1Upsmanship: No Man’s Sky (Feat. Cody Johnston)

Host of Some More News Cody Johnston sits in with Adam and Mike as they tackle a game with ambitions as vast as a galaxy and a launch scandal to match. Has Hello Games done enough to improve NMS over the years? Will it launch onto the Celestial Hard Drive or run out of hazard protection and get eaten by a Gek? They do that, you know. Strap in and let’s go exploring.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Huh, says some kind of whatsome, a whispering egg, kind

(00:27):
of egg with let's open this up. Oh my god,
it's what I'm spen ship.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
It's ripping my goddamn throw it out.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
All right, Hey, everybody, you know what I'm talking about.
If you know, you know, don't fuck with those whispering eggs.
I'm Michael Swam, a stalwart explorer of the space we
call interactive media. No one calls it that. We talk
about video games here. It's one upsmanship.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
I metem gans are still stunned by this by luster.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
That's how you dumb as a podcast host is you
get them to have a second of awkward silence because
they're so flabbergasted by what you.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Just find out.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
God, you gotta was that not? Did that not scan
the whispering egg? The horrible things come out of you
know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Funny enough, it only kind of did. It took me
a little bit. I was like, wait, what, Okay, uh yeah, funny.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
I know our guest knows what I'm talking about, because
he's such a pro that he stifled the gallous of
uproarious laughter that obviously my bit should have triggered for
the sake of de corum, and I really appreciate that.
But now you can speak please say, hey, special.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Guest, Hey special guest. My name is Cody, and I
got your bit immediately. But you're right, I was being polite,
although I guess being polite would be like laughing louder.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Right, Well, that's kind of how you define it.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Really, podcast etiquettes very specific.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, well I don't why, you know, I didn't want
to speak up before being introduced your podcast, No appreciate
vocally saying I understand you're whispering egg reference.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
That's right. Uh, No, it's not a Gwyneth Paltrow product.
It's from the game No Man's Sky. Uh. That was
a vaginal egg reference. That scan. I'm gonna stop every
time I try a bit and make sure.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
It's scan understood. That one. Yeah, great, really really good.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, we're talking about from hellas.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Sky. That's right.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Uh, a game famously that launched quite some time ago
to a certain amount of uproar of people saying there's
nothing here, there's it's not enough of a game. But
that has been very robustly supported, so we're checking in
with it now. Ish we've all played at fairly recently,
and so we've played a pretty robust version of No

(02:56):
Man's Sky enough that we feel like, yes, they're going
to keep adding stuff on, but it's ready to cover.
This baby's cooked enough to cover. We feel like we
understand what No Man Sky was as an experiment and
an endeavor now, so we know Codes played a lot
of it, and we figured we have him on to
talk about it. Always appreciate you taking the time. Folks
listening may know Cody from his Showdy Some More News

(03:19):
if you don't check that out. I noticed gamefully are
doing plugs at the beginning now, so I'm gonna start
ripping them off and doing some plugs at the beginning.
But let's dive in and talk No Man Sky Adam.
Is that alright with you?

Speaker 3 (03:30):
Oh? I'm perfectly fine. You might also know him from
from that one sketch we did called slormp. You might
remember that one's or the or the Puddle of Mud sketch.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
From that.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Now I know him from that, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
So this is uh. That means we pass our first checkpoint, which,
in terms of this game, I guess means we uh.
I'll say I teleported to the space station and immediately
got that backpack upgrade you gotta get always first, got
away first second you hit a star system, and that
takes us to a segment called tell me Like I'm
a Bit, where we implore our special guests to explain

(04:09):
this game in objective terms, not so much your your
experience of the game as much as like, if someone's
never heard of this game? What is nomn Sky? In
a nutshell, please, Cody?

Speaker 2 (04:21):
No Man's Sky is an open world sandbox style game
that includes an entire galaxy and other galaxies where you
can explore and land on and mine planets with fantastic

(04:41):
landscapes and atmosphere to gain items and upgrades for your
ships and weapons in a slight narrative way. And I
lost my train of thought. Furthermore, I love it.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
See this is how you know it's he's a performer
who's fully comfortable on stage, does not feel the need
to even be entertaining.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
I would say, uh, it's it's an open world GTA
red Dead redemption style game in.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
Space oh.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Redemption style style. To be clear, in the story, do
you get tuberculosa space gangs?

Speaker 3 (05:34):
I would say you losing your train of thought is
appropriate for the summary of this exactly.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yes, that is also true. Yeah, yes, I got a
lot of mixed feelings about this game.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Right, that's right, all right, so good alley, oop there,
let's move on from this statement. I think that's mostly true.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, I sure, I think we should say. It came
out originally in twenty sixteen, and it was the most
hyped indie game in a very long time.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Because specifically thanks to a new hip thing called procedural generation,
which is still struggling to find a mainstream place in
most games, but it's an exciting technology. This was one
of the first games, alongside another famous flop, Spore, that
that was really touting the promise of procedural generation in

(06:23):
order to make something of infinite scope. So they it
was a hugely enticing the gamers because they said it's
going to be a galaxy of literally like almost infinite size,
with planets in each system, and we're like, that's crazy,
and then Adam, you tell them what happened.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Then they released it.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
It was broken and boring, according to many, and they
spent it's what seems like six years basically fasting fastening
buttresses onto this game to make it a full robust experience,
And we're going to talk about how six while they were.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Or were not at this point, it wasn't even just broken.
It was missing features that it was missing features yeah,
talked about right and touted.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
It was a little bit of like the scandal of
Cyberpunk is sort of a bigger version of the scandal
of this game, where a certain thing was promised and
what was delivered was hilariously not that.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
And I believe Crawdfunding was involved in the initial creation
of the game, so people were pissed off.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah, yeah, we should pass our next checkpoint and get
into our spicy takes about this game, the gamer ramps.
I would like to invite Michael Swain to go first.
I would Oh, okay, I would love you to go first.
Would you mind?

Speaker 1 (07:41):
So, yeah, I would not mine. So I'll go first,
and I'm player one and I'm plugging in. And these
are the rants where we give our subjective view of
the game, with a priority for hot takes because people
love them, they lap them up the salty dogs. But
I don't have an especially hot take on this. My
true emotional response is, well, first, a bit about my
history with the game. I heard about the scandal, so

(08:04):
I didn't play it for many years. So I obsessively
do play through. I do a fresh playthrough of the
games we're going to cover on this show as much
as I can. So even though I played this, I
had three gos. The first time, played for about eight hours,
I was like, there's not enough here.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Still.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
It was a couple games years after the game came out.
Second time, maybe four years, four and a half, five
years after the game came out, I played it again
and I really got sucked in, and I sang about
forty forty five hours in. Still not as much as
you could sync into an endless procedurally generated sandbox game,
but that was how long it kept my interest. Before

(08:44):
I was like, I think I get it. It would
be more grander versions of this and chain until I
tire of it, And that ain't too shabby. I'll take
forty five hours of entertainment out of a game I purchased,
for sure. And then I repl a third time for
about fifteen hours, just to prep for this, and I

(09:06):
think I've sort of gone on a bell curve of
experience and I want to try and speak to the
middle of that experience, because I do feel like the
most genuine that was the I do have to knock them,
because of course the package was sort of fumbled, but
that was the experience they obviously meant to present, and
it did work on me. So I'm going to try

(09:27):
and project myself back to the time when the game
worked on me and I liked it. The most negative
thing I'll say about or the spiciest thing I'll say,
is that this game sort of starts with the lonely
depopulated feeling that Fallout games end with. For me, this
game almost starts with a feeling of like not many
people in the universe have too much to say, and

(09:50):
they mostly stand still or do a simple loop, and
you can come visit them anytime. And there's no such
thing as a hyper populated planet, like even though there
are you can land on an infinite number of planets,
they all have the exact same population density, which is
like there's a ruin or point of interest every mile
or so. And then most people live on space stations.

(10:11):
And in a game that's light on laura and world building,
I had to sort of use my imagination and you
end up with a story that's not there at all,
but I'm like of or unless it is. So that's
my question I'll end on, is that there's this depopulated
universe where where things are mostly like closing up shop.

(10:32):
It reminded me of the feeling I got playing Outer Wilds,
where it feels like the end of a decaying universe.
But it's funny because I don't even know if Hello
Games wants me to feel that way. I think they
want me to feel the awe and thrill of exploring space,
but it also has this lonely, melancholy vibe because there's
almost no story, and I do think that that's a

(10:54):
problem I'll always have with Sandbox survival games and procedural
generation in general, is how do you tie a story
to that? And it's tricky and different people have handled
it different ways. Haities recently handled it in a way
everyone kind of agreed is very graceful and interesting. But
that's my only knock. Like, I think it's really inspirational

(11:15):
how much they've supported it. All the systems they've added
are really truly additive and are enough to make me
go back to the game and try it again. Oh
I heard they added this, I want to try that,
And there are some indelible moments in the game loop
that do truly feel like what I want out of

(11:36):
a space exploration game in the way they wanted me
to feel. For example, going into hyperspace, or the first
time you lift off and traverse from the planet's surface
into space without there being a load screen. You can't
overstate that that's something we've always wanted out of a
space exploration game. I wanted it back when I played Freelancer,
which I think is underrated, or like all the way

(11:59):
back in the day, like Escape, Velocity or what have you,
any kind of like you're gonna explore a whole galaxy game.
The main thing I've always wanted is the seamless transition
from standing on the ground to being in space, and
this gives it to you in a way that is good.
It's impactful. I felt really cool, and I tried it
in VR this time to prep for this. Yeah, and man,

(12:20):
it feels awesome. In VR. It feels really sick to
go from the ground to space or space to the ground.
But at the same time, I I I don't like
that lonely, hollow feeling, and I don't think it's that
there aren't enough systems there. I think it's that there
isn't enough focus on story there. And you can tell
there never was going to be. That's not what their

(12:42):
goal was, and that's where it shifts away from what
I ultimately want or like what I always hope a
Star Trek simulator is going to be, like what I
hope Starfield will be. My perfect version of this is
a little less survival loopy because I'm not that much
of a survival guy, but overall cool. I have more
to say, I'll save it for This was a pretty

(13:03):
innocuous rant. I'm sorry, I have big important stuff to say,
but I'll save it for game.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
On end of rant, I would agree with a lot
of what you said, and my experience with the game
was kind of similar in that I found out about
the game and I was very excited because it seemed
really up my alley, and like my jam I heard
about the disappointment haven't didn't play it until about a
year and a half two years ago, and had a

(13:28):
great experience with it. It had all the things that
I wanted, but like you, it slowly started to feel
empty and a little too wistful, and I think that's
partially by design. I know that the creator wanted this
sort of like expansive, kind of lonely experience of exploring
the galaxy, and he nailed that. But then I think

(13:53):
people just don't want to necessarily play that for too long,
and so you have to add all these layers to it.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
You have to add the.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Sense of a story, and I think even the story.
I don't know how much Michael, you actually finished of
the story, but it is that it is this sort
of end of the universe thing, sort of simptiness.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
For all I know, I didn't get far enough to
know what the actual reveal of the story is, so
it probably is that.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Okay, yeah, well, like I mean, I guess spoilers, But like,
the basic idea of the universe is that it's a
constantly looping simulation and they're all all the simulations are
connected to each other, so you're sort of talking to
these echoes of past simulations and past like players in
the game. But it is this sort of constant fake loop,

(14:44):
which is a neat idea and I think makes the
game make sense, Like it makes all the mechanics of
the game makes sense. In the context of the actual gameplay, like, oh,
I guess you don't you do this because it's simulation,
so it doesn't matter. But because of that, it also
kind of doesn't matter, so it feels emptier because it

(15:04):
is essentially just a fake looking over again. Yeah, so
it feels a little disconnected from the universe that they
want you to be excited about exploring. But like you,
I think when I played it, I like I threw
in a bunch of hours into it because the stuff

(15:27):
that they added over time made that slow experience last
longer of realizing like, Okay, I guess it would just
be this over and over again, less interested, you know,
have you finished the story, and like, I guess I
gotta do this over and over again and fly to
the center of the universe to get through another galaxy,
and then I just keep doing that over and over
and over again. You could build bases, which is fine,

(15:49):
but to what I was saying earlier, when I was like, oh,
it's like GTA or Red Dead Redemption in Space, but
minus like a lot of the depth and intricacies that
make those games really great and replayably fun. So again,
it's this sort of like when I hear about the game, Oh,

(16:10):
the idea of that's really really cool. I want to
play that, but it doesn't quite nail it. And I've
the easiest way, I guess for to sum up my
opinion of the game generally is like, it's a very
beautiful looking wide pool, but it's also still very shallow.

(16:31):
I think the game itself needs a lot more depth
in these little updates that it gives, because a lot
of the updates are not necessarily just cosmetic, but it
is just sort of it's sort of widening the pool.
It doesn't deepen the pool, and I think games like
this really need something much deeper for you to constantly
be exploring and diving down into and then diving back

(16:52):
up to keep the game engaging and interesting. So yeah,
I find myself falling off of game pretty easily because
it doesn't have that depth that I think a lot
of other games would have.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
And what is the promise of an infinite galaxy if
you're not like the thing you salivate over when they
announce it is that, Oh, I could play this for
the rest of my life and it could be interesting
m hm. But it's not really that.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
But it's not yeah, it doesn't quite have the even
the connection between players isn't quite right for that for
that thing of like, oh, a space game. It's expansive
and procedurally generated, and I can play it online, I
can fly around, I can do whatever. Like you said,
oh I do that. I play that game forever, but

(17:40):
it doesn't have some elements that are required of that.
Like it's not quite like Minecraft, I think is a
game that can stick around forever because it has a
lot of depth. But this I think just needs There
are a bunch of ideas that like could be implemented.
I think that could really make the game much better.

(18:05):
But which isn't to say I don't like the game.
To be clear, I really really enjoyed it. It accomplishes
quite a bit, even like one of the most recent updates,
updating combats like, yeah, you made it better, you made
the combat better, but it doesn't quite nail you know.
I want to play like a mix of like like
GTA and SimCity and different types of strategy games, and

(18:30):
I want to go on Halo type missions like I
want like all of these game. I want all games,
but also.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
They're not all mediocre and compromised. Every element is as
good as a triple A version that just focused on
that exactly.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah, like with for example, like the settlement stuff, very cool.
Ad settlements add little towns that you can manage, right,
But what it is is every hour and a half
you go and say yes or no to a question
to make a decision of the town. It doesn't have
like the intricacies and the depth of like town management

(19:05):
that would make that element actually enjoyable for a long
time or interesting even.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Well, okay yourselves, because it's Adam's turn, and I feel
like we're in a pile on this game. I thought
we liked this game ahead Adam.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
Also, I also thought I thought you guys liked this
game better than you do. Uh okay, player three plugging in.
I played this game right when it came out in
twenty sixteen for fifty hours.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
I played it again.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
Oh, I played it again at Mike's behest to cover
it for about thirty hours. It sounds like I've played
it the most out of all of us, which is
shocking to me.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
I've probably played more than you. Okay, when I first
got it, I like, really put in time. Great, but yes,
certainly the first version, Yeah, well, I so okay.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
This. I remember the trailer for this game very vividly.
The trailer was You're in this lush world that feels
like space Jurassic Park, and then you hop in your ship,
like after you've been seeing all this amazing shit, you're like, oh,
this is great. Then you hop in a ship and
actually make it out of the atmosphere and fly to
another planet, and it's like whoa. Like it promised the

(20:24):
idea of the of reality as far as you can
imagine it, You're going to encounter it. That's what was promised,
you know, like you're gonna really see the galaxy. And
here's what the game does well. It does the space
travel sequences really well. Those are good. It does the
landscape and the feeling of running around a place that

(20:46):
very few people have been really well. It does the
mining stuff is like pretty fun, I would say, But
in general it's not a fun game to play. It's
never been a fun game to play. It's always been
kind of a series of like cool loading screens. And
the gameplay loop is managing a menu. That's what it is.

(21:08):
It's just menus. It's a bunch of menus. You're going
to this place. Here's some menus. You go to this place,
here's some menus. You go fly to the space station.
Here's some menus. Here's a bunch of texts that's largely
gibberish or esoteric. You know, talks about this is what
you know the universe means or whatever, right, and like
the lore is boring, it's not interesting. And then you know,

(21:31):
you can learn new words so that the gobbledegook becomes words.
But even when you learn the entire sentence that they're saying,
it's still esoteric nonsense. Because this team is not big
enough to deliver the game that we want from it.
And I don't blame them for that. Honestly, I don't
blame them for capitalizing on this. I'm happy for them
that they got people interested in this game that otherwise

(21:52):
wouldn't exist at the level it does without all the interests.
I feel bad for them that people eviscerated them because
they were just pointing. And I would say, this is
one of the most disappointing game experiences I've ever had.
I really thought this was gonna be awesome. I was
all in on how awesome this is, and I think
that the lessons I've learned from it are procedural generation

(22:14):
is not the same thing as design. It is not
a substitute for design. I would say a great counterpoint
to this game in every way a subnotica. Subnotica is
pristine where this game fails in almost every way, with
the exception of the fact that this game has some
combat that I'm not super excited about. Some people are.
That's fine, But I would say in general, every place

(22:37):
you go in Subnotica has been crafted to discover stuff,
to have a unique experience. Almost every time I land
on a planet it's hostile and it's barren, and you know,
seven other species have been there, and there's the same
airport and the same like you know, gek mythological artifact,
and the same tower that I need to blast out
to find all the bits and it's the same.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Like distributed unit and they're the same, and it's like, yeah,
it's one experience. This kind of painted over a little bit,
and al.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
Right, it feels like lipstick on a pig, honestly, and like,
I that's a that's a really old phrase, but like
it's perfectly applied to this game. Is that, Like, dude,
it's from like the fucking Depression. It's like from the Depression,
which is how I felt when I played this game. Like,
so bear in mind, I don't think it's bad. I

(23:29):
just think that people who really like it are sort
of defending all the pieces they've added to it as
being but see it's got all this now, and I
think Cody nailed it when he's like, yeah, this is
like ten miles wide and an inch deep. Like, they
never get to a loop that's actually satisfying. They just
add new places to get more menus to toy with,

(23:50):
you know, and like, ultimately, I don't want to play
games and menus. I don't want to do that. That's
my problem with Fallout, which is much much better than
this game for being an auging loop, you know, Like
Fallout has a lot more interactivity to it that I
enjoy than this game does. This game, I'm literally just
copying one thing to another place. And then I did it.
I invented the thing that's that added to my added

(24:13):
to my space back.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Now I can make this thing with the item that
you could you it could be a different iconic, be
a different way that it's called. It's the same sort of.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
Who gets finding like who gives a shit, And so
again the joy of that experience was captured I think
perfectly by Subnatica, where I have to find specific pieces
and then I get a tangible like item from that
that I create, and just the creation experience being out
in the world instead of in a menu is inherently
more satisfying. I know that sounds like a really nitpicky thing,

(24:45):
but like it's in, it's emblematic of the problem with
this game, which is it doesn't have the capacity to
be a fun, interactive three D experience. It doesn't have
the underlying engine for that, and it never did and
it never will. I wouldn't mind if they may nomann
Sky too, and I would buy it. I would buy
it as long as I knew that a lot of
things that they put into menus they're gonna gamify after that.

(25:09):
And I've again, I've gave this game a very good
long chance. Barrett, No will will. I just don't think
that it delivers on the fun aspect of the premise
that it's promising, and that's my right.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
I know this is not the format, but I gotta
ask Cody, as someone who I know does like survival games,
is that different from any are not? Aren't all survival
games combined the things to make the thing, to combine
the things to make the thing. Isn't that fine? Isn't
that the loop that we enjoy?

Speaker 2 (25:36):
They are like that, but the mechanics within the game
are different, I would say, And there's a more clear
like sequence of events to get you to that item.
It does seem like you're sort of just mashing text together. Yes,
like for like Minecraft, for example, it's like, well, logically

(25:58):
this goes together with this, and if you have and
you make this shape, and there are these recipes that
you have to sort of nail down, and there's simplicity
to it, but there's also It's like Minecraft, I think,
is there's simplicity to it, but there's also depth to
it that keeps it engaging for me personally. I know none.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
I think I can explain why, but I want to
get us to the break so that we can really
engage in this.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
So yeah, there's same instincts. So let's hit the brake.
We'll be right back with game on where we just
continue the conversation. Hope you'll join us.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
The rage has subsided. We're back now. Now we can
talk about what's the difference between this menu based game
and the other ones. So I think, to me, Cody,
the thing that's interesting about Minecraft or Subnotica or even
Rust or whatever like these other games is that in general,
when I create something, it becomes a usable tool or

(27:02):
a usable item that then changes the interactivity, like it
adds to the loop of it. In general, that's not
true of almost everything in No Man's Sky.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
It as what just occurred to me, it's all set up,
no payoff. That's the problem. Is you invent magnetized plating,
whereas in minecrafts when you finally build a boat, now
you can go on the water like he does something right.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
You have these sort of built in like you have
your ship, you have your your gun, and you have
your suit, and then you upgrade those things, but you
don't make anything new. You can't like craft new weapons.
You can add like components to them, you can add
components to them to add like oh now I can
shoot like this, but you're not actually making anything. It is. Yeah,

(27:47):
it's that sort of text menu issue where like, well,
you're putting skin on this, but you're not You're not
making the bones, you know, and being able to manipulate
said bones.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
So they they have manipulated the bones. They have added
a few things that I haven't tinkered around with too much,
Like apparently I think there is some form of land
transportation now that didn't exist, Like you can.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Get there's vehicles.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, yeah, you are like everything you make, they're things
you like, Oh I earned it via this mission.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Now I have this, and every single one of them
can be characterized as really exciting. And you strive to
create it, and you create the pad and the car
or whatever, and then if you tinker with it for
about forty five minutes, you're like, Okay, I get it.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
It's a car.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
There's nothing to do with it beyond that. In every case,
with all the sun, that's.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
All the things. Yeah, even the like the freighter stuff,
or like I was saying, the settlement stuff.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
It's like, oh, you get your own fleet of ships
that works for you eventually, and it barely matters.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
And now you haven't like okay, and now oh I've
got that. Oh I found this town very cool. Oh
now I've I've saved it from the sentinels or whatever.
Now I'm in charge. Now I do this. Now I'm
just gonna forget about the you know, the fleet stuff,
even like, oh you can you can build a fleet
and you can have these frigates and then you send
the frigates on missions. Okay, once you do that. Once

(29:14):
it's like, well, I just select the ship and I
say go on a mission, and then three hours twenty
four hours later, I come back and I get some rewards.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Right, here's the credit.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, and most of the time it's like, oh, this
this fucking rock that I can make into a different
kind of rock. You know, it doesn't have a physical
like a tangible sort of h Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
It's a lot of loops. It's a lot of loops
that exist as mini games in Triple A games like
the one you just describe, for instance, has been an
Assassin's creed for a pretty long time, or various Assassin's
creeds where you know, I capture a ship, right an
Assassin's creed for now that ship works for me, and
they go on these missions and basically they're there to
just give you more resources, which you need forever.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Right.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Yeah, maybe some of them die the way back, but
you get.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
Around and that's fine, and like it adds to the
story of it. In an ancillary way, but ultimately it's
just like a chore that you manage. And I feel
like I love.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Your chores, right, I like them too.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
Like I enjoyed the game that Mike and I just played, Uh,
Sunday Stardi Valley. Excuse me, Stardy Valley.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
I've playing that for right, and I love this.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
I love the chores in that because they are immediately rewarded. Uh.
And I feel like in this game, like fundamentally there
the planets aren't anything. If the planets were something in
this game, it would the entire thing would be different.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Hey, spoiler, planets have oceans, Like imagine if you could
fly down and then build a sub and do a
subnotica on a planet, like, yeah, it's interesting that the
planet's Star Trek style. Every planet is just one biome
and they all basically have a very similar topography and
a similar population density.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
So they fixed it. Yeah, once you go again, Yeah,
like once you do fifty planets, Like, well you've done.
I've seen every type of planet. Yeah, and even the
ones that are like, oh it's this type of planet,
but the colors are a little different. It's like, okay,
but the colors are different.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
I mean, I they also had to sort of dial
that in a little bit because I remember very again,
very distinctly, when the game first came out in twenty sixteen,
they had these like Island of Doctor Moreau abominations that
would be created by the Preceige generation to the point where.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Okay, procedurally generated animals are well they are ill agree.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
About that, but like, I don't want to pay sixty
dollars to see the monster art, you know what I mean? Like,
do you is it that funny to you?

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Well that was what so Spore was the same idea,
but instead of focusing on galaxy, was focused on gene splicing,
and it was going to make any kind of animal.
And the shit it pumped out was just like, this
is only good for making ridiculous abominations that you laugh at.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Right, it's just silly. It looks silly, like, okay, it's fun,
but it doesn't create like an immersive sort of experience.
Now look at these goofballs on this colorful planet they made.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
They did they got it so that it worked better,
Like now you don't get as many things that look
like uh like again, Island of Doctor Moreau or Turok
rejects or something like, so it's better. But also like
the game assumes that, hey, seeing the thing is pretty fun,
isn't it? And my answer is no, Uh, it isn't.
It's fine, But like being able to use it for

(32:26):
some purpose or going down and exploring the planet in
some depth is what I really want.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
And they're seeing the Nexus is fun. It's the Nexus
is But.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Again, the Nexus is just another series of menus. It's
a colorful place with you much menus.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Do you think part of our impression that it's shallow
comes from the fact that, because if you haven't played it,
I'd say it's pretty especially for the budget and the
size of the team involved, very pretty percent. It's intentionally
designed to be sort of a friendly uh bright colors
almost MGMT or nurfy.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Yeah, it's a little cartoonish element to it.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
Absolutely, would you.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Would we be taking it more seriously if it was
gritty and realistic?

Speaker 3 (33:05):
Is that part of it? I like the color scheme
and I like the space feeling of it. Honestly, I
like it too.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
It's he and I know the creator describes it, and
I think he nailed this aspect of it, which I
think is Largie. The problem with the game, which is
then originally it was like, no, you can fly around
that experience that Michael you described at the beginning of
like yeah, you lift off and you go and you're like,
you're you're flying into space. There's no load menu, like
the ship is the load menu. You're in there, you're

(33:32):
going here, You're seeing all these landscapes, you're landing down,
you're collecting resources, but mostly you're just sort of it's
almost this explorative, meditative game that I think you wanted
it to be, where you can stumble upon and create
your own images that look like like fifties sci fi

(33:53):
covers which I talked about before, which you have this
sort of like fifty sixty serialized sci fi kind of
vibe to just the aesthetic of it, which I think
is accomplished. But that was the goal with the game.
And then when you're adding all these other things to it,
which again like I enjoy certain aspects of it, and

(34:14):
it does make the game. It does make me get
bored with the game in the longer amount of time.
It takes me longer to get bored with it because
of all these things, But ultimately it is still this
sort of look at this and that's pretty yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
And it's like a great tragedy of my life as
a gamer, because if people don't listen to our other pods,
I'm like, Star Trek's a big part of my life.
I love Star Trek and it's all I want from
a gaming experience. Is like the Pinnacle version of this,
and I'll tell you when I play the other ones
where I'm sure someone listening to this is thinking, will
you guys play evonline or play Elite Dangerous? And it

(34:52):
is almost it over corrects the other way where it's
so technical that I'm like, yeah, but I didn't want
to play World Warcraft either. I didn't want to manage
a bunch of spreadsheets in space. Dang. I wish there
was the pitch perfect thing.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
And it feels like Starfield is supposed to be that
gamefelme so like, I think we're also forgetting that they
pivoted really hard away from what the game was supposed
to be. What the game was supposed to be in
twenty sixteen is everyone is going to find their own planet.
You will never meet another player, Like it's just you

(35:29):
out in the galaxy. That's it.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
And the problem.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
It's meditative, right, and they had to abandon it because
number one, if they put actually nothing on most planets,
which is what would normally happen, you would quit the
game immediately. So instead you're always you're always running into
aliens who've already fucking been there. So it's like I'm
not discovering shit, you know. And I don't say that
to belittle them. I'm saying, like it's a trick gay.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
They they they promised the thing that something in us wants,
but it's a bad game idea, I think, and I
think they realized that after their initial release. So instead
they're like, now we're gonna add a ton of social things,
but they didn't build the infrastructure to make those social
things rewarding because they don't have time to or the
size to. So instead it's just like adding a bunch

(36:14):
of traversal possibilities and men used to read through. Yeah,
because at its core, like I can't, for instance, go
kill any gek that I want to, a thing that
I'm not saying you should be able to do, but
in Fallout I could, right, And that adds a lot
to it. The fact that like you can you have
a fundamental, Like that fundamental possibility of altering the game

(36:34):
landscape in that way makes every one of these text
interactions interesting, you know, uh.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Right, or if you extrapt like evonline has the tension
of there's been news articles writing about it, right, like
clans can build and build and then betray other clans
and huge amounts of credits are stolen and there's like
bitter rivalries and shit, this doesn't have that as much.
I do want to say, I think the base building
is pretty good flattened tool. I like the variety of

(37:02):
blah blah blah, and something about procedural generation that I
kind of want us to talk about procedural generation as
a tool as a whole, because I feel like something
that we've danced around is it does beget a lack
of dynamics and a lack of specificity, right, because if
you're building something out of a bunch of legos that
you have to shake the box first and build them

(37:23):
in whatever order they fall, you can't have specific design things,
and you get this weird paradox.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
Right.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
So this is a sandbox designed to be infinitely preplayable
for a million hours, and yet I would sooner play
red Dead Redemption again, which is funny because red Dead
Redemption is an extremely limited specific story that I should
in theory only play once and then I, oh, that's
in my brain. I can just remember it. Yet it's
more engaging because it has dynamics. My thing with procedural

(37:49):
generation is everything becomes a what do you call it,
a homogenized like they reach a medium where, you like,
every experience is a medium experience unless you set these
really weird parameters, which no man Sky failed to do,
like you know, or unless you handcrafted some weird systems
that you run into or whatever. Instead, they really trusted

(38:11):
in procedural generation, and they stuck to that. Everything is
procedurally generated. And on the one hand, it's mind blowing
to me. For example, I don't even I can't fathom
still I kind of don't understand how I could go
to a specific place on a specific planet and then
create a tiny divot in the ground with my mining tool,

(38:32):
and then I could fly twenty five thousand systems away
and then come back years later and find that spot
on the planet and that divot would still be there.
Not only would that divit be there, but I could
use the restore tool, which means the computer remembers the
history of every piece of dirt in every planet in
the galaxy. Like procedural generation in some regards blows my mind,

(38:55):
but in another regard it makes for boring games.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
Well, the problem is, like procedure generation doesn't actually solve
the thing that we want out of video games or
frankly that as a tool, which is we want the
infinity of unimagined, unexplored, all possibilities out there in the world.
That's what we want. That's what procedural generation promises. But

(39:20):
the problem is procedural generation will generate absolute nonsense most
of the time unless they put a series of very
prohibitive parameters around it. And so because of that, it
ends up sort of generating ten million of the same
you know, like and you can feel the four or
five search things that it's allowed to choose between, but
it's never going to come up with a planet that's

(39:41):
inside out, a thing that's like i'd love to see what.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
That is, or a corosson. Yeah, it's entirely popular.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
It's never going to come up with that because we
don't trust the computer to make those kind of decisions
and for them to turn out entertaining and interesting.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
You know, Oh, if we did let it build a
Curissan in the no Man Sky engine, it would be gobblede.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
Yeah, so you can't. That's right.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
So it can't be what we want it to be,
which is an infinite intelligence that designs interestingly.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
We want the computer to be a fully sentient AI,
that is a game designer that's following us making a
cool game as we go.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
We wanted to make interesting, unique decisions, but by its
nature it's not supposed to. It's supposed to make these
sort of blanket decisions that approximate this kind of thing. Oh,
it's a blighted planet. Okay, it looks like all the
blighted planets. Okay, it's a paradise. It looks like the
paradise planets. It makes like twenty twenty unique decisions, but

(40:39):
if you do that over and over, they're no longer unique.

Speaker 3 (40:41):
They feel like the same. Right again. It was the
same problem as a Returnal. Returnal is a game that
has procedurally generated levels, but they wanted it to be
a triple A game, like at the highest level, right,
so what do they do? They're like, okay, it can
decide between fifty things. So then after you've played it
instead of a thousand, well sure, but it wasn't really

(41:02):
that many, Like the rooms that sort of ended up
being one of fifty in each area.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
You know, that's what I mean.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
They kept it, and it's like, it's like, okay, so
all you really did was h create fifty levels for
me to memorize, and because it's procedurally generated, it's therefore
more challenging, so I end up seeing them all pretty quickly. Actually, uh,
and then I'm disappointed because I have an idea in
my brain about what procedural generation is going to do,
and it can't do it, Like it's not possible for

(41:29):
it to do it. So I don't really think it's
a great tool for level designs so far. It might
be a great tool for like populating a design world
with stuff you don't have to look at, like for instance,
I imagine, oh imagine like simple yeah, well, or like
something like okay, Madden Football. You know three thousand right
where you're playing the football game. They've meticulously designed the

(41:50):
football game, and there's procedurally generated crowd members doing things
that make sense, and it creates every infinity of that
and the crowd starts to feel really lively because of that,
because we're not looking at them, you know, right.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
That's also kind of what Dreams is in some regard
the gamification game that tries to gamify game design, which
I know is a mouthful, but yeah, look into it.
I'm not going to explain it. But like, there's a
central database, right all the assets. People upload their assets
and you can search lamp and just get and download.
So that's an interesting thought I wanted to say. I

(42:24):
think procedural generation. I agree. I think it's interesting how
they initially tried to tackle that tool through level design,
and I think that's misguided. But where I do think
it does work is story, which I didn't think would
do were worked by which I mean not an AI
writing the story, because I don't think we're there yet technologically,
but case in point haites, meaning the story can be

(42:46):
dispensed in a procedurally generated order or way. And then
I just played this game that I don't think we'll
ever cover, but I wanted to bring up at least
once in this episode. Feels like The Right Time Road
ninety six, which is a game about out politics and
like trump Ism and fascism in America and trying to
cross the border. But that's neither here nor there. The

(43:07):
point is they take a bunch of lego blocks. But
the lego blocks are basically resonant postcarding moments of story
that speak to a theme, a central theme, and those
can be dispensed in any order. And it's just like
it doesn't matter the order, because it's like pulp fiction,
you put it together in order in your head eventually, uh,

(43:29):
And it's really compelling to me to have procedural little
generation that dispenses pre written units of stuff that is designed,
you know what I mean. So it's like it's like
a rapper who's freestyling, but they have some lines pre
written so that the rap won't be shit.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
Like if the if the AI was a train station
operator and it decides what line of the train, like
which train.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Gets but it wasn't writing the ship Yeah train.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Gets through it.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah, there's I think there's elements I think that help
with Doman Sky in that respect that for like playing
this story through, even though I do think there's something
very lacking with the story. But in sort of what
you're saying, where like there are these moments in the
game that like, Okay, you need to go to this
kind of place, this kind of place, you go here,

(44:18):
find this, and each of those locations is based off
of where you are. So you can play through this
game five times and every step of the story will
be in like a different location or have these certain
different environmental elements that do change, so at least those

(44:39):
like that, like that ten hours of the game, it
does still feel a little different. But again, like once
you do that many times, like Okay, it's a nice
planet this time, Okay, it's it's a it's a it's
a hot parent planet. This time it's a hot one,
whatever it is, And at that point then it's like, okay,
now I feel the that's sort of just like the

(45:03):
lack of because it.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
All amounts to feeding coal to your hazard protection and
then your hazard is correct. It doesn't matter if it's poison.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
That's right. You got to add the thing to the
other thing in the menu. Cody, I have a theory
on why the story is unsatisfying, which I played as
much of it as I could as I could this time,
it's that infinite regression, as I could. Still infinite regression
is actually not a satisfying answer because it reduces reality,
not expands it. It reduces reality, and it does it

(45:35):
in a way that is sort of actually kills curiosity
instead of rewarding it. So it's like the opposite of
the answer you want, like infinite regression is. And we
talk about this sometimes on our multiple arm Our an Exploration.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
It's like.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
Exactly, it tells It tells me that yes, that's right,
and it's all fa. So I don't want to play
that game. I want to play a game that's real.
I find a lot of in the world it's a
real thing. Well, I find a lot of.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
This is going to be maybe a little preachy, so
forgive me. I find a lot of people who sort
of lean into infinite regression as answers for things to
often not be that curious about the thing that the
answer like that they're trying to answer by it. Like,
I find infinite regression sort of ends up being the
stand in for not wanting to look into it further,

(46:29):
you know, like not in every case, of course, but
I find that a lot and I think that's true
here where like they're like, this is as much as
we want to look into this, So the answer is
we're doing this over and over. We're looping it over
and over, you know. And like even if that was
the truth of the universe, which like I really hope
it isn't, but let's suppose that it is. I still
think that we wouldn't want it to be the truth,

(46:51):
you know what I mean, Like we wouldn't we wouldn't
accept it, and this game is actually promising the opposite.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
That's like what my problem was originally when I when
I did my first playthrough, was like slowly realizing like, oh,
I'm interacting with ghosts, and I'm a ghost and we're
all just sort of like ghosts in this fake layer
under another fake layer, under another fake layer. So I
don't have any drive or interest in going out and

(47:18):
exploring more because of your fake guy Johnston a fake guy,
right right, And so if I'm a fake guy playing
this fake game as a fake guy, then like why
am I doing here?

Speaker 1 (47:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Like, and like you know, one could argue that, like
there's an element of like it's a waste of time
to play video games in the same way it's a
waste of time to like any any activity, ay or
or whatever. But like if you make the premise of
the game that it's fake and we're all ghosts not
really interacting with each other. Then you're telling me that

(47:56):
it extra doesn't matter, Like I'm wasting my time of
playing this game because it's not just about exploration and
this endless like vast expanse of the universe. It's a
vast nothingness, is what you're saying. That's the thing.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
Yeah, that's the thing, And like I feel like that
is a resonant theme for a space game. But what
it really teaches me is that, like I think we
really want endings, Like I really think that we want
games to have endings, even if we want to play
the game forever. Like I think there's a reason why
I can replay Red Dead too, a game that is
a very unique specific experience, because it's not that it

(48:32):
was over, like it being over is not a problem.
Like it being over is what gives the journey some
meaning of it.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
And I think, nah, I don't, like, there's many infinitely replays,
but not.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
When they're narrative. Not when they're narrative.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
No, yeah, yeah, no, I agree, But I'm saying that
the thing to a total, Well.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
That's the I think That's the what we've sort of
been circling around for about this game is that it
was never it was never meant to be the game
that I think we all really like that that sort
of open world narrative because it is like it it's
not like open world, but like a narrative was never
really part of the game. It was added Star.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
Wars Star Trek's let's all we want to be in
Star Wars exploring, I think.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
Right like I would, I want to I want to
play uh gta en Courriscant and I want to have
the ability to fly to Hath and fly to other
types of planets and have it feel like this big
expansive thing. But when it matters more, well, I think.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
It's I think it's really difficult to harness an exploration game,
like not a survival game, because the survival games have
a built in narrative, right, but but an exploration game,
which I think that was really the key ingredient here,
and not have a strong narrative backbone. I think the
the act of exploration does require, like it is a

(50:01):
narrative act, you know, like and I think there's some
people who like there's some games that get around it.
Eldon Ring gets around it a little bit. But like,
in general, I think this game, whether it's whether it
thought it was promising it or not, by promising you're
gonna be able to journey wherever you want, it's promising
that you'll have a story, that you'll have a story experience,

(50:23):
because like you'll have to make sense of your experience,
which is what story is. And it didn't deliver. The
world wasn't big enough for that. It's world was not
big enough for that.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
And then it said the world was fake anyway, right,
exactly right, so.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
And then yeah, so I think we end up being unsatisfied.
I still think it's an amazing achievement for the team,
a team of the size that this team is, And I.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
Mean even the updates, Like I'm curious because I every
update they do, I'm like, you're so close. Yeah, Like
it goes back to that, like you're you're making you're
making the pool wider, but you just need to dig
you deep, to dig deeper into the pool, please, And
they haven't quite gotten there. But every update I'm like, yeah,
add that. That's exactly one of one of the many
things that's missing from this game.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
I don't know why they don't add simple metroid gating,
for example. It would be so easy and give you
that at least one layer of depth. If it's like
there's places on planets you can't get into because there's
a crust crystal you can't destroy, and then when you
smash all this shit together and you get a drill,
now you can get in there and there's something in
there that you haven't seen before up to this point.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
It's not that hard, right, these sort of markers of
like you're saying progress exploration, right, if you have it's like, oh,
it's exploration and it's endless, and like everything is kind
of basic and medium, then the exploration and the journey
isn't isn't exciting to have that dynamic that you're talking about.
But I'm curious, Adam, as somebody who has played this

(51:50):
game when it came out. God, I don't even know
if that version is still available. I would be very
interested to just like play, like what is that even like?
But like you played fifty hours of that region and
then after many updates of things that that I think
did enhance the game experience, Uh, did you find yourself
like weirdly more bored or frustrated in the new version,

(52:13):
or were there elements are like oh that that is better.
I do recognize that this is like an improvement beginning
it's better.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
There's no question. I think it's unfortunate for me that
I played the original game, because I think I just
was like, like something in me switched off on it
after that, where it's like, yeah, you can add stuff,
but it's not like you haven't fixed the thing that
I wanted. And I think I've articulated what it what
I wanted now better, But like I can't say that

(52:42):
I can say every update made sense and was an
improvement in that it added things I might be interested
in doing, and it just made things smoother and like
you know, run better and like so yeah, so yeah,
I can't so like those are meaningful improvements. And I
can see why they won a lot of their audience back,
you know, And I don't think that audience was duped

(53:04):
or anything. I think that they had a genuine connection
to it, and they deserve that audience. It just never
it never satisfied what I wanted.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not that's the thing. It's like,
there's it does feel like Michael, you said this. I
think the beginning, there's this sort of like it feels
a little empty and lonely, which again I think was
the intention originally, like it's this empty universe, you're alone,
and you just you just go, just go. But with
all the layers they've added to make it not feel

(53:35):
that way, it still does feel that way. And actually
I think there's I'm curious what you think of this.
I was thinking about the mining you were saying was
still fun and stuff. I find the mining element of
it to be a little frustrating because I don't even
think the starfield will fix this problem. But there's something

(53:57):
very tactle and like game play, like about like in
a Minecraft game or like like Rust or what seven
Days to Die games like that, where there is mining
because it is not the future. You're not using lasers,
you're using tools, and so you hit the button. Every
time you hit you hit the button, it hits the

(54:18):
axe hits the tree, you hit the button, the pick
axe hits the rock. So there's this constant, like active
action that you're doing to do the thing, whereas with
No Man's Sky, and I assume like games like star Fields,
like we'll hold the trigger down and the laser does
the word that doesn't feel it feels like it separates
you from the world even more.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
It also in my like yeah, it also doesn't have
the possibility of being a different item than you expected.
So like in Minecraft, you you you hit with the
pick ax, it might be a it might be like
a lump of coal, or it might be a gold
nugget or whatever, you know what I mean, Whereas it's
always always the thing you're mining, like with the laser

(55:03):
like it, so there's no surprise, it's just a tedious chore.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
And I think that makes it pretty different. Uh.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
I think it's Yeah, although well my so in Minecraft
it does like the blocks look like the thing they're
going to be, Okay, it's just like more variety, uh,
Whereas like so like with No Man's Skies, like, oh,
that's a rock, I'm gonna get fairite dust out of
that because that's what it's gonna be, Whereas with Minecraft,
like oh that's like that's that's cobblestone or that's stone

(55:32):
with gold in it. I know I'm gonna get this
out of this, Okay. Interesting, And I don't know, I
think just like the the block element of it makes
it more more engaging and more yeah, more tactile, more
just the option. It seems like there are more options.
Uh in terms of the building of Weird interesting, even
though the graphics are much simpler and it is basically

(55:53):
pixel art, you're making you're making pixel art the entire game.
It's just three D pixel art, but uh, there's something
about Uh, speaking of Seven Days to Die, the building
mechanic in Seven Days to Die is block based, not
like like No Man's Sky or rust or it's like,
you got a wall, this is this is what the
walls look like.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
That's interesting. Uh, well, we're gonna take another short break
where we launch off to yet another planet, the planet
called Keeper Delete and see what we discover on the
other side of these ads and we're back. Hey it's

(56:34):
the same planet. It's exactly the same planet, only this
one's green. Only this one's green.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Oh, the doctor, soyss trees are taller.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
Sometimes like one out of like one out of fifty
planets has an incredible mix of foliage. That's like, Wow,
this is really cool looking and I want to give
them some credit for that too. Like once in a while, it's.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
Even after hours of playing. Sometimes I'll land in a
place and be like, yeah this look, this.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
Is really cool. Look yeah yeah, absolutely so they do.
They do nail it like the elements do come together
in surprising ways once in a while, and that's pretty rad.
So hey, sway moo. I think we're ready to pass
our final checkpoint into keep it delete. You agree, Okay,
who wants to go first?

Speaker 1 (57:18):
You want me to go first, I'll go first. I
feel like we got wrapped up in kind of dunking
on it in different ways, and now we're out of time,
and I so I'm like, oh no, but I want
to say as quickly as I can that I strongly
disagree with all the big points that Cody just brought
up on the other side of the break, and I

(57:38):
wish we'd gotten there sooner so we could have discussed
in more detail. But I'm not a big Minecraft guy.
I like the mining in this way better. I think
it's incredibly satisfying because the ore deposits are so shiny
and they float up and they go into your backpack,
like I love. I thought scanning stuff in exchange for
units was incredibly compulsively addictive, and I thought as fun

(58:00):
as menus go and it being all menu driven. Hell yeah,
But like I like games like Alchemy and Doodle God
that are literally only menus these icons. I cannot stress
how clean and nice the design is, how good the
icons look. These are some of the best menus around,
That's true, And there used to be games that were
just texts that were super involving gaging. So I just

(58:22):
wanted to give a last burst of like good stuff
I liked about No Man's Sky. Well, you're clearly not
alone listening to us, and I'm worried that we're being
I feel like we're being sour puss.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
I think we're being fair to the game. I mean,
but also, you're clearly not alone because it has a
huge audience that was willing to endure all these updates.
So like, I'm not here to say that that taste
is wrong or bad. I'm just saying I don't like
that that's not fun for me, which I've been consistent about.
I've been consistent about that for five years now. I

(58:56):
feel the same way about Fallout, which has more interactivity.
But I think if you're not bothered by that, and
there's a huge swath of gamers out there. It won't
be this is your jam, man, if you haven't tried well.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Like, I didn't want to downplay that, those detailed elements
of the loops can be satisfying and fun. I was
very excited when I got my new ship and moments
like that. There are good moments throughout Anyway, I'll delete it.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
You're gonna delete it. I'm surprised by that.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
I think ultimately it's a misguided early attempt experiment in
procedural generation. But I don't think it's the perfect use
of procedural generation. And I think the industry will evolve
and find better uses of procedural generation, and I'm sort
of waiting for that.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
That makes sense, Cody, Yeah, so I would.

Speaker 2 (59:40):
I would push back on early Cody as well, in
regards to what you were talking about, Like, I do
think that, like I'm saying, I prefer the Minecraft of
it all because I love that game until the end
of time. But uh, like you're saying, like, yeah, I
sometimes I find like an incredible ship. I'm like, I
thank god I got enough credits to buy that ship.

(01:00:01):
Now it's mine. Now I'm gonna fly it around and it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Does create this, It's mine crown extra extra couple.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Of hours, right, Like, every once in a while, there's
a thing that happens, like, oh, now I can play
this for a couple more hours. And because to be clear,
and I think, I think that I have been too
down on the game because of because I think that
the potential is there and I want, like, I love

(01:00:28):
the idea of this wide pool being deeper. I would
love to dive in to a version of this game
that just isn't there yet. And I don't know if
this particular game can ever get there because of what
it was originally intending to be versus what it's trying
to bring its audience up to now. But I also

(01:00:49):
put like one hundred hours into the game, so obviously
I enjoy playing it because it is and one reason
I play Minecraft is because it is meditative. So I
can still hop into this game and get some relaxing
flying around space out of it. So in regard to that,
I would keep it. And oh, I oh would maybe

(01:01:13):
reserve a final opinion until Starfield comes out, because maybe
that's like just a much better version. Yeah, but I
admire I do admire the game quite a bit especially
it's comeback and I will still probably pop into it
every once in a while.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
Yeah, for effort. Great model of supporting a game afterwards
and bouncing back from people not liking your game, but
going like no, we're going to win.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
You back and they did, and like, man, that rules,
Like again for an indie studio, these guys deserve a
lot of a lot of applause for number one trying
something like this, like this is a game. They were right.
We want the game they wanted to make, I think,
or we want the game that they promised. Maybe not
the one they're trying to make, but when they promise

(01:02:00):
we want it, they're right. And the fact that they
stuck around and gave so many free updates and made
it right so that the game is actually satisfying to
the audience that's stuck around, It's like that's a lot
of goodwill, man, And you guys deserve to make another
shot at it. I hope you do. I wouldn't mind
a nomn skuy too, I'd be I would play it,
you know, Like so that tells you I don't hate this.

(01:02:22):
I just don't. It's just not for me. But and
it's disappointing because I do think they promised things they
didn't deliver. But I still think good for them, like
fully endorse this project. I am so hopeful that Starfield
is finally the game we're looking for. I'm so hopeful
that finally the version of exploration I want, which I

(01:02:43):
gotta be honest with you, is personal. And by personally,
I mean I want to encounter people and stories and
have emotional experiences out there. And I have a little
bit of that with noman Sky, because there's something emotional
about taking off and like seeing the space and like
seeing the galaxy and encountering strange creatures and stuff. There
is something emotional about that, and they got that right.

(01:03:04):
But without people and without characters that are interesting to
interact with, without story and the ability to change the universe,
like fundamentally change it with my behavior. Uh, I'm not satisfied.
So I'm hoping. I hope we get that game. I'm
gonna delete this but with respect and with love for
the guys who made it, and I hope Starfield is

(01:03:25):
finally that game.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
That's right, Let's all get our hopes and we'll see
how that goes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
I do think it speaks to I mean, the starfield
of it all kind of speaks to what a lot
of stuff we were talking about where it's like, no,
it's real, it's a real thing. Uh, you're not. Yeah,
it's not. This just expansive thing where like it's populated
by ghosts. There they wrote characters that you can return
to and go back to and then open up the world.
That's what I want to see, a very like, Uh,

(01:03:54):
here's the story, here are the places you go to.
Here's the world that we made for you. And then
you beat the game and now you can stay right
and do your little You can play poker with whoever,
or like go on shoot out whatever it is. You know,
That's that's what I need.

Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
I Yeah, I think I'm okay with my infinite Space
game having an end, Like like I actually am okay
with that. And this game showed me that, Like I'm
okay with no. No, it can be fifty planets or
whatever it is, and like I can live with it
as long as I had a good time. You know. Yeah,
that's really it, Mike, anything else you want to add.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Nah, just so you can find all the other podcasts
Adam and I are involved in and Cody is there
sometimes as well once while sometimes sometimes not even as himself.
Over that's a place over over at a place called
small Beans, which you can find by pointing your podcasting
device at the words small Beans or heading to patreon

(01:04:49):
dot com slash small Beans, where you can find the
exclusive paywald content like Star Trek, the Next Futurama, Spiel Boys,
and select episodes of I'll show you mine if you
show me yours. Don't know what those things are, Investigate,
explore the world around you, dummy, find things out, and
then pay us for them. That's all I got. Thanks
for listening. If you just care about video games, stay

(01:05:12):
tuned in one opsmanship. Oh wait, Cody, where can people
find you online on.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
The internet dot com? Yeah, my name is Cody. My
name's Cody Johnston. I've got social media usually under doctor
mister Cody, and a show called some More News on
YouTube also as a podcast, and then another podcast called
even more News. We have a Patreon dot com slash
some More News, and those are I'm pretty sure the things.

(01:05:39):
Also my band The Hot Shapes. I don't know when
this episode's coming out, but we might have an epe available.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
Oh shit, nice rules. That's fun.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
The shapes. I like that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
That's fun

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
To be put to no