This episode was pulled directly from our livestream over on YouTube. Come check us out!
The following description was written by A.I.
Get ready to unravel the complexities of "Dragon's Dogma 2" and its microtransaction mayhem. This episode isn't just a deep dive—it's a full-blown expedition into the heart of contemporary gaming controversies, from the questionable influence of in-game purchases to the technological tribulations of CD Projekt Red's engine shift. Alongside my thoughts, we'll navigate through the labyrinth of industry practices that could impact your journey as a player.
The world of gaming is ripe with potential and pitfalls, and today we're stripping back the veil on both. I'll share my musings on the future of beloved franchises like Guild Wars, casting an eye on the delicate dance between innovation and nostalgia. We reflect on ArenaNet's secret projects and the longing for a gaming experience rich in mastery and connection, before shifting gears to explore the thrilling possibilities of racing MMOs and the enigmatic allure of Pacific Drive.
Then, it's a trip down memory lane as we revisit the classics that shaped our digital adventures, from the cyber streets of "Cyberpunk" to the star-spanning sagas of "Mass Effect". And because we live in a world where superheroes reign supreme, we'll dissect the resurgence of the X-Men with 'X-Men '97', the rippling effects of Deadpool, and the future of the MCU. So, buckle up—this episode promises a journey through the past, present, and speculative future of the gaming and entertainment landscape.
If you enjoy our episode's content, come check us out on twitter @KDratiopodcast, YouTube as The KD Ratio Podcast! or on Instagram KDratiopodcast
This episode was pulled directly from our livestream over on YouTube. Come check us out!
The following description was written by A.I.
Get ready to unravel the complexities of "Dragon's Dogma 2" and its microtransaction mayhem. This episode isn't just a deep dive—it's a full-blown expedition into the heart of contemporary gaming controversies, from the questionable influence of in-game purchases to the technological tribulations of CD Projekt Red's engine shift. Alongside my thoughts, we'll navigate through the labyrinth of industry practices that could impact your journey as a player.
The world of gaming is ripe with potential and pitfalls, and today we're stripping back the veil on both. I'll share my musings on the future of beloved franchises like Guild Wars, casting an eye on the delicate dance between innovation and nostalgia. We reflect on ArenaNet's secret projects and the longing for a gaming experience rich in mastery and connection, before shifting gears to explore the thrilling possibilities of racing MMOs and the enigmatic allure of Pacific Drive.
Then, it's a trip down memory lane as we revisit the classics that shaped our digital adventures, from the cyber streets of "Cyberpunk" to the star-spanning sagas of "Mass Effect". And because we live in a world where superheroes reign supreme, we'll dissect the resurgence of the X-Men with 'X-Men '97', the rippling effects of Deadpool, and the future of the MCU. So, buckle up—this episode promises a journey through the past, present, and speculative future of the gaming and entertainment landscape.
If you enjoy our episode's content, come check us out on twitter @KDratiopodcast, YouTube as The KD Ratio Podcast! or on Instagram KDratiopodcast
Hello.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Now we're live. Hello, a little quick on the draw there, hello.
Speaker 1:You went like this, I went like this and then fired. Well, anyways, welcome to the KD Ratio. We're here.
Speaker 3:What happened to 3-2-1 action?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the good old days.
Speaker 2:I need you to stand up at the camera. He's got to have the clicker the clacker.
Speaker 1:But welcome to the podcast, welcome to the the stream, you know. Come join us. Today we're going to be talking about, as you can see the title, dragon's dogma 2 and some other stuff, but kyle is the only one of us here who's played dragon dogma 2 and he's got some choice words making it sound like I'm really opinionated about this.
Speaker 3:Alright, you can hear us, we're good. Alright, I wasn't ready for you to throw it to me like that. So here's my experience with Dragon's Dogma I only have Is there dragmans? Dragon.
Speaker 2:Did I say Is there dragons?
Speaker 3:Dragmans, I thought you were making fun of me saying I said dragmans.
Speaker 2:No. Is there dragons? Well, yeah. Is there dogs?
Speaker 3:yeah is there ma's? I'm sure there's mothers somewhere in the somewhere, somewhere. Okay, so I have about I don't know an hour, a little over an hour in the game. So I am not an authority on this game whatsoever playing on console. I haven't run into a single bug yet but I haven't gone in. So they say when you get into like the big cities and stuff it, it starts to hurt the game a little bit. Performance wise, performance wise, um. But my main issue right now is it just hasn't grabbed me in a way that like like elden ring yeah, it's not.
Speaker 3:It like all's not. I was talking to you about this earlier. I said all the characters so far feel like NPCs. They don't feel like characters, and I understand. It's not really fair for me to judge it this early on, so I'm still going to give it the benefit of the doubt. It might get better as I keep playing, but that's the only thing that's keeping me from really playing right now.
Speaker 3:The real controversy for one is performance on pc is apparently like abysmal and their approach with micro transactions and a lot of stuff that they're they're charging you for for in a single player game that's already cost 70. It's pretty fucking wild.
Speaker 1:Before we dive into that, I do just have one question what is, what's the combat like?
Speaker 3:combat. It's, I would say it's um, it's similar to witcher in that there's at least I'm playing as um, just a fighter. So you got your heavy attack, your light attack, your, your quick kind of dashes, um, but then it's a little bit more involved. Like you can climb onto enemies. If they're larger enemies, you can pick things up in the world and throw it and stuff like that. Okay, um, and you could do like jump attacks, um, it's not so far, uh, as a fighter. It's not like super combo heavy, like you're not hitting, like light, heavy, light, heavy, heavy, like to get a certain type of move out. Um, it might get that way as, like, you level up, um, but I haven't, like I said, I haven't really gotten that far into it, but I would liken it to like witcher 3. Okay, it's similar to that.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, let's dive into the controversy then. So the big one that I know of well, I mean the two Kyle touched on is as far as DLC goes, or not DLC, but microtransactions. They actually hid them, or they didn't hide them, but they just didn't present them to the reviewers. That's pretty shady, yeah, but I heard that a lot of companies do that. Ubisoft does that, like with Assassin's Creed, and then what they'll especially do to Ubisoft I do know this like Assassin's Creed, I want to say Odyssey they release the game and then all the reviews come out three months later is when those time savers come out and so, like the review, the review is still good because you can't go back and say hold, you know, let me lower my rating to this because of the time savers, because they didn't exist. So I've seen that before, but this one, it sounds like they were in the game from the beginning and they just said look at this version of it without it.
Speaker 3:Yes, I don't know, man. I think it's kind of a shady practice on Capcom's part. What?
Speaker 1:exactly are the microtransactions in Dragon's Dogma?
Speaker 2:Things as simple as like what's up Something Cool, gaming, fast travel.
Speaker 3:Fast travel cool gaming, fast travel and fast travel yeah like, I haven't looked into it too much, but I know that's one of them. We have, uh, an article up here right now but like, uh, like end game items you can buy to make leveling quicker and things like that. Um, apparently everything that you can buy you can also just unlock by playing. From a few non-official sources I've been reading, like through reddit and stuff, they said that, um, but what I mean it's it's almost been unheard of up until like five years ago that they would even have this type of micro transaction shit like in a single player, non-multiplayer game, like battle passes for a single player game.
Speaker 1:That's pretty fucking weird is there battle passes in this?
Speaker 3:I don't think there's not like a traditional battle pass, but like it's gonna get to that point.
Speaker 2:This is not a live service game, and the fact that they're selling microtransactions kind of it is awkward it is capcom, though, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, capcom is very famous for ruining games with transactions.
Speaker 3:Capcom has such a large repertoire.
Speaker 1:They have really great games, but then they have ones like this Metal Gear is Capcom right, Is Konami Capcom?
Speaker 3:Konami and Capcom are two different things I believe.
Speaker 1:Okay, then, never mind, Not Metal Gear.
Speaker 3:Let's see Capcom.
Speaker 2:Games. My two cents on this whole take is when you know how you're going to monetize a game, such as fast travel or some of these other items like helping you kill bosses and making it easier and stuff like that you're incentivized to make the game more and more inconvenient yes, and so that's the problem, I think, with this, and why a lot of people are upset, is it's not the fact that it's in the game.
Speaker 2:It's like, well, you could choose to use it or not. It's. But when they understand the monetization model, they're going to be incentivized to be like oh well, yeah, it doesn't mind that that sucks, because actually we'll be able to generate more income with revenue from that so I I can't speak to dragon's dogma, but, like with assassin's creed, that's a single player game.
Speaker 1:Right, they added those time savers, what they were. One of them was an xp, like double xp, because it you took so long to grind and so, like you can directly see that they spent time making the grind longer, so that you got annoyed and you wanted it like but otherwise if the game had just come out? That's why I think a lot of people like um. I mean correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah, elden ring, or like nintendo games, like breath of the wild.
Speaker 1:They are no shop they aren't designed with any of that in mind. They just come out as they are a full game of fun. They're made to be fun, not made to make you want to buy microtransactions, whereas like diablo, I mean they have. It's just cosmetic, but it's still well, yeah, but the diablo.
Speaker 2:Like you go into that knowing it's going to be a live service game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, versus a single player, only Versus a single player non-online and they're, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Capcom's biggest, from what I can see here, their biggest IPs. I mean they do all the Resident Evils obviously. So that's huge Street Fighter, devil May Cry and this.
Speaker 1:They do a lot of other games too, too, but they're not quite on that level devil may cry does have time savers, really the newest one, at least paid. Yeah, I've really liked all the resident evils I yeah, those are great and those don't really have much, much micro transactions um, so I don't know if maybe that's more credit to the Resident Evil team. The developers themselves. But yeah, man, it's just stupid. It all started with horse armor, you know.
Speaker 3:Damn you, bethesda, fucking it up for everybody.
Speaker 1:Look what you did to us.
Speaker 3:They released more info on Elder Scrolls 6. Yeah, and they have a playable build that they were showing and I'm like are we still going to get hyped for Bethesda's shit After everything that they've done in the last? People are already shitting themselves.
Speaker 1:They're like oh my god it looks amazing.
Speaker 3:How long can you ride on the?
Speaker 1:hype of like skyrim I.
Speaker 3:I'm very apparently a long ass time I'm very wary of their next game.
Speaker 1:I didn't even buy starfield like well. It was on game pass anyways. But I didn't, yeah, I played it for like 30 minutes and I'm I'm done. I was like, yeah, this isn't fun.
Speaker 3:And I never went back and so I'm like I'm sad because I I love skyrim I honestly, though, I love skyrim too, but after playing like games, open world games with like good gameplay, like going especially after playing a game like Elder Ring going back to play Skyrim is rough. It's the most basic, boring gameplay ever.
Speaker 1:And there's a lot where it's really spaced out. It's really like you're walking.
Speaker 2:A lot of walking. What's the name of this sixth game.
Speaker 3:Right now it's just Elder Scrolls VI.
Speaker 2:I don't know what the official title is Is it a single player or are they doing a whole online universe? It'll be a single player.
Speaker 3:They already have their Elder Scrolls online.
Speaker 2:I didn't know if they were coming out with it.
Speaker 3:I doubt that it'll have any multiplayer in it at all.
Speaker 1:And I think I looked it's still on Creation Engine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the same engine they've been using since 2006.
Speaker 2:Wow, almost as old as the Cod engine.
Speaker 3:Almost. By the time Elder Scrolls 6 comes out, that engine will actually be over 20 years old. In the tech world, that's like saying, oh, this car was built in 1910. It's a beaut, though it runs great.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure Cod's still using their original one. They just keep updating it.
Speaker 1:It must be like on version 1, 2, or 3. At least COD there aren't many bugs.
Speaker 2:That's why they use it. It's an operational engine.
Speaker 1:You look at Fallout and this is any Bethesda fan can tell you every single game that's on creation engine there's the same bug like and the developers haven't fixed it the every time there's a mod that goes in to fix it because it's simple. But it's like that. That bug is consistent throughout all the games and all the games are super buggy on release, like fallout 4 I remember was pretty it probably still is pretty buggy yeah all right, I did miss speak uh.
Speaker 3:Creation engine was developed in 2011, so skyrim was the first game to use creation engine okay, so it's not quite, but that's still pretty damn old. Yeah, uh, 12 years old, 13 years old at this point. Um starfield used creation engine 2 but people were kind of it wasn't really.
Speaker 3:It was more like an upscaled creation, it wasn't a whole new engine it wasn't like how unreal goes from unreal 3 to 4 to 5, like it's, very like there is a visual like there's, you can see the advancement in tech. That's not how it was at all.
Speaker 3:It was more like like a it was more like a 1.5 than it was an actual 2 creation engine. Um yeah, I don't know, but this is gonna really have to show me something special for me to ever get hyped for one of their games again. But I haven't really been hyped for a Bethesda game in a long time. Last time I was hyped for a Bethesda game was Fallout 4, and I was whelmed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I wasn't underwhelmed, it was just like okay.
Speaker 1:It wasn't anything too special.
Speaker 3:Doom, that's not Bethesda, though Doom, that's an MMO. No, no, oh, I thought you said Dune, I'm sorry. Doom is developed. I believe it was by Machine Games, which is like no Machine Games did Wolfenstein.
Speaker 1:Is it id?
Speaker 3:Id did Doom and they're owned by bethesda, but they're not. The bethesda is not the developers, just like arcane is owned by bethesda. But it's not, but they're not. The bethesda is not the developers of the red fall, red fall that was their first miss though yeah oh, I've never really liked arcane games that usually are received really well yeah, but that one nope.
Speaker 1:Another live service fail. Why? Why do companies keep trying to do that?
Speaker 3:because there's the money potential is so high.
Speaker 1:What's the live service that worked?
Speaker 2:oh my god, that's the example for them I would argue like them like for, for these companies are looking.
Speaker 1:What are they looking at when they're like we want to be like that?
Speaker 2:Fucking Roblox Minecraft fucking-. Destiny even Modern Warfare, call of Duty, diablo, world of Warcraft I mean every major title that dominates today is a live service Fortnite.
Speaker 1:Probably Fortnite.
Speaker 2:They're all live service games. Mobile games make more money than you create one IP and then you just have a creative team continue to iterate on that. Um, it's way. I would say it's way easier to way easier to do. That I mean if you can find the success, which I think you can only find that level of success if you're an established company. Like war, world of warcraft came out and they had already done like two or three warcrafts.
Speaker 2:They had built a culture around that. Then boom, they hit everybody with World of Warcraft. Even today they still have 7 million active subscribers. It's just like what an incredible online world, if that's your thing.
Speaker 3:That's almost as many people that follow our podcast. Just give or take.
Speaker 2:Something Cool. Gaming asks where's cyberpunk 2?
Speaker 3:it's, uh, it's coming in unreal.
Speaker 2:Is they're doing an unreal? They're moving to unreal 5 yeah, that's gonna be interesting they're doing.
Speaker 3:It's gonna be wild for cyberpunk, though, because they're they're going back to witcher for a game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um if you're the executive director what do they call them? A game director for cyberpunk 2? And you're the studio head and you have all these developers that have are project red. Like what? What's their?
Speaker 3:it's project red, right their engine is just red. It's just red engine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, red engine do you have to then let those people go and hire in unreal? I imagine that if you, because that's a massive learning curve. If you're.
Speaker 3:If you're one of those, those developers, um, one of those engineers, whatever that you know, their title would be um. I imagine that if you don't adapt, then you're going to get cut. Yeah, um, I, knowing how cd project red operates, I highly doubt they're going to go in and just give them the axe, but they are probably going to set like a precedent like this is where we need to be as a team. If you're not there, then Because?
Speaker 2:their next project is not Cyberpunk 2, right? No, it's.
Speaker 3:It's actually Witcher, it's called Witcher Links or something like that.
Speaker 2:I mean they have and that's not going to be Unreal, is it? It's going to be Unreal, oh shit.
Speaker 3:So everything is Cyberpunk, cyberpunk officially made them drop Red Engine, which unfortunately is actually a very beautiful engine. That game when it runs. If you can get it to run, right it runs well now. No, but at launch. Red Engine is very pretty. Some of the best facial animations are in Cyberpunk. It's crazy to see the level of difference between that game and Starfield. I want.
Speaker 2:Guild Wars 3. That's for you, Billy. Thanks, Something Cool Gaming. Actually, the number one content creator for Guild Wars content is Wooden Potatoes is his name.
Speaker 3:Wood and Potatoes Wooden. I thought he was getting happier around potatoes.
Speaker 2:No, he doesn't show his face and it's just like literally a wooden potato. I don't know what it is a reference to, but he just did his thoughts For like what a remaster or remake would look in Guild Wars, and I actually I've changed my mind about this so many times. But I don't want a remaster. What I want them to do is just come back and develop the original game. I don't want to split the population.
Speaker 1:Is that a remaster?
Speaker 3:No, it's a remake.
Speaker 2:It's already there. No, no, no, they just come back. It's already a game that exists. I can go play it online.
Speaker 3:You just want them to work on the first game.
Speaker 2:Just work on the game that exists Because you've already got a community. There's still thousands of people that play that game. Just start to implement your ideas into the actual game, so it's not like something separate that you then divide the player base even more on with your decisions and stuff like that. Listen, they did an LOD, which is how far you see things in the distance. They did an LOD update, like four years ago, and this got hundreds of thousands of views from Wooden Potatoes, when he usually averages like 20,000. So he gets so much more traction. There's a lot of demand for this game, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:So you just want them to support the first game again? Yeah, come back and develop on it. You've already got the world, you've already got the world.
Speaker 2:You've already got the items and stuff like that. I think they can make literally some of the smallest tweaks and really revitalize the community.
Speaker 1:It'll be a lot of fun. Why not the second game?
Speaker 2:The second game still is their baby, so they still develop on that. They just had an expansion this year.
Speaker 1:So in your mind, would they completely give up on number two?
Speaker 2:I'd like to see them develop both. I think there's a world where they can do both. Obviously, the monetization model will have to change for Guild Wars 1, but they could do both.
Speaker 3:I don't know enough about that world. I'm not going to even try and play Devil's Advocate because I don't know enough about the community to decide whether or not that would be a good idea. I know that you have dedicated a huge portion of your life to this game, so if there's any authority to speak on what would be successful for them, that would be you so I feel like um well, because if you were to come back and do a remake, like you would, there would be creative liberties that you would just have to take.
Speaker 3:For example, there's no jumping in gobers one yeah, you'd have to so like well that a remake would be a whole new game, exactly. You might as well make three if you're gonna do that exactly.
Speaker 2:So it's like you come back and like there's a huge part of the community that say I don't touch my game, like they don't want it to. You know, like they love how it, how the game plays. The fact that if you add a jump mechanic it will change how a lot of the game plays, and so it's like okay, but you're never going to draw in. Jumping is so core to gaming these days. You can't not have something like that. So I don't really know what the answer is, but it is a shame.
Speaker 2:They said they were going to in parallel run Guild Wars 1 and 2 when gilbert's two came out and then they they had one patch after gilbert's two dropped and that was a arena that has been just pretty shitty as a development team to support their franchises. But anyway, I started talking about this because I was going to mention we're coming up on the 20 year anniversary and in the 15 year anniversary we got like a huge update where they added skills and shit like that and I was like whoa, where the fuck did this come from? I think they're going to announce something big on the 20th anniversary because they've been working on a secret project now for a few years and we don't know what that is Cyberpunk a reason it took over the IP.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's going to be gilbert's three, because then that's going to do what they did to gilbert's one and just kill the community. And gilbert's two and gilbert's two is like the fourth most popular mmo, and then you just further split your player base even more.
Speaker 3:Um, I think what if it's like a fresh?
Speaker 2:yeah, fresh ip I think it is what if it's like a sci-fi MMO. Something totally different compared to Please give me something cool to play, because from ArenaNet's philosophy is, I think, the greatest philosophy ever. Killers 1 was we're going to make a game, you buy it and then you play it. What MMO doesn't have this? Especially at that time?
Speaker 3:didn't have a subscription or anything like that.
Speaker 2:And it's still that way today. Like you just log in, I logged in, I play all the time. You just log in, it's like it just works, and you're like I, I bought this game 20 fucking years ago.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean I could still play it online by their hostess, or it's just amazing, just and get worse too.
Speaker 2:It's it's pretty much all cosmetics, some quality of life stuff, and it's a little more questionable, but you could buy gold, which is just absolutely the worst decision they ever made. But I get why they do it because I've fucking, I've spent hundreds of dollars buying gold, because I'm like, well, I could work for 15 minutes or I can grind for 70 hours what do I really want to do? Here. How much do I value my time?
Speaker 1:what genre would you would they have to go into, where you would completely write off the next game, like if it's still an mmo?
Speaker 2:if it's still. If it's still, let me tell you guys where I'm at.
Speaker 2:I I miss dedicating myself to one game I don't really like jumping from game to game to game to game. I don't like that. I don't have a lot of fun doing that. I really enjoy learning every fucking little intricacy of one game and getting really good at one game because it's very satisfying for me, especially a game, a competitive game, so that I'm drawn automatically then to online games and with large communities that I can that it's a lot of fun and there's a lot of interactions to be had, and so I want to dive. I honestly am like very open-minded to like what my next game is. I'm looking at dune. I think that could be a really cool setting.
Speaker 2:I'm not really crazy about the survival elements I've never been a big survival game guy, but I'm really, I'm kind of, I want to be like I've honestly like. If world of warcraft comes to game pass, I might pick it up as crazy as that seems now. I wouldn't probably play their what they call retail, which is like the core game.
Speaker 2:That I'm fucking a decade, two decades behind now on but they have like things called like seasons of discovery or classic and stuff like that that are set up to be very welcoming to new players and I might check that out. But I want something that I can go in and burn hundreds of hours in and get really, really good. I miss that. I started to get it a little bit with Diablo 4. I can't seem to get back into it that way.
Speaker 2:I've tried, I've gone back to the original guild wars sound like it, but I get it. I get it for me anymore, I just yeah, there, there's certain games where I get that that hit like.
Speaker 1:The last big one was probably you know, probably elden ring, oh yeah or no, there's been more since that came out probably spider-man I never got. It was spider-man was too short, though I feel like it was, it was.
Speaker 3:It wasn't a long high, it was I liked spider-man 2 a lot but it it didn't grip me the way the elden ring did.
Speaker 2:No, I think arena net I'm reading a comment here. I think arena net are working on a horizon mmo or nc software. It's arena net who does the developers nc soft as a publisher's horizon or the horizon zero dawn. That one are you? What are you talking?
Speaker 3:I'm not sure what you mean by that or horizon, the force or the car game racing oh god, please don't make a fucking racing game racing mmo, nothing about that they should.
Speaker 3:It would be wild um would that be the genre where you'd be like I don't know about this big dog, I don't know, I couldn't get into a racing mmo, where you'd like imagine like a little npc, like a little fucking car in like a town and you're like you don't have a character. You just a fucking car. There's no character at all. You can't even get out of your vehicle time to race.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I imagine that there's a racing mmo that when you're in hub areas you can get out of your vehicle.
Speaker 1:But well, like forza horizon is trying to be as close as you can to and to like mmo light, because you're you're in a big hub world, you're driving around, other people are driving around and you can race them on the spot or you can. If you go somewhere, it'll queue you up with everybody who goes there. So they're trying, but it's you can't get out of the car and that's like to me, that's boring if I can't get out of the car there's only so.
Speaker 3:Like I like racing games, but like there's only so much I could put into a racing game and it like it's, it's. It's only fun for a little bit. What is the content?
Speaker 1:You literally drive fast, stop go, the only incentive is getting new cars, better parts, when you don't know most of these cars because they're super sports cars, you're like I have no clue. Have you guys played Forza Horizon at all?
Speaker 2:No, no, but I've watched awesome it's I.
Speaker 1:Their way of unlocking cars is so strange. It's like a. It's like gambling, like you have a roulette wheel and I found that so weird for like a single player, yeah, like the last car game I really got into was like midnight club yeah, midnight club three la is that it was called midnight club three dub edition dub and it was.
Speaker 3:It was made by rockstar and like and that had a good story, yeah I, if I remember right, it was like there was like you can go to det, san Diego, like three different towns, and this was like what?
Speaker 1:15 years ago, maybe Zero time, horizon, zero Dawn.
Speaker 2:Horizon Zero Dawn MMO that setting Like an MMO of that setting.
Speaker 1:Are they close in company-wise?
Speaker 2:ArenaNet. No, I don't think so. Think so arena has only ever made gilbert's yeah, what?
Speaker 3:how did they get even? How would they even get that ip?
Speaker 2:it's like owned by gorilla games, which subsequently is owned by sony well nc soft, the publishers of gilbert's, is um making throne and liberty, which is a new mmo that's coming out. It's already out in Korea, but it's a fucking Korean MMO, so it's a pay-to-win. And it's just like I probably am going to check it out, but because I think it's free-to-play but like it's a pay-to-win, that's not fun. I don't even know how that's popular in those cultures. How is that fun when you can just wail hard and brag Big dick it.
Speaker 3:You know, Because they won't escape Okay so there is going to be a Horizon MMO, it's going to be by NCSoft but not ArenaNet. Okay, so it is separate from ArenaNet. Yeah, that's NCSoft then.
Speaker 1:Wait. So who's NCSoft?
Speaker 2:They're the publishers for Guild Wars 2.
Speaker 1:They're publishers, but not the developers. Developers is ArenaNet yeah.
Speaker 2:In ArenaNet. The original studio is from our Blizzard spinoffs.
Speaker 3:Okay, it's like Bandai Namco has like a million games that aren't developed by FromSoftware. Exactly it's like Bethesda and id.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And they just offer them funding and sometimes they're so fucking. I hate how they At least I don't know what the reality is, but I hate how they sometimes have too loose of oversight and then too strict of oversight. The arena net can't get out of their own damn way. I swear to God.
Speaker 2:They went off to make Guild Wars 3. That's the rumor at least. For like 2 years dedicated like 200 people, 200 developers, to making it and then gave up on it after 2 years. Maybe just keep doing Guild Wars 2 how the fuck do you do that?
Speaker 3:2 years.
Speaker 2:That is wild. They do stupid shit like this abandoned projects before they get into it and then they'll hype you up to oblivion on these new features that are coming, and they'll come out six years later.
Speaker 1:See, but, billy, would you rather them do that, or would you rather? Them do what Skull Bones did and know the game was shit and then delay it six times and still release it and see that it's garbage and I totally respect possibly ruin pirate games forever I totally respect that, you respect that more than no respect that they canceled.
Speaker 2:Okay, I was about to say I would rather have it canceled.
Speaker 1:I don't want to see that piece of garbage. You know what?
Speaker 3:that took balls. I like it rather have it cancel. I don't want to see that piece of garbage.
Speaker 1:You know what that took balls. I like it. They knew it was garbage and they're like it's quadruple.
Speaker 2:You just watch them like shoot themselves in the foot and you're like, just do something good, stop doing this. Please made me think of that incredibles meme like.
Speaker 3:What are you waiting for?
Speaker 1:I don't know something.
Speaker 3:Something amazing, I guess. Yeah me too.
Speaker 1:Well, I was switching topics to talk about a good game. I picked up Pacific Drive.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that game is a blast. I'm having a ton of fun with it. I bought it on PS5. It was like $30. You can tell it's like a Kickstarter game game or it might be, I don't know, I haven't confirmed it but you can tell that it's like it feels like something where it started out small and they just got funding to add cool, fun stuff and. But it's really fun. What the the basic gist of it? For people who don't know is you own this car. Well, like you end up in this area called like the exclusion zone, this game yeah and it's actually a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:I didn't. I wasn't going to give it a chance until I did and I was like, oh, but you, you're in this like it's almost like a scp paranormal exclusion zone where, like there's scientists that were experimenting on something and basically made the area uninhabitable you get linked to this car, you find this car and it ends up. The car is also a paranormal entity somehow. I don't know the answers to it yet and the whole gameplay is you. It's like a roguelike. So you'll go to the garage with the car, right, and then you plan a route. You go, look at the map, you plan a route. You go, look at the map, you plan a route. Their whole excuse is like, because of what happened when you drive, you just think of where you're going and you'll end up there. It's like you can't really, unless you know where you're going, you can't really go anywhere because it's weird science stuff.
Speaker 1:You'll go out, out, plan your route. You basically go to each place. You collect scrap, you collect all these, these like you know resources, and then there's this other resource that like, once you collect it, um, you can create a portal to get out of that, that map, and then you drive into the portal and you're back at the garage. That's the basic loop, but it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:It reminds me of like if you were to take a lot of Subnautica, like in the aspect of resource gathering and upgrading equipment, and like you need this to open this, you need this for this, and you kind of you're building up your repertoire of stuff and like like more armor so you can go farther, more gas so you can get further, and um, but then you also add, like in the mystery element of almost like I'd say it's closer to portal, like it's like a comedy, comedy science, like it's not meant to be scary or well, it's kind of it's creepy, but it's kind not meant to be scary or Well, it's kind of it's creepy but it's kind of meant to be like kind of silly. And then, but yeah, I've been playing that and I'm nine hours in now.
Speaker 2:Pacific Drive.
Speaker 1:Pacific Drive. I would definitely recommend it. It's a lot of fun, it's single player and it's just. It's kind of like it's supposed to be just a journey of you and this, this car. About the destination, yeah, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. About the journey, yeah, but I really like I like the loop of like you go out, you get stuff, you upgrade your car and like you're always having repair parts. You can upgrade certain parts of it. There's cosmetics you can add to the car that you just find out and about, and then there's weird anomalies. I want to know how to kill them. I don't know how to kill any of them yet. I wish I could. Maybe you can't, that'd suck. I want to kill things.
Speaker 3:That would ruin the game fundamentally for me.
Speaker 1:I need to kill anomalies.
Speaker 3:I'm here to chew bubblegum and kill anomalies.
Speaker 1:And I'm all out of bubblegum and to chew bubble gum and kill anomalies and I'm all out of bubble gum and. I'm all out of bubble gum, but you can. I think it was a PC game first, because you can kind of tell how you drive the car. You get in the car, turn on the key, shift into drive and then you drive and the camera.
Speaker 3:Do I have to press a button for each one of those movements?
Speaker 1:yes, I don't like that so you get upgrades as time goes on. Right, you get one that automatically shifts the car for you.
Speaker 2:Can I pay $2.99 to get an upgrade?
Speaker 1:no, no, I'd have to do that no, but I I already have that upgrade to where, like, as soon as I leave the car, it puts it in park, so I don't have to worry about shifting that that's a special upgrade.
Speaker 3:My truck does that. Well it does.
Speaker 1:As soon as you leave the car, it automatically puts it in park. That would have been cool. I'd just step out. Nose that I stepped out as you're going like 50 down the highway.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to jump out of my vehicle while it's moving and it slows down to where I just fall, damn it. I was trying to jump out action hero style. You know what game that I have went back to recently Cyberpunk and I thought about this Mass Effect. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1:Mass Effect Really, yeah, it's wild.
Speaker 3:I don't know when's the last time you guys played this game. No, I was thinking about this when you were talking about not being able to jump, because that is such a fundamental thing and you can't jump in this game and it takes a little bit of playing before you're like what the fuck? Um, why can't? I? Can't? I even just do something as simple as jump, but then you get used to it. Uh.
Speaker 3:Kingdoms of amalur oh I've just been like wanting to play a game re-reckoning. Yeah, the re-reckoning, which is the same game. I can't tell the difference. Are you playing the re-reckoning or just is the same game? I can't tell the difference.
Speaker 1:Are you playing the re-reckoning or just the regular? Yeah, because I'm playing on PS5. Okay.
Speaker 3:And I forgot that I love that game. That game is, I'm like eight hours deep right now.
Speaker 1:I forgot you couldn't jump, can't you juggle enemies?
Speaker 3:You can hit enemies into the air. I primarily play as a mage in that game. Huh, into the air, I primarily primarily plays like a mage in that game. Huh, um, I know, wild, right, what's the gameplay loop? Uh, it's not super in, it's not very in depth. Like you have, like maybe four different styles of attacks depending on what class you are. Um, it might be a little too basic for your liking. To be honest with you. Because I know what type of game you like.
Speaker 1:If I remember, there's a light and heavy attack.
Speaker 3:There's light, heavy, and then you can like. There's like different weapon types, there's like staffs, scepters, swords, great swords, like things like that, but then they all kind of do the exact same thing, but they just become more powerful. Like they all kind of do the exact same thing, but they're just become more powerful. Like they do more damage as you level up. But there's not a whole lot of variation from level one to max level, um, other than everything you do just becomes better, um. So it's fun gameplay. It's just not very. It's not like intelligent, it's not like super in-depth or involved uh, god like 2012 13, something like that.
Speaker 1:Um the re-reckoning, though, came out the re-reckoning came out and it was.
Speaker 3:I mean, it was literally the exact same guy. I can't even tell the difference. Like it, it didn't even look like it's like a better frame rate or anything like. It doesn't look polished in any way. It looks the exact same to me and it was a ps3 game, or at least I played it originally on ps3 um, and then they released the re-reckoning and you could play it on ps5. But like um, it's very like, uh, it's almost feels very like anime in a way, where you're fighting like kaijus at some points, you know, and like uh, the lore is super deep.
Speaker 3:It was developed by the, the guy that did um, all the drizzit books for dungeons and dragons, um, and like an ex-developer, um from bethesda who worked on like oblivion. And then they came over and the studio is I think it's called like Big Huge Games. It's defunct now. It was. It was bought out by this other company that re-released it, but it there's a weird story behind it. Like the, the guy that created Big Huge Games was like a former professional baseball player, something like that, and then, just like, created a game studio. It was, uh, it was weird um, and then they released this game. It flopped and then the studio flopped but like it. Um, it's a weird. So like, if you are ever, if you are into like the lore behind how these things develop and happen, that's an interesting read for sure, the whole yeah, re, yeah.
Speaker 1:Re-Reckoning came out 2020. The original came out 2012. 2012.
Speaker 3:Man, I got that year man right on. I did not think it was.
Speaker 1:How so? What's crazy to me is like I played the original game. I didn't think there was that big a fan base to warrant Re-Reckoning.
Speaker 3:It was super underground, really. Yeah, I don't know why it even got a re-reckoning. It was weird. It was like the people that got the ip were just like whatever and really like to just market it just to get a couple bucks, you know like, but I was one of the few people that like loved that game, so when that happened I was like fuck, yeah, I'm gonna play the shit out of this have you seen what's going on with the star wars collection?
Speaker 2:oh god, dude, and the uh like the fact that the original games were uh, like the ones that I think were re-released were like three and five gigabytes that's all they were yeah and the new one's like 60 it's because they use, like ai, to upscale everything and there's like a lot of cases where it looks worse aspire media is.
Speaker 3:I don't know why they keep getting agency to work on these star wars games.
Speaker 2:They re-released knights of the old republic they do it for five bucks and a can of coke and they re-released the uh battlefronts one and two.
Speaker 3:they re-released Battlefronts 1 and 2. They re-released the Jedi Knight series and they have literally done nothing to improve or update any of these games.
Speaker 2:Do you know how many concurrent players on PC there are for that game? 12? 300. 300. 300.
Speaker 3:They had all the opportunity in the world.
Speaker 2:There was like tens of thousands of people that were hyped up.
Speaker 3:They didn't even need to have like a, the game didn't.
Speaker 2:The reworks, republish those and host servers.
Speaker 3:If the game looked the way it looks now, that's not a problem for people. All they had to do is have a reliable server and minimal bugs Any amount of work on the bugs and they could have really done something with this. Um talk about, uh, fumbling the bag, man I don't want to say I called it, but it's the only game I've ever I've ever refunded really I actually refunded it.
Speaker 3:I got my money back I actually beat stars, battlefront 2 the classic edition. I beat, I went through the campaign, oh yeah, I uh, and that, for me, was my money's worth I.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed the single player part. I was like, oh, this is cool, um. But once I found out that they had copied like a modder's work, that was where I drew oh really they, they. There was, like some modder's code in the game that they promised it wouldn't be in there.
Speaker 1:And they're like oh no, it's not.
Speaker 2:And it was it's pretty shady. I was like, okay, you don't deserve my money. So I refunded it before I hit that two-hour mark, because you could do that with Steam up to two hours. I don't know. Is it the same for PS5?
Speaker 3:As soon as you play it, it's over.
Speaker 1:It's Jover.
Speaker 2:It's Jover.
Speaker 3:Jobe over. It's Jover, it's Jover.
Speaker 1:Fucking over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's why I wish Xbox or PlayStation had something like the two-hour window Within two hours and a week or two weeks.
Speaker 3:There's not really a whole lot of games that I ever would refund.
Speaker 1:I've never done one. Sony did do it for Cyberpunk when it first came out. I remember that.
Speaker 3:There was a lot of controversy around that because CD Projekt Red was like if you want a refund, take it up with. Sony, not us. Sony was like the fuck, like the fuck. You think you can stand up to us for sony? You're a little developer and they completely just took everything off of their. You couldn't buy that game on playstation for like over a year, like they lost out on so much because of them saying that stupid fucking like. Why would you say that about to your distribution?
Speaker 2:partner. There's no way of people playing your game. I mean so obviously PC and the other console, but like, really that's a no they did not play their hand well in that situation.
Speaker 3:Cd Projekt Red. But yeah, no, I was playing Kingdoms of Amalur and I like it's like a beautiful world um, it's, it's stylized and almost like kind of the way like fable looks I.
Speaker 1:What I remember from when it did come out is uh, todd mcfarland. Todd mcfarland did the art helpful, did the art design behind it.
Speaker 3:The only thing that's lacking a little bit for me is that soundtrack just doesn't really hit. I need a really good soundtrack. I know that's a weird thing, but if you're playing a game and you're in an open world and you're forced to listen to something while you're running from point A to point B, I would rather it be good. That's one of the reasons Skyrim is so good is because they have a good soundtrack to something while you're running from point a to point b. I would rather it be good.
Speaker 1:You know that's one of the reasons the skyrim is so good is because they have a good soundtrack yeah something as simple as that well, I mean think of the, the game I sent you guys today, that that one with will smith, that has like no sound in certain sections you know that's a mobile game it made me, it made me forgive it not forgive it made me accept it a little bit more.
Speaker 3:I was like oh okay, this is only on ios and android. That like I didn't. I thought that was like a console or like a full I was like what the? Hell, he's clearly mouthing, but there's no audio. Uh, yeah, so that's, but uh, I wanted to talk a little bit about X-Men let's do it. You guys can't really contribute to this because you haven't watched it.
Speaker 1:No, real quick before you begin. Do you like X-Men, like on a hero level?
Speaker 2:is Deadpool considered X-Men?
Speaker 3:he's a partner. I mean, he's a mutant but he's a collaborator of the X-Men, but he's not an X-Men.
Speaker 2:Yeah I, I, some of the x-men are some of my favorite characters. It says like superheroes and then some of them I, I could care less about. I think there's some of the most there's so many I talk about fucking like power curves, like in the marvel universe, like I feel like the ones that we see, at least on like x-men are fucking to the max dude, like the shit that they can do.
Speaker 3:You're like oh well, in the marvel universe, the most powerful, some of the most powerful beings in marvel are are mutants. Um, jean gray, uh, scarlet witch, uh, they changed it a little bit for the mcu, but in the comics she's she's a full-on mutant. She, she's the daughter of Magneto. Scarlet Witch, scarlet Witch but they changed it when they introduced her to the MCU. At that time they didn't have rights to the X-Men, so they had to change her origin story. But in the comics she's the daughter of Magneto, and so just characters like that. I love the X-Men and I think that the movies are very hit or miss. They have a lot of duds, but they also have a lot of fantastic films.
Speaker 1:They have a lot of good ones.
Speaker 3:Like First Class.
Speaker 1:I fucking love First Class. To me, that's probably my favorite. Well, they were the MCU before the MCU yeah yeah, x-men, the original X-Men.
Speaker 3:I like X-Men, the original X-Men, I like X-Men one and I like X-Men two. X-men three kind of fell off. X-men origins has good moments, but it fell off. The Wolverine I like the.
Speaker 1:Wolverine.
Speaker 3:Wolverine's good, obviously Logan, logan, masterclass Deadpool Deadpool's obviously good.
Speaker 2:I always say I wish we get a rated R movie. And then we have Deadpool. Those are so good. I want them all to be rated R. You just have so much more fun, I think.
Speaker 3:But X-Men it's X-Men is, as a kid at least, I kind of grew away from it. But as a kid I liked x-men just as much as I like spider-man. But then, as I, you know, got older I kind of grew away from the x-men. But watching this show x-men 97 on disney plus has like reignited my love for the X-Men. It is so fucking good. Only two episodes have dropped so far, but it has like, if you even remotely like the X-Men, this shows an absolute banger. I think the consensus across the board is pretty positive.
Speaker 1:From what I've been seeing on the internet Online.
Speaker 3:Everyone's loving it, saying saying it's the best thing that Disney's done in a while. Better than Loki I didn't watch it, so I'm no comment.
Speaker 1:Wish he would. I wish he'd take our recommendation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we just straight jizzed over that whole show and he never watched Continue.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's on you, that's on us. You obviously didn't sell it very well to me.
Speaker 1:Wow, be a better. Billy was basically orgasming the whole time he was watching Loki. I'm not, so he actually wrote this is the greatest installment from the MCU. You actually.
Speaker 3:At one point you wrote in our Discord. You said Not only is this my favorite MCU project, this might be my favorite show of all time. Is what you said about?
Speaker 1:Loki season two Kyle was still like that's not enough.
Speaker 3:There was some reason that I didn't watch it. It came out at the same time as something else. You spoiled it all for yourself.
Speaker 2:No, you were tired of Marvel, but anyway, sorry, go on.
Speaker 1:Are you hearing squeakiness, are you guys?
Speaker 2:hearing that, yeah, something's going on.
Speaker 3:I thought that was you going with your lips just now.
Speaker 2:I thought it was him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I do that so often.
Speaker 3:It was me With my mouth open. I'm that good. While he's talking. I'm a ventriloquist. I've been working on this. What do you guys think? The only thing I can do is make squeaky noises.
Speaker 1:I can't talk.
Speaker 3:So X-Men 97. It picks up pretty much exactly where the original animated series leaves off. You don't need, though you don't need to watch the original series to know what's going on. You just need to know who the x-men are. Uh, as long as you know who these characters are, even the ones you don't know um, it's pretty. It's not like you're going to be lost. Yeah, you're not going to be lost.
Speaker 3:If you know anything about the X-Men at all, the basics. Humans don't like mutants. The X-Men are there to defend. Magneto and Professor X were best friends and they slowly drifted apart. If you know that, what's Magneto's team called the Brotherhood of Mutants? If you know that, then you know enough. You know the brotherhood of mutants. Um, if you know that, then you know enough to watch the show. Like you don't need to like. Uh, there's things like nuance of how, like Logan, you know uh is in love with Jean Grey, but Jean Grey is married to Cyclops. You know shit like that. It's not anything new. So, with that said, you can go into the show, and I think that you could really really enjoy this.
Speaker 3:It picks up Charles is dead and Scott Cyclops has kind of been thrust into this leadership position.
Speaker 3:He's not super good at it just yet, um, because you know he's still trying to feel out his way of being the leader.
Speaker 3:Um, they go on this really epic mission, they kick ass, uh, and then at the end of the episode you see it in the trailer, but magneto's like everything. Charles left everything to me and he did because he has faith in Magneto still to come around. You know, it's sort of like a Martin Luther King, malcolm X type thing where that's kind of like the approach that they're going at, but they don't dumb down the dialogue for children. I mean, obviously it's like still like it, the approach that they're going at, but they don't dumb down the dialogue for children. I mean, obviously it's still like they want kids to watch it and enjoy it, but they don't dumb it down for children. It's a very smart show. They don't hold back, they don't pull their punches and I would highly recommend that, if you like anything Marvel, they at least give this show a chance. The animation for some I know that it's kind of choppy a little bit it runs at like 30 frames.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like 3D-ish.
Speaker 3:It's cel-shaded, cel-shaded. Funny enough, it almost kind of looks like that cartoon Archer. Oh okay, you know what I'm talking about. It kind of looks like that cartoon Archer, oh okay, you know what I'm talking about. It kind of looks like that a little bit. That's the design.
Speaker 2:How's the voice acting?
Speaker 3:It took me about five minutes to be like this is good Voice acting. There are some characters that I think there's no bad voice acting. There are some that are definitely shining more than others. Jennifer Hale is in it. She plays Jean Grey. I don't know the name of the voice actor for Magneto, but holy shit, he does an amazing job. Anything you want Magneto, he is that version of it. He gives this speech to the UN. It's so good in that speech.
Speaker 2:How old is Magneto in this? Is he older at this point, or is he younger?
Speaker 3:He's grayed, but he's not like, so Ian. Mckellen, magneto, not Michael Fassbender, I would say he's somewhere in between Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen. Oh, okay. Because, he's still fit. Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen oh okay, because he's still fit. He's a decently sized dude. He's got some girth. He's got some girth to him. He's not frail, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, but he's not old. Old it's Matthew Watterson. Matthew Watterson from Magneto.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, the only thing we will like. I'm going through right now, but it looks like in Star Wars Jedi Survivor. He's Bode, bode Acuna.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:That's the guy that betrays you. Is that that guy? No, no, that is Bode. Yeah, wait, this is confusing. Hold on, he's Bode. Yeah, wait, this is confusing that hold on. He's Bode Acuna twice.
Speaker 3:He's not Bode Acuna.
Speaker 1:Well, because Bode right. Oh, he's pre-vis. Oh, interesting, he was Bode Acuna in the pre-vis. What's?
Speaker 2:that.
Speaker 1:Like pre-visualization, when they're still coming up with the script. He just does a quick of it, I guess.
Speaker 2:So not for the actual release.
Speaker 1:But for the actual release he was a Jabba.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, so he was Virgil in Fallout 4. He looks like he does a lot of video games and anime.
Speaker 1:He was a narrator for.
Speaker 3:Diablo 4. He was a narrator for I don't even remember there being a narrator for Diablo 4. He was the narrator for I don't even remember there being a narrator in Diablo 4, to be honest with you. But anyways, he does an amazing job. So far. They have a lot of the original voice actors from the 90s cartoon. It's like Wolverine is the same as he was, storm's the same, but I'm excited is the same as he was, storm's the same, but I'm excited for where this is going to go.
Speaker 3:They set up some pretty good story arcs. There's this one story arc, I think it's called Life Death, that focuses around Storm. They set that up. They set up this story arc around this clone saga with, I think it's, madeline Pryor and Jean Grey, where they were like clones of Jean Grey and they set that up. So there's a lot of really cool ways that they can go with this and I'm excited to see where it goes. I would give the first two episodes. I'll give episode one and nine out of ten and I'll give episode two probably ten out of ten. So far so I'm really hoping that I stick with.
Speaker 3:It finishes strong because, um, I've been hyped, I've been super hyped, I'm loving the x-men again and I'm happy that, uh, this is an mcu project, oh, and that's the whole thing. They have a whole division now for mcu animation. So you know how. There's the the marvel intro, where it shows all the characters and it flashed, so it does that same thing, but it shows like all the animated characters oh that's cool yeah, and so it even has like stuff from like what if? In the intro title.
Speaker 1:Um, so yeah, uh, I'm excited to to see where this goes, and you guys should definitely check it out hopefully it stays good, and I mean if it does I I said this about loki, but it, from what it sounds like with you know what kyle's saying. If it does stay good, please let these writers or whoever's in charge of this show and loki- be involved in x let them be involved in anything bigger, like because this is good, the last the movies we've had, we're not like that.
Speaker 1:The level that loki and x-men are on versus this two different leagues, in my opinion. Like loki, like even the best recent marvel movie, I would say, wasn't even close to loki. I don't know what do you think?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'm from what you're telling me loki had some of the best marvel writing of all time in my opinion, just the, and not only that, but the creative vision and direction for the set and how they built that whole storyline. It kind of came together in perfection, and so I 100% agree. Coming from Thor, love and Thunder, I think, was the last one that came out before. What was the one that just came out right before? No, it was Guardians.
Speaker 1:No, it wasn't it was the one that Was it. Ant-man Guardians was the most recent right. What's the one that?
Speaker 2:did the Bollywood, the Marvels, ms Marvels, coming from that to fucking Loki, I didn't see the Marvels, me neither. Don't waste your time.
Speaker 3:I didn't even see Ant-Man 3.
Speaker 2:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:That's okay, I mean, it has good parts.
Speaker 3:I haven't seen all of the Black Widow movie. Oh, that's funny. You don't need to know. There's so many. I'm so behind now. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:Well, Black Widow was a long time ago, wasn't it? I know, but I skipped that one. You saw.
Speaker 1:Shang-Chi, though right, I saw it with you. Good, good I love that one. That one's so good. That one's awesome. I want a second one.
Speaker 3:Shang-Chi is in X-Men 97. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3:He just shows up, hey, I know, not once did he do that. It takes place in the 90s, so they did that specifically to predate anything. I guess it's not in canon with the MCU, it's its own thing. But there is something kind of visually appealing about the 90s style, like their clothing, it's very colorful, it's very colorful, very colorful. Like it has that same kind of appeal to it as like when stranger things first came out and you're like oh, the 80s, you know that's, it's almost feels, like there's some kind of nostalgia that I can relate to, a little bit more than the 80s.
Speaker 3:You know puffy pants.
Speaker 1:Like we saw. We saw, uh, on the screen, billy had pulled up there like in casual clothes and it's like a, a tank top, that's like yeah, they were like in that scene.
Speaker 3:They were like playing basketball like the X-Men. And then they were in like Jean Grey was all pregnant and she's like reffing in a ref outfit.
Speaker 1:So how do you guys think, since we're on top of the X-Men, how do you think we're going to get them in the MCU?
Speaker 2:I think it'll die off before they ever do that, the MCU will die off. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Before they get the X-Men.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Depends on the success of their next few movies.
Speaker 2:Are we talking full immersion or one or two characters?
Speaker 3:Introducing the X-Men is as hefty a task as introducing a full team of Avengers.
Speaker 1:So you think the MCU is going to die?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:I'm humbled by that answer.
Speaker 2:I didn't think you had that little faith in the future. Well, it's not gonna be mcu that we understand and know today like it's. It wasn't even five years ago. Yeah, exactly like to do that. They have to set up all the expenship and then they have to grow and and build this current version of the mcu.
Speaker 1:We're talking at least 10 years, I would say well, what if they bring in fantastic four and x-men at the same time?
Speaker 2:what movie are they doing? Are they fucking defeating erishim? Like I?
Speaker 3:well, they had to change their whole arc because of jonathan majors, so they had to change that whole shit.
Speaker 2:So you have like that movie would have to be bigger than Avengers to bring all the X-Men and all the MCU that exists at that time into one movie. You're just talking fucking more than Endgame in terms of collaboration. I'm not going to lie to you. That is so big I just don't know how they do it. Does it need?
Speaker 3:to. I'm not going to lie to you do it. I does it need to. I'm not gonna lie to you. I don't know if I give a shit about the movies right now. I'd rather they just focused on good stuff like this, like good series, good individual projects. I I'm kind of over everything needing to be in service of something greater yeah you know I, I miss having just like individually good films. Yeah, well, I was actually talking.
Speaker 1:I was talking with my friend malachi over the weekend and, um, I was saying that I personally think the issue with the mcu right now is that everything has to be connected to everything and like that's why I like shang chi so much is that it barely has anything to do with anything until the very end, and even then it's like just a little hey those bracelets. What are they?
Speaker 2:but otherwise what they did in the original phases and so it's like I think that's their issues.
Speaker 1:They're trying to interconnect too much instead of just making a good standalone, like it, stand on its own two feet.
Speaker 3:Film it really. They all, all the movies stood on their own um, I would argue, up until like just before infinity war and endgame.
Speaker 1:Then they started kind of building towards this infinity war endgame, but that made sense because of the of it worked yeah yeah, you built up the, the stakes you built up like it wouldn't make sense if we're waiting for infinity war and we get a movie that's low stakes, like Butterflies and Puppies and it's like no, but stuff's about to go down.
Speaker 3:Pre-Infinity War Endgame, even leading up to Avengers. All those movies could just stand on their own just fine. You wouldn't have to know anything about the other movies for it to be good.
Speaker 1:I mean, Iron man was the first one in that you could just watch that.
Speaker 3:I've even been than the last 15 or 90, last minute of every movie or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's like Shang Chi.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Did the same thing, where it's like a rest of the movie didn't matter at all, but until the end then it's like, okay, you get a little hint, maybe they're doing something. So I hope they go back to that formula and maybe they are with their with what. They're slowing down, they're doing less releases and stuff like that. Maybe they're giving them more time. I did notice a trend too as far as Marvel. If you look at the writers of these last few movies, they don't have a lot of stuff. I mean, I don't know, they don't got stuff, stuff of what.
Speaker 1:A lot of repertoire work that they've done good, they don't have a resume.
Speaker 3:It's like they worked on.
Speaker 1:Curb your Enthusiasm. A couple episodes and now they have a Marvel movie.
Speaker 3:You know why? It's because they had success with the Russo Brothers.
Speaker 1:The Russo Brothers, where did they come from?
Speaker 3:Arrested Development, oh my god. And they showed the fuck up, but before that I think Arrested Development was like.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:All they did.
Speaker 1:That's pretty funny, so that makes sense. That's why they're probably doing that.
Speaker 3:They're like Gotta have faith in these comedy writers and they said that that's what allowed them to make the Avengers movies work. Movies work is because they were very used to working with ensemble casts and trying to connect storylines of like four seasons of whatever you know. And so they said that, even though the content was very different, the approach was the exact same as they did to sitcom um. So it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1:What about Fantastic Four? You guys are like zero hype for it.
Speaker 3:I'm not hyped on it being a period piece taking place like forever ago.
Speaker 1:X-Men 97 is a period piece.
Speaker 3:It's different. This is a live action film that's supposed to be connected to the MCU. It's not its own standalone thing. That's why I'm like why do I care about?
Speaker 1:the fantastic four and like what?
Speaker 3:what is this supposed to be the 60s? I'm not sure. It's weird like I don't know, um, but I'll reserve judgment doing that for aesthetic purposes I don't know, I have no idea like are we expected to think that they're from the 60s? Actually, what they're going to do is they're going to do Fantastic Four is going to be the Forrest Gump and all four of them are going to play a version of Forrest Gump.
Speaker 2:Tell them where can people find us?
Speaker 1:I like that idea. It'll be four Forrest Gumps.
Speaker 3:Four Forrest Gumps, and it's all different versions of him.
Speaker 1:All played by Tom Hanks right.
Speaker 3:And he even plays Sue Storm it's him in a wig and it's going to follow the Fantastic Four's journey from birth in the 50s all the way up until the 80s, when one of the characters ends up getting AIDS and dying, and then they have to raise a child together as one collective force Can you imagine the thing just running and going.
Speaker 2:I was running.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great idea. We should copyright that.
Speaker 3:Yes let's copyright two giant IPs together hey.
Speaker 2:Let's send an email. Yeah, see where it goes.
Speaker 1:To who the copyright?
Speaker 2:office. Let's get our lawyers on it.
Speaker 1:I just write the copyright office at yahoocom we are interested in the copyright.
Speaker 2:Check out our viewer count.
Speaker 3:It dropped off a cliff. No, no, no, I mean for the.
Speaker 2:To get the IP rights.
Speaker 3:We? I mean, I don't mean to brag copyright leaders of these companies. But we have more than 20 subscribers.
Speaker 1:So it's a lot, it than 20 subscribers. It's a lot, it's a lot.
Speaker 2:Only six of them are moms. Six of them.
Speaker 3:Six moms between the three of us. It's aggressive.
Speaker 2:I got my first mom, my second mom, third mom.
Speaker 3:They're all Dylans mostly. He's got four.
Speaker 1:we got the other two anyways, we can find us they can find us on youtube, instagram, spotify, any large podcast listening platform and come check us out tuesdays 7 pm, pacific time, where we stream, like we are right now, and hopefully you're watching and you can also watch, um you know, after the fact too. Leave us comment like subscribe and we'll see you guys so where's he going after? Hours. Yeah, we have our after dark stream, you know that's on a different website. We just kind of shoot the shit and we shoot, shit we shoot shit and we, we turn on the neon light.
Speaker 3:It's russia content, but we're shooting piles of shit that's all right.
Speaker 1:Let's end this. Yeah, remember, with a good kd you get the dub bye guys.