Talking TEKKEN 8, Diablo IV S3 & Sea of Thieves S11
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- Games in this podcast range from E to M.
[XBOX SOUND]
- Hello and welcome back to the official Xbox podcast. This is not a drill. This is the second show of the week. First time we've done that, but we have assembled a pretty amazing, maybe somewhat motley crew here on the cheese couch today because it's actually one of the most exciting weeks, probably the first really big game release week of the year. So there is a ton to talk about. If you joined us actually earlier this week for the avowed deeper dive, thank you so much.
It's actually one of our most viewed episodes ever, so I want to thank you and I want to thank you for coming back. We've heard you loud and clear. We want to do more of that type of deep dive. But like I said, there is so much here. So if you're watching this on youtube.com/xbox, don't forget we're also available on podcast services like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. So thank you so much. But you're probably wondering, who are these people? And so-- because the first time we've had a combination of folks here quite like this. Britt, we locked eyes here. So Britt Brombacher. We know you as BlondeNerd. We also know you as the queen of Kamurocho.
- [LAUGHS]
- We had to have you back here this week. How have you been?
- I've been fantastic. It's hard to believe the holidays have come and gone and now January is almost over. And I don't know if that's just because I'm getting old but I feel like time is just going so fast, so, so fast.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It only accelerates. I can promise you that.
- Speaking from someone who's a little older than me.
- Yeah, quite a bit, actually. Like you said, little, you're trying to offend me and I actually took that as a--
- I said little because I was trying to be nice.
- More knowledgeable. That's what it means.
- Exactly. So, Joe Neate, you washed up ashore for us here this week.
- I have indeed. That's how it feels like, yeah.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --A surprise inclusion. How are you doing?
- Very good. Little jet lagged, but all good. Yeah, it's really exciting to be here. It was a great coincidence I was in town for a bunch of meetings. And this is definitely a highlight, I think, compared to all of the other people I'm going to be chatting to. So great to be here. And hopefully they don't watch this. 'Cause they'll hear that then.
- So you're here from Rare. You came from--
- Yes, yeah, I am. Yes. So yeah, so here just to talk to everyone here about future Sea of Thieves plans and things. That's what we're kind of talking to the folks here in Redmond and stuff. But yeah, it's cool. It's nice to be in town. I've not been here since 2020, I think. So it's been a while since I've been across to Redmond.
- The weather is still crap. We did not have enough time to work on that. And next to me, making an appearance for the first time on the official Xbox podcast, Lex Lim. Tell us about yourself.
- Yes, I'm Lex Lim. I am going through a move right now, so I'm also on the same end of almost feeling jet lagged. It's a different form of fatigue, I guess. But yeah, I'm doing great. I'm excited to be living in LA land soon. So I've been seeing a bit more sunlight than I am here, which is always a good thing.
- Yeah, so rub that in.
- They all leave us, Jeff. They all leave us here.
- Yep.
- You had a good run here. So what I would say is, we found out you were a Dragon fan so we wanted to have you on this week's show because we're really excited. And why don't we just jump right into it? So this is-- like I said, one of the biggest game release weeks of the year, in that we have both Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth and Tekken 8 out, both reviewing incredibly well. It is pretty amazing. All the games we had to play in 2023, I hope you caught up because we're right into it already here in 2024. And the thing that I know-- I heard you actually this morning, Britt, on the Kinda Funny XCast. And the thing that I've always loved when there's been a new Like a Dragon or Yakuza game is that on What's Good Games, Andrew and Brianna would just wind you up and let you go. So Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth. What is this game?
- OK, well, this is a sequel to 2020's Yakuza Like a Dragon. And it takes place a few years after the events of that game. If you played Like a Dragon Gaiden, The Man who Erased his Name, also a sequel to that of sorts. And this time around, we find Ichiban and Kiryu needing to team up for a particular quest. Now, is someone pulling the strings? Is it just coincidence that these two characters are meeting at the same place, at the same time? You'll have to play to find out because I'm not going to tell you that. But what's been really cool, and I think honestly unexpected for me with this game is that it has quite literally changed the way I want to live my life.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I'm sorry.
BRITT BROMBACHER: And I mean that. I wish I could go off of that and be like, yeah, I want to go Kamurocho and go to hostess clubs and do that. But no, I mean, the story and the narrative of this game is so emotional and it's so real that you can't help but reflect on your own life while you're playing it. And as someone who has been a long time fan of the series and someone who just idolizes Kiryu and I love Ichiban, watching them grow and form a bond and going through what they're going through together and how they overcome it and how their perceptions and thoughts on certain things change as the story unfolds, it actually really moved me to a point where I'm like, I need to think about the way I'm doing stuff. I almost swore. I know the producers in the back--
- They're ready.
- Good job.
- You didn't get me, I got the thumbs up. But no, it really had a profound impact on me. So that is the main thing I just want to get out there, is just go into this game with an open mind, and I think you really could learn a lot of life lessons from it. Other than that serious BS, this game is just-- I mean, honestly, it is just everything I ever wanted from a sequel to the game. The story is full of twists, turns, and butt clenching and hilarity.
LEX LIM: I love that.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Yeah, so much butt clenching. You know, we were talking about this.
LEX LIM: I know. I like horror games. I know how it is, yeah.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Well, yeah, the butt-clenching anxiety moments.
LEX LIM: A lot of that, yeah.
BRITT BROMBACHER: But what it also has, though, are just some of the best-- well, let me just say this. I think the improvements to the game are really what sold me on just how much it's improved. Like you have the combat, right? The combat this time has the area ring. And that has made the combat zone much more interesting because you had this typical turn-based combat before, but now you can move around, you can do back attacks, you can do slide attacks.
You can do combos with your partners. Speaking of your partners, there's now all of these intricate social links and walk and talks and bond bingo and other things you can do. There is just so much to it. They've taken the two characters and put them, in my opinion, in the perfect setting. You have Kiryu in Japan. You have Ichiban in Hawaii, and it just works so well. And I mean, I could gush about this forever and ever.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I asked you too broad of a question here. I just saw all of those thoughts trying to get out of your mouth at the same exact time. Let's get back to the battle system because this is a turn-based game.
- You don't want to talk about Dondoko Island?
- We will talk about Dondoko Island.
- That's where I was going next, Jeff.
- That's its own thing. That'll be the side mission to this larger conversation about the game, if that works. So this is Like a Dragon, Yakuza Like a Dragon. It's a turn-based game. A lot of advances though. To me, this feels like the turn-based RPG for people who are too impatient to play turn-based RPGs. Like, you can't just put the controller down and let it auto battle. You're constantly hitting the button, even in the middle of these things.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Yeah, yeah. It's very interactive. So when you have an attack, you can press-- depending on what console you're playing, of course you're playing on an Xbox. You can press the button and it'll do bonus damage if you hit it right. You can perfect guard, which means if you push the button right when you get hit, you will negate the damage. And eventually, you can make it so your attack will counter. So there's just a bunch of strategies you can do. And you have-- oh gosh, you have these combat opportunities where you can work with your partner's tag team, is what the actual term is called.
And each partner has a new tag team skill and ability. There is just so much to it. And what I will say is this is some of the most intense RPG turn-based battles I've ever experienced. And you wouldn't really think that because I think when you think RPG, you think of like, oh, action, combat team, whatever. Like, this is a true blue turn-based RPG and it has those deep intricate mechanics. And if you're not careful, you will get your butt kicked. And you will lose and you will be very, very humbled very quickly.
- It's true because in a lot of the more brawler Yakuza and Like a Dragon games, if I die once in a whole playthrough, that's probably a lot, like, oh, I forgot to heal, or maybe it was a particular boss. In this, you really have to strategize. And so there's a recurring character you run into who's a street brawler. And he keeps challenging you throughout the game. And when I played against him for like the third time last night, he kicked my butt.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Oh yeah.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And I was like, oh, you can't just sit here and hit the attack button. You really need to think. Am I buffing? Am I debuffing them? Am I being conservative?
BRITT BROMBACHER: The buffs, the debuffs are super important. And the elemental weaknesses and strengths as well, very important, too, to take into consideration. And that's just the combat. That's just the freaking combat. I finished this game in 102 hours.
- So you finished?
- I finished. I saw the story from start to finish. I became a Sujimon master. I got my Dondoko Island into a 5 star resort. I did all my bond and my drink links and I did a whole bunch of other stuff, but I still have so much more to do, but I had to see the story through. So that's why I wrapped it up. But then after you finish this premium adventure so you can keep wandering around and wrapping up stuff you maybe weren't able to, so that's what I'm doing right now.
- So I'm about 24 hours in. So I've spent one day--
- Sweet summer child, sweet, sweet, summer child.
- Took the words out of my mouth.
- I'm even worse, yeah. I'm only six hours in.
- OK, so you're not even out of the womb yet. Do you have any questions--
- You're not even out of the womb yet! Are we just gonna let that pass?
- I know. I kind of let that go over my head. I was like, I don't really-- But yeah, as someone who's more senior, I guess you could say with the game, what's something I should look forward to the most? As someone who literally just got to Hawaii, Kiryu just joined my party.
- OK. Because you've seen the story recaps before, right? You actually haven't played them, you see them. OK. Well, the narrative payoff in this game is some of the best across any medium I've ever seen, ever experienced. That goes across TV, film, anything.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No hyperbole here on that.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Oh man, it is so freaking good. But I think for you, what I really loved and I think what you might really enjoy too is just the fact that Hawaii is this literal playground. And you will just be able to wander around. And some of my favorite game sessions were just walking and I had no plan. I had no goal in mind. I just wanted to-- you never know. Maybe you'll go to the strip club. Maybe you'll go try to date someone on Mismatch. Maybe you'll do Sujimon battles.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Can we talk about this dating?
- Yeah, I'm like, wait a second. I haven't gotten there yet.
- Oh.
- I just got dumped by Sa-Chan, OK? So I'm still feeling a little sad about it.
- Ichiban, sweet baby.
- I know.
- Yeah, so there's a online dating app called Mismatch. And you are-- essentially, it's a really fun little mini game because of course, this is in this game where you have to create a profile and then you have to create your profile in a way that's going to attract certain people. So you can be a Playboy, you can just be an entrepreneur, you can be a stay at home bum, whatever. And that's going to attract different people. And then once you get them in a conversation with you, you have to pick the best choices. And at the top of this app, there's a meter. And if you fill it all the way, you have the opportunity to see if they want to see you in person. Go to a little hotel room. And all I'm going to say is--
- In true Yakuza Like a Dragon style, it never plays out exactly the way you think it will. And it definitely plays for laughs. But I feel like Ichiban would be like, if I brought back my grandfather or great grandfather into the present and said, oh, these are things you can do, because I feel like he's so innocent and doesn't understand technology in the slightest and goes in with the best of intentions. And because of that, you just have the best laughs. Like, for a game that I think might have been derided earlier on, it's like, oh, it's just GTA in Japan.
- Oh.
- It's really about the characters, I think, and the stories and seeing them grow over time.
- And that's exactly what it is for me too, and that's why this game is so special. I've spent 7 or 8 games with all of these characters, right? And now seeing them really just come into their own. And I think is RGG's best game yet, like, by far.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That's a pretty big compliment.
BRITT BROMBACHER: This is one of my favorite video games of all time now. Like, early when I was getting to that sappy BS about how I feel like it's changed the way I want to live my life and stuff. Like, I mean that because of the way they told these stories. It's just very impactful. But yeah, anyway, I don't even know where I was going with that. But I just love this game absolutely so, so much, and I'm so excited for you.
- It's honestly inspiring to hear the passion about it, like, it really is. Because I played some of the earlier Yakuza games, but I've kind of fallen out of love. But I know exactly what you mean about the characters, the story, the storytelling, the humor and stuff. So it's amazing to hear.
- Yeah.
- --As a game dev, to hear how it's impacted you.
- Oh yeah, and Kiryu is a mentor to me that I've never had. And so it sounds so like, I've never had this relationship with a character before. I've had other ones with, like, Majima. You know what I'm talking about.
- Yeah, that's a different type of relationship.
- I'm wearing his jacket right now, let's be real. But no, I have so many screenshots in my system folder of just profound things that were said that I'm like, huh.
- One of my favorite-- on that vibe, like taking place in Hawaii, one of my precious little joys in this game is that at any point, sometimes you'll see people with a little icon above their head. And if you hit X, you just say, hi to them and give them a little shocker.
LEX LIM: I noticed that, yeah.
- And it's almost like reaffirming of like humanity, in a way, that people are like, hey. And all of a sudden, it's like there's this community of NPCs within the game.
- Humanizing the NPCs, I love when games do that. It really made you feel like the environment was alive and it's not just people that were created by a computer walking around. It feels like they're there for you.
- So I did that last night because it actually ranks up certain things. And then I went out tonight because it was trash night. And I saw my neighbor, and I strongly avoided eye contact. And I was like, wait, I should probably say something.
- Yeah, those are the Aloha links. And you can do those with people, with animals, with other people's pets.
LEX LIM: Oh, with animals?
BRITT BROMBACHER: Yes.
LEX LIM: I love it.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Yes. But no, I'm just really excited for you to get into Hawaii and just experience all the wackadoodle-ness that RGG has been known for in their game. You're never going to run out of stuff to do. And again, we haven't even talked about Sujimon or Dondoko Island.
- Which are huge. And I've spent a lot of time in both, and I didn't expect to, is what I'll say. Before we move on from Like a Dragon, this is the first game in the series to take place outside of Japan. They chose Honolulu, which I think was a really smart choice in that if you've ever been to Hawaii, especially Honolulu, there are a lot of Japanese elements, it almost in many ways feels like it's halfway to Japan, both literally and almost culturally, whether it's the food.
There's a lot of food chains. Even-- I think there's a Lous in there, which is one of the konbinis that you see all over the place. Exactly, a lot of stuff. And I thought they did an amazing job because there's been times where I'm like, oh, I've been here. I've been to this restaurant or I've walked past that hotel or I've shopped in this mall, I might not have bought weapons there, but maybe just a nice shirt instead. Safe to say, an early Game of the Year candidate for you?
- Oh, hands down. Like, not even a candidate. I don't know what would surpass it for me.
- All right.
- Yeah.
- So Joe, have you had a chance to play anything this the last couple of weeks? We haven't caught up with you in quite some time on the podcast.
- Oh yeah, no, totally. Yeah, so I've been really getting into Baldur's Gate over the Christmas break.
- Yes.
- Because it was kind of one of those games for me that I was like, I need to just dedicate some time to this to get into it and to kind learn it and really, really get to grips with it. So I booked a couple of extra days off at the start of January because I was like, get all the family stuff out of the way over Christmas and then kind of post that-- I think from, like, the 27th, if I've got it right-- sit down on the sofa, play with my partner, playing split screen. And we just did about four days straight kind of thing. So yeah, got to the end of act one and loved it. I've kind of got a mix. I've got a solo that I'm playing with a different character so I'm going back in and discovering stuff differently and then we play split screen when we're--
- That is the best way to do it, isn't it? I had to start two campaigns too because my husband loves to murder everyone and I am not that person. So what's your play style? Are you like, let's keep the peace?
- It depends what mood I'm in, to be honest, yeah.
- OK.
- Yeah, I guess we can talk about some of the details and some of the characters.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I think act one is a safe space.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JOE NEATE: I've forgotten the guy's name. I blanked. But the really annoying person that you find quite early on that you--
BRITT BROMBACHER: Gale?
JOE NEATE: Yeah.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Yeah.
JOE NEATE: Yeah exactly, you know exactly what I mean. But yeah, he's quite annoying. And there's that bit about the brain bugs that you have in. And there's that person who's like, hey, well you might not know this. I don't know if you've encountered this person. I assume you have. But he's like, oh, I think I can get it out if I do this operation, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. And so with the character. I had at the time, I was like, obviously I'm not going to do that. And when I found him, I was like, right, we're going to go and speak to this guy, take his eye out.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- I was just like, this guy is so annoying. I'm just going to see what happens and do this thing on him. But yeah, that's my playstyle, basically. Because I think you just attach to the different characters. You build relationship, right. And so I'm not going to do it to someone that I really like, but this person is quite annoying.
- But this person, go on.
- So let's see what happens.
- So Gale is your guinea pig?
- Yeah, basically. Yeah, for anything that's dangerous, it's like, well, we'll try him first. Yeah.
- That's actually a really good idea. One of you go.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, you go into the scary place first. We'll see what happens. Yeah.
- I love it.
- That may change the way I play this game moving forward. So Lex, I know that as part of your job, you end up playing a ton of games. So what's been really catching your eye here this month?
- Yes, and it's funny because I do work on Game Pass and third party games, but I'm actually playing a ton of Phasmophobia, which is not on Game Pass, but Phasmo is great. I like games where I can kind of be a detective a little bit. And there's so many different ghosts you can try to figure out, which ones they are, and it's a great co-op game. You can play with up to three other friends, which is always something that I love. Similar to Lethal Company, I'm playing a lot of that too. Again, on that horror element, I love games that really make you just like, oh my gosh, like freak out a little bit. So yeah, those are kind of the games-- the realm I'm in right now. Very, very Steam oriented.
BRITT BROMBACHER: I love it.
- Yeah.
- I love from a game design space as well, from my perspective, personally, anything like Lethal Company and Phasmophobia as well, that's about almost that sandbox style of playing. But you're with your friends and you don't really quite know what's going to happen and what mechanics and what systems are in place to kind of drive interesting stories. Like, I love those type of experiences. And to see something like Lethal Company come out and just do what it's done, I get so inspired by that because it's the kind of space that I think we kind of ventured into with Sea of Thieves. But I love that space. I think it's so fun, it's so interesting that everyone comes out of the game with different stories and the humor as well with those kind of games.
- The humor, the memes have been just so massive for Lethal Company, I think that's pretty much why it blew up so much.
- It's like a ladder falling on your head and killing you. It's just like, that's funny.
- Trolling your friends. I'm doing that left and right. And now there's mods where you can control the monsters and not tell any of your friends, so you control them to the ninth degree. Yeah, it's a really fun game.
- I would love to play Phasmophobia with you, because it sounds like you're very seasoned and you know what you're doing. I've only played it with Andrea, my business partner and my very dear friend. And I always left her because I would get too scared.
- OK, I do still get scared. I'm not going to lie.
- But do you leave-- do you leave and then you hang out in the van?
- No, I loop the ghosts. I can loop them.
- Wait, the Resident Evil master who chided me for, like, watching RE7--
- This is one of those things that makes no logical sense. I can play Resident Evil stone cold sober. I'll never get scared in that game. I think it's just because I love it so much and I'm just so into it. Phasmophobia, though, I'm being hunted by spirits and I don't know what they're doing. I don't know what their game plan is.
LEX LIM: It's unpredictable.
BRITT BROMBACHER: It's unpredictable. And then you hear things falling around you, you hear people breathing down your neck and stuff, whatever. I'm gone.
LEX LIM: And tight quarters too. I think that helps.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Here's the problem, though, is they only pay you like $20 for that. You know what I mean? $20 to put your life on the line? Would you do that? You're a smart guy, Jeff. I don't know. You might do it.
- You have to play on like Nightmare Mode where you can't actually see all the different clues.
- I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm in the van looking at the cameras, Andrea is locked in the house. She's being murdered. And I'm like, I'm sorry. $20 was not worth it.
- Did you ever play a game called Project 0 or Fatal Frame back in the day?
- Fatal Frame, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Fatal Frame. So Project 0 was the Japanese one. But it was basically about-- you had this camera that could detect ghosts. And so you had to go into a house. And basically it would do damage to them if you took photos of them or if you kept the camera. So basically, they would be coming towards you in first person mode and getting closer and closer and you had to wait until they get super close. But it was a series, yeah, it was kind of a Japanese one. But it really reminds me of that vibe because to kind of defeat them, you had to deal with the scare of them coming towards you and stuff by looking at them.
- Yeah, that's a very intense game.
- It was a genius, genius design, a simple mechanic.
- I've never been able to play that one either. I think it's because it's Japanese horror.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Zombies, whatever, we're bros. But get those little girls, that stringy hair. And the white gowns, uh-uh.
- Yeah, it's brilliant. But it really reminds me of that Phasmophobia, that same feeling of just like, oh god, I've really got to face this.
- New titles to add to my list now. Thank you very much.
- It's a proper retro title but it's great. It's really good.
- I love retro titles, yeah.
- So another game that actually was a retro game, kind of. It's been around for quite some time but brought around in its newest incarnation, and that also, people are talking about is one of the best games of this young new year is Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown. Have any of you gotten to try that one yet?
- I have not.
- All right, so it's a metroidvania. You're actually not playing as the Prince this time. And let me just tell you, the mechanics on this are just like, buffed to a shine. It is so smooth, it plays so well. It is very challenging, I can tell you right off the bat. This is one where I'm getting a little bit humbled and I'm feeling my age and my reflexes a little bit. The tight windows on the parries. That being said, keep going back--
BRITT BROMBACHER: Is it frustrating-challenging? Because there's a fine line there.
LEX LIM: Yeah, I can't do frustrating-challenging. Yeah.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's frustrating when I think-- well, in general, I find games to be frustrating when I'm like I did it and you didn't register it. This is more like, I could have done better. I got impatient and I'm like, I tried to get one extra slash in and I should have been patient and just parried and waited for the next window. And I bumped up against a boss like that which completely steamrolled me and it took about 10 times before I'm like, I'm going to sit here. I'm going to learn its patterns. Great. I'm going to just deflect you, slash, slash, back up, and then I barely even got touched. So it's one of these games where you're not just going to blow right through. The last Prince of Persia game I played was the one-- the one with Nolan North voicing. I can't remember what that one was even called. It was a really good one. You almost couldn't die because every time you fell, you would just come right back.
- Oh, that's nice.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This is the opposite, in terms of difficulty. But it does have a lot of really good-- you can change the window of time on the parry and all kinds of things. So maybe I need to--
BRITT BROMBACHER: Oh, so accessibility options or--
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Exactly, which you don't often see in a game like that. So kudos to Ubisoft, I think it was Montpellier for really thinking through all of those different things. And maybe I'm at the point where I just need to swallow my pride and take advantage of those things.
- You do. And that's, I think, going to be the only reasons why I ever play Celeste. And I still want to, but from what I understand, it's a brutal game. But the accessibility options for it are just-- so you can at least enjoy the story of it.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Very cool. So there's so much to talk about here. As I mentioned, we had a show that was on Monday where we did a deeper dive on Avowed with Gabe and Carrie from Obsidian, which, again, was really cool to take that extra time. Just as a real quick recap on everything that we saw last week because it feels kind of crazy, even though it was only a week ago. So much has happened since then. We also revealed a date for Senua's Saga, Hellblade II, you're going to be playing that in just about four months on May 21.
LEX LIM: So excited for that.
BRITT BROMBACHER: That's my birthday.
LEX LIM: Oh.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Two big things that day.
- All right, fellow Gemini. I think so. Yeah, we're equally two-faced, I guess. I don't know.
- Oh, wow.
- We didn't really dig into that.
- You set me up. Man.
- Complex, we're complex individuals. Then later in the summer, we're going to enjoy Visions of Mana. This one really was speaking to me. Square Enix showed up kind of like surprisingly into the show, gave us a really deep look at that. I don't think I've played a Mana game since the original one that-- well, even before Secret of Mana, which was on Super NES.
- No, what was that?
- It was Final Fantasy Adventure on Game Boy.
- Yes.
- Which, that was like my first ever Final Fantasy Game, which it turns out, it's actually it's a Mana game.
- That's so exciting because this is the first time it's coming to Xbox, right?
- I believe that is the case. So that should be really fun to jump into. We've got a great retrospective of the series over on Xbox Wire so please keep an eye out for that. And then launching in the fall, we have Ara, History Untold, which if you love a 4x game, a.k.a. something like a Civ.
Actually, there's a lot of 4x games, a lot of these games where you can win in a lot of different ways, through conquest or through cultural victory or getting to space first. There's so many different ways to play these games. There's quite a few different takes on that in PC Game Pass. But this one is going to be coming in the fall, really excited for that. And then Indiana Jones and the Great Circle coming later this year. That was the first time I got to see that game and I was really blown away.
JOE NEATE: Literal mind blown, honestly. I think there's a lot of Indiana Jones fans. Mike Chapman, the great director, he's one of the biggest. And so I was watching it and imagining vicariously how he was feeling because I just knew how he would be watching that and being like, OK.
BRITT BROMBACHER: What's that moment like? What's that moment like when you know your game is about to be unveiled like that for the first time?
- Oh, it's incredible. Yeah, if I think back to well 2015 for Sea of Thieves, we were sat in the audience at the Xbox E3 kind of showcase. And to see that and to hear it and know when you were going to be coming, it was 15 minutes in or something. So we were watching all the other stuff and then you were just waiting. And you're just looking around and you're listening to people reacting at the right stuff. But yeah, for that moment, I don't think anything beats it, to get to experience that in person with people around you.
- That's awesome.
- Because you just don't quite know. You've crafted so much, how is this going to be reacted to? So you're kind of got your phone, you're looking on Twitter the same time. But the room, the noise, the laughs or the cheers and what do they cheer at? Do they cheer at the name? Do they cheer at the Rare logo? Yeah, it was incredible for us.
- So you got a vicarious thrill from watching that game get a-- yeah?
- Honestly, to know that people have been building up to that, and to know like and especially in this day and age that hasn't leaked. Because that is the biggest fear for anything, and we had it with Pirates of the Caribbean that we worked on really closely with Disney bringing that into Sea of Thieves. So similar to Indiana Jones, but it's like, you literally are checking every day. You wake up almost in a cold sweat. Check social media, or check things, like is stuff going out? Especially leading up to those kind of shows because you know that's is most at risk, right? That's when the leaks are most likely to happen because people are starting to dig and assets are being kind of delivered to different places, and it's just you're opening up the confidentiality a bit. And to just be like, this is coming this year.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This year.
JOE NEATE: Yeah, yeah, and that's amazing. Like, just straight out the gate, the excitement and the buzz for that game is just like-- And so yeah, it's amazing to see. And so I think I'm going to be first in the queue to play it for sure when that one comes out.
- That's awesome.
- I can feel the passion.
- I know.
- I love it.
- I feel like I have so many questions, but this is not that podcast.
- Honestly, there's nothing like the reveal of your game. There's nothing like it.
- That's so cool.
- But honestly, and I mentioned it earlier, but when that stuff leaks and teams don't get to tell their stories in that way, like, the impact on everyone at that studio everyone that's worked on that and that's poured years of their life into something, it's so impactful in a negative way. And I feel whenever that happens to teams, it's horrible. And yeah, I just think it's one of those things that I feel very passionately about and very strongly about.
- Let surprises be surprises.
- We should try and allow people to have that moment.
- And I appreciate you bringing that up too because I think a lot of times, people don't quite understand the humanity and that these are people with emotions and hard work. And they're just like, oh, it's a leak. LOL, post it to Reddit. And it's like, no, there's a lot that goes into that. And I think it's really great that you can humanize that and be very real about how it really does impact the team.
- Yeah. And I understand the excitement, right? Because people are excited to see things. But you always want that moment to be the way that you've crafted and you've thought about it and revealed in the right way and not just an image here or a bit of a trailer or whatever. It's just like, you want that to be that moment because you're landing your story in the right way, but it's also that moment that you're building up to as a team.
- And special for the fans that way too.
- Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, it's most special for everyone involved, right. So yeah, that's just one of those things that I was glad that everything that was in there got that opportunity to do it right.
- Yeah, yeah.
- It was an amazing show, honestly.
- And it was an amazing day, actually, for the broader team. You saw those games there, and then right after the dev direct-- I'm sorry, the developer underscore director. I'm missing the underscore.
[OVERLAPPING SPEECH]
- Full name.
- Fire this man. Fire this man, Xbox.
- There was the Elder Scrolls online reveal event, where they showed off the next chapter, which is gold road. If you haven't seen that, definitely look that up. There's so much to that game, as they are into really, their second decade, effectively, of its existence. And then there was also a Diablo IV live stream that day where Blizzard showed off season three, which is the season of the construct. And actually, right before that, I had a chance to catch up with the Chief Demon Lord of Blizzard himself, Rod Fergusson. And I guess the way we'll do this is I'll just change my shirt real quickly and we'll talk to him about season three. So here we go. I'll do it Yakuza style.
- Rip it off.
- Show off your bad, like, sick back tattoo.
- Yeah, the full tat. Yeah.
- What would your back tattoo be?
- Let's pretend that happens. I'm very pleased now to welcome Rod Ferguson into the studio, virtually, of course. Rod, a familiar face, an old friend of ours. He's the GM of Diablo, I assume that's greater meta demon, or something of that effect.
- Nailed it.
- Oh, perfect. Did my research on this. Rod, I actually got to see you at the Game Awards. I was like, oh, finally get to catch up with Rod. I think I saw you for about six seconds when something came up, and here we are. We safely have 1,000 miles of Pacific coastline between us. Now we can have a good conversation. I'm very excited about it.
- And it's no press lingering around. We don't have to worry about what we talk about, we can just speak freely. It's great.
- Exactly. No one's listening in on this at all.
- No one's listening.
- It's just two of us.
- There's no PR around. I just love these moments to be able to just speak our minds. It's awesome.
- So the reason we've got you here is-- as PR like whispers into my ear. Well, the third season of Diablo IV just kicked off this week coming off of the season of blood, which of course, was all about vampires and blood. And the name for this season is the Season of the Construct. So taking that name, what does that mean? What is the construct?
- Well, it's really about this notion of both the story aspect to it and then the gameplay mechanics side of it, because it's always about the lower and then how does it actually play? And so we've tapped into a good friend of ours in the lore, Zoltun Kulle. People who played Diablo III would know. And he's created this loom that is this mechanism, a machine that can basically help defend against evil. And it's hidden and protected by all these vaults and all these constructs, if you will. Kind of like what a robot would be in the Diablo lore. It's kind of more of a mechanistic, if that's the right word, kind of machine creature, if you will.
And what's happened is that a demon, Malphas has come along and has possessed the loom or the whole construct that's involved in that. And is basically turning the loom against humanity. And it's your job to go and free it and defeat Malthus, Malthus as the big bad. And one of the cool things you get to do along the way is you'll actually recover one of these constructs to become your companion. So that's the big gameplay hook of season 3, is that you're going to have this companion with you that can then partner with you to defeat Malphas.
- Very cool. As someone who-- I always love having a role in deep, sometimes as a necromancer. But even if you're playing a sorcerer or someone that may not have a companion, well, now, you've got this-- is it the seneschal companion, construct companion?
- Yeah, we call it the seneschal. Yeah, and basically, by putting in certain stones into it, you can actually change its behavior and what skills it has. And basically, at any given time, it can have two different skills in it, what we call governing stones. And that will tell it what its basic purpose is. And then you can put onto it tuning stones, which will then augment that skill to behave differently.
And so depending on whether you want it to be a tanky companion to absorb damage or attract aggro, you can have it be that. You can have it be kind of a Caster for you. Or if you're choosing, you know what? I want to kill everything that I come up against, every demon I see, I want to kill, you can actually have the seneschal basically support you and protect you. So it's really about what you're doing and not necessarily-- it's more a support construct rather than going out and doing the fighting for you.
- Very cool. My friends never listen anyway when I'm playing with them. So finally someone who will respect my wishes.
- Someone who will listen. I mean, that's true for you in real life, Jeff, so having something that'll listen is important.
- Yeah. I think we've made a bit of a breakthrough here. We'll be talking about that later on. So what else is new, in terms of things that you can do? I've been hearing about a replayable dungeon filled with other constructs that would be--
- Well, yeah. That's the whole vault idea. So the notion of this idea of the Zoltan cool vaults, those are basically another set of dungeons you'll be able to play through. And kind of the big part of this season is we really wanted to bring the idea of traps into play. So these vaults are more a lot of hazards in the way that we think about it, where you have to deal with all these different sorts of things that are kind of like the self defense of a dungeon without the monsters and stuff, you'd actually have all these traps and pillars of fire and spikes from the ground and all these sorts of things. That's the security system of a dungeon.
And then on top of that, we have another monster family which I was talking about, which are these constructs. They're driven elementally, so you have this notion of there's an electric version or a fire version, and you can fight these constructs as you go through. And so the vaults are kind of one of the main ways you play through because the vault is what's going to give you-- by going through them, you can actually get those stones that will help you customize your seneschal.
So getting those skills, or what we call governing stones, or getting those augmentations, what we call tuning stones, those all come through playing through the vaults. And because the trap layouts are always in these four main vaults, there's also a mega vault that encapsulates it all with the big bosses. But the four kind of main vaults that lay out of the traps at least, not the monsters, but the traps are always the same in each vault so you can actually kind learn each vault and kind of master it. Because there's a little trick here. And so it's around this idea of, could you get through without taking a bunch of damage?
And so the way that we track that is you're able to get this buff, or this blessing called Zoltan's warding. And it gives you these stacks of this blessing. And as you're going through, if you get hit from a trap, then a part of the blessing goes away. And by the time you get to the end of the dungeon, depending on how many stacks of that buff you have, it will open more chests for you. And so you can get greater and greater rewards. Now, you can really level up the buffs because I think you only need like, 16 is the highest that open all three chests.
Like, there's a chest at 15. There's a chest at-- sorry, it might be 10, 5, and 1, I think is what it is. So it's 16 levels of it. But you can actually put on like, 300 buffs. So you can take a lot of hits on your way through and still get the rewards. But it's that notion, that idea. And that's what we wanted to have, that noble path through the vault because we wanted you to get really good at it. So that you could like, OK, this could be a good run, I'm going to put on some of the boarding, and I'm going to go through and try to get those extra chests.
- Cool. Anything else that you're especially excited to bring to fans here in season three?
- Yeah, there's a couple things. Like, one is, in terms of just like what's out now, which is really around the quality of life stuff, one of the things we always want to do each season is improve the experience for the players. And something we heard a lot is we have that event that happens in the world called Hell Tide, where a particular area will start raining blood and the demons will get harder to kill. But all these chests will appear that you can unlock as you're going. And we've heard a lot of feedback about-- we wish these were available more often, they would show up and go away, show up and go away.
And so one of the things we're doing for season 3 is we're making Hell Tides be basically on all the time in some area. It's basically on the hour, a new one starts, and then it lasts for 55 minutes. There's a 5 minute rest, and then you're back at it again. So I think people are going to be excited to do that. I think the notion, too, is like we always hear about inventory space and stash space. So we're really excited to bring another stash tab to players so they can continue to collect all that cool loot. But one of the big things for us for season three was something we've been wanting to do since launch, which is leaderboards.
It's something that's not there today, but on February 13, we're going to be updating the game and we're going to be releasing this feature called the Gauntlet. And the Gauntlet is a dungeon that has fixed placement every week. So it's a different dungeon every week, but during that week, it stays exactly the same. The monsters are all the same, they're in the same location, and it's just a way for people to go through and try to get the highest score possible. And as they do that, then they'll get posted on the leaderboards. And then they can compete against their friends.
There's a friends leaderboard, there's a clan leaderboard, there's a class leaderboard, am I the best barbarian? There's also like parties of 2, 3, and 4. So you'll get to see where your rank is in the world, or against your friends, in terms of how you're going through the Gauntlet. And so we know leaderboards has been a big thing, especially in Diablo III. And so we're really excited that in February 13, we'll be able to bring that leaderboard feature back.
- Could be fun for a really fine tuning your build as well and being like, oh, was I able to get a higher score or get through faster?
- Totally.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah. My number one thing in Diablo III always was, if I showed up a little bit late for a season, I would just go to the leaderboard, look at number one and say, what did they do? And then I'm like, I'm now looking for that gear. I'm now looking for that to set my skills the same and that kind of stuff. So it is a great way to learn, but it's also a challenge because it really puts-- one of the things that's hard about Diablo because it's such a deep game with five different classes and all the different builds and all the combination of skills and all the combination of loot, that keeping it balanced is a real challenge.
And so this really puts that balance front and center because you can see it in the leaderboard. Season two, it was awesome to be a, well, lightning sorceress because you knew that you were going to dominate. Exactly. And so now, when we look at that, we have to go, OK, it's really fun. But how does that work on the leaderboards now? And so that's something that we're going to have to-- it's going to be an interesting challenge over season three.
- I would imagine it's an interesting challenge all the time in that millions of people play Diablo IV. They may have their particular favorite build that may not be considered part of the meta, or they might not like farming for this part or people have strong opinions. I mean, we've been playing Diablo since the 90s, right?
- Wait, what?
- Exactly.
- On the internet? People have strong opinions?
- You know. You know.
- I'm on a different internet. Well, look, the way I look at it is it's better than silence, right? It's good to hear. But I do wonder how you and the team think about, OK, is there a "there, there," or is it a small group of people that are incredibly loud? Like, how do you take all of this input? Because I'm sure it's very hard to make everybody happy, but to make the best decisions for the game and to tweak it without creating a new set of people that might feel aggrieved because this changed and they love this thing.
- Yeah, it's a mixture of things. Like, you basically have to take quantitative and qualitative. And what I mean by that is we have lots of data on how people play. We have lots of data on what the kind of damage output a class can do, or a kills per second kind of thing that we track. And we also do surveys, and we also do focus groups, and round tables. And then we have that qualitative, which is like how does it feel to us? How does it feel based on the social media response or the sentiment amongst the players? And then you have to mix all that together and look at it and kind of work through what's the right decision.
And then ultimately, it was something we learned a lot, honestly, going from preseason to season one is that we started in a very-- when you're in development, up to that point, all the balancing we were doing was during development. And we were just trying to make the most balanced game we could. And so when we had our first real big balance adjustment going into season one, we kind of focused on just the purity of the balance and not necessarily what players were considering to be the most fun thing to do at the time, which, in a game like Diablo, kind of the most fun thing to do is to kind of feel like you're cheating or you're slightly overpowered or you feel like you found a loophole in the rule system or whatever, much like the ball lightning sword.
Like we know that there's no way that sword should be that powerful, but at the end of the day, we decided people are having a lot of fun. And if people don't want to take advantage of that, they can play another class or another build if they want to. So it was really learning this idea. And we kind of got down to-- I call it the Mary Poppins strategy, which was the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. And so we recognized that, hey, if for whatever reason, we might have to nerf something a little bit, much like trying to maintain the balance for the leaderboards, as an example, that makes sure there's enough sugar there, enough fun there that we're trading something for something potentially even more fun.
And I think we kind of stumbled a little bit going into season one. We were just-- it was all medicine and not enough sugar. And now, we're trying to find that balance. And we continue to do that with each season, of like, OK, what's the right thing to do for the game, in terms of the balance and for the players? And do we have enough sugar there to make sure that our priority is our players having fun, as opposed to, oh, this is a perfectly balanced system. Because at the end of the day, with that much variety of class and skills, you'll never have a perfectly balanced system, so you just want to have a fun-balance system.
- I think that's a great way to put it. I'm just trying to think of other Mary Poppins references that the game is supercalifrag-- definitely not going to be--
- Talking about being a chimney sweep.
- Yeah, yeah. My mind did go there and that was a cul-de-sac, to be honest. But I'm glad that you do land on fun because this is something that we've been having fun with for decades as a whole. And so Rod, I love that someone who's been with us as a fan is now the GM of Diablo or has been now for a few years. So it feels like things are in good hands and that you're listening, and that's appreciated as a player. So thanks so much for that. And thanks so much for joining us here on the Xbox podcast.
- Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Yeah, I think if players haven't jumped in yet-- I know some people are not used to a kind of a seasonal rotation in a role playing game, and so it's kind of a known thing in action role playing games. And so it takes a little bit. But season 3 is a great time to jump in, if you haven't. One of the things is, if you've already beaten the story campaign, there's actually an option when you create your character to skip the campaign. And even if you haven't, all you have to do is play the prologue, which is maybe an hour. And then you can say skip the rest, I just want to get into the seasonal play.
And what I like about season 3 for new players is just that idea of getting that construct, that having that person who can help draw fire or can protect you. So if you're a new player and you're like, I don't know if I'm hardcore enough, but you don't have to be. Or I know enough about Diablo, which you don't. Like, everything you need to know about Diablo lore is in the game. But this is a great time to jump in. So I really hope people come and play season three with us. And it's live now, so why not hop in?
- Very cool. And how do folks get in touch, if they have things they'd love to share with you all, what's the best way to do that? Probably not your personal Twitter account.
- Yeah, I was going to say, are you setting me up for a Twitter-- no, there's a number. We have forums. You can go to blizzard.com, we have our blog. That's one of the things we do all the time, is we're always updating our blog with patch notes. We're kind of updating the game as much as it needs to be, so we can do hot fixes where we just fix things on the server that doesn't require a patch, and we do that pretty regularly, especially at the beginning of a season.
And I should really call out our developer updates and our campfire. So one of the things we try to do, and that was another thing we learned going into season one, is we wanted to be talking more to the players. And even in a more casual way, because we had these developer updates and we felt like we could only really do them when we had these formal announcements of some big thing. What we did for season three, we had to do a week or so ago, we did the big-- here's the developer update for season three. But we wanted to have these things we call campfire chats.
We're just really being-- have the ability for the developers to talk to the players about what's going on, what are we hearing? What are we thinking? Or if there's some rumor that's flying around that we need to deal with. And so it's really been trying to find additional ways to be able to talk to the players. So I hope people can tune in on like Twitch and YouTube and all that to get to hear what's going on.
- Very cool. Thanks a lot, Rod. I'm going to just change my clothes and send it back to me. Let's do it. Thanks so much, Rod. That is out today, season three of the Construct. Actually, it's going to tie into free code Friday. So we'll be asking a question about that. Stay tuned for that. We're back here. Wanted to just catch up. Let's take a breath, we had so much to talk about. Lex, let's talk a little bit about what you do. What is your role? You're a business planner. Like, I can't say things are none of your business, because really everything's your business.
- Everything's my business. Yeah, what do I do? It's a great question. I feel like I'm doing something different every day. Well, I work on the Game Pass team, as well as the third party games team. So we have our hands in a lot of things. I mainly just work with a ton of data, so data is my bread and butter. But I'm closer to when the title is going to launch into Game Pass slash when it's going to launch outside of Game Pass, and then kind of tight after it launches as well.
So I'm looking at any analysis you can imagine. What types of genres do well in the catalog? What do we need more of? Why is this title getting so many engagement hours? Cough, cough, Palworld. All those types of things, those things you might think about, like how to make the catalog a little stronger. I dig in and look at that. So it's a lot of fun Excel formulas. I love that stuff. Integrating a lot more machine learning tactics into there as well. So yeah, it's been really exciting.
- That's fascinating.
- So every couple of weeks, there's new games that are announced. And every time, pretty much you look on social, and people are like, oh, my backlog just got bigger. So now we know the way that you're always picking good games is math.
- It's all math. As much as I'd love to be like, gaming is so fun, and I'm a huge gamer myself so I know the consumer side of it. But it really is all math. And I love math, so it's fun to incorporate the two pieces together. Like, it's a lot of statistics, guys. And I know that's really boring for a lot of people, but I love a good linear regression.
- The way you're selling it, though. Maybe I should have went to the maths. I don't know.
- If you like strategy games, it's so satisfying to see some of your formulas pan out correctly. You might have some insight into that as well too, right?
- I'm really glad there are people like you that really love that side of things. Honestly, because you just surface up these insights and I'm like, I can work with that.
LEX LIM: Yes, yes.
- I don't know what I'm looking for. I don't know how to find it, but I can go, well, that's interesting information. I can make a plan around and a strategy based on what you've surfaced. So yeah, I'm super glad that that's your passion. Because for me, I'm like, oh.
- OK, I have another question for you because I feel like that's a really interesting job that a lot of people would probably be very fascinated by if they knew it existed. So like, real quick, how would someone get into something like that?
- That's a great question. I love-- specifically, I work with women trying to break into the tech industry. It's very interesting. My path specifically was not like the standard path. I actually came from a sales background. I'm very introverted, so that was not the direction I saw myself.
- You would not know that here on the show.
- No, no. Yeah, yeah. It's just, like, I worked in Excel like, once or twice. And I'm like, oh, this is interesting, this sum formula, it's really doing it for me right now. It's a similar satisfaction as like, when I beat a game or something, right? I'm just like, oh, yeah, this is great. So then I kind of just started digging into it. I started creating more intricate models, just in my free time, which is super, super nerdy. But when I work with a lot of the women I work with, I tell them, like, if you have a passion, you work on it in your free time, and it will be expressed when you're trying to hunt for these jobs.
You're going to look so much stronger than someone who maybe does it for work because you've literally spent all this time in your precious free time that you have working on these things to make yourself a stronger candidate. So that's the biggest thing for me is just explore the internet and just type in. If you're curious about gaming analytics, just look up different data sets. There's so many free data sets online. Pull those data sets, start messing around. That's the beauty of data. You can try so many different formulas. You can cap it all together. You can do so many nested ifs. I could go on.
- Math is like the ultimate turn-based RPG.
- The way you were lit up right now.
- Yeah, I was so excited.
- She thought we were passionate.
- That was how I felt when I discovered conditional formatting in Excel as well.
- I love conditional formatting.
- --I was like, oh, I can change the colors automatically.
- The colors. The icon sets.
- I bought a soccer ball for my kid hoping she would get into soccer, I should have gotten her Excel.
- That's it.
- Britt, it's not too late for you. Your kid is still pretty young. So maybe get that Office 365 subscription.
- Programming, yay.
- Thanks, Jeff.
- Britt, besides playing 100 hours of Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, what have you been up to?
- Oh man, we're still on our hiatus with What's Good Games. And I have this new motto that, of course we're going to come back. Like, the show is definitely coming back.
- I hope so.
- Oh yeah, don't worry about it. All the Resident Evil and Yakuza games, like-- I'm just kind of focusing on what makes me happy in the moment.
- I love that.
- That's my thing right now. Obviously, this game has taken up 100 hours of my life over the past few weeks. So I have been festering, pretty sure there's a permanent butt indent on the couch where I've been playing.
- Oh yeah.
- But yeah, since I saw you last, I think that was in November. It's just been getting through the holidays and just kind of relaxing, seeing family and planning little weekend getaways and just honestly, just chilling. So nothing super exciting. But honestly, it's been fantastic.
- So I heard you this morning when I was driving in here on the Kinda Funny Xcast. It was great hearing you and Roger and Snow Bike Mike dive even deeper into Like a Dragon. You going to make more appearances? Like any place else we can look forward to hearing you soon?
- Right now, no, not really. I'm just like I said, taking opportunities as they come. That's why when you're like, do you want to come up? I was like, absolutely. And when Kind Of Funny asked if I wanted to be on, absolutely. Just doing things that make me happy and bring me joy and just chilling with rad people, doing stuff like this that we all share the same passion, that's kind of what I'm pursuing right now. Obviously, that's why What's Good Games is going to come back.
- Yeah.
- You need the outlet, I feel like.
- I do. I know. I'm just a shaken up bottle of pop. Like it's so bad. That's why when I was on the Kind Of Funny podcast this week, and then even when I'm here, I'm like, ugh. Like, I need to talk to somebody. Because generally, they just wind me up and let me go on What's Good, but I haven't had that outlet.
- Well, we're very happy to have you here for the second time. Our first repeat guest.
- Do I get a medal?
- We should get on that one. Joe, I have a feeling I know what you're up to because out now is season 11 of Sea of Thieves.
JOE NEATE: Yes.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So let's talk about that.
JOE NEATE: Great, yeah, thank you. I did none of the work. Yeah, yeah, no so like all of the amazing team back at Rare and all of our co-devs have done incredible work with it. So when talking about season 11, I think it's kind of important to look back at why we targeted the stuff that we targeted for this. Because well, running a live, evolving game is a fascinating thing where we get tons of data and insights all the time. Honestly, but we do. And it can be a mixture of sentiment, it can be a mixture of just player behavior and player requests, there's so much that you have to kind of pass and sort through to figure out what to do.
And honestly, working on a live, evolving game feels a bit like-- I think I used this metaphor on our podcast recently on the Sea of Thieves one, but it really holds true to me. Which is, you feel like you're just in a river being buffeted along. And you're just trying to kind of avoid things and just not get hit by the rocks or the branches and stuff. And just kind of keep making decisions and keep moving forward and keep adding things and you very rarely get a chance to almost get out of that river and stand on a bit and take a breather and stuff.
- I would play that mode, by the way.
- Because it's just never stopping. There's always a new release, there's always a new thing. There's always more data. And as soon as you hit one hot topic down, then another one pops up. But there's always a top five list of things that you want to fix or we need to add. Because as soon as you meet one demand, then a new one kind of emerges. Like, there's always different kind of projects and things. But we really took the time to really look at some of the insights and some of the asks from our players for Sea of Thieves.
And as anyone that's played Sea of Thieves probably knows, you need an afternoon or a day to dedicate to Sea of Thieves, to go play it. Because in the best way, it's this distraction simulator that you just jump in and then you just set off with one goal and then just all this stuff happens and you're just being pulled all over the place. And suddenly, four hours is gone. And you're like, whoa. Yeah. And so you can't jump down and be like, oh, just before dinner starts I'm going to go in for a quick session and things.
And so our pattern of play historically with Sea of Thieves has been frequency of sessions is quite low, but lengths of sessions is super high. And so it's quite interesting, which kind of would look different to something, say like Rocket League for example, which would be much more frequent sessions and things and they'll probably be shorter. And you get a choice every 10, 20 minutes to decide, do I want to carry on? Do you want to carry on? And so it can be quite a barrier for people to play and find the time to do that in Sea of Thieves. And so we really were like, how do we give people a shorter session option to play Sea of Thieves?
Something that they can look at it and kind of bring it more into the rotation alongside other games. And at the same time, Sea of Thieves as an experience now, because we've been working on it for six years post-launch, like we're almost at our sixth year anniversary in March, which is mad.
- Wow.
- I've been on it for 10 years this month. I know, right? Yeah, it's crazy. It's been a lot of my life. For new players, the amount of stuff that is in this and how to play, what to do, where to start, it's just overwhelming. And a lot of the content is hidden because we liked having things discoverable emergently, like, oh, there's a big cloud in the distance, in the sky that's shaped a skull. What should I-- What's over there? I'll go do this.
BRITT BROMBACHER: You should go check that out.
JOE NEATE: Yeah, yeah. And now it's glowing red and the eyes are-- Oh, OK. But actually, we were really like, how do we surface that content? How do we bring new players into our experience? Because we definitely see a lot of people bouncing off wherever they come from, whether it's in Game Pass or even when they bought the game on Steam or on Xbox. And so we were like, how do we really target that but also maintain the heart of what Sea of Thieves is, there's this shared world experience, right? And maintain the magic of those encounters.
When you encounter other players, you don't know what they're up to, what they're going to do and that risk and reward of getting the treasure in the world before you have to take it back. And so we really thought about this and the team came back with a proposal because we kind of, as a leadership group, went hey, this is the situation. What do we go do with this? And they came back with the proposal, which was very, very carefully thought through. But was not without risk. Because we were like, hey, we're going to allow players to basically choose their voyage and then dive to that location where it starts.
So that whole kind of sailing to the start point of a thing, which because you start a random location in the world, right? Whenever you load into Sea of Thieves, you don't know what outpost you're going to be at. And so when you pick a voyage, you could be like, oh, I've got to sail a half an hour over here just to get to the thing and do this. And so we're allowing people to just choose what they want to do. So you go to the captain's table on the ship now.
So everything starts on the ship as opposed to before, you had to go and collect voyages from all the different trading companies. So it's all in one single place. There's now a UI pops up and it shows all of the available content so you can just go, I want to do a tall tale. I can go dive to it, I can start at that point. Or I want to do a world event, or I want to do this kind of voyage. And so we've rebalanced and changed kind of the whole flow of Sea of Thieves.
BRITT BROMBACHER: That's a big deal.
JOE NEATE: It's a fundamental change to the game. But basically, when you finish, if you go to a voyage, finish, dig up the treasure, you get a little bit of XP in that trading company. But you've still got to take that treasure back.
- You can't dive to the location.
JOE NEATE: No, exactly. Yeah, because if you die, you lose anything that's on the ship without you.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: The treasure just floats to the top.
BRITT BROMBACHER: I like that.
JOE NEATE: Yeah, because you think about how are people going to try and abuse this and game this?
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Like Loki coming in and grabbing it.
JOE NEATE: Yeah, yeah. So it's like, if you dive, all the treasure stays, obviously, because it floats to the top, right? That's physics. It works. But now, you've got so much more choice about what you can do. You can go into the game with an intent. I want to go do this type of world event or this type of experience. I want to do this. I want to do a tall tale. Get straight to the point then go play that experience and then you've still got to take that treasure and get it back. So you're always going to have treasure in the world.
And in fact, for that whole mix of PVP and risk and reward in our game, it means, in theory-- and we'll see it play out, we've launched today, we'll see if all of the theory plays out-- is that there will be more loot on the seas. So if you get into a kind of engagement with another ship, they're far more likely to have treasure because when you're diving, no one's on their way to it anymore.
BRITT BROMBACHER: They've already all got the treasure. Yeah.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You're not hijacking an empty boat.
JOE NEATE: Yeah, exactly.
- Richer seas is what they're going to be.
- Honestly, though. Yeah, because some people, there was a risk of, oh, are we going to change the dynamic too much? Is it going to lose some of that magic? And it's like, no, actually, it should elevate it. And so alongside that part of it, there's so much depth of like-- literally, we have just rebalanced the entire game. Every single voyage, every single way each one plays and stuff, it's astonishing. But we've also introduced an entirely new onboarding process for new or returning players.
So you now wake up on the ship. And the pirate lord appears and kind of guides you through how to play in a much more kind of natural way than our previous tutorial system and things. So in theory, this should play out that people can get to the content they like much more. They can have those shorter sessions if they want. So it really kind of changes the dynamic of how you can go play this.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Fascinating.
JOE NEATE: Yeah, honestly, I think it's the biggest--
- This is the first I'm hearing about it, so I'm wrapping my head around it. Like, that's really cool though.
- Yeah. It's the biggest change we've made to Sea of Thieves, I think, since we've launched. So it should, in theory, make it better for new players, better for returning players. But even elevate the overall experience for everybody whilst cutting down that kind of unnecessary start. You can still do it if you want. Like, when you pick up a voyage, you can choose, do I want to dive or do I want to just go and play the game as it always was?
BRITT BROMBACHER: Are there limitations to how far you can dive across the map?
JOE NEATE: No, no. Like, it will take you--
BRITT BROMBACHER: You can go anywhere.
JOE NEATE: Yeah, yeah. Totally, yeah. It's based on some of the previous things we've done where you can dive to combat with other players, which was in season eight, I think. So of we're doing the technology for that to allow us to go across servers and move people together. Like, this kind of builds on that. And when it comes to world events, like a fort, you can't dive to an active one that someone else has already started. So if you dive to one, it starts and spins that up. And then that will be in the world, shared world. So you'll still get that emergent threat on the horizon.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Got it.
JOE NEATE: All of the emergence of those events happening, you see that skull cloud. You're like, hey, I can go to this. It's all there. And so it's just like, honestly, the team who've worked on this have done an incredible job of thinking through of all the permutations and the possible risks. We've taken feedback from insiders about that. That was actually one of the changes of insiders about the world events, they didn't want you to all just be piling in at once.
They wanted that emergence still of the risk and not knowing what's going to happen and stuff. And some of those things unlock as part of the progression now, so you unlock the ability to do a 4x level in the progression. Obviously, you can do one emergently, but then you won't unlock the ability to go travel to it as you progress through. So it's like, the whole game feels so much more coherent, I think.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. As a casual Sea of Thieves player, I think I really appreciate that too, because for me, I just love getting the treasure and the rush of trying to get it back. But you had to sail there, right? And along the way, maybe your ship will get sunk, and then you're like, I got to start over again. And that's a really interesting mechanic. And I think it makes a lot of sense. Is it also going to apply to safer seas?
- Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So all of that is across both entirely.
- Oh, awesome.
- Oh, good. Yes. Love me some safer seas.
JOE NEATE: And we've been over the last year doing a lot of system work. Like safer seas is another example, right? And so as we look ahead to this, this is kind of the last of those big fundamental changes to Sea of Thieves for the foreseeable future. Who knows what's in year eight, year nine, year ten. And I think some of the feedback we've had from our players over the last year has been that the seas have felt a bit stale, I guess. Like, this hasn't been as fresh. We haven't been injecting the sandbox with as much stuff because we've been doing these big complex updates to get to where we've got to.
But this season-- I've been all over social media today watching it land-- has been really positive. I think people have really gravitated towards it, because I think at first, there was a bit of like, whoa, this is a big change. Go through the change process and the thinking, and it's like, oh wow, this is actually a positive for everyone. So it seems we're landing great, which is awesome. But now, as I look ahead to the rest of the year, like we are all in on Sandbox and just kind of injecting it with new--
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Content.
JOE NEATE: Yeah, yeah, and new ingredients. Like, players creating stories together was the tagline for Sea of Thieves internally. That was our vision before even calling it Pirates. And so it was always about that, about the stories and the encounters with others. And so we're going to be just giving people new tools to mess with each other, like the mischief and fun and stuff like you were talking about.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Love that.
JOE NEATE: Because that's some of the best stories you've seen with Sea of Thieves, is when people are just kind of hiding on each other's ships and kind of like--
- It's the best. If I can just praise Sea of Thieves for a second. It is my relaxation game. There's something about the seas, sailing around, hearing the oceans, the creaking of the ships, and then my husband getting drunk off grog and then me playing instruments and then shoot myself out of a cannon. Like it's so great that way and I just love that y'all are just still continuously listening to the community and innovating and you are aware that with big changes, there are going to be people who are going to try to take advantage of it. How do we prevent that? But knowing that you guys are so in tune with it, the community and stuff, it just feels like, OK, no matter what, you're on it.
- You've just got to keep evolving. Like, it's an evolving game, but you have to keep evolving your thinking and the new learnings you have and you've got to take risks, right? We took a risk with what Sea of Thieves is. And it was like it was a pretty bold, new kind of game experience, right? But it landed well, people loved it. Obviously, they had some content requests at launch. But we're in a great place now. And actually, as a developer, one of the things, when you're going into launching a live game like this, an evolving game, it's the first one we've ever done.
And so we had a really clear intent of how we wanted to operate, how we wanted to talk to the community and learn. But you don't know if you're going to get bored, right? Like honestly, as a developer, you're like, oh, do I just want to go and do something new? And would that be a risk for us or the team or anything else? But for something like Sea of Thieves where there's so many possibilities to go do new creative fun things, and you get that joy of revealing it and launching it and seeing the feedback, which when you work on a single game that you spend five, six years on, you have that moment once, and then you're kind of--
- It's your whole life. Yeah.
- And then you're back in the shadows again. We got to pay it up, and then you're gone again. Whereas this, we get that satisfaction and that joy and that feeling all the time. And it's really fascinating learning, just kind of being that. And so yeah, we're nearly six years in and it still feels as fresh and fun as ever. And we just want to keep taking risks and being bold and doing more and kind of-- Yeah.
- You should give us the opportunity to customize our own island. I'm just saying. You would never get rid of me.
- In Sea of Thieves, I think there's ideas that could work and there's ideas that couldn't. And I'd definitely put that in the former. So like as a potential thing, is there a hideout you could have? Is there things like that? There's stuff we've talked about internally, nothing confirmed, nothing in a roadmap for the next year. But I totally get it, right? Like, we get that, like, appeal, and it's--
- Britt really just wanted to talk about Dondoko Island.
[LAUGHTER]
[OVERLAPPING SPEECH]
BRITT BROMBACHER: You're not gonna let me talk about it. Jeff cut me off but I wanted to talk about it, so I got to talk about it with you now. But seriously, I think that would be really cool. But that's just my two cents.
- No, but I get the ask. It's something we've talked about. Like I say, the hardest thing is picking the thing to do next. And that's why talking about the strategic goals of the thing, which is what for season 11, why do we go do this? Right? Like, that's where we start now, and then you go, what's the best way to go solve that? And what's the best solution? And if one of the things is we want to give people a place of their own, a place to socialize with their friends, customers, and all that kind of stuff, then oh, hey. Maybe a hideout fits with that goal.
- You need a tester, you know.
- Yeah. [LAUGHS] But it's always about that. It's always about, what are we really trying to do? We really try and kind of give-- and we try and give as much ownership to the teams themselves to go hey, here's the strategic kind of framing goal for what your season is, or your update. Go figure this out and kind of pitch back to us and things, because we're trying to kind of hand as much ownership down as we can into the team. Because I think historically, when you're building a game and starting game, you're very like, here's what we're making. We're doing this, and you want to allow that creativity and smartness to kind of thrive in your team. So we're definitely kind of evolved to that stage as a leadership group and as and as a culture, I think. Which is just, again, one of the things you just grow and learn as you move through it.
- Joe, I'm so glad that you happen to be in town.
- I know. I still have so many more questions for you. But I'm like, no, this is not my podcast, I need to sit down and back up.
- All right. Actually, we're going to skip through a few of the other things we were going to talk about because we actually have one more special guest. I mentioned earlier in the show that there were two huge releases this week, one of them, of course, was Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth. The other, Tekken 8, reviewing so well. I go all the way back to Tekken 2, so I'm really excited to get in and play this game. But for more on it, we have the Tekken series producer Michael Murray who spent some time with Malik. Malik, always good to see him, so let's hear from both of them.
- Thanks, Jeff. It's Malik here. Now, when you hear the name Tekken, players around the world know one thing. It is one of the most storied franchises in fighting game history. And with the newest installment coming out on January 26th, excitement is at an all time high. So let's talk about it. Here to talk about it is Michael Murray, who is the Tekken series producer. Michael, how's it going?
- Hey, Malik. I'm doing well. Thank you. It's good to talk to you today.
- Yeah. I mean, it must be a really exciting time. I mean, a Tekken release has to be like this moment when the team has put so much work into-- like I said at the intro, a franchise that people have been playing for decades, at this point. What does it feel like putting out Tekken 8?
- It feels great. I mean, Tekken 7, the previous iteration was so popular that we ended up-- we didn't plan to at the start, but we ended up running maybe seven years post-launch with content and esports, et cetera. So it really has been quite some time since we've seen a brand new installment, so I'm quite excited.
- Yeah, I mean, I have to make an admission, Michael. Because I'm actually pretty new to the whole fighting game scene, as well as Tekken scene. And so I got to play the demo last night, and really excited to jump into the full game. So I'm going to ask you a few questions from a newbie's perspective. But I know there's a ton of Tekken faithfuls out there who want to know what's new, so coming off of Tekken 7 from a few years ago, what can players expect? What should they be getting excited about? Can you give us a little bit of an overview.
- Well, there's a lot to cover, but I think the first thing I would bring up is just the amazing graphics. When we first announced Tekken 8, everyone was blown away. And this was achieved because we actually took all the character models and the environments and created everything from scratch and then made the jump to ue5. So I think the graphics are going to stand out to everyone who's seeing the game for the first time. Not just that, but the denser story mode that we have.
In Tekken, the story is always important to a wide variety of our audience, and so we'll see the continuation of-- we left off from Tekken 7 where Heihachi and his son, Kazee were doing the epic battle. And then we'll pick up right again with Jin Kazama and his father, Kazuya. And so players will get to see everything that goes on there. The quality there too has been ramped up, volume as well is probably 1.5 times more than Tekken 7. So that, and then I guess I'd say the characters, right? I mean, what's a fighting game without its characters? And even the returning characters have all been created from scratch, like I said, so they look and feel brand new. But we have some really interesting additions too. We have three brand new ones, Reina, Victor, and Azucena. So that brings our roster to 32 characters, which is, I believe, pretty respectable for any game in this genre.
- Yeah, I mean, new characters, an amazing story, and unbelievable graphics. On the point of the graphics, though, I mean, fighting games have always looked amazing. But when I booted up the demo last night, I was blown away. Seeing the pores on Kazuya's face, and even like the start menu right before you hit start. The effects in that initial fight scene, I didn't know games could look that good. And so if you're jumping into Tekken for the first time, expect to be blown away by the graphics. And then of course, you get into everything else into the game, which we'll get into a little bit right now.
Because the story, I don't know what I thought about, as someone who's never been into fighting games until recently, what a fighting game story was like. And then I started to play it, and you all do a great job of having these tiny little vignettes in the game to catch people up. But I went even deeper and started looking into it. And I thought my family was dysfunctional. The mission was-- I've never tried to throw anybody off a cliff like I've seen as I was reviewing all the backstory. And so after almost 30 years of Tekken and with this newest release, how do you all keep the story fresh? And then can you also give us a little bit of a catch up on the story, which may be hard to do.
- Right, so I think we actually released-- or we will be shortly-- kind of an overview with the guy from Succession, actually, Brian Cox, was it, I believe, where he does a really brief run through of the story from Tekken 1 through 7. So if you haven't seen that, that's a really great way to catch up on it. So basically, we're starting off with the Mishimas-- obviously Heihachi, his son Kazuya, then later on, Jin Kazama. And the son, Kazuya, starts out with the devil gene, and where did that come from, and why does he have these powers, et cetera.
At the same time, we have a wide cast, so everyone has their own individual story arcs as well, whether that's Nina, Paul, everything. So you'll be covering that. And for people who knew the series, don't worry. We have you covered. Boot up Tekken 8, and in the gallery you'll see digest of each of the Tekkens up until then. So I think it should be pretty easy to follow the story. As far as how we keep up with it and keep it interesting, I guess it makes it easier, since most of the devs on the team, we've been there for 20 years, most of us. Harada himself being on almost the complete 30 years.
So everyone has a really good handle on the law of Tekken and what makes these characters unique and why the fans connect with them, so it's a little bit easier for us to continue with the story. And then we always have these story arcs that kind of get left off and they're not completed in each installment, so fans are always bugging myself or Harada, hey, you guys didn't say anything about-- where is June? Where did she go? Stuff like that. So there's always kind of things to work off on that. And then Tekken, it's serious, it's cool. But then there's also that kind of comedic elements like you see with Lau and Paul and what goes on with them. So I think that kind of combination, and we have just the right taste of seriousness and silliness in the game.
- Yeah, I mean, that's a great way of putting it. And I will say, it was interesting watching back a lot of the history of the story and how it evolved and the themes that were in it, where people aren't really good or bad. And then also with-- like you mentioned, with the devil gene, how absolute power corrupts absolutely, right? And what that means and how the dynamic of a family, and so it was just really cool to catch up. I highly recommend you all check out that story catch up when it comes out because it really does a great job of setting up the stakes of this game. And so kudos to you all. But I know there's also a separate story mode in the game called Arcade Quest. Can you let us know a little bit about what that might be?
- Great, yeah. So that's a brand new mode for Tekken 8, actually, and what this is it focuses on you as a player in this competitive scene. And so you start off in your local arcade, and granted in Tekken 8, we feature these arcades heavily because that's where Tekken was born, and that's where this nostalgia comes from. But for the newer players, they haven't experienced that. So this is kind of a way to experience that arcade and arcade culture as your mentor, Max kind of teaches you the ropes.
So we didn't want to just make a tutorial where you're checking off the item list and just going through the menus. You're actually playing through the story of you as a player. He's teaching you little bits at a time. You fight against increasingly capable opponents, AI opponents, as you progress through the story. And as you come towards the end, you'll notice you're a much better player. But then you've also unlocked a bunch of stuff as well.
And there's also a little cool area that once you progress a little bit, you can fight against these AI ghost opponents of people. So whether that's people online, or even the devs like me, Harada, the director, Nakatsu, we all have our own ghost AI that you can fight in the game. So there's a lot of cool stuff crammed into that mode. And I think it's a good way to get newcomers up to speed as well. But if you're a veteran still, I think you can have a lot of fun with it.
- And I think that's what you want with the game, right? Especially with a game like this with such a storied past, is to be able to with each new installment, invite new people and make them feel welcome and give them little-- I mean, even when I was playing the demo, the assists that were there to help me as I was playing that opening fight. And I thought it was just a really great way of doing that. And so Arcade Quest is again, another great example of you inviting new players in and giving them a different way to experience the Tekken experience. Now, let's go back to the hardcore fans, because the fighting game community is so passionate. I watch tournaments all the time. It's just so impressive to see. How are you guys looking to build up the Tekken fighting game community?
- Right, so the community, Harada and I have been involved with it directly for many years, which is why I think we have a really solid community built around the game. And we have very open dialogue with the community as well. And I think there's a lot of fun in just fighting on the sofa with your friends or your brothers or whatever, but I think the real bonds come with the competitive scene when people are traveling to tournaments and they experience that hype firsthand.
So we wanted to include more people in that. Because we understand it might be kind of daunting to jump right into that from the start. So this online mode that we have this time around called Tekken Fight Lounge is supposed to recreate that, where you can jump into a virtual arcade. You can interact with your friends if they're there or make new friends online. So we're trying to recreate that whole competitive scene, but make it more easy to jump into.
- Yeah, which is great. I mean, you said it best, right? Video game and how you engage with your friends, especially with fighting games has changed. And while there are these great experiences in person where you're really competing, whether it be on the couch or in the arcades, having a new way online to experience that makes so much sense. Now, as we know with many games, the release is just the start of the journey. So what can players expect down the road for Tekken 8?
- Right, so I mean, first off, the overall content, I think, is going to keep people tided over for a while. Like I said, the story mode, the Arcade Quest that you touched on. But then we also have a lot of other content, Tekken Ball, which is a really popular mini game from Tekken 3. And then also just easy ways to get up to speed with the game. Not just Arcade Quest, but one of my favorite features, just let me tell you about this little bit, is my replay and tips. So this is really cool. Up until now if you wanted to learn a new fighting game, you had to go on Wikipedia or look for like combo videos and all this stuff.
But say I play you, Malik, and then you beat me up badly. I look at our video and it'll actually stop it in certain points and say, hey, you could have ducked this attack or you blocked, but you didn't punish. Here's the recommended punish, or he threw you, why don't you push these buttons to escape? So I think in the base game itself, it's going to keep people busy for quite some time. But then just this past weekend, we announced the Tekken World Tour 2023 Finals post-launch content. And so we have a few characters on the way, the first one starting with Eddy Gordo, who's a staple of the series.
We weren't able to include him in the base, but we're happy that he's going to be available soon post-launch. And then also the Tekken World Tour 2024, right? So I think it's based on two fronts, the game content that we provide with the post-launch, but then also all the great content and story outside of the game that the players create in their respective environments.
- Oh, I love it. Again, it's going to be a great experience on January 26th when the game launches, but it's just the beginning delivering on new characters and new experiences for newcomers and veterans alike. It's been a pleasure, Michael, having you on. Excited to see Tekken 8 and all the players jumping into it. Thanks so much. Where can people go to find out more about what's coming next for Tekken?
- To keep up on everything Tekken, we have several official accounts, be it the YouTube account, the X account, or our homepages, the websites for Tekken. So we try to keep everything up to date there. Please check it out. Or you can check out Harada or myself on X as well.
- There we go. Tekken 8 releases January 26th, be sure to check it out, whether you're a newcomer or a veteran. Michael, thank you so much for joining us, and we're going to send it back to the studio.
- Thank you, Malik. I had a great time.
- Thank you so much, Michael and Malik. Tekken 8 is available tomorrow. Something else, actually, that is rolling out now. Every week, so many games come out. We have so many indie games in the ID@Xbox program, literally thousands. And so we want to make sure that some of the real gems are able to be resurfaced for you. And so something that we have just rolled out in the Xbox store on your console is ID@Xbox Indie Selects. And so this is a new permanent hub on the store that showcases select indie games. We're going to update it every Wednesday to make sure some stuff you might have missed is back on your radar.
So we have a couple collections that are available now. One is called Featured Indies, which has really, some of the biggest games that have come out in the last year, Talos Principle II, definitely recommend you check that one out. Collection number two is Games to Play with Your Cat. And so of course, you expect to see Stray there. I did not expect to see Dredg there.
BRITT BROMBACHER: Lots of fish in Dredg.
- I guess cats like fish.
BRITT BROMBACHER: They do love some fish.
- OK so that must be that. Moonglow Bay. Certain games that you expect to be there, Cat Quest II and then other ones. This game called Castle Full of Cats, but then also game called A Building Full of Cats. So I'm highly allergic, and I'm already starting to tear up here. Collection number 3 is games from around the world. I just want to call out Haven. This is one of my favorite games of the last five years. It's sort of relationship simulator on a planet that has been polluted, and there's no one there. Has some of the best soundtrack, and also like, skating mechanics. You've played Haven?
BRITT BROMBACHER: Yes, the visuals are so beautiful in that game. Yeah.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It is absolutely one of my favorites. Some really good voice acting too. Some folks I think are in the Persona and Persona V. I'll have to go back and check that one out. But I don't have to double check that Haven was amazing. And then finally, collection four, indie games to wish list for you horror fans. The Outlast Trials is on there.
LEX LIM: Yes. That one was rough on me, on my conscience.
- So you want to check that out, there's always something to play. And ID@Xbox collections will definitely be a good place to start when you're wondering, what am I going to play this weekend? So here's another game might get to play this weekend, if you win it. Diablo IV, we have Diablo IV codes, and we've got some of the platinum that you need to be able to buy the new battle pass for season three, the season of the construct. You know how we do it. If you tune into twitter.com/xboxwire at noon on Friday, you answer this question that I'm about to ask you, you got about an hour, why don't we say two hours. Two hours to get your answer in and then we will pick some winners at random. And really, there's no right answer here, other than--
- There is a right answer.
- There is definitely a right answer.
- I'm going to pose this question to you. We know that in new seasons in Diablo IV, you roll a new class, a new character. What class are you going to roll, Britt?
BRITT BROMBACHER: Barbarian. I got to shout, I got to smack stuff in the face. I got to get all up in the enemy's grill. That's my class, Barbarian.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All right, Joe, do you have a favorite?
- I'm going to say the same. That is literally my vibe as well. Yeah, exactly. No, I'm a Barbarian, absolutely, 100%. I'm not going to be able to talk.
- Heavies over here.
- OK. Lex, you feeling lighter or more nimble?
- Actually, so we were talking about this earlier. And I did say Rogue. And actually I'm going to cycle it back a little bit and go back to Druid, because we were talking about it and I'm like, you know what? I would love to be a werebear again. I think it was really my spirit animal where I was able to be in the front lines, but then you're able to kind of step it back. You have your wolf friends if you want have them help out with you. So I think if it's like first time playing, Druid was actually kind of nice. Rogue is, in my opinion, a little bit more experienced with the game, because the tactics, you have to be a little bit more strategic with your moves. So Rogue, if you've played, or otherwise you're dead, which is kind of common for me in this game. So yeah.
- All right. I used to-- I rolled a Druid in season one. I think Necromancer is what I'm feeling, like rolling deep with even--
- With your posse of skeletons?
- Grabbing all the dead bodies?
- I get lonely really, really easily. So that will make me feel better. So we want to know what is the class you're going to be rolling here in season three. You don't have to tell me this directly. Tell twitter.com/xboxwire. When you see that question go up, it'll be noon Pacific on Friday and you got about two hours to answer and then we're going to pick five of you to win a copy of Diablo IV and enough platinum to buy that new battle pass. That is the end of the show, folks. Any last thoughts? It's been a doozy. And so I want to thank you so much for joining us. Any last thoughts here, Lex?
- No, I'm just excited to be here. It's not every day that a little data girly gets to come on a cool show like this to express how fun gaming is and working in gaming. So I'm just honored to be here. Thank you for having me.
- Good luck on your move. And when you come back up here to the mothership, the door will be open. Again, we're leaving the key under the mat.
- Everyone get extra keys in here.
BRITT BROMBACHER: You're going to wake up one day. I'm going to be on a cheese couch--
- Yes.
- --with blankets.
- Playing Phasmaphobia.
- Playing Phasmaphobia, right there.
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- There'll be a Britt-shaped impression there on the couch. Joe, any last thoughts?
- Well, first, thank you for inviting me as well. It's been great to be here, honestly, fantastic.
- Britt, we've made it another show without the bleep. We have had someone standing by to buzz you out if you cursed, and you've done it again.
- This is the misconception that I am just always swearing and I'm always talking about dirty things and half naked men. I mean, they're not wrong. But I can control myself when I need to.
- I think having no whiskey on the set probably contributed here. But you know what?
- Speak for yourself.
- I knew there was something in that cup.
- How come he gets it?
- Well, I mean, he makes a game where you can literally drink grog until you vomit. So I think we have-- we had to do all that. Britt, it's been great having you here. And like I said, always an open door, especially every time we have another Like a Dragon game to talk about. No one knows more than you do. So you've made the show better. Thank you once again.
- Thank you for having me back. I'll be back.
- All right, no doubt. No doubt. Whether we want you here or not, but we do.
- You don't have a choice anymore.
- All right. Thanks, everybody. This has been two shows in a week. So thanks for staying with us and we will be back again next week with Tina and some more guests to be named later. Thanks, everybody.
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