September 5, 2025 • 53 mins
This week we talk about the Call of Duty movie passing on Spielberg, Hollow Knight: Silksong finally releasing, 007 First Light’s first gameplay showcase, Helldivers 2 possibly selling the most on Xbox and much more. Click this link for my socials, all of my other content and ways to support: https://linktr.ee/baundiesel
00:00:00 | Intro
00:00:32 | Why “baundiesel”?
00:02:41 | Hollow Knight: Silksong Is Out
00:09:04 | 007 First Light Showcase
00:17:29 | Helldivers 2 Sales On Xbox
00:23:46 | Crystal Dynamics Layoffs
00:29:20 | Call Of Duty Movie News
00:33:57 | MindsEye Ruins Publishing
00:36:27 | Anno 117 Demo Thoughts
00:40:49 | Battlefield 6 Big Maps
00:43:36 | Starfield’s 2nd Anniversary
00:49:58 | Content Updates
00:52:44 | Wrap Up
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
This is the Bonfire Gaming Podcast episode 353.
I'm your host Morgan AKA Von Diesel, and this week we'll be
talking about Hollow Night, Silksong finally releases our
first look at Double O 7, First Light, Call of Duty coming to
the big screen, and much more. Be sure to subscribe to the show
on your favorite podcast app, leave a review on Spotify or
(00:25):
iTunes, and subscribe to the VonDiesel YouTube channel.
To get all of my videos, including this podcast.
Let's jump into the gaming news.Why Von Diesel?
I have made the probably not great decision to start talking
(00:46):
a little bit more to people. I actually know about some of
the hobbies I have, including making this podcast and making
gaming videos and stuff like that, so I figured it's worth
talking about what the what the pseudonym comes from.
So Von Diesel is a play on my actual name for gaming purposes.
(01:11):
I am glad that as a younger man,I didn't just put my actual name
into my Xbox and instead once I had my own Xbox Live account and
Steam and all of that stuff, I actually used the name, a
nickname I was given when I worked at GameStop all through
college. There was a, a assistant manager
(01:33):
at my store who couldn't say my name correctly.
And he was a sports guy. He, he played, you know, college
sports and so on. And so he called everyone by
their last name as as one does, but he couldn't say mine right.
Or it wasn't, it was unwieldy. So he called me Von Diesel
instead. It stuck especially, you know,
(01:56):
19 year old me thought that was a cool name to have as a
gamertag. So that's what my all my
gamertags are for the most part.I will say I'm glad I went with
that instead of, you know, like 4/20/69 super gamer or
something. But you know, as I'm approaching
(02:17):
for the IT, you know, feels a little silly, but you know, it's
OK, we'll keep going with it. I've had for almost 20 years.
We'll we'll we'll stick with it at least for now.
So if there's anyone listening new who didn't know I did this
and I've been doing this for, you know, 7 plus years, eight
(02:37):
years now. Welcome.
All of night Silk song has finally released.
This game has been talked about,proposed, shown in various
gaming showcases. I I want to say it was one of
the Xbox showcases literally like before COVID, I believe, or
around that time. It's out, it's the sequel.
(03:03):
So the original Hollow Night. It's a side scroller kind of
Metroidvania type of game, like old school Metroidvania.
I'm going to be honest, I've never played the original.
And so the interesting thing, atleast from my perspective about
this game really had nothing to do with the game.
I I couldn't care less about Silk song personally, No, no
(03:25):
interest in it at all. I I liked dead cells, you know,
few years ago. Otherwise, that's about the only
side scroller kind of Metroidvania game I've ever
gotten into. Hollow Knight never got me.
I'm actually one of the weirdos who like I don't like Celeste.
That's, you know, one of the most loved or beloved games in
(03:46):
the genre and and I mostly just because I'm not very good at it,
and I suspect that's the case with most of these.
But regardless, even if you know, you don't care about these
type of games, the spectacle andyou know, the all of the drama
around hollow night silk song isjust impossible to ignore and
(04:06):
and to not acknowledge the the release has been interesting.
They basically, you know, after many, many years now of making
the game and, and really people not even knowing if it truly
existed or when it was going to come out, they had their own
little showcase a few, you know,weeks ago or a month ago or so.
And we're just like, oh, it's coming out in September at the
(04:29):
beginning, in like a month and now it's out.
They did not do any early accesscopies or anything like that for
reviewers. Sometimes that's not a great
sign for a game. In this case, they cited the
reasoning being basically that they didn't want to spoil
anything or or give anyone a step up.
(04:50):
It's also worth remembering thatSilksong, it's so old that it
was crowdsourced the funding formuch of it, at least early in
development. And so they want to make sure
that the people who Crowdsource the game basically didn't get
undercut for, you know, by them giving early copies to reviewers
and stuff like that. They, you know, seem pretty
dedicated to believe it's Team Cherry is the developer to
(05:15):
making sure, you know, the people who are the reason the
game exists get their reward, even if it's been a very long
time coming. So there are no reviews yet as
of the recording of this podcast.
I'll probably mention it next week.
I suspect it's going to be reviewed.
Well, this is one of those gameswhere I think if they just had
random people review it like myself, that it may not get that
(05:38):
great of a score for various reasons.
But I feel like this is the typeof game that most outlets are
going to have someone who loves,you know, the first game is
super excited for this one who like basically knocks down the
editor's door to be like, hey, I'm reviewing that by the way.
And you know, whether that helpsthe score or not, you know,
(05:59):
depends on the person, I guess. But I suspect it's going to
review very well. I put an hour ish into it.
You know, it's on game pass on the Xbox Game Pass.
It's only, I think it was like 20 bucks or something if you buy
it straight up somewhere, which honestly, the argument almost
even for Xbox people is to just buy it, you know, for 20 bucks.
(06:22):
If this is the game you're actually excited about.
I'm, I suspect they cut a reallygood deal with Xbox to get this
game on there. It has so much notoriety and so
much marketing. I, I'm sure they got a good deal
from Xbox. So getting it through game pass
should be fine. But you know, it's 20 bucks.
So if you can spare it and you want to play it, I would say you
(06:42):
just go ahead and grab it from my play time.
I don't get it. It it looks nice.
It has a cool design. The the the art style is really
nice. It plays OK.
I suspect my gripes with the play are, you know, there's just
unlocks and upgrades that I sureI'm sure you get through the
game. That would address most of my
(07:02):
issues with it. These games just don't grab me
and and they never really have like I said before, besides dead
cells, I I think dead cells is avery unique game in this genre,
at least for me, where it it it just it was fairly casual
friendly, but still really challenging that, you know,
(07:24):
there's been other games I've tried out there was there's the
Prince of Persia game that came out not too long ago that has
the style made by the same people as dead cells and it was
OK. I didn't get into it either.
And then I'm not going to say this right, but earlier this
year, the Mondragon or whatever it's called has a, it's a slower
(07:44):
kind of game, but it has a similar vibe to it.
And, and I really like that and I played quite a bit of it, but
you know, I fell off of it eventually.
I got my money's worth. And you know, even with silks on
here, I, I feel like it, it wouldn't take long to get your
$20 worth. So goodness, if you buy it and
you don't even and you play at 5or 10 hours, I feel like, you
(08:05):
know, it becomes worth it even if you don't end up finishing
it. From what I've seen, the game,
the the mainline story is it's like 20 to 30 hours, I guess.
So it's a media game and with the potential of, you know,
twice as many hours if you do absolutely everything that's
available. At least that's the rumors I've
seen. We don't know.
We have no clue because the gameis barely, you know, hasn't even
(08:29):
hardly been out long enough for anyone to beat it yet.
So we'll see how those numbers play out in the long run.
Regardless, I think just as a gaming moment and kind of a
story in the games industry, this was just a cool thing, even
if it, you know, isn't really something I'm super excited
about. I, I think part of getting older
in general with things is being able to appreciate things that
(08:53):
are making other people happy, even if it's something that you
couldn't care less about. So for all those who are living
their dream this weekend, good for you.
I'm happy for you. Double O 7 First Light has had
its first big gameplay showcase in the in the form of a
PlayStation state of play, whichwas kind of interesting.
(09:13):
I didn't realize that this game,I assume, has a marketing deal
with PlayStation. So this staple, it was only this
game. The director of the game spoke
shortly before they showed anything, and then they showed
what appeared to be the whole opening mission of the game.
So Double O 7 infiltrates this party trying to find someone.
(09:37):
They do a time skip somewhere inthe middle of and inevitably,
you know, and that saying that eventually, you know, the target
figures out that, you know, Double O 7 and the others, that
Mister Bond and the others are there to get them.
They take off, they do a car chase which leads to an airport
with a big giant action sequencewhich involves going up in a
(09:58):
plane and falling down and fighting people as you fall and
you know, getting a parachute from one of the other people
who's falling. My thoughts on it is that it
looked really boring, especiallythe first half of the sequence.
It very much just looked like Hitman kind of re skinned to a
(10:19):
point. This is the same developer is
Hitman, which is a good thing. The you know, especially the
recent hitman games and updates and all that are, you know, they
have a extremely loyal fanbase and and I've even played quite a
bit of of it. I'm terrible at it.
(10:39):
My sessions always end up starting with me trying to play
it right and then end with me having the giant shootout and
like the entire level being wiped out.
So not great, admittedly, but I,I think the issue I had with
this showcase was that maybe it just wasn't the, the, the best
(11:01):
way to show it. The actual what we saw, the
gameplay, the sequence that was very hitman like where you're
trying to infiltrate this party and, and there's various ways to
do it. It looks it seemed like it was
really linear, like there were things that you had to do in
order to get into the party. Maybe that changes when the game
(11:23):
actually comes out and you're actually playing it.
And then the sequences once you're inside the party trying
to find this person that you're trying to find, they refer to
them as double O 9. So I assume it's a another
agent. It, it just, I don't know, it,
it seems like there maybe there's a bunch of systems and
mechanics in there that really, you know, once you're actually
playing will feel less linear and less forced.
(11:47):
But to me, what they showed, andit's because it was a demo.
So maybe that's why it feels this way.
It just didn't feel like you were going into this area and
using your secret James Bond training and tools and
everything to to work your way through this mission, Especially
(12:08):
because when they do this time skip in that from the middle of
the mission, it, it presumes that no matter what you do and
no matter how you handle this situation, the person you're
going after discovers you and takes off and it and it leads to
during after this time skip a a car chase, which may be one of
the worst looking driving sequences I've seen in a really,
(12:33):
really long time. Like it very much had like Xbox
360 vibes of of just like a gamethat has an engine that isn't
meant to have driving in it and they had to figure out how to do
it. Kind of like the old Fallout
games where, you know, they had to have like a locomotive, like
a train. But you know, the back then the
(12:55):
with the creation engine didn't have any tools in it to do
moving vehicles. So they attached the train to
the head of an NPC and synced the NPC down to the ground and
had them walk around under the level with this train on their
head, right. And so it works, but it, you
know, obviously looks terrible because it's being kind of, you
(13:18):
know, shoved in there. That's very much what this chase
sequence seemed like to me. They had some, this is where it
got a little more exciting. They had some big spectacles and
set pieces. And then this car chase ends up
in a situation where you're on this Air Force Base trying to
chase down this target who's trying to get on this big cargo
plane. You're chasing it down on foot
(13:40):
using airport vehicles and things.
This is where it turned into there's a lot of shooting, a lot
of CQC, lot of, you know, close quarters combat.
And some of that looked OK. This is where the frame rate
completely tanked in the game. What what they were showing I
believe is a, it was a 30FPS video just because it was on
YouTube and, and all that and rendered and everything.
(14:02):
But even like you could tell theactual game was chugging along
pretty bad. And, and so maybe it's just an
old build. Maybe it's still in, you know,
a, a, a beta situation. They're still, you know,
optimizing it and so on. But it, it, it just kind of made
it hard to tell if the action really looked as good as it kind
of did look, I think maybe you know, I mean the shooting and
(14:27):
stuff, the cover system, the, the using your tools and all
your, you know, techniques. Like they seemed like they were
doing OK during the first part of it.
They, they showed off the systemwhere you can kind of use like
little clips and you know, kind of verbal manipulation to say
you're walking into a restrictedarea and there's a guard who
(14:47):
sees you. You're able to use some
mechanics or you're basically just like, oh, no, I'm a bug
inspector. I just got a call.
I've got to go find so and so. And you kind of try to walk past
them And it seems like, you know, I don't know if this
mechanic, it's like if it's a guarantee to work or it depends
on what you've discovered in thelevel or whatever.
But that seemed kind of neat, this action sequence, like in
(15:10):
theory, it looked really cool. You know, you get onto the
plane, you're up on the wing, you're fighting people on the
wing, they're flying off as the plane goes to take off, as it
takes off, you jump into a hatchand you start fighting people
inside the plane. You know, like it's this big
crazy action action sequence which leads to you being thrown
out of the plane or the plane exploding, I can't remember.
(15:30):
And then you, as you're falling,you're like fighting people
avoiding debris that's falling with you.
And then it finally, I believe, ended with, you know, James Bond
finding one of the bad guys who has fallen with a parachute and
in, you know, essentially, you know, commandeering their
parachute and, and landing. And then, you know, that was the
end of the sequence. So like, it's just, it's
(15:53):
confusing because technically itseemed cool and it was kind of
what I expected, but from like actually thinking about watching
it and kind of thinking about like, oh, does this look like
something that would be fun to play?
I, I don't, I don't know, I'm not really sure.
So we'll, we'll see how this plays out.
I'll be curious. I'm really curious to see this
(16:15):
game being played on the consoles on the PS-5 or the Xbox
Series X&S, because I have to imagine this demo was recorded
on PC and often these PCs are pretty beefy that the developers
are using when they record thesekind of things for showcases.
And if it was struggling with that, I'm really curious how
(16:36):
they're going to do with optimization for just in general
for the game and especially how they're going to make it work on
the, you know, now 5 year old consoles, which by the time this
game comes out, which the the date was announced or I believe
March of 2026, you know, those consoles would be 5 plus years
old by that point, right? So I'll be curious to see how
(16:57):
they make that work, but I thinkthey will to some degree.
It's going to be, it's going to be interesting.
I, I suspect this isn't going tobe the like super banger people
were hoping it was going to be some 10 out of 10, nine out of
10 experience. If this comes out and gets a
Metacritic or an open critic score of like 75 to 80, I would
consider that probably a success.
(17:18):
We'll see whether or not the developer and the publisher and
especially the rights holder to the bond, you know, IP, well,
we'll see how they feel about it.
Maybe I'll be wrong. One of the big stories this week
after the release of Hell Divers2 on Xbox last week popped up
when an analytics firm speculates that the Xbox's first
(17:42):
week of Hell Divers 2 sales may have outsold the first week of
PlayStation 5 sales a couple of years ago or a year ago.
A time as a concept, I don't remember at this point.
I, I, I think there should be some skepticism here, even
though this is possible. So these, the report is saying
that Xbox sold around 1,000,000 copies of Hell Divers 2 in the
(18:05):
first week where PlayStation five it was around 700,000.
There's multiple factors to why this could be a thing.
The first thing being that theseanalytic firms are basically
just making stuff up. They claim that they have a, a
way of doing this, but we've also experienced relatively
recently around the time of I, Ibelieve it was with, with Final
(18:29):
Fantasy 16 when it released on Xbox.
All these reports came out were like, oh, it's only selling,
It's only sold like a few 1000 copies and this launches a
disaster on Xbox. And it was all citing this
analytics firm and this individual at that firm who's
probably the only person there who we ended up finding out was
(18:49):
looking at like Xbox store reviews and how many people have
left reviews on the Xbox Store. And then comparing that number
of reviews to other games where we know how many games they've
sold and seemingly trying to make it so say a game has sold
(19:10):
1,000,000 copies and has 1000 reviews on Xbox store.
So their logic here is that if, say Final Fantasy 16 has 100
reviews, then it's only sold, you know, 100,000 copies of the
game, right? Like that's, that's not a good
(19:31):
measure. That's that's a correlation.
And even as a correlation at stretch to the absolute limit of
the definition of you know what that would be.
And it definitely isn't the way that you should be trying to say
like how many copies of a game sold unless, and then this was a
my assumption, you you're tryingto basically just, you know,
(19:52):
kind of engagement bait, click bait, try to stir up the people
who care way too much about whatplastic box other people play
on. You know, that's that's that's
the main reason I'm skeptical ofthis Hell divers two thing.
Now, a factor that could make this at least somewhat
believable is that, you know, hell divers 2 is a known
commodity at this point. You know, when it came out on
(20:15):
PlayStation Five, it was pretty quickly recognized of how good
it was. But, you know, it still takes
time for that word of mouth to get around and all that.
You know, like, the chances are that Helldivers 2 will sell more
on Xbox over the six months compared to the first six months
of PlayStation 5 is pretty unlikely.
So, you know, this could just simply be a, you know, a
(20:37):
mindshare thing where, you know,it releases on Xbox when
everyone knows what it is and they did a big marketing
campaign. It's got all the talk around it
because it's one of the first PlayStation, it's technically
the first PlayStation exclusive published game that's being
brought over to Xbox like voluntarily, where MLB the Show
was a different story, you know,so that's in there too.
(21:00):
So then, you know, it's, you know, there, there's this big
and what this comes from is a lot of talk that Xbox gamers
don't buy games. They just use Game Pass and
that's bad for gaming. And you know, this story in one
way or another is being pushed depending on, you know, the
person's perspective as like, hey, look, Xbox gamers actually
buy games. I hope this is true.
(21:20):
I I hope a million people on Xbox did buy it.
I wasn't one of them. I actually cancelled my
pre-order for cross progression reasons.
I just don't want to play it again.
I've played it like 50 hours on PCI have no desire to start over
again, But that's a me problem. The the, the last thing is, and,
and it makes, you know, this explains it a bit more as well,
(21:43):
is that, you know, for quite a while at this point, I think
we've, you know, there's been lots of conversation and that
hell divers too didn't really sell all that great on PS-5, or
at least that's been the impression.
And that the vast majority of sales and most of the push
behind hell divers too was actually PC players on Steam.
And you know, I, I assume I, I don't know for a fact other
(22:04):
stores. So it's one of those things
where it's like, well, maybe youknow, the PS-5 sales wasn't that
great of an indicator in the 1stplace.
How many sales on Xbox in the first week are compared to PC in
the first week? I suspect PC one that pretty
handily. But we don't know.
And we don't know because barelyever, unless it's really good
(22:25):
news to any of these publishers at this point, ever put this
information out. Do they ever really talk about
it publicly? Because if you know, because
they care more about, you know, shareholders and stock prices
and all of that. So if you if you have a game
that you thought was going to sell a million copies, at best,
it sells, it sells 10 million. You talk about that as loud as
(22:49):
you can as often as you can, butthat doesn't happen too often.
Most of the time, games sell roughly what they expected or
below. And when that happens, you don't
talk publicly about it. You just say we're very
satisfied with the sales of thatgame, but you don't give numbers
because that would likely or potentially take your stock
(23:10):
prices and all of that. And unfortunately, in modern
gaming and then our, you know, capitalistic world, that matters
a lot. And, you know, whether you like
it or not or whether it's a goodthing or not, that's just kind
of the way it seems to be. So regardless, I'm hoping that
hell, Divers 2 is a huge successon Xbox because I would love to
(23:30):
see PlayStation be a little morewilling to be a little more
flexible with all this stuff. And, you know, we could see The
Last of Us get its 15th release over the last 10 years.
Maybe we get an Xbox release. Crystal Dynamics has laid off a
pretty substantial number of workers, it seems like, and it
(23:51):
seems to be directly related to Perfect Dark being cancelled
over at Xbox Studios. So we knew that the initiative
had been shut down. It was, I think that wasn't
talked about very clearly by a lot of journalists and so on.
We're under the impression that the initiative, which was at one
point pegged a, a triple or a quadruple a studio.
(24:13):
The first one because the original intent, you know, back,
you know, 7-8, nine years ago was to make a studio the old
way. You bring in a bunch of
experienced leadership and then you make a new studio of like
500 plus people. And then that's not what
happened. Whether it's because of COVID or
(24:34):
just, you know, game developmentis changing or whatever.
It turned into a thing where it seems like there were maybe like
a few dozen people at the initiative and then they were
using a code developer, Crystal Dynamics, who does code
development, you know, pretty regularly with other studios to
have Crystal Dynamics do the bulk of the development on the
(24:55):
game led by people at the initiative.
And not to say that there weren't actual developers at the
initiative as well. I've seen multiple people
posting over the last few weeks about how they were like a
narrative designer or a environmental, you know,
designer or something like that at the initiative.
But we are under the impression the bulk of the the meat of the
(25:18):
development studio, you know, was going to be through Crystal
Dynamics, who was going to do the most of the bulk of the
work, right. So we find out that Crystal
Dynamics has laid a bunch of people off.
That's almost certainly because of Perfect Dark being cancelled.
But the part of the story that was really interesting that only
came out this week was that there were ongoing discussions
(25:41):
ever since this cancellation happened between Crystal
Dynamics and Xbox and 2K. The initial and and supposedly
other potential partners as wellwhere Xbox slash Microsoft was
going to allow Crystal Dynamics to potentially buy out or or or
(26:03):
bring the IP along with them theperfect dark IP to another
publisher who would then fund the you know the game being
finished and eventually shipped and two K.
It sounds like they were kind ofthe leading potential partner
there. Now I assume there were other
potential partners as well. You have to assume the $0.10 and
maybe even like the EA third party publishing all that who
(26:25):
knows, but it seems like 2K was the most the closest they got
and then but unfortunately the deal fell through when there
were issues with IP ownership. Everyone has an effectively
instantly blamed Xbox for this, that, oh, it's just going to be
another dormant IP that acted like Activision.
And, you know, most of these publishers have, you know, they
(26:46):
they might at any given time have, you know, 5 to 10 active
franchises, but they might have the IP of like 100 franchises
and most of them just aren't being served.
You know, that was kind of the accusation here that Perfect
Dark was just going to disappearagain, go into the vault, maybe
never to return. I, I, I wouldn't be so quick to
assume that that may very well be the case.
(27:08):
But it's also worth considering that, you know, maybe 2K just
didn't want to pay enough. Or maybe they wanted like
reverse rights or something where they got the rights back
all the way to, you know, the first Perfect Dark and they
wanted to have complete IP ownership and Xbox wasn't
willing to do that or whoever, you know, actually owns all that
stuff. It's likely a more complicated
story than just, you know, Xbox said no, I mean, they were
(27:31):
willing to deal with Crafton to sell off Tango Gameworks and the
hi-fi Rush IP, which even thoughit didn't really sell that well
and there were lots of, in my opinion, legitimate reasons for
that studio to go away. You know, the hi-fi Rush has a
good name. Like it's a attractive IP.
So, you know, they could have just kept it in their vault and
(27:53):
said, yeah, sure, Craft and you can have Tango.
We don't, we obviously don't want them.
We shut them down, but not give them the IP, you know, and but
they did. So these deals seem like they
can work and honestly, IN2025I I, I guess perfect dark has a
more clout than a new IP like hi-fi rush.
But realistically, I mean perfect dark, you know, the,
(28:14):
the, the fans of the original perfect dark are like older than
me at this point. I'm and I'm not young right?
So how much value it truly has, I think it's kind of arguable,
but maybe not. I'm not one of the the smart
people who makes these decisions.
So it is a bummer and more. The biggest thing is it sucks.
It always sucks to find out people are losing their jobs and
(28:35):
that there was even just a a modicum of a chance that maybe
this game was going to survive, maybe it was going to come back
and and end up releasing. My my guess is at the end of the
day at least the rumors were that the game really wasn't that
far along, had missed a bunch ofdeadlines and stuff like that.
I wouldn't be surprised if 2K saw these issues with IP
(28:57):
ownership and how much money they were probably going to have
to dump in to to actually finishthat game with a Co developer,
even not even one of their own studios.
It probably just wasn't worth it.
Now the money is kind of hard toargue about when we all know
that 2K is about to make the most money ever in the world
when Grand Theft Auto 6 releasesnext year, but that's not really
(29:18):
how these corporations work. So Speaking of kind of strange
decisions with IP, Activision has made a deal with Paramount
to make a live action Call of Duty movie.
What was funny about this was the initial reaction I saw from
some people were like, who even wants this?
And I'm like, man, you do not have much of A grasp of like the
(29:41):
average person because at least in my opinion, if they
essentially take like Call of Duty 4, hope they don't go back
further in that. But like Call of Duty 4 has a
movie story. You know, it's the the potential
for Co opting that into a story is so good.
(30:03):
And then you start thinking about Modern Warfare 2 and three
and all of the games have come since then and even the modern
kind of rebooted games. And that, you know, you're
looking at probably 3 solid movies there that you could, you
know, build up these characters of, of soap and, and, you know,
all these people. Not to mention that you also
(30:23):
have the Black Ops series, whichcould be its own like spin off
set of movies that they could also do, which arguably has an
even better storyline for making, you know, like a, like
a, a wide audience movie about, you know, with all of the mind
control and, and, and all of that stuff that you know, goes
into that series. So, you know, people poo pooping
(30:43):
on this. Like, I get it.
It's, it's easy to hate Call of Duty.
It's easy to crap on them. I I do myself, even though I
find their actual stories to always be pretty good and or at
least fun if they're not good. But not being able to recognize
the absolute goldmine that this could be is crazy.
Now, a part of the story that was really interesting and
(31:04):
probably has some explanation, even though it seems insane, is
that when they were shopping this before Paramount was the
buyer or was the partner that they were going to go with
Steven Spielberg and his like company made an initial pitch to
to be, you know, to make these to to make this movie and I
assume other ones. And they said no.
(31:29):
So, you know, mind you, this is Steven Spielberg who's done, you
know, Saving Private Ryan and and so on and so forth.
So it seems insane, but supposedly, according to some
articles I read, that the Activision or the people in
charge of the IP who are in charge of this deal were spooked
by how much control Steven Spielberg wanted, which from
what I've read was full creativecontrol.
(31:51):
So to a point, I understand that.
I mean, you know that the argument, you know, for him
doing The thing is it's Steven Spielberg like of course, and
and it's not out of the way for him to want to do this.
I've seen this before, but I even kind of looked into it a
little bit more recently today of the he's like a legit, he
(32:12):
plays Call of Duty. He's he's into games.
He plays games all the time. If if you look up interviews
with him, he is an avid gamer and has been for a really long
time. And it looks like even fairly
recently he's still playing games, which is, you know, kind
of neat. And it gives him a little more,
you know, credit here, I think that he wasn't, you know, his
agent just didn't say, hey, there's this video game movie
(32:33):
and he's like, OK, whatever. Like he probably has personal
interest in Call of Duty and that, you know, probably would
have been really cool. But my my thing is that I
suspect the spooky part of it for Activision or whoever was in
charge of this was that, you know, this is a deal for one
movie. And I can almost guarantee that
(32:54):
Spielberg and maybe even Paramount, we, we have no idea
of the exact details of the deal, but you know, he very
likely would have wanted some assurance that he would be the
one in charge of all of the movies they would make and, and
would likely want probably a pretty good cut.
And, you know, he's Steven Spielberg.
He'd want to be paid appropriately.
And he's not dumb. I'm sure he and his people know
(33:14):
how much the IP is worth and allthat.
And maybe they just didn't want to go into a long term
commitment with one person. We're going with a public, you
know, what is essentially a publisher like Paramount just
made more sense. We'll have to wait and see.
It would be funny if he still ends up like directing it.
I don't know how all that stuff works.
But, you know, we'll, we'll haveto see how that plays out.
(33:35):
I'm excited for this. I think it'd be cool.
I, I think they could do this. This this story could be done
really, really well. And you just know that there is
no chance that Chris Pratt does not end up in this movie.
So maybe he'll be Ghost and we won't see his face, depending on
your feelings on him. So, yeah, Call of Duty movie,
it's coming. Hang tight IO Interactive
(33:58):
Partners, which is IO's publishing arm, may not do any
more publishing after the Mind'sEye launch disaster.
This was an interesting one to read about and to see.
I mean, it seems kind of obvious, right?
Mind's Eye, if you don't remember it's, I think it's
already left most people's minds.
It it was this big game that people were saying like, oh,
(34:18):
this might be the next Grand Theft Auto.
And the, the people making it were like real vocal and, and
like, in my opinion, like way too cocky, little overconfident
about their situation. And the thing about Mine's eye
is my impression is that Mine's eye was this, this the single
player, this like the story in this game above that, at least
(34:43):
for some time, was the engine. And that you were basically
like, Mine's Eye was supposed tobe kind of like a showcase for
this engine, but then late in development or more recently,
the whole thing with the engine where you're basically supposed
to be able to make your own game, that kind of went away.
They focus on Mine's Eye trying to put it out and really put it
out there as like Grand Theft Auto competitor, blah, blah,
(35:05):
blah, blah, blah. And then it comes out and I've
seen a few people be like, oh, it's not that bad.
But the majority of people just being like, it's a, you know,
like technically it's a completecrap show.
The actual gameplay is a complete crap show.
The story and the characters andthe voice acting and the writing
is just all a disaster. And, and it's, you know, you can
kind of tell because it, you know, has disappeared way
(35:29):
quicker than the lead up to it. And I, I remember, I think that
there's some stories out there about how they're going to try
to do this big relaunch and they're going to try to do all
this stuff. But Long story short, when it
comes to IO Interactive and, andthem in this publishing wing,
they had, I think this is their first big publishing deal.
It was a disaster. It was they, they probably
(35:50):
almost certainly spent way more money on marketing and and
actually publishing the game than they're ever going to make
from it. And that's, you know, not how
that that that doesn't go well when the the whole goal is to to
publish a game and make a bunch of money off of it and all that.
So, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised at all if we never see
them publish another game simplybecause, you know, and maybe
(36:12):
they could do a better job with other games.
You know, this isn't IO's fault that the game was a disaster,
but you do, you know, you are attached to it and it is your
money that got spent at least tosome point.
So we'll we'll have to see how that plays out in the long run.
Ubisoft's ANO 11717-I actually haven't heard them say the title
(36:34):
of the game, so I don't know howthey're saying it.
Their new game that's coming outlater this year, which we'll
focus on kind of like the Roman Empire.
Times has a demo on all PC platforms right now.
At least it's on Steam and the Ubisoft store.
It does the Super annoying thingthough where you can get it on
Steam but then when you start it, it has to open the Ubisoft
(36:55):
store and it seems like it just runs it from there.
So then I just uninstalled it from Steam and installed it on
the Ubisoft store so I didn't have to have this weird setup.
Regardless, it's a one hour demothat so after an hour the demo
ends. It kicks you out and you can
only go to a Tier 2 citizen. So the way Anna works, at least
(37:17):
I've only played the 1800 and now this demo, but basically
it's a, you know, it's kind of like an old school, like real
time strategy kind of age of Empires feel to it.
But with like, like the like SIMCity or something.
And the, the, the main thing with the game is that you, you
want to attract people to come live in your city.
(37:39):
So you build houses and to get more people to come for them to
be happy, which is something youwant.
So you get more money and stuff like that.
They want certain things. They want a market and they want
to have clothes and food. So you have to make sure you
have the infrastructure for a market and clothes and food.
So you build a market and you build a, a sheep farm that makes
(38:04):
cotton and a clothing produce a clothing building that makes
clothing and you have those. And then those make the people
happy. You get more people, but they
also want food. So you have to have, you know,
a, a hog farm or a a farm in general that makes grain and
then a bakery. So now your citizens have a
(38:25):
market and they have clothes andthey have food, so they're
happy. But the market needs beer.
So you have to have a hops fieldand then a beer producing
building. So now the market.
So now you're good, but now you want your city to keep growing.
So you want, you know, you want higher level citizens that you
can upgrade their houses and make them so they, they can do
more things. So in order to do that, there's
(38:46):
higher level citizens want higher level things.
And that, and that's the kind ofmechanic of the game is you're
constantly trying to make the people happy by having all the
things they want, but everythingthey want requires like 3
things. So you're constantly expanding
the city and you're also having to do things like you, you have
to build fire stations. You, you can do trade with other
(39:08):
cities and other islands in the area.
You can, you can go to war with them.
This game introduces ground warfare where Ano 1800 was
purely naval. You can only fight on the on the
sea. And, and so that's that's the
game. What I'll say about my time
playing this new one is that it feels very familiar to 1800.
(39:31):
It definitely has a bunch of kind of quality of life
improvement and mechanical changes and updates and
improvements. I will say so far, like I'll
probably buy this new one and play it or I'll get it for free
as being a Ubisoft partner. I guess there's a warning, but
I, I definitely have left the demo being like, OK, now this is
(39:53):
a game that you play for dozens,if not hundreds of hours.
So only getting to play, you know, with, with a city for one
hour, you're barely getting intothis Tier 2 of residents and,
and flushing out your city. There's so many mechanics and so
many things in the game that youliterally can't even start doing
in one hour. So maybe there's a gym here and,
(40:15):
and, and I enjoyed it, even if it is just what it is.
I'll still have fun with it. I'll play it for 50 to 100 hours
over the next year or two and then I'll probably be kind of
done with it, which is how I waswith ANO 1800.
So if you're into these type of games, into the the Age of
Empires, the city builders, the resource managers, it's almost
certainly going to be great. And I am curious to how the
(40:36):
later parts of the game where you need to start building a
ground army and a naval army andthings like that.
I'm curious to how that plays out as time goes on, but we just
don't know that yet, so I'll talk about it when we do.
Battlefield 6 maps have leaked, so everyone wanted bigger maps
from the next game that's comingup here in about a month, which
(40:57):
is super exciting. And we got some previews of it.
So through official channels, they've shown off some more
mechanics and things like that and have inadvertently, even
though it was definitely purposeful, showing off some of
the real big maps. And they look huge.
They look extremely large, at least a couple of them.
There were also some kind of early renderings, both public
(41:21):
concept art, along with some potential like early versions of
levels that people have data mined of some of the, you know,
some classic battlefield maps and more that could be extremely
large and, and, and be really cool.
So you know, for anyone who was worried about how big the maps
are going to be in Battlefield 6, I I don't think there's any
reason to worry about it, but we'll have to wait and see And
(41:42):
the grind of Battlefield 2042. The the battle pass they put on
there for free, admittedly for Battlefield 6 cosmetics, it
continues. There's 60 levels you need to
unlock. They have these weekly bonuses.
You can do so certain tasks, youget extra tears to be able to
build up this battle pass. So we're I guess about a halfway
(42:04):
through it. I'm at level like 25 I think and
I've been trying to I, I basically play every day for at
least an hour or so to try to work on this because I want all
those cosmetics for Battlefield 6.
I I really like Battlefield 2042and so it's been hard seeing
people just relentlessly dump onit right now because you know,
they are basically, you know, they aren't truly forcing, but
(42:26):
if you want these Battlefield 6 things you have to play 2042 and
a lot of people really hate 2042.
I like 2042. I think Battlefield 2042 is a
great game. I just don't think it's the best
Battlefield game, but I still think it's for what it's worth.
If you want a modern aesthetic setting or near future, I guess
(42:48):
Battlefield game, it's kind of your best option today.
Obviously 3 and 4 still exist and and I know that there's
still somewhat active communities there, but it's not
the same. And then Battlefield 1 and five
are historical games. So I I like 2042.
It it's just it's it's more arcady than it should have been.
They obviously were trend chasing and they're a lot of
(43:10):
things they fixed since releaseda few years ago, a lot of things
they haven't fixed. So maybe it annoys you.
I still think it's worth jumpingin.
I think it's like 5 bucks for 2042.
It's, in my opinion at least, worth jumping in and grinding
the battle pass. Obviously if you're excited for
Battlefield 6. So there's my advice.
I think it's a better game than people give it credit for.
(43:32):
Maybe I'm wrong, we all know I probably AM.
And finally, we'll wrap it up with Starfield's two year
anniversary. I'm recording this on September
5th, 2025. S we're two years out from
Starfield coming out. I it's been an interesting
couple of years. I, I really like Starfield.
(43:53):
One of my most watched videos from the last few years over on
YouTube is me saying that I likeStarfield.
And I will tell you, I have never seen people say so many
awful things to me than in that video.
I opened the video up maybe being a little too pretentious
or a little too combative. Basically, I believe I said
(44:16):
something along the lines of Starfield is good and people who
say it isn't are wrong. You know, I don't know if I'm
paraphrasing, but so I was definitely inviting a little bit
of vitriol, but not I wasn't expecting what I got.
And you know, that's subsided quite a bit.
They improve the game private. I mean, I think Starfield is
(44:37):
pretty good from launch. It's of the Bethesda games I've
played, it's easily and at leastin my opinion, the one that was
in the best shape at launch. It just it wasn't whatever what
everyone wanted, even though I think what a lot of people
wanted wasn't realistic. Even today.
We just had No Man's Sky and youknow, this week release another
(44:58):
update for free, which is just crazy.
And you know, every time No Man's Sky comes up, people are
always like, oh, this is what I wanted Starfield to be.
And it's just like, you know, everyone's entitled to their
opinion, but Starfield was nevermeant to be what No Man's Sky
is, at least in my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong, but you know,
(45:21):
it's it's a Bethesda game that just happens to be in space.
It's Fallout in space, as everyone has said 100 times.
And a lot of the mechanics in the engine and many of you know,
the quest structures and stuff like that are relatively
antiquated. If you're not in there for that
Bethesda experience. If you came in hoping it would
(45:41):
be the next Mass Effect or something like that, you know,
that sucks. You know, you were probably
being a little crazy or maybe just too hopeful.
I don't know what the right wording would be, but it's it's
very much a Bethesda game now. I I wish that the cities in the
various lanets were bigger and more fleshed out.
(46:01):
I wish the character animations were better.
I wish the romances were a little more up to date.
I thought the romances were OK in Starfield.
And then I played Fallout 4 again, which I had never
experienced, you know, gone downthat path in any previous game.
Only for me to realize that the,the, the way the, the romance
(46:22):
system in Starfield is basicallyexactly the same as Fallout
fours. It's a little more advanced.
There's a little more to it, butnot that much that that kind of
brought me back to reality a bit.
But it was fine. It was OK.
That game, it's kind of like what I was talking about with
Battlefield. Battlefield's multiplayer, if
(46:42):
you like it there, there's not really anyone else who does it
the same. That there is a feel and a chaos
and a satisfaction from Battlefield's multiplayer,
especially Conquest that you just can't get with other games.
And other games have definitely tried like World War Three and
and a few others and they, and you know, Call of Duty has
definitely tried and, and with the big team battle or whatever
(47:04):
it's called and it's just never been there.
Even Halo to a point, it's not the same.
And I kind of feel that way about Bethesda and with their
games like Starfield is not perfect.
It did improve a lot of things, at least in my opinion.
A lot of the the models and the texture work in that game are
really, really good as long as you don't pay, you know, maybe
some of the environments are aren't the best, like the
(47:25):
outdoor environments, it's a little rough, but like the
ships, the guns, the things inside building, the, the
interiors are super pretty and really well like populated and
think of things like that. The gunplay I think is a lot of
fun. I think the actual combat, you
know, mechanics of, of Starfieldare actually a lot of fun.
I, I like the story. I actually love the story in it.
(47:46):
I think it's really cool and very interesting and I, I want
more of it, which it sounds likewe are getting.
I just I think the game sufferedfrom a lot of issues of
expectations that were maybe notrealistic of the console war.
This was the first Bethesda, youknow, game that got released
(48:08):
exclusive to Xbox and it still is to this day.
So that I think ruffled some feathers and caused a little bit
of animosity. Maybe there was some forgiveness
that they would have gotten if it was multi platform that they
didn't get for sure. And I, I just, I, I think that
there is a part of it where Bethesda needs to at some point
(48:28):
acknowledge that, you know, they, they, they need to try to
modernize their games or at least parts of their games
sooner than later, even though Idon't think anyone actually
thinks they're going to. So that said there, you know, it
was some borderline confirmationof more DLC coming.
We presume that's not coming until 2026, and it very likely
will come alongside APS 5 release.
(48:51):
Those rumors have been around forever, you know, ever since it
came out. Now we're two years in.
You cannot convince me to be bothered by a Starfield coming
out on PS52 and a half three years after it released.
Starfield is not selling Xboxes today, or at least not very
many. And at at this point, it would
(49:12):
only be good for Bethesda and Xbox to make more money.
So, and I have a feeling that you would see Starfield sell
extremely well on PlayStation. You know, there's the real loud
vocal minority of folks who havecrapped on it.
And maybe you would stay with that message.
But I think if it hit PlayStation, you would see a lot
of just kind of regular folks just buy it because you would
(49:33):
have people have PS Fives and there's 80 million of them out
there who don't get caught up inall the drama and all the, you
know, console warning and stuff.You would just see him be like,
oh, hey, I have a PlayStation and Starfield's by the fallout
people. I love that game.
I'll, I'll buy, I'll check that out.
You know, so I'm excited for that.
I think it's going to be good for him.
And I'm excited to see Starfield2 one day.
(49:58):
Moving into some content updatesand some closing thoughts.
YouTube, my channel has hit its eight-year anniversary.
I think it's all, I think it's been like 7 years since I
actually started posting videos.But the actual channel I created
eight years ago, which times up pretty well with when after the
Division One came out and I didn't like the way that people
(50:20):
were talking about that game andthe issues it had and we're
maybe not talking enough about the good things it did.
So I, in my infinite wisdom, decided to start a YouTube
channel to basically tell peoplewhy they were wrong.
And if you know me, you'll know that's not all that surprising.
And it's been cool. It's been a fun journey.
(50:44):
I got to go to E3 for free and stay in Los Angeles for like a
week for free and a hotel that aroom that was nicer than
anything I'll ever stay in for the rest of my life, probably
for free. That was all really cool.
As part of the Ubisoft Star Player program that is no longer
around. And I've got to meet game
(51:08):
developers and direct movie directors and do all kinds of
stuff through this YouTube channel and in the various
projects I've done on it. And I've gotten yelled at a lot.
I've seen a lot of really mean things about me, like I know I'm
chubby, I know I'm losing my hair, I know my teeth are a
little janky. I promise.
I know all those things. So but luckily I've had lots of
(51:30):
people remind me of them. But just like all other things
on social media and YouTube and,and this, you know, kind of
modern day digital world, hell, even on Facebook and stuff, for
every nasty comment or, or thing, there's been 10 great
ones, people who just want to talk about games, just want to
talk about ideas and speculationand news and all that stuff in
(51:52):
the industry. And that's what I do this for.
And I'm going to keep doing it for as long as I can or as long
as I have time. We'll see what what comes first.
And then just a quick reminder, it is September over on Twitch.
If your preferred way to supportwhat I'm doing on here is to do
it through Twitch there. I believe there's discounts for
(52:14):
first time subscribers over there as well as gifted Subs.
So if that's your way that you would like to support, you know,
you can head on over there and do that.
I will very much appreciate it. That is obviously up to you.
If you have a free prime sub, I would really appreciate that.
It doesn't cost you a penny and if you're not going to give it
to anyone else, you might as well give it to me.
(52:34):
So my Twitch link is in the description of the episode.
So go down there and check that out.
And that is where we are going to wrap up this episode.
Thank you for listening to this episode and thank you to
everyone who supports his YouTube members and or Twitch
subscribers. If you're interested in
(52:55):
supporting this podcast and all of my other content, please
check out the links in the show description.
If you have questions or feedback, hit me up on social
media at Von Diesel or at the bonfire.
Join my discard via the link tree link in the episode
description or comment on Spotify or YouTube.
Yes, you can do that on Spotify.It's weird only like one person
(53:15):
has made a comment on there so Idon't know be the second one.
That is all I have for this episode of the Bonfire Gaming
Podcast, so until next time. None.
This is the Bonfire Gaming Podcast episode 353.
I'm your host Morgan AKA Von Diesel, and this week we'll be
talking about Hollow Night, Silksong finally releases our
first look at Double O 7, First Light, Call of Duty coming to
the big screen, and much more. Be sure to subscribe to the show
on your favorite podcast app, leave a review on Spotify or
(00:25):
iTunes, and subscribe to the VonDiesel YouTube channel.
To get all of my videos, including this podcast.
Let's jump into the gaming news.Why Von Diesel?
I have made the probably not great decision to start talking
(00:46):
a little bit more to people. I actually know about some of
the hobbies I have, including making this podcast and making
gaming videos and stuff like that, so I figured it's worth
talking about what the what the pseudonym comes from.
So Von Diesel is a play on my actual name for gaming purposes.
(01:11):
I am glad that as a younger man,I didn't just put my actual name
into my Xbox and instead once I had my own Xbox Live account and
Steam and all of that stuff, I actually used the name, a
nickname I was given when I worked at GameStop all through
college. There was a, a assistant manager
(01:33):
at my store who couldn't say my name correctly.
And he was a sports guy. He, he played, you know, college
sports and so on. And so he called everyone by
their last name as as one does, but he couldn't say mine right.
Or it wasn't, it was unwieldy. So he called me Von Diesel
instead. It stuck especially, you know,
(01:56):
19 year old me thought that was a cool name to have as a
gamertag. So that's what my all my
gamertags are for the most part.I will say I'm glad I went with
that instead of, you know, like 4/20/69 super gamer or
something. But you know, as I'm approaching
(02:17):
for the IT, you know, feels a little silly, but you know, it's
OK, we'll keep going with it. I've had for almost 20 years.
We'll we'll we'll stick with it at least for now.
So if there's anyone listening new who didn't know I did this
and I've been doing this for, you know, 7 plus years, eight
(02:37):
years now. Welcome.
All of night Silk song has finally released.
This game has been talked about,proposed, shown in various
gaming showcases. I I want to say it was one of
the Xbox showcases literally like before COVID, I believe, or
around that time. It's out, it's the sequel.
(03:03):
So the original Hollow Night. It's a side scroller kind of
Metroidvania type of game, like old school Metroidvania.
I'm going to be honest, I've never played the original.
And so the interesting thing, atleast from my perspective about
this game really had nothing to do with the game.
I I couldn't care less about Silk song personally, No, no
(03:25):
interest in it at all. I I liked dead cells, you know,
few years ago. Otherwise, that's about the only
side scroller kind of Metroidvania game I've ever
gotten into. Hollow Knight never got me.
I'm actually one of the weirdos who like I don't like Celeste.
That's, you know, one of the most loved or beloved games in
(03:46):
the genre and and I mostly just because I'm not very good at it,
and I suspect that's the case with most of these.
But regardless, even if you know, you don't care about these
type of games, the spectacle andyou know, the all of the drama
around hollow night silk song isjust impossible to ignore and
(04:06):
and to not acknowledge the the release has been interesting.
They basically, you know, after many, many years now of making
the game and, and really people not even knowing if it truly
existed or when it was going to come out, they had their own
little showcase a few, you know,weeks ago or a month ago or so.
And we're just like, oh, it's coming out in September at the
(04:29):
beginning, in like a month and now it's out.
They did not do any early accesscopies or anything like that for
reviewers. Sometimes that's not a great
sign for a game. In this case, they cited the
reasoning being basically that they didn't want to spoil
anything or or give anyone a step up.
(04:50):
It's also worth remembering thatSilksong, it's so old that it
was crowdsourced the funding formuch of it, at least early in
development. And so they want to make sure
that the people who Crowdsource the game basically didn't get
undercut for, you know, by them giving early copies to reviewers
and stuff like that. They, you know, seem pretty
dedicated to believe it's Team Cherry is the developer to
(05:15):
making sure, you know, the people who are the reason the
game exists get their reward, even if it's been a very long
time coming. So there are no reviews yet as
of the recording of this podcast.
I'll probably mention it next week.
I suspect it's going to be reviewed.
Well, this is one of those gameswhere I think if they just had
random people review it like myself, that it may not get that
(05:38):
great of a score for various reasons.
But I feel like this is the typeof game that most outlets are
going to have someone who loves,you know, the first game is
super excited for this one who like basically knocks down the
editor's door to be like, hey, I'm reviewing that by the way.
And you know, whether that helpsthe score or not, you know,
(05:59):
depends on the person, I guess. But I suspect it's going to
review very well. I put an hour ish into it.
You know, it's on game pass on the Xbox Game Pass.
It's only, I think it was like 20 bucks or something if you buy
it straight up somewhere, which honestly, the argument almost
even for Xbox people is to just buy it, you know, for 20 bucks.
(06:22):
If this is the game you're actually excited about.
I'm, I suspect they cut a reallygood deal with Xbox to get this
game on there. It has so much notoriety and so
much marketing. I, I'm sure they got a good deal
from Xbox. So getting it through game pass
should be fine. But you know, it's 20 bucks.
So if you can spare it and you want to play it, I would say you
(06:42):
just go ahead and grab it from my play time.
I don't get it. It it looks nice.
It has a cool design. The the the art style is really
nice. It plays OK.
I suspect my gripes with the play are, you know, there's just
unlocks and upgrades that I sureI'm sure you get through the
game. That would address most of my
(07:02):
issues with it. These games just don't grab me
and and they never really have like I said before, besides dead
cells, I I think dead cells is avery unique game in this genre,
at least for me, where it it it just it was fairly casual
friendly, but still really challenging that, you know,
(07:24):
there's been other games I've tried out there was there's the
Prince of Persia game that came out not too long ago that has
the style made by the same people as dead cells and it was
OK. I didn't get into it either.
And then I'm not going to say this right, but earlier this
year, the Mondragon or whatever it's called has a, it's a slower
(07:44):
kind of game, but it has a similar vibe to it.
And, and I really like that and I played quite a bit of it, but
you know, I fell off of it eventually.
I got my money's worth. And you know, even with silks on
here, I, I feel like it, it wouldn't take long to get your
$20 worth. So goodness, if you buy it and
you don't even and you play at 5or 10 hours, I feel like, you
(08:05):
know, it becomes worth it even if you don't end up finishing
it. From what I've seen, the game,
the the mainline story is it's like 20 to 30 hours, I guess.
So it's a media game and with the potential of, you know,
twice as many hours if you do absolutely everything that's
available. At least that's the rumors I've
seen. We don't know.
We have no clue because the gameis barely, you know, hasn't even
(08:29):
hardly been out long enough for anyone to beat it yet.
So we'll see how those numbers play out in the long run.
Regardless, I think just as a gaming moment and kind of a
story in the games industry, this was just a cool thing, even
if it, you know, isn't really something I'm super excited
about. I, I think part of getting older
in general with things is being able to appreciate things that
(08:53):
are making other people happy, even if it's something that you
couldn't care less about. So for all those who are living
their dream this weekend, good for you.
I'm happy for you. Double O 7 First Light has had
its first big gameplay showcase in the in the form of a
PlayStation state of play, whichwas kind of interesting.
(09:13):
I didn't realize that this game,I assume, has a marketing deal
with PlayStation. So this staple, it was only this
game. The director of the game spoke
shortly before they showed anything, and then they showed
what appeared to be the whole opening mission of the game.
So Double O 7 infiltrates this party trying to find someone.
(09:37):
They do a time skip somewhere inthe middle of and inevitably,
you know, and that saying that eventually, you know, the target
figures out that, you know, Double O 7 and the others, that
Mister Bond and the others are there to get them.
They take off, they do a car chase which leads to an airport
with a big giant action sequencewhich involves going up in a
(09:58):
plane and falling down and fighting people as you fall and
you know, getting a parachute from one of the other people
who's falling. My thoughts on it is that it
looked really boring, especiallythe first half of the sequence.
It very much just looked like Hitman kind of re skinned to a
(10:19):
point. This is the same developer is
Hitman, which is a good thing. The you know, especially the
recent hitman games and updates and all that are, you know, they
have a extremely loyal fanbase and and I've even played quite a
bit of of it. I'm terrible at it.
(10:39):
My sessions always end up starting with me trying to play
it right and then end with me having the giant shootout and
like the entire level being wiped out.
So not great, admittedly, but I,I think the issue I had with
this showcase was that maybe it just wasn't the, the, the best
(11:01):
way to show it. The actual what we saw, the
gameplay, the sequence that was very hitman like where you're
trying to infiltrate this party and, and there's various ways to
do it. It looks it seemed like it was
really linear, like there were things that you had to do in
order to get into the party. Maybe that changes when the game
(11:23):
actually comes out and you're actually playing it.
And then the sequences once you're inside the party trying
to find this person that you're trying to find, they refer to
them as double O 9. So I assume it's a another
agent. It, it just, I don't know, it,
it seems like there maybe there's a bunch of systems and
mechanics in there that really, you know, once you're actually
playing will feel less linear and less forced.
(11:47):
But to me, what they showed, andit's because it was a demo.
So maybe that's why it feels this way.
It just didn't feel like you were going into this area and
using your secret James Bond training and tools and
everything to to work your way through this mission, Especially
(12:08):
because when they do this time skip in that from the middle of
the mission, it, it presumes that no matter what you do and
no matter how you handle this situation, the person you're
going after discovers you and takes off and it and it leads to
during after this time skip a a car chase, which may be one of
the worst looking driving sequences I've seen in a really,
(12:33):
really long time. Like it very much had like Xbox
360 vibes of of just like a gamethat has an engine that isn't
meant to have driving in it and they had to figure out how to do
it. Kind of like the old Fallout
games where, you know, they had to have like a locomotive, like
a train. But you know, the back then the
(12:55):
with the creation engine didn't have any tools in it to do
moving vehicles. So they attached the train to
the head of an NPC and synced the NPC down to the ground and
had them walk around under the level with this train on their
head, right. And so it works, but it, you
know, obviously looks terrible because it's being kind of, you
(13:18):
know, shoved in there. That's very much what this chase
sequence seemed like to me. They had some, this is where it
got a little more exciting. They had some big spectacles and
set pieces. And then this car chase ends up
in a situation where you're on this Air Force Base trying to
chase down this target who's trying to get on this big cargo
plane. You're chasing it down on foot
(13:40):
using airport vehicles and things.
This is where it turned into there's a lot of shooting, a lot
of CQC, lot of, you know, close quarters combat.
And some of that looked OK. This is where the frame rate
completely tanked in the game. What what they were showing I
believe is a, it was a 30FPS video just because it was on
YouTube and, and all that and rendered and everything.
(14:02):
But even like you could tell theactual game was chugging along
pretty bad. And, and so maybe it's just an
old build. Maybe it's still in, you know,
a, a, a beta situation. They're still, you know,
optimizing it and so on. But it, it, it just kind of made
it hard to tell if the action really looked as good as it kind
of did look, I think maybe you know, I mean the shooting and
(14:27):
stuff, the cover system, the, the using your tools and all
your, you know, techniques. Like they seemed like they were
doing OK during the first part of it.
They, they showed off the systemwhere you can kind of use like
little clips and you know, kind of verbal manipulation to say
you're walking into a restrictedarea and there's a guard who
(14:47):
sees you. You're able to use some
mechanics or you're basically just like, oh, no, I'm a bug
inspector. I just got a call.
I've got to go find so and so. And you kind of try to walk past
them And it seems like, you know, I don't know if this
mechanic, it's like if it's a guarantee to work or it depends
on what you've discovered in thelevel or whatever.
But that seemed kind of neat, this action sequence, like in
(15:10):
theory, it looked really cool. You know, you get onto the
plane, you're up on the wing, you're fighting people on the
wing, they're flying off as the plane goes to take off, as it
takes off, you jump into a hatchand you start fighting people
inside the plane. You know, like it's this big
crazy action action sequence which leads to you being thrown
out of the plane or the plane exploding, I can't remember.
(15:30):
And then you, as you're falling,you're like fighting people
avoiding debris that's falling with you.
And then it finally, I believe, ended with, you know, James Bond
finding one of the bad guys who has fallen with a parachute and
in, you know, essentially, you know, commandeering their
parachute and, and landing. And then, you know, that was the
end of the sequence. So like, it's just, it's
(15:53):
confusing because technically itseemed cool and it was kind of
what I expected, but from like actually thinking about watching
it and kind of thinking about like, oh, does this look like
something that would be fun to play?
I, I don't, I don't know, I'm not really sure.
So we'll, we'll see how this plays out.
I'll be curious. I'm really curious to see this
(16:15):
game being played on the consoles on the PS-5 or the Xbox
Series X&S, because I have to imagine this demo was recorded
on PC and often these PCs are pretty beefy that the developers
are using when they record thesekind of things for showcases.
And if it was struggling with that, I'm really curious how
(16:36):
they're going to do with optimization for just in general
for the game and especially how they're going to make it work on
the, you know, now 5 year old consoles, which by the time this
game comes out, which the the date was announced or I believe
March of 2026, you know, those consoles would be 5 plus years
old by that point, right? So I'll be curious to see how
(16:57):
they make that work, but I thinkthey will to some degree.
It's going to be, it's going to be interesting.
I, I suspect this isn't going tobe the like super banger people
were hoping it was going to be some 10 out of 10, nine out of
10 experience. If this comes out and gets a
Metacritic or an open critic score of like 75 to 80, I would
consider that probably a success.
(17:18):
We'll see whether or not the developer and the publisher and
especially the rights holder to the bond, you know, IP, well,
we'll see how they feel about it.
Maybe I'll be wrong. One of the big stories this week
after the release of Hell Divers2 on Xbox last week popped up
when an analytics firm speculates that the Xbox's first
(17:42):
week of Hell Divers 2 sales may have outsold the first week of
PlayStation 5 sales a couple of years ago or a year ago.
A time as a concept, I don't remember at this point.
I, I, I think there should be some skepticism here, even
though this is possible. So these, the report is saying
that Xbox sold around 1,000,000 copies of Hell Divers 2 in the
(18:05):
first week where PlayStation five it was around 700,000.
There's multiple factors to why this could be a thing.
The first thing being that theseanalytic firms are basically
just making stuff up. They claim that they have a, a
way of doing this, but we've also experienced relatively
recently around the time of I, Ibelieve it was with, with Final
(18:29):
Fantasy 16 when it released on Xbox.
All these reports came out were like, oh, it's only selling,
It's only sold like a few 1000 copies and this launches a
disaster on Xbox. And it was all citing this
analytics firm and this individual at that firm who's
probably the only person there who we ended up finding out was
(18:49):
looking at like Xbox store reviews and how many people have
left reviews on the Xbox Store. And then comparing that number
of reviews to other games where we know how many games they've
sold and seemingly trying to make it so say a game has sold
(19:10):
1,000,000 copies and has 1000 reviews on Xbox store.
So their logic here is that if, say Final Fantasy 16 has 100
reviews, then it's only sold, you know, 100,000 copies of the
game, right? Like that's, that's not a good
(19:31):
measure. That's that's a correlation.
And even as a correlation at stretch to the absolute limit of
the definition of you know what that would be.
And it definitely isn't the way that you should be trying to say
like how many copies of a game sold unless, and then this was a
my assumption, you you're tryingto basically just, you know,
(19:52):
kind of engagement bait, click bait, try to stir up the people
who care way too much about whatplastic box other people play
on. You know, that's that's that's
the main reason I'm skeptical ofthis Hell divers two thing.
Now, a factor that could make this at least somewhat
believable is that, you know, hell divers 2 is a known
commodity at this point. You know, when it came out on
(20:15):
PlayStation Five, it was pretty quickly recognized of how good
it was. But, you know, it still takes
time for that word of mouth to get around and all that.
You know, like, the chances are that Helldivers 2 will sell more
on Xbox over the six months compared to the first six months
of PlayStation 5 is pretty unlikely.
So, you know, this could just simply be a, you know, a
(20:37):
mindshare thing where, you know,it releases on Xbox when
everyone knows what it is and they did a big marketing
campaign. It's got all the talk around it
because it's one of the first PlayStation, it's technically
the first PlayStation exclusive published game that's being
brought over to Xbox like voluntarily, where MLB the Show
was a different story, you know,so that's in there too.
(21:00):
So then, you know, it's, you know, there, there's this big
and what this comes from is a lot of talk that Xbox gamers
don't buy games. They just use Game Pass and
that's bad for gaming. And you know, this story in one
way or another is being pushed depending on, you know, the
person's perspective as like, hey, look, Xbox gamers actually
buy games. I hope this is true.
(21:20):
I I hope a million people on Xbox did buy it.
I wasn't one of them. I actually cancelled my
pre-order for cross progression reasons.
I just don't want to play it again.
I've played it like 50 hours on PCI have no desire to start over
again, But that's a me problem. The the, the last thing is, and,
and it makes, you know, this explains it a bit more as well,
(21:43):
is that, you know, for quite a while at this point, I think
we've, you know, there's been lots of conversation and that
hell divers too didn't really sell all that great on PS-5, or
at least that's been the impression.
And that the vast majority of sales and most of the push
behind hell divers too was actually PC players on Steam.
And you know, I, I assume I, I don't know for a fact other
(22:04):
stores. So it's one of those things
where it's like, well, maybe youknow, the PS-5 sales wasn't that
great of an indicator in the 1stplace.
How many sales on Xbox in the first week are compared to PC in
the first week? I suspect PC one that pretty
handily. But we don't know.
And we don't know because barelyever, unless it's really good
(22:25):
news to any of these publishers at this point, ever put this
information out. Do they ever really talk about
it publicly? Because if you know, because
they care more about, you know, shareholders and stock prices
and all of that. So if you if you have a game
that you thought was going to sell a million copies, at best,
it sells, it sells 10 million. You talk about that as loud as
(22:49):
you can as often as you can, butthat doesn't happen too often.
Most of the time, games sell roughly what they expected or
below. And when that happens, you don't
talk publicly about it. You just say we're very
satisfied with the sales of thatgame, but you don't give numbers
because that would likely or potentially take your stock
(23:10):
prices and all of that. And unfortunately, in modern
gaming and then our, you know, capitalistic world, that matters
a lot. And, you know, whether you like
it or not or whether it's a goodthing or not, that's just kind
of the way it seems to be. So regardless, I'm hoping that
hell, Divers 2 is a huge successon Xbox because I would love to
(23:30):
see PlayStation be a little morewilling to be a little more
flexible with all this stuff. And, you know, we could see The
Last of Us get its 15th release over the last 10 years.
Maybe we get an Xbox release. Crystal Dynamics has laid off a
pretty substantial number of workers, it seems like, and it
(23:51):
seems to be directly related to Perfect Dark being cancelled
over at Xbox Studios. So we knew that the initiative
had been shut down. It was, I think that wasn't
talked about very clearly by a lot of journalists and so on.
We're under the impression that the initiative, which was at one
point pegged a, a triple or a quadruple a studio.
(24:13):
The first one because the original intent, you know, back,
you know, 7-8, nine years ago was to make a studio the old
way. You bring in a bunch of
experienced leadership and then you make a new studio of like
500 plus people. And then that's not what
happened. Whether it's because of COVID or
(24:34):
just, you know, game developmentis changing or whatever.
It turned into a thing where it seems like there were maybe like
a few dozen people at the initiative and then they were
using a code developer, Crystal Dynamics, who does code
development, you know, pretty regularly with other studios to
have Crystal Dynamics do the bulk of the development on the
(24:55):
game led by people at the initiative.
And not to say that there weren't actual developers at the
initiative as well. I've seen multiple people
posting over the last few weeks about how they were like a
narrative designer or a environmental, you know,
designer or something like that at the initiative.
But we are under the impression the bulk of the the meat of the
(25:18):
development studio, you know, was going to be through Crystal
Dynamics, who was going to do the most of the bulk of the
work, right. So we find out that Crystal
Dynamics has laid a bunch of people off.
That's almost certainly because of Perfect Dark being cancelled.
But the part of the story that was really interesting that only
came out this week was that there were ongoing discussions
(25:41):
ever since this cancellation happened between Crystal
Dynamics and Xbox and 2K. The initial and and supposedly
other potential partners as wellwhere Xbox slash Microsoft was
going to allow Crystal Dynamics to potentially buy out or or or
(26:03):
bring the IP along with them theperfect dark IP to another
publisher who would then fund the you know the game being
finished and eventually shipped and two K.
It sounds like they were kind ofthe leading potential partner
there. Now I assume there were other
potential partners as well. You have to assume the $0.10 and
maybe even like the EA third party publishing all that who
(26:25):
knows, but it seems like 2K was the most the closest they got
and then but unfortunately the deal fell through when there
were issues with IP ownership. Everyone has an effectively
instantly blamed Xbox for this, that, oh, it's just going to be
another dormant IP that acted like Activision.
And, you know, most of these publishers have, you know, they
(26:46):
they might at any given time have, you know, 5 to 10 active
franchises, but they might have the IP of like 100 franchises
and most of them just aren't being served.
You know, that was kind of the accusation here that Perfect
Dark was just going to disappearagain, go into the vault, maybe
never to return. I, I, I wouldn't be so quick to
assume that that may very well be the case.
(27:08):
But it's also worth considering that, you know, maybe 2K just
didn't want to pay enough. Or maybe they wanted like
reverse rights or something where they got the rights back
all the way to, you know, the first Perfect Dark and they
wanted to have complete IP ownership and Xbox wasn't
willing to do that or whoever, you know, actually owns all that
stuff. It's likely a more complicated
story than just, you know, Xbox said no, I mean, they were
(27:31):
willing to deal with Crafton to sell off Tango Gameworks and the
hi-fi Rush IP, which even thoughit didn't really sell that well
and there were lots of, in my opinion, legitimate reasons for
that studio to go away. You know, the hi-fi Rush has a
good name. Like it's a attractive IP.
So, you know, they could have just kept it in their vault and
(27:53):
said, yeah, sure, Craft and you can have Tango.
We don't, we obviously don't want them.
We shut them down, but not give them the IP, you know, and but
they did. So these deals seem like they
can work and honestly, IN2025I I, I guess perfect dark has a
more clout than a new IP like hi-fi rush.
But realistically, I mean perfect dark, you know, the,
(28:14):
the, the fans of the original perfect dark are like older than
me at this point. I'm and I'm not young right?
So how much value it truly has, I think it's kind of arguable,
but maybe not. I'm not one of the the smart
people who makes these decisions.
So it is a bummer and more. The biggest thing is it sucks.
It always sucks to find out people are losing their jobs and
(28:35):
that there was even just a a modicum of a chance that maybe
this game was going to survive, maybe it was going to come back
and and end up releasing. My my guess is at the end of the
day at least the rumors were that the game really wasn't that
far along, had missed a bunch ofdeadlines and stuff like that.
I wouldn't be surprised if 2K saw these issues with IP
(28:57):
ownership and how much money they were probably going to have
to dump in to to actually finishthat game with a Co developer,
even not even one of their own studios.
It probably just wasn't worth it.
Now the money is kind of hard toargue about when we all know
that 2K is about to make the most money ever in the world
when Grand Theft Auto 6 releasesnext year, but that's not really
(29:18):
how these corporations work. So Speaking of kind of strange
decisions with IP, Activision has made a deal with Paramount
to make a live action Call of Duty movie.
What was funny about this was the initial reaction I saw from
some people were like, who even wants this?
And I'm like, man, you do not have much of A grasp of like the
(29:41):
average person because at least in my opinion, if they
essentially take like Call of Duty 4, hope they don't go back
further in that. But like Call of Duty 4 has a
movie story. You know, it's the the potential
for Co opting that into a story is so good.
(30:03):
And then you start thinking about Modern Warfare 2 and three
and all of the games have come since then and even the modern
kind of rebooted games. And that, you know, you're
looking at probably 3 solid movies there that you could, you
know, build up these characters of, of soap and, and, you know,
all these people. Not to mention that you also
(30:23):
have the Black Ops series, whichcould be its own like spin off
set of movies that they could also do, which arguably has an
even better storyline for making, you know, like a, like
a, a wide audience movie about, you know, with all of the mind
control and, and, and all of that stuff that you know, goes
into that series. So, you know, people poo pooping
(30:43):
on this. Like, I get it.
It's, it's easy to hate Call of Duty.
It's easy to crap on them. I I do myself, even though I
find their actual stories to always be pretty good and or at
least fun if they're not good. But not being able to recognize
the absolute goldmine that this could be is crazy.
Now, a part of the story that was really interesting and
(31:04):
probably has some explanation, even though it seems insane, is
that when they were shopping this before Paramount was the
buyer or was the partner that they were going to go with
Steven Spielberg and his like company made an initial pitch to
to be, you know, to make these to to make this movie and I
assume other ones. And they said no.
(31:29):
So, you know, mind you, this is Steven Spielberg who's done, you
know, Saving Private Ryan and and so on and so forth.
So it seems insane, but supposedly, according to some
articles I read, that the Activision or the people in
charge of the IP who are in charge of this deal were spooked
by how much control Steven Spielberg wanted, which from
what I've read was full creativecontrol.
(31:51):
So to a point, I understand that.
I mean, you know that the argument, you know, for him
doing The thing is it's Steven Spielberg like of course, and
and it's not out of the way for him to want to do this.
I've seen this before, but I even kind of looked into it a
little bit more recently today of the he's like a legit, he
(32:12):
plays Call of Duty. He's he's into games.
He plays games all the time. If if you look up interviews
with him, he is an avid gamer and has been for a really long
time. And it looks like even fairly
recently he's still playing games, which is, you know, kind
of neat. And it gives him a little more,
you know, credit here, I think that he wasn't, you know, his
agent just didn't say, hey, there's this video game movie
(32:33):
and he's like, OK, whatever. Like he probably has personal
interest in Call of Duty and that, you know, probably would
have been really cool. But my my thing is that I
suspect the spooky part of it for Activision or whoever was in
charge of this was that, you know, this is a deal for one
movie. And I can almost guarantee that
(32:54):
Spielberg and maybe even Paramount, we, we have no idea
of the exact details of the deal, but you know, he very
likely would have wanted some assurance that he would be the
one in charge of all of the movies they would make and, and
would likely want probably a pretty good cut.
And, you know, he's Steven Spielberg.
He'd want to be paid appropriately.
And he's not dumb. I'm sure he and his people know
(33:14):
how much the IP is worth and allthat.
And maybe they just didn't want to go into a long term
commitment with one person. We're going with a public, you
know, what is essentially a publisher like Paramount just
made more sense. We'll have to wait and see.
It would be funny if he still ends up like directing it.
I don't know how all that stuff works.
But, you know, we'll, we'll haveto see how that plays out.
(33:35):
I'm excited for this. I think it'd be cool.
I, I think they could do this. This this story could be done
really, really well. And you just know that there is
no chance that Chris Pratt does not end up in this movie.
So maybe he'll be Ghost and we won't see his face, depending on
your feelings on him. So, yeah, Call of Duty movie,
it's coming. Hang tight IO Interactive
(33:58):
Partners, which is IO's publishing arm, may not do any
more publishing after the Mind'sEye launch disaster.
This was an interesting one to read about and to see.
I mean, it seems kind of obvious, right?
Mind's Eye, if you don't remember it's, I think it's
already left most people's minds.
It it was this big game that people were saying like, oh,
(34:18):
this might be the next Grand Theft Auto.
And the, the people making it were like real vocal and, and
like, in my opinion, like way too cocky, little overconfident
about their situation. And the thing about Mine's eye
is my impression is that Mine's eye was this, this the single
player, this like the story in this game above that, at least
(34:43):
for some time, was the engine. And that you were basically
like, Mine's Eye was supposed tobe kind of like a showcase for
this engine, but then late in development or more recently,
the whole thing with the engine where you're basically supposed
to be able to make your own game, that kind of went away.
They focus on Mine's Eye trying to put it out and really put it
out there as like Grand Theft Auto competitor, blah, blah,
(35:05):
blah, blah, blah. And then it comes out and I've
seen a few people be like, oh, it's not that bad.
But the majority of people just being like, it's a, you know,
like technically it's a completecrap show.
The actual gameplay is a complete crap show.
The story and the characters andthe voice acting and the writing
is just all a disaster. And, and it's, you know, you can
kind of tell because it, you know, has disappeared way
(35:29):
quicker than the lead up to it. And I, I remember, I think that
there's some stories out there about how they're going to try
to do this big relaunch and they're going to try to do all
this stuff. But Long story short, when it
comes to IO Interactive and, andthem in this publishing wing,
they had, I think this is their first big publishing deal.
It was a disaster. It was they, they probably
(35:50):
almost certainly spent way more money on marketing and and
actually publishing the game than they're ever going to make
from it. And that's, you know, not how
that that that doesn't go well when the the whole goal is to to
publish a game and make a bunch of money off of it and all that.
So, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised at all if we never see
them publish another game simplybecause, you know, and maybe
(36:12):
they could do a better job with other games.
You know, this isn't IO's fault that the game was a disaster,
but you do, you know, you are attached to it and it is your
money that got spent at least tosome point.
So we'll we'll have to see how that plays out in the long run.
Ubisoft's ANO 11717-I actually haven't heard them say the title
(36:34):
of the game, so I don't know howthey're saying it.
Their new game that's coming outlater this year, which we'll
focus on kind of like the Roman Empire.
Times has a demo on all PC platforms right now.
At least it's on Steam and the Ubisoft store.
It does the Super annoying thingthough where you can get it on
Steam but then when you start it, it has to open the Ubisoft
(36:55):
store and it seems like it just runs it from there.
So then I just uninstalled it from Steam and installed it on
the Ubisoft store so I didn't have to have this weird setup.
Regardless, it's a one hour demothat so after an hour the demo
ends. It kicks you out and you can
only go to a Tier 2 citizen. So the way Anna works, at least
(37:17):
I've only played the 1800 and now this demo, but basically
it's a, you know, it's kind of like an old school, like real
time strategy kind of age of Empires feel to it.
But with like, like the like SIMCity or something.
And the, the, the main thing with the game is that you, you
want to attract people to come live in your city.
(37:39):
So you build houses and to get more people to come for them to
be happy, which is something youwant.
So you get more money and stuff like that.
They want certain things. They want a market and they want
to have clothes and food. So you have to make sure you
have the infrastructure for a market and clothes and food.
So you build a market and you build a, a sheep farm that makes
(38:04):
cotton and a clothing produce a clothing building that makes
clothing and you have those. And then those make the people
happy. You get more people, but they
also want food. So you have to have, you know,
a, a hog farm or a a farm in general that makes grain and
then a bakery. So now your citizens have a
(38:25):
market and they have clothes andthey have food, so they're
happy. But the market needs beer.
So you have to have a hops fieldand then a beer producing
building. So now the market.
So now you're good, but now you want your city to keep growing.
So you want, you know, you want higher level citizens that you
can upgrade their houses and make them so they, they can do
more things. So in order to do that, there's
(38:46):
higher level citizens want higher level things.
And that, and that's the kind ofmechanic of the game is you're
constantly trying to make the people happy by having all the
things they want, but everythingthey want requires like 3
things. So you're constantly expanding
the city and you're also having to do things like you, you have
to build fire stations. You, you can do trade with other
(39:08):
cities and other islands in the area.
You can, you can go to war with them.
This game introduces ground warfare where Ano 1800 was
purely naval. You can only fight on the on the
sea. And, and so that's that's the
game. What I'll say about my time
playing this new one is that it feels very familiar to 1800.
(39:31):
It definitely has a bunch of kind of quality of life
improvement and mechanical changes and updates and
improvements. I will say so far, like I'll
probably buy this new one and play it or I'll get it for free
as being a Ubisoft partner. I guess there's a warning, but
I, I definitely have left the demo being like, OK, now this is
(39:53):
a game that you play for dozens,if not hundreds of hours.
So only getting to play, you know, with, with a city for one
hour, you're barely getting intothis Tier 2 of residents and,
and flushing out your city. There's so many mechanics and so
many things in the game that youliterally can't even start doing
in one hour. So maybe there's a gym here and,
(40:15):
and, and I enjoyed it, even if it is just what it is.
I'll still have fun with it. I'll play it for 50 to 100 hours
over the next year or two and then I'll probably be kind of
done with it, which is how I waswith ANO 1800.
So if you're into these type of games, into the the Age of
Empires, the city builders, the resource managers, it's almost
certainly going to be great. And I am curious to how the
(40:36):
later parts of the game where you need to start building a
ground army and a naval army andthings like that.
I'm curious to how that plays out as time goes on, but we just
don't know that yet, so I'll talk about it when we do.
Battlefield 6 maps have leaked, so everyone wanted bigger maps
from the next game that's comingup here in about a month, which
(40:57):
is super exciting. And we got some previews of it.
So through official channels, they've shown off some more
mechanics and things like that and have inadvertently, even
though it was definitely purposeful, showing off some of
the real big maps. And they look huge.
They look extremely large, at least a couple of them.
There were also some kind of early renderings, both public
(41:21):
concept art, along with some potential like early versions of
levels that people have data mined of some of the, you know,
some classic battlefield maps and more that could be extremely
large and, and, and be really cool.
So you know, for anyone who was worried about how big the maps
are going to be in Battlefield 6, I I don't think there's any
reason to worry about it, but we'll have to wait and see And
(41:42):
the grind of Battlefield 2042. The the battle pass they put on
there for free, admittedly for Battlefield 6 cosmetics, it
continues. There's 60 levels you need to
unlock. They have these weekly bonuses.
You can do so certain tasks, youget extra tears to be able to
build up this battle pass. So we're I guess about a halfway
(42:04):
through it. I'm at level like 25 I think and
I've been trying to I, I basically play every day for at
least an hour or so to try to work on this because I want all
those cosmetics for Battlefield 6.
I I really like Battlefield 2042and so it's been hard seeing
people just relentlessly dump onit right now because you know,
they are basically, you know, they aren't truly forcing, but
(42:26):
if you want these Battlefield 6 things you have to play 2042 and
a lot of people really hate 2042.
I like 2042. I think Battlefield 2042 is a
great game. I just don't think it's the best
Battlefield game, but I still think it's for what it's worth.
If you want a modern aesthetic setting or near future, I guess
(42:48):
Battlefield game, it's kind of your best option today.
Obviously 3 and 4 still exist and and I know that there's
still somewhat active communities there, but it's not
the same. And then Battlefield 1 and five
are historical games. So I I like 2042.
It it's just it's it's more arcady than it should have been.
They obviously were trend chasing and they're a lot of
(43:10):
things they fixed since releaseda few years ago, a lot of things
they haven't fixed. So maybe it annoys you.
I still think it's worth jumpingin.
I think it's like 5 bucks for 2042.
It's, in my opinion at least, worth jumping in and grinding
the battle pass. Obviously if you're excited for
Battlefield 6. So there's my advice.
I think it's a better game than people give it credit for.
(43:32):
Maybe I'm wrong, we all know I probably AM.
And finally, we'll wrap it up with Starfield's two year
anniversary. I'm recording this on September
5th, 2025. S we're two years out from
Starfield coming out. I it's been an interesting
couple of years. I, I really like Starfield.
(43:53):
One of my most watched videos from the last few years over on
YouTube is me saying that I likeStarfield.
And I will tell you, I have never seen people say so many
awful things to me than in that video.
I opened the video up maybe being a little too pretentious
or a little too combative. Basically, I believe I said
(44:16):
something along the lines of Starfield is good and people who
say it isn't are wrong. You know, I don't know if I'm
paraphrasing, but so I was definitely inviting a little bit
of vitriol, but not I wasn't expecting what I got.
And you know, that's subsided quite a bit.
They improve the game private. I mean, I think Starfield is
(44:37):
pretty good from launch. It's of the Bethesda games I've
played, it's easily and at leastin my opinion, the one that was
in the best shape at launch. It just it wasn't whatever what
everyone wanted, even though I think what a lot of people
wanted wasn't realistic. Even today.
We just had No Man's Sky and youknow, this week release another
(44:58):
update for free, which is just crazy.
And you know, every time No Man's Sky comes up, people are
always like, oh, this is what I wanted Starfield to be.
And it's just like, you know, everyone's entitled to their
opinion, but Starfield was nevermeant to be what No Man's Sky
is, at least in my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong, but you know,
(45:21):
it's it's a Bethesda game that just happens to be in space.
It's Fallout in space, as everyone has said 100 times.
And a lot of the mechanics in the engine and many of you know,
the quest structures and stuff like that are relatively
antiquated. If you're not in there for that
Bethesda experience. If you came in hoping it would
(45:41):
be the next Mass Effect or something like that, you know,
that sucks. You know, you were probably
being a little crazy or maybe just too hopeful.
I don't know what the right wording would be, but it's it's
very much a Bethesda game now. I I wish that the cities in the
various lanets were bigger and more fleshed out.
(46:01):
I wish the character animations were better.
I wish the romances were a little more up to date.
I thought the romances were OK in Starfield.
And then I played Fallout 4 again, which I had never
experienced, you know, gone downthat path in any previous game.
Only for me to realize that the,the, the way the, the romance
(46:22):
system in Starfield is basicallyexactly the same as Fallout
fours. It's a little more advanced.
There's a little more to it, butnot that much that that kind of
brought me back to reality a bit.
But it was fine. It was OK.
That game, it's kind of like what I was talking about with
Battlefield. Battlefield's multiplayer, if
(46:42):
you like it there, there's not really anyone else who does it
the same. That there is a feel and a chaos
and a satisfaction from Battlefield's multiplayer,
especially Conquest that you just can't get with other games.
And other games have definitely tried like World War Three and
and a few others and they, and you know, Call of Duty has
definitely tried and, and with the big team battle or whatever
(47:04):
it's called and it's just never been there.
Even Halo to a point, it's not the same.
And I kind of feel that way about Bethesda and with their
games like Starfield is not perfect.
It did improve a lot of things, at least in my opinion.
A lot of the the models and the texture work in that game are
really, really good as long as you don't pay, you know, maybe
some of the environments are aren't the best, like the
(47:25):
outdoor environments, it's a little rough, but like the
ships, the guns, the things inside building, the, the
interiors are super pretty and really well like populated and
think of things like that. The gunplay I think is a lot of
fun. I think the actual combat, you
know, mechanics of, of Starfieldare actually a lot of fun.
I, I like the story. I actually love the story in it.
(47:46):
I think it's really cool and very interesting and I, I want
more of it, which it sounds likewe are getting.
I just I think the game sufferedfrom a lot of issues of
expectations that were maybe notrealistic of the console war.
This was the first Bethesda, youknow, game that got released
(48:08):
exclusive to Xbox and it still is to this day.
So that I think ruffled some feathers and caused a little bit
of animosity. Maybe there was some forgiveness
that they would have gotten if it was multi platform that they
didn't get for sure. And I, I just, I, I think that
there is a part of it where Bethesda needs to at some point
(48:28):
acknowledge that, you know, they, they, they need to try to
modernize their games or at least parts of their games
sooner than later, even though Idon't think anyone actually
thinks they're going to. So that said there, you know, it
was some borderline confirmationof more DLC coming.
We presume that's not coming until 2026, and it very likely
will come alongside APS 5 release.
(48:51):
Those rumors have been around forever, you know, ever since it
came out. Now we're two years in.
You cannot convince me to be bothered by a Starfield coming
out on PS52 and a half three years after it released.
Starfield is not selling Xboxes today, or at least not very
many. And at at this point, it would
(49:12):
only be good for Bethesda and Xbox to make more money.
So, and I have a feeling that you would see Starfield sell
extremely well on PlayStation. You know, there's the real loud
vocal minority of folks who havecrapped on it.
And maybe you would stay with that message.
But I think if it hit PlayStation, you would see a lot
of just kind of regular folks just buy it because you would
(49:33):
have people have PS Fives and there's 80 million of them out
there who don't get caught up inall the drama and all the, you
know, console warning and stuff.You would just see him be like,
oh, hey, I have a PlayStation and Starfield's by the fallout
people. I love that game.
I'll, I'll buy, I'll check that out.
You know, so I'm excited for that.
I think it's going to be good for him.
And I'm excited to see Starfield2 one day.
(49:58):
Moving into some content updatesand some closing thoughts.
YouTube, my channel has hit its eight-year anniversary.
I think it's all, I think it's been like 7 years since I
actually started posting videos.But the actual channel I created
eight years ago, which times up pretty well with when after the
Division One came out and I didn't like the way that people
(50:20):
were talking about that game andthe issues it had and we're
maybe not talking enough about the good things it did.
So I, in my infinite wisdom, decided to start a YouTube
channel to basically tell peoplewhy they were wrong.
And if you know me, you'll know that's not all that surprising.
And it's been cool. It's been a fun journey.
(50:44):
I got to go to E3 for free and stay in Los Angeles for like a
week for free and a hotel that aroom that was nicer than
anything I'll ever stay in for the rest of my life, probably
for free. That was all really cool.
As part of the Ubisoft Star Player program that is no longer
around. And I've got to meet game
(51:08):
developers and direct movie directors and do all kinds of
stuff through this YouTube channel and in the various
projects I've done on it. And I've gotten yelled at a lot.
I've seen a lot of really mean things about me, like I know I'm
chubby, I know I'm losing my hair, I know my teeth are a
little janky. I promise.
I know all those things. So but luckily I've had lots of
(51:30):
people remind me of them. But just like all other things
on social media and YouTube and,and this, you know, kind of
modern day digital world, hell, even on Facebook and stuff, for
every nasty comment or, or thing, there's been 10 great
ones, people who just want to talk about games, just want to
talk about ideas and speculationand news and all that stuff in
(51:52):
the industry. And that's what I do this for.
And I'm going to keep doing it for as long as I can or as long
as I have time. We'll see what what comes first.
And then just a quick reminder, it is September over on Twitch.
If your preferred way to supportwhat I'm doing on here is to do
it through Twitch there. I believe there's discounts for
(52:14):
first time subscribers over there as well as gifted Subs.
So if that's your way that you would like to support, you know,
you can head on over there and do that.
I will very much appreciate it. That is obviously up to you.
If you have a free prime sub, I would really appreciate that.
It doesn't cost you a penny and if you're not going to give it
to anyone else, you might as well give it to me.
(52:34):
So my Twitch link is in the description of the episode.
So go down there and check that out.
And that is where we are going to wrap up this episode.
Thank you for listening to this episode and thank you to
everyone who supports his YouTube members and or Twitch
subscribers. If you're interested in
(52:55):
supporting this podcast and all of my other content, please
check out the links in the show description.
If you have questions or feedback, hit me up on social
media at Von Diesel or at the bonfire.
Join my discard via the link tree link in the episode
description or comment on Spotify or YouTube.
Yes, you can do that on Spotify.It's weird only like one person
(53:15):
has made a comment on there so Idon't know be the second one.
That is all I have for this episode of the Bonfire Gaming
Podcast, so until next time. None.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd is a thought-provoking, opinionated, and topic-driven journey through the top sports stories of the day.