Avowed (w/ Matt Fresh from Hard Drive Mag)

[00:00:09] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Pre-Order Bonus Podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Cameron Warren, and I'm joined by Jacob Price and very special guest, Matt Fresh from The Hard Drive. Matt, welcome into the show. How are you doing? I am doing swell. You're doing swell. That's wonderful. Matt's coming to us from Toronto, Canada. Matt, what's new? What video games are you playing right now?

[00:00:36] Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do every day. Ooh, what video games am I playing? I'm playing too many video games. That's what video games I'm playing. That's a good answer. Let's see, like an hour before this, I just streamed Chex Quest HD. Oh my God. That's a winner if I ever heard one. Jeez. Specially requested by one of my viewers. What else? I'm playing Claire Obscure. I'm playing...

[00:01:06] Of course. I still gotta finish Split Fiction. I'm waiting for my friend to stop being busy. Although I know he's not busy, because I see you playing Marvel Rivals, buddy. You're not busy. He thought no one noticed, but you did. Yeah, I notice when he comes online. And I'm playing Xenoblade Chronicles. That is an incredible gamut of video games. I don't... That seems like many plates to be juggling.

[00:01:35] Although Jake is similar in that fashion, right, Jake? Way too many. Very plate juggly. Way too many. And yeah, dude, Claire Obscure has eaten up most of my free gaming time. Dude, that one is... That's a fair assessment. It's got its hooks in me pretty deep at this point. The world is obsessed with Claire Obscure at Expedition 33 right now. It is very obsessive. I'll say I put in probably four or five hours into it.

[00:02:03] Combat is really good. But I'm going to be honest. Let's hear it. Okay, you ready for a hot take? Hot take from Cameron. Hot takes and pancakes. We should have pancakes while we do this show. It's a good idea. I am not jiving with the world that much. I think the acid trip dream worldiness of it is throwing me a little bit for a loop.

[00:02:32] And I feel like that is definitely not a popular opinion. That is a very unpopular opinion. But that is the way that I feel, unfortunately. Do you guys feel like it's too acid trippy or do you just like that? I dig it. Fired. You dig it. Okay. Yeah. That's fair. I like it just fine. I don't know. My, I don't, I haven't seen this anywhere else. And so I think it's 100% just me. But I feel like the lighting is really wonky in the game. That's like my only visual complaint.

[00:03:02] It does have wonky lighting. Yes. Yeah. It's got like the, the, the, the, like the fog. Lots of fog. Everywhere. That's my only visual complaint though. Yeah. It's, it's got like a haze, which isn't great. Cause lights are how you figure out where you're supposed to go. It's got that. Why does some games, Matt? Why does some games have the haziness? Do you know the answer to this? Why does some games have like the hazy cloud? I know that's like a graphical thing, right?

[00:03:31] Because if you put a, like a fog on everything that will reduce like, you know, how much you have to throw in visually to the game. I don't know. Maybe that's the reason. Maybe that's why it looks so good. I don't know. It's a, it's a, I feel like it's an unreal engine thing. Cause I, I feel like it only happens in unreal engine games. Now I'm going to have to pay attention. That's fair. That could be it. I should ask chat GPT about that. Maybe it has some answers.

[00:03:59] Um, yeah, no, clear up screen. It's, it's, I'm going to keep playing it. It's, um, I mean, I think everyone in the world's obsessed with it. I just, you know, you know, uh, Dumbo, Huffle, Huffle lumps and woozles. Yeah. Yeah. Winnie the Pooh. I feel like, yeah, sorry, not dumb. I mean, dumb. I don't know. I thought you were just going for Dumbo and Winnie the Pooh. My Disney lore is off base right now and I apologize to the Disney adults out there.

[00:04:25] Um, the, the, yes, the Winnie the Pooh, Huffle lumps and woozles acid trip dream when he has too much honey. You know what I'm talking about? That's what I feel. That's like this setting for Claire Obscura expedition 33, but a little bit dark. I gotta say, I've not heard that one before. Um, Humphalumps and woozles. I don't know. There, there are weird enemies. I, dude, I don't know. I think it's a you thing, Cameron. I kind of, I kind of just want, you know what I mean? I kind of don't want, just want to fight like a guy. I just want to fight like a guy. You know what I mean?

[00:04:54] Like, I don't want to fight like a, like a, like a, you know, like a, like a teddy bear sewn together with like a, uh, a block of wood. You know what I mean? I mean, sure. I don't know. It's, it's, it's final French-y. Oh, it's their French artists. Final French-y. There's definitely some art. That's a great headline. Have you used that one on the site yet? No, that's too easy. Yeah, that's true.

[00:05:24] That's not clever enough. Final French-y. No, and I appreciate it for that reason too, just because I am a big old school Final Fantasy fan. I, when I say old school, not too old school. Jake knows all about that. Final Fantasy six. Yeah. Uh, dude, I'm coming up on the end. I think of Final Fantasy four. I'm pretty stoked to see where it goes. The game where. So are you playing Final Fantasy four or Final Fantasy six? And are they the same? Final Fantasy six is on hiatus. They are not the same. Okay. I'll come back to Final Fantasy six. I don't know.

[00:05:54] This is my answer for every game within the next two weeks or two years. I'll come back to this game. Like, let's just, that's just it. Fair enough. We shall see. Uh, no, I do. I do appreciate the Final Fantasy of it. I'm a huge Final Fantasy seven, eight, nine fan. So like that era. So anytime a game has those vibes, Final Fantasy 10 to like, it has those vibes, but I'm kind of sitting there thinking to myself, like, man, this is really cool. I kind of want to go play Final Fantasy 10. That's where my head's at.

[00:06:24] So that might be what I do. Uh, which is on game pass, by the way. I think, I think it's still on game pass. Is it? Is it 10? I don't know. I don't think so. Dude, it was for a minute. It definitely was. They might have taken it off. They probably took it off. You're probably right. I need to go check. That's one of those games that I keep telling myself I'm going to buy, but I know the second I buy it, it's going to be sitting in my backlog for, I don't know, five years. Yeah, it's, it's good.

[00:06:52] I mean, you're going to have to now that you are going through the Final Fantasy game. So it's basically a requirement at this point. I know. Yeah. You can't skip 10 or 10 to. Well, that's. Or nine, which is my favorite of all time. Hold on guys. Hold on. I only got some. You can't even skip 13, which nobody likes. You can skip 13. I'll give you permission. You can't skip 13. Cause if you skip 13, then you can't play lightning returns. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. We're getting deep cuts. Okay.

[00:07:20] So back when I first started playing Final Fantasy 15 and I was like, this game isn't as bad as everybody says. I did start looking into Final Fantasy 13 cause I was like, but this is the one that most everybody hates. And, uh, it's, it's got three parts. Is that right? Yes. It's like Final Fantasy 13, one, two, and three. And there's Final Fantasy 13. There's 13, two, and then there's lightning returns. That's right. Yeah. And I was like, dude, can I just play one of these?

[00:07:49] And then all the Reddit forums were like, no, no, you're not allowed to. And so here I am. I have not played it. The only franchise more convoluted, which I also haven't played is Kingdom Hearts. So, um, Kingdom Hearts is fine. If you just ignore everything that's happening in the plot, it's the best way to play. Just go to Disney worlds, beat up bad guys. Who cares? Dude, I like this idea. That's probably the, yeah, that's, that's a great tip.

[00:08:19] Honestly, YouTube's algorithm pushes, uh, Kingdom Hearts explained videos at me all the time. I've never clicked on a Kingdom Hearts video in my life, but for whatever reason, YouTube believes that I need to know that story and how it can be explained. One of the, Jake, one of these days we need to just start off the show by pulling up our YouTube homepages and telling people what the first like six videos are.

[00:08:47] And that would tell you everything you need to know about that person. Mine is going to be like, what are the newest games this month? Because I just only play new games and never finish anything. Uh, and golf, golf swing videos. And that's like my entire algorithm. Matt, what about you? What's your YouTube looking like these days? Oh, mine would probably be some Conan video, a wrestling clip. Nice.

[00:09:14] And I don't know, some, maybe a game review and hopefully a nice one. And not one of those angry, why are there women in this? Yeah, this game's woke because there's an Asian woman with a, who's, who's wearing clothes. Yeah. Um, the audacity. Hey, I've got mine pulled up right here. This is, I don't know. Okay. This is somewhat embarrassing. On the spot. This is. Okay. Uh, number one recommend. Will it be anime waifus?

[00:09:44] No, anime waifus. Um, do they have videos on that or just images? You know what? No judgment. I don't know. No judgment. Anyway, the first video is history of the 120 star early era from summoning salt, which honestly I am interested because he does histories of speed runs. So they got me there. That is a really deep cut. That's like right on. That's right. I couldn't have picked it any better than that.

[00:10:09] Uh, next up we have the Okage Shadow King OST, which I can't find anywhere else. So I listened to it on YouTube. Once again, very on, very on brand. The history of Super Mario Bros. 3 100% world records by summoning salt. Um, let's see some bloodborne video. Gosh dang it, dude. This is, this is a little uncanny. I don't know if I like this.

[00:10:37] Uh, we got a, a daddo video. So did I, um, back, back in my heyday of playing a lot of destiny, I did tune into a lot of daddo streams and YouTube videos. Oh, okay. There we go. So, uh, that's coming back. And then, uh, oh my gosh, final fantasy video game guitar covers. Dude, that is Jake. This is literally like, you need to put that, you put that in a blender and you come out the other side.

[00:11:06] I'm just going to wait, wait. And then Elden Ring lo-fi beats. Dude, this is freaking embarrassing. I mean, it's not embarrassing. I'm proud of all these things. I'm not even going to give mine because they're so uninteresting. It's like, best video on tilt and side bend in the golf swing. Oh, dude. I mean, come on. That's just so, so boring. I tested the world's most unique gyms. Arc Raiders, the marathon killer. Oh boy. Can't talk about that. Oh boy, can't talk about that.

[00:11:36] Matt, give it to us. Give us a couple of yours. What do you got? All right. We have, how many am I doing? The first what? Like five? Yeah, just the first few. Just give us a couple, you know, just the top. A couple, three, four. All right. I have here, I have the Bourne Supremacy Caravan of Garbage. Okay. Solid. Love it. I have a wrestling interview. Nice.

[00:12:04] I have the Now You See Me, Now You Don't trailer. We got a movie fan? Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Very cool. I have Game Grumps finale for a game about digging a hole. Nice. Oh, the dig, the hole game. Dude. Yeah. That's, yeah. When you play that one. And I have a, I have a 14 second video of John Bernthal in that Ghost Recon game saying, let me tell you something.

[00:12:34] Dude, that's beautiful. That's perfect. That is, that's so good. Dude, this is a fun action. This is a good way, you know, to get to know, to get to know people. I feel like I know you so much better than that. Everything about me has been laid bare. There are no secrets anymore. I'm going to add that John Bernthal to watch later. You're going to have to send that to me afterwards. Matt, I want to get your thoughts. You are, of course, editor of, am I saying this right? How do you say it? The hard drive or hard drive?

[00:13:04] It's hard drive mag. Would we just call ourselves hard drive? Hard drive mag, but it's just hard drive. Okay. Got it. We're not an action magazine. As editor of a great site that puts out just amazing headlines. It's like today, the top one. RFK Jr. demands records of everyone who's played a Sonic game. Oh, man. It's so good. Matt, of course, approved that one.

[00:13:34] Wait, did you come up with that or did you just hit the button? No, I just hit the button. You hit the button on that one. Okay. I hit the button on that one. Kudos to whichever writer of yours came up to that because that's hilarious. I want to get your thoughts on a slightly more serious topic. What do you think of $600 Xbox Series Xs and $80 Xbox games? Because you know what?

[00:14:01] Nintendo, they opened the gates and Microsoft didn't waste any time to just be like, you know what? We're coming along for the ride. What do you think? I think this is what happens when you put a circus in charge of the economy? And I think maybe Luigi did nothing wrong. Oh. Dude, when is a documentary on Luigi coming out?

[00:14:29] Of course, we're talking about Luigi once he's freed. Yeah. Once he's free. Once they blue shell the side of the cell. Dude. Who's going to star in that movie? Oh, dude. Who do we cast as Luigi? That's going to be... He's got to be 20-something, like good-looking, pretty jacked. Thick eyebrows. Which, nothing wrong with thick eyebrows. Thick eyebrows. That's Luigi's signature.

[00:14:55] You know, I know people are saying Dave Franco because they look alike. Okay. You need a better actor. You need a better actor. I say Chalamet. Timothy Chalamet? Yeah. I could see it. They say Chalamet. I could see it, man. I don't know. I'm not convinced. Not initially. Luigi Mangi out. I mean, look. I say either Chalamet or if you want to go wild card, Will Poulter. Will Poulter?

[00:15:25] Okay. All right. Yeah. I don't see that one, but I mean, he's a good actor. I don't know. So, would Luigi Mangi out... Would he pay $600 for an Xbox? Yeah. Well, he could. I think he was a Nepo baby, but he wouldn't out of principle. Yeah. You know, it's so interesting, right? Because companies make these decisions to up the prices. And Jake and I talked about this ad nauseum.

[00:15:54] Our last episode, if you didn't listen to it, the subjectivity of value in video games. Man, that is a lot of money. And so, and the problem is, is because now you've anchored, and we, again, talked about this ad nauseum, but just to reiterate the point. You've anchored everybody to $500 Xbox Series X's, like, bundles, right? Now you just took it up to... What is the exact price, Jake, that they took it up?

[00:16:24] What's... Is it $600? And then... It's straight to $600. They just went there. It wasn't even, like, $50. It was $100. Yeah, so $600. So the PlayStation Pro now is what? It's going to be $800 within a week, right? So you're talking, like, consoles are breaching, like, encroaching onto the $1,000 territory. Dude, it's...

[00:16:47] I mean, I know everyone was pissed off at the Switch, but that Switch 2 price is looking pretty dang good now in comparison. It's still, like, a frick ton of money, but... Dude, are people just... Are we... Are these companies pricing people out of the hobby? Or do you think we just cough up the cash? Dude, then there's a question, right? And I think that's the more interesting question that's kind of surfaced from all this conversation, right?

[00:17:16] Is people being priced out of the hobby. This is something that I explain to my students all the time because I typically do... When I do, like, an introduction to literature class, we'll end the class talking about video games. And one of the things I say is that video games has a higher barrier to entry than most artistic mediums. And that it costs money and that it typically requires a specific level of dexterity. So that's why...

[00:17:42] And then I briefly just talk about, like, the conversation surrounding accessibility in video games, right? And how this is a huge talking point as opposed to, like, we haven't really talked about that when it comes to novels, right? Or we don't really talk about that in the same way. Just other things, right? But yeah, this is super expensive. I just kind of think that a lot of companies are probably just going to shift to... If people aren't going to buy consoles, they're playing games on their phone.

[00:18:11] How do we just increase mobile gaming? In which, honestly, mobile gaming is still... It's probably the biggest portion, right? Percentage of gaming revenue. Maybe I'm making that up. But if it's not, it's one of the top sources of revenue. And people will shell out for a smartphone, but they won't shell out for a console in the same way. And so I kind of think that, yeah, you're pricing people out of consoles by making them really expensive.

[00:18:41] But people will still be buying smartphones. I think people, if they were given the choice, right? Like, hey, do you want the new smartphone or the new Xbox this fall? I think the majority of people who play games in any capacity, they're probably going to pick their phone. And then they're probably going to keep playing on their phone. I don't know. Playing Fortnite or whatever it is that they're doing. Bellatro. Matt, what's your take on this, especially as editor of a gaming site?

[00:19:09] Obviously, how are you thinking about these price increases? I think, for one, this just cements this is the worst console gen ever. Only console gen where the prices have gone up five years in. Oh, man, that's crazy. Five years in, you forget that. Yeah, we're like five years in, prices have gone up, not down. There's no exclusives unless you're Nintendo.

[00:19:39] I think, yeah, I think the sickos will buy it no matter what. Of course. You're always going to get those sickos. But I don't think you can get all the sickos anymore. Because even the sickos especially will know, okay, this is this price. I might as well just buy a PC, right? Mm-hmm.

[00:20:02] And honestly, this is the same thing I said about the PS5 Pro was for that money and for what? You get Astro Bot and Demon's Souls and that's it? Yeah, pretty much. So for that money, you save up a little bit more and you can get a pretty decent gaming PC and you have everything.

[00:20:25] And I think you jack up the price of everything more and it's like, okay, PC plus Steam sales, why would I buy a $600 Xbox? Why would I buy an $800 PlayStation? I think this pushes people to PC. I think it pushes people to Game Pass, which if you notice, they didn't increase Game Pass, just their hardware. Right. So I think that becomes more enticing. I think Nintendo is safe because of the portability.

[00:20:54] I think handhelds are safe, but I think that's where it's going. People will still find a way to buy and play games for the cheap and that is Game Pass and PC. And they'll pay the premium for Nintendo because it's Nintendo. I think that's a spot on take. And that's actually – that's the immediate I thought I had when I saw the headline and was like, I am now a Switch and PC gamer. Like 100%. Like you've given me zero reason.

[00:21:23] And I play stuff with my kids like on Xbox and I own a PS5. I have everything. Right. I'm that guy. But now I'm kind of going like, I don't know. I don't think I can be that guy anymore. I basically play most stuff on PC and I most co-op things I'm playing probably Nintendo most of the time. Right. There's a few things on Xbox that I play with my kids. Astro Bot I played with my kids, but it wasn't co-op. Right.

[00:21:50] So, you know, so that was like the one game where we sat together and kind of handed the controller around. Jake, you're similar situation to me. Like, how are you thinking about it? I mean, one of my questions is like what these price raises, right, for Xbox, but also – right, PS5 has gotten a price raise in Europe. It's a little more restricted than maybe what we're seeing here with Xbox. It makes me wonder, though, like five years into this console, Jen, who's buying a brand new Xbox Series X?

[00:22:21] And I honestly do not know who is trying to buy this console right now. Yeah. This holiday or now, nobody. Yeah. So, because now you have a $150 disparity between a brand new Nintendo console, cheaper, and a five-year-old Xbox console. Yeah. I just – With no games. With no games. I don't know who's buying it, right? Matt, I think you're totally right.

[00:22:50] I think Game Pass's value has just increased, right? But that's for people who are already on Xbox, not for people who are looking to buy an Xbox, right? So, I just got – I just am wondering, right? I don't think Xbox is doing this to try to get new players to buy Series Xs. I think they're doing it so they just don't lose as much money if one gets sold, right? Like, I don't know. And honestly, the same goes for PS5.

[00:23:16] Who's buying a brand new PS5 five years into this when the price has gone up for some people in certain regions? I don't know. I kind of feel like what the pricing out is doing is just – I think people are more willing to kind of coast on whatever it is that they have. Because if your consoles are the same but just more expensive because of, you know, United States and tariffs, why bite the bullet now? You didn't do it for five years. For five years, you didn't buy PS5 or Xbox.

[00:23:45] Why do it now when it's more expensive? So, I think what Microsoft is essentially saying is like, hey, look, we don't sell that many consoles anyways. Let's not break even on these. Let's just make a profit on the ones that we can sell. We're just sitting on inventory. We're not manufacturing. We're working on the next thing right now, which is most likely whatever the new thing is going to be some sort of handheld thing version, right? I think that – I think it's pretty obvious. Like, there will be some artisanal $800 super console.

[00:24:14] But the thing they're going to bank on is some type of handheld situation, which you imagine – I mean, it could come in either at this same price or cheaper, which is probably what they're going for now that they've shifted their strategy to everything's an Xbox. Right. Right? I will say there is a massive opportunity right this second for a handheld Steam Deck type thing that has a dock to a TV.

[00:24:40] I just think that's a huge opportunity because basically like PC gaming to your TV. Like, I'm starting to think now about ways that I can make that happen, especially like co-op situations. But it's not going to be hooking up my desktop to my TV. I'd like to have some kind of – I mean, if Steam Deck – imagine if Steam Deck had like a docking station like a Switch. You could just drop it in there and then you have – I mean, that would be pretty sick. That would be pretty sick. I'd be totally on board with that.

[00:25:10] Yeah, I don't know. I think it's – I just think it's super messy at this point. People are just scrambling for whatever pennies they can get out of people. Yeah. Matt, you had a thought? Yeah, let's get out the guillotines, man. Dude, these prices need to come down. The gamers say that – I just want to apologize on behalf of America for screwing you over. Yeah, why are my prices more money now? I just want to apologize.

[00:25:40] I've been saying – I have a friend in Mexico and we keep saying we got to build the Mexican Highway. Just bypass you guys completely. Could you imagine? That's a great idea. Instead of the Keystone Pipeline, right, you have the Keystone Highway that just goes straight over the Midwest. Yeah. We'll build it around you guys. We'll just – You know what's funny about this is – Build it like Death Stranding.

[00:26:09] Nintendo didn't up the price and now they're going to come out looking squeaky clean, man. Good grief. I saw people on Blue Sky blaming Nintendo for this. I'm like, what is wrong with you? This wasn't Nintendo. I'm like – I replied in a thread about this and I was like, how many people are going to blame Nintendo over the tariffs? And immediate reply is somebody going, both. It's both. I'm like, what is wrong with you? Oh, gosh.

[00:26:39] Dude, Nintendo just wants us to play Mario Kart World. That's their biggest goal in life right now. Dude, honestly, I'm ready for a Nintendo game. I need some wins. DK! DK! I need – DK might be my most anticipated game of the year. If I can get a freaking Switch too, Jake. Hold on. Because you stole mine. My wife told me the other day that she thinks our Target preorder was canceled. Yeah, take that. Okay?

[00:27:08] It's on my list of things to do. I need to call Target. Wait, did you get an email saying it was canceled? Well, but they still took the charge. So I'm going to be like, okay, Target, you can't tell me that I don't have a Switch and keep my money. I know this is Trump's America, but come on. Give me my Switch. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's enough about that.

[00:27:33] Matt, the reason we're here actually and the reason we invited Matt on the show is because we want to do our episode on Avowed. And we needed some extra help because, you know, I just – I'm going to be honest. I only got like halfway through and I didn't finish it yet. So we're going to break it down with Matt's help. Jake, how are we going to break down Avowed on this episode? We're going to talk about Avowed in three different categories. The first one will be the narrative.

[00:28:03] So we'll talk about the story, character, just kind of how things go. So as is kind of the custom, if you're new to the pre-order bonus podcast, we typically won't go beyond the first 20% or 30% of a story. So all of that will be fair game, but major spoilers, anything that kind of happens after the first third of a game or so, we will talk about thematically rather than plot details to kind of keep everybody's sanity in check. Next is game design.

[00:28:28] So we'll talk here more just about like, I mean, Avowed, for example, we'll talk about the different mechanics, the different systems in play, combat. I imagine we're going to talk quite a lot about and just how it is playing the game and what it is that you're kind of doing and how the game kind of funnels you or doesn't into doing different tasks within the game. And then finally is impact on the industry. We get a little speculative here.

[00:28:54] We do have the fortune of knowing that Avowed has come out, what was that, in February. And so we have some time between us and launch. And so we have seen some kind of ripple effects of what it's done. But sometimes here we'll just speculate and just talk about what we hope something like Avowed can do for the games industry at large. So those will be the three categories we use to dissect Avowed this evening.

[00:29:24] So I'm going to be honest. I've forgotten the story of Avowed completely. But it has something to do with – I'm supposed to give the breakdown. And I forgot to have ChatGPT tell me – I have to be reminded. Matt, I have to be reminded. You know what I mean? Matt, why don't you tell us what's Avowed's – give us the plot breakdown. I was not told I would be tested on this show. I mean, you're getting tested now. So just give us your – I mean, you said it. It's mushrooms. Okay.

[00:29:52] Yeah, you are a mushroom person or you're a person who's like part mushroom. Oh, a Goomba. No. Yeah, you're a human Goomba. You're a sentient clicker. Yeah. Um, who – yeah, the reason you're a mushroom is because you're like – I forget what they call it. But you're like – I don't know. You're like some – you have a connection to some god.

[00:30:20] Because in this world, there's people who are connected to the gods. But you don't know which god you're connected to. They've never spoken to you. And you are part of the Adiran Empire. And you come to this island. You come to this island that your empire has begun colonizing to try and solve this mysterious illness known as the Dream Scourge. And everybody hates you because you're a colonizer. Dude, that's pretty dang good. That was pretty solid.

[00:30:48] ChatGBT is breaking it down for me right now. And it took too long. Uh, you were an envoy of the Adiran Empire. Envoy? Right, specially selected. But you're also like a mushroom face, right? Yes, yeah. Because you are a godlike, which is mean that you're touched by a deity. And I'm going to be honest, guys. That threw me off in the character creator. I turned it off. It's toggled off for me. I also turned it off. Matt, did you turn it off or did you leave it on? No, I left it on.

[00:31:18] I had some nice, sleek red mushrooms on my woman's cheeks. Mushroom flops. It matched her hair and she looked quite nice. Nicest looking mushroom person I've ever seen, let me tell you. Dang. I mean, you know what? That was a bold, that was a bold creative decision. I'm glad that you could turn it off. I was like, I was a little thrown off by that. I think mushrooms maybe creep me out a little bit. So it was like having a fungus face wasn't, I didn't want to stare at that like the whole game.

[00:31:48] No, I think you broke it down really well. So, and just people probably, most people probably know this, but this is part of the world of Pillars of Eternity. Yes. So, have either of you played either Pillars of Eternity 1 or 2? No. I played 20 to 30 minutes of the first one and said I would get back to it in either two weeks or two years. Been there, done that. Four years ago, I think.

[00:32:18] Man, yeah, people speak really highly of Pillars of Eternity and it's just been one of those games that I've watched the trailer several times before when it's been on sale. And I'm like, dude, I just don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I got the brain power to follow all the names and the jargon and everything that's going on. Which kind of leads me to one of my favorite things about this story is that it just has like a real time glossary that you can turn on in the middle of a conversation. Such a great feature.

[00:32:46] And I am begging, I guess this is kind of an idea for impact on the industry. Dude, I'm begging for this to become standard. I am way more bought into the story. I can follow what is going on. I get the little snippets of history when I need them to be able to piece together what's going on and why certain people hate other people. And it helps inform the decisions that I'm making because this is a really decision-heavy game. And man, I freaking love that.

[00:33:13] And so if this were like a feature in a lot of games, like these really, I don't know, heady RPGs, I'd be playing way more of them. And so I love the narrative. Like when Matt, you're giving this brief rundown. Sorry, you're on the spot. You do pass the test though. Yes. Like I can follow all that. Like I know what the Adirian Empire is. It's like, I know what, you know, I don't know, throw whatever term they use out. And like, I actually know what that is.

[00:33:42] And I don't feel like, and I actually feel like it gives the writers a lot more leeway to just write about things more organically. Because they don't have to give me like mini exposition dumps every few seconds, just so I can catch up with what the jargon of the world is. They can say, oh, there's a glossary right there. Oh, the player can just look up what this word means. Great. Let me just use it organically. And that's going to feel much better for the characters when they're speaking. So like, I love this system.

[00:34:09] And I love that it's just making me more interested in the narrative, in the politics of the world and what's happening. Because we are in like a colonizer settler or settler colonizer scenario here in the living lands. And now I'm like, oh, we're part of this. What are we going to do about it? So I'm in.

[00:34:32] Matt, what are some parts of the story plot that you liked, disliked, some themes that maybe stood out to you? I really like how because you're a colonizer, everybody immediately hates you. Yeah. Yeah. And to top it off, you're a mushroom face. So they also are afraid of you because they think you're one of the evil mushroom people.

[00:34:57] So I don't know how that plays if you turn that off and you don't look like a mushroom face and people are like, ah. They still respond to you as if you're a mushroom face. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if that. Yeah. Does that still play well if you have it turned off? Because I know like I have, you know, because I'm playing with the mushroom things in my face and people are reacting to me like, what the hell are you? You know, because they think maybe I'm one of the dream skirts or they're just afraid of me and plus they hate me because I'm a colonizer.

[00:35:25] I think more games should have everybody just hate you immediately. I think it's really interesting because then you can, you have to work to get these people to trust you. You have to persuade them. You have to do things for them. You can't just be like, well, I'm the protagonist. I'm okay. They're like, no, no, no. Your people are here ruining our life. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, there's a pretty, I don't know. It's, it is within the first like 20% of the game, but it's not in promotional material.

[00:35:54] So I guess I'm going to skirt about a little bit, but like very early on, there's a major plot point that has to do with the fact that you are the envoy from the Adirian Empire and everybody freaking hates your guts. And I loved that moment too. Same thing, Matt. I'm on board with you. You're like, holy cow, not only do they hate me, but they really hate me. They hate me a lot. And so it does, it absolutely influences how I respond in dialogue trees.

[00:36:21] I know that it's like really common for most players tend to be really nice. We don't want to make the NPCs sad, but I feel like in this game, it gives us a greater sense of urgency to actually play good in that kind of response. Like play, like trying to be nice because you're looking to like make allies. Although I will say there have been some moments where an NPC pissed me off and I was like, I'm just going to kill you then, I guess.

[00:36:48] I'm just going to totally buy into whatever stereotype you have of me because I can't stand you. And this is going nowhere. I think it also. Go ahead. I think, I think it also does a really good job of because you're the colonizer. So at your mission is for the empire and you're told all the time for the empire, you know, you're doing this for the empire and everybody hates you.

[00:37:13] And so it, it's in your nature as the player to want to be liked, but then the game also makes a genuine effort to be like, this is what your people are doing to these people. You should feel bad. Yeah. Yeah. There are some really good moments in there. I totally agree. Right. Like oftentimes with games like this, they want to introduce like this morality system. And we talked about this a little bit with kingdom come deliverance to where, I mean, evals like this as well, too.

[00:37:43] There's no morality meter, right? It's all about like your personal integrity as you're playing the game. Like, how are you going to respond to people who are like, yeah, your people and a big part of this, we didn't mention them, but the steel garrote. Right. This is like part of the Adirian empire, even though they're kind of like an extremist, like hyper violent military group. People always are connecting the steel garrote to the Adirian empire because they kind of act in the name of the Adirian empire.

[00:38:10] And so you as the envoy, you have to juggle like, do I take ownership of what these people are doing? Or do I actually want to try to convince these people that I disagree with what it is that they're doing? And sometimes people just would flat out not believe me. I'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Me and the Inquisitor, like, we don't see eye to eye. I don't, you know, approve of anything she's doing. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. I don't believe that. I have no reason to believe that you think differently than any other Adirian person who's here on the island.

[00:38:41] I thought they did a really good job of, because you're, you are both at once like colonizer representative of this kingdom that like is encroaching on these people that, you know, they're, you're, you're encroaching on their land, encroaching on their territory, but you're also a godlike. So not only are you hated, but you're also a weirdo and people think that you're weird.

[00:39:08] Um, so I did really like that. I, it, it did took, take me a while because I usually like to play these games as, uh, like the good guy. Right. I like to play it as like the golden hero, but I think I enjoyed more just playing as the colonizer. I'm not going to lie. Like I, I actually enjoyed more just making decisions of like, nope, I am here to.

[00:39:37] Bring forward the plans and the schemes of the Adirian empire. And that's like what I'm here to do. And I'm not going to mess around. I'm not going to like join the other side. That's like, I'm just doing my job. And that's kind of the way I ended up playing like halfway in. I started out like, Oh, this is the good decision. You want to like join with these guys and like let nature take its course and blah, blah, blah. And then by the middle, I was like, Nope. I'm just going to be represented. Like I'm just, this is easier. It's more efficient. I'm just, I'm just going to follow the path.

[00:40:06] Uh, like that my character has set before me from the beginning. So I don't know. I liked that. It gave you different, um, choices. That being said, like, I don't think this game does a great job at reactiveness to those choices. I think it offers you, it offers you choice, but it's like choice light, which I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I don't, I'm not saying that like that's bad.

[00:40:34] And that, and that was like one of the biggest criticisms of this game when it, when it first got introduced is like, Oh, well, it's not Skyrim. Right. It doesn't have, it's not the simulation. Right. And it, it happened to unfortunately come out right around the same time as maybe the best simulation video game maybe ever made, which is kingdom come deliverance too. I mean, it's just this insane sandbox, right. Where it's hyper reactive and so many different ways.

[00:41:03] And this game is a bit more by the numbers, but it's, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but you did. I did admittedly, I did feel it a little bit where it's like, okay, I did something. It was bad. It didn't really matter. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

[00:41:21] It's maybe more of just like sort of a, I'm going to call it an arcadey experience from a story standpoint where there's different decisions in different branches, but it's more like less consequences of your actions. More. Or, um, choose your own adventure. Hmm. Yeah. I can see, I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I do think. That's my thoughts. But feel free to disagree, please.

[00:41:51] I do think some of the bigger decisions do a good job of, they won't have consequences right away, but there are a couple of big decisions that like later on you'll be like, oh, that's what that did. Gotcha. I'm not, I'm, I'm not going to spoil anything, but there's a moment in act two near the end of act two. That. That happens. That happens.

[00:42:14] And I, I don't know, I don't know how that played out for you, Jake, but it, the way it happened for me was during act two, I was, I was doing side quests and because of a decision I made, um, regarding, um, a lady in a church.

[00:42:35] That major thing that happens for a lot of people didn't happen for me the way I was expecting because yeah, I made like a minor decision like three hours earlier, three, four hours earlier. The vague, the vague speak, right? I know what you're talking about, but we're trying really hard to avoid spoil. I got through act two and I'm trying to think what you're talking about. And I'm, I can't put my finger on it.

[00:43:04] I mean, I can think of one very specific decision. I can think of one very specific decision I made and it's the, it's the big one. You make an act one, right? Right. Um, with like basically picking a side, essentially that did have consequences, which, which was, which was cool. It's, you know, my problem is, is I just, I put too many hours in boulders. You know what I mean? That's the problem. I'm waiting for ball. Sorry to come up in this.

[00:43:32] There's so many permutations and different outcomes that I, I'm, I'm calling it like decision light when I just, you know, your perspective is, is morphed. I'm broken. You know, I don't know. I, I do agree though. A lot of the smaller decisions or side quests, they'll give you a decision and you'll do it and you'll be like, oh, that's it. Okay. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. I think for me, thinking specifically about act two, um, I had the major event occur.

[00:44:01] And I think the way that most people had it occur, which was pretty negative. Right. Um, and I went back to, after that happened, I didn't save scum, but I finished the act. And then I went online. I was like, dude, what did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? I thought I was doing things right. And I think for some people, this might be an annoyance. It was a specific side quest that I started, but didn't finish.

[00:44:25] And had I finished that one specific side quest, it would have had major consequences for the main quest during act two. And so I don't know in terms of, in terms we're talking game design now, really. Do you signpost more the decision that is going to have severe consequences, or do you just let the player go entirely organically through the side quest and through the world?

[00:44:51] And maybe they choose an outcome that happens to have like a massive outcome. And so I think that's kind of a, that's a really tough call to make. I think kind of the advantage of the way they're doing it, that Obsidian does it with Avowed, is that now, I mean, from there on out, I'm like, dude, I want to see what all the side quests are. Because if I miss the wrong one, I might get an outcome that I am very unhappy with. Right.

[00:45:19] And so it definitely encourages me to play the game more thoroughly, which thank goodness is this is a small, dense world. So it's much easier to do that. I don't feel like I'm hiking, you know, 30 miles or whatever it is to get from one side quest to the next fetch quest step or whatever it is. So I think like in Avowed, it does work. But at the same time, it's like, dude, that was a massive consequence. And it's not entirely out of my control.

[00:45:47] But at the same time, it's like, dude, this massive consequence took place because I was ready to move on. And that doesn't necessarily feel good as a consequence. Am I explaining myself? Okay. Like, it doesn't feel good necessarily. Yeah. A hundred percent. Consequence when I just wanted to see more of the game. So I almost feel like I'm a little bit punished whenever I go back. Well, it's just if you side, if you signposted too much, right? I think it. I don't know. It's kind of like.

[00:46:18] I mean, a BG3, if you can you can miss. I mean, just as an example, like they they really don't. So I missed like two entire characters when my first playthrough of that game. Right. Yeah. Which just because I didn't hundred percent it. And I'm the type of person who doesn't hundred percent everything. Right. It's like my brain doesn't need. I don't need to do every side quest. I can just move on.

[00:46:43] Um, so I probably entirely missed that whole thing that you're talking about because I can't even think of that specific specific instance. Yeah. Woof. I still feel guilt. Uh, I do want to briefly mention. I think one thing this game didn't do a good job of, at least for me is I wanted to feel more connected to the to my character. Hmm.

[00:47:07] And I just, I didn't feel like I had any, I just feel like I wasn't invested in my character. Right. I didn't feel anything for the fact that they were like a godlike, like I didn't, I didn't feel any like emotion around like, oh, they're an outcast or they're weird. It's like, well, they're not that weird because they're an envoy for the Adiran empire. So, you know, they're weird in the sense that they have a mushroom face, but they're not like an outcast. This is like somebody.

[00:47:35] And I picked my background was, it made it even worse. I picked the noble background. So I was like rich kid envoy for the Adiran empire. So it was kind of like, it kind of nullified that feeling a little bit. You still had the colonial stuff in there, but again, I just, I didn't feel it. I needed, I wanted the game to do a little bit better job of making me feel invested.

[00:47:57] And I think it tries to do that by some of those, um, like flashback illustrated video things. You know what I'm talking about? When you go to. Yeah. Yeah. That you connect with your ancestors and then you kind of have a choose your own story background situation thing that happens. That was kind of cool. But I just, for some reason I was just like, this is taking me out of the world that I'm in.

[00:48:24] And I wanted to be more in the world I was in and feel invested in like my mission is here and what I'm trying to do. And I just didn't feel that I think in this game. What about you guys? Um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:48:39] I think, I think they were going, I mean, I don't know if they were going, but it, it feels like the type of game, like a, you know, like a Bethesda type experience where they want you to just throw you in there and you know, you're going on an adventure. You're the character. You make it up. Right.

[00:49:25] Right. Yeah.

[00:49:56] This part of the game would have benefited just throwing this out there from a handcrafted character. That's unpopular. These days, people do not like to not have a character creator, but for me, it's like, I mean, you can even have a character creator, but like slap one voice, maybe a female on a male voice. and like have that be the character like as written by as intended by the storytellers i don't know that maybe could have done something for me in this game just throwing yeah i just think there's

[00:50:26] sort of path to creating who this character is was a bit unusual so much of what you learn about your character you learn in when you come across the i think they're called godlike memories or something like that where you have like a specific communion um with a god and then you walk through this history together right and you make a lot of decisions in there like the god is kind of

[00:50:53] interrogating you about a specific historic event and it's a little strange because you are just making it up on the fly like they'll they'll ask a question for example it's like when i didn't i did not that didn't jive with me i was like just just give me something yeah i don't so i think just to explain a little bit more for listeners kind of what happens here like you'll be having this conversation with this god about the founding of a city right and this is pretty vague so i'm not

[00:51:23] spoiling very much and then they'll ask like what type what was your goal in founding the city and you have three options it's like i don't know like to be the shining jewel or example of the world to be a military might or to like know and be a center of multiple cultures i don't know so i'm kind of paraphrasing slash making up those three responses and you're like as a player like oh well i don't know let me think about this like how do i want to respond here but whatever your response is

[00:51:52] is like taken as fact for how that history played out and so if i pick like i wanted my i wanted the city to be the center of you know a bunch of cultures where they could come and meet and mingle or whatever and then the in the conversation that god is like oh so that's why this happened and it becomes like this story with like a dozen or so branches and like the span of 10 minutes where you're just like making on-the-fly decisions about how this history played out and it

[00:52:19] turns into fact it's i don't know i see what you're saying cameron it would have been nice like in some of those moments to just have a cut scene oh this is who you were and this is kind of what it was right and so i wonder yeah but at the same time it's like oh avow does allow and i think this is great for a specific type of player it allows for a ton of freedom in terms of how you want to create

[00:52:43] your backstory and how you want like that head cannon to actually play out in the game so that's where i give kudos to what the writing team is doing at obsidian it's like dude you're actually allowing the player to do a whole lot but i agree in the sense that the path towards that creation it felt like it felt like i just had to make a decision in the moment like i had to make a split second decision about like a bunch of a bunch of background details that feel really crucial and i was like oh crap

[00:53:13] i don't want to sit here for 15 minutes to you know twiddling my thumbs to come up with an answer i want to move forward with the game too much freedom jake too much freedom but the horse blinders on the gamers yeah i i answered all of those the way my character the way i was playing my character sure so i was like you know what's my care you know okay what would my character do but they're supposed to be the ancestors so it's like so i think yeah like a cutscene probably would have

[00:53:40] been stronger because then you can be like okay this is what your ancestors were like and then you kind of have okay now you kind of have a compare and contrast what what was my ancestor like compared to how am i playing this character then you have something interesting to work with as opposed to just i'm just going to answer this the way i would if you were talking about my own character what what i care for was my ancestor it's me yeah exactly what that's exactly what i was going to say i was like if the game was a bit more react just a teeny bit more reactive right it's like

[00:54:10] hey look at four decisions i made and in the game code just do like an if then and here's the cutscene you get right and that tells you you're based on how you're playing a game but i think that takes us into talking about game design um and i think i want to start off this conversation we've talked about a lot like story and decision kind of how the game approaches that i think i think the

[00:54:36] there's two two major things in the game design that this game does really well exceptionally well even and like really make it stand out is the combat and the exploration oh yeah um we'll start with you matt what are your thoughts give us your thoughts give us your breakdown

[00:54:59] uh what did you think of the combat in this game all right i i have there's one thing about the combat i'm not so big on i guess it's not really the combat it's the equipment system oh oh i might know where you're going because i have thoughts yep i i i i'll start with this and that way i can end on a positive i i the combat system in this game is you can very clearly tell this

[00:55:28] was going to be some sort of multiplayer looter shooter before they pivoted because the comments is the combat system in this game is you'll find like you'll find a weapon and it will have a rarity yeah and then you have to find upgrade materials and upgrade its rarity because eventually you're gonna fight enemies that are the enemies are categorized not by level but by rarity of equipment

[00:55:55] so if you have a blue weapon and armor and eventually you're gonna fight purple enemies and your weapons will do nothing to these purple enemies and they will kill you very quickly so you then have to go and upgrade your stuff to purple and then once you have a purple thing then you'll start to find purple things i do not like this system i want to be able to just find a cool sword and immediately

[00:56:19] use it i 100 percent agree with you man i couldn't agree with you more please continue however i did find a very cool sword and a very cool gun very early on and so essentially i just kept upgrading them because i didn't have to switch yeah which you know on the one hand i'm using the

[00:56:44] same loadout the entire game essentially but on the other hand these weapons were fucking awesome dude it was what was the was the gun the electric pistol dude that thing rules yes i had in one hand i use that too do we all use that it's amazing guns you can have two you can have two loadouts you can swap to in this game so on one hand i was playing like a roguish character because i'm always a

[00:57:12] roguish character um so on one hand i had just a flame sword just a one-handed flame sword that i was parrying with up close and in the other hand in the other hand i was dual wielding my my i had a flame dagger in one hand and my electric pistol in the other and i was going ham yeah dude i'd go in i'd shoot my electric pistol i had a perk on it where if i got a um like a headshot or whatever or hit their

[00:57:40] weak point whatever it's called it would it it would do area damage and electrify the enemies around it so i'd go in with that if anybody got close to me while i'm popping shots i'd i'd quickly stab them with my flame dagger and then when you know their damage is good enough i switch to my sword go in i'm parrying and i'm a badass and it's incredible and i think i i was explaining this to somebody when

[00:58:07] i was playing it i i i used the word to describe the combat i used was it's very chunky like when you like you you and i think as a lot of people were comparing this to skyrim it's it's obsidian's you know but you know bethesda game or whatever and even now i started playing the

[00:58:32] oblivion remaster that i'll get back to in two weeks two years and and and you know even then it's like this combat is chunkier when you hit enemies you hit these enemies right even even when you shoot them like you can feel it and when you when you hit them with a sword or a dagger an axe like you feel

[00:58:54] those swipes you feel those stabs they ragdoll when they die it's incredible yeah it feel i mean it feels really good it's they did such a good job with the chunkiness as you mentioned and the variety of play styles and i i loved i i played a um battle mage was my one loadout and then the next

[00:59:19] set out was double pistol oh um yeah and it was it's just fun right like you pull your double pistols out you're just slapping people in the face you know with bullets left and right and then you switch over and drop in like a fireball spell on them uh yeah i mean this was really good i think it's the gear system though yes that was i don't know i don't know if i was just like annoyed by it

[00:59:45] i don't know it's too much like a looter shooter i don't want to go gather like pieces of wood to upgrade the stupid gun just i was annoyed by it i was because i'm going through these areas like rambo like a badass you know like i'm fantasy john wick and then all and then all of a sudden i hear you know all of a sudden purple enemies and i'm doing no damage and my companion is saying you need better

[01:00:09] gear yeah thanks kai that that helps me oh dude yeah i i agree with you like and that's another this weird thing is like the game does such a good job with exploration and it's fun because you go around the corner and like you're like oh what's over there and that little like nook and then you go in the nook and it's like a whole tree house and it's filled with stuff but most of the stuff is like

[01:00:35] sticks and like chunks of iron right so it's that it's that disconnect and breath the wild and tears of the kingdom also kind of do that as well right where it's amazing exploration and you feel rewarded just by the exploration itself but then you open the thing and it's like two sticks it'd be a lot more fun if it was like cool weapon even i i don't know like just some kind of cool weapon or cool thing

[01:01:01] that you got to just give it a little bit more variety but yeah i'm but that could just be because i'm some people like that some people like the dopamine hit of weapon number go up weapon color go up and they like that a lot i mean a lot of people like that that's why looter shooters are so popular right destiny diablo all these games so you had a little bits of that those elements in the end here which i yeah i agree with you matt i didn't find it jake what do you think i don't think i was as

[01:01:30] bothered by you guys buy it it was it was too cumbersome though because like when you would you need a lot right it's i mean that initial gap between purple and blue like when you're at blue and you're you're first running into purple enemies i think it was in the second area um i was trying to do a side quest and i was like oh man purple enemies i'll come back later did another side quest oh purple enemies again i'll come back later and then there's like a third side quest i was trying to

[01:01:57] knock out these side quests on the way to the main quest and it was purple enemies again i was like dude i like recently got here how am i supposed to have a purple piece of equipment so i don't just get annihilated when i step into these side quests or these enemy camps whatever it is and so i felt like as as much as i love the exploration and the density of this game i felt yeah same thing if i'm looking through if i'm hunting through spider dens or i'm finding the shortcut or whatever it is

[01:02:24] dude please throw one like upgraded piece of gear at my way so i can get ease my way into these like harder combat scenarios in the world i just kind of felt like you would get to a new location and then it was like brick wall until either you had enough money which dude things are crazy expensive in the living lands right um there's a deer and tariffs dude are freaking screwing us up but like

[01:02:51] i never had enough gold like to to just like go into a new location and buy like the next tier of item and so i spent a lot of time just like which is which again it takes you out of the immersion of it right it's like oh i'm this hero running around like saving the world and like wait gotta stop at the shop yeah to sell all my crap so i can get the purple sword which is the same sword that i have but

[01:03:18] it's just number higher yeah i just think that you know just the game kind of trolls you about this too because when you go to a new area you're immediately met with all of the upgrade materials you could possibly need to get to the next level so i'm like i'm like you right i'm in the first area i'm hitting these purple enemies i'm like what the hell am i supposed to do i just barely scraped by enough to

[01:03:43] upgrade one of my pieces of equipment to to just get by then i get to the next area and oh here's all the like just within five minutes of going to act two here's all the materials you possibly need to get the rest of your equipment to purple and then you know like half an hour later oh and now here's the next tier of enemies yeah it happened too fast i think i definitely agree there like

[01:04:13] that difficulty jump happened too fast as i was getting into an area and i get it like sure i could have collected all of the blue tier swords that i found and broken them down into crafting materials but man because the exploration and the world design is so freaking good i don't want to spend time in the camp doing that right i want to spend time exploring stuff i want to spend time like in even like the little dens or whatever it is that you would go through like the puzzles weren't like super difficult

[01:04:42] or anything but i found them to be immensely satisfying to be like you know what there's a door there's a cave over there i bet i could probably go in there in five to ten minutes and maybe you'll find something really dope and sometimes you did um and sometimes you would find like a cool unique weapon i was like dude that was totally worth it right that was the stuff that i loved most about this game because the exploration like you get to investigate all these things and then two you actually get to put your weapons to use and so that's why i choose the word cumbersome because it's

[01:05:12] like you ran into these difficulty spikes too quickly and then it's like okay i have to go back to a camp right now okay where's the nearest camp have i discovered a camp in the area maybe i should try to find a camp okay i'm gonna break down all these weapons okay now i've got some parts do i have enough parts looks like i need to craft a bunch of my steel into steel chunks or white steel chunks whatever it is so i can upgrade the thing and that kind of tedium was just too much i think it either

[01:05:37] needed to be scaled down or i guess for me if it was scaled down i would have been fine is what i mean to say it's taking you out of the out of the fun right it's like fun per minute it's not it's not a fun part of the game it's like tedium that you got to go do it's like you said jake every time i'm running up against the purple enemies and i gather enough resources for an upgrade the game's yelling at me you ready for an upgrade you're ready to upgrade

[01:06:05] your weapon it's like dude i'm playing the game i'm like doing quests right and then it's like oh no make sure you stop what you're doing go to the camp but then when i go to the camp you can't just go to the camp it like takes you to you have to go to sleep to go into the camp mode right and then you got to go do the upgrade and it's like okay i did the upgrade and then you're back out in the world and you're just constantly again gathering more resources and then it's like repeats the cycle and

[01:06:31] i'm like dude i just want to play the game i just want to do quests and like kill stuff that's what the game does good you you went like too hard and this other other thing you you brought up some looters before like you know like diablo and board like i i like a good looter shirt too like i like borderlands i like the i love diablo i'll play diablo you put me on a desert island with nothing but diablo and i'll die a happy man right but what those games do is they give out loot and not just

[01:06:59] any loot like they give out good unique loot like ketamine at the white house right like and and this game gives you there right there there's like a handful of unique weapons but when you get them their whatever tier you have equipped yeah so you'll find a unique sword but if you're blue it's going to be a blue sword and then it's useless 10 minutes later whereas like a good looter when you

[01:07:28] get a unique weapon in diablo like when you get a legendary in diablo that thing's gonna wreck for at least a little while and and this game you're gonna get of your tier and mostly junk dude i did this uh i i'm blanking on the word now i undid i got the materials from a lot of swords

[01:07:51] and a lot of maces yeah if they were doing anna if like so i work in as many of you know i've said i work in video game analytics okay i'm a data engineer right you could track how much time people spending their menus like breaking down gear you could absolutely do that and you could build that into your qa process and be like how much time in a given like two hour play session is this person

[01:08:20] in the menu breaking down gear like that is it's a lot right it's a lot like so if you measured it it'd be like okay that's every second that you're doing that is a second not having fun now there's some sickos and some crazies out there who probably they maybe they like getting the iron chunks you know who knows um loading up on iron chunks but no not to beat a dead horse let's let's talk about let's

[01:08:46] move on to let's talk real quick about the gameplay loop because we we we broke it we talked about a little bit so basically the game is split up into uh multiple acts and each act introduces a new mini open world for lack of a better term essentially uh open zone open zone design as we like to call it i think the um like jedi survivor was the last one right i can think of that kind of did that open

[01:09:14] zone design it's it's good i think it's a more popular we've kind of moved away from the open world era a little bit and now we're in the open zone era i think um and you have your main quests and you're going around and you know gathering side quests pretty standard rpg fair going around the map exploring you know you're you're completing side quests and that essentially leads to

[01:09:40] basically getting material so you can upgrade your weapons and you can go do more of the quest because it unlocks more areas um we've already talked about how like the game kind of artificially blocks you off from doing stuff so it restricts your freedom by having like purple level areas but it also doesn't tell you that necessarily right it doesn't say like oh

[01:10:06] this quest is a purple quest you just kind of fall into it and you realize oh it's a purple quest i need to upgrade my weapons because as you mentioned matt your companions will literally yell at you and say you don't have purple weapon get purple weapon or you can't do the thing um so yeah i mean that's the loop it's pretty basic i think this is maybe the part where this game took blowback again going back to

[01:10:33] that like public uh reception to the game was like man this game has like really so critical reception was like man this game has like really cool exploration really great combat it's not reactive though right it's not like skyrim again it doesn't have to be and it does feel like i'm trying to find a better word it's more of like it's more like arcadey i don't know if that makes sense but it's

[01:11:00] almost like it's like an arcade version almost of like an like a bethesda rpg is kind of like how that's probably not the right words to describe it but it's something along those lines right where they took a lot of things out and then streamlined it and then added like a little bit of a twist and i just think there's a little bit and again this is this is being overly negative but i'm just saying it to illustrate kind of my overarching thoughts is there's just there's a little bit

[01:11:29] of dissonance across this game on kind of what it's trying to be right and i think there was dissonance even in the marketing when this game was presented when it was initially presented they really lean into the idea of this is uh this is obsidian's skyrim okay and this was an obsidian skyrim and i don't know if that changed if that was the vision of the beginning and then it morphed into what it

[01:11:53] became it definitely became something unique which i think it became something really good and unique and different and smaller um but it does seem like maybe there's like a teeny bit of an identity not a crisis i wouldn't call an identity crisis but sort of like it doesn't exactly know what it wants to be all the time and again i'm not even saying that's necessarily a bad thing because it's almost kind

[01:12:17] of like a new take or kind of a new type of rpg in a way like sort of a double a i don't even know i'm kind of going off the rails you guys pick me up pick me up for where i'm at jake i don't know no um i i don't know i let's see i think that the gameplay loop yeah it's what you describe i mean you get to a new open zone and you just kind of work your way towards towards solving a piece of

[01:12:44] this dream scourge mystery there's a lot of side quests you can do along the way a lot of bounties that you can do different characters you can meet um and then the most fun in this game is just simply just doing the combat between point a and point b uh and then yeah a lot of the gameplay loop is tied leveling up which you actually talked quite a lot about um i would say that like i like how the mysteries unfolded it's not quite like a detective story and you meet some interesting characters and

[01:13:12] there's some pretty funny moments which i think go a long way in this game um but yeah i don't know you just get deeper and deeper or more and more entrenched in the world as you go and i think i don't know i i like this gameplay loop i think it works really well for me it majorly because it is a small dense world and i listen if we are entering an era of small dense worlds with open

[01:13:39] zones like sign me up i'm loving it because yeah each act isn't taking me 20 years to complete like despite the hang-ups that we have discussed here it's like dude i still feel like i can actually make progress and i feel like oh you know what and in an hour's worth of play session i think i can actually get quite a lot done here it could be streamlined of course and i agree with the things that we've been talking about but i just like how this gameplay loop was like just just check it out

[01:14:07] just explore what's out there bonk a ton of enemies and the one one thing that we haven't talked about that i'll mention briefly is respec in this game is super easy it's like that's what i actually have been spending my gold on it's like try stuff 250 500 750 gold or something like that i've probably gone through four different builds my build currently is big hammer go bonk which is a an all-timer right

[01:14:31] like it's an all-timer man like heavy stun build just like what am i doing uh i'm actually doing because and this is we briefly talked about this but the dual loadout system i freaking love so big hammer go bonk and then i have a set of grimoire spells that i use to bonk harder and it's a ton of fun jake i'm glad you brought up that i'm glad you brought up the like small dense

[01:14:56] world because i think that rounds out i mean we've we've pinpointed some we've pinpointed some specific negatives but i think the overarching it becomes more than the sum of its parts in many ways right um by and one of the biggest components that makes that work is as you as you said is this

[01:15:19] like small ish just consumable so this is a digestible game yeah right it's not this massive plate of food it's like this nice decent meal that satisfies you and you can get what you want out of it and it's not this ginormous thing that just goes on and on and on like has to suck your attention away forever so that's the biggest positive i can take away so when you take all those things that we talked about

[01:15:47] all the good parts all the bad parts and then but then you break it down into that size i think it does become elevated a little bit and more more than some of its parts i love how small this is i i always get when i start an open world game i'm like okay uh and this game this game man i finished i finished act one in like uh a week maybe a little less and that was while i was playing like three

[01:16:15] other games i was like hell yeah i was there there were there were times i was i was there were times where i'd like kind of finish the main quest and then okay i gotta clean up all these side quests and i would just clean up all the side quests while i was lurking in your twitch chat jake just right and i'd clear out all my bounties and like all my side quests and be like fantastic now i can move on and yeah honestly they could have made this even they could have made this denser and compactor and i

[01:16:44] would have loved it even more probably yeah i think that's a great transition to our talking about impact on the industry so this is a 50 dollars jake 50 retail retail at 50 i actually am not sure well now it's 80 right but uh was this a full price game maybe it was i mean it definitely wasn't 70 oh no it was it was 70 it was so it wasn't oh dude it was a full price game okay so i was wrong

[01:17:14] um i don't know i still think it's it was on game pass this is a like a like a what would you say 30 to 40 hour outing i think if you were to mainline this you could do it under 30 um without breaking a sweat but i think i think i finished it in like 35 yeah i think that's i think that's yeah i think

[01:17:39] that's probably going to be like the average but on game pass again i think the big takeaway impact on the industry wise is and this is something we've talked about that kind of microsoft it seems like they're promoting within their studios is finish the game it doesn't have to

[01:18:01] make the game and finish it right like finish it and don't do it don't don't have a five to six year development cycle make a 30 hour game in three to four years instead of a 80 hour game in like five to six years i think is what they're saying and that's going to be

[01:18:28] good enough and you're still going to get more value out of it and the truth is we're all exhausted right and i think it's an interesting it's an interesting dynamic where at once the dad gamers or old gamers like us are exhausted from huge massive ginormous rpg giant games that we used

[01:18:50] to play when we were younger but then also like the zoomers and the gen z and the gen y also have like no attention span so it's like it's like i think it's meeting a better market to kind of split the difference right you don't need to be and they're still going to be like the gta sixes of the world right assassin's creed shadows just came out although that was quite a bit smaller probably half as

[01:19:17] small as assassin's creed valhalla so that's interesting it's like you just don't need to be that big it doesn't need to be that big and i think gamers have caught on and realized like no and look there's still sickos out there as we mentioned that they're going to eat up every second of the 200 200 hour open world assassin's creed game right but i think those days are are behind us a

[01:19:42] little bit in the sense that people crave the variety and the uniqueness and like the experience and you can't just stuff the game full of repeated stuff and make the world big for the sake of making it big and not only can you not do that it's that just takes way too long because you just have to generate so many assets and so much content and so i think this game does a really good job of of being this this nice middle ground now i don't know how it did financially i don't know how it did for game

[01:20:12] pass i think it did pretty well obsidian is a freaking they've put out so many freaking games like they just they put out games and so i wouldn't be surprised if this game did not set the world on fighter fire but it did enough because obsidian's uh volume and velocity is so high it's like oh yeah

[01:20:36] that's fine like that that did good enough and i think that's um that sounds like i'm saying like just do good enough and that's okay i'm not saying that i'm just saying like but maybe i am just do good enough that's okay let's save the industry or is that what microsoft is saying i i saw something uh somebody posted something it was like i guess this year microsoft is getting a bunch of i don't know between like 83s or 84s on metacritic right which is great yeah honestly like

[01:21:05] scoring in the 80s is very good and to have that sort of consistent like eight out of ten i think is amazing for game pass because uh it's like oh that game looked really good i would like to try it and then if you have a string of five of those come out in four months which is kind of what we're dealing with right now it's like oh maybe i should get game pass you know so i think for microsoft a game like avowed is just it's i think it's a home run i think it's a hit um i think in terms of game design like dude yeah the smaller denser more compact worlds like

[01:21:35] bring them on it that actually feels i think much more fresh than like these massive worlds that we've been handed time and time again and uh so yeah like i'm all on board for it but at the same time it gets really tricky i think coming back to our conversation about pricing where like video game prices are changing right now and i think they're kind of hard to predict what they're going to actually cost at retail and we've talked about this before right but like if gta 6 launches

[01:22:03] at 100 bucks for a standard or 90 bucks for for a standard uh edition oh how do you price a game like avowed should it have been 50 bucks should it have been 60 bucks i'm actually and i was actually surprised it was 70 bucks i thought it was less than that um and maybe just because i'm thinking of like split fiction and south of midnight and uh there's some other game that came out that was like 40 or 50

[01:22:26] bucks um so i'm i am rambling a little bit here but i do think that overall like this is avowed is a good sign for like okay good completable but still meaty game like this is this is good this is what we want i just hope with all the pricing wonking this that's happening right now that a game like avowed

[01:22:48] doesn't like raise its costs a ton i don't know matt do you think avowed is a 80 video game i think i mean i'm against the whole well this game's only 30 hours so it shouldn't be 80 dollars of course yeah totally um i think because you know i've played i've paid full price for games that

[01:23:17] were 10 hours and were some of my favorite games of all time like of course it doesn't matter right i'm gonna play that game over and over again i'm gonna play uncharted 2 over and over again i don't care that when i came out i paid full price for it you know absolutely i mean that's i mean that's uncharted 2 but yeah but but there's so many other games like i i paid full price for this and i'm happy about it i don't care how long it was you know uh i pay for quality i do think this is a quality

[01:23:41] game um i think i think this type of game specifically i think this is this is the type of game that makes game pass sustainable i think there's always been an argument is game pass sustainable and maybe there was an argument against it wasn't when their plan was we're gonna release these big triple a you know blockbusters all all year round it's like no you're not gonna do that

[01:24:05] but if you're gonna if you're gonna release these smaller denser completable games that take a shorter amount of time to make and a cheaper amount of money to make and you release those all the time well now people have a service with oh hey there's a bunch of games that i can play and beat instead of well there's a game that's gonna take me eight months i'll just buy it why would i

[01:24:33] subscribe to game pass if game and i always say this game pass is digital blockbuster and the beauty of blockbuster was you'd rent a game and beat it over the weekend and then rent your next game this type of game you know atom fall south of midnight that lets them do that in a way that we're gonna release you know triple a bangers 80 hour epic games you know once a quarter it's like no

[01:25:02] you're not gonna do that because why would people subscribe yeah they'll just buy them and they'll probably buy them on playstation because we all know you're gonna release them on playstation right but but this is doable and i think that's good because it keeps these types of games getting made and then they fund the bigger games that need that money i mean i'll use a movie analogy because i'm a movie guy and the movie industry has the same problem now back in the day

[01:25:27] a studio would release like six small movies a year like mid-budget movies yeah right that didn't need to make a record amount of profit they could do just enough you know you could make a 10 million dollar movie and make 20 million dollars on it and then releasing a 15 million dollar movie and make 30

[01:25:51] million dollars on it you know and that was enough to fund the big movie that makes all the money and funds all those little games and now what's happening is i mean the little movie is kind of coming back but the the problem for years has been they're just making the bigger movies and if these that cost 200 million dollars and have to make 600 million dollars open in weekend otherwise they're

[01:26:15] failures which is what the gaming the gaming industry has been like that too you'll you'll have these big you know huge triple a epics that you know goddamn spider a spider-man game can't make enough money to be successful and that's a problem and if you have these avowed and south of midnights that don't cost as much and are just successful enough then those bigger games don't have to be ridiculous

[01:26:44] successes because the smaller games have subsidized them and then the bigger games subsidize them and so on and so forth did i think yeah i mean it seems crazy but it it turns out if you're a company that wants to make money you have to have products to sell so yeah wait what people don't just give me money and if and if you only come out with one or two products a year

[01:27:13] that costs so much money to make it's like to your point and we've we've had this conversation ad nauseum it's like you're right it's a different strategy i still think it would be cool if xbox did take a shot with one of their studios and tried to make the insane you know 600 million dollar game epic you know i i don't they're not going to do it now because it doesn't fit their strategy it doesn't

[01:27:40] it doesn't it's not worth the form right because because if it's a flop they've they've lost three three to four smaller games that could have made like a decent margin right right yeah but like if sony had really if sony had their own avowed like if sony had made a new gravity rush game

[01:28:00] or a new sly cooper game for cheap and it came out would spider-man had to have made 800 billion gajillion dollars to be successful probably not because they'd have the profits from those other games and i think with a game like a with a game like avowed can do just enough plus whatever you know game like south of minute can do just enough and now fable doesn't have to be the you know highest

[01:28:29] grossing video game of all time just to make a profit you know perfect dark doesn't have to lay off their whole staff because they didn't make the most money any game has ever made yeah it's like it's like a pool now right because when you're in game pass you're in it's like one big pool of money it's not just like and it all kind of comes together and i don't know how they break down the finances

[01:28:51] obviously it's probably very complicated but um yeah clockwork revolution fable you know whatever they're gonna announce in june doom all these things starfield redfall 2 sorry the other day redfall injured my mind for some reason should we go back to redfall i heard it's updated um

[01:29:17] so well ladies and gentlemen uh jake matt give me your final thoughts on uh give me your final thoughts on avowed before we close up shop i'll go first here um i think maybe we've sounded a little too a little more negative than each of us like our experience with the game is like dude i think avowed is a really great game and the what really matters to me is like the moment to moment

[01:29:45] fun factor is there and avowed yeah i like talking with kai mainly because it's garris right um but i like talking with my companions i like making decisions the combat is a ton of fun i love the loadout swapping system like those little systems the way that they function like the abilities that you have in combat to just like engage in those scenarios is like way way way fun and so

[01:30:10] even if you don't get super invested in the story which like i said the glossary helps a ton for for you to get i think invested with what's happening in that world it's just it's just a lot of fun dude like it's a great time like going through that world and zipping people with the with the pistol or bonking them with a mall or whatever it is right um and i just like that obsidian like

[01:30:35] committed avowed to be what it is even if it has its imperfections because i don't know man to me avowed very much feels like a classic video game like okay we're gonna go in this world we're gonna do some fantasy crap we're gonna have cool looking weapons and we're gonna save the day you know and at the end of the day i just think about is it i think it's a hit it was a lot of fun

[01:30:59] yeah i was annoyed at the gear system but when i was when i was killing it i mean i wasn't thinking about it i was thinking hell yeah got my little electric pistol got my little dual wield so i was like and it's so short too that it it a lot of these big games have this problem you'll play this huge game one way right like i'm not gonna go back to that and see what a different play style is like why would i right like i even if you love it like i love boulders gate 3 i'm like do i want to spend

[01:31:27] another 80 hours just so i can see what it's like to be a dwarf a dwarf who's uh a wizard you know instead of the elf sounds fun to me camera's excluded here right yeah but like avowed oh i finished it in 30 hours i could probably you know sure why not do a replay and see what it's like to to bonk you know

[01:31:50] bonk people hard yeah you know it's it's it's doable and i think a lot of these rpgs they hit you with uh you know a map and you're like what is this i'll never finish this and avowed is like here you go here's fun combat with so many different you know weapon types and play styles that you could experiment with and you can finish this and then play it again and not be overwhelmed yeah honestly

[01:32:20] uh i didn't even think about this right but like i'm thinking about how much time it took me to beat metaphor re fantazio which is about 70 hours um and i'm like dude how many times could i beat avowed while playing that game and folks i'm not trying to drag us back into like the value conversation necessarily but like with a game like avowed you're totally right like that big blunder i made at the end of act two like dude if i wanted to replay avowed and i already know where everything is

[01:32:48] and i have all this pre-knowledge of what the game is a replay might take me 20 hours with a completely different play uh with completely different like play style with the weapons of loadout that i have and the decisions that i'm making right and that yeah way more doable than dude i didn't finish assassin's creed odyssey but if i did like i don't know if i could look back at that game and be like

[01:33:11] let's replay this it'd be too hard i'd feel stressed tldr make shorter games people i want i want shorter games that cost less to make made by people who are paid more and i want them now yes yeah 100 100 percent agree with that sentiment so let's do it i mean i'm not gonna do it but we're forming a studio

[01:33:38] right now we're making a two-hour game that being said i do love bg3 and i did do a second play through and i'm in act three listen we all have our sicko game i have like 400 hours in the ring i beat that game like yeah everyone's got a sicko game so yeah but those but you you can't bet the house on the sicko game you know what i mean no i agree don't do it make avowed instead avowed's great um ladies and

[01:34:03] gentlemen this has been our episode on avowed with special guest matt from hard drive the hard drive hard drive mag matt before we close up the show what's the best place to find you hear from you here read your content all that stuff uh you can well the only place you can follow me is blue sky

[01:34:26] at real m fresh you can follow me on twitch at real m fresh um if you show up you know one day sydney sweeney might be in chat you never know i'm making it happen um you can you should you should read hard drive we're very funny and sometimes people think we're real and that's also very funny and uh you can you can read my ramblings i have a sub stack um called certified fresh i'm currently

[01:34:55] writing little i write articles about games i'm playing movies i'm watching right now i'm doing a thing where i'm i'm going through my backlog and i'm i'm writing little journal entries nice that's awesome we will put links to all that in the podcast description so you guys can get stuff from matt and yes the hard drive is hilarious um so if you're not familiar just go read and every headline

[01:35:21] actually leads to an article of what i didn't realize yes there are articles there are articles and the articles are funny they're not just memes they're not just memes they're not just headlines you can click on the headline and it's more jokes yep you can click on those and in fact that's how we'd like you to to read we we'd like you to click on those links and and read those articles read those articles well ladies and gentlemen uh once again this is the pre-order bonus podcast

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[01:36:14] up various different levels to get however much content you want um we've got extended editions jake's indie impressions we have special topics episodes all those special extra things you can get on the patreon thank you so much for listening and have a great night