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00:00:11 Intro
00:00:51 News - Sony Sony Sony
00:01:55 Gran Turismo Memories
00:08:35 News - Astrobot reception
00:10:00 News - Concord's Crash Landing
00:16:45 News - PS5 Pro Detailed
00:26:46 News - Gearbox Bigger than Beatles?
00:30:55 News - Warhammer 40k Spacemarine 2
00:33:29 What Playing: Still Wakes the Deep
00:40:49 What Playing: Plague Tale: Innocence
00:52:27 What Playing: Disco Elysium
01:21:47 Emails
Transcripts
Tom: Hello and welcome to Episode of The Game Under Podcast.
Tom: I'm your host, Tom Towers, and I'm joined as ever by Phil Fogg.
Phil: Hey, Tom.
Phil: Thanks, man.
Phil: Thanks for welcoming us to episode of The Game Under Podcast.
Tom: I felt like that as ever was wrought with disappointment.
Phil: Yeah, I pick up the subtext, and I'm sure our listeners do as well.
Phil: I'm sure they all want a better co-host for this podcast, but here we are at episode and they've stuck with us this long.
Phil: We may as well stick with the format.
Phil: And I think maybe we just jump straight into the news.
Phil: That's what people want to hear.
Phil: This story is called Sony Sony Sony.
Phil: Credit to VGCharts, The Financial Times, Eurogamer, playstation.com, Wall Street Journal, you name it.
Phil: We're all talking about it.
Phil: Sony is the talk of the town this week.
Phil: And it's their turn to be whacked around like a piñata.
Phil: They're celebrating years of playstation.
Phil: Can you believe that?
Phil: years since the playstation was released?
Tom: I'm surprised I'm older than the playstation, actually.
Phil: I'm surprised you are as well.
Phil: It's shocking.
Phil: But, yeah, years, man.
Phil: I think the Dreamcast is celebrating its th, right?
Phil: On September th, which seems like a long time ago as well.
Phil: So anyway, Sony is celebrating the th year.
Phil: Judging by the official website, this means they're giving away a few digital trinkets to the masses, like a free online gaming weekend for some games, you know, some soundtracks.
Phil: They've got something called My First Gran Turismo, which appears to be just a demo for the current Gran Turismo.
Tom: Sounds like a segment we might have.
Phil: My First Gran Turismo does sound like that.
Tom: Let's turn it into one.
Tom: What was your first Gran Turismo?
Phil: Okay, thanks for asking.
Phil: We've covered this in the previous show, but I was an Nadopter, right?
Phil: I was so much an Nadopter that when I was playing Vigilante on the NI was like, wow, car combat.
Phil: This is like doom with cars.
Phil: This is incredible.
Phil: Not even knowing anything about that.
Phil: It was a complete ripoff of twisted metal, but I was an Npurist.
Phil: I thought it had better graphics than the playstation's, you know, crazy underwater graphics.
Phil: But then I walked into a Vietnamese video rental shop and they had Gran Turismo.
Phil: And I was like, wow, that looks way better than Cruisin USA.
Phil: That's not a sprite based game.
Phil: That's a polygonal game.
Phil: That looks kind of good.
Phil: And that sort of planted the seed.
Phil: So when I did have the opportunity to buy a playstation yeah, one of my first games I played.
Phil: Well, the second thing was Parappa the Rapper.
Phil: Once I saw Parappa the Rapper, I went out and bought a playstation that day, albeit a used one for bucks.
Tom: What would that be in today's money?
Phil: bucks in today's money?
Phil: Probably bucks.
Tom: Surely more than that.
Phil: Maybe
Tom: I think maybe
Phil: In Australian dollars?
Phil: Yeah, you're probably talking about bucks.
Tom: I mean, in US dollars.
Tom: This would have been what?
Tom: What's the year?
Phil: Would have been maybe ..
Phil: Well, the playstation came out in...
Phil: Metal Gear Solid came out in so I'm going to think it's about
Tom: Let's check this live on air.
Phil: Hang on.
Phil: would have been years ago.
Tom: Paid dollars, was it?
Phil: bucks, let's say, in
Tom: In
Tom: So, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia, I'm correct.
Tom: Let's just approximate...
Tom: Let's just assume that the US has had approximately the same sort of inflation over the last years.
Tom: dollars in is about dollars today.
Tom: So, I was bang on the money.
Phil: That is insane.
Phil: That's a lot of...
Phil: I get, you know, it's been years.
Phil: But still, that's crazy.
Phil: So, yeah.
Phil: So, what was your first Gran Turismo?
Tom: My first Gran Turismo was also the original Gran Turismo.
Phil: And what was your...
Phil: Now, I had a Mazda Miata or MX-at the time.
Phil: So, that was the car that I took from...
Phil: And it's one of the first cars I introduced you to in the series.
Phil: So, this was in the game.
Phil: So, this was fantastic, because I got to pimp that out until I couldn't anymore.
Phil: What was the car that you spent the most time with?
Tom: I think from the original Gran Turismo, my two favorite cars were the Mazda demio in the first series of license tests.
Tom: Something about it just being this box that you're doing racing, driving, training in is very, very engaging and enjoyable, and it captures the spirit of Gran Turismo perfectly.
Tom: And the other one was...
Phil: We should just mention, a demio is not commonly known to most people.
Phil: A demio is basically a four-door hatchback.
Phil: Yeah, and I remember the car.
Phil: I remember how starkly it shifted gears.
Tom: Yeah, well, in Australia, we call it a Mazda and I think that's the case in America as well.
Phil: Yeah, that's right.
Phil: So everyone knows what we're talking about.
Phil: So yeah, I remember that car vividly and how poorly it accelerated and changed gears.
Phil: It was a brick, but that was the spirit of Gran Turismo.
Tom: And it stopped so slowly as well, despite probably weighing about half a ton.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Well, that inertia is a powerful force.
Tom: But the other one, the other one was the the blue and white Corvette.
Phil: My other one that I graduated with and then took as far as I did the MX-was the Mitsubishi Lancer.
Tom: Yep.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Yellow, yellow Mitsubishi Lancer.
Tom: Just a normal one or an Evo?
Phil: Evo.
Tom: Okay.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: That one was fantastic.
Phil: And when I came to Australia and found out you could actually buy Lancers, cause I didn't release it in the US.
Phil: Yep.
Phil: It was like, Oh my God, this is incredible.
Phil: But yeah, yeah, fantastic.
Phil: Now, but your favorite Gran Turismo is
Tom: That's correct.
Tom: Yes.
Phil: Yes.
Phil: And that's because of Snoop Dogg's Chrysler endorsement and song, right?
Tom: Of course.
Phil: That was released for the playstation
Phil: And I remember the first time I saw that it was in a game stop and it looked amazing.
Phil: And I went home with that that day.
Phil: But I did spend a lot of time with it, but nowhere near the amount of time I did with and
Tom: Gran Turismo and still look very impressive.
Tom: If you look up the game being emulated at high resolutions, it looks excellent.
Phil: And also, while we're talking about Gran Turismo memories, I do remember I had the Blem cast for Dreamcast.
Phil: So this was basically a boot disk you could put in your Dreamcast, because the Dreamcast was way more powerful than a playstation of course.
Phil: Yeah, you basically put this boot disk in your Dreamcast.
Phil: That would let you then put in the disk for Gran Turismo, or Gran Turismo I can't remember.
Phil: And it would upscale the graphics to...
Phil: It was basically an emulator, I guess, somehow.
Phil: I don't know, maybe not even an emulator.
Phil: I didn't know how to describe it.
Phil: But it would upscale the graphics so that it looked like a Dreamcast game.
Phil: And I remember games will never look better than this.
Phil: This is amazing, this is incredible, which is what you say about driving games.
Phil: If there was anything tempting you to buy a playstation would it be Gran Turismo?
Tom: Probably.
Tom: That would definitely be one of the things.
Tom: Maybe even the only thing.
Phil: As a part of the year anniversary of playstation, their best gift has been the release of their mascot platformer Astrobot, which is getting universal critical acclaim across the board.
Phil: Apparently, it makes fantastic use of the haptic controller with the playstation and it's just a, you know, a quote Nintendo level quality platformer.
Phil: And, you know, it's great for them to be, you know, have that sort of success with that.
Phil: I forget the name of the studio that brought that out, but have you managed to see any pictures of it?
Phil: Apparently, it's a beautiful looking game.
Tom: Astro Bot, I think, in its early hype cycle, I did.
Phil: Yeah, so Astro Bot obviously started as a demo for the playstation camera.
Phil: And then, of course, it was a demo for VR.
Tom: I think it's the camera demo that I've seen.
Phil: Yeah, and then it was the pack-in.
Phil: They also produced a small pack-in game for the playstation to really highlight the features of the playstation
Phil: But now this is a full-blown platformer, a platformer level game.
Phil: I think it's about hours long, and it's getting perfect scores across the board, nines and tens, that sort of thing.
Phil: And then there is the Plight of the Concord, also known as Concord's Bad Fur Day.
Phil: These, this wordplay is, I wish I had thought of these.
Phil: We're usually pretty good with wordplay.
Phil: Coming up with our show title, so I'm gonna credit Plight of the Concord to GameScoop, IGN's GameScoop podcast, and Concord's Bad Fur Day to the Jeff Gershman podcast.
Phil: I think both of those were great.
Phil: But after just two weeks, Sony's live service hero shooter Concord was taken offline, which won't be news to anyone.
Phil: And they had refunds returned to all.
Tom: I think the existence of it might actually be news to a lot of people.
Phil: Well, yes, it was certainly poorly marketed.
Phil: And there's a lot of people, even before it was canceled, saying there's nothing wrong with this game.
Phil: This is a good game.
Phil: It was being sold for $as an online shooter.
Phil: And it's not really a hero shooter in the, you know, in the sense of the games that we talked about last week.
Phil: But it was a competent shooter.
Phil: I mean, critically, it was getting sevens out of which is a good score.
Phil: I mean, that is a really good, you know, seven out of it sounds bad.
Phil: Like that's a, that's a solid game.
Phil: And people were enjoying it.
Phil: And the whole thing was, it was, it's a live service game that you could buy for $with no ups and extras.
Phil: They weren't exploiting you with loot boxes and skins and hats and all this other stuff that traditional gamers have said, oh, just, just let me buy the game and play the goddamn game.
Phil: But the backlash against the game was, well, why am I paying for this when there's so many other games that are free to play?
Phil: Just give me a game that's free to play.
Phil: So that's pretty much what sunk it so far as I can tell.
Phil: And it's, it's certainly, it's certainly unprecedented in terms of a triple A game that was many years in development, many hundreds of millions of dollars of, of development money for Sony to pull the plug on it.
Phil: And the fact that they refunded the money makes me think that they're not going to retool this thing.
Phil: They're just, that's it, it's done, it's finished.
Tom: It's, it's a bizarre situation.
Tom: I don't really see the need for them to remove it in that way.
Phil: There's a couple of theories, and one is that Warner Brothers will bring a movie to theater to have it flop so that they can then claim it as a tax deduction.
Phil: So basically, they can say, hey, well, look, this was a commercial failure.
Phil: We put in million dollars.
Phil: So now we're going to claim that as a loss against our profits to reduce our revenue.
Phil: So we're paying for, you know, our revenue is reduced by million dollars so that we pay less tax.
Phil: I don't know that that, I mean, that sounds credible because in any other, in any other world, a company like Sony would go, oh, this game got seven out of ten, guys.
Phil: All we got to do is like either re-release it as a free to play and tweak it.
Phil: You look at other games that suffered this fate, like Final Fantasy was a game, that's their online game that they had attuned to the Chinese market, which of course then the rest of the world just threw up on.
Phil: They're like, this might be good for China, but it's not good for Japan, it's not good for the West.
Phil: They've completely, they completely turned it around and made it a success.
Phil: Cyberpunk, playstation, took it off their store because it wouldn't work and was breaking playstations.
Phil: That's probably one of the closest things to this.
Phil: No Man's Sky, another game that was pilloried at launch that was able to turn it around.
Phil: Fortnite, Fortnite was a joke.
Phil: It was literally a joke for four years where people were like, is this a real game or what is this, what's going on with it?
Phil: And obviously turned around to be the most successful live service game in history.
Phil: So, as you said, it's perplexing as to why Sony did this.
Phil: If in fact, it wasn't just to basically go, all right, we're just sending this out to die.
Phil: We'll do it the week before we release a game that we know is going to get tens out of tens.
Phil: We'll do it a week before we know we're going to be announcing the playstation
Phil: People will move on the playstation Pro.
Tom: It's still bizarre, though.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: Do you have a theory of your own?
Phil: In terms of historical precedent, I'd say if you looked at the Dreamcast being killed by Sega within two years of its release, that's probably the closest disaster.
Phil: Because that took Sega out of the hardware manufacturing business.
Phil: But if you look at the library of the Dreamcast, it's solid.
Phil: I think I've got over games for it.
Phil: Like it had software support.
Phil: So I don't think people see it as a disaster.
Phil: My theory is that there was at one point a CEO in charge of playstation that said, we're going to have live servers.
Phil: We have live service games in development.
Phil: And he's since gone.
Phil: He's gone and now Helmut Helmetson is in charge of the company.
Phil: So you've got, it's sort of the same thing that happened with the playstation virtual reality too.
Phil: It's kind of like, well, that the old regime thought this was a good idea.
Phil: We don't think this is a good idea.
Tom: A way for Mr.
Tom: Helmetson to stamp his mark on Sony.
Phil: I think it's his way of saying, this isn't going to work.
Phil: So we may as well release the bloody thing.
Phil: We'll take the loss.
Phil: Sony has some experience with this, keeping in mind that they are a motion picture studio.
Phil: We'll put this dog out there.
Phil: It'll be out there and we'll pull it back.
Phil: And if there's enough interest, then we can probably re-release it as a free-for-play game.
Phil: Now, can you imagine if they released this in eight months as a free-to-play game?
Phil: If they release this in a lull in the release cycle as a free-to-play game, after tweaking it, taking on the critical, the criticism that people gave, because there was a few things they could have done to fix it, like everyone would go on, or me and you would go and play it just to see what this train wreck was all about, right?
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Like if it's free to play, I will go and visit the scene of the crime if it's going to be free.
Phil: So that's still an option for them.
Phil: But I think just like with the playstation VR, there's been a change of direction, leadership stepping away from it.
Phil: I think they would look at the tax benefits of abandoning it, and I think that's all there is to it, sadly.
Tom: Another victim of Mr.
Tom: Helmut Helmetson.
Phil: But, you know, unfortunately for Sony, that wasn't the worst of...
Phil: You know, they said, hey, man, we'll give out this bad news, and we'll release this game that's going to get tens, and then we're going to release the playstation Pro, and then people will be flocking, people will be getting a second job, just so they can get the playstation Pro.
Phil: So how did that go?
Tom: I think the big news there is the price, isn't it?
Phil: It is, yes.
Phil: So you can basically pick up a playstation now for half of what the playstation Pro is going to be selling at $US.
Phil: It has no disc.
Phil: You have to pay $more for a Blu-ray drive, if you want a disc.
Phil: It has been announced for Australia.
Phil: You can go to JB Hi-Fi and pre-order one right now, with no disc, for $which is $US for our US listeners.
Phil: But surely, what are you getting for this?
Phil: There's basically three things they're talking about.
Phil: You'll get better ray tracing.
Phil: Ray tracing, what's your take on ray tracing?
Tom: I'm still a fan of it.
Phil: Yeah, I think most people are.
Phil: And better ray tracing, that's good.
Phil: Better DLSS, so that's basically where they can automatically upscale graphics of older games through computational power.
Phil: Now, they call DLSS something different on playstation, but that's basically the second thing.
Tom: I find it interesting that better DLSS is something people are paying more money for when the whole point of it is for you to be able to squeeze more performance out of hardware.
Phil: Yeah, exactly.
Phil: DLSS should be something that...
Tom: It should improve with patches.
Phil: Yeah, you shouldn't be talking about it.
Phil: You know, like if you're doing it on a sly, just do it on the sly and let everyone think that you've got a more powerful CPU.
Phil: And you know, and then the third thing is the CPU is % faster than the playstation which I think is significant.
Tom: It is, but what are you going to use it for?
Phil: Yeah, exactly.
Phil: Comes with a terabyte SSD drive, which by most people's accounts is too small, with most games being gig or gig.
Tom: Or
Phil: Yeah, I thought a CPU going up by %, like that's almost a new console range to me.
Phil: I thought that was pretty considerable, but not not for the money.
Tom: No.
Tom: And again, what's the CPU going to be used for?
Tom: Other than DLSS.
Phil: DLSS and better rate tracing.
Tom: Rate tracing would be the video card.
Phil: I don't want to get into that.
Phil: I don't know enough about their console hardware in terms of what they're using for video cards and things like that.
Phil: But in any case, it's been a bad, it's been a rough couple of weeks for Sony, other than the release of AstroBite.
Tom: Have you looked at the footage they've released of games on PSPro?
Phil: I have, and I couldn't tell the difference.
Tom: It's not very impressive at all.
Phil: It's not impressive at all.
Phil: The same, the video wasn't impressive to start with, because it was like two tiny screens in the middle of a YouTube screen that I'm watching in p.
Phil: So I don't know what that's about.
Phil: I could not tell the difference, and I couldn't care less.
Tom: They showed The Last of Us, or The Last of Us Light game playing, and they said on the original PSit runs at frames per second, and on the PSPro, it runs at frames per second.
Tom: And judging by the graphics, I was simply left wondering why it wasn't running at frames per second on the original PS
Tom: So I don't think that's a very good advertisement.
Phil: No, it's a good point.
Phil: And the one thing I did notice when they were showing Gran Turismo was the reflection of the cars in real time.
Phil: That's the ray tracing part of it.
Phil: The reflection of the cars on the other cars as they passed.
Phil: That was pretty impressive.
Phil: And I'm sure it's immersive when you're watching it on your inch TV.
Phil: But yeah, I don't, if I was in the market, let's just say, look, I found, I found, let's just say I found bucks on the street tomorrow.
Phil: And I go, oh yeah, I'll go buy a playstation
Phil: I'd probably just buy a playstation because I know I've got to buy a controller for bucks as well.
Phil: And then you got to get the games and all the rest of it.
Phil: Yeah, it's not a good value proposition, let's say that.
Phil: Anything else on Sony before we go to the next big story?
Tom: I think that about covers it.
Tom: So if we just, for the record, Mr.
Tom: Helmut Helmetson has moved away from projects such as innovative VR and games that don't feature a plethora of in-app purchases, in-game purchases to a $PSPro.
Phil: I was just reflecting this afternoon, given how Microsoft is handling things, given how Sony is handling things, if it weren't for the indie scene and PC, I'd be seriously worried about the direction of where video games are going and their viability into the future, because Sony and Microsoft are really balling this up big time.
Phil: And I'm not a fanboy.
Phil: Like Nintendo does its own thing, so they do things that are unique enough that I can kind of treat them like an indie.
Phil: But I like blockbuster games, like I love Call of Duty and stuff like that, as much as anyone.
Phil: But you just see this and it's like, you guys are just making it harder and harder for people who want easier and easier.
Phil: People want to play, look at people that people want to listen to Spotify.
Phil: They don't want to own music, right?
Phil: They don't want to have quality.
Phil: They just want to have accessibility and ease.
Tom: Probably the whole point of consoles as opposed to PC.
Phil: Consoles are all about plug it in, turn it on, put the disc in, play again.
Phil: It's the closest thing to an arcade experience you can have.
Phil: And again, not to sound like a PC person or anything, but I turn on my gaming PC on my TV, it boots faster than a console.
Phil: And my time from boot to play is faster than any console.
Phil: It's basically the same as when I had a Dreamcast and it had to load up the disc.
Phil: It's not as fast as a cartridge-based game, but it's still super fast.
Phil: Like I'm playing a game within a minute of turning on my PC.
Phil: Now, that's not the case for everyone, but I've got a dedicated PC hooked up to my TV.
Phil: It's working out really great.
Tom: Before we move on from Sony, I think we just need to do a little update on Black Wukong.
Tom: We theorized that the massive sales were all from the Chinese and the Chinese diaspora.
Tom: And I've been doing a little bit of research in this direction.
Tom: And I know quite a few people in China and in Hong Kong.
Tom: And anyone I know who plays games with access to a console that can play Black Wukong has been playing it.
Tom: Or someone I know has been playing it.
Tom: And a colleague of mine recently got a PS
Tom: And the only game he's played on it is Black Wukong.
Tom: And he is from China.
Phil: Yeah, okay.
Phil: So it's definitely something that culturally they're proud of.
Tom: I'd say so, yes.
Phil: In Australia, we don't have anything like that.
Phil: Like, we don't have anything, I don't think, that we could say, oh, this is our national story, and they brought it to a AAA video game.
Tom: What's the poet, the Snowy River Man, what's he called?
Phil: Lawson, Henry Lawson.
Tom: Maybe him, maybe Waltzing Matilda?
Phil: Yeah, but that's just a poem.
Phil: It's just a song, it's just a poem.
Phil: I don't think you could base a video game on a homeless guy who steals a sheep and then when he's caught, commits suicide by drowning himself in a small dam.
Tom: I think you probably could.
Phil: Which is Waltzing Matilda.
Tom: I think you could base a pretty good game on that.
Phil: Yeah, I think Suda could.
Tom: All the people who made Dear Esther.
Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll be talking about...
Tom: Speaking of which, he asked me for a PSrecommendation.
Phil: Who did?
Phil: Oh, okay, yeah.
Tom: This guy who was playing Black Wukong.
Phil: Yeah, Gran Turismo, man.
Tom: Yeah, no, here was my strategy.
Tom: He's playing Black Wukong.
Phil: I got a strategy.
Phil: Okay, you tell me your strategy.
Tom: I went in a totally different direction.
Phil: Yep.
Tom: Unrecommended Dear Esther.
Phil: Good, because what I was going to recommend was you should recommend the worst and most expensive games possible so that he eventually gets sick of it.
Phil: And then you can buy the playstation from him used.
Phil: So you've done a good thing.
Tom: I think I might be going in that direction already.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: We didn't tease the games.
Phil: We're going to be talking about some hot games this week.
Phil: Still Wakes the Deep, which is a game from the people that made Dear Esther.
Phil: We're going to be talking about that.
Phil: You've been playing that.
Phil: I have indeed.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: It's on Game Pass, so everyone can play it right now.
Phil: I'm going to be finished A Plague Tale Innocence from Asobo, my favorite developer right now.
Phil: Disco Elysium, you've been playing.
Phil: So yeah, we've got some hot games coming up.
Phil: But before we get that, we'll go to episode news story number two.
Phil: Gearbox's Randy Pitchford compares his company to the Beatles.
Phil: And credit for this story goes to Eurogamer, who congratulations Eurogamer.
Phil: They're celebrating their th anniversary this week.
Phil: Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford has defended recent flops, such as the Borderlands film and its Risk of Rain DLC, by comparing his company to one of the most highly regarded bands of all time, the Beatles, which comically for me brings to mind when John Lennon of the Beatles compared his band to Jesus, stating that even Jesus could only bring salvation to % of the world's population.
Phil: Randy said, I wish everything could be a hit, but that's not how it works.
Phil: He wrote in an exchange on social media platform X, the greatest musical act of all time, the Beatles had a % hit rate.
Phil: So again, why would you compare yourself to the Beatles when the Beatles themselves compared themselves to Jesus and it basically killed their sales?
Phil: People were burning their records in America because they had, you know, John Lennon had compared himself to Jesus.
Phil: So ergo, I guess, Randy pitchers.
Tom: So we're gonna have Beatles fans burning copies of Gearbox games?
Tom: Is that what you're saying?
Phil: Well, Christians or Christians, because if Gearbox is like the Beatles and the Beatles compared themselves to Jesus sacrilegiously, then basically Randy Pitchford is comparing himself to Jesus, who, you know, he did only, there's only % of the world's population is Christian.
Phil: I looked it up on Wikipedia.
Phil: So even Jesus didn't have a good hits rate.
Phil: Now, Randy Pitchford is saying the Beatles had a % hit rate.
Phil: I did some independent research just as you did.
Phil: Thank you.
Phil: We're still gumshoes hitting the street during the hard work of journalism.
Tom: Hence why we're citing Eurogamer.
Phil: Well, yes, but now I'm, this is separate, right?
Phil: So a hit is a song that is in the top
Phil: So between and the Beatles released UK singles.
Phil: They had of them were number ones.
Phil: Three of them were number twos.
Phil: One of them was number four and one was number which means they had % hit rate.
Phil: They released albums.
Phil: of them were number one.
Phil: One of them was number three, which again is a hit rate of %.
Tom: I was very confused by the claim that the Beatles had only a % hit rate.
Phil: They had a % hit rate, which is why they're the Beatles.
Tom: If there's one thing going for the Beatles, it's their commercial success.
Tom: How could a band that only had a % hit rate be the most successful band of all time?
Tom: That didn't make sense to me.
Phil: Just so you know.
Tom: Did Eurogamer go to the efforts that you did to fact check this statement?
Phil: No, they didn't.
Phil: They're not real journalists.
Phil: So, now, do you, I don't know the answer, but do you want to speculate which one of their singles only got to number ?
Tom: I've no idea.
Tom: My knowledge of the Beatles is that they are commercially successful, as opposed to what Beatles songs exist.
Tom: There's something about a walrus, I think.
Phil: I reckon number was probably Eleanor Rigby, but who knows?
Phil: Actually, I think that was probably number one.
Phil: But here's the other thing.
Phil: He's comparing it.
Phil: He's bringing up a cultural reference that is actually, what,
Phil: That's like years ago, right?
Phil: It is.
Phil: It's years ago.
Phil: This is like someone bringing up, I don't know, someone from the s when they're talking about the s, you know, like, you know, like Cole Porter, he had a % hit rate, you know?
Phil: We're just like Cole Porter.
Phil: Anyway, enough of that.
Phil: That was silliness.
Phil: Finally, it's not really a news story before we go into what we've been playing.
Phil: But I did want to note that a game that me and you both enjoyed, Warhammer K Space Marine, has a sequel that we talked about last episode.
Phil: It's now released and its credit for the story is everywhere.
Phil: It's getting broad praise as a great game in its own right.
Phil: And it's getting praise for its satisfying shooting and melee and it's appealing to everyone, not just Warhammer K enthusiast.
Tom: I think the review you're quoting here is quite interesting because in the bad listing, one of the issues with the game is it apparently has far from the deepest storytelling, the extended K universe.
Tom: Now, I wouldn't call the storytelling deep in the original Space Marine, but it was certainly, arguably the highlight of the game.
Tom: So I wonder if maybe it's a little disappointing from that perspective.
Phil: Yeah, perhaps.
Phil: I mean, Warhammer can be credited.
Phil: I mean, they invented the word Space Marine, which went on to influence Halo and the Aliens franchise among many others.
Phil: But my memories of, I've pulled out a copy of Space Marine.
Phil: I haven't, it's a playstation game.
Phil: I haven't played it yet.
Phil: But my memory of it was that the Malay was so satisfying.
Phil: Is that is what I went to most of the time.
Phil: Do you have any memories of it at all?
Tom: Yep.
Tom: The Malay was, I think the shooting was good too though.
Tom: Everything came together to be pretty satisfying.
Phil: Game itself was over the top in terms of just everything.
Phil: It was a bombastic game.
Phil: It was fun.
Phil: It was, yeah, a really fun game.
Phil: We talked about it in episode
Phil: We both played it and yeah, we talked about it in episode and mostly.
Phil: So yeah, maybe I'll put that up as a bonus.
Phil: Would you agree I could put that up as a bonus episode in about maybe next week in between our recordings?
Tom: Go ahead.
Phil: But yeah, it's good to see.
Phil: It's come from a different developer, but it's yeah, I think it's really good to see.
Phil: It's still like a $game on Steam.
Phil: So I'm going to wait for a sale because I've just got other games I can be playing.
Phil: So do you want to talk about what you've been playing and why it's important?
Tom: Well, I started playing Still Wakes the Deep, which as you said is developed by the Chinese room who made Dear Esther among other things.
Tom: And so far, I think the highlight is the setting.
Tom: It takes place on a Scottish oil rig.
Tom: And you're surrounded by people with...
Tom: It's also I think set probably in the s, I would say, judging by the fashions involved.
Phil: Yep, it's set in December
Tom: Oh, there we go.
Tom: So mid s, close enough.
Phil: Yep, for sure.
Tom: But the setting lives up to the concept.
Tom: You're surrounded by amusing Scottish characters with very thick accents.
Tom: The oil rig so far I think feels very stylized, particularly as it begins to change as the story of the game begins to develop.
Tom: But it's still a very engrossing setting.
Tom: It is a horror game, and it is not a walking simulator like Dear Esther is.
Tom: Basically, you're drilling in off the Scottish coast, and some sort of Cthulhu-like horror is unleashed as a result of this, which destroys the oil rig and takes over various people.
Tom: So you are trying to find a way off it and to save whoever you can on the oil rig.
Tom: And the game play is basically a mixture of stealth and platforming.
Tom: So there's a lot of yellow surfaces here and there, so you know where to jump.
Tom: But it works pretty well for the most part.
Tom: The stealth so far, I'm yet to work out whether it is real or bullshit, because I tried my best to be discovered by the person who was chasing me, and did not succeed in that endeavour.
Tom: So it might be like the burning car in Heavy Rain, where you can't actually be killed, but you can certainly die in the platforming segments.
Phil: Yeah, so it's a psychological horror.
Phil: I mean, what a great setting, an oil rig.
Phil: The whole, you know, you're drilling into deep, deep into the earth.
Phil: So obviously out in the out in the sea off of Scotland, the Northern Sea there, that, you know, the fact that you're awakening this mystical monster is a, is a delicious, delicious plot.
Phil: And obviously being an oil rig, like in Aliens, you're in a confined space, which is also good for development, but also extra creepy because there's nowhere to run.
Phil: So I think that's fantastic.
Phil: I saw this, this was advertised in Retro Gamer.
Phil: If it wasn't a back cover, it was probably the first major full page ad when you opened it.
Phil: And they, this basically said, didn't mention the name of the game.
Phil: It was basically a job advertisement to come and work on a oil rig.
Phil: And it features a picture that I've seen from the game.
Phil: And I saw it and I was like, okay, this is obviously some sort of, you know, a game and they want you to go to the website and find out about the game.
Phil: But they just, in the ad itself, it's just, it just looks like an ad, like come and work at this oil rig, which I don't, it's clever, but I don't think that's the most effective form of advertising.
Tom: Well, we're talking about it.
Tom: So maybe it's effective advertising in a second hand sense.
Phil: So how long is the game at me?
Phil: How far into it are you?
Tom: I'm still nearish the beginning of it.
Tom: I would think it's probably going to be about maybe somewhere in the realm of around five hours, give or take.
Phil: Yeah, I mean, it's a $game.
Phil: It's obviously free on and it's available on playstation, Xbox and PC.
Phil: So it's a $game on playstation and PC right now.
Phil: But you can obviously play it for free on Game Pass on.
Phil: Well, I guess that's on PC really, isn't it?
Tom: Yep.
Tom: That's how I'm playing.
Phil: The How Long the Beat says it's about four and a half hours in length.
Phil: And a completionist run will do six and a half hours.
Tom: So $an hour, essentially.
Phil: Yeah, which is basically like an arcade game back in the day.
Phil: If you look up the show notes that I've put up there, I've got a comparison of the credits between Dear Esther and Still Wakes the Deep.
Phil: Did you see that?
Tom: Yes, I did.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: So like it's from the developer, the Chinese room.
Phil: But when you look at the big credits on Dear Esther and the big credits on Shadow of the Deep, there's really only one name there that matches up.
Tom: Well, Dan Pinchbeck was co-director on Still Wakes the Deep, wasn't he?
Phil: Yes, definitely.
Phil: Yeah, he was co-director.
Phil: And notably, he was the writer of both.
Phil: And do you see any similarities between the two?
Tom: Without a doubt, I think just the way it is constructed is similar to Dear Esther, and there's a very strong focus on the writing as well.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: And even though events unfold quite quickly, they unfold with a lot of detail as it goes along.
Tom: So things happen quickly, but at the same time with a lot of depth to them.
Tom: So compared to many games, you're getting more out of a short period of time.
Tom: So it actually feels longer in a sense, but in a good way, which I think was the case in Dear Esther, which was probably to its detriment for a lot of people.
Tom: But Dear Esther is only an hour long, but there is so much detail both aesthetically and in terms of writing within that hour that in a way it feels like a much longer experience.
Phil: Is there a morose narrator in this game?
Tom: No, there isn't.
Phil: Oh, well, that's a shame.
Phil: You know, honestly, I was surprised that the composer wasn't brought over from Dear Esther, but a lot of time has passed.
Phil: I mean, you know, that composer could have moved on and had great success in, you know, other things.
Phil: You know, people, you know, they're not stuck in time.
Phil: And Dear Esther was certainly, you know, a smaller type project.
Phil: Yep.
Phil: Anything else on Still Wakes Are Deep for now?
Tom: At this stage, I think that probably covers it.
Tom: One other thing actually I would add, which I'm hoping becomes a more important mechanic.
Tom: If you press, I think it's the right mouse button, you look back over your shoulder, which in a horror game, I think is a brilliant mechanic.
Tom: But as I said, thus far, I've failed to be killed by the Cthulhu horrors lurking in the deep.
Phil: How's the audio direction of the game?
Tom: Very good.
Phil: So let's go on to a game I've been playing.
Phil: Now I've got to roll your mind back to when A Plague Tale Innocence came out.
Phil: You perhaps played it close to launch, or did you play it more recently than that?
Tom: I believe I reviewed it.
Tom: So I played it pre-launch then at launch.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: Well, A Plague Tale Innocence is made by Asobo, who has since gone on to do Microsoft's Flight Simulator, which is certainly critically acclaimed.
Phil: And they've also done a sequel to it, which I'm very interested in picking up.
Phil: I'll probably pick it up, but I'm a little bit-
Tom: Sequel is not as good as the original, but it is worth playing.
Phil: Yeah, I'm a little bit reluctant to go into it after having played or hours of this one, you know, back to back.
Phil: But I've got to say that I did start playing at other games yesterday after beating this one.
Phil: And I'm just not feeling it.
Phil: I've been spoiled because I've gone from Indica to other games to, thank goodness you're here, to A Plague Tale.
Phil: Not to mention, not to mention Teardown.
Phil: And now I'm sort of like, you know, what am I doing?
Tom: A good way to follow it up, except you don't have games past, I think would be still Wakes the Deep.
Phil: And that's not going to happen.
Phil: I look at Disco Elysium which you're going to be talking about as well.
Phil: But yeah, you reviewed this in episode which I might go ahead and include as a bonus episode after this, or something like that at some point, just to see what your impressions were.
Phil: But yeah, Sobo is like my favorite developer.
Phil: They're from France.
Phil: They've done a lot of amazing games and have a diversity, and also been able to release games on a quick cadence.
Phil: This game is an action adventure stealth game, is how I'd describe it.
Phil: And it's available on everything, including Switch, which is usually the thing that it's not on.
Phil: So basically, this has been, and even I described this as a B game.
Phil: But in thinking about it, the only thing that's quote B level about it is the cinematics.
Phil: The gameplay, I would say, is most similar to the recent Tomb Raider games.
Phil: And not just because you play as a female protagonist, but there is a light degree of crafting that goes on.
Phil: The Tomb Raider games rely on you using a bow and arrow.
Phil: This relies on you playing with a sling.
Phil: As it's set in mid th century France, there's no guns involved, which is a delightful change of pace.
Phil: And basically, you're fighting against the plague.
Phil: And in this telling of history, the French inquisition has unleashed a plague of rats to bring salvation and cleansing to Europe, in this case, in France.
Phil: And you play as a princess.
Phil: Is princess overselling it?
Tom: I think so.
Tom: A member of the aristocracy.
Phil: Yeah, a member of the aristocracy.
Phil: So basically, she loses, her family loses their, you know, their castle and all the rest of it.
Phil: She's been brought up in a place of privilege, but she's also, you know, down to earth because the game opens with her hunting with one of her servants.
Phil: And she's a competent hunter and a bit of a Tom boy is what we would have used to have said.
Tom: I think hunting would mean you're not down to earth.
Phil: Well, she's hunting, they're hunting for food.
Phil: I mean, this is the mid th century.
Phil: She's not like hunting for sport, though she was enjoying it as sport, but still though, it was still.
Tom: I think if you're hunting in a forest setting in the th century, either a member of the land of gentry, if you're not working for them, or you're a poacher, and she's definitely not a poacher.
Phil: No, that's true.
Phil: Her mother is taking care of her younger brother who she never gets to see.
Phil: And her younger brother has some sort of affliction.
Phil: So that's how the setup for the game.
Phil: So of course, they lose all of that.
Phil: And then she and her younger brother then have to go out and go on this thing.
Phil: So basically it's, oh, we'll go to the church, and then we'll go to the university, and then we'll go to here, and we'll go to there.
Phil: Because the young one is afflicted with a disease, and they're trying to cure him.
Phil: And along the way, you build up a band of about five different people.
Phil: One of them's a tank type creature who's very strong.
Phil: There's a couple of thieves, and there's a guy who's able to create potions and things like that.
Phil: And yeah, I found that the gameplay itself was was triple A, if you want to call it that.
Phil: There was absolutely no compromise in the gameplay.
Phil: As I brought up in the last episode, it is a stealth game, and I was playing it on the default difficulty.
Phil: I didn't see a way to turn it up or down.
Phil: And the detection cones for the guards was almost just not really a cone, but more of a rectangle directly in front of their head.
Phil: But even so, the game presented enough of a challenge that it was enjoyable.
Phil: Yeah, I really thoroughly enjoyed this game, and I thought it was a lot of fun.
Phil: You at some points, you do get to play as the younger brother, which I think is the only thing that sort of brings it down, because the animation for him made it look like he had a soiled diaper, the way he walked.
Phil: It didn't look like a real human being.
Phil: He sort of walked more like a chimp, which took me out of the game a little bit.
Phil: But otherwise, I found the story to be fun, and it certainly ramps up in the last five chapters of the game, to the point where you're actively interested in what's going to happen between all the different characters.
Phil: And it's a good mix of, like in Tomb Raider, there's environmental puzzles that need to be solved.
Phil: There's stealth.
Phil: There's just good old direct combat.
Phil: Yeah, it's a it's a rollicking game.
Phil: It's it's it's fun.
Phil: I really thoroughly enjoyed it by the time I was done with it.
Phil: The only time where you are the cinematics are jarring because they they're really poor in terms of their resolution and animation.
Phil: But, you know, that that's sort of nitpicking.
Phil: I really don't I didn't think that that held back the game at all.
Tom: And the story, the story telling is nonetheless excellent, even if the animation is a little bit janky.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: You look past things like that.
Phil: And the characters were quite good as well.
Phil: I'm talking about the character models, but I thought the characters were quite good and true.
Tom: Definitely.
Phil: Going with the game under ethos of enjoying, you know, seeking out things that are different.
Phil: Game, first of all, the game set in the mid th century, in Europe, right?
Phil: That is immediately for most commercial studios are no no.
Phil: Number two, it's got a female protagonist, which in these days, Post Horizon is, you know, more commercially palpable.
Phil: But certainly in this still would have been something that's like, okay, what?
Phil: Okay.
Phil: And you've got little boys, like what is this?
Phil: They all have thick accents for an American ear.
Phil: They have thick accents and that's, I'm not putting down our American friends.
Phil: But you know, when you're marketing a game to a diverse population, having a thick French accent for all of your characters could be a bit of a barrier commercially.
Phil: Yep.
Phil: And certainly there's the other thing, it's really gross.
Phil: This game has a lot of rats.
Phil: And I thought that that was technically dynamic as well.
Phil: Just the way that they used the rats in the game.
Phil: But like I wasn't creeped out by it.
Phil: But also, you know, like, you know, that could be a barrier of entry to some people.
Phil: Yep.
Tom: Did you ever, did you ever take a moment to stand still and watch the rats?
Phil: All the time.
Tom: Because the parthing of them is absolutely hilarious to watch.
Phil: Oh, in a Virtua Tennis type of way, you know, especially when you're setting up the lamp, the floodlights to keep them out of an area, but also using the tool that draws them to an area.
Phil: Yeah, that's what you're talking about, right?
Tom: And also the animation as well.
Phil: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Phil: But I'm not, that's that's the only jank to the game, but I'm not holding that against him because they're...
Tom: I think it's charming jank.
Tom: That was one of the things I enjoyed about it.
Phil: It is.
Phil: And, you know, talking about jank, the game never crashed.
Phil: I never had any problems with it whatsoever.
Phil: Of course, I'm playing it five years after it's been released.
Phil: It's been patched, you know, a whole bunch because it's been released on a bunch of different platforms.
Phil: But super competent game.
Phil: The thing that I enjoyed the most about it was that it has a weapons wheel.
Phil: And the rate at which they unlock the weapons wheel, the weapons in the wheel, was just right.
Phil: Like if they had given you everything at once, it would have been overwhelming.
Phil: And the rate at which they unlocked the new tools and skills that they gave you, I thought was absolutely perfect and kept me captivated throughout the entirety of the game.
Phil: So I forget what you gave this game when you played it.
Phil: But, you know, I'm prepared to give it a score.
Tom: What's your score?
Phil: I would give this game a out of
Tom: High praise.
Tom: I think that's fair.
Tom: I doubt I gave it a out of if I gave it a score.
Phil: Yeah, you would have given it a score and we'll have to...
Tom: Before we move on from play-tel, I gotta ask you what you thought of the Catholic Church's villains in the game.
Phil: Right, well, the Catholic Church was not the villain.
Phil: Now, we've recently played Indica and there was a lot of, you know, comparable things in Indica and this game.
Phil: And I've gotta thank you so much for recommending Indica to me.
Phil: It's just one of those games that's gonna stick in my head for a long time.
Phil: I don't know about you.
Tom: That'll be my next PSrecommendation.
Phil: Yeah, yeah, very good.
Phil: In this one, though, the Catholic Church is actually the hero because the Grand Inquisitor is the baddie.
Phil: And at one point, someone that...
Phil: the Pope sends an envoy to the Grand Inquisitor to say, this wasn't sanctioned, knock this off.
Phil: This is unholy.
Phil: Stop it.
Phil: You know?
Phil: So I think in this one, the Catholic Church has actually got to win.
Tom: Maybe.
Tom: I think they're in a morally gray area.
Phil: They told the guy it wasn't sanctioned and to knock it off.
Phil: There's no moral ambiguity whatsoever.
Phil: I got some Resident Evil vibes off of the dude.
Phil: Definitely, right?
Tom: Yep.
Tom: And Emperor Palpatine.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: That's the guy from Star Wars, right?
Phil: Yep.
Phil: All right.
Phil: This is going to go on favor.
Phil: So let's talk about the next game that you've been playing, which is Disco Elysium, developed by a company that was developed by an Estonian novelist.
Phil: The name of the company is Z A slash U M, Z A slash U M, which sounds like a company name that an Estonian novelist would come up with.
Tom: I think it's a programming reference or something.
Phil: It was released also in
Phil: So what prompted you to start playing this very critically acclaimed game from five years ago?
Tom: I've always wanted to play it, and I wanted something interesting to play after Baldur's Gate that wasn't necessarily a huge change of pace.
Tom: So I thought, what better way to follow up what many people claim is the greatest Western RPG of all time with another game.
Tom: Probably not anywhere near as many people claim to be the greatest Western RPG of all time, but certainly a few people do.
Tom: Actually, probably no, come to think of it.
Tom: I don't think I've seen anyone call it the greatest RPG of all time, but I have seen a lot of people say it's the greatest modern RPG of all time.
Tom: And I think I think that tells you what the difference between the audience of Baldur's Gate and Disco Elysium.
Phil: Yeah, and just ZA slash UM is a British company or a UK company, even though it's founded by a novelist, which...
Tom: I don't think so.
Tom: I think it may have been bought out by a British company.
Phil: Yeah, there was a big lawsuit from...
Tom: And the author has been kicked out of it and lost all of his...
Phil: That's right.
Tom: Disco Elysium related IP.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Now, when I saw the screen...
Phil: When this game came out, it was getting broadly praised for its incredibly divergent, sort of almost AI in the modern sense.
Phil: There's a thousand different ways this can unfold.
Phil: And I thought this was going to be like a photorealistic game, like LA.
Phil: Noire.
Phil: So I was really shocked when I saw screenshots of it, because it's like an isometric D game, like Baldur's Gate or Diablo.
Phil: And it's got...
Tom: Or Planescape Torment, which it is very clearly inspired by.
Phil: Yeah, and it's just, it's roughly drawn.
Phil: I was expecting a super realistic game for some reason, based on what people had described it over the years on podcasts.
Phil: So yeah, I was sort of put off by it, because people were talking about it as being a realistic game.
Phil: What would they, were they referring to the dialogue and the unfolding choices or?
Tom: I think they're referring to the narrative.
Phil: Okay, well, you're gonna have to, let's let you walk us through this then.
Tom: I think you've just said probably a more interesting thing than anything I've said could say about the game, without having played it, which is you said you compared it to AI, did you not?
Phil: Yes, yeah.
Tom: Whereas, I think the, not so long ago, you would have probably compared it, you would have called it postmodern, for the things you described.
Tom: And you know what I've never heard AI be compared to?
Tom: Not once.
Phil: Postmodernism.
Tom: Never.
Tom: But it's essentially the ultimate postmodernist mode of production.
Tom: Is it not?
Phil: Unpack that, please.
Tom: Well, you are literally feeding a series of images or voices, it could be anything, but you're inputting information into a machine, which collates all this information together and outputs something directly based on that information.
Phil: Yeah, right, okay, yeah.
Tom: That's essentially the entire basis of postmodernism, is it not?
Phil: It is, it is, right.
Tom: I mean, one could say that that is essentially the basis of all production in the first place, but the awareness that this is occurring is, I think, the basis of postmodernism.
Phil: Yes, that is true.
Tom: And the conscious use of that fact.
Tom: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: But I've never seen it compared to postmodernism, and I can only assume it is due to the massive marketing hype train that is AI.
Tom: And they would know if someone compared AI to postmodernism, it would not make AI look very good.
Phil: No, no, no.
Phil: Okay, so as you know, I work in industry.
Phil: If anyone who's trying to sell me anything can attach the letters AI to what it is they're selling, that's what they're doing, right?
Tom: Yep.
Phil: The people that cynically attach those letters to what they're doing, you know, a year ago would have just been called programming or software.
Phil: None of them would would have even heard the phrase postmodernism, because it's a completely separate subset of education, of experience and all the rest of it, which is why you've never heard that comparison.
Tom: What would you do if someone came to you and said, here's postmodernist software design?
Phil: I would say, how can I?
Phil: Please let me subscribe to your newsletter.
Phil: Go ahead.
Phil: Tell me more.
Tom: Tell me more.
Phil: Who are you?
Phil: And let's go to lunch.
Phil: If someone came, if someone in my work rose those two words together, postmodernism, I would be shocked and just, yeah, I'd probably like, okay, we need to call a timeout here.
Phil: What's happened?
Phil: Am I losing my mind?
Phil: So walk us first of all through the gameplay, please.
Tom: Well, the gameplay and here's, I think the closest thing to something interesting compared to your statement I could come up with is, this was I think maybe or maybe not a good choice to play after Baldur's Gate but it was definitely a good choice to play after Dear Esther because I've not seen anyone accuse Disco Elysium of not being a game.
Tom: Yet, if you look at what the gameplay of Disco Elysium is, it is not unlike Dear Esther.
Tom: The vast majority of the game consists of you going up to characters, talking to them, and the interaction is, okay, you can choose dialogue options, but you can choose whether to walk up to a triggering point in Dear Esther.
Tom: So, in the one sense, there's more interactivity, but in another sense, if you are a games need to have quote proper end quote gameplay sort of person, you should be criticizing this game, but I haven't seen any of those people criticize it for that reason, and I would imagine that the reason that they criticize Dear Esther is actually aesthetic and has nothing to do with the gameplay, because Disco Elysium, unlike Dear Esther, looks like a normal RPG, and aesthetically feels like a normal RPG.
Tom: And thematically, while it is a lot more complex and interesting than most normal RPGs, it is science fiction.
Tom: It's not literary.
Tom: It's certainly literary, but it is literary through the lens of science fiction, which I think is acceptable to the sort of gamer who would be raising those sorts of complaints.
Phil: Yeah, you said acceptable.
Phil: The word in my mind was accessible because if you turn this game on, it looks like a game.
Phil: I understand it.
Phil: I get it.
Phil: If you turn on a walking simulator when it's the first walking simulator you've ever seen, you're like, well, where's the gun?
Phil: Was this a first person walker?
Phil: You know, I understand first person.
Phil: Where's the gun?
Phil: And where's the thing to shoot?
Phil: Where's you turn this on, you're like, oh yeah, I key.
Phil: This is like a Western RPG.
Phil: I get it.
Phil: Isometric view, all the rest of it.
Tom: All of your comments are, I think, more cutting into the point on Disco Elysium the Mine again because one of the important points in the narrative is that you are a policeman who has lost his gun.
Tom: So there is a gun in the game, but you are not in possession of the game.
Phil: Of the gun.
Tom: Which is clearly an accidental reference to what we are talking about here.
Phil: Perhaps, yeah.
Phil: So now, the game is dialogue heavy.
Phil: And what is the main gameplay mechanic?
Tom: The vast majority of the game is dialogue.
Tom: And the gameplay mechanic is going through the dialogue.
Tom: The RPG element is that you've got four different sets of skills that you have.
Tom: Two of them are related to the functioning of your brain, and two of them are related to the functioning of your body.
Tom: And depending on what your skills are in those areas, they give you different dialogue options and increase your chances of successfully performing actions in dialogue, such as convincing if you have a good rhetorical skill, you might be able to convince someone on something that you would not have been able to convince them of if your rhetorical skill was lower.
Phil: So are you able to develop, like is there a skill tree where you can choose what you want to develop?
Tom: That's correct.
Phil: Okay.
Tom: And in addition to that, the other mechanic is you have what is called a thought cabinet, and thought cabinets you get through dialogue options for the most part, where one of them is, I've forgotten the name of it, but it's related to how much you use socialist dialogue options.
Tom: So if you use enough socialist dialogue options, you can develop a socialist related thought, which will then give you bonuses and debuffs within your base skills.
Tom: And additionally, the clothing that you find in the game, will also raise and lower your skills as well.
Tom: So for a lot of the game, I have actually, I've got probably accrued at least somewhere between to unused skill points because of the way I've been playing the game is, I'm constantly changing the clothes I'm wearing so that I don't have to raise my skills.
Phil: Why?
Phil: Why wouldn't you want to raise your skills?
Tom: Because there's another mechanic in it, which is if you fail a certain type of dice roll in the dialogue, to unlock it again, you have to raise the skill that it is based on.
Phil: Okay, yeah.
Tom: Which has been encouraging me, even though I haven't really needed them, hence the large number of leftover skills, it's been encouraging me to hoard skill points.
Phil: My five year old memories of people talking about this game was that they were most amazed about the divergent paths that the game would take.
Phil: And I could play the game, it could be completely different from how you played the game.
Phil: Is there any evidence of that in your playthrough?
Tom: Yes and no.
Tom: I think there's a lot of stuff that you can just miss altogether, potentially, if you're not doing the side things.
Tom: It feels like the narrative is going in a general direction, regardless of what you are doing in terms of the main story, though.
Tom: But that remains to be seen.
Tom: I would say I'm probably about halfway through the story.
Tom: And a friend of mine has been playing at the same time.
Tom: He's already finished it.
Tom: And he's had pretty similar experiences to me so far, but we play games somewhat similarly anyway.
Tom: So there's not much that I can conclude from that.
Phil: Do you know if the developer...
Phil: Well, there was the controversy.
Phil: So yeah, obviously the developer hasn't gone on to make more games.
Phil: It'd be nice to know if this novelist has done anything with this at all, if his books based on the series.
Phil: But I guess what you're saying is he lost everything, lost all the rights to Disco Elysium.
Tom: That's right.
Phil: Do you see the appeal of the game?
Phil: Is this a game that you'd recommend?
Phil: There was a lot of hype around this game when it came out.
Phil: I'm amazed.
Phil: I only didn't buy it because I thought it was going to be something that I couldn't play in my PC because the way people were talking about it as an ultra realistic branching path, divergent story rich game that I was like, oh, my PC is not going to be able to run that.
Phil: But yeah, so does it live up to that hype?
Tom: I think it surpasses the hype that it's received and it's so good, it might be my third playstation recommendation.
Phil: That good.
Phil: That good, wow.
Tom: I have a lot more to say about it, but I don't know if you want to wait until you've played it, if you're going to play it, or should I talk about more, talk about it more now?
Phil: I think if I would love, I would much prefer if you go ahead and finish the game, and then we can talk about it then and perhaps by then, I will dip my toe in it.
Phil: Yeah, it's still like a still pretty expensive game to pick up relative to other games on the on Steam, at least.
Phil: So, yeah, I haven't.
Tom: I think there are, there should be sales for it somewhat regularly.
Phil: Yeah, I believe it is.
Phil: And I've put it on my wishlist.
Phil: So when it comes up on sale, I'll grab it pretty quickly.
Phil: I think the annoying thing is, is that the Plague Tale sequel is on sale right now for bucks Australian.
Phil: So that's sitting there, tempting me while I look at my library and go, what can I play?
Phil: What can I play?
Phil: Hey, have you played Stacking?
Tom: No, I haven't.
Tom: I've always wanted to, but I've never actually played it.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: Honestly, I think I'm probably, I should, after playing the game that I've just played, I probably should play a game like Warhammer k or something like that as a palette cleanser.
Phil: Is there anything else you wish to say about a Plague Tale?
Tom: About a Plague Tale, no, but I am going to say just a couple of things before I move on from Disco Elysium.
Phil: Well, no, that's actually more interesting than your, your Plague Tale.
Phil: You did talk about it for minutes in episode
Phil: So I thought you might have something more to say.
Tom: That's why I don't have anything more to say about it.
Phil: You're done with it.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: But back to Disco Elysium, folks.
Tom: Well, why not, why not just move on to a Plague Tale ?
Tom: I think it will be fascinating to play them back to back because I played them with however many years between them in terms of when they were first released.
Phil: I gotta tell you, it was so satisfying to play a regular ass video game with a big boss at the end of it.
Tom: The final boss was really enjoyable.
Phil: It was.
Phil: It's a really good final boss.
Phil: And the whole set up of the white rats without spoilers, the whole set up of that when they had the foreboding of it earlier on, it's just, you know, it is a really good story.
Tom: Guess what is % off on Steam right now?
Phil: Uh, your mom?
Tom: No.
Tom: She's, I think, % off.
Phil: What is % off?
Tom: A Plague Tale Requiem.
Phil: Yeah, I know.
Phil: It's like bucks, right?
Tom: $
Phil: Oh, wow.
Phil: It's gone down.
Phil: See, the thing is Steam Fs with you because you're going to be seeing discounts that I'm not seeing.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: But I might actually have a key for it from Humble Bundle.
Phil: All right.
Phil: Well, check that out, man.
Phil: And yeah, yeah, I'd love because I saw the trailer for the sequel and I'm like, oh, the cinematics are like now AAA level, which, you know, is neither here or nor there for me.
Phil: But like it looked like a bloody good game.
Phil: So yeah, check if you check that out, that would be great.
Phil: But back to Disco Elysium.
Tom: There are just two things I want to say.
Tom: I won't go into too much detail, but the sense of humor in the game is consistently amusing and not just amusing, but revealing as well.
Tom: The humor manages to provide a lot of societal commentary in a brilliant way.
Tom: The setting is incredibly rich, that it's all very satirical.
Tom: And we were talking about AI, as you said, it is very much a very postmodern sort of game, but it's the post postmodernism that we've been moving in the direction of, where everything is very postmodernist in the sense that it, everything in, it is ironical and ridiculous and absurd and constantly referential and all over the place.
Tom: Yet, it's doing all of this in the service of authenticity.
Tom: So all the characters are all very authentic.
Tom: The world is very authentic, and I think the things it's trying to say are all very authentic as well.
Tom: Despite this veneer of irony and all over the place referential humor.
Tom: And it's, I think it's been interesting seeing this develop in art in general, but also in games, because it's gone through stages where there have been things like Dear Esther that have been purely authentic without any sort of irony whatsoever, despite having a very postmodernist as opposed to modernist structure.
Tom: And there have been things like Sebelle, which have been purely authentic without having an all over the place sort of postmodernist feel to it, yet not being modernist in the sense that it is, has a sort of very serious structure to it where a lot of effort has gone into it, which is not to say that effort didn't go into making the game, but it was not meant to be this supremely crafted demonstration of mastery of skill.
Tom: It was meant to be this sort of drafted journal entry sort of feeling to it.
Tom: And now we've come to the culmination of all of these sorts of styles.
Tom: And we're now seeing things like this in games, the Disco Elysium.
Tom: I think an example of this in film would be everything everywhere all of once.
Tom: So I think it's an interesting time in art at the moment.
Phil: I agree.
Tom: And I think a positive, I think it's an improvement.
Tom: I think art is moving in a potentially interesting and positive direction for the first time in a long time.
Phil: I completely agree.
Phil: Yeah, I completely agree.
Phil: Because when you look at other aspects of society, like politics, which is completely, you know, at a standstill and stagnant and dead.
Phil: If you look at other forms of entertainment, like movies and I'm not going to say music, I'm not going to write off music yet, but yeah, like there's a lot of stagnation and unoriginality.
Phil: And I think in the in the field of visual arts, it's a it's a wonderful and vibrant time.
Tom: I would include music in it, actually.
Tom: Yeah, because if you look at commercial music, I think you have interesting things like K-pop, which has in turn, I think, influenced Western pop music.
Tom: And even within Western pop music, I think I'm certainly not a fan of Taylor Swift whatsoever.
Tom: But I think if you're comparing Taylor Swift to pop stars ten years ago, I think she's doing something a lot more interesting than they were then.
Phil: Yeah, music is is I, you know, I have a daughter and so I have Spotify and I listen to, you know, the the latest hits.
Phil: And I certainly think there's more going on now.
Phil: A lot of it is referential, very referential.
Phil: But I think that the pop music right now is of a much higher quality than it was ten years ago, certainly, and possibly even years ago.
Phil: So and that become, you know, because of the technology that we have, iteration happens more quickly.
Phil: And also because of technology, the technology is more accessible, right?
Phil: So before, if you had to edit a song, it would have involved having tens of, if you wanted to edit a song, it would have involved at least $worth of equipment to make it sound, you know, commercially viable or access to a studio where you're renting it for, you know, $an hour sort of thing.
Phil: So yeah, no, I think technology certainly enabled that.
Phil: I think Disco Elysium to me is important because of the unfortunate situation.
Phil: Like number one, it's a studio established by a novelist from Eastern Europe.
Phil: Number two, he's lost the IP and this is it.
Phil: So this is sort of like a game inside of a snow globe or whatever you call those things.
Phil: Is that what you call those things?
Phil: It's a ship in a bottle and it's not going to get commercialized.
Phil: It is a snapshot of a game that was received and widely critically acclaimed.
Phil: And that makes it very, very interesting to me, because there's not going to be a besmirching of its reputation.
Phil: It is its own thing, basically.
Tom: I think it's interesting.
Tom: I think it's sort of dropped out of the general consciousness after its massive hype.
Tom: And I wonder if that is because of what happened with the company who bought IP.
Phil: Yeah, perhaps.
Phil: But it's also like, you know, you can be Jonathan Blow and bring out, you know, the first hit indie game on Xbox, and then bring out The Witness, which people absolutely love.
Phil: And then no one cares what you do after that.
Phil: Like, you know, I think it's just no one's talking about Disco Elysium because there's no reason to talk about it.
Tom: But here's the thing, like people do still talk about The Witness and Braid.
Tom: You see them mentioned, I think more so The Witness and Braid these days.
Tom: You rarely see Disco Elysium mentioned.
Phil: Right.
Phil: Because, well, what would, what has it...
Tom: And I think, I think there's more, as much reason now, if not more reason now, to talk about Disco Elysium than when it came out.
Phil: What, because of the election?
Tom: Not the election.
Phil: That's a joke, obviously.
Phil: But, you know, like, besides us...
Tom: Why not the election?
Phil: Besides us, who's looking back five years and going, wow, this was an important game?
Tom: I think people should be, and I think it's bizarre that they aren't.
Phil: Yeah, well, we will get there.
Phil: Anything else to say about Disco?
Tom: Tangentially related to it.
Tom: When I was talking to my colleague, I mentioned to him that I do a games podcast.
Tom: And he asked me if I'd ever done streaming of games.
Tom: And I said no.
Tom: And he was saying with streaming and YouTube videos, being weird or having an over-the-top sort of character was a requirement.
Tom: I was thinking at the same time back to, and I should add, so at this place, I'm apparently a writer and I have marketing experience, which I do, but not in the area that they think I do.
Phil: Certainly not in the area of making Australia's longest-running video game podcast popular.
Tom: I've done, well, here's the thing, I've done no marketing on The Game Under Podcast.
Phil: Yeah, but you did tell that one guy.
Tom: Exactly.
Phil: So that's better than what you've done in the last years.
Tom: I'm demonstrating my marketing experience to him.
Phil: So that's, that's good.
Tom: No, I actually, I successfully marketed my GameSpot blog and GameSpot output.
Tom: Very successful.
Phil: You did.
Phil: And in the years subsequent to us starting this podcast, you've now at least proven to me that you've told one person about it.
Tom: Yep.
Phil: Did you tell him the name of the podcast?
Tom: No, I didn't.
Tom: Okay.
Phil: This is a problem.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: So Master Marketer, what is it?
Phil: What amazing conversations did you have with your colleague?
Tom: But so here's what I was thinking, right?
Tom: He said, like to be successful on Twitch, you need to be weird, right?
Tom: Or have some sort of weird and interesting persona.
Tom: And I was thinking, and I wonder if things are different today.
Tom: But I was thinking of my time back on GameSpot where I had, I'm not going to be modest whatsoever, I had easily the top five, if not top three, writing output on GameSpot.
Tom: And my writing within the top three was, I would say, the only writing produced in the GameSpot community or on the GameSpot website for that matter, that in the vast swathe of video games, writing at the time stood out, at least in terms of a large amount of output, which is why I say top three, because there's two other writers on GameSpot at the time.
Tom: I remember the name of one of them, Aberynculous, I think it was.
Phil: The other one was Phil Fogg, wasn't it?
Tom: And I've forgotten the name of the other one, but it was a middle-aged Scottish man.
Tom: And I remember seeing the most generic bullshit being automatically promoted on the user content highlight, with no effort in terms of the writing.
Tom: I mean, no effort in terms of standing out or personality being put into this writing, which was just automatically promoted by the fact that it was simply someone who had written something that was words or or words long with correct grammar and spelling.
Tom: Whereas, if you wrote something with or words long that had correct grammar and spelling, but had even a drop of personality to it, you were immediately suppressed.
Tom: Actually, no, one of the people was actually on the VG Press, Gaming Eek.
Tom: And he can attest to the fact that if you wrote with personality on that website, you were censored and you were suppressed by the powers that be at GameSpot.
Tom: And I can't help but wonder whether that is true or not today.
Tom: And having personality online, if you're a streamer or a YouTuber, doesn't mean having personality, but fitting the new form of generic, which is based on the people who wrote in the background with personality years ago.
Phil: It's about marketing really, isn't it?
Phil: And if you're selling a message that they don't think is marketable or doesn't support what they're currently marketing, it's not going to gain voice when it's a commercial platform.
Tom: That's what I'm saying.
Tom: I think having personality automatically makes you unmarketable, is what I'm getting at here.
Tom: It's just that the people who were unmarketable years ago, are now the marketable personality, except it's not those people who are marketable.
Phil: Right.
Tom: It's the modern equivalent of that.
Phil: Right.
Tom: If that makes sense.
Phil: Yeah, it does.
Phil: Totally.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: So, Disco, done with that?
Tom: Yep.
Tom: All right.
Phil: We've only got time to go on to e-mails before we leave our dear listeners for this episode.
Phil: So this is my questions for you from other people's podcasts, where you answer questions from other podcasts because they did not answer them satisfactorily.
Phil: Indiana from an undisclosed location writes, now focus your mind and listen carefully to the question.
Phil: When using a game pad on a PC, which do you use?
Tom: PScontroller.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: So you talked about using keyboard controls today on a game that I wouldn't have thought you'd use keyboard controls, which was the still wakes the deep when you're saying you'd press the right button on your mouse to look backwards.
Tom: So that's a first person game.
Tom: So of course you would use a keyboard or mouse for that.
Tom: Unless you were mentally degraded from some unknown cause.
Phil: It's called console gaming for the last X years, right?
Phil: So now, how do you choose when to use a game pad?
Phil: Like, when do you use a game pad?
Phil: Do you use it mostly?
Phil: Do you only use it in certain types of genres?
Tom: I only use it in certain games.
Tom: It's pretty rare.
Tom: I'd be more likely to use it in a platformer, definitely.
Tom: I would usually choose a controller over a keyboard or a mouse for a platformer without any question.
Phil: Yep.
Phil: That's what I thought.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: I think for maybe third person horror games, it might be better if they're...
Phil: So third person games collect a Tomb Raider.
Tom: Not Tomb Raider, no.
Tom: Tomb Raider is a third person shooter.
Tom: So that would be keyboard and mouse.
Tom: Wow.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: All right.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: See, see, I use the...
Phil: obviously, I use the console because I'm playing it on a TV and I've got a rubbish keyboard and mouse set up.
Phil: And even if I did have a proper set up, you know, I use the console controller most of the time.
Phil: So, okay.
Phil: So playstation or playstation or what?
Tom: playstation
Phil: Okay.
Phil: That's a decent controller.
Phil: Are the nubs completely rubbed out at this point?
Tom: No, they're still in good condition.
Phil: Oh, well, that doesn't surprise me since you've said you use keyboard and mouse for most things.
Phil: So, yeah.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: Well, that answers Indiana's question.
Phil: If anyone were to ask me what I use, I use a Xbox controller, which is connected via a dongle.
Phil: And I'm going to just ride that thing till it dies.
Phil: God, my hands hurt last night when I was playing, finishing off a plague tale.
Phil: You know, so at some point, I guess, yeah, I'll probably go to a playstation controller.
Phil: I use a playstation controller for my playstation, my mini playstation.
Phil: But you know, the thing that, the classic, I think it's called the playstation Classic.
Phil: I've got that wired to that.
Phil: And yeah, otherwise I use this really old Xbox controller on a dongle.
Phil: So with that, thanks for listening to The Game Under Podcast.
Phil: We've been doing this since
Phil: So there's a lot of resources covering games from that time till now on our website.
Phil: I most recently reviewed The Good Time Garden using your premise that it's based on The Garden of Eden.
Phil: Yeah, I thought that was a...
Phil: I particularly liked my title for that review, which was Yonic and Knuckles.
Phil: I'm not sure if you noticed that.
Tom: Yonic and Knuckles.
Phil: Yonic and Knuckles.
Tom: Yonic and Knuckles, yes.
Tom: No, yeah, I did notice that.
Phil: Because basically you're hitting things.
Phil: That's the Knuckles part and the Yonic.
Phil: I was particularly proud of that one.
Phil: So I liked it.
Phil: Thank you.
Phil: And when I review A Plague Tale, the subhead will be O Rats.
Phil: Anyway, you can go to our website, Game Under.
Tom: Well, I can't promote your work on GameSpot.
Tom: I can say you are one of the two best writers on the Game Under website.
Phil: Thank you so much.
Phil: And you can go visit gameunder.net.
Phil: If you'd like to submit a question, just go to the front page.
Phil: We don't need your email or logins or anything else.
Phil: Just go to the front page of gameunder.net and type in your questions for us or comments, and we'll bring them up in the next show.
Phil: Thanks again for listening to episode of The Game Under Podcast.
Phil: I'm Phil Fogg.
Tom: I'm Tom Towers.
Phil: Thanks for listening.