749: Back 4 Blood, Sarah Bond and Halo Infinite

Larry Hryb:
Hi, it's Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson. Welcome to the official Xbox podcast. We're all back this week, we're together. Let me hit the button. Boom. Hello, everybody, hey gang.

Jeff:
Now with plantation shutters. I mean, look at that. Look at those window décor. It really classes up the joint.

Larry Hryb:
Well, I wanted to open-

Rebecca:
Interesting angle.

Larry Hryb:
I wanted to open the show a little differently. Yeah, you can see my other monitor over here, you can see my-

Jeff:
I could see how many buttons on your shirt are undone.

Rebecca:
I know. Seeing a lot of Larry today.

Larry Hryb:
That was a little much.

Jeff:
It's going to change our ratings on this one.

Larry Hryb:
Well, I have to tell you, what happened was, I realized when I'm sitting here during the office... I mean, you know this, because I did the test with your earlier, Rebecca. I had a T-shirt on. And then when I realized, I said, "Oh, I got to do the show," I had to go get this. So pardon me. Thanks. Hey, gang.

Rebecca:
This is a family friendly show, Larry. Come on.

Larry Hryb:
Yes, it is.

Jeff:
Not anymore.

Larry Hryb:
It is now.

Jeff:
What about you, Rebecca? This is a different look for you. Surrounding.

Rebecca:
Is this different? Is this not the same? Yeah, the two week hiatus worked out really well because I just moved to New York, so I'm in a significantly smaller apartment now, but [crosstalk 00:01:08].

Larry Hryb:
The whitest room in New York, right there. Look at that, it's unbelievable.

Rebecca:
Yeah.

Jeff:
You're in the city that never sleeps. We're in the city that goes to sleep on time, wakes up at 6:30 in the morning and goes for a jog, even when it's raining.

Larry Hryb:
Well, no, a bike ride.

Rebecca:
Yeah, that's been an adjustment.

Larry Hryb:
A bike ride.

Jeff:
Yeah, that sucks even more.

Larry Hryb:
More appropriate. Anyway, how you doing out there? You're on the East Coast now, Rebecca, which East Coast, best coast. I'm just going to tell you right there, Jeff. In fact all of us-

Jeff:
It doesn't rhyme.

Rebecca:
Is that how the saying goes? I don't think that's what it is.

Larry Hryb:
I'm going to ask on behalf of Jeff and I, since he and I have traveled so much together, have you gotten a good bagel yet?

Rebecca:
I've had two good bagels.

Jeff:
Yes.

Rebecca:
Really good bagels. Yes. Very happy. Haven't have any pizza yet, but-

Larry Hryb:
What?

Rebecca:
I know. I know right?

Larry Hryb:
Just go to Ray's, go to Famous Ray's or Ray's Famous or...

Rebecca:
Famous Ray's.

Jeff:
Just whatever, just any quarter will do.

Rebecca:
Got it.

Larry Hryb:
No there's a whole thing about Famous Ray's-

Rebecca:
There's a Sbarro nearby.

Larry Hryb:
There's a whole thing about there's Famous Ray's and there's Ray's Famous, go look it up on the internet-

Jeff:
There's Original and then there's Original Ray's, yeah.

Larry Hryb:
It's this whole thing.

Rebecca:
Okay.

Larry Hryb:
But anyway.

Rebecca:
I'll go to one of them, I'll let you know.

Larry Hryb:
Or all of... hold on a second, looks like there's somebody-

Jeff:
Oh, look at... He's popping out of the corner like in Mortal Kombat. I expect him to go, "Toasty."

Rebecca:
Hey buddy.

Larry Hryb:
Boy. I see Pumba's-

Rebecca:
Yeah, I brought Pumba with me.

Larry Hryb:
How is Pumba making the migration to New York so far? How's he like his new big city home?

Rebecca:
It's okay. I think it's been a tough transition for him. There's still a lot of things to pee on, but it's really hot outside in New York, go figure. And I think-

Larry Hryb:
Do you remember, Rebecca, when you told me a few months ago how you were going to New York and I said, "The summer has a aroma to it in New York City."

Rebecca:
I see.

Larry Hryb:
Now you know.

Rebecca:
Yeah. What is that... I guess I know. But yeah, he's doing all right though. Still same work from home, so he just has a little bed by my side and... Just smaller quarters now.

Jeff:
Pumba, pug in the city.

Rebecca:
Hot pug in the city.

Jeff:
[crosstalk 00:03:20] watch that movie. Rated G.

Larry Hryb:
We're coming off a big week this week. We had a heck of a week this week. This way-

Jeff:
A big week, a big week. Just a big week, that's it.

Larry Hryb:
I don't even know where to get started, I mean, we had the Games Showcase, which I know everybody probably watching the show, and I know Rebecca, you watched it, and Jeff, you watched it, and I watched it. It was pretty awesome wasn't it? It was pretty cool, in fact I've got some of it here. I don't know what your favorite part was but this was an amazing part, right? having Todd on stage?

Rebecca:
Yeah, right at the start.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, that was a good [inaudible 00:03:52].

Rebecca:
Yeah, no, that's-

Jeff:
All right, what was your favorite moment? Actually how about this, I'm going to rephrase it. What was your smallest, little thing? Everyone loved Halo, and everyone loved Todd Howard being out there. Was there something that jumped out at you? A smaller thing?

Larry Hryb:
I'll let you, Rebecca, because I actually have a funny story that unbeknownst to me it was a long game from four months ago that paid off. So Rebecca, I'll let you go.

Rebecca:
Okay. I mean, the whole show was really good. I needed to use the bathroom at one point during the middle of it, and I had a really hard time finding that moment. So that's a good sign, right? But let's see, so anyone who knows me knows that I play a lot of Halo and I'm a big Halo geek. So I was pretty stoked, especially finding out that multi-player's going to be free for everyone. That's pretty big announcement. That wasn't publicly known, right? That was an announcement, right? I feel like I've known that for a while-

Jeff:
It was announced I think at some point last year.

Larry Hryb:
Previously, yeah.

Rebecca:
Oh, okay.

Jeff:
You didn't know what you were getting for free, but now you do.

Rebecca:
Yeah. No, it's cool. I've always played the campaign too, but I'm the person where I play the campaign, and then I'm over with it, and then I just spend most of my time playing in multi-player with my friends. And so now I won't have to talk as many of my friends into buying it if they weren't already going to. So I'm pretty excited about that.

Larry Hryb:
As somebody who played a lot Halo, I'm really excited to team up with you.

Rebecca:
Yeah. Yeah. What's your game mode of choice?

Larry Hryb:
I mean, I love big team battle just because it's chaos. You can be off in the corner doing your own thing and get a vehicle and get plowed down by a Warthog or vice versa, plow somebody down. So I do like big team battle, if you have the right team.

Rebecca:
Right.

Larry Hryb:
If you can get three or four of your people together. But I remember playing six or seven, eight big team... seven person big team battle back in the old Halo days, and that was just a lot of fun. So we'll actually hear from-

Jeff:
I thought your role was bait? I thought that was what you did? And then other people come and clean it up.

Larry Hryb:
That is actually another thing. Because most people know my gamer tag, Rebecca, is... the better players would send me out there, "Go out into the middle, go out into the middle."

Rebecca:
Oh, I see.

Larry Hryb:
And then I'm like... "Hey, there's Major Nelson," and they start wailing on me and they start shooting me, and then my team would come up from behind and just take them off when they're all aggro on me. So that was a lot of fun. But yeah, it's going to be amazing to be able to play that, and again, as you said, free to play. We have Joe Staten on, later on in the show, who's going to talk about it actually.

Rebecca:
Awesome. Very cool. I'm so excited. But aside from Halo, which was my big shiny moment, I was also pretty impressed by Party Animals. At first when they started, I thought maybe this was Overcooked 3 or something, because the characters looked similar, the really squished animated... But it looks like a lot of fun. I feel like I've been playing a lot of those party/funny/cutesy games lately and that looks right up my alley, so stoked it was coming to console.

Jeff:
That definitely was a... stole the show. Those physics based games like Gang Beast or Human Fall Flat, those are always a lot of fun. And this one-

Rebecca:
Fun to watch, yeah.

Jeff:
... just adding the animals, just a little bit further up.

Larry Hryb:
What about you, Jeff? What was your highlight of the show?

Jeff:
Oh my God. Well, there was a lot of them. I will have to say, because I think I'm obligated to at this point, was the point where they said Yakuza: Like a Dragon is now available-

Rebecca:
Yeah, exactly.

Jeff:
... to everyone who has Xbox Game Pass. We had a live chat, everyone was like, "Jeff, this is you. This is you."

Larry Hryb:
Yeah.

Jeff:
Look at you, you had it ready to go. By the way that moment's a spoiler in that one, it's a shame. Look, you have no excuse not to play it, it's my favorite game of last year, it's in Game Pass. All of the main line Yakuzas are in Game Pass, so that great. Also, I'll pick one of the smaller things, I'm super excited for Halo. Incredibly excited for Halo. Hype levels cannot be higher.

Rebecca:
Is Halo a smaller thing?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah.

Jeff:
It's not. So I want to focus on... everyone's going to say Halo. So Eiyuden Chronicles, which was a smaller thing that was later in the show, which is made by the creator of Suikoden or Suikoden, I don't know how you pronounce it, but it was my jam back in college. It's this RPG from the PS1 that had like 100 characters. They made two of them, and then it... there were other ones that came later, but I think they were made by different folks. Anyway, so this is an original JRPG by the creator of that franchise and it's coming day one to Game Pass and I'm just super excited about that. I don't think we have a date on that yet, I think it was 2023 is when that's going to be coming out. And that's fine-

Larry Hryb:
By the way, I think I've got-

Jeff:
... but just knowing it's coming.

Larry Hryb:
I think I've got a slide here that talks about all the titles that we had, which ones are available on game-

Jeff:
Oh, wow.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, I mean this is... You can find this on my social if you don't want to zoom in-

Rebecca:
That's awesome.

Larry Hryb:
Let's just say Game Pass, Game Pass, Game Pass, Game Pass. Right?

Rebecca:
What was that? I didn't catch it the first or second-

Larry Hryb:
Game Pass. Anyway, speaking of Game Pass these are coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2021, this whole list. There's a lot there.

Jeff:
Yeah, starting this coming week. Well, starting with Yakuza, like I mentioned, but Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is going to be... A lot of co-op games coming down the line. Can you go back to that Larry, if you don't mind?

Larry Hryb:
Sure, absolutely.

Jeff:
Yeah, that's co-op, I want to say... well, obviously Back 4 Blood is, Anacrusis looks really cool, that's going to be co-op. So it's really going to be fun to be able to play together in so many of these games. Obviously Forza and Halo usually have team up options.

Larry Hryb:
Psychonauts, yeah. Age of Empires. Flight Sim, coming to console. So good.

Jeff:
Yeah. Hades, which was the PC Game of the Year last year. So a lot of folks are going to be able to play that.

Larry Hryb:
Who did that? Who's the guy behind Hades?

Jeff:
It's Super Giant Games, Greg Kasavin. [crosstalk 00:10:04]-

Larry Hryb:
Greg, did you know he's good friends with Felicia Day?

Rebecca:
Oh, really?

Jeff:
[crosstalk 00:10:10], it's a small industry. He's a former journalist, and they've made a lot of really great games, known for having a narrator... The voice acting in this game, I played it on Switch, I'm very much looking forward to being able to play it on my full TV. But that is definitely going to be one to watch this summer. I have to run, I'm sorry. There's someone at my door. These things happen. [crosstalk 00:10:29]-

Larry Hryb:
Oh, okay. I guess this is the way it goes, this is way we record. You know what? Then we'll just do this, bye.

Rebecca:
I love it. You're so ready, it's great.

Larry Hryb:
I'm always ready.

Rebecca:
Well, this is fine, because Larry, what was your moment of the show? What caught your eye?

Larry Hryb:
One of the things that caught my eye was, it's interesting, was this moment. And this was when we saw Sea of Thieves and Pirates of the Caribbean come together.

Rebecca:
Oh, yeah.

Larry Hryb:
What's interesting about this, Rebecca... And I just love watching this trailer.

Rebecca:
It's really good.

Larry Hryb:
What's interesting about this is that if you remember, I think it was before you joined the show, we had Joe Neate on and there's a specific moment during it-

Rebecca:
Did he give an Easter egg?

Larry Hryb:
Well, no. No, what happened was... and I'm going to get Joe on or Mike Chapman, the other director and producer from the show either next week or the week after, where I basically said, "Hey, I love this universe you created, in fact I just made Pirate Legend, and I love this universe you created."

Rebecca:
Congrats.

Larry Hryb:
And I said, "It feels..." Thank you. "It feels like you've done it better than the Pirates of the Caribbean could." And the look on his face, because he clearly knew at that point. I had no knowledge of this. So I felt terrible. And when I found out about this, I was like, "Oh no." And of course somebody dug up the clip. In fact if you look at the clip, I put it in the chat here, if you look in the chat here for this program, you'll see it in there. I'll link off to it. But that aside, because I played so much Sea of Thieves and I love what that team has done with that game, I'm so excited about that.
And the other thing and I'm just so excited about of course, is Starfield. And seeing what Todd Howard and those guys are going to do with Starfield. Did you play a lot of Fallout, Rebecca?

Rebecca:
No, I didn't. And Starfield looks awesome, I wish I would have seen more of it though, to be honest. I was like, "Okay, they're in the ship. Okay." And then, "Oh. I want to see more."

Larry Hryb:
And then they're not in the ship. I loved Fallout. I think I've told this story a couple times on the show. Did you play Oblivion a lot?

Rebecca:
I did, yeah.

Larry Hryb:
Okay.

Rebecca:
Oblivion and Skyrim, yeah.

Larry Hryb:
See, I'm just the opposite. For some reason that fantasy world never did it for me-

Rebecca:
Interesting.

Larry Hryb:
... but the Fallout, the post-apocalyptic did. Even though it's essentially the same game and the same mechanics, right?

Rebecca:
Yeah. That's fair. It's just different aesthetics. I played a little bit of New Vegas, which was fun, but actually, now that I think about it, they are really similar. God, I hate to empty my inventory again. Oh, I need to stop searching all the different baskets and [crosstalk 00:13:27]-

Larry Hryb:
I'm over-encumbered again.

Rebecca:
Yeah. Is that what Starfield's going to be like, "You have too much stuff in your spacesuit. You need to drop some items."

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, I have no idea what's going on. I'm looking forward to that. There's just a bunch of moments. And then earlier in the week, later on in the week, on Thursday, just a few days ago depending upon when you're listening to this, then we had the extended version of the Showcase. And we made a big announcement during that, didn't we, Rebecca? Do you have yours ready?

Rebecca:
I do. I wish Jeff were here for this part.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, I wish Jeff was here, I don't know where he had to go, but we have... and I'm going to hold mine up right now. We have the return of Xbox Design Lab. And you'll notice how mine is orange to match the orange thing here. What color is your by the way?

Rebecca:
I think it's like electric volt or neon... it's like a neon green, but it shows up really yellowish right now. But it's pretty cool. I got to design all the different colors, [crosstalk 00:14:28]-

Larry Hryb:
What did you write on it? I see something there. I didn't put anything on mine.

Rebecca:
It has my gamer tag of course. I guess you can't really see it.

Larry Hryb:
Oh, there you go. I thought I put mine on here. I don't know why it's not here. But these were early. But Design Labs now, with the Xbox Series X and S controllers, they added a few new colors, so you can check that out if you want to.

Rebecca:
I feel like mine, since I have the black writing on the buttons, it just looks like a little face now, it's really cute.

Larry Hryb:
Oh it does, you're right. You're right. They also added the buttons... in fact I thought I had it over here. They added the buttons for the classic Xbox controller, and I don't know if you saw this Rebecca, but James Shields, who's a good friend of mine... I don't know if you know James, he works on the hardware team. He posted the right... I don't know, I guess you'd call it the recipe, because all these are different colors and whatnot, how to replicate the Xbox 360 controller, which had gray underneath.

Rebecca:
Oh, yeah.

Larry Hryb:
And did a great job. So anyway, I'll see if I can find that and I'll put that up on social.

Rebecca:
That's so cool.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, a lot of coolness there. We had a big week this week with the Xbox Games Showcase and all the games in Game Pass and Halo and all the rest of the games we talked about. It's a good week, isn't it?

Rebecca:
Yeah, it is. And another one that look really good was Back 4 Blood, which I think you actually spoke with someone from that team, right?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, you know what we should do right now? We've got a bunch of interviews, I was able to chat with the team from Back 4 Blood, Sarah Bond, who is on the Showcase, she's just amazing. She's just unbelievable. You're going to love this chat.

Rebecca:
Yeah, love Sarah.

Larry Hryb:
And then of course we had Joe Staten, we'll talk about Halo. So what do you say, should we do it?

Rebecca:
Yeah, let's go and do interviews. Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
All right if you watched the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase last week, you saw an amazing game, Back 4 Blood. Joining me today is Matt Driscoll, who's the lead producer at Turtle Rock Studios. Matt, welcome to the Official Xbox Podcast.

Matt O'Driscoll:
Hello, thank you for having me. Looking forward to it.

Larry Hryb:
Great to have you on here. What a great moment to unveil on the Showcase. Tell us about what we saw, because I've got a little bit of the trailer here, but I want to just get it from you. Let's level set and start folks in from the very beginning.

Matt O'Driscoll:
Well, I think we showed off PVP today. That was our big announcement that we were showing today. [inaudible 00:16:53] we're super excited to bring this to the public. They'll be able to play our up and coming open beta, which runs in August from... When do we run? 5th to the 9th for early access if you pre-order or then 12 to the 16th after that, open to everyone. So yeah, we're showing off a bit of PVP, one team plays as the Cleaners the other team plays as the Ridden, and you're going to go off and you're going to fight each other and see which cleaner team can basically survive the longest. And we play a best of three match, and the cleaners that survive the longest take the spoils, they're the winners. That's our PVP in a real quick nutshell.

Larry Hryb:
You're front and center with the message that Back 4 Blood is from the creators of Left 4 Dead franchise, and fans of that series are going to notice some similarities, even in the trailer between games and the title and the artwork, right down do the four player co-op campaign which is great. What other similarities did you draw from, from Left 4 Dead games that we can expect to see in Back 4 Blood?

Matt O'Driscoll:
The Ridden, the zombies themselves, some of the mutations that you'll see. There's going to be some similarities there. Obviously as you mentioned there's the four player co-op against PVE and PVP. But I think it's important to point out that we have... there's some big differences. We got the card system now, and it's-

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, tell us about that.

Matt O'Driscoll:
Yeah, it's just like a Rogue Lite kind of system. As you go through the game in PVE, you earn points, and then you can spend those points on different things, one of those things is new cards, and these cards have lots of different things they can do. It might be that it'll make your reload speed better or your stamina better, I should say. I like reload and stamina so I always bring those two up, because it helps me a lot when I'm playing. And then it's up to you how you want to build your deck. You can build your own deck. We give you a little starter deck when you first start PVP, but yeah, you can build them out pretty quick, and you start building decks in your own play style. So you might build out your own deck and call it medic or support or whatever you want to be. And you've designed it around keeping your team alive, reviving quickly, that kind of thing. And as you strategize at the start of PVE, [inaudible 00:19:12] play a medic, I've got a medic deck for this build.
PVP's slightly different, we do still have the cards in PVP, but it's a set amount of cards. We're don't give you any extra at the moment and these cards you can choose, you can make your own deck. And then we've also built I think four decks out for players to choose from. Again, similar thing, you can be a medic, you could be support, you could be assault, that kind of thing. So you could choose those decks to start with if you're playing the Cleaners in PVP.
The zombies actually have something else, so they get as well in between round, which we call the ZMS, zombie mutation system, as points. Then they could put it into different classes on each Ridden that they're playing. So again, they might want to build up a Ridden's assault, so they put a lot of points into there, or damage. So if you're playing an exploder, from the Reeker family, you want to come in... you get one shot. You explode and then you die. Then you have to respawn. So likelihood is, it would make sense to put a lot of point into your damage so when you do hit that explode, you actually do a lot of damage and it helps out the team more. So there's a little bit of balance and strategy from either sides in PVP.

Larry Hryb:
You talked about building the decks, and that's an interesting feature we have there, but one thing about Left 4 Dead was the characters. You have a diverse group of characters that probably under normal circumstances would never get together, but here in the apocalypse they're getting together. Tell us about what we have with these new characters, that you're bringing with the characters in Back 4 Blood?

Matt O'Driscoll:
Yeah, we call them the Cleaners, and so they're not survivors. They're not scared of the world anymore. The world's obviously not in a great spot, there's a lot of zombies out there, there's a lot of mutated zombies out there, lots of other things. But they are going out there to clean up, let's get rid of the Ridden. I just made that one up. Let's get rid of the Ridden. And so yeah, like I said, they're not cowering, they're not, "We're scared to go out there." They're taking it on. So they're called the Cleaners, and each one has some different kind of abilities. Say for example, Mom is a good one. She's got a quick revive. So if you play that character and one of your other teammates goes down, she can go over and pretty much revive in maybe like a second or two compared to whatever our revive is right now.
So they each have an attitude, they're each there to take on the Ridden, they each have their own weapon set they can use. Yeah, they're not scared, they're not terrified, it's let's go out there, we're going to come out... hey, they're back for blood basically.

Larry Hryb:
And you talked about the Ridden, which here in the game, and like I say I don't want to keep going back to Left 4 Dead games, but in there we saw some very specific characters, like one of them of course is the Witch. We all remember the Witch. So tell us with the Ridden, what type of the different characters do we have? We saw some of them in the trailer, but I was wondering if you could walk us through some of them?

Matt O'Driscoll:
Yeah, you're going to get to play quite a few of them anyway in PVP. So we've got the Stinger. And then two type of variation there. One is the Stalker version, it has a grab/pounce that you grab onto Cleaner and they can pull them away so they've got a bit of crowd control there. And then the other one, my favorite the Hocker, has a pinning attack that comes from the mouth. So like a big gooby, unfortunately. It's like... and it sticks to players [inaudible 00:22:57], there you can see right there. That's the Crusher, he's a variant of a Tallboy, and you see his attack there, you grab players and you're basically squeezing the life out of them. And they need the help to come and get them... sorry, rescue the Cleaner from their grasp, you're going to have to shoot him down.
And then I briefly mentioned we've got the Reeker, and so there's an Exploder we talked about, and also the Retch. And the Retch, again, is another pretty disgusting attack, they're just going to vomit all over you. And they leave the vomit on the floor which is an area of effect. Those are there ones you're going to see in PVP. There might be a couple more that we've not talked about yet, but you'll be able to see them soon enough.

Larry Hryb:
With shipping the game on Xbox Series X and S, I imagine that unlocked a lot of opportunities for you in terms of more zombies, just more, more, more. Can you tell us a little bit about what we can expect there for those of us that have Xbox Series X and S?

Matt O'Driscoll:
Yeah, we got hoards of zombies. There's times where it's going to be, they're coming at you and it might feel overwhelming, but we've got a... you've got the specials that spawn in and all these crazy moments that we've managed to build up during the game, where there's... yeah, it feels like, "Are we going to survive? Are we going to survive?" But it's important that we've also got some lulls in that. So there's going to be time where you can start exploring the world and you can find pick-ups, different items, better guns, loot, copper, which is the currency we use in our game. So there will be times that you can look through the world, find these things, explore. We're going to have some secondary objectives in some of the maps as well, for players to do.
A lot of it point A to point B, safe house to safe house, yes. That is the classic style of game that people remember, and we of course we have that in Back 4 Blood, but yeah, we've got a lot more of these other little things as well. In between the massive hoards and mutated Ridden and whatever else we're throwing at you. And the AI director is also watching so to speak, right? So the game's playing, maybe me and you are in a game and we're kind of like, "Oh, okay, these guys seem to be getting through okay. Their health is good. Let's throw a hoard at them. Or let's spawn some mutated Ridden here."
And also at the start of the round, I talked about cards, Cleaners having cards in PVE. The game has cards as well.

Larry Hryb:
Oh, interesting.

Matt O'Driscoll:
Oh yeah, we call them corruption cards. So every now and again we'll throw one of them out at the players. So a couple of examples, there's a dark card, pretty much does what it says on tin, the level's going to be a lot darker. Your flashlight's going to be on all the time, obviously your line of sight isn't as good. So it makes for a lot slower paced, more tense paced round, when we play the dark card. And then there's a miss card, similar thing with line of sights. We throw more ferocious Ridden at you, or armored Ridden as well. A lot of Ridden have weak spots, we're going to cover the weak spots with some armor and they'll come at you instead. So depending on how you're playing, these corruption cards can get thrown at you.
The AI director's playing at the same time. You've got your deck of cards that you chose, and how you're playing, so there's all these mixes and matches going on in each run, and that's what we hope. That each run is just going to be unique. Something new will happen. Some kind of water cooler moment [inaudible 00:26:49], "Oh, do you remember that? When that happened to us last night? And it spawned that, and that." "Yeah, that was great, how did we survive that?" So that's the mix in how we're trying to get the maximum replayability out of the game.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, I mean, I think that's important to point out is that people think you're playing this game and it's just going to be, okay, you're going to hit this checkpoint, and then we know someone's going to come through this door around that corner, oh brace for it. But with the director and this approach you're having in the AI, it's going to be different, the same map or the same four players, could have four different play-throughs each time. That's the beauty of this, right?

Matt O'Driscoll:
100%. That's exactly it. And then you can obviously, if you find it too easy, you can go up a couple of difficulties or whatever you want to do. I think we're going to have three difficulties for launch. But yeah, you're right, every run should be unique, should be different. The cards, the director, the corruption cards, there's that big pot, let's throw it in and see what crazy experiences we get out of it.
We test daily at the studio, every plays, every has a lot of fun playing it. We're at that stage of the game now where we're finishing off our open beta as well, so there's a lot of play test going into that, making sure we get that firmed up, ready for release in August. So yeah, we're play testing, we're seeing these things daily like, "What happened then?" "That happened to you? That's crazy, that didn't happen to us." So we talk about that at the studio and it's exciting, it's coming together and I'm super looking forward to this game coming out. I really can't wait.

Larry Hryb:
You talked about the open beta. Remind folks again how they find out about it or how they download it or how they participate, how they opt-in, whatever you guys are doing, tell us about that?

Matt O'Driscoll:
Yeah, I mean, quick way, pre-order. If you pre-order the game you're going to get early access, 5th to the 9th of August. And then after that, I think... because all the information is on the Back 4 Blood website on how you sign up for that. Get on it. So you need to find the website, sign yourself up and then all the information will come through that. But it's going to be across all platforms. So the last playable we did, alpha, was PC only. Now we're all console, PC, cross-gen, cross-play.

Larry Hryb:
Wow.

Matt O'Driscoll:
Yep. So if your friend's got a different platform, you can still play together. We're trying to keep everyone together and not split anyone up. So yeah, that will be available during the open beta this August.

Larry Hryb:
And then also, if you're a Game Pass member, day one. That's got to be really exciting for you guys to come into Game Pass, because you'll have an instant community right from day one.

Matt O'Driscoll:
Mind blowing. It's crazy to think about that in October, when we release this game, millions of Game Pass users are going to have access to our game. It's like, I can't think about those numbers because I've never had a game launch like this before. We've always been a bit more traditional launch. So it's super exciting, it's unbelievably great for us that it's going to have huge, like you said, a huge community from day one. And so these things are super important to us. The open beta is... we're going to see stuff there that we know we're going to have to fix for launch. So we want you people to sign up, play it, tell us the things that aren't quite right with it. We have a a little bit of time to fix that stuff for when we come to launch, because like I said, millions of people are going to have a chance to get their hands on this game, and that's an amazing opportunity.

Larry Hryb:
And that's also really important because with Game Pass, obviously your game goes right into it, so people can download it. But you're also forgetting that, "Okay, now I've got this game, which is a four player co-op, I can match make. I'm going to have this massive pool of people that have the game," as opposed to you're waiting a few days or even a week or two weeks until it gets... the flywheel starts going. You guys just hit it and just go. It's big.

Matt O'Driscoll:
Yes, yes. It's crazy. Yeah, it's fantastic. And some other things there. A lot of people have friends that own Game Pass as well, and there's that barrier to entry's gone, "Let's play Back 4 Blood," cool. "It's on Game Pass," even better. I don't have to pay another $60 we can just play together straight away. And yeah, touching on that, you're 100% right, that huge pool from day one, there's going to be matches just all the time. It's going to be crazy [crosstalk 00:31:10].

Larry Hryb:
It's going to be a lot of fun. Well, Matt O'Driscoll, lead producer for Turtle Rock Studios, congratulations on Back 4 Blood. Looking forward to seeing the beta in August, and then full game coming day one to Game Pass later this year in October. Matt, thanks so much and good luck in the last few weeks leading up to beta and release. Thank you.

Matt O'Driscoll:
Thank you. Thank you, it's been a lot of fun. Take care.

Larry Hryb:
What a week it's been for Xbox. As I said earlier in the show, I am so excited to have a very special guest here, Sarah Bond, who I've been trying to get on this show for... Sarah, it's been like three years, but welcome. Welcome to the show.

Sarah Bond:
It has been. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited we're able to do this this week.

Larry Hryb:
It is amazing. Because you were on stage of course with the Xbox Bethesda Games Showcase earlier this week, what was that like, because you're out there, it was a pretty amazing, amazing event, wasn't it?

Sarah Bond:
It was amazing. I just love doing those shows because it's sort of a love letter to our fans and a love letter to games, and frankly it was an honor to get to stand up there and introduce the show and welcome everyone. It never gets old, I have to tell you, it's just such a thrill every time.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, and you got to come out of Starfield, which is amazing and see the team there.

Sarah Bond:
Yeah. And introduce Stalker 2, which is frankly... I still can't believe my eyes when I see that, the electricity, it's unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Larry Hryb:
It really amazing. I want to talk a little bit about what you do because a lot of folks are... you've got this amazing title, you're a CVP at Xbox, but really you are the head of Xbox Creator Experience. What does that mean for folks, for gamers?

Sarah Bond:
It means so many things. Sometimes I have a hard time explaining it, frankly Larry, we're always trying to figure out the right way to describe it, but my team works with all the game creators, developers, and publishers, around the world that want to bring their games to Xbox. And that's everything from the relationship we have them, helping them into Game Pass, but also the tech that they use to be able to come to our platform. And I just love it because it's all about the games and our team is all about games to fans.

Larry Hryb:
The other thing that your team does, what you do covers so much, it's games, and you and I have talked a lot about it's all about games. But your team is responsible for getting out and getting those Game Pass titles. People love Game Pass, so that's got to be a lot of fun too.

Sarah Bond:
Yeah, they do. It is a lot of fun. It's been a real journey. It's been four years now since we started and when we first started actually, there were a lot of developers out there that were a little bit skeptical of Game Pass, honestly. And it was just like working with them and having them try it out once, bring in a title, experience what it can actually do for your franchises. And then they would come back and they would see the lift and engagement and how many more players got to play their games. And then they bring more titles, and it's just gotten better and better every year. And now I look at it and we just have the most incredible catalog in Game Pass. You kind of can't believe it, frankly, with some of the... I sort of pinch myself.

Larry Hryb:
And also, to the point, at the Games Showcase, we announced 30 games that... during the entire show. 27 of those are on Game Pass. That's unheard of, isn't it?

Sarah Bond:
Yeah, it is unheard of. But the thing that's really cool about Game Pass is that it's awesome for players, obviously, because you can just try all these new games, but it's also great for creators, which is why we see such great Game Pass participation. So many people say that they've tried a game in Game Pass that they would have never otherwise tried. We see that people are playing more genres, they're playing more games. So that's why we're able to bring 27 of 30 in, is that it's something that creators really want to be a part of.

Larry Hryb:
When we were going through the Showcase on Sunday and we saw game after game after game, we saw everything from Indies to AAA blockbusters, your team really works across, left to right across all the different developers and all the creators. You get to look not just two weeks up the pipeline, but you're way up the pipeline. You can see games that are coming out frankly that haven't even been announced yet. That's got to be very exciting for you.

Sarah Bond:
Yeah, that's my favorite part. Well, I don't know, I say everything's my favorite part because I just like all of it. But it's just cool when you get to go visit someone, they've been working on something, they show you their IP for the first time, and it could be two or three years out. Or sometimes they'll come see us here. Actually there's a TV behind me because I'm sitting in my conference room. The reason why that's there is because sometimes people come and they actually show us their game for the first time and we sit here with the controllers and play it for a little bit. And there's something so vulnerable about that, honestly, that you have an idea as a creator and you pour your heart and soul into it and it takes years, two or three years, to make these games and bring them to the world, and then they show it to us. It's so much trust.

Larry Hryb:
I was thinking about this, and you and I had a chat earlier in the week, you've had an interesting journey to where you are as a CVP at Microsoft, at Xbox, and the head of game creators. Tell us a little bit about your journey and what gaming was like for you growing up?

Sarah Bond:
Well, gaming was a big part of me growing up and I look at it with fresh eyes now. At the time it was just part of what we did. My first game I ever played was King's Quest II with my dad, I was about seven years old at the time. He had me read out the dialogue I think, because he was trying to get me to get better at reading. I had to sit right there next to him. But then gaming became part of our household tradition for... I'd get home on a Friday night, he would order Hawaiian pizza and he'd put the controller in my hand, because he said I was an expert jumper and he just liked to see how I would play and we would play together. So it's just always been part of what entertainment and relaxation and fun means to me.
And then I started out my career, after I graduated from college, I did consulting, then I worked at T-Mobile for a long time in wireless. And then this incredible opportunity came up to work in gaming, and at the time Phil had said, "We're really doing a lot with subscriptions, so maybe we should find someone who knows subscription. And we're going to do this amazing thing where we're going to make it possible for people to play their games on any device and on wireless devices. Maybe we should get someone who knows wireless." And it just all sort of clicked in my head and I suddenly realized, of course I want to do gaming. Gaming's always been something I love and enjoy. And so to get to be part of bringing that to everyone in the world at Xbox was sort of a pinch myself type of dream job, frankly.

Larry Hryb:
It's interesting, you said something very important there that I think a lot of people are going to pick up on, is that we found out what side of the fence you fall on in the infamous does pineapple belong on the top of pizza. And I think you answered that question.

Sarah Bond:
It absolutely belongs on the top of pizza, as long as it's with Canadian bacon. Yes.

Larry Hryb:
When you look at what your team does in bringing games to Game Pass, it's really exciting because Phil's talked about we're moving beyond just consoles, and there's so much more to what Xbox is. How do you look at that? I mean, that's got to be an amazing thing to look out and see the future of, with gaming on the cloud and so forth. Tell us a little bit about that?

Sarah Bond:
Well, there's 3 billion gamers on the planet and I look at what we're doing and I think, gosh, we're just bringing something that is so powerful, has so much joy associated with it, is such an incredible source of community, and we're making it accessible to everyone. Because the games that we play on console, these incredibly immersive, high-fidelity games, they're amazing, right? They're just some of the best stories and experiences and they create something that otherwise wouldn't exist. You can just actually walk in somebody else's shoes, you can tell a story with a level of vividness and fidelity that you couldn't anything else. You can [inaudible 00:39:44] and push your brain to get better and better at something, over and over again in a game. So I look out and I see what we're doing, and I see us actually creating connection for the world, actually bringing people together.
A couple years ago, Phil and I went on this trip to Africa and there in Africa, very, very few people actually could afford a console. But they all know these games. They all were thrilled to see us there. They're all like, "Oh my gosh, we can't wait for this to be a reality here." And so you know that there's so many people in the world, billions of people in the world, that know all of these brands, that want to have these experiences, and as we're rolling out what we're doing, it's going to be something that they're just going to pick up and start playing instantly.

Larry Hryb:
I mean, that's a great way of putting it. You think about the 3 billion gamers and everybody who doesn't have access to games, and certainly maybe they can't even afford a console or anything like that, but that's one of the great things we have with Game Pass [inaudible 00:40:50] you get access to all these games, and there's things we're dong with xCloud, where you don't even have to own a console, you can do it from your mobile device. That's pretty amazing.

Sarah Bond:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:41:00].

Larry Hryb:
Now I can see why Phil brought you here.

Sarah Bond:
Well, I don't know. It's a team effort. I talk about this a lot but it's just an amazing. Team Xbox is an amazing team. Everybody has these unique perspectives and a part to play, and we've created it together, and it's probably the first time in my life that I've truly, truly felt part of a team.

Larry Hryb:
Well, I have to tell you, as somebody who's been on the Xbox team as you know for 17 years, we as gamers and a member of team Xbox, we are so thrilled to have you in our corner and getting great games for us on Game Pass, and just doing all the great work that you and your team is doing. So I'm so excited we finally got you on the show and I appreciate you coming by, and I want to thank you again, on behalf of gamers for just giving us such a stack of games to play and I can't wait to see what you and your team are going to be doing in the near and beyond future. So thank you, Sarah, it's great to have you on. Thank you.

Sarah Bond:
Thank you. There will be more games. So I can't wait for you guys to see what's going to come up next. It'll be awesome.

Larry Hryb:
Big week for Halo fans. Halo Infinite had some great news, and joining me is the man, the myth, the Halo legend, Mr. Joseph Staten. Joe, good to see you.

Joe Staten:
Larry, it is great to see you as well, in this strange world where we only see each other on cameras, but still.

Larry Hryb:
I know. I miss seeing you in the office. I mean, you and I have worked together for a long time. I was thinking about it, I first met you when you were working on Halo... I mean, you've worked on all the Halos, but when Halo 2, because I joined the team right before Halo 2 launched, so that's when I met you.

Joe Staten:
That's right. Wow, the Halo 2 launch, that was a good one.

Larry Hryb:
They've all been amazing, but it's great to see you. What a great week you guys had. You had a great moment on stage on Sunday. Tell us a little bit about what you announced and how you're feeling right now?

Joe Staten:
Yeah, so Bonnie Ross and I were both on stage talking about two things really, one we wanted to give everybody an update on the campaign.

Larry Hryb:
There you are.

Joe Staten:
And so yeah, there I am. It's funny, I don't look any taller on camera, I wonder why that is? That's so strange. But we wanted to give people an update on campaign from last year, but the main thing we wanted to talk about was our multi-player part of Halo. I mean, as you know, as I said on stage, you cannot have a Halo game without multi-player and we haven't talked about Infinite's multi-player yet, we certainly haven't shown any gameplay footage of it. So that was the main thing we wanted to do this past weekend.

Larry Hryb:
We talked a little bit about that on Sunday, but then Monday morning you guys put out a vidoc which just was mind blowing some of the things you saw in there. In additional to Tom French's beard, but that's a whole other conversation.

Joe Staten:
Well, that's mind blowing on its own. We [inaudible 00:43:52] have a whole vidoc just about Tom's beard. It would have been amazing.

Larry Hryb:
But it really was, it went into a lot of detail and people, this Halo community, has been craving for a long time. As somebody who's worked on all the Halo games, it's got to be great to see the excitement there for Halo Infinite, because really it's going to be exciting, isn't it?

Joe Staten:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And we're at this exciting stage of the project where we're so close to being done, and by done I mean taking the game out of our hands and putting into player's hands that we're able to show real game play from matches. And so it's very easy for us to talk about it now that we can be completely transparent about what we're working on. And vidoc's also, I just think a really fun way to connect with fans, and just have a more intimate conversation about this is what we care about as designers or artists, this is what we hope you really enjoy as players. So that was really fun I know for the whole team to let that out there and see people's reactions to it. It's been a really positive, uplifting experience for everybody on our side.

Larry Hryb:
Some of the areas that you talked about, that I want to talk to you about, is cross-play and cross-progression. Let's talk about your POV on that, because it's really interesting.

Joe Staten:
Larry, you know what's great? Is when different kinds of people can play games together.

Larry Hryb:
That's right. That's right.

Joe Staten:
No, it is. It's really, really good. And so for us what's so exciting is that whether you're on a console, whether you're on a PC, there's no barrier in terms of multi-player game play. You can play with each other and your progression, as you said, crosses platforms. Frankly, that's the way it should always be and we're just happy that Infinite multi-player is doing that. I think it's been great. I certainly find myself, at home, where I'm jumping back and forth between devices depending on who's using a device in the home or just general how I feel like playing that day, whether I'm in more of a mouse and keyboard mood or a controller mood, whether I want to be on the TV or on the couch, or just in a quieter place. It's just a convenience I think, but more importantly, I have friends who have different platform preferences. I have PC playing friends, and console playing friends, and in Infinite there is no barrier to play together, which is great.

Larry Hryb:
I also want to point out that, the PC version is going to be there day one, right?

Joe Staten:
That's right. Yeah. All platforms are going to hit on day one.

Larry Hryb:
And also, I know we've talked about this on this show many times, but Game Pass. Day one Game Pass. Of course it's on day one Game Pass.

Joe Staten:
A little thing called Game Pass. Absolutely. Yep, it's there Game Pass day one, so if that's the way you want to engage and play the game, absolutely.

Larry Hryb:
You know, with multi-player, your team made an interesting decision this time around where it's free to play.

Joe Staten:
Right.

Larry Hryb:
What does that mean for folks? Because we've seen a lot of free to play games and certainly most people when you hear free to play you think there's going to be ads popping up all the time, but that's obviously not the case, it's not a mobile game. But tell us about free to play is, and why you made that decision?

Joe Staten:
Yeah, absolutely. And for people who might be watching that didn't hear the news over the weekend and some of the clarifications we offered. The campaign is not free to play, you can either purchase the campaign or of course you can play it through Game Pass. The multi-player is the free to play component. For us free to play is all about helping us earn the biggest audience possible. Just lowering the barriers for entry, letting anybody jump in who want to and experience Halo. Of course we want to create a great experience for our long-time, grizzled Halo veterans, but it would also be wonderful to bring in new players to the game as well. So that's really what free to play gets us is hopefully the biggest audience we've ever had for a Halo game.
In the vidoc, and if you haven't had a change to watch it, I highly recommend it, it goes into a lot more detail than we have time for today probably, but the short story on free play for us from a design point of view is we're taking a player first perspective on our design choices and our monetization choices to be frank. So we do have a battle pass system, but the battle pass in Halo Infinite never expires.

Larry Hryb:
So it's battle pass infinite.

Joe Staten:
Larry, you need to trademark these things. It's battle pass... I don't want to call it battle pass infinite, I might get in trouble if I use that word. That's the spirit of what we're doing. If you buy a battle pass, it never expires. If you want to play a battle pass from a previous season, you're welcome to flip the battle pass that's active and earn toward that particular battle pass. If you're in a season and you want to purchase a battle pass from previous season, that's possible too.
Because we know people are busy. We know people don't have time to work through an entire battle pass sometimes. And we don't want to put that pressure on players to always feel like they need to grind it out or they miss out on the opportunities to earn things that they really care about. We want to let people see something on a battle pass that they really want and then give them the time to go after it, and ultimately to earn it.
So that's just one example of our approach to free to play, which is really a player first approach to it, which I think is great.

Larry Hryb:
And I know you mentioned, or I've read that you guys are going to have a technical preview this summer, obviously for multi-player. So let's tell us a little bit about that.

Joe Staten:
That's right. So we've been flighting the game, which means just sending the game out to larger and larger rings of players for a number of months now. Those flights have been relatively small as we stand up the multi-player experience, but over the summer leading up to launch, those rings, those flight rings, they're going to get larger and larger. So you can sign up for those flights, have a chance to get into those flights. And the numbers keep increasing, like I said, from flight to flight. If you've got Halo Waypoint, you'll find instructions on how to get on the insider list and be ready to be called into action for these flights. So [crosstalk 00:49:59]-

Larry Hryb:
Tapped on the shoulder.

Joe Staten:
That's right. That's right. And like I said earlier, Larry, this is the exciting time of the project where now we take it out of our hands and we largely put it into other players' hands. I think sometimes people say, "Well, why aren't you doing a beta?" These technical flights are mission critical for us, these preview flights are mission critical for us because we are actively reacting to what we see there. I think sometimes people think, "Am I going to play this? Is this going to matter? Are they going to take my feedback, and is it going to positively impact the game?" The answer in this case is 100%. We're diligently looking at what's happening from everything from weapon balance to the way the modes work, to of course all the technical stuff under the hood, match making, to make sure that we have a really stable, rock solid, fun experience at launch.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, it's interesting, because when you say that, it reminds me... we started off this interview how you and I have worked together for a long time and became-

Joe Staten:
We're old. We're old now.

Larry Hryb:
But I remember the days for Halo 2 and for Halo 3 and beyond, where we would send out internal emails, "Hey, we're having a take home this weekend," we'd have to come pick up a disc, right?

Joe Staten:
That's right.

Larry Hryb:
And we'd come pick up the disc and we would play and you have weapon balances. And I remember there was one, I don't remember what it was, this was never seen in public, but it was a test map where you had all the weapons lined up and you could just go pick up the weapons. Do you remember that? In the world environment. And that was a lot of fun. But it reminds me a lot of that, where we would... But now with this amazing where everyone's connected and you can just do insider rings, it just allows you a much broader, to your point, broader press coverage. Or excuse me, broader test coverage, right?

Joe Staten:
Yeah, 100%. Absolutely. And the cool thing is, Larry, back in the day, that firing range or test range that with had for Halo 2 and other games, that experience was super useful. If you wanted to warm up with weapons to just get ready for multi-player action, you had a place to go and do that. And when I joined the Infinite team back in the fall, I was so excited to learn that they actually had made that an experience that's available to all players. And we showed some glimpses of this in the vidoc that we released. And it's called the Academy.
And the Academy is this place where you can go to learn the basics of playing Halo multi-player, we have weapon drills where you can pick up weapons on a firing range, just make sure you're going to go and dialed in before you jump into multi-player. I think now that we're in this world of trying to get an even bigger audience and trying to attract, as I said, old, grizzled Halo fans, and people who never experienced Halo arena and big team battle before, this Academy experience is super important for us just to provide a place where players can jump in and get ready to go.
A big, important component of that is for the first time ever, bot support.

Larry Hryb:
Wow, yeah.

Joe Staten:
Yeah, the bots, I would have to say, with their multiple difficulty levels, the bots can be quite challenging.

Larry Hryb:
They're legit.

Joe Staten:
They're legit. And so it's this really fun experience that, as you said, has always been valuable for Halo players, and I'm just really happy that now it's not just a debug toolset, but it's an actual experience, built into the multi-player experience. The Academy, where you can go train against bots, play around with weapons, and just get good to go before you jump into multi-player.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, there's nothing worse than when you're in a multi-player game and you finally got that power weapon, and then you lost it, you didn't even fire a shot and you lost it. Now you can go in and experiment and say, "Oh, so this is the zoom," press it and hold it down to do something or what have you, and just learn all the weapon intricacies.

Joe Staten:
That's right. Yeah, absolutely.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, I don't know if a lot of people know this, and this wasn't on the list of things we're going to talk about, so I'm going to take you-

Joe Staten:
Larry, I told you not to talk about that time in the desert with the scorpions, what are you going do?

Larry Hryb:
No, I don't know if a lot of people know this, but I'm pretty sure it's in Halo 2 and Halo 1, but I don't know beyond that, but you did the voices for the early grunts.

Joe Staten:
Oh, that's true. That's true. But Larry, I'm sworn to secrecy about whether or not I will have a return as a grunt in Infinite, that would be fun though wouldn't it.

Larry Hryb:
That would be a lot of fun. But I just do remember somebody would tell me-

Joe Staten:
[crosstalk 00:54:13] it's like, "Nah, I've been there, seen that. Bring it on, Spartan. What do you got?"

Larry Hryb:
I love that. We talked a lot about the multi-player and the campaign, tell us a little bit about the campaign, because I know I got to let you go, but tell us a little bit about the campaign before I let you go?

Joe Staten:
Sure. Well, as I said over the weekend, this is the largest, most wide open campaign we've ever built. And I just remember, as I said, when I joined the team back in the fall getting a chance to play the game for the first time and honestly being genuinely shocked and delighted by how expansive this world was. And I said this I think, I don't know if I ever said this publicly, but for me it really was as I was playing at this realization of a dream that we had had 20 years ago when we made the first Halo game of being able to explore this beautiful, mysterious alien world and have a feeling of being grounded in the world and that it was big enough that it could be filled with any possibility. That there weren't ridge lines that stopped you. The idea of I can go over that ridge because I can see a alien spire poking out over the top of it. [crosstalk 00:55:25]-

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, let me go check that out.

Joe Staten:
Yeah. And of course there are boundaries to our world as there are in any video game world, but for a Halo game it feels so much more expansive, so much more filled with the possibility of adventure and mystery. It just was a super impactful feeling that I had that first day that I played, and I have to say, every time I go back and play a build, I still have that magical feeling. And I'm just really eager for players to jump in begin to explore this world. It's a lot of fun.
And I've also described it as just... you have the Halo sandbox, this tight 30 seconds of fun where you as the player are the most powerful actor in this rich, emergent, physical simulation, you poke something, it reacts. Imagine that, but just expanded. So if you have an encounter in this new Halo game, it's no longer just a few axes of attack on that encounter, it's now 360 degrees of choices for players about how they want to take down this banished installation, et cetera.
I mean I could talk for hours about the campaign, and I'm sure we'll do it at some point, Larry, but it does have this wonderful, expansive feel to it, but it still retains that tight Halo sandbox, that tight set of really interesting choices for players, which has always been a hallmark of the game. So I think the team has just done a really, wonderful job of achieving a lot of those dreams that we had so long ago, it's just really incredible to see them now real and in software to play.

Larry Hryb:
And then of course you talked about the weapons and whatnot, but of course another part of the Halo universe is the vehicles. And there's such a rich tapestry of vehicles to play with. I love the vehicle usage in the game, but also of course the vehicle combat, so I'm really excited and looking forward to that.

Joe Staten:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, it's going to be fun.

Larry Hryb:
Before I let you go... I'll have you on again maybe as we get close to launch, but launch is... back in the old days, we talked about launch is we're all done, people... it's gold, we go on vacation. But really launch is just the beginning-

Joe Staten:
We all line up at [inaudible 00:57:28] and get our [inaudible 00:57:29].

Larry Hryb:
That's right. But launch-

Joe Staten:
[crosstalk 00:57:32].

Larry Hryb:
... for most people now, including your team, it's launch is really just the starting line, right?

Joe Staten:
100%, yeah. It's the start of the conversation with our community as it's always been, but as we talked about at the Showcase event, it's the start of our service for Halo. When I say service, I just mean a commitment by us to our players that we're going to deliver a steady stream of content and new experiences, fun gameplay, new ways to customize your player character, season to season and year after year. And I know Halo games have done this previously, we've had DLC and other post-launch content, but that's different a more regular conversation, a more regular series of heartbeats with our community. So it's just super exciting to see the stuff that's behind the curtain still that we haven't talked about, and the plans that we have moving past launch, and yeah, I can't really talk about that, but I can only say that I'm really excited to continue that conversation, continue to offer fun ways for people to play the game and get rewarded for playing well after launch. It's going to be, one might even call it, a great journey, Larry. I think we could accurately call it that.

Larry Hryb:
You know what, Joe? I-

Joe Staten:
Except without that weird thing that happened that the covenant believed in that isn't the good part of the great journey, but this great journey is really going to be, let's call it the best journey. How about we go with that?

Larry Hryb:
The best journey. All right, listen Joe, Joe Staten, you are the head of Xbox Creative for Halo Infinite. It's great to see you, you've been with Halo longer than most people I know. I mean, for many people you are Halo. Just like many people say I'm Xbox, for many people you are Halo. So I want to thank you for the many games and the many hours of-

Joe Staten:
Thank you, Larry, it's very kind.

Larry Hryb:
... hundreds of thousands of hours of fun we've had. Looking forward to Halo Infinite. We'll get you on closer too launch, how's that sound?

Joe Staten:
Sounds great. Thanks everybody, I appreciate it.

Jeff:
Thanks so much, Joe. Could not be more excited about Halo and of course our other guest Sarah Bond and, oh man, I'm looking forward to Back 4 Blood as well. This has been a historic week. It's not a big week, it's not an exciting week, this has been a historic week. [inaudible 00:59:50] by the way, thanks for baring with me.

Larry Hryb:
Oh no, yeah, well we took care of business, just so you know. We took care of it this way.

Jeff:
Oh boy. Oh boy. I don't know, Larry, does it match your shutters? [crosstalk 01:00:04]-

Larry Hryb:
By the way, Jeff, we were showing off our controllers before we went into the interviews.

Jeff:
[crosstalk 01:00:10] Florida Gators controller. Oh, I like that one. That's nice, the volt. Anything volt on it.

Rebecca:
Thank you.

Jeff:
I got mine as well, and I have yet to open it.

Rebecca:
Ooh, unboxing.

Jeff:
So I have no idea what it looks like.

Larry Hryb:
We are doing an actual unboxing on the air here. So I'm going to go fullscreen on you so we can see-

Jeff:
This is great radio by the way, if you're listening on audio, this is top notch, hit fast forward... Oh my God, this is bad at all.

Larry Hryb:
Now, what was your theme? Is it Eagles themed?

Jeff:
My theme was Miami theme, but not quite Miami. It was more like just Dolphins maybe? Even though I don't really care for the Dolphins, I love this [crosstalk 01:00:43]-

Larry Hryb:
It's kind of the opposite of mine.

Jeff:
Yeah. So the one you made, I made one very much like it-

Rebecca:
You guys worked together on this.

Jeff:
... with Design Lab Expert before. But we kind of are inverse. I really love the, I think it's called the electric blue?

Larry Hryb:
Yep.

Jeff:
Whatever color, this teal color is just beautiful. Looks even better, and I like it [crosstalk 01:01:01] gray-

Rebecca:
So is it really bright?

Jeff:
No, it's just deep. It's just really deep like a oceanic blue, but then the gray looks nice with it, but then I wanted the pop of orange, and of course it says, "Larry can't cook." Or no, it says, "[inaudible 01:01:17]." But I felt... well, I didn't feel bad for Kahlief, if you watched our extended show, the Showcase Extended today, he really went after... Parris really went after Kahlief. [crosstalk 01:01:34].

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, he was sleeping on that because we had Kahlief on the show about a month ago and he was talking about how much he cooks better than Parris. Well, Parris came back big. He hit back big.

Jeff:
Now, here's what Parris doesn't know, which is that Kahlief is making one now. And who knows what it's going to say.

Larry Hryb:
Who knows what it's going to say? I feel like we should get those gentlemen back on the show here and they can have a cook-off.

Jeff:
Yes.

Rebecca:
I like that.

Jeff:
If you could figure out a way where I can taste what's being made on-

Larry Hryb:
Virtually.

Jeff:
... through the power of the internet, then you might be too rich to be on this show anymore.

Rebecca:
I volunteer to Shoutcast for that one.

Larry Hryb:
Yes.

Jeff:
That would be awesome.

Larry Hryb:
So anyway, we had-

Rebecca:
And Kahlief coming in hot with a cast iron. Sorry, [crosstalk 01:02:16].

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, it was pretty crazy. But yeah, great show if you want to-

Jeff:
Did you ever watch Iron Chef back in the day? I feel like you would have been a good host-

Rebecca:
Yep, I'm ready. If we're down, I'm down.

Larry Hryb:
Okay, all right. I'm in. All right, anyway. So Jeff, we just pretty much talked about that, of course we had the interviews here, great to hear from those folks. I don't know if you are prepared to talk news.

Jeff:
Am I prepared?

Rebecca:
A lot of news his week.

Jeff:
I mean, come on. So did you talk about Sea of Thieves yet?

Larry Hryb:
Well, yeah, we talked about that was being my favorite moment. If you open up the chat, the chat in this program, in the little chat window I put a Twitter link in there, I want you watch it. And I was telling the story about how, when I had Joe Neate on a few months ago and I talked about it, and I was talking about the Pirates of the Caribbean universe, I did not know that that was going to be announced. So he's has this look on his face, because he's obviously been working on it for a long time, and it's like... So I have to get him back on to apologize for doing that live on the air.

Jeff:
That's really funny. That's really funny. He goes white, and he's just like...

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, he's just a deer in the headlights.

Jeff:
He kept it a great secret, but it's... We have to get back in there and play that, that's June 22nd which-

Larry Hryb:
I will not be playing with you until you reach Pirate Legend. I'm sorry. I'm just sorry.

Rebecca:
Legends only.

Jeff:
Larry, let's not. Let's not be elitist here. I'm pretty good at bailing out the boat.

Larry Hryb:
I'm sorry, Jeff, I'm not [crosstalk 01:03:48].

Jeff:
Oh no, you're right. You have the most finely appointed portholes on your ship, I'm sure. Plantation portholes.

Larry Hryb:
Anyway.

Jeff:
Hey.

Larry Hryb:
Hey.

Jeff:
Have you played anything recently? Did you talk about that? [crosstalk 01:04:06]-

Larry Hryb:
You know, we usually talk about that at the top of the show. What I didn't talk about is I am... the game that you and I have been playing, which is Tunic.

Jeff:
That's what I wanted to talk about. Yes.

Larry Hryb:
Have you played it, Rebecca?

Rebecca:
No, I haven't even heard of it.

Larry Hryb:
It's in the ID@Xbox festival of games. I think there's almost 30 games you can download. It's free download. Jeff-

Jeff:
It's a Summer Fame Fest demo, so this is almost like when you go to E3, which we all miss it, and of course there's the part where there's the big broadcast, the showcase as you would, as you saw this week. But then there's the part afterwards, when the broadcast fades to black, and then everyone gets out of their seats and they go up to the stage where you see all those monitors, they start playing games. And of course there would be the big titles that you would expect, but then there's also typically a lot of Indies. And there's that sort of playing a build that is not ready to necessarily be released, but it's like, it gives you a real feel for what the game its.
And now, and this is the second time we've done this, you get to have that experience. And so it's the Summer Game Fest Demo Event, and Tunic is one of those ones. Go onto the store at Xbox and you get to try it, it's like a Link was a fox on a very original, sort of isometric Legend of Zelda. It doesn't even [inaudible 01:05:26] when you hit the view button... yeah, it's the view button right?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah.

Jeff:
The two squares, and you go to you menu, it looks like an instruction booklet from the NES. It really looks like you had imported this game from some other country and you can't really even read the language, and it just style for days. It's also really, pretty challenging. There's like 30 or 40 games there, some of which are coming out sooner rather than later, and some which could be down the line. Sable, I hear is the one to really check out as well as Tunic.

Larry Hryb:
Sable?

Jeff:
Sable. Yeah, that one looks... has a very incredible art style. We have a blog post that has a lot of different stuff. I've heard great things about Riftbreaker. Look, when you get done with E3, there's always that feeling of, "I don't want to play games I have, I want to play games I don't have yet." Now you get to do that.

Larry Hryb:
Right.

Jeff:
And that's pretty awesome.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, it was pretty awesome. So that's a lot of fun, so check those out. But you got some other news, I mean, do I have the news ticker? We do have the news ticker. We can bring that up if you want to just go through it.

Jeff:
Well, so we had our... there is is, Roboquest is coming soon to wreak havoc. That's what I was going to say. So obviously we had our big showcase on Sunday, but then later in the week on Thursday, as we talked about Parris Lilly hosting the Extended show, and some of you might not be quite as up on that. Of course one of the big announcements was the return of Xbox Design Lab. And there was lots of nuggets, I highly recommend if you were really interested in Forza Horizon, if you were excited to... you wanted to know more about what Ninja Theory's working on, if you wanted to see a deeper dive into Psychonauts or Stalker 2, which by the way looked so good, that's very high on my level.
One of the things I wanted to call out specifically is we loved A Plague Tale: Innocence, the game where you're escaping a horrible-

Larry Hryb:
Speak for yourself, the rats were driving me crazy.

Jeff:
There was so many rats, you've never seen this many next gen rat rendering technology. But it had a very brutal look at the Middle Ages and just how life was tough in the Middle Ages, especially I think it took place during the 100 Years War, which is a long conflict between France and England, with horrible atrocities happening. And it was a great game. A lot of stealth and things like that. It's on Xbox Game Pass. Really, if you're looking for something a little bit different, highly recommend you try it out. It's amazing, it's made by Asobo, the same developers that made-

Larry Hryb:
Flight Sim.

Jeff:
... [crosstalk 01:08:03] Flight Simulator. Not the same teams. They should put a rat on a plane or make a rat plane, I think [crosstalk 01:08:08]-

Larry Hryb:
You know what? I'm going to be so disappointed if... I don't know think anybody, is there a rat in that Flight Simulator universe? Is there an Easter egg somewhere on planet Earth? There better be.

Jeff:
That's what I want to know. There should be, well maybe, we'll have to check. But A Plague Tale: Innocence, if you haven't played, is getting optimized for Xbox Series X and S, on July 6th.

Larry Hryb:
Yes.

Jeff:
So if you want to get ready for Plague Tale: Requiem, which is also coming to Xbox Game Pass, I believe... I don't want to get the date wrong, but not this year, but you want to get ready for that, really recommend playing A Plague Tale: Innocence. Really enjoyed that one. The characters, you start really feeling for them and really caring about them. There's some brutal moments in that game, and I'm glad they're making a second one, and I'm glad this one's going to be optimized.

Larry Hryb:
Yes.

Jeff:
Speaking of optimizations, our good friends at Bethesda are optimizing Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood for Xbox Series X and S. It's already happened.

Rebecca:
It looks really good.

Jeff:
Even if you hit the button as soon as I said that, it was too late, it already had been done. So a lot of graphical improvements, of course those improvements are free for all players, and you you play ESL [crosstalk 01:09:16]-

Larry Hryb:
I just want to point out, it's not just it's free, this is smart delivery in action right here. You don't have to go download another version of the game, we just... we handle that for you. There's none of this manual stuff. Let's look, we live in that age of computers, let them handle it.

Jeff:
Yes. Yeah, that's where it goes.

Rebecca:
This is how the end begins.

Larry Hryb:
This is how it begins, exactly.

Jeff:
Look, if our AI overlords are going to make things convenient for me, then just take it. They can't do a worse job than we've done as a race, as humans.

Rebecca:
Fair.

Larry Hryb:
Fair.

Jeff:
Maybe they could, I don't know. Did you talk about the June Xbox update, Larry, coming to consoles?

Larry Hryb:
No, we've been saving and when you decided to rejoin us.

Jeff:
Look, I tried to just be vulnerable and let you know, there's a lot of stuff going on in my life. And I had to run away for five minutes. And I'll never-

Rebecca:
[crosstalk 01:10:12] from home.

Jeff:
Yeah. Really there was no one at the door, it's just after Larry's shirt was unbuttoned I was just like [crosstalk 01:10:18]-

Larry Hryb:
I'm out.

Rebecca:
Uncomfortable.

Jeff:
So really cool additions in terms of accessibility to the console. So party chat now supports transcribing speech to text, and text to speech, which is just really awesome. This is, we're talking when you're in a party, you can have the words that are spoken up show up there, and it just makes part chat more accessible to more people. And is a very cool setting you can do that through in the settings there's a whole accessibility setting within your Xbox that you could do that and that's a feature that will be coming. So you can find it in Ease of Access, which will be in game and chat transcription.
There's also some additions to the Xbox mobile app, which they continue to update. There'll be some official post which you'll see from the game devs and things like that. And I have a request here to reorder groups in the guide. The guide is when you hit the Xbox button and that pops out there, and people wanted to be able to move their groups, and that is coming as well.

Larry Hryb:
Move my group.

Jeff:
[crosstalk 01:11:34] as well, especially in terms of child protection, in terms of insuring regulating what your kids can play if you've got [crosstalk 01:11:42]-

Larry Hryb:
Your family settings.

Jeff:
... parental settings set up. The family settings. So you can approve your family's cross-network play requests. Which is good to have that extra option. Highly recommend by the way. If you've got a kid, you've got to set them up with their own account and set them up with the family settings. It enables so much power, you have so much control exactly what they can and can't do, so you just don't have to worry about it.

Larry Hryb:
Why worry?

Jeff:
Worth the effort.

Larry Hryb:
There's enough things to worry about in this world.

Jeff:
True enough.

Larry Hryb:
One thing we didn't talk about during the briefing in the beginning of the show was this. And this is-

Jeff:
Oh, yes.

Larry Hryb:
... one of the biggest moments. At the end of the show-

Rebecca:
Oh my gosh, yeah.

Larry Hryb:
... when it was revealed that we... So this was an interesting idea. There's been a whole fridge meme going around, if you're watching this on video, you can see the trailer that I'm playing right now. Is there was a refrigerator that we're going to be selling, right Jeff?

Jeff:
Yeah, there was one more thing, and everyone thought the one more thing was just Red Fall, which [crosstalk 01:12:55]-

Larry Hryb:
Was one more thing, but then there was a one, one, one more thing.

Jeff:
Yeah, the post-credit scene, Samuel L. Jackson found this in the desert or something like that. And yes, this is something that-

Rebecca:
That's amazing.

Jeff:
From meme to reality. What was it? Don't let your memes be dreams? I love that this is coming. I have a feeling that demand is going to be high.

Larry Hryb:
Can we at least call something out here? I think I talked about this with Sarah. It was Aaron Greenburg's idea. That whole thing was Aaron Greenburg's idea, who's head of [crosstalk 01:13:30]-

Jeff:
[crosstalk 01:13:30].

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, so he's-

Jeff:
He's going to be-

Larry Hryb:
As opposed to a fridge magnet.

Jeff:
... [crosstalk 01:13:32]. No, he's going to be one of those appliance salesmen. He's like, "How much to put you into this Xbox?"

Larry Hryb:
You know what? Aaron is the new Maytag repairman.

Jeff:
Please direct all-

Rebecca:
Yeah, I can see Halloween costumes from him already.

Larry Hryb:
So anyway, I just want to make sure-

Jeff:
Oh, imagine dressing up as the fridge and you opened it up and you put the candy in there. I'm thinking.

Larry Hryb:
I know.

Jeff:
I'm thinking. Halloween's back.

Larry Hryb:
What else you got there, Jeffrey?

Jeff:
I mean, there's been so much news. All I can say is go to news.xbox.com, there is the news from the Showcase Extended, there's the news from the actual Showcase, there's been other news throughout the week as a lot of our partners have had great shows. I don't know if you saw the deep dives on Battlefield. Battlefield just looks incredible. That's a game that we had so much fun. Actually I wanted to call out, actually Scarlet Nexus that we saw there at the top. There was the Extended show hosted by Parris, had lik 15 minutes of that game. That game's coming out next week. I could not be more excited about it now. I already thought, this was a demo, I was like, "This is cool," but these city scenes really got me excited for this game. It's a beautiful game.

Larry Hryb:
You love this type of game. Is that the tech tree?

Jeff:
Yeah, that's in your brain, your brain map, I think it's called.

Larry Hryb:
Wow. Wow.

Jeff:
Very complicated. But when I saw that there's the city part, exploring... I don't know if it's Tokyo, but there's some crazy huge version of the Tokyo Tower that's as big as Mount Fuji. I don't know, I love that stuff.

Larry Hryb:
We love our Tokyo.

Rebecca:
I have one small other plug or piece of news. Not from this week, but last week. So Minecraft just released our big summer update, Caves and Cliffs Part 1. Part 2's releasing this holiday, so if you want to check out an Axolotl in Minecraft or goats... Do you guys know what an Axolotl is?

Larry Hryb:
I would like you to tell me.

Jeff:
I do. But tell us.

Rebecca:
Okay. Yeah, it's an amphibious animal, not a reptile, amphibious, amphibian, that's native to, I think Mexico and it's endangered, but we brought it into the game. And if you play with Axolotls I think that they can join you in combat even, and then you can have buckets of Axolotls, and I saw a video of someone who created an Axolotl race, and he spawned two and then was trying to lure them and then have them swim in a race. And there's goats, and there's cliffs, and there's all kinds of new stuff to jump into and try out. So I would highly recommend. Yeah, there it is.

Larry Hryb:
Is there an Axolotl on this page?

Jeff:
New materials, there's so much there.

Rebecca:
Yes, [crosstalk 01:16:17].

Jeff:
Yeah, the pink thing.

Rebecca:
Oh yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah. Oh, and the Glow Squid, which was the mob that won the community vote at Minecraft Live our broadcast last fall.

Larry Hryb:
That's right.

Rebecca:
The Glow Squid has arrived and sorry to everyone who voted for the Moobloom but here we are.

Larry Hryb:
Better luck next year.

Rebecca:
Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
That's great stuff, so-

Jeff:
If we lose the vote, I accept it. I just accept it. It was like, "Okay, it's the Glow Squid. We'll just leave it." [crosstalk 01:16:41].

Larry Hryb:
And what do people need to do to download? I mean, your Minecraft just updates and you get all this-

Rebecca:
It's free. Yeah, it's free.

Larry Hryb:
It's free. Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be? You're in Minecraft, you guys do great stuff over there. For those folks that don't know, Rebecca works on the Minecraft team, on the communications team, so she is our in-house, not just hear on the show, but in our team she's the expert. And she plays a lot of it. I've not been invited to your realm yet by the way.

Rebecca:
I don't think I've invited anyone. My house is very much still in development and I don't want to... I'm the kind of person where I don't want to show anyone until I feel really, really good about it. So sorry, you're going to be waiting a while.

Larry Hryb:
Okay. We'll wait. Right, Jeff?

Jeff:
We're not your real friends I guess. Because I would not judge your house in progress.

Rebecca:
Honestly I'm-

Larry Hryb:
May I make a suggestion?

Rebecca:
Yes.

Larry Hryb:
If you could, could you put in some plantation shutters?

Jeff:
Oh, there it is. There it is. He brought it all back.

Rebecca:
I'm envisioning it like a tropical house, where it's missing a wall but then it's really open and... Okay, or I'll put in some shutters. Okay.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, okay. And it can open... it's got kind of a West Indies vibe, right?

Rebecca:
Yes, that, exactly.

Larry Hryb:
Right. I totally-

Rebecca:
Inspired by tropical.

Larry Hryb:
I love that.

Rebecca:
But I think lately I've been playing a lot of games by myself.

Larry Hryb:
Like what?

Rebecca:
I don't know if it's antisocial or what, but so I started playing Wilmot's Warehouse. Have you guys heard of that one?

Larry Hryb:
No. Tell me about that?

Jeff:
No, tell us?

Rebecca:
So it's on Game Pass. I don't know if it's new to Game Pass, but I hadn't see it before. It's you play as a helper in a warehouse. It's a puzzle game. It's relatively simple, basically you're fulfilling orders, but then all of the different items that you have to use to fulfill the orders are stacked up together and so it's almost like... Not like a Rubix Cube, but it's one of those games where you have to figure out how to rearrange things so that you can get to certain items in time, and you have to bring them up to fulfill the order. But it's been pretty fun so far.

Larry Hryb:
This it?

Rebecca:
Yeah.

Jeff:
[crosstalk 01:18:51].

Larry Hryb:
This is the Windows 10 version.

Rebecca:
Yeah.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
Okay. Are you getting ready to-

Jeff:
Dr. Mario vibes off that.

Rebecca:
Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
... do some part-time work out there at JFK 1, Rebecca? That's the big Amazon fulfillment in New York.

Jeff:
How do you know that?

Rebecca:
That's very specific knowledge.

Larry Hryb:
Maybe I read the New York Times.

Rebecca:
Ah, that makes one of us.

Larry Hryb:
So anyway, as you were saying? It looks like we may have lost Jeff. Yeah.

Jeff:
I'm here. Can you hear me?

Rebecca:
He's just entranced.

Larry Hryb:
We're going to back to Rebecca and I while Jeff figures out his connection. I don't know what happened to your connection there, my friend. He just disappeared, so we'll let you go there. Anyway-

Rebecca:
Sorry, buddy.

Larry Hryb:
... so Wilmot's Warehouse, that sounds like a lot of fun. And again, you said it's on Game Pass?

Rebecca:
Yeah. It has nice ambient music and then it's [crosstalk 01:19:43] retro-

Larry Hryb:
Like Minecraft?

Rebecca:
Yeah, exactly. I guess a lot of the games I play are somewhat similar. It's all cubes, it's relaxing, and moving items around. Oh God, I really need to branch out a little bit more. One game I also downloaded that I'm going to try out this weekend, is called Maneater. Have you heard of that one?

Larry Hryb:
Oh yeah, Jeff and I played that probably about six or seven months ago. That's the one that you play as the shark.

Rebecca:
Oh okay. Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
That one's cool and I think it's now enhanced for Xbox Series X and S, so that's a fun one. Yeah, you should check that out.

Rebecca:
[crosstalk 01:20:10].

Larry Hryb:
If you want to be a shark, this is where you need to go.

Rebecca:
I'd rather be the shark than the human in that scenario.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, I completely agree. Completely agree. Anyway, well I think we're almost at the end and... Oh, wait a minute. What are you doing over there?

Rebecca:
This guy again.

Jeff:
I don't know what's happening. I did nothing. I'm innocent.

Larry Hryb:
Uh-huh (affirmative), sure. Tell it to the judge. Anyway, we're going to wrap it up here. We've had a big show with all these interviews, and it's going to... they're going to continue next week. We got more interviews next week. We got, Rebecca, you're going to be doing an interview. I don't want to talk about them yet. I'm going to work on getting Joe on. We have a bunch of stuff lined up. Just because it's the summer... The summer used to be a relaxing time in games, not anymore. Not anymore.

Rebecca:
Not anymore. Yeah.

Jeff:
There's so much to play though, that's good.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, so much to play. Check out Game Pass. Whatever you want on Game Pass. Jeff and I'll be in... Rebecca, do you want to play some Sea of Thieves with us? It doesn't have blocks.

Rebecca:
Yeah, I'll try it out.

Larry Hryb:
But we can play it.

Jeff:
Wow.

Larry Hryb:
No, she was just talking about it-

Rebecca:
[crosstalk 01:21:14].

Larry Hryb:
... when you decided to have your situation there, we was just talking about how-

Jeff:
I didn't decide... Larry, not today.

Larry Hryb:
Okay. Not today. All right gang, we're going to wrap up here. Any final words before we go? Rebecca, any kind of words? And by the way, welcome to New York.

Rebecca:
Thank you. I will gladly accept any restaurant or pizza recommendations over DM. My DMs are open.

Larry Hryb:
Do me a favor, just by next week I need to sample at least two or tree pizzas.

Rebecca:
[crosstalk 01:21:43].

Larry Hryb:
Oh, there he is. So maybe you can go out and... No pizza for Pumba though. No Pumba pizza.

Rebecca:
Well, he can have a little bit.

Larry Hryb:
All right. All right.

Jeff:
Pumba disagrees.

Larry Hryb:
Jeffrey, anything you want to say before we go?

Jeff:
No, it's good to be back and through most of the show... Oh, there's people in my house now, and my room. So I'm going to go. I'm going to go.

Larry Hryb:
Okay, well you're going give up the-

Rebecca:
[crosstalk 01:22:04] good timing.

Jeff:
Yes.

Larry Hryb:
All right gang, we'll see you all next week. Bye-bye everybody.