759: Artful Escape, Sable and Life is Strange True Colors

hi it's larry hryb xboxes major nelson welcome to the show welcome to the podcast we've been off a couple weeks but we have the gang back jeffrey over there on the left rebecca to the right me in the middle hi gang hello hi it's good to be back hello it's been you know it's funny the end of the summer is kind of this funny time at least here in the united states you know we're kind of schools going back in session for those of you those of you with kids and everyone's trying to get the last drops of summer out like rebecca in new york and jeff and i appear in seattle where you know it's jeff i don't know about you but did you notice how the sun just left oh it's done it was very quick rebecca is it me or your latency just like super low like i feel like you're just like you're closer than normal you just well maybe how did you know um yeah i'm actually coming to you live from the microsoft campus in a very empty meeting room in a very empty building in a very empty campus right now now so which means so you for those of you that keep up with this rebecca's been out in new york are you back here permanently are you going to go back or what's going on oh no i just really missed my parents and pumbaa and i was tired of the sunshine and having fun in new york so i wanted to come back and be cold so here i am i did not bring a thick enough jacket for sure who needs all that great pizza and the subway and all of the rest of that stuff there no yeah that's not who needs that anyway well well i'm well god but you're only here for a little while is that your first time back in the office since covid hit yeah this is my first time in the office all year and then as soon as i got here 10 minutes later there was a fire alarm so that's how it works right that's that's exactly how you know it's funny because we we were doing and you were scheduled you get an interview each one of us has an interview this week but we were having one for you and now you were like texting me like uh there's a fire alarm like really what's going on there i don't understand that but anyway it was fine when i was there so if it had just been the flashes i could have ignored that but there was also the you know emergency immaculate evacuation yeah evacuate yeah that's well you you need to do that so i thank you for respecting the fire alarm process so thanks for that but uh it's been it's been it's been a couple weeks as i said at the top of the show i don't know what you all have been playing but i figure we'll go through that we've got some great interviews we've got some news rebecca let's start with you since you've uh you've been traveling i don't know if you had a chance to play what do you mean yeah i started playing psychonauts um like a week and a half ago and uh it's it's really good i'm really enjoying it so far i will say though it actually did give me nightmares it did what well without spoilers jeff finished it and i finished yeah so i ha so i haven't finished it yet um like i i started it and it's in the you know like the mouth i'm not giving any spoilers there like when you start the game you're in this like mouth dentist nightmare scenario and then surprise i actually had a nightmare about that did you have i tend to have time to vivid dreams was it a nightmare you were in someone's mouth someone was in your mouth you were at the dentist like i don't think i want to know the answer to this life i'm just trying to figure it out yeah it was it was basically just me in the game it i mean it's it's kind of a lot of different scenarios right like you're in like an office space and then all of a sudden then you're in a mouth and you're jumping on molars and things like that so it was a little bit of all of those things and i woke up and i just felt kind of gross but i still kept playing the game anyway now i just know i need to not play right before i go to bed so this has happened before i told you i had a nightmare after we played uh aliens fire team too that's right right sorry yeah that happened to me that used to happen to me when i was when i was younger where what happened it was halo halo gave me um elite and grunt nightmares for some reason i don't know why that was a long time ago that was a long time ago were they were they exploding and going yay yeah exactly yeah that was it was uh it was it was joe's state because joe staton does a lot of voices used to do a lot of voices for the uh for the grunts used to grunty voices but yeah it was yay and all the rest of that i'll get you human or whatever so yeah well for you i will just say psychonauts only gets trippier from there so uh expect more psychonauts dreams there it is

i think i need to carve out playing time during the day then yeah there's one there's one whole section and jeff i don't know if this will be a spoiler or anybody helps you spoiler folks who have played it it's the psychedelic section and that one that's not a spoiler it's yeah it is it first of all i love the music in that section it was so chill and relaxed it was like a festival but the whole thing i mean it is just a i got like i tweeted out over the weekend when i finished it it is it is like a a little trapped like the little trapdoors in the game it's a little trapdoor into tim schaefer's mind it's fascinating it's exceptional so and you just have to tell me when you do the game show level both of you i want to hear your i did it i remember you told me i remember you told me about it jeff it was a lot i was like this is it was fun i really enjoyed it it's so good it's so good it's so funny it's it's really a very funny game yeah it's so you'll this this is when you need to finish rebecca it's just again don't play it at night got it okay but you said you finished it over the weekend like is that what you said i did i i just you know it was one of those games it's one of those games that i just kept you know you keep keep going back to and i couldn't stop playing i just loved it it was it just it kept getting weirder and weirder and the voiceovers are so good like that i don't even know again this is not a spoiler jeff but you'll understand what i'm saying like that angry moth in the level do you remember the moth that was flying around it was i don't know why i loved her i loved her voiceover oh that one yeah for sure yeah like why there's so many like bothering me leave me alone and why do you have to realize there's a library level pretty far into the game and there's a lot of just like optional sort of i'll just say people to talk to you should do that because they all have really interesting very funny things to say yeah i did in fact i told my sister my sister's a librarian and i told her about that level because at some points one of the little mechanics is you go into books and it's a platformer inside the books i i just thought that was all this game is great i mean so i don't want i don't want to call it because i am not qualified to say this and and the internet will remind me of this uh this may be a game of the year it's certainly in the in the running i i think people it no it's been a lot of conversation like that you're not the first to say it it's exceptional obviously we have a lot of year left and and so uh but uh certainly me i would say my favorite game that i've played so far this year and again people it's on game pass and actually it's on game pass so if you're on xbox you have game pass you're all set it's also it's pretty much on every platform because they when they did the kickstarter so it's also on playstation i know that phil tweeted out about playstation um so it's it's it's a lot of places enjoy it have fun yeah so rebecca you playing anything else no i had a bunch of friends in town the last couple weeks so it's i haven't had a lot of that's why i've been playing at night is because that's my only like time i've had to play so right yeah i'm trying to figure i'm just pulling up the xbox app right now so i want to see what i've been playing because i played uh playing quite a few things i started doing artful escape and jeff will have an interview about artful escape later on in the show jeff talk about trippy yeah i would there's really nothing like this and especially coming off of psychonauts and playing this it's like there's never been a better time for really like visual sumptuous visual psychedelic sort of colors like you've never seen them and to play them both like essentially back to back is uh pretty trippy and great music as well so really they're the games themselves are nothing alike but in terms of that sort of aesthetic um people making the most of the medium to just you know i think that games have been criticized at different points mainly like 10 years ago for like being too brown or too gray um nope not anymore so uh yeah they found they found the color wheel in in photoshop right they turned the saturation like all the way up yeah it's yeah it's a lot of fun what you know i know jeff you said uh you were playing artful escape what else are you playing yeah um there was another game that came to uh game pass that was looking for something in between actually because artful escape i was waiting for it to go live and and the day before a game called breath edge went live which is like a sort of an interesting uh space game it's like maybe it's not as funny as they think it is they're trying very hard to be funny and there are a couple chuckles there for sure but um you're sort of like marooned in space and like you know you have very little air and trying to like go around and find this to repair this to do this and so i found you know i spent a few hours with that and i had a pretty good time i also then played split gate which is you've probably probably i've heard really good comments yeah portal plus halo equals split gate it's a free-to-play game it's cross console so i actually was playing with uh sid and some friends over at playstation we were able to get in there together um it is very trippy because you realize exactly how maybe um if you know if you're playing shooters like that are most commonly out there like you know the rules right when you start thinking oh wait so there could be a portal there and someone could shoot a rocket into in through this portal and that could just come out and kill me well that's not something i was thinking about but it was really interesting you're now playing a game that was it was like oddball and you remember oddball from you know from halo we have to hold on to this skull i think and they had a similar mode to that and at some point it clicked for me i got the ball and i put a portal someplace and if anyone came near me i just dropped the portal and jumped through it i kept popping out of the same place but they didn't seem to figure it out and i just ran the table on the match and it was uh it was pretty funny so um it's a really interesting title it's free to play and um split gate yeah give that a shot and then oh i've just been playing an awful lot of octopath traveler which i will be playing that for the rest of the year and then oh and i beat uh ghostbutsushima so i've been playing a ton so that was yeah

i've been left this room for years is octopath travelers that you're like i'm i'm gonna sit down and play a game what am i gonna play well i'm comfortable with this one let me just jump in and play an hour for this is that because we've all got those games in our gaming cycles right yeah it's one of those things where it's like um i can make progress on that game in an hour you know i can make a tremendous amount of progress and i gave it an hour so it's a series of sort of i don't want to say bite-sized stories but like i can play through a chapter maybe in like an hour or so thing is there's a ton of chapters so i i will be i think i'm 30 hours in i think that's like a 80 to 100 hour game right but i don't want to stop playing because i know that uh i i'm gonna i'm enjoying it it'll be worth it but there's a lot of great stuff coming down the line i know we'll be really excited to play uh we've got uh from the makers of yakuza we've got uh last judgment coming out next week so i think that'll be i need you to do the big from the makers of yakuza you know i need you to do that do the big announcements in the world right right yes exactly tokyo 2019 yeah one game i forgot to mention that i just started last night and jeff you know what i'm gonna say i don't loop death loop oh yes please tell me about it hearing a lot of great stuff about that yeah i mean it's i'm just just started it so i'll have a full report next week so you'll be you may see me playing if you're on if you follow me on xbox live you may see me uh playing that because i'm playing it on steam and steam will tell you what game you're playing over at xbox live if you hook it up properly so i'm gonna build the thing i'm gonna play some death loops so you'll see me playing that i'll let you know how that goes because that's from our our other one of our other studios bethesda yeah arcane leone was the studio and the leon i've never been in france i've never been outside of paris in france what about you rebecca just paris yeah although i know i think one of our one of our colleagues went there and he had a fantastic time right oh everything everything about everything about french france is so beautiful i was looking at i was reading an interesting story about i don't know why i bring this up but i will it was about the the school lunches around the world that children have and i saw i saw that round up too yeah and remember like france they have a chef they have china they have silverware i mean i don't know about you guys but when i went to school if i you know that that cardboard pizza was that was the special yeah they have mexican pizza that's what was called in our school it was like there was nothing mexican about it but it was what it was called it was like a hexagon it was the this i mean florida cafeteria no we we just had that terrible frozen pizza that was in like not even slices it was like rectangles and it was you know it was just that kind of right you remember that oh yeah yeah we had those and then certain times i think it was like maybe similar to something they served at taco bell not i have to look at the origins of making pizza now but uh definitely florida mexican people there's something that's more mexican where it's basically just a um like a tortilla and they put stuff on top of it so so it's more on the mexican side that they're having to call pizza it's not pizza that's mexican does that make sense no no i don't know never mind so i don't know how we got it french french food so i mean if we want to go did you did you see uh lupin did you watch lupin uh season two came out earlier in the summer if you want to just like enjoy the scenery of

the character is his real name um just very likable like very just like very cool guy people find that but it's on netflix and they're just they're dashing around paris and you just watch it and you just like fall in love with with you know paris and they're in other parts of france at different times so uh a really cool show highly recommend it's pretty there's only like i don't know maybe 12 episodes total um but um check it out lupin has nothing to do with lupin the third the all right that was my first guess good distinction

i guess it's like their version like i guess if it's real like the french version of like the um you know some inspector or something like that i don't know well no like i'm like uh he i guess our san luis pen was like a i was like the hearty boys or some sort of like so is he with the certain the police

he's a gentleman thief okay oh i say i see gentleman thief never mind okay uh we've got we've got some interviews boy do we have some interviews for you all this week so jeff i i i do you want do you want to kind of set us up and we can roll into them because you're not right you are larry uh we all have one which is really cool first up larry you're going to be speaking with rebecca basel from life is strange true colors which is out now then rebecca not the same rebecca this rebecca is going to be talking to greg atherothis uh the creative director from shed works the makers of sable this is a really cool looking game coming to xbox game pass and then lastly it was my distinct pleasure my honor to talk to johnny galvatron you'll see rebecca you'll see johnny galvatron can't wait he's the maker artful escape he's sort of the creative genius behind it he is he's exactly what you think he is and but and then some so take it away life is strange true colors is now available on xbox and i'm very excited to hear to be joined by rebecca basel who's the producer at deck nine games hi rebecca hi what a delight to have you here life is strange is uh you know this has been an amazing uh franchise that uh that that gamers have loved for years and years you guys have really pushed the boundaries of storytelling you know in the electronic video game medium but i want to talk about that but before we get going i want to talk about you and your journey and and what you do there at deck 9 at deck 9 games would you tell us a little bit about your past sure um well i feel like most developers when they talk about their journey into the game industry they always start out with a this is not typical but we'll don't try to understand the same thing and i i i apologize i'll repeat the same this is not typical so i started playing games like everyone else when i was a kid um primarily on uh playstation xbox and i realized in college i went to a small liberal arts college in maine called bates college uh i was a rhetoric major there which is basically what a fun way to spend four years of your life and your college tuition uh it was i studied the way in which different texts be they a speech book film a game can be persuasive and or tell a story in a way that compels the uh player or reader or person who hears it to them be convinced of that viewpoint um i realized wait a minute i'm sure i'm sure my rhetoric professor and department head will be like well actually it's this definition of rhetoric but that's a major yeah it's basically it's it's i'd liken it to like film criticism or just media analysis in general yeah um i realized my sophomore year of college that i was like i don't know how but i i games are such an amazing wonderful way to tell a story and to interact with something and i i wanna how can i make rhetoric and games interact and i was like i have no idea i'm just gonna write every single term paper i can for every rhetoric class about a game and the way in which a game is designed how it tells their story i ended up actually writing my honors thesis in my senior year on narratology authorship and agency in video games i looked at the stanley parable which now working on a life is strange title i i think fits just so perfectly well um yeah i uh so i i when i first got out of college i applied for a job at nickelodeon so i was a production coordinator there on their uh mobile and web games team and then associate producer about three and a half years they're in total and then a friend of mine who's another producer on the game rachel sema reached out to me and said i'm on this amazing project in colorado this is really special we're hiring another producer you should come and i said i've never been to colorado why would i want to go to colorado i'm in new york city i'm having a great time why would i do that um and she's like no no you have to come it's very special let's cut to the scene of you packing all your things in your car and going over the george washington bridge and driving west right okay well i i didn't know what to expect and then when i got here and i hope um what i hope players of the game feel because this game really is a love letter to colorado and i think a lot of the developers on the game feel this way too if you got here and you're like wow oh my god there's so much biodiversity in the landscape and there's so many beautiful things in the mountains and the towns that are here and just everything that's just wonderful in colorado so i got here i fell in love i found out i was working on life is strange three having grown up oh played it and played the first one in college i started i burst into tears sure and then when i found out it was about empathy i cried even more because i think something that a lot of young folks especially young women are told when they're growing up is that your empathy or just empathy in general is emotions or things to be feared and not really things to investigate and the more that you focus in on those it makes you a weaker person and i think um i'll i can talk more about the game and how that applies later but it's really special to be able to now as a producer uh help artists engineers programmers all these different engineers program the same thing all of these different individual contributors uh help make the game in the most effective efficient way possible i mean this is this is an amazing story because your background is exactly what that game need or what that those that that that franchise needs in terms of how to convince people so that that must be real really good that you you know you look in your rear your career rearview mirror and like ever and i tell people this all the time every single thing you do adds up and it brought you exactly where you need it to be so that's re that's i mean well done congratulations on that now let's talk about the game life is strange true colors brand new game it's out now this is this is you know i can't remember which which number this isn't but there's been quite a few of them in terms of chapters but where does it fit in the narrative of the life of strange universe so this is a brand new entry into the life of strange universe um there are some references scattered throughout easter eggs that fans can find that maybe reference the events that have happened in previous games but as far as if you're a new player you know nothing about the franchise you just saw this really cool trailer in march and you're like oh my god that looks fun i want to try it right new players can jump right in um we have a brand new protagonist alex chen and her um she's grown up as a kid within the foster care system having been separated from her brother gabe for the last about eight years i believe the start of the game she's 21 or 22. okay um and we arrive in haven springs uh where she's been contacted by her brother gabe to start a new life and um when she gets there about a day after a day of having a great time uh and the trailers say this so no spoilers technically but uh he dies in a mysterious accident and you alex using your supernatural power of of empathy slash mind reading slash heart reading where you can see and understand the emotions of people and why they're feeling a certain way have to find out what happened to him and what the secrets uh what haven springs is hiding from that too you know you just finished telling us about your your college work in university where you learned about how to essentially do exactly this um so how does it feel to take i mean i mean you must be writing your professor right now going hey guess what i'm doing this because you wrote all about that when you were in college so that's amazing that you're able to to bring it forward what is it like to create work with these characters did did you walk in and say and and and they said okay alex is the name of the character or were you actually able to develop the character that it was this type of person and defined it and tell us a little bit about the character creation process so me rebecca i'm not involved in the process i came a bit later on into the development but um what's funny you mentioned my college work because the way that the writers were thinking about alex and her character and the way that she would be informed was very similar to the work that i did in college right um the writers when they when the team when they came off of life estranged before the storm in 2017 they knew they wanted to make a game about a character or somebody where empathy was the central power right because essentially video games are empathy machines when you think about it of you are you as the player being asked to control the fate of a character on screen and understand their background what they need to accomplish x y and z and then you know the choices you make from them inject like impart that empathy towards you about that character um so the team really started to focus on okay what kind of character where they could feel the super empathy where would this be a problem where would it be dramatic um and the team did a lot of research and consulting with people in that who have grown up in foster care of when you're constantly being uh transported either from either different foster home to foster home or living in a system where you have everybody's emotions constantly surrounding you and you're trying to figure out who you are versus is this the emotion that i'm taking from somebody else and then ha which is something we experience just generally and then bringing that up to like the 500th degree what types of things would you see and feel and hear um and i that was always the core and that was just a really fun world to explore and what kinds of things would happen to that person yeah i'm looking at that and we've got the trailer right here right now and you can kind of see a little bit of it it's it's you know it's it looks like the life is strange universe which is great but we can see a little bit about the main character and and as you as you play as as her and you know her superpower that you referred to earlier is how does that reveal itself how do you how do you see is it just thought bubbles above someone's head or tell us a little bit about that mechanic so um one special piece of this for alex who is our new protagonist she is the first life estranged protagonist where we start the game and should we instantly know right off the bat this is a power alex has had for a very long time and she comes to haven springs viewing it as a curse and how that manifests is when alex encounters an individual with a particularly strong emotion she'll see that emotion radiate out from them in a colored aura and that color matches the emotion that they'll have so in the beginning um you know if the character is angry they'll have a very big red or around them if they're sad they'll have a blue aura and alex if it's at a high enough level can use her power to uh read into that person's thoughts and see the world temporarily as they see it you know it's interesting to say that because i mean we've all had those experiences where you or maybe you're angry or you're happy and you feel like you're radiating red and anger or happiness green or whatever your whatever your happy color is um so it's interesting to see that you you choose you chose that as the methodology and of course part of the you know part of the um the experience and these games is just is again is the rich storytelling you know life is strange as you said you played the first one who you were a little bit younger in college they really just i mean they they're almost the books of our generation in some regards certainly people say video games are like that but these are just so specific in terms of their storytelling it's it's got to be great to work on that but what's interesting also is that you're now working at deck 9 games and and if i understand correctly is is don't nod which started the series you guys are now taking that that that mantle forward for life is strange is that accurate um i don't believe that we are the ones taking the entire franchise that franchise belongs to square enix and we were lucky to be able to do an entry in it sure um so this yeah yeah so with this um specific moment i think what's so wonderful about the life is strange franchise and the the immense um you know men's glass ceilings that don't nod broke without putting this game forward and showing that there's an audience for people for stories about young people and experiencing the mundane in a supernatural way focusing on story and community building and just seeing how many people out there that mattered so much to them was really freeing for deck nine um knowing that we could start telling stories uh and luckily in this universe about love loss grief um moving away trying to find what home means to you all of these different mental health and emotional health um things that all of us have in our life and we learn how to process has just been a blessing to really have had that wonderful precedent set by don't nod and then now us throwing our hat into the ring to add to that world right the original game some of the original games uh life is strange they were broken up in chapters do you use the same mechanic for this for this title yes um the only difference is now we're giving the player much more agency in choosing do you want to play all of them through at once so you just get the whole thing at once but you still have those breaks or do you want to you know at the end of a bad cliffhanger at the end of a chapter stop cry your feelings out take a minute and then maybe come back to it in a couple days a week but um so that the structure is still built in and it doesn't fundamentally change but we're allowing the player to choose that rhythm that they want to have the story yeah it's it's a recipe that people enjoy and and lends itself to the really the the modern storytelling so i'm so excited to see i mean it's funny because we have to talk about this game and i i you know we can't we don't do any spoilers you kind of told us what it is but there's also something interesting here is that you know you talked about the chapters but my understanding is with one of the additions there's also um some downloadable content that's going to happen later in the month is that accurate uh yes um our dlc for our beloved character steph uh life is strange wavelengths it's coming out i believe the end of september um which is wonderful uh the fun i don't i'm so sorry pardon my words

what's so special about the production of this specific dlc is uh we actually the team started you know writing it just as we went into lockdown for the pandemic and we kind of had to readjust everything and this whole dlc that you're seeing is a single person katie bentz who is amazing shot by herself and then the team working remotely to tell this complex story of a a woman moving to a new place trying to establish what her identity is as a queer woman throughout the entire year before the events of the main game and the fact that the team pulled this off is and just how it just so perfectly tied into the constraints we were given as a dev studio it it feels natural and it was just so it's so so amazing to have that be put together well i i you know first of all i always love to tell people this i mean the most important feature of any game is shipping it you've done that so congratulations um so it's it's great to see and again for for folks that are new to the life is strange uh series you know this is you don't have to play any as you said earlier you don't have to play any of them but if you do you'll see some things in there that you may recognize and certainly this amazing amazing storyteller so rebecca basel thanks so much producer at deck nine games congratulations to you and the team for shipping it and thank you for joining us today yes thank you so much for having me i hope you guys enjoy playing sable was first revealed to the world a few years ago and it's finally going to be coming out on xbox xbox game pass and pc next week and so here to tell us about the game is greg from shed works hi okay it's going thanks um tell us a little bit about sable uh yes so sable is a open world exploration game you play as a young girl setting out from home for the first time uh on kind of a rite of passage that everyone on this in this world takes part in which is called the gliding and the gliding involves basically basically everyone in this world wears a mask um and masks kind of convey different cultural or carry different cultural meaning or function and the gliding is basically a way for

young adults going into adulthood to try out different kinds of masks and see what kind of fits them and then at the end of the gliding they choose a mask to settle with so throughout the game you'll be trying out different things helping out different people meeting different people exploring different places and um and yeah just basically trying to find out what fits you but the game is primarily based around exploration so there's lots of kind of uh big open spaces to explore you're driving around on a hoverbike uh through the dunes and exploring different biomes different um like old ruins and uh fallen spaceships uh as you do so so it it's kind of a has a loneliness to it in a way the game like uh it's part of like the story we're telling uh about leaving home i guess and some of the feelings you get when you do that um you know we kind of thought of it

in a similar way to when you leave home for the first time maybe go to university or start living on your own or go and do yeah i don't know people do different things in different places i guess but uh yeah this is sable's version of that and um yeah it's it's primarily based around exploration we wanted it to keep it quite loose um so there's kind of uh there's no set kind of main quest line to do there's just a variety of different things that you can choose to do places you can visit and we don't really do a lot to control that we kind of want to give the player a lot of freedom um and that's kind of also reflected in the mechanics that we use in the game so we have this very free climbing system where players can climb on more or less any surface and explore any environment and approach any environment in any way that they want um and yeah we kind of keep yeah that all kind of ties in i think or we tried to tie that into the idea of exploration and discovery and uh really try to evoke strong feelings of wonderlust and uh yeah it kind of started yeah we started we're two-person studio but the team's grown over time and it's been the game's been in development for a while we kind of first had the idea in 2016 um but we didn't start full development until late 2017 um we didn't think it would be a game that people were interested in we thought it was just a silly passion project um and yeah we started sharing on twitter and uh people apparently were interested so from there we managed to get support and get to make it the way we want it well it's it's a pretty unique approach to have the player have so much freedom i mean usually even in different open world games there's still some kind of storyline that you need to follow some point a to z that you have to get to in order to progress so that's a really interesting approach i mean is that is that kind of evocative of like the games that you and like your partner typically like to play or like how did you come up with the inspiration for that kind of open no real necessary direction um i think it's partly like a production thing it's because with such a small studio by having this really loose structure um it allowed us so we kind of have we have a beginning and we have an end but the things in between are more nebulous and you know part of that is that's our way of giving the player agency of saying okay uh the kind of start and the destination you know let us tell you that story but the the journey in between uh you can kind of choose where to go and what to see and if you don't like something you can walk away from it but what that meant on the production level was that we could kind of scatter these content this kind of content around the world and so people uh so it meant that if we needed to cut something if we didn't have time for something it wouldn't the kind of overall structure wouldn't just collapse on itself which sometimes with games uh when you're producing them in a more linear fashion so you need players to see this thing or do this thing in order to make the next thing make sense um and for us we didn't have that issue so much um i mean it brought plenty of other issues making an open world game but um that was the idea at first we thought we thought we were being clever um but uh we still made an open world game with a small team so we're not that clever um yeah it's it's refreshing i mean i can't tell you how frustrating it is for me to get to a certain point and then it's like oh no you have to have already completed xyz in order to progress and i hate that so i think this is actually a very refreshing take i'm excited to try it yeah i think and so you just have to collect a couple of masks and then after that like uh you can wrap the game up um we expect people to continue playing um but but we do encourage people to just play how they want and uh you know when they're when they're bored of it to go wrap it up and feel like they have a completed story i guess yeah okay well with the masks it's that's interesting so is the mask that i would create or get not necessarily the same as like what my friend would get if they were playing the game like it kind of varies by the route that you take within the game yeah so um so different it's often kind of uh go runs down professional lines so maybe there's like you have these masks called the machinists and they're kind of like uh the engineers of the world they they're kind of scrapping uh old technology from big ships and turning them into more functional objects in the world so you can get uh a machinist for example or you could get a um a cartographer's mask and those uh cartographers are kind of like the map makers of the world and they're floating around in their balloons and you can uh get get so you get badges from different people and when you have three badges uh you can take that to a mass caster and make a mask um and so the idea there is that you're you're meeting different people with who maybe do the same profession but uh maybe have different backgrounds in that profession or maybe you get all three badges from one person or maybe you don't need any badges at all for a particular master we kind of mix it up but um the master you pick at the end you know that will affect sable's life going forward i guess um but so in that sense yeah that's more more down to you and your journey but um i think we have enough masks that you could finish a game and totally you'd only see you you can see a totally different set of masks to your friend for example and uh yeah and end up choosing something totally different and i think that is something we wanted to encourage is this feeling of like the playground whispers like trying to keep things a bit more secretive and try and encourage people to talk to each other about the game and their experience and the things they did and hopefully that will vary a bit with different people and you might say oh did you see this thing and if your friend if your friend says no you should uh no oh i totally missed that like that to me is a cool experience because then people like sharing stories about the game and sharing uh their experiences in a way that i think becomes more and more difficult now with games um there's a lot of a lot of stuff get showed very early or before launch and you know it's a totally different way of experiencing games but this was the idea we had before uh yeah

yeah i've i've seen um i think the the reveal trailer and then there was another trailer recently and you can see a lot of really interesting aspects about the game but it doesn't like give away exactly what you're going to be doing um so i yeah it looks pretty cool i mean can you tell me a little bit more about the the hover bikes i mean is it weird it kind of reminds me of star wars no no um i mean the horror bikes well the star wars connection is is definitely there like uh the original idea of the game definitely was inspired by uh by actually a force awakens like i think it was kind of like okay yeah an idea of like oh what if ray never left uh jack what if what she was just a normal person what if she wasn't the one to save the world and what she was someone who just lived on this planet um and it kind of evolved from there obviously uh you know it's not it's not the exact same idea but um but that was the original conception and and so the hot bikes running of star wars isn't a surprise to me but um but actually we so sable gets given a hoverbike at the beginning of the game um simone who's your uh kind of traveling companion and as you explore uh you'll get different bike parts and you'll be able to customize your bike you'll be get different bike panels you'll be able to change the color but the customization system like i think it's really cool system actually we uh you can change the front the wings or the back of the bike and you can create kind of configurations that look totally different to each other and also handle and sound totally different from each other and i think you get some really interesting uh bike combinations you know i haven't i've probably only seen like uh 40 50 of the different combinations i i mean yeah there are gonna be some trained ones i think and some fun ones um but yeah i think i think that's another way for players to express themselves uh in the game uh that the mars they wear and also the clothes they wear so they'll be able to change what clothing they're wearing uh throughout the game um yeah it's very cool a lot of player freedom in this game i'm sensing a theme yeah yeah i think you know we yeah for sure can you tell me a little bit about the the art and the music i mean it looks really beautiful like both of the trailers that i saw were really well done um like what's the yeah what's the inspiration behind the art and the music yeah um the the art we kind of started it's like from a few different places we started with some like experiments using uh line art techniques and then we were obviously inspired by the work of mobius the belgian uh comic and comic artist and uh sorry the style was lincler mobius was french but we were inspired by the belgian comic styles but that mobius was kind of like a pioneer of but um and also tonally very inspired by uh studio ghibli's uh animation work um but also a lot of the inspiration yeah a lot of the inspirations come from actually my backgrounds in architecture are sold architecture um and so a lot of the references that we call from were actually architects so carlos garper archegram and the metabolism the japanese metabolism like a lot of these were kind of an arcusanti in arizona it's like a really interesting uh desert uh kind of living scenario um and yeah these were like real world architectural experiments that we looked at and kind of were inspired by um but yeah it was just like a kind of uh synthesis of these different elements and trying to create a place that kind of felt unique um and i think in games especially um because we wanted to pull as much as we could from outside of games for these sorts of inspirations um and you know part of that tied into the what we want to do with music too so actually the composer of the game is uh indie musician uh japanese breakfast and michelle who is japanese breakfast she composed the entire soundtrack and all the songs in the game and yeah it was we wanted to kind of have someone who hadn't necessarily worked in games before uh bring something new to the table and that was just a really cool exciting experience to work with her because she's out touring and writing writing the songs for the game in the back of her tour bus and stuff um and she you know she brought production experience and also just a different insight into making uh making music but we also had martin uh who he's a sound designer on loads of different game projects uh and so we kind of got to have them as our sound team and combine someone who's super experienced in games and someone who this is like this is well she did a small game project as a promotional piece for her second album i think but this was her first kind of uh game project as just a composer um and yeah i think that was something we again like outside of games inspiration that we wanted to pull in and see what we could do with in in a video game yeah well it looks and sounds really unique and beautiful i'm very excited i'm sure you have a lot to left to do before it launches next week but do you have any final words uh yeah i just i hope people come in and and

feel like yeah i hope we create something that is just something really evocative and gives makes people feel kind of a sense of wonder and uh inspiration i guess as they're playing the game um and you know i think it's quite a chilled out game it's quite slow paced in some ways um but i hope people i hope that resonates with people um i think i think i hope people just take their time with it it's you know you can't die in the game it's just about taking it easy and getting lost in this world and i hope that i hope that people get that from it that's that sounds refreshing i'm excited to try it so thank you so much for your time and uh sable will be out next week september 23rd on xbox xbox game pass and pc the artful escape which sounds like a cat burglar caper like the thomas crown affair is instead an interactive rock drama that looks like it could have spawned from david bowie or the beatles or jimi hendrix i've never played anything like it and i'm assuming i've never interviewed anybody like johnny galvatron who is joining us live from australia johnny this psychedelic masterpiece spawned from you and i've been trying to explain how i've been trying to explain this game to folks which i played through over the weekend and i loved it and i kind of landed on dream simulator how how do you describe the artwork yeah it's a tricky one isn't it it seems to be somewhere between like a cinematic experience and album and a narrative and a game um i think you know one of the the cool things about the game is it's just how we approach music um and what is one of the main things that's that works about the input um i think it's it's about um making music feel like you're playing it live like i you know i love a lot of music games i love um guitar hero and that sort of thing but doesn't really feel like playing music to me um music you know i always use smells like teen spirit as an example it's it's a very easy song to play but it's powerful and you're not really thinking about what's coming next it's it's in you and that's what i wanted the guitar to feel like and i think we we did an amazing job of getting the guitar to flow effortless effortlessly through the whole world and and um and give you that badass feeling of shredding across the galaxy let's talk about that because i mean i used to love playing rock band but there's there was a lot of stress involved i want to i don't want to boot off the stage and or maybe i'm playing on too hard of a difficulty still a lot of fun gave me a lot of appreciation for artists i hadn't met before but there was something that was really interesting in the artful escape and you have these freestyle moments where like no matter what button i push it sounds good and and it gives you agency i feel like to make something that sounds like like i made this but there's like a safety net so i'm curious like how you did that and and and i've heard there's a term for something like this called like uh paradolia uh tell me like yeah

yeah well have you heard of dark side of the rainbow yeah where it looks like it's big floyd and wizard of oz right yes that is it um you start the dark side of the moon on the third roar of the mgm line and uh it lines up but it doesn't really it's just your brain looking for pattern recognition and trying to associate the visual with the audio and we're going to do that in a multi-layered audio sense so we record everything in um in a in a key so like in the heliotrons in the snow world that's uh it's just an e flat uh great key personal favorite key of mine and um the you just shred the guitar we just would get eden altman into the studio me and josh abrahams who did all the music record hours of shredding chop it up place it in different parts of the music see if it works finesse it round off the corners and um and then you uh you get it to play at the you know the player can activate the guitar at any point so you've got to get it to be able to work it at any time and if you get it right the guitar you know the player will play the shred will roar across the galaxy and uh it'll line up and you know sometimes you'll hear it like performing a perfect counter melody with something that's on the track or reaching a crescendo at the same time and your mind will say well that was exactly how it was supposed to happen that's that's how it was composed but really it's your mind trying to make sense of what's going on um so if it sounded good to you it was because your brain made it sound good well i mean i will give my brain a lot of the credit here for that but probably your brain a little bit more for for programming this i i the only thing i could kind of like describe this is it kind of reminded me of like close encounters of the third kind at times where you're not only jamming out with aliens but you're jamming out through like tones and i don't know like like when you hit it at the right time it just felt like incredibly powerful in a really in just like a really cool way that i i'd say you have to experience yeah i think it's definitely something to have to play on on on yes totally i'm gonna go into that um they uh i think playing uh when you get those uh jewel notes that kind of finish these uh progressions of music it's like if you hit that progression you're the one who closes that loop yeah it makes you feel like a badass makes you feel like batman beating up people that's what i feel like um and yeah close encounters the third kind huge influence one of my favorite films uh i don't know why richard dreyfus is in it seems like a weird character but if you pull like all of richard dreyfuss's parts of the film out it's it's like a perfect film um and i think it's a big influence too i think it's the only film that spielberg cut to the music usually he cuts the film and then he adds music and this is the only film to do the other way around it has this kind of uh the symphony quality to it i think uh definitely a big inspiration i i don't know if any actor more than richard dreyfuss ever molded mashed potatoes in such a way so i think that was maybe that's what got me uh is that what he did in the audition for spielberg he just was like on the on the match it must have been it must have been i saw that movie at a very young age and i think it like for some reason that stuck with me and yet i was not allowed to play with my food but you know did he win an oscar i don't know so i would love to talk about yeah probably probably not so um you know the guitars in this game are still sort of ringing in my ears after they're playing through it uh uh you know over the over the weekend but another thing that's really stuck with me is the voice of carl weathers as lightman was just awesome this rock god spaceship captain it makes sense when you play the game but he's far from alone as far as as big names are concerned so i i would love for you to talk about the voice talent uh in this game and also like what did you say to them that made them say oh yeah i want to be like a giant floating head made out of like different parts or or you know just straighten stuff in this game what how did you sell them lena heady for instance on joining the game yeah yeah well look his here's how it happens from my angle which is that um you know i did the short story is one time i did a playthrough for annapurna and the music was broken in the game um and half of it wasn't playing it and you've played it so you know how important it is and uh so to cover that silence i started doing all the characters like just really chewing the scenery like a uh like a shakespearean actor in star trek and i got a call at the end of it and they said we um we want to do vo for the game i was like damn it what have i done i've made so much more work for myself and um then we did a little test and it was really cool it was just me acting so the acting wasn't very good but we knew it was going to work and then you know deb mars we work with the annapurna she was like you know who are you thinking for lightman i'm like well you know like who can i have what's the echelon here um and she's like if you could if you could have anyone who would you get i was like i get carl webbers she's like i'll get back to you and then uh you know a week later you get the call carl zit and then a week after that carl's in the studio and he's reading all the nonsense that you wrote

it was the part he was born to play he was just so great at it so uh i mean i don't know i i couldn't i couldn't see any other like in any other actor playing the role he was just so perfect for it because he's he's that guy who has like the charisma like the apollo creed who is kind of like a stage persona but then you know he's also like in happy gilmore he's got like perfect like comedic timing what a what a like what a one and a zillion that guy

and imagine he's got his hands in this one so he was able to shred some really great guitar um you know the croc didn't get lightman um in the artful escape francis vendetti uh so he goes on this journal journey of a lifetime we haven't talked about the game itself all that much of the story um and and and that's fine because this journey is really interesting but i'm wondering about your your journey i first played the artful escape it was the last game i played before they turned off the lights at e3 i want to say it was e3 2017 and it stuck with me it carried me through the flight home i want to know how you have spent the last four years between that time when we all saw the game you know that was introduced to the world to to where we're at now what have i done i've done so much stuff and you know i think the the crazy thing is like just having a studio and learning to work with people and learning to well i was going to say i like do the accounting but i i get someone else you just i mean that's another you find someone to do the accounting that's really important and um uh yeah we've just been crafting i mean the thing is because the the whole game is this kind of tracking shot like this this wes anderson kind of long dolly shot um it's there's so much detail in the game that passes the camera in a second and we never wanted to like compromise on it we always wanted the player to be able to stop and see these vistas and then you know you have the voice acting that was like a huge thing that we did and just like making sure that the pacing of the game was correct i think we got really we we did really well i feel like we approached it in in kind of a musical sense as well this kind of verse chorus bring it down guitar solo um and i feel like the game has a good flow to it so that was definitely one of the things we worked hard on i spent you know way too long in the recording studio having so much fun um absolute push to be in the studio with uh such good musicians for so long um and just making sure you know it had all the bells and whistles uh and and and hanging out with the car with us my best friend collins who we hang out all the time at least two years of that i'm sure just just hanging out with carl weathers right there i'm glad you recorded it

yeah yeah sorry no it's a bit of a delay we're here to hear you johnny galvatron not not me they'll get me for the rest of the hour um okay well i'll i'll just tell you a um

sorry about that sorry that is so unprofessional um the uh welcome to this yeah yeah yeah the um yeah i mean another cool thing was like working with jason schwartzman he um he i got to just hang out with him for an hour before and just like talk about bowie and and and and bob dylan and that was just like what a moment you know i'm a huge fan so it was just like uh i loved it and um and then when he came into the studio he had all these props like he had a cape and some hats and an umbrella like a little synth and stuff i'd be like let's try the line this way and he'd like he'd do one way and then he he tried to flip the cape back and then hold the umbrella up uh uh amazing experience i would have been disappointed if it was anything else because he's a great actor i loved him scott pilgrim of course he's done uh many other things uh wes anderson but then also a heck of a musician as well with with coconut records so um i the game the artfulscape now available uh on xbox game pass you have no excuse not to try it you've never played anything like it i can assure you i'm curious now that it's been out for the better part of a week what's the reaction been like johnny um metal af uh the reviews the reviews have been really amazing it's been great you know getting so much input from twitter and i can't believe how like you kind of steal yourself for for uh an onslaught of nastiness especially after you know i was in like a mid-tier band that was kind of like poison i'm used to a bit of internet carnage so um i i can't believe how good it's been um and just seeing all the costumes people make and the personas that people makes have been an absolute delight

that's so awesome to hear like i said you have to try the game if any of this piques your interest give it a go wait to the point where you get a guitar in your hand that's when when once you go into space you'll know stuff is getting real and that's where you have the majority of the game and you start to see things you've never seen before um you know depending on your your your mental state at any given point so uh i want to thank you i want to thank you very much johnny for joining us uh it's been great having you on here at the artful escape it's available now and and johnny please give your best to your grandfather megatron thank you i will he's doing well well that was something wasn't it

with the last name like johnny what did we expect so so apologies in advance because as you could tell as jeff mentioned he's from australia and the internet was a little dicey down there but what i loved about johnny was as you said before in the interviews uh jeff is that he's exactly the person who could make that game and when you play the game you'll understand you finish the game right yeah i played it i loved it it's only about i don't know maybe five hours or so i highly recommend you you go through it it's just it's more of an experience than anything you kind of can't fail right um but you still have agency especially in sort of like how you customize yourself and when you're sick but it's just it's like it's just sort of like a beautiful thing to watch and listen to and i i i thoroughly enjoyed it and if johnny gal patron can't sell you on the game i what chance do i have and the funny part the funny part about it was i mean johnny's great he wore the sun like we have our sunglasses on he wore sunglasses the whole thing and jeff i don't know how you didn't ask like what's up with the sunglasses but you know what once we started once we started rolling with the interview it made perfect sense you it didn't need explanation no and here's the other thing is that when you play artful escape everybody wears glasses like everybody like no one they never come up so um i almost would have been you know disappointed if you took them off it would have been a bit of a just staying in character yeah just like we are right now uh i respect the kid jeff should we uh should do do you have some news we got to do a little bit of news here i know you've got some stuff on the news desk there do you want to take a look oh we'll take our glasses off now okay or you can move them on that's fine i just need to reach back to my dad

don't tell us what you told or tell everyone what you told us about those glasses yeah off the air um yeah my so my dad has been using my car while i've been gone and so i got these out of there and he says that these help him see the fish in the river because they're like polarized or something um and then they also come with the nice dad loop so in the summer time they're just you know hanging around his neck there like that so i'll keep him there now the time is perfect because as part of xbox game pass available now i am fish yes it's available from day one it's a charming physics adventure starring four intercepted fish friends one of which i'm sure your dad will be gravitating too so there were 13 i had to see you up for that i was like there's gotta be a fish game my dad does have an xbox so this sounds perfect there we go it's i don't think it's a fishing game he's taking the role of fish so it might actually make him think differently about the fish in the future anyway thirteen games where now hunter becomes the hunt so there's just a ton to play uh i'm gonna call it a few of these um some of them we've known about for a long time like lemnis gate we did an interview i want to say a little while ago which is like a really interesting groundhog day sort of um tactical shooter against other folks where you you keep going back and forth almost like a chess game but it's a shooter you'll want to look for that interview because it's super complicated or super complex but really interesting and i'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out for real uh larry for you well of course uh i think you'll be very interested in playing subnautica uh there's a uh updated version here uh which is called below zero so did you ever get into subnautica as a scuba diver i feel like this would be your be your thing i did i something came along which pulled me away from it but i did enjoy it as again as you said as a scuba diver because it's uh i just i love being in that weightless aquatic environment cool so we talked about sable that's out next week uh origami two which seems really cool i think the first origami is also a r a not origami philly accent i apologize uh but it's you're not folding paper here uh it is a stealth uh a stealth co-op game um that it just seems really cool and that's how that's out now uh day one type of game and then uh i was really excited to find this out phoenix point phoenix point is made by the original creators of like xcom one and two not the remake or the sort of like rebooting of xcom one and two that happened uh during the xbox 360 generation fantastic games love for axis they're awesome really like they're working on a marvel game um but the original xcom uh which was like on early pc days but the game that they're making now is phoenix point it's been out on pc on windows 10 part of xbox game pass but it's coming to console uh on october 1st and they're going to be adapting it and so that's going to be really cool too anyway 13 titles that are coming in the next couple of weeks which is so much and that's on top of everything else that's available to play so um really time management is the real game here hurry and finish psychonauts on game pass because you have a lot of other games to get into exactly so i i saw this post uh that said uh thq is celebrating a major uh xbox store sale and i was like larry's on on sale but uh i just see major and i immediately think major nelson they it's somehow the 10th anniversary of thq nordic i feel like they just formed very recently right they work on an incredibly diverse uh slate of games that they publish everything from uh like a a huge sort of third person action adventure with biomutant which came out earlier earlier this year darksiders that series everything to like spongebob people love that yes oh kings of ammore re-reckoning which i've been meaning to get to um i love destroy all humans yes so there's a lot of stuff mx versus atv anyway significant sales up to 75 uh and that is going on now until september 27th if you want to really want to check it all out head over to my blog at majornelson.com there's a whole there's a hole you can sort by date and there excuse me title and the whole routine so you'll check them all out over there thq 10 10 years jeffrey dhq yes yes and now that we are uh halfway through the month is actually the start of hispanic heritage month and rebecca i know you're working uh you know internally on on the work that we're doing here i'd love to hear more about some of the things that we have planned yeah so for those of you who don't know hispanic heritage month in the u.s runs from september 15th through october 15th so it just started a couple days ago on the xbox side we have a lot of cool ways for people to get involved learning entertainment for one thing the forza team is actually doing a livery design contest so if you use a hashtag forza hhm and share any designs that you've created that are kind of like rooted in like hispanic or latino culture there's a chance for those to be featured in game and then also for the people who designed them to get in-game rewards um pretty cool uh microsoft's also going to be matching rewards points different kind of rewards for folks who donate to latin latinx in gaming which is a it's a group that connects latinos across the gaming industry promotes cultural appreciation representation in games and there's also another group that you can donate to called care they're fighting poverty around the world but they're also specifically doing it like latin america and the caribbean so any points that are donated to those groups this uh for through hispanic heritage month will be matched by microsoft so you can double the impact um and then you know we've also just got a lot of really good programming that's planned this month so on twitch.tv xbox we have a lot of different um like you know hispanic and latino creators uh protagonists stories content things like that i think each week has a different kind of programming schedule but it's all in celebration and support of hispanic heritage month so yeah there's a lot going on um we published an xbox wire post on wednesday i would check it out if you're curious to learn more um there's a lot of good stuff yeah thank you for being some familiar faces part of what i do is actually i was working with some of these creators to bring them onto our channel next week so uh i know you know danny pena yeah so godfrey will be taking over the channel um uh and cortez from kind of funny will be joining us i think the week after on the 27th so um you can look for them uh these these guest creators joining us starting 9 20 um uh in the afternoon pacific time and you know having fun and bringing new voices to our channel which is really cool thank you jeff that's that's great great program thank you for letting us know about that rebecca and jeff thanks for all the great work on that of course one of the things i just wanted to bring up is you talked about donating points and we've brought it up a couple times but if you're on xbox and i'm assuming you are if you're you're listen you're listening to the show make sure you

download achievements things like that you'll see this sort of uh we call it a toast pop-up um and if you hold down the the xbox button the nexus button what do we call that i i actually saw a poll and anyway um you end up racking up points exactly that sounds thank you larry and you end up racking up points and then you can donate those points which we match and so it's just all you got to do is one play games right you're doing that anyway you see the thing pop up hold it down

and before you know it after a month you'll rack up 9 000 10 000 points which you can donate and turn that into real money that um can be donated and then matched and that's like really powerful and uh the fact that you can just keep doing what you're doing and do something good is pretty awesome yeah so it's a it's a friction free way for gamers to kind of uh help out you know the community around them and beyond so thank you for that jeff good point uh what else you got for news over there pal i think we're gonna leave it there obviously we're getting into a crazy period of of games coming out um we've got back for blood coming up in a couple weeks i really hope that we get to play we'll need to get a fourth uh but that should not be hard um and then you know we've got uh what is it uh age of empires four coming out after that forza and halo and uh there's obviously so many games from our partners and so it's it's gonna be it's gonna be so much to play what i'm saying opportunities to back up this point and i i i i don't complete apologies in advance rebecca because i i don't mean to not include you but jeff and i have a history with the far cry franchise that's right that's coming out soon so we've got in fact in fact i'm working on a very special guest for to to interview for that for that show i i'll tell you more in the future stay tuned uh but but that that's also that because if you go watch the trailers i mean the co-op that's a have you ever played uh rebecca have you ever played the game i have it it is just an open world co-op sandbox delight i mean jeff and i got into so much trouble in this game we just had you know we're not going to talk about that afternoon or that evening in the field punching cows but beyond that uh it was a lot of fun tenderizing the beef it was a lot of fun so if you want to try it rebecca maybe you and i or you and jeff can do co-op you know we're happy to happy to pull you into that you need to be part of that nonsense yeah it seems like you guys would be the right ones to hit up for some nonsense for sure

did you just offend us i mean i'm not offended i'm just like was that no it's fine we deserve it there's a compliment that was that was like that was like that was like a mother-in-law backhanded compliments

nonsense that's your department yeah that's yours anyway all right gang well thanks thank you uh rebecca for you know you didn't have to travel back to the west coast i mean i know you came out here just for this yeah thank you for thank you for coming in doing the show and when you come back you'll be back in new york you'll be back in the city yep back in my small apartment awesome well well safe travels there jeff you you and i are gonna uh get together this weekend right we talked about that or maybe this week i haven't seen you in a while why are we not in the same room by the way like how how did this not come together this is we had our chat it's funny when i was talking to rebecca i'm like geez i i wish you had known you were there we would have we would have taken you to lunch or something but you're booked you're like leaving like almost directly after the show to go back go back east so i appreciate that yep yeah you guys virtually yeah yeah is puma gonna stay out here or is he gonna go with you back to new york um tbd for now he's for now he's staying um him and my dad have developed quite the bond um we'll see i'm sorry able to find some pitch together yeah you just said that i have a i just have this image of your dad and pumbaa sitting on the couch both with sunglasses no it's more like they've been laying in the hammock in the backyard and my mom sends me these photos and pumbaa is like laying on my dad's head in the hammock and my dad is sleeping while wearing these sunglasses um so all right well there you go was living that country lifestyle now he's enjoying his is live in his best country life anyway all right gang we'll see you guys next week we've got some more interviews for you next week some more fun jeff will have more news rebecca you'll also probably have some interviews lined up and we look forward to everybody so stay safe have fun everybody and uh hit us up on on twitter you know how to find us it's it's pretty straightforward um hit us up on twitter let us know what you think there it is they're all right there uh and then also jeff do you want to do the the youtube schtick oh i mean we haven't done this in a couple weeks but uh we do greatly appreciate your um your comments uh the polite ones most of them or the constructive criticism uh maybe not the marriage proposals that occasionally come up can you be kind because i i found out rebecca's mom reads the comments so be cool yeah

i mean yeah nope no pressure but be cool people yeah you need to you need to you need to pass that past that bar just just you should know that anyway we do appreciate those comments we get in there um and we love to engage with you there that's the best place obviously if you're listening to this on audio services uh that's great too feel free to engage us on twitter which we just shared there um and your comments and your reviews there are also greatly appreciated we'd love to go back through there and review those but thanks for joining us no matter what especially if you made it this far when we when we didn't do a show i know you i think you were you were not available rebecca you were out doing something jeff and i spun up a um a twitter spaces you know with the kind of clubhouse-y thing audio we had a great we had a great time with that it was a lot of fun you cut it short larry i mean we we're just gaining speed yeah so what we just haven't had time i mean we've got the show we don't want to we don't know rebecca if you would join us sometime we would love to do yeah i'd love to maybe night one night for like a half hour an hour so we just take live q a and and you know listen to people and it's great just to meet people because we have people from all over the world right jeff we had korea australia a lot germany i mean it was crazy there's some some streamers that jumped in paris lily jumped in like you you was like whoa hey okay yeah apparently very cool people enjoy it so we'll do that and we'll oh let's do it so there you go there's your incentive follow us all on twitter and when we do this we'll tweet that out so all right everybody have a great uh gaming week and weekend and we'll see you next time bye everybody