it's summer time and the gaming is easy trailers are jumping expectations are
high so hush game babies and don't you start to cry welcome to triple click
we bring the games to you this week we're talking about all the video game
news of the past week with announcements from summer game fest xboxes big
press conference and much more so many trailers so little time let's get into it
I'm Kirk Hamilton I'm Maddie Myers and I'm Jason Shire. Hello. Hello. Hello. Good morning.
We are. It is very early in the morning for me and Jason. It is coming at you
from a hotel room in Los Angeles. Yeah, JW Marriots in downtown Los Angeles
which is hilariously also the place where all of xboxes staying so like every
time you go on the elevator you just see people in xbox jackets just just
watching them. They're matching jackets. They all have xbox jackets they got
xbox shirts they got xboxes. One increasingly that is a larger and larger
percentage of the whole games industry so it's like two hotels and then three
hotels and then it's just the entire thing is just xbox xbox. It's funny you
say that Kirk is at one point I was at the bar talking to like a group of
xbox people mostly comms people PR marketing etc and the boss of them was like
oh you know these are all externalists we're gonna get you to Jason. I was like
oh my god. No, I don't think so. You were gonna happen. You wish you said
charging off like a teenager. If journalism dies my backup plan is to I don't
know go become a monk or something I think journalism dies just as a
world where all of journalism. I just yeah all of journalism. I just have so
many things that I need Jason. I know I've got a long list of things I would do
no offense. Yeah no it's just it's all of like all these are lovely people
including our old Palatina Amini who I spent a much of time in this week who
have gone to the other side but it's just not not for me. Yeah. I actually just
got to the part of the second nuts documentary where Microsoft buys them and
it's interesting watching this fiercely independent studio suddenly realize
that they are all Microsoft in place. Oh weird. Yeah. Yeah. Comes for us all
eventually. Well anyways it's very early in the morning but we're gonna stay
on target. I'm gonna stay on track here. Yeah. Explain to you all that
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join and one programming note before we get started we are going to be off
next week. We're taking a week off so we'll be running something in the feed
not sure what but then we'll be back the week after that. Okay so this week we
are talking about not E3. I can't believe it's not E3 live from live from
Los Angeles so I just flew out here for this thing. E3 is dead it is no more at
least for this year they say they'll come back who knows we can talk about
that in a little bit but in lieu of that a new event has a risen has kind of
come from the ashes like a Phoenix and it is called summer game fest which is
a terrible name because everybody I've spoken to calls it summer games fest
and this is like Barnes and Noble Barnes and Nobles exactly Kirk that's oh man
my wife Amanda does that she calls it yeah every single time a
character and she's like no nobles no it is like that and on top of that it's
also not summer for half of the world so that's another interesting
interesting part of the name. We're about to go to Australia where it is
definitely not summer it's even a festival like there's more than one game
so games inaccurate summer's inaccurate is it a festival we got to get into
what Jason is going to tell us it did feel a little bit like a festival
as we as we talk a little bit more about like what summer games
fest actually see I'm doing some are game best actually I've never known
that until you told me right now that it was games single
I know what it should be so we're so you can talk a little bit more we can talk a
little bit more later about like the campus experience and how that
differs from me three but first let me just do a quick overview to ground
people to make sure everybody knows exactly what happened so events really
started on Thursday which is when Jeff Keely best known as the host of
the game wars gaming's biggest night he did a live show at the YouTube
theater in Englewood Los Angeles and Englewood California and just like
did one of his Keely shows or it's like look at all these world premieres
trailers trailers on trailers on trailers for videos on trailers for video games
except the which I was in I think was there I was in the theater it was full of
people but not quite not that crowded it was like a decent show I would say
then on Friday and Saturday media and influencers were able to go to this
little campus in downtown Los Angeles that was essentially like kind of like a
constrained version of e3 basically it's this I think there were like
three hundred attendees as opposed to the thousands and thousands of attendees
who go to e3 every year it was this kind of there were a bunch of buildings on
this little campus and a couple of like food trucks and food stands and you go
around and like you see all the signs are the big publishers and they have
their little booths their little demo stations and so Square Enix is over
there and you get to go play foam stars in that room and then you get to go
check out a behind closed doors demo of armor core or whatever okay so kind
of like e3 like very e3 except the big differences are that it was very
gel is lumber gel because of the lack of crowds and so uh and it was also it was just more
it fell more professional than e3 did um not a lot of like uh people weren't capes in the press
or like this is Jason's but no capes in the press room if you were wearing
any form of cosplay but especially a cape around Jason Chire in a press
event he is he is so upset yeah i honestly don't wear capes guys journalist don't wear capes
they don't their secret heroes they're heroes but they're not that kind of
gay heroes don't wear capes and journalism heroes so there you go
exactly but no i mean you could tell it's like every i mean it was all
familiar faces for me like of course yeah you can walk from one booth to another without
having ten conversations of people you knew on the way so that was cool and again like
not just developers but other journalists you know yeah yeah they're in the industry
PR people you know very much like a a lot of familiar faces um so that was Friday and Saturday and
there was enough air that you could really you could fit it into two days um and then on Sunday
there was an xbox show that you guys probably watched your cop pieces of where they did their
whole trailers thing it was an hour of xbox and then another hour or so of starfield um just
showing off starfield we'll get into that and then what xbox did that wasn't streamed was they
had like a little panel a little behind closed doors panel called what's next for gaming and they
had full-spenser xboxes boss and a couple of other executives and Todd Howard director of
starfield they all got on this little stage and did this kind of moderate a conversation where
this xbox employee has some of our questions um and there was no like press q and a or anything
so it was pretty canned and then uh Sunday evening I went to a final fantasy 16 event which we
won't really talk about because there was no news there or anything other than the demo coming um
but that was just a fun thing to be added in fact a bunch of people came up to me and we're like oh
I'm fan I'm a fan of the show so that was cool to see was that final fantasy event more of a
kind of fan thing I feel like I've been to those before yeah okay yeah I think I know it was a
fan thing um a lot of games were there um a lot of games yes there weren't no not a lot of
caves actually but there there were a lot of final fantasy t-shirts and kingdom hearts I guess
they're more crystals than caves right yeah I'm like cloaks to kind of match the game of thrones five
maybe some pins on the cloak no cloaks that I could see wow okay really follow down final fantasy
a lot of a lot of cool people a lot of fans they all got to play the game and then there was like
a signing for um for all the the top developers neo kio shita okay sir sure and all the other
folks were there um which was pretty cool it was cool to to be there and be part of that that
excitement I was actually shocked so uh it's the opener of the event and this will be the last
we talked about this date this part of the show but the opener of the event um square annexes
c-e-o diamond stage to address everybody and he's spoken english which I was so impressed by
because usually japanese developers executives are speaking through translators and everybody
else did but like that was pretty cool to see this that is cool young guy young new square annex
c-e-o he's like just started or it's just about to start um and spoken english I joke like chose to do
that yeah yeah yeah well that he was able to do that it's really cool yeah yeah yeah um I was standing
next to a square annex pr person and I was like uh so once you can dimension nfts and the fjr
so let's talk about that second order we'll talk about Thursday and what you guys saw then we
can talk about Friday and Saturday and I can tell you guys a little bit about what I played and what
the vibe was like and then we'll talk about Sunday and Xbox and how they how they came off we're
recording this before the Ubisoft thing and the Capcom thing today so we won't be able to talk
about that stuff but Ubisoft happened to announce a couple of their big games anyway over the the
older shows um so yeah let's start with Thursday um to do guys both watch the keely event what did
you make of them how do you want to start sure so I did watch it and we covered it at polygon in
much the same way that y'all would remember we covered e3 back at kataka together but this
is a very different vibe than e3 and I think that's reflected not just in terms of like the high
levels and traffic being lower and and just also the vibe is more chill even from a live stream
perspective it feels slower and a little more meandering we can get into some of the specifics it's
not to say there weren't trailers that I thought looks really cool and exciting but kind of like the
game awards there'd be some trailers that felt a little bit more like an advertisement than a trailer
which I know is a fine line but there's kind of like a waxing and waning of that sensation in the
STF stream that I didn't think they were watching Xbox I think there weren't commercials there were
ads for sure yeah yeah okay yeah some of it is just the the tone and pace uh but yeah I mean
I watched it all and felt exhausted by the end of it and we could get into some of the specifics of
what was shown uh as we go along but yeah it did feel different Kirk I'm I'm curious how you
felt as somebody watching it and not being hot on those screenshots post in the news what's
your sense of it well I was just sort of following along with what everybody was talking about um
it seemed like summer game fest there was like a little bit more there than maybe that previous
Sony event but it wasn't you know extremely exciting I watched a few things I didn't watch everything
I am excited for Alan Wake to I did you to watch the um man Alan Wake to it's gonna be great
but I guess we we knew that because remedy makes good games um did you watch this will our net twisted
metal what did the two think of the theater was dead silence so they put no they play this clip from
the show the new twisted metal show and they made this did joking thing like Anthony Mackie and
will our net sing the song song and it was meant to be funny and silly but it was dead silent and
that that was awful it was and that is fascinating because our coverage of that has done really well
I I feel like I get into traffic on this show which is always like kind of weird but well
no that isn't interesting we're curious about that and um we encourage it in where people like
hate watching it or you did well like people reactive well I don't know we don't have thousands
of angry comments on it I think people are curious about it I know I was curious about it because
when I heard about the adaptation just from their PR I was like twisted metal like it's been 20
some years since anyone said those words to me and in this age of video game live action adaptations
I wouldn't have thought twisted metal starring Anthony Mackie pretty solid star power on that guy
he's Captain America now will our net famous comedic actor wouldn't have thought twisted metal would
be the project but if people are curious about that I recommend um just checking out the polygon
article because it includes a letter from the showrunner who is obsessed with twisted metal like not
not just a cash in situation for this guy he has been trying to make this happen for the past 20
years has a pretty successful career in TV writing and this one guy is just really into the game
twisted metal and really want to make this show so regardless of what you think about the trailer this
show is a labor of love and it's somebody who really loves twisted metal I don't know
yeah that does explain it right if it does doesn't it we start asking this question of like okay the last
of us I get that assessment speaker okay that kind of makes sense mario okay yeah they always want
to make a mario I think then it's like twisted metal but when you when you hear the guy making it
is like it's been his dream his whole life something else to make sense yeah I think it's going to be
a bit of a cult hit I I'll say that because like we've gotten some promo for it that makes it seem
like it's going to be really weird and I thought it was a card game and there wasn't a single card
in the show like the show clip they show they're not sure there will be cars in the show just
they didn't want to show cars driving around in the trailer that makes sense they wanted to show
people that it's going to be funny I guess but did they succeeded that anyway yeah let's get
into the video open comments of the show so um the big I guess announcements were there was a
new principle purge a game that's like a 2d Metroid being yeah um thing that has a lot of positive
buzz people played it say it's it's kind of cool um there was the new sonic game which I'll
talk about in a bit because I play that I mean there isn't much to say it's more sonic I don't know
you don't have to talk about it but it's Sonic Jason it's 2d there's a spedium into release date it's
come in in October um and there was uh lies a p that games looks pretty cool got a release date
there was a demo as well I've seen people playing the demo and talking about it I haven't yet
played it but I do have it downloaded this is lies of p is a Pinocchio bloodborne game
and it looks dope as hell there's a new answer for you like sand like a game called sandland
which is a new anime game it's very cool the giant ball is made imagine why dragon ball creator
a curator yama looks really cool art wise I thought this this trailer was very exciting to me
and there was this amazing moment uh truly truly well done by Jeff Keely where he was like um
they showed some final fantasy mobile thing and then it cut the camera cuts a keely and keely
was like speaking of final fantasy and the crowd starts going crazy yeah and he's like and he
he turns he turns and he's like no no no no no and then he's so exciting door dash has got you covered
with the final fantasy 16 promo everyone's like oh it was five for the funniest part of the show
it was so funny accidentally punking us all by everybody waiting it wasn't accidental because then
the real twist was that later he did have final fantasy seven rebirth the trailer for that the
second world final fantasy seven remake series to close the show so I don't think it was an accident
Maddie I don't know so is it the is it the final fantasy seven remake series or is it the
final fantasy seven re series is it final fantasy three seven I don't know um that trailer was
pretty cool it was I was actually really confused I don't know how much you guys followed but
everybody thought that um they were teasing Tifa dying oh yeah there's a whole polygon didn't
Maddie didn't you write this article on the whole article on fully gone about these series you can
read my explanation of why people think that so I'm sure Jason what you're gonna say is that in
the original game Tifa doesn't die but she does have an altercation with Sephiroth that is similar
to the one shown in the trailer so of course you and I might be like well why would anyone think
Tifa's gonna die there we already know she's not gonna die well and the Japanese version of the
trailer it's much more clear what Sephiroth is saying in that scene he's saying he killed Tifa during
that altercation and that he doesn't know who this current Tifa is who's been hanging out with
Cloud yeah I know I just interpreted that as him just say like them adding a line well there's
the interpretation that Sephiroth's lying and that he's messing with Cloud and that Tifa didn't
really die that day versus she did well or the third one which I thought was at least was clear
to me which is that they they for this remake they've added a lot of extra dialogue to kind of
fill out scenes and this is just him saying oh I sloshed you down I thought you died like I killed
you and they're just adding a little bit of color you think that and they just they just included
that in the trailer just for fun yeah well but why does he say who is she and also include a
homonologue leading in suggesting that Genova is impersonating Tifa I mean given that we're playing
a game where the biggest question is is the character who dies not going to die yes it definitely
seems fair to me that's true especially but they also in the first game they added a whole segment
where bar it seems like bar it dies and then that was bringing back to life anyway I didn't
interpret it that way but yes I had conversations like that one afterwards and people are like
yeah this is why but anyway yeah so that was somewhere games fest the keynote game fest generally
I left yet game fest I left pretty underwhelms underwhelms by that whole show and the feeling of
it many I think you you were spot on before this more than anything else feels just like like
the blend between commercials and like I mean even just the door dash thing it's like at least
when you watch at E3 previously at E3 there were no keelie shows it was like publisher shows and at
least when you watch an EA show you know you're watching a commercial for EA shows but they don't
actual commercial commercial it was purity in the commercials back in our day so yeah
when I watch yeah I don't want to fucking door dash can move yeah I get you I get you know
and I just think it's funny but I get you like I I want that the game company is to advertise
that's how keely pays for the show Jason it has to be brought to us by Samsung and
door that pretty pretty silly yeah it's pretty silly like when you watch the Xbox show you like
yes this is all Xbox marketing Xbox commercials but that's what you're tuning in for you're not
tuning in for the only soon Microsoft will just own everything and then all of the ads and all
of the companies advertising will be in some way owned by Microsoft so it'll it'll come full circle
that's true all of these events these events are always from the YouTube theater the Microsoft
theater so yeah yeah okay let's talk about the next part of the show which was the play days event
so like I mentioned before it's this little campus you go around it's pretty chill I really like
that you don't have to wait on line for anything you can get food like any food you can't get food
because the line is an hour long no there's been actually your own granola bar or you starve
exactly and it only takes you like 30 seconds to walk from an appointment to another appointment
so that was cool because no running have to be play for things I'll talk about a couple things
that I played a couple things that impress me and you guys can say a few song thing that impressed you
so the thing that blew me away the most was way for it crash team rumble okay yeah
I'm saying more crash team rumble me neither I sent it for you for everything is like whatever
it was super fun it's like this kind of like Destiny's Gambit it's this 4B4 multiplayer mode where
you have to go around collecting fruit and bringing it back to your little deposit bank and then
along the way you can also attack other players like the other team and like block them and use
special abilities is this first person third person it's their person it's all multiplayer it's
like one of those budget I think it's like 40 bucks multiplayer sure sure they also sell costumes
and hats and stuff um yeah and incredibly fun I was playing with like a bunch of the dev team and
like other people who were there and it was super fun I really enjoyed that experience I was
to play it remnant too you guys critical event of the first game right yeah I love the first game
it's very good remnant is like it's like souls with guns um it's like Gears of War souls I'd say
Gears of Souls was a lot of people describe it yeah like third person cover shooting with like
Gearsy kind of combat but a Dark Souls structure and kind of world yeah well so I played
remnants who I played through like one in one stage with a boss they told me that there's some
procedurally generated elements to it so it doesn't have like the careful design level design
of a Souls game but it feels pretty good the shooting is really good um they're bonfires and
as this blasts and all the stuff you want from all the good stuff you want from a Souls game um I was
playing on like either easy or medium one of the low there are difficulties settings in this one
um I was playing on one of the lower ones and still got my ass kicked so yeah fun fun challenge
to play the game for sure um unlike the first game the biggest difference in remnant too is they
have these archetypes so you can you can pick from the beginning of the game like I want to be a
sniper type archetype or I want to be up early tank played archetype and then there's a lot
more like character customization they were telling me um it felt really good I really enjoyed it um
lot of fun monsters to shoot and a big part of the fun of that game is playing multiplayer it is
multiplayer games so yeah I would say having more of a class system would be really cool for it
because you can specialize yeah yeah I didn't try multiplayer but the designer I was talking to
one of the lead designers is Slady named Cindy who was telling me that um that uh when you play in
multiplayer they ramp up the difficulty they throw in more more monsters to kill as fun I thought a
boss at the end of the stage I was really cool um just this teleporting kind of like uh father gasky
own looking dude just based on the first game it seems like a team that you know had a lot of success
with their first game but it's a kind of a simple game and that now they've probably got the
kind of resources in time to really explore a lot of ideas they it has the feel of that game
that's gonna have a really killer sequel so that's cool to hear yep yeah um played some sonic whatever
it's more sonic um I checked out uh armor core six I got to see I need to play up but there was
like a little stage demo um that game that series is not for me I was kind of I came into it open
minding because I was like oh new from soft game maybe they'll add some soulsy stuff but now it's
just just armor core um which I'm just not into the next or anything so I can't really
hone on that one played some mortal combat gross games uh just like did you did you see people
the discourse talking about uh how mortal combat was so prominently featured in summer game
fest and how if somebody were to watch that show they'd be like really this is what video games
are doing the same I and that's the that when you were there you heard people going crazy over
the spine ripping and like because there were a bunch of fans in the theater and they were love
that shit yeah man some people were into it I it was not for me um I was sitting in this theater
presentation the developers are getting really excited about all the the spine ripping fatalities
Mortal Kombat though it's like speaking of twisted metal I mean to look at another 90s brand
Mortal Kombat is one of the most enduring brands in all the video games I mean they've
they've always they've I guess there was kind of a fallow period for a minute but they've
always been around and they've always been popular so that doesn't surprise me at all people love
Mortal Kombat it is true people love Mortal Kombat and then I played the cyberpunk expansion
oh man I'm so excited for this that trailer was totally sick and I've been playing a time
cyberpunk this year and that games like become very good and I'm extremely excited about that DLC
maybe more than almost anything maybe more than anything yeah so okay so yeah I played some of
that it was really cool I really enjoyed it I'm excited I told them hey I'm excited to revisit
the game everyone loves the redemption story here's a fun fact the director of cyberpunk
phantom liberty and also he told me now the director of like the next cyberpunk game which they're
gonna work on after this is a man named Gabe I'm in tangelo who might sound familiar to
old listeners of split screen because he was on the show in 2018 I believe or 2019 GDC he was
running a studio called QC games that mean a game called breach and Maddie and I talked to him
at GDC and I was like hey do you remember me he's like oh yeah we did the podcast and now he is
running cyberpunk that's pretty cool he took over or he came on in like 2020 towards the end
of development and then took over a year later as director of phantom liberty the DLC and then
went on from there and it seems very much like this they want this DLC to be like a big
meaty expansion it looks like is it I was looking at it and it's like the president has crash landed
in part of the scene I was like is this just escape from New York like are they basically doing
escape from New York and cyberpunk which if that's the case hell yes I'm on board with that yeah it
doesn't the president have the same last name is me that was very dismayors yeah I'm sure
she spells it the same way too I was like I'm on it is some distant relative of mine president
future all right all right shout out to Maddie yeah it was cool I wanted to take screenshots of all
the moments of the characters are like everybody's after Myers but who goes why there's a thousand
reasons to take Myers out I was like damn Myers has so many enemies yeah it felt it felt very much
like you're trying to do they're trying to make him more of an RPG they're trying to make him
more of like the linear experience I mean when I interview Gabe you some you that like they
also have systemic stuff and trying to try to have that too but I kind of got the vibe that they're
they're focusing a little more on what that one that is the next part of it I'm really I'm excited
for you because I know Maddie you played a fair amount of or maybe all of cyberpunk but Jason
I'm excited for you to play it because having played through but I would like to beat it yeah oh
okay yeah I played through most of it I'm near the end but I really like the story stuff in that
game is very very strong and it's exciting to like go and and play more of it like the fact that
they're gonna do expansions especially because those Witcher 3 expansions were the best stuff in
the game they were incredibly good and this one was this one is $30 so it's like meant to be the
big one he they also told me this is this is the only one they're doing this will be going on
to the next game yeah that's the plan it's that just like glitch ones that set in the middle of the
story so you can do it like any time right you can also start a new game and skip right to the
else that yeah I think I'm gonna download it in the middle and it looks like from the trailer
it's gonna deal with your character v's brain implant and Johnny and the whole thing like it
looks like they're gonna try to find a way that you can get out of it which was kind of always
attention in the game is that you're playing this open world game you want to just relax and live
your cyberpunk life in Night City but yeah there's this ticking time bomb in your brain and it's a
constant plot pressure so those two things are in conflict the fact that they are now adding a
way that you can maybe some other ways you can deal with it totally makes sense and then
you can maybe kind of relax and just live your cyber life yes and Keanu is just as big a part of
the DLC as you as in the main game I get pretty excited to play a fair amount like I got part
though all the stuff with with Jackie and got into some of the giannest stuff and yeah
you run into it yourself as character no I had to stop my demo just before I met him I was like
about to meet him and didn't get to you so it's okay September is it's coming on in September
so not too far away um yeah that was cool um it was it was a fun atmosphere so one thing I'll talk
about it and then we'll get into Sunday is there was a lot of gossip around the show because I was at
the JW bar every night and you always see like thoughts of people you meet new people people people
people came up to me alive like hey I'm a fan like love triple click etc etc cool all right great
right story a lot like like Jason yeah it's popular no everyone loves a lot of love with a
cool piece in this everyone loves triple click um the gossip the gossip was about uh E3 and like
is E3 coming back most people I talk to believe that it is dead that SGF is going to replace it
that next year more big publishers are going to go to SGF because what SGF was really missing
were a couple things one like a really a stronger lineup of games is like you have EA there but
all they have is like they're immortals whatever game like a morgals of abium yeah um like some
some soccer golf game I don't know I don't even remember um and like Nintendo isn't there um
Microsoft is in their own thing separately a lot of the heavy hitters were kind of missing and
then also there were very few opportunities for interviews the way that E3 would often give you
time to like go to uh go to a booth somewhere go to a close room somewhere and talk to people so
those are things that were missing but the general consensus I got from talking to people is that like
next year it'll probably be more people coming to SGF at rather than E3 opening up again
so we'll see what happens but I got that vibe I don't think that's a bad thing I think this thing
was a good replacement for E3 um maybe they could also be like a fan show that exists alongside it
but having that campus for press you can really get a lot more done than you can in the craziness
of crowds at E3 that said there was a vibe missing there was an energy missing that was always
at E3 you can walk down the hall and then be like oh she gave me a notice over there like playing
PlayStation games well that's weird so there was something missing it'll be like that as it gets
bigger though I I personally just find it odd that Jeff Keely ends up being the guy who's in charge
of this event I don't feel like there's any one person who has a comparable role in any other
industry and I've said this about the game awards as well like just how unusual his role is and
how much responsibility he has as a curator I just find it unusual it's not to say I don't think he's
up for it or something it's just it's just odd that it's just this guy yeah but yeah I guess I'm
not against the SGF replacing E3 but we'll see I guess yeah more door dashes I agree it is weird
it's not it's not exactly comfortable that's for sure yeah and he clearly works with a lot of
sponsors as opposed to what E3 does which is work with an event that probably has unionized
set up as opposed to like Samsung TV sponsoring the event razor headsets sponsoring the event like
that is a that's a difference that I'd love to see somebody dig into yeah it's funny you mentioned
that and one of the conversations I had with people is that buying a space at SGF was cheaper than
it was at E3 years ago because of a lack of union yep no teamsters yeah no unionized labor you're
100% right yep it's interesting hmm definitely something to keep in mind so and then Sunday was the
Xbox show definitely the strongest yes now we show at least so far um again we're recording this
pre-gift soft in Calcambas but but Xbox was as it was much stronger than likely show um did you
guys watch it any highlights anything you guys enjoyed from that show I think it's funny that
Ubisoft showed their big game at Xbox which is very E3 like yeah that's very E3 of them to show
the cinematic trailer and then do the gameplay reveal okay um you know I I still haven't
gone back to finish Jedi survivor so I'm still in the midst of one big third person open world
Star Wars game but uh you know another one with uh with a with a lady protagonist that looks
mm-hmm looks kind of neat kind of a fun trailer she seems like a solo gun gun toton type yeah
I can't surprise you not a little higher on that because it looked like if anything's gonna be close
to an andor show uh it's gonna be that I guess so yeah it's I mean the only real reason that I don't
have a strong take on it is that I haven't seen gameplay because we haven't watched the Ubisoft
thing so like it was a 200 trailer I don't know but yeah cool and concept um I love fable so I'm
I'm excited that there's gonna be more fable that was a little trailer yeah yeah and Richard
Iodis it was in that trailer being funny um little bit uncanny values I have to say not all video
renderings of humans actually do that anymore a lot of times they just look like people yeah like
real pretty famous actors that you see yeah I was a little bit thrown by that in the trailer yeah
yeah there's also a vouch um there was that new game from an exile that looked like
pioshock infinite you guys see that it was like straight out of bioshock it was weirdly very
weirdly bioshock infinite yeah a little too much that was odd to me I I didn't know what to make of it
I wouldn't have expected a game to like straight up just the aesthetic there's just something the
lighting that it was very I mean on how much that looks how much that looks like bioshock infinite
yeah yeah and that was the main reaction I saw to that like to the point that people seem
distracted from the actual trailer itself just to be like what's that by a shuck infinite too
well yeah right it was it was just how's that being made wait I almost don't know how I feel it's
just like it made me feel weird I was like to have a game be that similar to another extremely
famous game with a studio that notably um disbanded as a weird word to describe what happened to
right and also I guess it speaks to the how iconic bioshock infinite it is you know I know we all
have very mixed feelings about that game and about its development at the story wise but it has a
very solid aesthetic for sure like it's really it goes to show right it's so strong that if you do
copy it it's like it's immediately you're copying it's like oh yeah this is what you're doing like
you were there's this one game that looks and sounds like that yeah I will say I don't think that
just a CG trailer or whatever it was not CG in game whatever it was it doesn't really do justice
because it's a game from an exile the makers of like wasteland Brian Fargo's team he was originally I
mean he ran interplay back in the day and wasteland fallout etc it's kind of interesting to see
an exile making this kind of a game well that doesn't it's they said afterwards like this is our
PG with like RPG systems in it it just seems more like an infinite type game from the aesthetic of it
but I don't think it's gonna be like a first person shooter the way that my shock infinite was oh okay
that's good to know I think it was just the trailer immediately assumed that you see it and I'm
like oh yeah this is going to be a by-shock style you know run around shoot things that do magic yeah
I think that was the the nature of the trailer interesting yeah there was a vowed I saw headline
afterwards I was talking about how we've sit in had set out to make their own version of Skyrim with
a vow it looks like to scale it down and so it's a little bit more like outer worlds approach where
it's like depth rather than breadth is their goal for that so is a vowed did you get the sense that
it's also a kind of dialogue-y go around do stuff it looked to me more like an action combat game
that's what I was talking about it looks like Skyrim it's obsidian but I don't see a lot of like
dialogue and sort of world interactivity the way that I mean that was just the nature of the trailer
I suspect it'll feel like an obsidian RPG like it'll have all the dialogue trees and stat checks
and stuff that sounds cool do they say when that's coming out that's next year yeah because
starfield is the really the big thing yeah we'll talk about that yeah so yeah what are the two if
you think of that of that extensive demo that they gave I thought it was really cool I also was
like how much of this is is actually going to be delivered upon in the game promises are actually
going to live up to what they're what they're what they're having up here but I was impressed
so I felt that that whole game that whole gameplay presentation afterwards I didn't watch all of it
it to go take a shower like towards again but I saw it's really cool I liked I like the lady who
was like I don't know words sandwiches I love hoarding sandwiches I think that was everybody's favorite
moment a real and actual reality in one of those trailers like this is how we actually play
these kinds of things yeah it looked cool at this point I have hit I just want to play it I don't
want to keep watching stuff about it but I I don't know if that's an unusual take or not it's just
when we're close enough to release on something I'm almost like the more I learn about this yeah
you don't want to know any part yeah you know what I mean but I do enjoy watching it nonetheless
the gnome of sky comparisons abound and they have since it was announced but even more so after
that reveal yeah especially the first parts of that route that trailer the sort of demo not really
trailer I suppose that directs the demo yeah it made me think of of No Man's Sky for a while and
I've just now sig weighed back to Zelda after kind of wrapping with Diablo 4 and there's so much
Zelda left for me that I still have a little bit of that feeling of overwhelm looking at another
gigantic open world game hearing Todd Howard say there will be 1000 planets like this and like
I just one planet would be fine man but when I started getting into settlements and walking
on and talking to people and it started to look more like Mass Effect and less like No Man's Sky I
was much more on board and excited I thought that that stuff looked really cool like the aesthetic of
the game does look very nice I think they have a really nice art style this sort of clean shiny I
don't know how to describe it exactly but the the cities that they should have looked really nice
and I was like okay okay cool all right I'm gonna play this and then Maddie I did start to feel like
you I was just like okay fine put it on my computer let me play I'll see to the give me the game Todd
yeah I'm curious and uh mostly just with regard to the No Man's Sky comparison of it all people
are like sort of now looking at it and being like well No Man's Sky has all these
procedurally generated planets and that's why it's so much better and I'm just like well it
wasn't better at launch how how soon we forget and also to have like really specific crafted spaces
and crafted NPC quests is really what I'm looking forward to with something like Starfield and
it's not to say that No Man's Sky isn't cool in its own way but that's the specific thing that
I'm excited about that it supposedly will offer with actually making things like on purpose
the way that this seems to you can just build the things that are a little more climactic like
one issue that No Man's Sky has always had is that when you do find a huge monster like a space monster
which you can do now and you couldn't really do it launch there always a little deflating because
it's just this big dumb thing wandering around and it's bigger and it's maybe cool looking but
that's sort of it where you can imagine at least and I have no idea if this will be true of Starfield
but if there is some sweet space Leviathan it's actually a whole set piece that somebody made
and so it actually feels much more you know climactic and exciting to find this huge crazy
space dinosaur that impacts the rest of the world and other people react to it along with you
and those reactions are composed yeah it's that right and there are it actually has gameplay that
means something yeah yeah yeah yeah one thing that's shocking me about the that showcases that
it felt like they were trying to show like hey you can do other things besides from shoot you can
talk your head as a show you can sneak around which I think a lot of people felt like was missing
from Fallout 4 and so it's good to see them putting emphasis emphasis on it it does I have to
say it does always reduce the game whenever they cut to like sick first person headshotting like I'm
always just like this is lame like even though I'm sure it'll be fun and stuff it is it is such a
video games thing that you have to show this like beautiful evocative space world in these conversations
then be like also like sick gunplay like low gravity like headshots and I'm like you know which I'm
sure we'll be doing a lot of in the game and it'll probably hopefully be fun but it is it is always
there the biggest problem with Starfield is that it comes out on September 6 and you can buy
early access and get them in September 1st while while Baldur's Gate 3 comes out on August 31st
that is a problem yeah and then Cyberpunk comes out later in September right I mean we're it's
never going to let up this year it is never going to let up yeah and then Spider-Man in October
it's a lot this year one more thing that we didn't mention from the Xbox show is the new game
from the persona trilogy the trilogy of like the designer and artist and stuff who who Helm's
personified and showed you the composer yes of course the composer it was called metaphor or
something or another and it's like a fantasy taken persona they had announced this ages ago as
project our e-famacy now it's finally here and it looks well I thought it looks tremendous
what do you look like persona fantasy game I don't know yeah especially in the in lieu of a
new persona game how yeah I'll play that right one then along with the persona three remake and
percent of five tactics like there's a lot of percent of the persona is really just around a lot
which is cool though I I'm kind of like sated for the moment after finishing percent of five royal
like the second time I will definitely play more percent of things and I'll replay that
persona three remake and yeah I'm sure metaphor is going to be going to be cool just based on
his working on it so yeah man I mean I'll play all those games well that's I was excited about
benefit because it was something new it wasn't like more persona it was and it was totally new
even though it looked like persona it's still is going to be a brand new thing it has fantasy
and it's like I noticed that it's like more persona but it's not more persona but it's exactly it
looks like persona it's very stylish it's got the whole the menus look persona ish they're all
over the place it looks like thousands if I caught in the bottom right and during one of the combat
sequences which looks like persona it was like night like I saw it was like it looked like it was
like fantasy archetypes for each character so maybe maybe instead of saying like joker go do
this so that we like night go do that which is so different yeah so before we take a break and do one
more thing and he finds all thoughts anything Maddie you watch them in the indie shows did you see
anything that really stood out to you anything else that we haven't mentioned for either of you sure
I'll just say really quickly we also covered Dave the devs which is always fun to watch has a lot
of indies in it and I thought the game viewfinder looked really cool it's like a game where you're
walking around a world with a bunch of like suspended platforms and first person and you find
pictures of other platforms and architecture that you can then hold up the picture and that
structure will appear if you're holding up oh I've seen this game yeah yeah the trailer helps
explain it better than I just did you have to see it you do have to see it beautiful and it looks
like a cool puzzle game to me but yeah just in general I don't really good time watching some
trailers all we can watch yeah all right why don't we take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing
my fellow graduates for 500 episodes my podcast the jv club Janet Barney has gathered story
after story of all the scandalous things we've done throughout our childhood stories like how
Jamila Jamil survived a horrific house party and she was on crutches great or how how
loved one learned a Shakespearean monologue in his pajamas this is not the speech we approve
without your love and life tragedies there would be no podcast in fact I have an exclusive look at how
Maggie Lawson's mom confronted her after a sneaky basement meetup with her crush
listen to the jv club with Janet Barney Thursday's on maximum fun class of forever
yeah
parenting it's hard but don't worry you're not alone
belly up to the low bar with one bad mother and let us remind you that fine is good enough
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so that is not a thing so join us each week and let us tell you that you are doing a good job
you can listen to one bad mother on maximum fun or wherever you get your podcasts
okay so we're back for one more thing Kirk come on how do you want to do this you want to
both go at once you want to talk at the same time what do you want to do yeah let's let's both
talk at the same time so and I'll hand myself right and Maddie let's
okay
it'll be like you can experience being at the jw bar
we're both talking about Diablo for which I finished on my sorcerer
I finished and in the end game and Maddie you are you started over as a rogue and you're
enjoying it more as that I did so I've not finished it but Kirk why don't you give us your
big picture of that some then I can talk more yeah would you think you finished it all
I think the story is really fun it's really cool it has a lot of really cool moments it's
totally worth playing through I mean if you have the game of course I'm sure people will but I'd
say it's even worth focusing on only because you know you'll probably be around level 50 when you
finish it which then you can enter the world tier three which you kind of start getting the end
game loot and entering that whole world it feels a little bit like monster hunter to me
in that monster hunter has high rank and low rank where when you finish the low rank run of
all the monsters you just do it again on high rank and then high rank gear that you start grinding
for is so much better than your low rank gear that you immediately get rid of all this stuff
that you may be spent a long time accumulating in low rank and that's happening to me as well
where I really kind of built a pretty sick build for a sorcerer toward the end of the game
and now like the basic stuff that I'm getting in world tier three is just better than my best thing
that I was carrying around that I spent forever kind of customizing in worlds here too which I had
played the sort of easier world tier so that's a little bit deflating so now that I've kind of
beaten it and entered this higher world tier I'm a little like man I can't do this all again
and the stories over so I've sort of I'm like okay back to Zelda like it it was a good sort of
point to stop playing but I did have a very good time and I'll say just for anyone out there playing
as a sorcerer I changed my sorcerer build again because I know I got kind of detailed last time
about my build this time I respect to be a totally a sort of one trick pony a sorcerer that just
does arc lash which is just a sort of melee like lightning whip I guess attack and then everything
else that I do is built around passives and stunning so this is a build that I found online all
I'm also share a link for that in the show notes I wouldn't have figured this out just because
there are all these different nodes in the build tree and you'd have to really sit down and study
them but I think if you did that you would immediately see this where basically there's a way to
set it up so that every time you trigger something with a cooldown you get certain perks activated
every time you stun an enemy you get certain things activated there's a couple of items that
give you bonus damage to stunned enemies so then the cooldowns and the stuns start to work
together and pretty soon your whole ability bar is just cooldowns so things that have a cooldown
rather than things that use mana I have no mana abilities so I just don't use my mana at all
and then every time I trigger a cooldown it makes me kind of armored and invincible so I'm basically
a tank sorcerer who just stands there in the middle of everybody with a shield just absolutely
wrecking shop and I just like marched through the final maybe third of the story with this build it
was like it felt broken it was very fun to just like absolutely annihilate everything oh yeah and it
kind of goes to show I think just how varied your builds can be since I've been playing this you know
very much more mobile sorcerer who couldn't take much damage and I was like doing a lot of ranged
attacks and then I just respect my character and suddenly I'm a tank who just like destroys things
so that was a lot of fun and made me you know I think it'd be really fun to try a different
character and different kinds of builds in the future good it's a very flexible game and very
fun overall with a good story I will say um definitely worth playing through the story it's very
cool very cool so you don't think you're gonna stick with end game content at all you think you're
just no if anything I would need to if I'm bored later play it again as a rogue or something but
I want to hear more about what Maddie thinks of the rogue of the rogue yeah Maddie how far are you
um I'm on act two so I did I did start over completely as a different character and I'm so
glad I did and I just wanted to go into a little more detail about how much fun it is because I
really recommend it I played as a barbarian for all of D3 and D2 and I just and such a slow heavy
methodical player and pretty much every class-based game that that exists in that it was really hard
for me to even imagine playing a different kind of character but just for whatever reason I don't
think the barbarian feels that great in this game I'm sure they're gonna change it
but right now a lot of the moves felt very similar to me and it almost felt like kind of button
mashing and just in the sense that I was like every every move feels like a different version of a
melee attack that has just slightly different timing and that isn't very exciting to me um but
the rogue as I'm playing it has a lot of different kinds of attacks which is really cool because I
truly feel like it's the opposite of button mashing where every single button I'm hitting is
completely tactical very specific knife kind of yeah and that is so cool like I there's the the
double knife stab like Arya Stark style like I'm getting in really close and shivering people
and the cal trops is like you leap back and you're throwing a billion razor blades on the ground and
I have these like swirling shadows that flip around me and attack people and stuff I don't know
it's really cool so there's like mid-range far-range up close everything really feeling like it's
tactical feeling like it's super fun both multiplayer and also completely on my own and like
playing against bosses isn't as hard as it was or as boring as it was just all around having a way
way better time with the game and definitely gonna beat it with the rogue could you even see
myself trying the sorceress at some point because of how much fun and having and how much I've heard
about just how creative you can be with builds I don't know that end game is gonna be for me either
but that's okay because I'm enjoying it a lot in this current form yeah who needs a forever game
just playing a game in the end exactly allows both options you can make it a forever game or not
and there's and the story does set up like there's more to the story and there's gonna be they've
said there's gonna be expansions so like I'll definitely come back for those I'm seeing more of
the season of content also yeah that I'm probably gonna miss but I'll come back for the like
story yeah well I mean I think seasons have story in them too is is what I think I've seen
though that they've said that they're not gonna do the as strong of a seasonal narrative the way
that destiny does where if you come in late you miss a bunch of the story I think they're focusing
the big story beats more on DLC I'm not totally sure about that but I saw that somewhere which
would make sense I think it's a better approach that's right everyone in LA is talking about the
I saw a bunch of people who were all obsessed with it a second Mara Buddy Billy about it a
second Mara Buddy Tom Tom about Diablo it was fun to see everyone's just like you know I'm excited
to get home and hopefully fix my crashing issues like yeah we will see my one more thing is
not a game it is the writers strike and the reason them well my one more thing is ready to
strike is first of all the games I'm playing I can't really talk about other than Zelda but also
it's just an interesting conversation topic here in LA I actually went to the picket line on Tuesday
last Tuesday and visited and was was chatting with some of the folks there and it was really interesting
there's outside of Netflix HQ and cars kept coming by and honking in solidarity and our buddy our
friend of the show Adam Conover who is like kind of one of the leaders of the line yeah told me that
that word is word on the scene is that the honking is very irritating for Netflix executives
which is part of the point it's really interesting to send conversations with people about like
what they think of the strike when they think it's going to end a lot of people think it'll go
through the summer unless the actors strike to which a lot which might expedite things but one
thing I thought was really interesting is that one of the big sticking points is over residuals
involving the streaming networks and one of the big kind of obstacles is that the streaming
networks and Netflix's Disney pluses of the world won't share their data and so there's no point
of like there there isn't even anything that people can negotiate from you can't say like well
my show made X hours so I shouldn't make Y and then this show made that and that should make that
nobody has the data unlike the movie business or even standard TV TV networks where you have
Nielsen ratings you have box office you you know what people should be making as a result of that
and there are kind of a couple of theories about that and this is really interesting I was
actually talking to someone like who works in a Hollywood a manager of Raiders and stuff and
was talking to him a little bit about this one theory is that the numbers are incredibly high
and the Netflix's of the world don't want to share the money that they're making with anybody
another theory and this is when I'm kind of leaning towards just in my own like this makes sense
is that the numbers are incredibly low and they don't want to reveal that it's all a house of
cards and that like this is all they've been they've been pursuing this like Don Quixote like quest
of just like making streaming a thing and it's not actually a thing so if that is the case one
belief that a lot of people in Hollywood share I think is that streaming is just going to die
and that it's just going to be like okay this golden age of streaming is over we're returning
to network television it's kind of like we're going back to the old way of doing things because
these uh 30 million dollar an episode productions of shows that like make for these fantastic
looking and really cool shows are just not sustainable when the streaming model never worked
and all these companies all these uh tv companies and film companies were just trying to act like
tech companies and show growth even if it didn't actually equate to profit um and that's the one
I believe and so I can see that being the future where it's like hey this is all just nonsense
let's go back to the way things used to be but yeah it's really interesting being in Hollywood
and just seeing it seeing it all in the air talking to people about it it's really fascinating
to me and I'm curious to see what happens next that's for sure yeah same and definitely curious
to see how they'll work it out or if they'll work it out or when they'll work it out yeah how
how this thing is going to be resolved yeah I mean everybody thinks after the summer is when
it'll be resolved like around labor days is generally what people think is going to happen
and then the question is what are the readers gats and and what are the studios agree to give up
and they're a lot of different sticking wins I mean the streaming residuals are a big one writers
room sizes they're a big one one artificial intelligence right is a big one AI is another big one
yes yes yes yes AI like the studios won't even discuss they'll just be like they're their
counter-proposal like the writers asked for a band on use of AI to like write scripts and stuff
and the counter-proposal for the studios was like we will agree to meet yearly to discuss future
technology right right and everyone knows so little about how AI is even going to work yeah yeah
it's a big one thing yeah um all right cool that is it for this week's show hope every
is enjoyed summer games fast slash not e3 slash e3 replacement summer games fast which I mean
I think is going to happen and by the way I'm doing it again summer games fast summer games fast
they should just change that that's my note for next year they should it's so clunky summer
game fast like it feels weird to say you could just change it no one would notice because they
would just change it to electronic entertainment expo maybe for short that's going to ring
to me three e3 actually easier to say yeah it's easier to say e3 that is a nice thing to it
and in fact they should move from that campus to the L.A. convention center
to some ideas to some ideas yeah yeah yeah okay go well uh yeah I will see you both uh not next
week because we'll be off next week we'll put up something for for fans for listeners and then
we will be back in a couple of weeks to talk about more videos yeah see you both in two weeks
bye
triple click is produced by Jason Shryer Maddie Myers and me Kirk Hamilton I edit next the show and
also wrote our theme music our show art is by Tom DJ some of the games and products we talked
about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration you can find a
link to our ethics policy in the show notes triple click is a proud member of the maximum fun podcast
network and if you like our show we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at
maximumfund.org slash join find us on twitter at triple click pods and email the triple click
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next time
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