Returnal

[00:00:10] 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, as always, by the pixel professor, Jacob Price. It's March 6th, 2025. We're back to talk about video games. Jake, I am encroaching on 50 hours in Kingdom Come Deliverance dose. Holy cow.

[00:00:40] Let me tell you, I know 50 hours doesn't sound like a lot, but for me, that's a lot of hours. I'm usually like a 35 max for any given game. If you get me for like 30 plus hours, then you're probably going to be on my game of the year list. If you get me for over 40, you might be an all-timer. Ooh.

[00:01:08] So, no, KZ2 has just been awesome, dude. It's just super fun. Continues to engage me. Great systems. I like the combat a lot. Fantastic story. Great side quests. Just a great way. It looks beautiful. Like, it looks stunning and it runs like a dream on PC. So, it's essentially like the perfect package for me, dude. It's like, it's singing all the notes that I like to hear.

[00:01:37] Very nice. My Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 has been a little on hiatus. I've been pretty swamped, man. Just in the evenings, I have been really, I don't know, I'm just having a lot less time to play games. Life slapping Jake in the face.

[00:01:56] Yeah, holy cow. And it's not like, it's not bad things necessarily. It's just busy things, you know. Life gets complicated. Things come up. Gotta take care of this. Gotta take care of that. Yeah. Some of it is work related, which never feels fun. Never feels fun to be like, oh crap. Now I'm getting slammed with work right now.

[00:02:19] But the good news is that by the time you listen to this recording, spring break will have started at the university where I teach. Hey! And spring break is gonna be fantastic because I will have some grading to do, but my kids will be in school, which means... We'll be in Cancun. Oh no. Sorry. By kids, your kids, not... Yeah. I meant, I was thinking of the college kids. The college kids... They'll be in Puerto Vallarta.

[00:02:49] Will they with the... I don't know. Never mind. I was gonna make a political joke, but I'm not going to. They will be somewhere enjoying something with someone, for sure. Cabo San Lucas. Yeah. I will be gaming because my kids will still be in school. Yes.

[00:03:08] So it's one of these golden weeks in the life of the Pixel Professor where the kids are gone for six hours and I do not have six hours of work to do that day. Okay. That's when the Pixel Professor comes out of his hiding place and he really gets it done. He gets through the games. Well, that's awesome. We'll hope you'll make some good progress on KCD2. Episode for that is incoming.

[00:03:40] Just, that game is very big. It's a big one, guys. Bear with us. It's gonna take a little bit of time. You know, wish we could do it full-time, you know what I mean? Like, we could just do this full-time. We could just game every day. Think how many games we could play. Think how much content we could get through. It'd be insane. It'd be wild. It'd be insane. What if you had, like, an eight-hour day dedicated to just video games, you know? That'd be great. I'd probably still be complaining, to be honest.

[00:04:06] Yeah. I think the problem with that is if you start taking on bigger and bigger games, you just still never finish them. Yeah. Cameron and I both like this one streamer who kind of has attained this impossible status. I don't think it's possible to do this before or anymore, but CoCarnage, right? Yeah, the ultimate variety streamer. The ultimate variety streamer. And I think... Probably the most successful varieties, would you say? Probably. He's been in the game.

[00:04:36] I'm sure there's other ones I don't know that are... I think Lyric is up there. He variety streams, I think, quite a bit. Yeah, it's a tough gig to pull off, but he's able to do it. And it's so funny because he'll take a game like KCD2, right? And he'll play it straight for three weeks and will 100% it, but he has put it in, like, 10-hour days, you know? Yeah, that dude's crazy.

[00:05:01] He gets up early, streams in the morning, East Coast time, I believe, and then he gets back on again at night. And then he also does, like, during the middle of the day, he, like, does his historical streams. Yeah. Which is... It's weird. Anyway, he's got, like, an empire going on. Anyway. And he's a dad. Yeah, he's got a few kids. Yeah. That's wild. I mean, any news that's worth talking about? I know we had...

[00:05:30] We gave our rant on the WB situation in last episode. I think that hasn't really changed at all. Although I did hear a recent podcast episode. Let me hear your thoughts on this, Jake. They were discussing how to save WB game. Like, what would be, like, the ticket to save WB games? What would, like, bring it back? And they threw some stuff around, but Rocksteady...

[00:05:57] This was the idea that I was like, yep, that's the idea. Let's hear it. Rocksteady Batman Beyond game. I think saves it. That saves it. Batman Beyond. Do you know anything about Batman Beyond, Jake? That's, like, the classic... That's, like, one of the highly regarded animated series, right? That's the Kevin... Shoot. What was his last name? No. So, Batman Beyond... Wait. Okay, what is it?

[00:06:26] ...is a direct sequel to the original Batman animated series, but features Terry McGinnis in a cyberpunk-ian Gotham City many years in the future, where Batman is an old man, and Terry McGinnis is, like, a young dude who becomes the new Batman, but it's, like, a future Batman. And it's really sick. It's cool. So, it's, like... It's really dope.

[00:06:55] It's actually really dope. And then they have this, like, new version of the Joker, obviously, because you have to have the Joker. Gotta have the Joker, yeah. Dude, it would be really dope, because I think people who are fans of Batman Beyond, you'd still get Batman in there as an old man. You'd get fans of Batman Beyond, but then you'd introduce the character to, like, a new generation. Anyway, I thought that was a cool idea. I watched that show when I was a kid. It's been a long time, but it was really cool. I don't know.

[00:07:23] I mean, does Batman need to be reintroduced right now? What's the most latest... I guess we had... We had The Batman. That's the most recent thing, right? Batman's one of those franchises, I heard... They also said this, which I think is true. Batman's one of those franchises where you just really can't do enough. You can just kind of keep doing it, and it doesn't really degrade the brand at all of Batman. Like, people will always... Batman will always be a thing. Yeah.

[00:07:53] And will be, like, popular. And people will always love it. So it's like, you can never really do too much Batman. Yeah, and honestly, I think that's due... Listen, I'm not, like, a big superhero guy, so if you are, and I say something wrong here, feel free to just totally eviscerate me in the comments or whatever. But I feel like part of Batman's longevity is that Batman started with the hokey Adam West show, right? Yeah. Like... It's been around so long. Yeah, yeah. It's been around forever, but also Batman hasn't always been super serious.

[00:08:23] Yeah. And I think that kind of allows that character to be molded in different ways without people totally getting angry about it. Like, of course, you need your brooding Batman, but at the same time, you also have, like, I don't know, the Batman Lego movie, and you have Adam West Batman, and you have Tim Burton Batman, where, like, they're also just... It also can be silly. It's okay for Batman to have a sense of humor, like, in the show, right? I think they allow

[00:08:52] for that kind of creativity to be in there. Some other characters, I feel like they just don't have that same grace. I mean, Rocksteady's making another Batman game, which... Why wouldn't they? Like, they kind of got to just go back to the well and just see what they can salvage from the years of toiling in Suicide Squad, live service land. When do we see that game? Who knows? Probably 2030. Yeah. Honestly,

[00:09:23] I think my answer would have been different. I think my answer would be Hogwarts Legacy 2. Oh, well, that's a... That's coming. We know it's coming. That's coming. And it's a slam dunk, but... That is a massive priority, and that game's gonna be... That game's gonna have massive funding behind it, too. Yeah, I think... I mean, it's... It's sold north of 12 million copies. Like... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy huge.

[00:09:52] I almost feel like... I don't know. I don't know where they are in the production process, if they're in the production phase where they're hiring like mad, but a part of me is like, all these people you just laid off, man, how many of them did you absorb into like Avalanche to just work remotely on Hogwarts Legacy 2? Yeah, I don't know. They're focusing on these really big IPs. It's a shame because...

[00:10:21] Like, the lack of diversity from these like super big companies, like in terms of product output, isn't this just like putting all of your eggs in one basket? And isn't this... Sure, it's safer in the short term, but I feel like in the long term, it's actually a bigger risk because you put more emphasis on one big thing and if that one big thing trips before the finish line, you know, then it all comes crashing down because all of your eggs were in that basket.

[00:10:51] So, I mean... I don't know. You tell me. All companies, but game companies especially, are way more interested in short term profits than they are in acquiring a lot of loyal customers. And one of those is worth way more over the long term than the other. Yeah. The key word there is long term.

[00:11:21] And most companies cannot see beyond one or two years of returns. They just... They can't do it. They literally physically can't do it. They're too blinded by the stock market and self-interested hands of executives whose income is based on the short term horizon, not the long term horizon. Unless you're a visionary who owns the company who is a founder, right? Like you're like a...

[00:11:51] You're... I say visionary, loosely held word, but you're like a Bezos in his prime where he owns so much of Amazon and has so much control he can do and say whatever he wants knowing that like he can kind of do things and have this kind of long term outlook and have everybody in the company saying no, no, no, no, no. That's not going to work because all of the incentives are aligned to like short term successes and short term wins. Yeah. And how do we eke out 1% profit gains year over year

[00:12:21] instead of like, hey, how do we like do something that's going to be long lasting and it's going to deliver value for decades not just next year? Yeah. But it's really hard for companies to think that way and if you think that you would act differently you have to remember that if you're an executive of one of these companies you're talking about millions of dollars coming in or out of your pocket or potentially getting laid off and so it's just

[00:12:51] misaligned incentives. Right. It's like anybody who's in that position Phil Spencer probably is the guy who's like threading that needle the most and he still gets so much flack for all the decisions that he's been making over the past few years. I think he is one of the very few executives in the games industry who's legitimately like trying really hard to think long term and look at this thing long term but even he's susceptible because he's going into the board meetings and they're saying like

[00:13:19] hey, you need to turn 20% year over year gains next year. How are you going to do it? And he's like I don't know. I'm going to like increase the price of Game Pass and I'm going to fire this you know like that's Yeah. Roll out this AI plan which I think was the most recent thing that Xbox came under fire for. We're making a big investment into AI so we can streamline QA and it's going to cut costs by X millions per year, right? It's all cost cutting and it's anyway we could go on and on but

[00:13:51] it's ugly It always comes back to you need to make cool games that people care about so that they will be invested in you for the long term and they will purchase your they will happily give you their money because they like you a lot like that's really the basic gist of it and Yeah I would love to see forecasting at WB for like pre-orders of whatever their next game is right?

[00:14:21] Like if your reputation is tanked um do fork I could I could go on a long tangent on forecasting but I won't Yeah but you know that stuff that they do right? And Cameron knows this very well 100% They are They're forecasting every day They are taking well they've got nothing coming out this year at least that we know of No There's no way they got anything Anyway At the end of the day it's gonna be Batman

[00:14:51] Lord of the Rings Mortal Kombat and Harry Potter And they're gonna That's That's the future of WB games So hopefully we get some cool stuff out of that Dude Can we get a cool Lord of the Rings game? That Moria game It looked It looks good Don't get me wrong Return to Moria Yeah Return to Moria looked good Dude Tales from the Shire has been delayed a lot Not looking real good that way To be totally frank

[00:15:19] I am not interested in that game's art style at all It looks way too Roblox chunky for what I think that game I just I just disagree with that art style and it's been delayed a ton Like what what do we want out of a cool Lord of the Rings game? I mean the sad part is they had Monolith that can make cool Lord of the Rings games And now they don't Dude imagine I'm imagining something like

[00:15:49] Dynasty Warriors man Like couldn't you do like a Musu Lord of the Rings game and have it work? What would sell a jack think about put yourself what would sell a jack ton of copies that's a Lord of the Rings that would sell like north of 8 million copies north of 8 million copies Lord of the Open World Lord of the Rings Adventure RPG

[00:16:20] where you fight orcs and participate in giant battles Dude why is it too expensive? Why didn't they just make the Rings of Power game? I don't know Rings of Power season 1 was whatever Cameron and I both like season 2 why not this is honestly I've been saying I like Rings of Power but people don't like it but I do season 2 was good I'm sorry but um dude I would play a Lord of the Rings game the thing is there's so much that they can mine from no pun intended for this IP

[00:16:50] but it just seems like they're too afraid to really do something interesting with it and Witch King of Angmar dude the northern kingdom of men in the fall of that I would I would play like Age of Empires the rangers trying their best to hold off the forces of or I'm getting dude there's a million ideas bro like it's it's really that it's really not hard to come up with a cool Lord of the Rings game idea you know it's like

[00:17:20] it's not man I Musu man that's I want to go in it kind of I don't really want to let me let me explain what I have in mind think think shadow of Mordor right you go in as like some OP ranger or OP elf into these battles actually I'm just thinking of shadow of Mordor you mow down 300 guys and then you have a giant duel with some guy and then you keep your rival system and then as you keep fighting the orc forces

[00:17:50] you just keep fighting these different rivals or dude I don't know dude it could be as easy as like single player action adventure RPG god of war style that's adjacent to the lord of the rings films but it's like a separate character separate story and it could make a ton of money and then you do Marvel snap for the DC universe and there you made two and a half billion like I just solved your

[00:18:20] problems hire Cameron now hire me as a consultant you know what also kind of drives me up the wall is this Tales from the Shire game actually is a perfect genre to match with Lord of the Rings but the gameplay it just also doesn't look great the art style like I've said already too many times just really doesn't flatter Shire or Lord of the Rings I think at all

[00:18:51] like that was a perfect match when they first announced that I was like yes this is cool and then I keep seeing gameplay I keep seeing trailers and it keeps getting delayed and we're just gonna get some story about how this game finally launches in summer of 2025 and it's gonna make not a lot of money and then a bunch of people get laid off and then we're gonna get the story about how upper management was just sticking their fingers into every single aspect of creativity in this game

[00:19:21] being like where can you put in the microtransactions dude have them paid three real world dollars for turnip seeds or something I don't know man loot boxes loot boxes dude you you could get purple tier overalls for your hobbit gardener I mean that that shadows of war game was full of loot boxes if you remember at launch oh I don't they took it after launch they took it all out

[00:19:51] like in a patch later on and then the game was like really good but anyways enough about that let's talk about a game in a totally different genre sci-fi this is an oldie now but a goodie it's been I played it a long time ago Jake just recently finished it Returnal from what's the developer again house mark from house mark yes who just dropped a

[00:20:21] trailer a couple weeks ago for their new seemingly roguelike thing that looks pretty dope Jake how are we going to break down Returnal we will be talking about Returnal in three different categories the first one is the narrative we'll be talking about the story we'll be talking about this game thematically more than anything because it has some pretty big twists and I think it's just best that you experience them I mean if you're new to the pre-order bonus podcast we typically only cover about the first 20-30%

[00:20:51] of a game anyway of the game story next we'll be talking about the game design so essentially what you're doing to interact to play the game what systems are in place for you to progress and to get from start to finish and then finally impact on the industry we do have the good fortune of seeing this game four years after launch so we can kind of talk about what it has done for the industry since then and maybe what it hasn't done also so that is how we're going to be talking about

[00:21:21] returnal in tonight's episode returnal is a science fiction you are a lady who's on a spaceship crashes you wake up on a strange planet you're running around you're doing stuff and then weird stuff starts to go down

[00:21:51] involving like visions of your home and weird stuff and then you're you're playing and you're fighting stuff and then you're killing aliens and then suddenly you die and then you just wake up on the spaceship and then you figure out that you're in a forever loop and you need to do something to break the loop it's basically groundhog day right yes

[00:22:20] this is groundhog day in science fiction form with weapons and aliens groundhog day in space in the form of a video game and honestly it's been a long time since I played this I've I'm gonna be frank like I didn't even I I recently played a few hours to kind of refresh myself this was like a month or two ago but Jake's like way more fresh off of this one but yeah that's that's the gist of the story and

[00:22:50] the story is designed in such a way it's one of those games where they design the story around the structure of the game right yeah it being a roguelike like they've built it that way which have we come up with a word or is there a word that that defines that idea Jake because we talk about this a lot where we can categorize like a game where the story has been constructed with uh to fulfill the needs of the design versus

[00:23:19] like they designed a game and then they put a story in it there's you know what i'm saying yeah yeah there's the term which has caused some feathers to be ruffled in uh this was a few years ago ludonarrative uh ludo being a latin root meaning play um so ludo is associated a lot with video games in academia and so ludonarrative harmony is when sort of story and gameplay mechanics go hand in hand and ludonarrative

[00:23:49] dissonance is when they don't um games have plenty of wb games shadow of mordor is another example of this like you when you die you just come back to life and the nemesis system is built around the idea that when you die you just come back to life because the orcs kill you and then they become your nemesis and they go up the ranks right so that's anyway that's just another example yeah yeah and i would

[00:24:18] say that with cameron and i have talked about this before it feels like it's really difficult to make a compelling story in the roguelike genre because you do have to come back to this kind of loop notion you have to explain procedural dungeons and i just feel like sometimes even in metroidvania is right this idea of like you go out explore and come back to this main hub a lot of times the story is just kind of

[00:24:46] secondary to the exploration and the abilities that you get as you kind of progress through whatever the map is so returnal um man i don't know it might be up there with hades for me as like a roguelike that really utilizes the story incredibly well with the loop system yeah now hades i think is way more straightforward of a story you get different beats as you kind of progress through people saying new things to you and it very much fits a

[00:25:16] neat and tidy narrative arc structure that we all learned about in 10th grade english or whatever right uh returnal has really abstract and like uh like asynchronous almost storytelling it is really hard to map out i would say the events of the story of returnal but essentially uh you're playing as celine vasos and uh this is an astronaut who works for i

[00:25:46] believe the company is just called astra yep astra and as she goes to this planet um oh my gosh how i just beat this game like a few days ago atropos there we go so she's stuck on this planet and this is all in the trailers none of this is really spoiling she dies and then she just wakes up in a jolt in helios uh her spaceship

[00:26:15] and starts it all over again and what's compelling about returnal is you see like the first time that celine discovers herself and then realizes that she's been doing this for she doesn't know how long and she's collecting these different audio logs from herself kind of detailing all the information she's been been able to piece together on a trope as she's progressing and so i think returnal really smartly plays with the kind of amnesia trope of a

[00:26:44] lead character and oftentimes in story hey give your central character your main character amnesia of some sort because then it forces them to ask a bunch of questions and then all the people surrounding that person in the story are answering the questions really for the like the reader the viewer or in this case the player to help you get immersed i think it's used really well here because the amnesia is not necessarily for exposition alone the amnesia here

[00:27:12] is also kind of used like how do i explain this i mean it creates much more of a sense of urgency i think than most stories that use this kind of trope of the amnesiac protagonist because as you the player are learning about things this game gives you you you ask i don't know three you ask i don't know ten questions and you get one answer per ten question pack and so you are constantly trying to discover what the heck is

[00:27:42] going on i think what really elevates the storytelling here is actually the voice acting i i remember that i want to say that the voice actor for selene was nominated for a few awards um and kind of looking back on it when this came out 2021 i'd have to see like what um she was up against but that dang the voice acting is pretty dang

[00:28:12] good and i think that really helps with makes you want to listen to the audio logs it makes you want to kind of try to figure out with selene what the heck is going on so yeah i think that it uses i've been talking for too long but i think it uses this loop to its advantage incredibly well as it's telling this story it instills a lot of mystery and um urgency in the player to try to figure out okay what exactly is really going on and then as you progress through the game i feel like you think you know

[00:28:41] and then you discover you don't and then you think you know again and then this you discover that you don't so this is there's this really playful back and forth i want to say between what you know and what selene knows and what's actually happening as you as you progress through the game yeah i think this is well executed i mean i i don't think it's as endearing as hades because hades is just filled to the brim with sexy people you know yeah that helps that helps

[00:29:11] yeah i mean yeah this game like you're really quite alone for the most part uh without any spoilers but like so it's really just a to jake's point it's like a discovery of self of things that events of that have maybe already happened right and you're trying to like retread your own steps in many ways and there's this interesting mechanic that ties into that where like you'll run across

[00:29:43] uh what are they calm in the game jake when you run across like silhouettes of other players who've done and then you have to do like the challenge shoot what do they call them i think they just call them other suits like uh it pops up it's like another space suit detected but there's a narrative reason for it where it's like oh this is like me i've already done this uh anyway it yeah so i think the game does an exceptional job of that which i think which is why one of the reasons why it's

[00:30:13] i there's there's something about roguelikes pulling off an impressive story that just makes for a game that a lot of people really like yeah like and maybe that's just because is there some kind of interesting combination of like just the roguelike gameplay and like the design obviously roguelike is a very popular it's a very popular genre now right yeah i remember when roguelikes

[00:30:42] weren't a thing and i still am not the biggest roguelike fan but they kind of they came on the scene i when did what's like the first big is it is it really dead cells that really kind of broke the the stratosphere on that one man it was around that time i want to say it was like roguelike with maybe a few others was it 2015 2016 let's see pulling up a list here

[00:31:12] um i feel like dead cells was the one that i mean there's obviously a lot before it that were good but none that i've probably heard of dead cells is the one that i think really made roguelikes like go mainstream and then i think hades other games obviously look they've done it but hades was the one that was like hey look roguelikes can also do a legit narrative

[00:31:40] and build the narrative like into the structure of this like repeated doing this doing the same doing a run over and over again but having the narrative build as you do continuous runs and having things change narratively as you do the same uh gameplay loop over and over and over again and this like really condensed gameplay loop right and returnal i think just they take that and they

[00:32:10] take it to sort of a triple a level right in terms of graphics and visuals and a lot of cinematics and production and that's just like a really interesting lineage of this game that's not really a conversation and that's that's just and it looks like house marks doing it again right and i think they they found kind of their wheelhouse and they're they're about to do this again and that looks like i mean that was a premiere trailer at this last uh

[00:32:39] state of play like this is a big deal now so that'll be an interesting uh thread to pull on again as we talk about impact on the industry yeah we'll circle back to this conversation uh for sure but uh let's see final things i kind of want to say about the narrative because i really don't want to spoil things is um let's talk about some major themes now what i think the game does beautifully in where we've already said this is the theme of cycles and more specifically how

[00:33:09] to break specific cycles i think um we've all been familiarized with things like the poverty cycle or just like the abuse cycle sorry i'm picking heavy examples here um how do you break those it's extremely tough and you're up against a lot of different odds if you're in that kind of scenario and situation and you're trying to break those cycles and this game has a lot to say on that and i had a hard time deciding or parsing if the

[00:33:39] story of returnal is meant to be like allegorical is it meant to be literal or is it uh or is it like something in between or is it purely psychological and i think that actually works rarely in the in for most games it works in favor of the game storytelling because there's such an aura of mystery surrounding kind of what's going on here um i will say without i don't

[00:34:08] know i got some advice from people on our discord who are mega returnal fans and something that i wasn't doing was returning to and this is a mild early game spoiler a 20th century house will appear in the first area and after every major uh i would say moment of progression in returnal you need to return to that house because the story will progress and you will get more information about what's going on and it was in those

[00:34:38] moments that i started seeing this pattern of cycles right and it's like cabin factory it's like cabin factory yeah um some gives me the creeps man i cannot look at jane seymour the same way after playing cabin factory i cannot um but yeah breaking cycles in particular i think is a really really big one that you get to see play out in the house in those cut scenes and well they're not really

[00:35:08] cut scenes in those moments uh specifically something else i want to point out is that um again this is a minor thematic spoiler but there is a lot of meta narrative discussion about um maybe i just kind of leave it at that there's a meta narrative discussion on cycles and on agency which kind of comes up later into the campaign which was very

[00:35:37] compelling uh and then let's see i had something else that i wanted to it's hard to talk about this game and it's funny i cannot believe this game wasn't spoiled for me massively before playing it and i think it's because there's a bit of a cult around returnal uh dedicated fans who will not spill the beans and so i'm trying my best to adhere to kind of um that protocol yeah but yeah i'll let's see i don't know i maybe i'll just kind of leave it at that it's really hard to

[00:36:06] determine if it's this purely psychological allegorical or literal and i think it's all bits it's bits and pieces kind of mixed together of those three things um it's a heavily layered game and you can really just discuss it in either of those ways with success let's talk about the game design i think this is uh i mean if you played a roguelike you played them all no i'm kidding um

[00:36:37] jake why did why did game design why did game developers like roguelike so much i think it is so polished and smooth i think that's a big one um because you can just take a single gameplay loop idea and just like drill it just like oh wait you're talking about roguelikes or returnal i'm talking about roguelikes in general okay in general i think just to frame the conversation around

[00:37:07] the design of this game which is indeed a roguelike gotcha and we can we'll explore the special elements of this game but i'm just it seems to me that like this is this the most popular genre on steam it's got to be at this point right like it's got to be the biggest it's it's got to be up there with just mmo survival crafting games right it's got to be up there but i would say maybe roguelike is a popular genre because

[00:37:35] um well there's a tried and true formula in there this is something i tell my students all the time yeah the hero's journey is full of tropes and we can criticize that all day but that storytelling outline has existed for millennia because it works and people like it and i think that's true of roguelikes um you're kind of talking about this moment uh when dead cells kind of got people more interested in roguelikes and

[00:38:05] then hades really got people interested in this type of game there's a tried and true formula there and i think when it comes to designing a roguelike um the very basics of a roguelike a lot of that is those decisions are made you can make a roguelike and you kind of know what the the skeleton design outline is going to be i think the big problem is okay now if i know how to design a

[00:38:34] roguelike and what the structure should be how do i make people care about mine over somebody else's and i think that's where things get really difficult it gets really difficult to find a good roguelike that you really want to sink your teeth into and that's the other part of this i think the reason why it's popular is because roguelikes um if done well will pace difficulty and mechanics and sort of train the player of how to play the game

[00:39:03] better and if this is done really well then the player sort of gets this sense of like micro successes as they're progressing towards the finish line hades i think is a beautiful premiere go-to example of this right uh hades you're gonna play that and you're gonna die quite a lot but you are gonna learn a lot you're gonna get a lot of feedback and you are gonna notice yourself improving uh as you continue to do run after run um

[00:39:31] whereas um i'm playing a lot of precision platformers right now just while i'm streaming and for indie impressions and let me tell you it's really easy to bounce off a precision platformer if you feel like you are not making any progress in that game if you feel like you're not learning and you're not getting better and i feel like roguelikes very much tickle that part of your brain that's like hey you figure this out you're doing better or like oh my gosh you just got like s tier rng

[00:40:00] and you have the best weapon with the best perks like it constantly is feeding you this dopamine whereas other genres might put up like inhibitors to your dopamine intake yeah it's interesting that you you know you have the suspense of death i think that's a commonality right of roguelikes for like yeah death can be used in very effective ways in this case in the

[00:40:30] case of returnal to not only advance to this game is really hard oh yeah and so when you go on a run like one part of roguelikes and then this game too like you feel the tension and the suspense of like i need to figure out how to stay alive and this game is trying to kill me like really hard and if i die i have to restart which is an which is interesting and this is kind of talking about roguelikes in general but it's

[00:40:57] interesting in this game i feel like as with hades because the pain of roguelikes is i died so i i lost my progress yeah now they you because there's this pain point in the design where it's like i died i was making progress i was about to get to the boss i died and i now i have to go back and do all this again okay well to offset that the game has to give you

[00:41:26] something back to make up for the pain that it just gave you in the case of returnal it's the story moves forward maybe you found like a better weapon that you can kind of take in with you narrative kind of makes progress in hades it's like all every run kind of changes a little bit and there's new character interactions and it's like constantly kind of throwing those things at you so you don't like if you die it doesn't

[00:41:53] feel like the end of the world but it still kind of does it's this interesting feeling that like it's tough for me to get around honestly like i would bounce off returnal a lot because i would get super deep or get to a boss and then i would die and be like oh my gosh dude like i got it and in returnal it's interesting there's a slight spoilery but like when you die like you go all the way back to the ship so it's not like you're starting from a new checkpoint right right so

[00:42:24] you've got to go back through the map and then go find the next area and then continue through all that and so that made me feel as a as a this is sort of a criticism and some people this is the thing like this is for me personally some people really like this for me personally that felt like a drag like i felt like i had as i as i got further into the game i was actually as i got further into the game i was

[00:42:50] actually uh making less and less progress and i like to feel like i'm making progress when i play a game and so when i come against up really difficult walls that a designer throws at you and those can be for example like a jrpg they have levels of enemies and you have to go and grind so that you can get up to the level of that enemy in order to continue the story and to

[00:43:18] get more content that's a wall that will that will if i hit that wall like i'm probably going to stop playing your game because i have no interest in grinding same thing with return all this is kind of what happened to me i hit that wall of okay the now the like the the runs are getting longer and longer and i make and it's getting hard and the game is getting harder and harder and so every time i fly play i feel like i'm making less and less

[00:43:48] progress even though i'm kind of like grinding and eking that out so that was just something that i ran into but and i realized that that's totally like a personal taste in just this this type of design but i wanted to get my perspective no i and i think that's a fair perspective i had moments playing returnal where it felt less like retracing my steps in a roguelike and more like a run back to a boss in a dark souls game yeah and long run backs to a

[00:44:17] boss feel bad always yes they always feel bad and so i had some runs where i was frustrated and i just blitzed through a bunch of rooms because for the most part you can actually just zip through like rooms as you're making your way towards you can kind of run yeah you can run through now of course the downside to that is you don't get any of the potential upgrades that get dropped in a room right and some i started feeling more frustration as i got deeper into the game

[00:44:45] because the last few areas in the game have some of the most annoying enemies of all time hyper aggressive flying quick enemies that hit you hard you know um and if you're flooded by like 10 of them you know see ya you know it's over so you know when you're doing a run back and you want to get to a boss and you have to go really far and then you have all this what felt like clutter in the

[00:45:14] way between you and a boss though it started feeling like a run back instead of a roguelike now of course returnal has shortcuts and you can get to other places relatively quickly but the the meta progression is actually not very generous in this game really i felt like your meta progression was like you would level up perks on guns and there would be a chance because it's a roguelike right there's a chance that you pick up the guns that you're really good with or that have perks that you've leveled up

[00:45:43] a ton and so a bunch of my runs would be better if i had specific weapons that had you know rng the perks that i liked that or that i had leveled up and those runs i was much more willing to like sit back in a room and try to pick all the enemies out you know kill them all and then collect all the items and then move on there were some rooms though for example i was like this room has terrible coverage i like meaning i cannot really hide and recover and sit back

[00:46:12] when i need to so i just started memorizing where to blitz through certain rooms and then i would get some rooms where it's like okay i can navigate this room really well even with the starting pistol so i'm going to take my sweet time and comb through this entire room and so what i think this says about the game design is returnal really forced me to like hyper optimize and strategize how i was going to perform a run because getting to a boss and these bosses are beefy and

[00:46:42] they got many phases right getting to a boss and feeling like i had to do a big run back was such a mental setback sometimes that it's it's a tough as nails roguelike man i want to pose this question to you as an armchair game designer nice my favorite so let's just be clear jake and i do not design games for a living we don't know what we're

[00:47:08] talking about we're idiots well i am um i'm also when it comes to i couldn't design my way out of a paper box but jake here's here's my question when it comes to a roguelike okay yeah does the does the game i want to put this in a

[00:47:32] very tactful way okay does is roguelike just a method for designers to pad content because let me and then i'll pose this with another question which is would returnal be a better game if it was just a linear action adventure game with a

[00:48:01] regular checkpoints i think these these are really important questions they're good uh the now yeah and with that in mind right the to frame right out of the gate the obvious answer to that is if it was linear they would be massively shorter yeah but i'm interested in your thoughts uh i think let's see the first question roguelikes padding for content um not if they're done well i'm in i think

[00:48:30] this is kind of a bad answer because it's vague but let me explain this a little bit i think something like uh hades or dead cells or returnal works as well as they do because they have something in there baked into the design to kind of mitigate um the best three roguelikes ever made okay ah no i'm sure i'm missing i'm sure i'm

[00:48:58] missing one or one or four yeah they got to give you some nugget of newness in each run you know what i mean because when runs runs get stale when it feels like you're beating your head against the wall and i think in the case of returnal and hades it's the story you can pick up interesting new story tidbits that um propel you forward returnal does not have super generous meta progression so i think it needs to make that up in other ways and that would be like

[00:49:28] shortcuts right um i'd also just say the gameplay of returnal the action the shooting the guns dodging jumping everything that you do in the game feels so smooth and it feels like it's entirely under my control so i could go into a room and i can curse the rng gods for giving me a ton of crap but i always felt like i could rely on myself like in what i had learned

[00:49:55] to do something about the crap that returnal keeps throwing at me whereas i feel like a poorer roguelike um has if it feels like the difficulty is insurmountable or it feels like you're not given tools to mitigate all the crap that a roguelike will throw at you then it starts to feel like padding then it feels like it maybe you just made this incredibly difficult so i would have to

[00:50:24] not i don't know i don't want to say the answer there is like get good but i think the answer is there let me throw all these roadblocks up in front of you so that you really engage with all systems of the game better even if they're not all fun systems of the game and so i feel like a good roguelike doesn't feel like padding when you hit difficulty barriers but you feel like you can take full advantage of all of the mechanics that it that a game gives you in order to overcome

[00:50:54] those obstacles and i do feel like returnal does that because the gameplay feels so freaking good and so smooth um we could we could talk about whether or not like the rng items um or weapons or whatever that is fair i think it does add for some variety and it does make returnal interesting in that regard but i always felt like i at least had some

[00:51:20] mechanics to work with um yeah i don't know the answer sounds might be a little convoluted but i think no i just i mean i'm posing the question not to be like a punk and because i really because i realize people love roguelikes but like to me personally like i do tend to feel like roguelikes feel like they exist as a method

[00:51:43] to condense the content of a game down to like using less assets and like really smart ways which that's not a bad thing i just i just want to be clear that's not a bad thing but i i would have been happy to just play a version of returnal that was just a linear action adventure game with checkpoints and a little bit of progression with my guns and shoot some aliens and get the story

[00:52:10] i think i would have been happy with that i can't find a reason mentally where i'm like does this need to be a metroidvania aside from the difficulty excuse me not metroidvania roguelike aside from maybe the difficulty challenge that you brought up which is there's the meta progression which increases your likelihood of completing a run or doing well in a run for various reasons i feel like maybe you could just condense that down and just make it like

[00:52:35] a significantly shorter experience but you also want to be able to thread that needle of like having a chonky experience and i guess i guess it also allows you uh if you're a i'm a story gamer right i play most games to consume a narrative of some sort and i think roguelikes are definitely for

[00:53:01] mechanic sickos who get really deep into the the the mechanics and the builds and the combinations and i think hades pulls this off in spades right because there's so much rng and there's so many different build possibilities and you're you're changing builds like every run and so mechanics wise but hades also does it insanely from a narrative standpoint where it almost they almost make it feel like it's not like it is kind of linear because of just how much story content they they pack into it

[00:53:30] from a character and a writing perspective yeah returnal i think gets close to that but not as much for me personally i sound like i'm being very negative this game feels amazing to play it's probably the best third person shooter uh i've ever played from my mechanics and just pure feeling standpoint i think for me i just i'm just always searching for like give me a reason for the roguelike setup to exist in this game i think that this game does give it to you but i have to admit that i

[00:53:59] do sit on the fence and go like yeah do i really need to do this can i just just give me a checkpoint before the boss yeah um i would say and you know what i'm saying i do know what you're saying and i think in the case of returnal it does have an excellent story but it is it is an extremely abstract story that you were finding the most obtuse puzzle pieces to put together the most random 3d puzzle

[00:54:25] or seemingly random 3d puzzle right right so in that way it is so different than hades and i think depending on whether or not the storytelling lands for you it might not just be a good motive for you to sort of continue through the game so to answer your second question of like would linear what excuse me would returnal have suffered if it were a linear game i think this story would have suffered quite

[00:54:51] dramatically to be honest okay so you think they could okay so yeah so i mean i'm i'm serious i think it's up there with hades in terms of a roguelike that really handles the story but the thing is also and i think maybe this is where you're coming from tell me if i'm wrong here the gameplay feels so dang good it almost feels like i want a game with this gameplay where that is the highlight where

[00:55:18] that is i mean it is absolutely in highlight of returnal but what i mean by that is like you just want to dig into that and have opportunity and not feel like you're always in survival mode with those mechanics and gameplay it would be really fun i think to play a version of returnal where it's like a bullet heaven where like it's like dude here's you you like a horde mode of returnal

[00:55:42] like are you kidding me that would be freaking fun this game definitely doesn't do a great job of ever getting to you to the feeling of like i am a god never um and i can decimate anything in my path because i've upgraded my guide to the point it's like the elden ring design ethos right where you start off as a puny weakling that can barely kill a wolf and then by the end of the game you're just

[00:56:10] dominating bosses yeah right but not only because you've mastered the mechanics of the game from a skill standpoint but you've advanced your character and your build and like you're just crazy powerful right returnal doesn't really do that it's always kind of putting you on the back fence it's pushing you up against the ropes the entire time yeah and so there's this there's this level of stress um at least that i had right playing this game and then to your point i don't think the narrative

[00:56:40] i think the narrative is really well executed i think i just wasn't i wasn't feeling it enough because of the repeatability yeah the repeatability because of the repetition i wasn't feeling it enough to feel like okay i want to see this through and kind of see what this is all about because i would to your point get to the room right before the boss with a sliver of

[00:57:04] health barely dragging myself alive and then get like sniped across the room from across the room by an alien and i'm like dude i can't do another run i can't i just can't do another run and then i turn it off i mean it feels bad i would say this is something that's really hard for me with roguelikes is if you you constantly get to a boss room with you're in the red on health and you don't have

[00:57:30] like a revive or anything and you're like i'm not going to be in this room long enough to learn the boss fight i am i'm gonna be in here for 30 seconds and i gotta hope that this 30 seconds is the same 30 seconds i had the last run so i could get through to you know yeah a full minute in the boss room and actually learn some of the mechanics that is really tough to to manage for sure when i beat bosses in

[00:57:58] this game it's because i had amazing rng i went into a boss room with a revive or i went into it with some type of healing item or a weapon perk that allowed for healing um the other thing i learned though is um this is gonna make me sound like such a snob cameron just virtually slap me if you need to

[00:58:17] okay after after i got to after i think i beat the second boss um let's see what biomes did i get hung up in there are a few biomes that i got hung up in but there were probably two or three bosses that i thought were out of order that needed to be earlier bosses um and like the final main boss

[00:58:44] um guys i'm gonna sound like such a such a d-bag i beat it first try and i didn't even feel like my moveset was all that impressive um that's probably my one criticism of of the bosses there there were some incredible bosses super memorable ones ones that i will remember and cherish forever but i was pretty disappointed by i think it was the final two um and i'm not like a god gamer don't this is not

[00:59:12] what i'm saying here definitely not but like i don't know man i'm coming out really negative about this game too i feel like this is a really great game it is super fun to play i'm sorry everybody no no we're we're analyzing we're analyzing it we're breaking it down we're doing this is what this podcast is about this isn't a review i feel like we have to remind people sometimes this isn't

[00:59:38] intended to be like a review podcast this is intended to like make people think about the game and give our an analysis and a perspective yeah oh that that and usually we'll say we'll caveat jake and i are usually like way too positive probably we're like every game's amazing play every game yeah um i did i mean you should you should play every game you should play every

[01:00:03] game right uh well not golem probably dude okay sorry and aside that game keeps going on sale for like five to seven bucks and i am so tempted to buy it and just should we just should we do it for the sake of the podcast jake was it really that like let's put it let's let's put a cap on it we'll say we'll each do 90 minutes of game time in golem yeah 90 minutes that's what we'll get oh my gosh this

[01:00:32] sounds like a special episode nightmare let's do it um hold on paid for by patreon members like you our suffering um i was gonna say so remember back to our our blops six episode where i didn't finish the campaign blops and yeah i didn't even make it to the big narrative twist that probably i missed the best part of the game that probably would have compelled me to finish the rest of the game

[01:01:00] what i want to say about returnal is that um i think it's after this third boss if i'm not mistaken that something really significant happens in the story yeah and i i'm probably right there is that's and as soon as that happened i was very compelled to get through that to the to credits right um i didn't bring it up in the narrative section because i i just didn't really know how to word

[01:01:27] it without spoiling it so much and people in our discord were super kind they're like hey jake once you get to this section something big is going to happen and they were totally right and so i'm passing that along so to that point though jake why not do that in the beginning of the game i love this because this is the exact inverse of what we had in the blops episode which is why i wanted to make the comparison and to be totally honest with you and and and to your point to the same point of

[01:01:53] blop six why not do that in the beginning of the game yeah um maybe it's because you you didn't earn it or something but like it's call of duty who cares it's a video game i mean what we you're not you're not writing a novel right well what we said in the blop six episode is that it's not a brandon sanderson 800 page fantasy well brandon brandon sanderson you're not getting to the point

[01:02:16] until page 700 right yeah nothing happens in brandon sanderson books until like the last 200 pages yeah um i i i feel like the blops campaign blop six was made for call of duty fans and a part of me just wonders if returnal was made for time loop sickos and that's why they felt like they could

[01:02:42] postpone time loop sickos time loop sickos right and that's the name of a new band there's probably a subreddit for that and so i wonder if the answer is similar in that like uh for roguelike fans to have that big of a twist when they put it which would be delayed it functions more like a climax even

[01:03:06] though it's not the climax than it does is like some sort of uh exposition hook um a part of me just wonders if like this was a roguelike for the roguelike fans you know and so do we just kind of take that at face value but if they choose to do that then it's going to be off-putting to people who check out the game because it looks cool but they're like fine i'll give this roguelike a chance even though i don't love roguelikes let me throw this out there as we transition to impact on the industry

[01:03:35] i think if you want to make a great roguelike a fantastic roguelike even you need to use as your model groundhog day the movie featuring bill murray okay walk me through this in this film i've seen it recently actually it's a very good movie right it's the same day repeated every day

[01:04:00] yeah but as i'm gonna we're gonna spoil the movie right as he goes through the movie he's trying to figure out the purpose of why he's repeating this day because he's in this miserable town puxatani it's not the name of the town no yeah yeah puxatani puxatani phil groundhog puxatani phil groundhog day um uh so he every day he's trying to figure out ways there so he starts like

[01:04:30] he first goes down this path of like i'm just depressed i'm living in this world and then he starts to like oh i'll should use this time to like do some stuff and so he starts to like gain skills and then he figures out like oh i'm i need to get the girl and so then the progression is every single day he's getting closer and closer and closer to like getting the girl to fall in love with him

[01:04:55] and then kind of all comes crashing down and then he has like another day where he's just he's kind of more authentic about it and then he gets the girl on the end it's a it's the same day repeated in the film over and over and over again where the same things are happening but the context is different every time i think that's what you need for a good roguelike video game so if we analyze groundhog day

[01:05:19] the movie starring bill murray as a roguelike this is my conclusion is that it has extremely generous meta progression yeah that's that's it right there the meta progression is amazing because he learns french for example yes he learns french he becomes a concert pianist he gets the girl he like he does

[01:05:47] all this stuff and he gains all these skills and that's like part of the film that's cool because it does make you think about like oh if i was stuck in a time loop like what would i do would i spiral deep into depression or would i like learn a skill you know what i learned chinese anyway like i think that's a great point i think you need really strong meta progression i think at the end of

[01:06:10] the day returnal is a really good video game with the great mechanics i think the meta progression sucks and that makes it a tough pill to swallow if you're not a huge roguelike fan there you have it folks that's the nail in the coffin that's cameron but on roguelike no i'm just teasing yeah roguelikes impact on the industry obviously roguelikes are a mainstay

[01:06:38] this is a huge genre this is a drama that's here to say housemark has just announced they're new is it a warhammer thing saros is that what it is i can't remember i felt like there might have been a space marine in the trailer or that was a guy that just looked like no no no no no yeah yeah not no warhammer in this he just looks like a kind of like a space marine type kind of yeah there's a lot of speculation

[01:07:03] because that video gave us yeah so this so housemark's making the triple a roguelike right and we've seen roguelike modes get added to triple a video games god of war has a roguelike mode valhalla that was actually really good uh i played actually quite a bit of that um the last of us they added a roguelike mode sony really likes roguelikes they're into this and like the sony studios

[01:07:32] what is what do we like what's like does how like how come we haven't seen any other triple a roguelike games akin to this why where's this genre at right because like i feel like in the indie space this is a genre that's here to stay it's heavily heavily heavily heavily heavily utilized

[01:07:57] maybe even too much i would say maybe even too much i think it's relied upon i honestly this is going to sound really mean but i see it sometimes as a crutch for any developers because it is a way to pad content it is a i mean we can't deny that making a roguelike is a way to pad content i don't i think that that's a true statement i think because you don't have to create as many assets

[01:08:23] it's a smart way to pad content i'm not saying it's a bad thing to do i think developers need to figure out ways to do that so they don't have to make a bajillion assets right and figure out you know that's that's one of the things that costs a lot of time and a lot of money right ray traced cabinetry in a you know new scene inside the video game right but all that stuff costs money and time so when you have a roguelike you just kind of repeat all that stuff

[01:08:50] and you do it once and then you've kind of got your structure and then you just build everything in that structure um yeah i kind of lost the plot of where i was going but i just i'm trying to figure out like how come more triple a doesn't use this how come kind of housemark's kind of the only one doing it i may be missing someone that i'm not thinking of jake but no i think the question is solid i'm gonna be spin team jake here for a second um all right i think that indie devs make a lot of roguelikes

[01:09:19] because the genre i imagine from a design and development standpoint is extremely useful to understand how to make a game and how to make one work on a shoestring budget that's a fair call yeah so it makes sense i do think because and i think about like i feel like pre-roguelike mania a lot of indies were making platformers or they're making platformer zelda likes top down dungeon

[01:09:48] exploration ability very puzzle heavy dungeons right and i'm just thinking about the different um indie devs that i follow or that i've talked to and i feel like making your top down link to the past is just a death sentence um it is incredibly difficult to make that type of a game and have it be successful it's just way too crowded of a market and you're the competition is just way

[01:10:17] too fierce and i feel like roguelikes um they aren't competing like and i think you point this out correctly they're not competing with the triple a space really and i think a lot of people who like indie games like roguelikes that's that venn diagram i think those two circles are really close um and in part i think that's just kind of one of the spaces that the indie sphere has carved out for

[01:10:42] themselves in gaming now returnal is an incredible game it's amazing even though it sounds like cameron i just put it through the ringer and i think you ask a valid question why won't more triple a studios make a roguelike and i i think they should i think returnal needs competition i think returnal needs a companion um in some ways and you're right like you've mentioned these sony games that have like

[01:11:08] these but they're definitely more spinoff modes right there's secondary and i think yeah i think those spinoff modes just to be clear i think those were training exercises for junior developers oh interesting yeah those were a way to build up the inexperienced devs and level them up inside the studio and then build something at the same time that was that was part of the last of us remakes as

[01:11:36] well so if that's the case then i think it does maybe strengthen the point that making and designing a roguelike might be a really great instructional method to learn how to make games work um because i imagine when you're making a roguelike uh you have to juggle like procedural generation of dungeons and you have to make those things feel great a roguelike like how many twin stick shooter roguelikes

[01:12:04] are there probably one billion and you know and some of those feel like garbage they just do not feel good to play yeah but the ones that do feel really good and i'm gonna shout out a very low-key indie here her name is fire i would highly recommend this one to folks who are listening um that one feels really

[01:12:25] good and so it works right but yeah dude now now i'm kind of like what other massive studio what triple a studio should be making a roguelike that would work could you make like a metroid prime roguelike i know i think it could i don't know i think it could be used as a tool i think it's probably

[01:12:50] i'm gonna say two statements on this statement number one is i think it's used it's overused in indie indie studios can do whatever they want but i do think it's gonna make it a lot harder to stand out because now one of the best indie games ever made is a roguelike and so every time you put out a roguelike you are competing against hades and honestly and hades too we're seeing that we're

[01:13:16] seeing the the games made in the wake of hades that are roguelikes yes and so now i think as an indie you really need to be thinking about like i probably need to do something different genre wise because if i put out a roguelike the standard is now hades that doesn't stop developers from putting out things because you know you get inspired by the art that you love right and so so many indie developers are going to be inspired by that same thing with stardew valley there's a bajillion farming things that are

[01:13:45] kind of like stardew valley but never as good because and that's not that's not me taking a shot at like indie devs making their farming sim game i'm just i think if you want to if your goal is to like to stand out and make a product that's people game developers are allowed to make the art that they just want to make and that's fantastic yeah that's great if you if you're looking to like stand as a business device this is why this is the

[01:14:12] industry conversation as a business device you probably need to look elsewhere from a genre perspective now in the triple a space i think it's the opposite i think the triple a space there's actually a lot of opportunity here it's how can we decrease the budget make something that's really fun that we can make quicker that's going to sell a lot of copies i think it's a fantastic avenue for

[01:14:34] that elden ring night rain elden ring night rain it is a roguelike it's a three that's a great example yeah it's a literally a roguelike a three-player co-op roguelike yeah i think you bring up a really good point here um triple a space there's a lot of opportunity and there's budget to iterate on this now i know that we're in a very risk adverse moment in the

[01:14:59] games industry but if house mark it is house mark not house marquee i've just second guessed myself anyway it could if that one studio that made returnal if they house house mark it's french probably right my french is so bad if if that a first party now first party oh no sorry sorry apologies to house mark studio it's helsinki finland oh my gosh they're not french good for them

[01:15:27] they are definitely not french are fine whatever finish the finish um but but by the way this guy does look like a he doesn't look like a space marine he looks like a hell divers marine yes yeah yeah yeah he definitely that's what it is yeah i just saw a screenshot here um but if but if house

[01:15:47] mark can make returnal a triple a roguelike and have it be an absolutely stellar like use of the genre in terms of storytelling and gameplay and you give them like two ounces more of freedom and creativity like their follow-up sorrows might just be the thing to inspire other triple a studios to to get into

[01:16:13] this uh genre um it's it's just such a shame right like i don't know i think returnal has proven that this works i think if you look when returnal first came out i don't think it was a ps5 launch title but it was close to the ps5 launch um it was ps5 exclusive yeah ps5 exclusive listen that game looks beautiful it plays beautiful it is absolutely in my point after having played it it is a selling

[01:16:39] point for the ps5 it is a beautiful game and it runs very very optimally on the ps5 um i was going somewhere with that yeah man like triple a's what have you you got the money give us something that's on par with returnal you should be able to right like i think from a from a financial and a creative standpoint but yeah i just think these studios are way too risk adverse and they would rather try to

[01:17:09] make some sort of single player third person yeah rpg these studios want every game to be a billion dollar game that's a problem they can't they can't put out like a tiny game that's like a device for to generate interest and again no long-term thinking man there's no long-term thinking in any industry yeah which is i almost feel like it's almost silly because don't you feel like with a

[01:17:36] roguelike you could do a live service roguelike game hell divers 2 absolutely i mean hell divers 2 isn't that i would say but it's close it's kind of what it's kind of what uh hades did and hades 2 is doing where they've released a chunk of the game and then they continue to update it

[01:18:00] and the price continues to go up and then when they do 1.0 it's a larger price and then it's like yeah funny how it's kind of like it's like kind of the same thing but just packaged up differently right it's like a live service game but packaged as oh it's early access and we're in development i mean if you download hades 2 right now you get like a pretty complete video game experience that's

[01:18:26] already really good and it continues to get major updates yeah it's like it's pre-life service if pre-1.0 transactions there's no micro transactions but what they do what they do do though is the price they set a certain price in early access as the price goes up at 1.0 and then they continue to add on like extra you know deluxe edition and various things have indies figured out live service better

[01:18:53] than triple a then and the the key is to straddle your live service one leg is all it's one leg is early access and the other is post launch i mean if you think about it it's just marketing psychology right like a battle pass is just 10 loot boxes but with a ui and a progression on it right um yeah

[01:19:15] live service is just early access you know live service is just early access but positioned way differently right so in a way that doesn't piss people off yeah that's the beauty of it you can also get away with more right because you release an early access if it's broken it doesn't have that much content you can be like oh i mean we're we're in we're in development right so that's like okay

[01:19:40] early access the ultimate game industry shield no man's sky doesn't charge anything even though they continue to add to that game because i think they continue to sell more copies and they've built this like compound interest that every time they release an update they get a big marketing huge attention on the game big every time they release an update i guarantee you they get a huge sales bump on on

[01:20:10] all platforms guarantee you yeah man there's just no that's why they've continued to charge zero dollars for those updates because they just have this pattern now where it's like oh free update giant sales bump oh man like i'm gonna get my buddies to buy this game like this and then more people buy the game and say oh man look how much content's in this thing and it just like continues and continues and continues and it's like this waterfall and now dude they've got so much goodwill invested that when light no fire

[01:20:38] comes out they're gonna have crazy conversion of the millions of players that they have on no man's guy man i can't wait for like no that's long-term thinking jake versus short dude you nailed it i'm and i maybe like my tone was too silly there but i think you're totally right i think uh hello games has figured out long-term thinking i think um my gosh larian's figured it out right from software's

[01:21:05] figured it out i really want obsidian to figure it out i think they kind of have um you're right there are studios that have totally figured out that long-term thinking and look it's it's paying paying dividends for them for sure let's see returnal though oh just i was gonna say with returnal i remember when it launched and it looked very cool everybody was saying it was tough as nails

[01:21:29] like it's this bullet hell which it totally is um and i was super interested i just remember it being the dumbest fodder in the concert console wars and i'm not going to get into that because this is totally stupid the game looks beautiful and i feel like every screenshot that i saw of it was somebody trying really hard to make it look bad but i want to say since then uh since like the initial

[01:21:56] stupid backlash it released to pretty good reviews and i feel like it has a pretty dedicated following i feel like all these people came out of the woodwork when sorrows was revealed at the most recent state of play and they're like oh man returnal was so good this is one of my new most like hyped games most anticipated games is sorrows here and so i kind of wonder if it has a really strong dedicated

[01:22:22] fan base that just tends to keep to themselves and maybe is a little more quiet because nobody was spamming the chat you know returnal 2 like they do kingdom hearts 4 or whatever um so i want to say impact on the industry is like this is a game that has created very strong goodwill and reputation for a company and that gets rewarded you know and it's a shame because what these layoffs and closures

[01:22:51] and reorganizations are doing is they're killing that reputation they're killing that goodwill um so yeah i don't know i feel like returnal and housemark they're doing it right if they can maintain excitement for their next game even though it's probably a ways out and returnal came out four

[01:23:11] years ago returnal good video game but deep analysis um i think we've come off pretty negative on this game but i think hopefully we've made our analysis hope we gave me something to think about right just thinking about trying to dissect the roguelike genre and i think returnal is obviously one of the

[01:23:36] preeminent examples in this in the genre like that one of the top ones um highly regarded yeah if nothing else just a fantastic feeling third person shooter just crazy snappy shooting movement just all over i will say one thing i hope they upgrade the melee attack in their next game i felt like the melee attack was a little bit weak oh the melee attack um which i pretty much never used it for that

[01:24:02] reason um i'll be honest i man i'm gonna sound like a total whatever again i got really good with the melee i i learned i actually um got some of the upgrades for it quite a lot because it could really decimate because there are stagger meters we didn't talk about this in mechanics you can stagger enemies and i felt like melee was a really powerful way to top off the stagger meter and to do big

[01:24:29] damage um which became invaluable for uh specific enemies towards the end but at the same time towards the end you had so many flying enemies that you just needed some some weapon that had really strong tracking um but anyway yeah no we don't need to say more right now well if you want to continue the conversation jake and i are gonna extend this episode in an extended edition version if you're already

[01:24:56] listening to that version that means you're one of our patreon subscribers uh one of our beloved patreon subscribers if you want access to that you can go sign up at patreon.com slash period or cast at whatever tier is appropriate for you there's a ton of options on there if you want to support the podcast and get access to a whole bunch of extra content including jake's indie impressions with jake is pumping out the content you may have noticed some of those episodes going out on a regular channel

[01:25:26] that's for the purpose of getting some additional coverage out uh for games that require that um but yeah jake's just doing the lord's work over there on all the indie games he's playing uh you can follow us on our social media on primarily blue sky uh blue sky that's that's what it's called right yeah uh our links to that is in the description and you can join in the conversation that we're having every day if you want to just keep chatting with us

[01:25:54] you can join our discord link to that is in your podcast description as well thank you so much for listening we appreciate you very much and have a great night and we're back for the extended edition continuing the conversation jake good conversation on returnal roguelikes in the industry i think

[01:26:18] roguelike's an interesting piece to analyze as we continue the conversation on returnal let's talk about i'd like to take the conversation to saros what is what does uh house mark do

[01:26:37] to fix the issues that we have what would make saros like even better than returnal what would like take it to the next level and i think we've already answered one of those questions which is way better meta progression right i and i'm reading a line from the playstation dot playstation blog in the

[01:27:01] press release and i think they've keyed into this it says a key and they've put this is in like the fourth paragraph down in this press release on the announcement of this game a key gameplay distinction between saros and returnal is permanent resources and progression making every death valuable after every death you will face a changed world but in saros you will be able to choose

[01:27:27] and permanently upgrade your loadout from an evolving set of weapons and suit upgrades to come back stronger to overcome the challenges you face on carcosa so specifically they're setting apart this new game from returnal calling out the meta progression which i think is interesting i think for house mark um returnal was a great success and it was a good success for sony like i said to me it's

[01:27:55] definitely a game you want to buy a ps5 for like if this is the type of game that you enjoy that paragraph there sounds like okay how do we make this game a bit more approachable for the masses right and right a part of me kind of wonders when that decision was made i mean we don't know when

[01:28:22] they started production on on saros we know that returnal came out in 2021 and that they released uh one dlc with it the ascension dlc and i'm really curious to know if housemark's original plan for saros was to kind of retain the structure that worked for them in returnal and if sony was like you know what we're we're canceling too many games we're not canceling your game but we need your game

[01:28:51] to be more approachable so i i don't know i don't and you know this is this is conspiracy theorist thinking i've got a tinfoil hat on so don't read too much into this um i do think please don't right i do think that this sounds like it's going to play quite a lot like returnal but the meta progression is like exactly what you're saying it's going to be a lot more generous um or on the other hand

[01:29:18] they're like hey yeah we'll give you meta progression but if you take a look at what looks like a boss in this trailer they're like great that means we get to make this game really tough right if we're going to give you more player agency then we can raise the bar on difficulty which listen the masochist dark souls fan that i am is like bring it on because i was disappointed in some of those bosses in

[01:29:43] returnal so i say i'm i'm there i'm excited for of course i want to see more before i like fully commit to getting into this game um man a part of me though cameron hear hear me out here a part of me is like could could saros have like a raid like i feel like returnal plays so good with its gameplay

[01:30:11] i'm like dude can we get the squad together and just do like a saros raid i feel like it would work but maybe i'm just wishful over here i mean is that what 33 immortals is gonna be 33 immortals is basically yeah like a boss rush raid it's like a boss co-op boss rush yeah i don't know i i i think they'll probably stick pretty close to

[01:30:42] i don't think it's gonna be a huge departure from returnal obviously i think it will be better and i do agree with you that like i think it will be to your point like more approachable um what that exactly means i'm not sure but like the fact that they're calling that out i think is it's just interesting i think

[01:31:09] i hope that this game can make you feel a little bit more like a god in in some moments right like i want to be able to have moments in the game where i can just dominate some fools right and i just felt i just returnal i just feel like i'm on the ropes like the whole time which it's just i'm fine with that and some because you want the progression but i feel like i'm fine if i'm on the ropes at the beginning but i want to progress i want to like reach the point

[01:31:36] where i've mastered it and i have the skill and my skill is translating to like doing you know executing on on what the game off anyway yeah i don't know dude um when does this thing come out do you think i that's a really good question it says here i'm looking at the same press release we cannot wait to share more about our gameplay art audio music technology story and how we push the

[01:32:04] ps5 hardware and more from everyone working on sorrows so next few years this it sounds like they want to put this out before the ps6 comes out um which we don't know anything if they're showing it says they're going to show extended gameplay later this year so i'm guessing what early 2026 uh yeah i would say 2026 is a fine guess um spring 2026 like a year from now spring 2026 yeah yeah i think that's that's

[01:32:34] definitely possible i love how it says here this is a dream project made by a dream team um this is exactly what we want to see i think in studios is that you have retained talent and they're really passionate about what they're making and now that they've done returnal they know really what their true capabilities are and what the potential is for their follow-up game so you combine that skill

[01:32:59] and talent with the more approachable um kind of settings for weapon loadouts and progression i mean the stars are kind of lining up for a slam dunk i think you this could potentially be like a really big high profile slam dunk i like that sony is letting this team continue because i just looked

[01:33:25] up i don't think numerically this game performed insanely well however i'm guessing that it was pretty cheap in comparison to i could be completely wrong about that but my guess is that it's pretty i'm guessing that the budget was pretty meager in comparison to the other big studios um which i think allowed them

[01:33:49] to hang on right and like get another shot at it i think from the numbers it looks like returnal did okay probably somewhere in the realm of like a million units on ps5 and i don't know maybe another 500,000 on pc maybe more than that so you know one and a half million units if the budget's under 50

[01:34:12] million that's pretty good but yes you know i don't know so i'm sure sony's looking for sorrows to be a lot bigger from that standpoint and i'm guessing it's going to be pc ps5 uh they're going to launch at the same time for sure oh you think this is coming ps5 and pc simultaneous launch oh yeah 100 and then

[01:34:35] it'll get a it'll get a definitive edition on ps6 just like every game on the ps5 um yeah i mean sounds sounds very possible but yeah i mean this is this is seemingly to our earlier conversation this is seemingly the only triple a studio that is making that whose whole bag is making roguelikes

[01:35:03] which is just really interesting you know i'm curious you think obsidian's got a roguelike in the works i feel like that would be a good project for them because they just kind of do everything now i mean my gosh yet another episode in which uh which cameron and i end up talking about grounded they did grounded and it works super dang well right like yeah dude like totally went out of their wheelhouse survival game probably the best yeah i'm not shy about saying probably one of the best

[01:35:32] survival games like all around i think that market conditions are have tighter leashes on studios um i would be 100 there's a type every studio right now jake every studio i don't care what studio you are working at i don't care how successful you are except for maybe fortnight or but even then

[01:35:53] even then you are like the ground could fall out from under your feet at any moment yeah i think i mean no they're not gonna let obsidian do it who's obsidian is an rpg obsidian's rpg factory it's software man it's software can make um

[01:36:18] they could make dude why doesn't doom medieval doom or whatever have like a roguelike mode i feel like that's such a perfect pairing you know that i totally agree i think it's a pretty like a dlc maybe maybe doom eternal one of the dlcs i feel like was probably a roguelike if i remember that's possible i mean doom the dark ages looks honestly i'm like pretty lukewarm on doom but doom the dark

[01:36:45] ages really looks dope as heck like it looks really really good and i think um i mean it's even if you're not a doom fan it's pretty fun to just go blow up some heads for a few hours yeah but yeah no anyway so bottom line is um yeah this game needs to do well just like every every game

[01:37:10] that's coming every game that's coming out needs to do exceptionally well to for the studio to live any game that comes out in the next 24 months if it is not very successful if it's not at least minimally profitable that studio has a high high chance to be either completely shuttered or more

[01:37:39] than 50 of the staff laid off so you're in a position now where the next 24 months probably longer than that 36 months longer than that 48 months the numbers keeps growing man i mean because i mean because i'm thinking about games that are being like put into pre-production

[01:38:02] like right now right the risk tolerance is so low nothing new is going to be made except by those studios that those golden studios that have no strings attached and can do whatever they want i.e. cd project red larian i can't even think of who else larian basically basically you're saying

[01:38:27] established high well-established third-party studios well-established independent studios that have a ton of cash that have strong creative vision those studios will make the most interesting games over the next four to five years everything else is going to be very safe it doesn't mean that we're not going to get really good video games but i think it's going to be extremely safe because the

[01:38:50] environment that we're in right now is so precarious yeah kind of a shame that like especially in the triple a space right the diversity of games is going to narrow which is a bummer um because and then it feels like the industry is self-cannibalizing right not great may gta 6 save us all

[01:39:17] well jake good conversation about returnal any other final thoughts on this one before we put it to bed let's see final thoughts on returnal um i'm really this is stuck in my brain now what you said is why why is the triple a space not really capitalizing on what they can do with the genre um it allows housemark to be forerunners if things should ever change for triple a and i think returnal

[01:39:47] will gain a lot more like historic value if triple a start doing roguelikes um as standalone games and not just um you know secondary modes attached to primary games so yeah i think i want returnal to

[01:40:10] to be bigger in that way but it's it might just be a wrong place wrong time thing i mean this game came out 2021 uh this is pandemic um so this is a studio that i feel like it simply exists and lives and breathes differently because they had a game come out during the pandemic and they weren't infinitely delayed on whatever it is that they were doing as far as we know and yeah yeah i think that's what i

[01:40:38] what i have to say in terms of returnal impact on the industry folks it's got a really lovely narrative um i really think that you have to be in the right headspace because it is extremely cerebral and um inconclusive almost at times not to a fault but in the sense that it's going to give you way more questions and it gives you answers and you have to be compelled by something like that to really

[01:41:02] push forward in returnal yeah i'm excited to see what else the studio does i think this is a great kind of um yeah again like just calling out triple a roguelike i just love that this this game exists it feels so good mechanically i want to see like what else they can do with it it didn't hit for me in

[01:41:26] all ways probably primarily just because i just don't love the design and the story like didn't grab me personally but i think for a lot of people like this is an exceptional video game um and yeah i'm excited to see what they do next so and with that jake i just saw that uh respawns new multiplayer fps has been canceled no what yeah so it's probably just to make more apex battle passes probably

[01:41:57] uh although i did so my understanding is that respawn was working on a star wars first person shooter and a star wars strategy game so i don't know if maybe that was what anyway that's neither here nor there ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for listening on our to our extended edition episode our additional thoughts on returnal we appreciate you if you're listening to

[01:42:27] this you are a patreon subscriber thank you so much for supporting the show you help us stay alive help us get keys help us buy games so we can give you more content um yeah make sure you are on the discord if you're signed up and you're not um and just reach out to us let us know if you want us to cover anything or have specific conversations one of our special topics episodes or in one of our regular episodes thank you so much for listening and have a great night you