Loved the sidetracking into the crime stories. LMAOROFL when Jeremy said that He Who Shall Not Be Named would 'know' him because he saw Jeremy's guitar. Love it, like usual!
I like to imagine that the citizens of Japan can hear Frank as his flight gets closer and closer to his destination. Just a "YEAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!" that progressively goes from almost imperceptible to deafening.
I think Kotor disproves the argument that there is no way to frame an interesting and novel story in the Star wars universe, and the argument that Star wars isn't recognizably star wars without Darth Vader etc.
Starwars Outlaws does some pretty cool things and roping as some kind of Ubisoft junk game feels like a disservice. its worth at least a try with ubisoft+.
sometimes you just want a solid 7, theme park ride ass video game. outlaws is what i'll play when i just want something with low friction and pretty graphics. it's junk food, it has its place, though it shouldn't be the only thing big studios make...
Btw the 21:9 mode in Star Wars Outlaws is actually just black bars, when you switch to 16:9 it just removes the black bars and you get more on screen real estate freed up, there is no zoom in. At least that's how it is on console, I can't speak for PC
Yeah I misunderstood what was changing, and had a clearly wrong observation when I turned off the bars. Weird to launch in 21:9 regardless, but I was wrong about the other setting.
So, the longstanding rumour was that Blizzard tried to get a Warhammer licence in the early 1990s and couldn't afford it, so made WarCraft and filed off the IP-infringing similarities. And when they made StarCraft they used 40K for inspiration but never even tried to get the licence. WarCraft they kinda got away with it because generic fantasies are ten a penny but science fantasies with Space Elves and Space Bio Monsters are a bit rarer, and the Zerg are so close to the Tyranids I have no idea why GW didnt sue them. Maybe because they might risk legal action themselves because the Tyranids are the xenos from Aliens mixed with the bugs from Starship Troopers. Still, a bit close to the bone.
1:58:22 Sing Sing looks amazing Jesse! Colman Domingo is underrated as hell. Highly recommend “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” if you’re a fan of his. The late, great Chadwick Boseman gave the performance of a lifetime so it’s worth seeing for that alone.
Love the Ubisoft discussion. "Turning over the soil" instead of throwing together the _blandest rendition of something specific_ is what I hope we are able to get back to as a trend. Titles like Star Wars: Send the Squirrely Lizard are what might indeed reveal itself as a misread of what appeals to moloch studios' demographic on the long run. The correction could already be underway, when we look at the very recent nuking-from-space of Concord. Great stuff as always, thanks team.
In my opinion, Ubisoft embodies the following thesis: Art's relationship to the market is sometimes similar to being on a ventilator. It guarantees life but at the cost of quality of life. One visiting the theater or playing the latest triple A open-world mush often finds themselves staring at the rot of a paradox given to the wrong side. For at the end of the day, want informs comsumption, and consumption dictates supply - what and how much. But art is not about giving people what they want, but what they need. Now where what they want and what they need intersect, we ought to rejoice! We should never turn our nose at or be fundamentally suspicious of people undergoing pleasure, but we ought to of them never feeling pain. Never being challenged or given over to true freedom, rather tricked into thinking you’re exercising autonomy. As horrible and pretentious as it might sound, it is the job of the artist to save us from our own tastes. If they don't, we become - as we are now - as those who eat only venison: starved to death with full stomachs.
You know, I've never met anyone who seemed to be an "Assassins Creed superfan". Just a lot of people who play it and think its entertaining but I've never known someone who is a diehard fan. I gotta wonder if at some point if your franchise is successful enough you just have to pass a certain quality bar and people just keep buying it because that's what they've heard of, or people just assume it must be good if they see enough marketing about it. Y'alls discussion reminded me of a twitter thread, I forget who it was - but they talked about the pitfalls of trying to make the "cheese pizza" of videogames - it has maximum appeal to the most people, but its kind of the lowest common denominator of pizza. Everyone likes cheese pizza but nobody is having a transcendent experience with a cheese pizza that they'll be telling stories about and obsessing over. It's not winning any awards. But people are gonna keep buying it. Great discussion in this cast - I always appreciate yalls perspective
The discussion around IP is fascinating and gets to a lot of deep issues, and it is not just games. Hollywood has the same problem only maybe worse. Indie movies certainly exist but how often do we get a mega success indie movie anymore like Hollow Knight or SuperGiant's various games etc. Hollywood mines other media for things that are already popular, be it games or books or whatever. The closest thing I can think of (though was not really indie to my memory) was John Wick which was a wholly original IP created by the director and/or writer wanting a new action franchise. On the discussion of IP being mined to death I think this has a lot to do with what is done with that IP early on. Whatever touchstones show up early in the properties define what people come to expect. If you only release space opera grand adventure stories with Skywalkers then fans come to expect that. But genres like sci-fi which are more setting than anything else give a lot of room to tell other types of stories, be they detective stories or romances or whatever. But if you dig too shallow when the audience expectations are still malleable, once they settle you're just screwed. And mind you Star Wars in particular messed up big time by making Episode 7 a massive nostalgia trip back to the original trilogy.
I was referencing an old GB moment where I believe Jeff had a realization during recording that the "down" in "phoenix down" was referring to literal feathers, and not just a weird translation thing. So in having my realization that Starcraft was based on 40k, I was using "phoenix down moment" to mean like a stunning realization over something that is also somewhat obvious when you think about it.
I’ve played every Ubisoft Game and some I like, some I really do not. I really did not like Valhalla for example. I really don’t get why people say outlaws is a typical Ubisoft Game. It’s not really. There’s no Icon Barf on the map, you actually have to find stuff that is not marked on the maps. You need to explore to find things, etc. I actually heard several conversations from NPCs that I as the player had to remember and the game did not even tell me („I lost my credits near the alley“ etc.) I don’t love the game but I think it’s pretty good and I think they actually did many things differently than they do normally. Also I did not buy it, the Ubisoft+ sub is like 17 bucks and that’s they way I always play their games tbh
Holy shit, Danny and Jeremy have both seen someone get shot? And heard shooting too. That's actually insane to me. I've literally never heard a gun being fired in my 31 years of life. America desperately needs to rid itself of guns and have a welfare state.
Surprised that the fact that outlaws is a Massive production was completely overlooked in the conversation. Their open world recipe is quite different from the classic Ubi (Montreal, Quebec...) one . Both the Avatar and this Star Wars games are miles ahead of the recent AC and far cry, primal imho. Putting them in the same basket (without playing them, mind you) seems quite unfair. They certainly aren't mind bending or even original but are definitely good blockbusters, whereas the ACs are just a markers chore. Also, I think Jesse is mistaken regarding the cinematic/16-9 switch: the fullscreen option is not a zoomed in version but the exact same picture minus the black bars. You actually see more of the game. As per the digital foundry video on the subject.
Ah my bad! The PC feature video and the description in the game threw me off regarding the Full Screen mode. Also, been playing more of the game and am really enjoying it the further I get, this was my early thoughts like 4.5 hours in and I was taking my time.
@@jesseguarascia I thought the exact same thing with the cinematic mode, it's a little weird how they described it. And I totally have the "Oh I like it!" and "Oh maybe I don't? huh?" thing with this game, too btw. I think for the most part I really do like it though.
The Ubisoft failure, for me, is not just the repetitiveness or mass appeal. It's the lack of respect for the players that I feel. It's the cutting corners and delivering the minimum viable product that people will still buy. It's never reaching high, never reaching beyond the ground even. It's doing the most predictable, boring and lazy thing, even though they have so much potential and power.
1:00:30 I don't understand why an answer to this problem isn't simply to have your setting be highly plastic. I don't care for Marvel schlock whatsoever, but given it's based on comics, how beholden to its own through-lines seems incredibly strange to me. You don't need to have a "multi-verse" where there are multiple timelines coherent with each other; you can just have stories with common elements but also divergent ones and trust that the audience can understand they aren't meant to be coherent with each other. Why does a new Alien movie need to respect "established lore" for a bunch of one-off film experiences from decades ago? Why can it not simply be evocative of similar aesthetic and emotional experiences and do something new? The reason series like ASOIAF and The Kingkiller Chronicle are so wonderful is at least partially due to their infamously long gaps between releases: these gaps have led to fans imaginging every possible angle for every potential in-text clue to anything that exists. Entire meta-series have basically been invented by these collaborative imagingings, and they're all interesting while none of them are mutually coherent. It baffles me that professionally produced stories seem unwilling to engage this approach to their settings.
Haven't started the ep yet, but just judging from the title/description, it looks like you're not talking about Deadlock, and that seems wild this week.
Loved the sidetracking into the crime stories.
LMAOROFL when Jeremy said that He Who Shall Not Be Named would 'know' him because he saw Jeremy's guitar.
Love it, like usual!
I like to imagine that the citizens of Japan can hear Frank as his flight gets closer and closer to his destination.
Just a "YEAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!" that progressively goes from almost imperceptible to deafening.
Someone make one of those 10 hour long videos of Frank's signature scream.
Tactical Breach Wizards might just have the best "mission complete" screens i've ever seen in a video game. each one is custom.
Crazy Taxi on Coruscant would go hard
I think Kotor disproves the argument that there is no way to frame an interesting and novel story in the Star wars universe, and the argument that Star wars isn't recognizably star wars without Darth Vader etc.
Starwars Outlaws does some pretty cool things and roping as some kind of Ubisoft junk game feels like a disservice. its worth at least a try with ubisoft+.
sometimes you just want a solid 7, theme park ride ass video game. outlaws is what i'll play when i just want something with low friction and pretty graphics. it's junk food, it has its place, though it shouldn't be the only thing big studios make...
Anyone not wanting to wait to play Iron Meat should check out Huntdown. Also totally great.
Totally agree with Jeremy's take on the dark souls games. I'm replaying 2 now after playing 3 again and yea you're not crazy.
Btw the 21:9 mode in Star Wars Outlaws is actually just black bars, when you switch to 16:9 it just removes the black bars and you get more on screen real estate freed up, there is no zoom in. At least that's how it is on console, I can't speak for PC
Yeah I misunderstood what was changing, and had a clearly wrong observation when I turned off the bars. Weird to launch in 21:9 regardless, but I was wrong about the other setting.
So, the longstanding rumour was that Blizzard tried to get a Warhammer licence in the early 1990s and couldn't afford it, so made WarCraft and filed off the IP-infringing similarities. And when they made StarCraft they used 40K for inspiration but never even tried to get the licence.
WarCraft they kinda got away with it because generic fantasies are ten a penny but science fantasies with Space Elves and Space Bio Monsters are a bit rarer, and the Zerg are so close to the Tyranids I have no idea why GW didnt sue them. Maybe because they might risk legal action themselves because the Tyranids are the xenos from Aliens mixed with the bugs from Starship Troopers. Still, a bit close to the bone.
1:58:22 Sing Sing looks amazing Jesse! Colman Domingo is underrated as hell. Highly recommend “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” if you’re a fan of his. The late, great Chadwick Boseman gave the performance of a lifetime so it’s worth seeing for that alone.
Love the Ubisoft discussion. "Turning over the soil" instead of throwing together the _blandest rendition of something specific_ is what I hope we are able to get back to as a trend. Titles like Star Wars: Send the Squirrely Lizard are what might indeed reveal itself as a misread of what appeals to moloch studios' demographic on the long run. The correction could already be underway, when we look at the very recent nuking-from-space of Concord. Great stuff as always, thanks team.
Weaponised telecaster chat - I’m here for it
I've got a proper heavy slabby 50s style tele. It would knock the shit out of Jeremy's thinline 😂
In my opinion, Ubisoft embodies the following thesis:
Art's relationship to the market is sometimes similar to being on a ventilator. It guarantees life but at the cost of quality of life. One visiting the theater or playing the latest triple A open-world mush often finds themselves staring at the rot of a paradox given to the wrong side. For at the end of the day, want informs comsumption, and consumption dictates supply - what and how much. But art is not about giving people what they want, but what they need.
Now where what they want and what they need intersect, we ought to rejoice! We should never turn our nose at or be fundamentally suspicious of people undergoing pleasure, but we ought to of them never feeling pain. Never being challenged or given over to true freedom, rather tricked into thinking you’re exercising autonomy.
As horrible and pretentious as it might sound, it is the job of the artist to save us from our own tastes. If they don't, we become - as we are now - as those who eat only venison: starved to death with full stomachs.
2 hours? YES!
Tom Francis actually calls these games the Defenestration trilogy
StarCraft was supposed to be a 40k game but they couldn't get the license stuff worked out so they just made their own!
You know, I've never met anyone who seemed to be an "Assassins Creed superfan". Just a lot of people who play it and think its entertaining but I've never known someone who is a diehard fan. I gotta wonder if at some point if your franchise is successful enough you just have to pass a certain quality bar and people just keep buying it because that's what they've heard of, or people just assume it must be good if they see enough marketing about it.
Y'alls discussion reminded me of a twitter thread, I forget who it was - but they talked about the pitfalls of trying to make the "cheese pizza" of videogames - it has maximum appeal to the most people, but its kind of the lowest common denominator of pizza. Everyone likes cheese pizza but nobody is having a transcendent experience with a cheese pizza that they'll be telling stories about and obsessing over. It's not winning any awards. But people are gonna keep buying it.
Great discussion in this cast - I always appreciate yalls perspective
The discussion around IP is fascinating and gets to a lot of deep issues, and it is not just games. Hollywood has the same problem only maybe worse. Indie movies certainly exist but how often do we get a mega success indie movie anymore like Hollow Knight or SuperGiant's various games etc. Hollywood mines other media for things that are already popular, be it games or books or whatever. The closest thing I can think of (though was not really indie to my memory) was John Wick which was a wholly original IP created by the director and/or writer wanting a new action franchise.
On the discussion of IP being mined to death I think this has a lot to do with what is done with that IP early on. Whatever touchstones show up early in the properties define what people come to expect. If you only release space opera grand adventure stories with Skywalkers then fans come to expect that. But genres like sci-fi which are more setting than anything else give a lot of room to tell other types of stories, be they detective stories or romances or whatever. But if you dig too shallow when the audience expectations are still malleable, once they settle you're just screwed. And mind you Star Wars in particular messed up big time by making Episode 7 a massive nostalgia trip back to the original trilogy.
Can someone point me to Jeremy's Phoenix Down moment? I wanna know what this is about. I feel like there's something mind blowing there.
I was referencing an old GB moment where I believe Jeff had a realization during recording that the "down" in "phoenix down" was referring to literal feathers, and not just a weird translation thing. So in having my realization that Starcraft was based on 40k, I was using "phoenix down moment" to mean like a stunning realization over something that is also somewhat obvious when you think about it.
@@jeremybjayne Oh! Thank you for the reply!
TBW is so good
Danny singing Africa? I don’t believe it 😂 IYKYK
I have long felt the exact same way as Jeremy RE: Dark Souls III. Refined gameplay in a sauceless retread.
When americans talk about crime the everpresence of guns scares the absolute shit of me. What the fuck!
Jesse wins intro item off with a damn Quagmire plushie 😠
43:02 Spot on Danny! Fed up of the lack of respect for players time
I’ve played every Ubisoft Game and some I like, some I really do not. I really did not like Valhalla for example. I really don’t get why people say outlaws is a typical Ubisoft Game. It’s not really.
There’s no Icon Barf on the map, you actually have to find stuff that is not marked on the maps. You need to explore to find things, etc.
I actually heard several conversations from NPCs that I as the player had to remember and the game did not even tell me („I lost my credits near the alley“ etc.)
I don’t love the game but I think it’s pretty good and I think they actually did many things differently than they do normally. Also I did not buy it, the Ubisoft+ sub is like 17 bucks and that’s they way I always play their games tbh
Sweet and sour baby Jesus. Danny what kind of apocalyptic hellscape did you live in?!
Original Contra was a big thing in 90s in Russia. That's why best contra version is coming from Russian dev
Hot takes, the podcast
lol
Awwww yeah
Holy shit, Danny and Jeremy have both seen someone get shot? And heard shooting too. That's actually insane to me. I've literally never heard a gun being fired in my 31 years of life. America desperately needs to rid itself of guns and have a welfare state.
Surprised that the fact that outlaws is a Massive production was completely overlooked in the conversation. Their open world recipe is quite different from the classic Ubi (Montreal, Quebec...) one . Both the Avatar and this Star Wars games are miles ahead of the recent AC and far cry, primal imho. Putting them in the same basket (without playing them, mind you) seems quite unfair. They certainly aren't mind bending or even original but are definitely good blockbusters, whereas the ACs are just a markers chore.
Also, I think Jesse is mistaken regarding the cinematic/16-9 switch: the fullscreen option is not a zoomed in version but the exact same picture minus the black bars. You actually see more of the game. As per the digital foundry video on the subject.
Ah my bad! The PC feature video and the description in the game threw me off regarding the Full Screen mode. Also, been playing more of the game and am really enjoying it the further I get, this was my early thoughts like 4.5 hours in and I was taking my time.
@@jesseguarascia I thought the exact same thing with the cinematic mode, it's a little weird how they described it. And I totally have the "Oh I like it!" and "Oh maybe I don't? huh?" thing with this game, too btw. I think for the most part I really do like it though.
The Ubisoft failure, for me, is not just the repetitiveness or mass appeal. It's the lack of respect for the players that I feel. It's the cutting corners and delivering the minimum viable product that people will still buy. It's never reaching high, never reaching beyond the ground even. It's doing the most predictable, boring and lazy thing, even though they have so much potential and power.
You're really speedrunning "Jeremy talks about Japan" this week
1:00:30 I don't understand why an answer to this problem isn't simply to have your setting be highly plastic. I don't care for Marvel schlock whatsoever, but given it's based on comics, how beholden to its own through-lines seems incredibly strange to me. You don't need to have a "multi-verse" where there are multiple timelines coherent with each other; you can just have stories with common elements but also divergent ones and trust that the audience can understand they aren't meant to be coherent with each other. Why does a new Alien movie need to respect "established lore" for a bunch of one-off film experiences from decades ago? Why can it not simply be evocative of similar aesthetic and emotional experiences and do something new?
The reason series like ASOIAF and The Kingkiller Chronicle are so wonderful is at least partially due to their infamously long gaps between releases: these gaps have led to fans imaginging every possible angle for every potential in-text clue to anything that exists. Entire meta-series have basically been invented by these collaborative imagingings, and they're all interesting while none of them are mutually coherent. It baffles me that professionally produced stories seem unwilling to engage this approach to their settings.
Thou shalt not take the lords name in vain
Love you guys, cheers
Haven't started the ep yet, but just judging from the title/description, it looks like you're not talking about Deadlock, and that seems wild this week.
Why is that wild
Danny I hate to break it to you but there's a new Matrix movie coming out :)