Overwatch Drops the 2, Baldur’s Gate on HBO & Discord’s Face Scan Plan | Games For Breakfast

Good morning, Matt.
AH, GOOD MORNING, WILL.
Good morning to all of you.
Welcome to Games for Breakfast, the only internet talk show we talk about this week's gaming and tech news, but we're also I don't know what happened at the Super Bowl last night. I don't know. I know who played. I I remember that. I don't know who won. I know Bad Bunny killed it. I don't know anything else. And I'm guessing if you're here for this internet talk show about video games and tech news, maybe that that ven diagram is small for you like me, but the the usual place I go to watch the Super Bowl or hang out with people and eat a bunch of snacks. That's really what it is for me. Uh I missed. So So anyone could literally say an egg was handed. That's correct. If anyone could say any score in chat right now in Brad or Janet on Twitter or YouTube or message me or will on on Blue Sky if you're watching this later on Nebula and I will believe whatever you tell me happened at the

Super Bowl because I didn't watch it.
I did I did hear some general amount of rejoicing that the Patriots lost. So
I'm seeing a lot of great things here like uh this could be real. This could be real. This could be real. This could be real. This [laughter] could be real.
This could be real.
Yeah. Right.
This could be real.
Yeah. 45.
I don't know why, but I'll take this one.
Yeah. Right. Exactly.
This is all great.
Yeah. This is all 100%. Um Oh, this is I like this one. The superb owl was appeased. And I'm certain that the losing team was offered as a sacrifice to the owl. You know,
snac is what I do when I go to a Super Bowl party. That's correct. Yeah. Although I did hear um and it is up on the tubes of you. So after you watch this show, if you're inclined, you can go watch Bad Bunny's halftime show.
Yeah. Which I I need to do.
Uh which apparently was uh incredible. I

have not yet had an opportunity to watch it because I was busy doing not superb owl things last night. Uh but it is on my list of things to do this evening. So
same. I was watching uh US Figure Skating, [laughter] the recap of the US Figure Skating thing.
And I I did level a little bit in Dragonfly, Will, I was trying to because I'm not going to have time to do it with you, so I was just trying to blaze through as much as I can.
I was spending time with my one true love, Final Fantasy 14.
That's fair.
Yeah. Um
but how is everybody doing? H how how how how how not only how are you all doing right now, but how do you anticipate you'll be doing later in the week? That's a good question to start things off with. What what what video game uh leveling system in your own life will you be espousing to make sure things go smoothly?
Yeah. Yeah. Uhuh. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. the uh because tomorrow actually

there is one big change coming to the land of video games for sure. There's another one today because we're getting another deadlock character.
Okay.
There's one in Magic today because there's a ban restricted announcement.
Sure.
Um Oh yeah. And then uh Overwatch is returning to Overwatch and dropping the two tomorrow.
The world could use more heroes minus one and then we're back to the original.
Yeah. [laughter]
So after a long and terrible journey,
actually, okay, let's hold on. We we we attack. We go hard on Overwatch. I think because I'm so bitter because the promise of a wonderful meta narrative wrapped around a world that I truly care about felt squandered and and knocked over into a free-to-play model that I felt like it couldn't really sustain and made sure that the first game was devalued at the same time while not

offering anything terribly exciting for the freetoplay version. But I want to make sure that everyone listening right now, maybe there's a bunch of people that still play Overwatch. So, I don't want to just be the old man yelling at the cloud um in in this particular situation. How many of y'all still play Overwatch and enjoy Overwatch? I would just show show of uh positive emotes versus negative emotes and then we'll I'll I'll I'll glean the answer from that.
Yeah,
we got some here.
Hey, nah.
No, Dark. I'm that old man.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So we have we have
also true
some people.
Yeah. Oh, there we go. We got some Yeah, it just it just jumped. So
yeah, it it do that.
Does Paladins count? No, not
conversation yet, isn't it? Didn't
I think you can Can you still play Paladins? I think Hyres killed Paladins

or they killed all future development of Paladins because they're all in on Smite 2, a game which I have played recently and is incredibly mid.
So, good job on that one, Hirez. You done you done something. As of eight months ago, you could play it. So, it seems like there's a few folks and Artemis, here's where the heart of the story comes in. I think I terribly miss Overwatch uh one as well. So when uh this in my opinion they basically did a full like what do they call these directs or not directs a state of the state of play? I don't know what they
Yeah, like a like
spotlight. It's called a spotlight,
right? It's not a treehouse or a state of play or a direct because every company calls it something different. So it's special to them. Uh, and this one started with a ve like the first um in my opinion interesting story moving forward uh cinematic in a while.

Yeah.
With um with with Doomfist. I don't want to spoil anything but some comeuppants seem to be had um
some comeuppants. All the comeuppants.
All the comeuppants or the come downants he does. however you want to put it towards the end. You know, it started with a really great um uh cinematic which I've missed terribly. Um also friend of the show Karolina Rasa got to have some somber lines on there so I was very happy to hear her back there. Um but the after that that I really I actually did very much appreciate if you didn't watch this thing. uh they're all like CGed into Talon's headquarters like either standing around or sitting at the big chairs and I thought that was very fun because basically the the the news that they started with andor buried till the end is they're instead of going to season 21 in Overwatch 2, they are starting at season 1 and dropping the two in general,
right? Um, which

of course that is the correct thing to do. Um, I I think that there must have been was over was Overwatch 2 cuz everything it moves so fast and everything feels like it was both yesterday and 100 years ago. Did what did Overwatch 2 release during the middle of the Microsoft acquisition?
I think that sounds correct to me.
Chat, can you can you help me out on that one? cuz it cuz essentially it felt like it was two or multiple groups of people in control of the IP like kind of like jockeying for what this thing was going to be.
Part of the problem is that Overwatch 2 released October 4th, 2022 which is sort of like towards the end of the panini and we are all like completely incapable of processing time during that.
Yeah.
Um
uh R2 asks a great question. So, what happens when someone has Overwatch's 2 installed on their computer? Great question. You have to buy a physical

disc for $40. No. Uh,
and yes, it was in the middle of the acquisition. So, the acquisition was announced January 18th, 2022, and it was completed October 13th, 2023. So, it was like dead set in the middle of that whole transitional period where everything was moving through the courts and figuring it out.
Okay. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. So, um, to answer that question for real that R2 asked, I believe nothing. It just changes. They're going to, and we're going to go over all the sort of changes that they brought up and talked about, which I think a lot of them are very, very good. I think um I [clears throat] I am very glad to see them rectifying this mistake. Now, granted, uh, the game director, whose name is escaping me right now, um, has gone on record saying that no one believe, and this is what they kind of have to say, right? Like, no one believes that adding the two or doing the two was a mistake. Um,

I feel like and I I I understand you can't do this because of of the corporate corporate town corporate town USA, but like I think it would like I think the fans would be like if you were just like, "Yeah, it was a mistake. Like, we want to do this stuff. We got caught up in the acquisition. Stuff gets complicated. We're really sorry. Look at all the cool stuff we're doing right now." I think the goodwill they're experiencing here would like catapult. Like I I just I I wish there was more room for that level of honesty in games marketing when it comes to large companies and there just isn't because there's no question. I I know that Overwatch 2 was a financial success, but it all but also it allowed other games to come and eat its lunch way faster than Overwatch one did. Um because it became just another version of those other games where Overwatch
lost it. Yeah. It lost its position.
The over original Overwatch did

something that like I mean it
it changed the hero shooter.
Yeah. uh and solidified it as like I think I know there were other hero obviously Team Fortress 2 um but there but like it took that and wrapped it in a meta narrative with like I know people might feel uh you know certain ways about the scout or the heavy or stuff like that but like th this turned it into like an actual full-blown narrative world with characters you cared about what do you care
I was going to say that beat the team did that when like
meet the team made fun video, but like do you care about like the heavy's home life?
I am deeply embedded in the story about whether or not Spy has actually seduced Scout's mother or not, but that's just because I think that's one of the best ways to hook people [laughter] on that game.
Yeah. [snorts] Yeah.
Listen, also Pyro is ba like that's

that's all right.
Sure. This is awesome.
But I will also I will also confess that I am like an OGTF2 player. So like
my opinion is not the average opinion. I think
I'm just saying when Overwatch one dropped, I was so involved with the story that I became a fan of her shooters. Like truly like I cared about May and Winston and Reaper and uh Genji literally in my my future wife Jamie. And when I met her on an online dating app, I literally had a line in my profile that said um Hanzo mains need not apply. Like that's how hard I went to the point where I forget if I've told this story and she'll probably kill me, but she's walking llo so it's fine. Uh she came uh to our first date and this is one of the sweetest things ever. She came to my first our first date. Uh she had never heard of Overwatch, didn't know what Hanzo main was or whatever, right? and she had like a post-it note

and she pulled it out and she's like, "So, okay." She like [laughter] broke down like trying to understand why I hated a person who played this character [laughter] so much. And it was a very very very very sweet
both. By the way, as someone who has met her, that is incredibly sweet and also an incredibly Jamie thing to do.
Yeah. So, so to say that I was invested um is is putting it lightly.
Yeah.
Uh I have the stat I have a Reaper and a Widowmaker statue. I have like I have all of the the stuff. I have all the comic books and things. And then when two dropped like wind just got taken out of the sales and I don't even think it was because of the monetary change.
I think they could have got away with the monetary change. It was the Hey, it felt like a rug pull a bit. Yeah. Right. Um, so now it's all very interesting to see it going back to sort of like larger

bigger budget uh cinematics and um hopefully some interesting characters though we are facing some stuff um I know uh Blizzard's facing some backlash about like essentially um I I forget the term it's chat you might know this like same facing
like the characters aren't terribly diverse in their body type and or facial structure.
That's correct. one of the new characters. Um, I saw a very interesting video. If you take off their hair and like all their identifying facial stuff, you can swap in any number of other like hair facial characteristic kind of like diva's um like face tattoo kind of thing or face paint kind of things. You can just swap those in and out. And it's close enough that it's like you might be able to tell that those aren't the same character, but like they're really close to the same character.
Yeah. And Synchronos Synchronos also brings a really good thing. What killed me about Overwatch 2 was the flimsy

reason behind having to make it a sequel rather than just adding content at a speed at which all became apparent of how much of a lie that excuses were. Exactly. Because as originally, if you remember, the promise was a ton of narrative PvE content and you got some, but I think by the time most of it even came out, it was much smaller than anticipated and I had I had bailed. Like I don't know what any of that stuff is. Um,
so it it feels like if they had just stuck the course and been on this path that they've just revealed since instead of going the Overwatch 2 route it and probably Blizzard would be in a better place with the fans because what what they're offering sounds pretty significant, right? They're offering 10 heroes this year, five of them tomorrow.
Yeah,
right. They're doing five heroes tomorrow, five more, one per additional

season for two through six throughout the year because seasons are two months long, I believe.
Yeah.
Um so, uh they're offering incre like a a whole like choose your side talent. Overwatch thing. It feels like this is they're trying to course correct back to where they feel like they probably should have been before anyone did an Overwatch 2 thing, which good. The question is how many people are going to get back on the Overwatch wagon now that they're back on the course they probably should have been on the entire time before they did like this. This feels like the most Looney Tunes detour, right? the most like hastily done like side road like shortcut poorly drawn sign stuck in the side of the road kind of thing, right? And now they're back on it.
Yeah. I But at the same time, like it's funny. I'm just going down the hero

roster right now to see like how behind I am.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Uh, like I didn't even know I I think I from the lore I knew, Vendetta, who then deals with Doomfist, uh, essentially was like a kid the last time I think I paid attention to this game because she's the the the leader or the founder of Talon's daughter or whatever.
Yes.
Um, regardless, I I think also the move from 6v6 to 5v5 did some damage. Um I think it changed the dynamic a lot
there. They also have gone to great lengths to procriptively sculpt the player experience. So by that I mean in many other games you can choose your total team composition. Right? There's not a requirement that you have x number of healers, x number of damage dealers, x number of tanks.

Some games, some games say, "Hey, this is recommended." Some games say, "Hey, this is demanded."
And so, they've done a lot to like proscively like force the game into that model with roll talents, which they're changing, and um or roll passives, I guess, which they're changing, and the the Q system. um which is not a good or a bad choice, but is definitely a choice that they've made
as part of the move to 5v5 and in general.
Yeah. But now apparently with this with going from Overwatch to Overwatch 2, back to Overwatch uh season 1. Uh I do like that they are sort of trying to make the sub roles a bit more distinct. It seems like, and again, we're going to find out. Actually, this might this part might even be live already. I don't I don't know. I reinstalled it. I haven't had a chance to play it yet.
I believe that the sub rolls are tomorrow as well with the season.
So, basically, like there's a different

kinds of tanks, different kinds of damage, and different kinds of support, which is really nice to help even in a in a pickup game with randos sort of like figure out what is needed andor what you like playing. I think that is incredibly helpful. It also um unflattens the sub the passives, right? Which was kind of a problem was that all DPS had a singular passive and all healers had a singular passive and all tanks had a singular passive which was kind of a balance patch move it feels like based on everything I've seen. Um and it does feel like adding more nuance and difference there is a good way to go.
Yeah, they got a couple other things too. competitive refresh UI UX update, which I very much appreciate. I really dislike Overwatch 2's UI. Um, it Overwatch one. And again, it's but like

it was just clean. Like I knew exactly what to do and where to go and I understood it and it was fine. Uh, then it got very like essentially it was like but what if this looked like a mobile game? So, so I have a different take on that
and I think it it's not that any of that was done intentionally. I think and this is in part due to our foray into World of Warcraft which began last Friday and you'll be able to see on the Twitch channel as as eye level and Matt joins when he can. Um, this in part feels like an inevitability given the age of the game that over time as more features get added and more things get tried and more stuff gets like it is difficult to keep the game interesting if you don't add more features, subsystems, other stuff. It is certainly possible to do that. Let me be very clear. It is possible to keep the game interesting without adding more

frufus, more doodads, more acutal. Um, but that's not the route they chose to go, right? They they chose to add these things over time. And so the UI has sort of reflected that. And I think that's the reason that it's such a mess is because those were added sort of haphazardly and there was never a single unifying pass to slim it all back down and make it all make sense together. And I think the new UI I agree that the new UI uh UX pass is going to do that in a good way because it's deliberate instead of oh well we found space in the loading screen. We could add this new menu here and that is what ends up making it feel kind of mobile.
Yeah. Yeah.
But also just the the I'm not saying things like stadium are good or bad. Stadium is Overwatch is sort of like essentially kind of mobile light thing, right? Like but like that adds a different like that makes it a

different game. Like you're making a lot of different games in it and that's okay, but the more different games you do, the more uh structures you have to build and like UI you have to move people around. Right. Actually, uh, purely if I was thinking about this as I watched the reveal trailer, chat, uh, whether or not you actively play Overwatch by show of emotes, how many of you have ever played an singular round of stadium?
Oh, interesting.
One complete game of stadium, just one ever.
Curious, right? Because I think that it's very interesting. I think we get a lopsided view of that.
I like this. What's that? I think I What stadium?
Right. Okay.
Might have ah what stadium. Jimmy did
fly hyping. It's It's fly hyping's main game mode. Okay. So very few. Okay. Very interesting. That was one of [laughter]

the Google thing.
Yeah, that's it. Yeah,
that's Stadia. And we'll we'll ask you about that later, I'm sure. God, remember Stadia? No, no one does. That's why it failed.
Wow. Wow. Anyway, um what was I going to say? Uh yeah, so like I I'm glad they're going to be cleaning that up. And you know what I liked about the spotlight was they brought on and Blizzard used to do this a lot or maybe I just stopped paying attention. They still do. I like it when the whole team comes on and even though everyone's kind of cheesy and not good at doing these presentations, like they still do little skits or they still hang out and like, oh, is the UI UX designer going to talk about the UIUX? Good. Is the art director going to talk about the art? Yes. Like, you know, I like that.
I really liked the the They were like, "All right, here's the five new characters that are coming out on the 10th. Here's the head of um

character design,
character design and story and the head of the technical team that developed all of their abilities. And here's how all of those things work together to tell this story, right? So, like there's a there's a character who's a essentially like a high-powered executive and how all of her abilities are like based on this giant extra set of arms that she's got and how it's all glam and how she's also like a barrier tank and how that works and how that fits into her lore and like I love that the commitment to that that Overwatch shows, right? because it does feel like there's a reason for all of this stuff. Like all of their abilities are generally speaking well considered, right? And that they fit into the world instead of well what we needed was a guy who could kill a man with a knife. So we made knifestabber. He's coming to Overwatch next season. Like they don't do that, right? They do

like this is knife stabber. Here is his tragic backstory and how he has a sentient knife, right? Like, okay, great. Awesome.
To be fair, to be fair, I'd like to know more about uh Knife Stabber's troubled past. I would like to know more about that. Will, could you tell me could you tell me what what where did his sadness and penchant for sliding metal objects into things where they shouldn't be come from?
Uh, that's a great question. Uh, unfortunately, we don't have time for that on this spotlight. You'll have to tune in next season when Knife Stabber is fully revealed.
Well, I'll just uh I'll end that little section on saying that Aerys is probably going to be my new main.
She is She looks visually insane, and I love the idea of an evil executive, which is like I'm just going to use all the tech I have to be a nightmare.
Yeah. Like the uh I I just think like they've got a good pitch, right? And I think that this is a thing that Overwatch has been good at and I think they've had a lot of people biased

against them since the two move. And one of the things that I felt in this entire presentation was we have a good pitch. We've made a good thing. We're we're talking about it because we're confident in it and we want the players to be confident it too. Oh, and by the way, we're dropping the two. It's just Overwatch. It always has been. Here's the path forward. Let's go. Right. And that did make me feel some kind of way like more confident in in the Overwatch team specifically as a like
cohesive unit like that has their crap together.
Well, and also like they it's not like they're not taking little swings here and we're going to see how well it works out, but I did feel like a lot of the stuff just got stale like here's another DPS, here's another thing. And like everyone's like where are the tanks? Where are the other weird stuff? Like they're literally making Jetpack Cat. And Jetpack Cat's whole thing is like not being a big like fighter, but like

fly. They fly the entire game. It's not an ability. You just fly and you can like tractor beam friends and foes places. Now, depending on how the foes part of that ability works might get incredibly annoying,
but
yeah,
it's another way you can play. Yeah. Like it's another way that you could engage with the game. And I think when you keep the game the same, but you let people play it in different ways, I think that is where uh that's where the fun comes in.
Um yeah, the
this is interesting. Shockwave has it. Would any of this hype have happened if the PVE was able to launch? Like if if in a timeline I want to make sure I get the question right. in the timeline where Blizzard didn't lie and they released like good quality uh story and PvE content. I imagine that at that point

they would still drop the two because the two infinitely dates you like like you can kind of see it. I mean the two games I can think of here like there's a reason there's no World of Warcraft 2.
Yeah. that that admits that your game, your hyper popular game is done and now there has to be a new one. And then you have to prove why there has to be a new one. And in my opinion, Overwatch 2 did not prove that. They had a lot of promises, but they never kept them. So, I do think in a world where all those promises were kept, they still would have done I mean, look at the way every one of these businesses names and renames and rebrands and whatever. We're going to be talking about HBO in a little bit that had nine names in the last three years. like they just they can't get out of their own way fast enough. And if you're going to make something that's a lifestyle game that you want to be a thing that people keep

playing forever, you can't tack a number onto it. And I'm sorry, I don't mean Final Fantasy 14. 14 has been 14 for like 10 years,
a decade. Yeah.
Yeah. So, like
that's that's part that's a different phenomena. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. And Final Fantasies traditionally have not had the same like you could pick up any Final Fantasy and you're not like I need to know the first six of them before I play seven. Like
I unironically do know people like that.
No. No. But like you don't need to like
Correct. Correct. Yeah. Yeah.
Whereas and I guess [laughter] I guess before Resident Evil 7 you could pick up any Resident Evil anywhere in it and still have fun, but you if you wanted the plot, you would have no idea what was going on.
Yeah. I I think to Walt's point, I think even if they'd split into a PvP game and a PvE game, yeah, it would have been like Overwatch Defenders or like Overwatch, right, adventures or Overwatch campaign or something and not

call it two.
Yeah.
Right. Cuz like the the the two thing is very important in like people's minds as a separation and a um superseding. Right. The second one is superseding the first one. Right.
Right.
Yeah. Overwatch campaign evolved. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Like Yeah. I wonder like and there's something interesting there like is there maybe maybe I'm it's Monday morning and my coffee hasn't kicked in yet but like is there a game property that's done that successfully that's taken like that has had a kick-ass start and then switched a genre kept the first thing going but then made a successful second thing and they both just kept going there has to be I mean
okay this is the wrong answer but I'll say it anyway is across a long enough term Mario and Mario Kart.
Yeah.
Right. Like it's not that like Mario the platformer by its very nature despite

the original initial points system um is a single player or or co-op player game. Like you're not you're not really competing overall or competition is not the general vibe of it. You can compete in various ways but Mario Kart is entirely a competition in a different genre. Like is there another
Both of those are still going? Yeah,
chat's on like the Warcraft RTS MMO. No, no, no, no. They stopped making the Warcraft making World of Warcraft 3, right?
Buted off a new branch
and kept going with both of them in a forward direction in the future, right? You could say Hearthstone
possibly or the cards people are bringing up uh Gwent or uh other sort of card games,
but uh I don't know like it's
all of Riot's games I think is fair, right? Like
Yeah, cuz there Well, like for I mean, and we're going to see, right? X2KO

uh versus, you know, League,
right? And they did it with um Legends of Rune Terra and now with Riftbound, right? They're crossing into the physical space even. Riftbound is I have not gotten a chance to play it. From everything I have seen, Riftbound is a banger of a game.
Oh, it's dope. Uh,
it looks really good. I just don't have anywhere to play with it.
Uh, and I believe Val and I at West got to play it last year and it was awesome. If I had like groups of people around me that wanted to play that game all the time, I' I'd jump to that and I'll repeat.
Yeah.
Um, it's just fun.
Yeah. But anyway, oh, and the last thing which I actually think will actually get me back into Overwatch more than any other thing, they are updating the Switch port, the Switch 2 port. And if I can actually actively play this game fine on the go,
I will play it more and I will give a crap more about my standing or my skins or anything like that. Can only like it's kind of the reason why I'm not like jumping back into something like

Warframe, which by the way, they never made Warframe 2.
Yeah. Uh like so like I think when when when the switch I know there's a lot of talk online in various circles I don't love going to about the uh I I find the fact that we are getting high quality ports of two or threeyear-old games on the Switch 2 really good for me because I am behind. I understand that people are there want exciting and new stuff and they've only gotten what three or four Nintendo exclusives on the on the Switch 2. like it's it's an abysmal uh launch in that regard. But like for these lifestyle games that I can have the same account that I can play on the go, then come home and play on my PC and the accounts are just all linked and it all kind of works. That's kind of my optimal win condition because that's what I have time for. So, uh I'm I'm very excited that that's happening here, too. And

this has gotten not only us, but other people that I know sort of excited about Overwatch again. I'm in a bunch of Nebula discussions and people there want to like jump back into it. Some never left to be fair. Uh [laughter] but like I think that it feels good. This is where I think this will be sort of my final thought on this story. It feels good for me personally to see the company that did all of the things with this game and kind of drove it into the ground and all of the things I didn't like that got me out of it as much as they can from a, you know, publicity and corporate nonsense perspective. Walking a lot of it back. And that to me says perhaps myself and literally most everyone else was on to something. And hopefully they can sort of find their way forward because I I think I care so much because I am still weirdly emotionally involved in

this world that I dropped a year and a half, two years ago or whatever it was and I want to go back there. So this is a nice this is overall a very good thing which again Blizzard is Blizzard and Blizzard got problems but um I think from this IP's perspective and it will be nice to not at least for a little bit and hopefully this continues not uh have to dunk on Overwatch for doing silly things.
Yep.
For me for my soul.
I agree. Would you would you would you like to dunk on a different company for doing silly things?
Oh sure. Yeah, why not?
Okay, cool. [snorts] So, this is like the most I'm not understanding like Okay, bro. So, Boulders's Gate 3 is coming to HBO. It's in it's it's it's in I I believe a

paper has been signed, but like nothing is in production yet. This is so pre pre-production,
right? The problem is that the amount of support for this project that Laren is doing is nebulous at best and looks like it's close to zero, which
Larry's not touching this. You kidding me? Sven has said that there is some amount that they might be doing something but like
he said that Craig Craig uh Mazen uh who has made phenomenal television shows and by the way I like The Last of Us show uh but also made Chernobyl and a bunch of stuff for HBO uh an incredibly uh excellent crafter in my opinion of television is the person who is trying to helm this and Sven said that he would invite Craig to the to basically the offices to chat essentially at this point. But like and look,

I don't want this. [laughter] I want to make it very clear. I love Balderskate 3. I think Craig Madson is a is a really good purveyor and creator of television. I don't want this. I don't I don't
Yeah. So So it's not going to be exactly the story of BG3. It is a it is a continuation of the story into the rest of the the the what happens after. And there are possibilities that some characters might get more satisfactory conclusions,
particularly if you're a fan of
giant tling barbarians with nebulous conclusions to their story. you know, um
this feels like missing like okay, The Last of Us has a concrete throughine that is one singular story told from an interactive perspective with limited agency on the player's part to change the direction of that story.

And that's why it works because it's it's always the same story and we're just getting a version of that story told on the big screen. Okay, cool. Or the small screen in this case. [snorts] This feels like an exercise in blatantly missing the point of Balders's Gate 3, which is everyone I know has different has taken a different path, a different version, has different takes on different characters because they had different interactions. Because the whole point of Balders's Gate 3 is that it is not a singular line from A to B. It's A. Get sidetracked in Q through Z, come back, maybe do B, smooch characters one through five, then return, do part C, and completely annihilate the final boss cuz you're super overlevelled because you've done all the side quests, right? Like, it feels like a different buy from a player narrative perspective. And it

feels like this is just not it, right? I don't know because because it's not like Critical Role, right? I cannot stress this enough. It's not like Critical Role because Critical Role has one story that is canon. It just happens that the story that they're telling in the Critical Role cannon involves some dice rolling, but once it's out, it's out. That's the story, right? D is specific versus the Balders's Gate story which has like a canon version that no one cares about because everyone played it their own way with their own tab and like I just don't think it's going to work. I don't think it works.
Yeah, it it's definitely not as clean of a line as say a Fallout that is taking that is taking a world that exists and telling a story in it. Um because you're taking the characters the idea is we follow the characters after after this whole thing. Um, that's another thing like, okay, look, there are so many reasons why Balders's Gate 3 was the phenomenal game that it was. Um, but one

of them, one of the crucial pieces in in this series success is the mocap and voice actors.
Also true.
Now, my guess is they're not going to cast them, even though they probably could. and probably should.
So, we're going to be changing the like one of the reasons that got us emotionally on board. Anyway, like the story is good, don't get me wrong. Like the writing is really good and actually I would I would argue that the moment to moment like conversational writing in Balders's Gate 3 is far stronger than like the overarching like narrative plot. The overarching narrative plot feels like a pretty solid Dn D 5e adventure.
Yeah. Like but like the reason why it works uh is because these actors and you know what's funny like and it's funny um uh someone just said they could do cameos uh as did the like and they they've done

that right like in in Last of Us uh Ashley Johnson plays uh Ellie's mother
which is very apt right like
good job
but I just I I just don't see this working. And then actually Grant just brought up exactly what I wanted to bring up. So the D&D Honor Among Thieves movie is awesome.
It is an awesome movie.
What I would rather see is an HBO show set in Fyun, Forgotten Realms, and just have it be that vibe with new characters. The thing about Dn D is there's an infinite number of structurable character. I mean about any story, but like this is like truly like on rails on what these characters are like and what they can do. And I think there's a larger like again does it have the IP cache that this does? No, not at all. Did Craig Madson play a thousand

hours of any other game that he wants to make in a TV show? I don't think so. Like he's also a fan of this game. Like he loves this game. That's great. That's good. It's weird. I'm in an odd spot where I believe in the people making the product, but I don't want the product. Does that make sense? Like all the I could think of a million reasons why uh like for if this was in someone else's hands doing it or whatever, I would be like mad about it. This is I just like no thank you,
right? Yeah. Yeah. No thank you. I I'm confused and like also a little worried, but you know, we're going to let him cook.
Yeah. And like for instance, it this this does feel and I know we're we're have we have another movie story later, too, but this does feel a little bit like the Alex Garland. Oh, no. Actually, this is different. So, let's I want to bring this up. So, Alex Garland is doing the

Elden Ring movie from what I understand. Uh director of Exmachina and Annihilation. Um, it is also a A24 movie in partnership with Bandai Namco. So, like there's every word there is like, okay, I'm in. And like I'm actually kind of excited to see what that is. But I also wonder like cuz that that too is a giant world sandbox playground with lore and things that happen, but you kind of exist either after the fact or very much your tarnished is like sort of around it. Whereas your tab in Balders's Gate 3 is the active protagonist pushing the story forward and every character you run into is affected by you and your choices. So maybe that's the difference, right? Like I've already like I've already had a very personal experience with one and just I've I've enjoyed spending time in the world of the other. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Also,

just make a Dragon Lance show, you cowards.
They did. It's called House of the Dragon, and it's not as good.
Um
Huh. We're talking about very different dragon lance. It's not even
There's dragons. There's lances. It's fine.
And it's not the same. It's not the same at all. One of them has one of them has like
canonical
the weirdest set of twins ever. Uh,
Dragonite show would be good.
Yeah, it would be. All right, before we get on to our next show, it is now the time where we give you fake ads for things you can't buy while Twitch gets real ads for things they probably won't buy. Um, so we're going to run our ads now so we don't get interrupted in the middle of our next story. So chat, if you're seeing ads, we'll be back in three minutes. You're not going to miss anything except us doing a funny improv game. And if you aren't seeing ads, please enjoy our funny improv game. Who wants to start?
Me.
Okay.

Oh, was that not it?
Hi there. Will from Mad from Will from Extra Credits here. Here to sell you on my continued course on saying less. That's right. Say fewer things. Leave more country undiscovered. Is there weird lingering plot threads left at the end of Boulders Gate 3? Cool. Good. Don't do anything with them. Let people imagine. Let the story rest. Sometimes there can just be a dot dot dot or sometimes there could just be a and there they lived happily till the end of their days. There does not need to be a hard and fast conclusion or like tack on to like every story. You know, it's a really great point and uh I think that's why I want to talk about the this show that I do really want to sell you. Um uh because I know that the narrative throughine behind it is so everyone is so passionate about it that I think um I

don't know we you'll be the judge. Hey everyone, Matt from Wills Matt's Wills Extra Credits. Matt Wills, Matt from Extra Credits here wanting to tell you about the newest exciting movie from Sony Interactive Pictures. That's right. They've brought you Uncharted. They've brought you probably another movie that Sony had something to do with Until Dawn, maybe. But now they are bringing in the big guns to make the most emotionally resonant story possible with an IP that we know you care deeply about. We are going to be making the Astrobot film. That is right. Every piece of Sony IP rolled into one narrative big slurry that you get to num num num num num drink up and hear about the tragic backstory that they have. Oh, also it's going to be David Benonoff and DB Wise running it.
I literally can't tell if he's talking about a real thing or if he just made this up. That's the point where we are. Also,

grass grass. This is exactly what I wanted, Matt. Now I want this. And then right at the end when I said who would be running it and now I don't [laughter] [applause]
Oh boy.
Hold on. [laughter]
Will we do need to make a tragic backstory for knife stabber?
We probably do. I'm also looking at a specific thing. No, actually an Astrobot show would be great, just not what I've described. Um,
okay, chat. Commander is safe. World is not going to burn down. Amazing.
All right.
Uh, the the BNR just came out and I just wanted to check. Sorry. Um uh to save you a click, um Bio-ythm is unbanned and

Luchri the spellchaser is unbanned, but you can't use it as a companion. Uh and they've given reasons why other things are remaining brand uh remaining banned and why they didn't ban specific things. So that's good.
Did they ban Knife Stabber?
Yes, absolutely. Uh 100%. U Oh, farewell. How will that affect how will that affect uh my my premium foil version of knife stabber stabber with knives? Uh
you know the great question on the market
knife stabber is uh just timeless eternal valuable beyond measure. The real knife stabber was in our hearts and probably also our spleens all along.
The flavor text would be what do you HAVE A KNIFE? NO, THAT WOULD be what would be at the bottom of Knife Stabber's card.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yes, chat. Uh, Farewell is also now a game changanger, but that's not really a change. Um, so good.

Excellent. Wonderful. I still think they should ban uh, you know what? I'm not going to tell you because we had that discussion in the Discord and we're not going to get sidetracked here. Uh,
get regular tracked.
Get Yeah, we're getting regular tracked onto this morning's announcement. Where's Knife Stabber when you need him?
All right. All right. So, let's do some backstory real quick. So, a bit ago, Discord tried this thing where they did age verification the UK because UK said, "You got to do this because to protect the kids, except it was never about protecting the kids." Because it's never actually about protecting the kids. So, we're all on the same page. Okay, cool. And it didn't go so well. Um because a contractor that Discord worked with to resolve cases where their automated system could not verify your age got hacked and leaked 70,000 people's government IDs along with several

terabytes of data about the biometrics um gathered from this uh onto the internet after Discord was like, "Hey, we're totally not storing that data. It's all getting deleted as soon as Oh, whoops. it is not getting deleted. So now they want to roll that exact same system to the best of my ability to discern in the time I had this morning. They want to roll the UK system exactly out to the rest of the world. [snorts]
That'll go well.
It goes super well. Discord has become sort of one of the prime centers of socialability for people in this hobby andor
Yes.
Uh I'll just leave it at that. Um but also like people just on the internet.
Yes.
And to see it

do what it did in the EU and then be like this is great. Let's go. Let's do it everywhere is a real bad move. Yes.
Um there's no adjustment like at all.
Correct. Um and the the way that it'll work is you will be locked out of all adult
Oh, UK, not the EU. Sorry.
Um uh all of the adult sections like you won't be able to uh use uh chats that are marked not safe for work. Importantly, by the way, not safe for work does not necessarily just mean um like adult content like sex or gore. It also um means some other stuff because of some other changes that Discord has rolled out over the years. politics channels are under Discord's terms of service supposed to be

18 plus or marked as adults only um in many cases because Discord has a very extensive list of stuff that needs to be marked as adult only under their terms of service. So our politics channel is marked as adults only even though it's just a discussion channel, right? Um, so that is another like weird wrinkle in this that people might not be expecting. Um,
also the wording the wording of this uh, February 9th, 2026, San Francisco. Uh, the first sentence out of this and we'll have the like the link to their press release, but I just want to read this because when I read it, I it gave me a big like, huh? Discord is announcing enhanced teen safety features rolling out globally that reinforce its long-standing commitment to creating a safer and more inclusive experience for users over the age of 13. Okay. So they're trying they

they're trying to like what was their tier system before from an age perspective or did they just have none
there? They they it's it's the same system that currently exists. either you're between 13 and 17 or you're 18 or over. Except now they're forcing you to verify that you're 18 or older. The system already exists. You can already mark things as adults only,
right?
Like you can already do that. Like there's no change on the functionality end from like individual servers. It's just forcing you as a user to be in one category or the other.
Yeah. So hold on. Let me double check that. Just making sure that my thing is coming to the right spot. Um, where in the will where in the actual

press release I'm trying to find it is the is there sort of like age verification process system
u process. So, uh, it's the privacy forward age assurance thing.
Yep. So, um, they've got they're the the system that they've used, and this is the same system that they use in the UK, is [snorts] that they're going to have you do an ondevice. They're claiming it's fully ondevice um, video selfie age verification thing, which has been defeated by a Death Stranding ad before. So, who knows if that'll still work or if they'll fix that or what the plan with that is. If that doesn't work, they will move on to having people submit government documents through the app to someone who will review them and then they swear pinky promise delete them.

But we're trusting a lot here, especially when they've already goofed with at least one vendor once.
Yeah.
Right. That we know of. Right. So, I just want to be very clear because because this comes up, right? I want to be very scrupulously accurate in the way that we slam Discord for the this mess up because I want us to be as accurate as possible with what all of the problems with this are because this is probably the biggest test case. They've sort of done this with Blue Sky. They've kind of done this with Twitter, but this is the first global roll out of this that I can think of. So when we criticize this, I want us to be as accurate as possible and not hyperbolic because I feel like we have a chance to get them to not do this maybe.
Here's something also that brought up that I'm very curious about. Ian brought up a very good point. If users are underage by default, will they be restricting ads by default?
That's a great question. I don't know.
My guess is no.

Yeah. Yes, the Yes, that's correct. The face recording they say is all on the device and option two. Now, there is there is also I'm going to I'm I'm reading directly from their press release. Okay. Additionally, Discord will implement its age inference model, a new system that runs in the background to help determine whether an account belongs to an adult without always requiring users to verify their age. That is another thing that um some groups are picking up on. It isn't the my gold standard for age verification is the Newgrounds method, which is have you ever bought anything from us with a credit card? If so, we can assume that you have access to a credit card and are therefore 18. Is your account old enough that it would be unfeasible for you to have made it at

an age that does not mean that you are now 18? Great. You're 18.
And are there are there ways to get past that? Sure. Sure. But you still need like an adult with a credit card would have to you would have to have to have get it from them uh with permission or not permission. Correct.
And either way that does put the onus of blame on whatever is going on on that group, not the company.
Correct. So, uh, and I'm actually more okay with that one because I think that that's like the infer the idea of inferring from available data that you've already given Discord that you're 18 is a pretty broad idea, right? If you've, for instance, let's say some people were mentioning Steam accounts, you can link your Steam account and your Discord account. Your Steam account may have your Steam badge public. If you have your and I'm only

suggesting this is public,
okay? All of this data could be available publicly. And if you've made it public, then if your Steam account, which is linked to your Discord account, has the 18-year service badge, which is possible, they could easily infer that you are at least 18 years of age using publicly available data and nothing else. Okay, I'm all right with that. That makes sense. That's publicly available data that they are that you have granted them access to
by linking those two accounts. Okay, I'm I'm personally okay with that, right? I'm far more okay with that than sending my government ID to some weird third party group that's probably going to leak it, right? I just don't get like Okay. What is the overall business draw here?

That's a great question, Matt.
My guess is safety is important to them just as much as your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line. Like I I I don't I don't think that any individual at Discord wants people to be hurt on the internet. I also don't think that as a company they truly give a crap about the safety of their users. As long if if if they could put all their users and this is almost any company. If if they could put their users in mortal danger and still make a ton of money, they'd do it. Like that's not that's neither here nor there. Nor am I even like like that's not what a a company's job is not to be empathetic. It's just not. uh we can want to deal with companies that are full of empathetic people but at the institution of a company that's not what it's there for. It's there to make profit. So what is the profitability thing that Discord is trying to do here? They never went public, right?

They are trying to go public. So they are trying to comply and make one universal thing work across all essentially um markets that will satisfy government regulations to make their product ubiquitous and still be able to be um essentially be popular enough to eventually start selling shares to me. And again, I don't know Discord's monetary thing. Maybe they're totally underwater and they wouldn't survive another year if they don't try to go public. I have no idea. Right. Um to me, this screams we need to get all of our ducks in a row, even if those ducks don't know how to swim because we're going to try to go public and make sure that we have a viable product that people will want to buy in for. And then maybe on the best case scenario of that, they'll make enough money to be able to fix the problems. Or worst case scenario, certain people just want to make a bunch of money before this thing dies. Anyway,

yes,
Braon, the ducks are actually bricks.
Um, yeah. I don't know. I So there's there's there's sort of three parts to this, right? One of it is the why, one of it is the how. We've kind of discussed both of those. And the other one is the now what. And I think okay, here's the problem. And this is this is a much more deeply embedded problem than it was with Twitter, but it's exactly the same kind of problem that we have with Twitter, which is everyone is immediately like, okay, we want to bail ship, but how and to where? Lots of people are saying Matrix. Matrix is a free open-source um software

alternative that is much like Discord. Some people are saying Team Peak, some people are saying Vent. There was at one point a competitor named Golden. It was great and then Roblox bought it and demanded that you have a Roblox account to use it, thus absolutely murdering it dead on the spot,
which was terrible.
Um,
yeah. or Skype or like the there's there's a whole bunch of Yeah, that is Inventello. Um there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
Yeah, correct. The um I'm not opposed to like the search, right? Like the search is a good idea. I need people to keep in mind that it needs to be at least as convenient and at least as featureful as Discord. And

then people kind of do like one of Discord's primary quality, its primary feature is its ubiquity.
Yeah,
that is its primary feature, right? It is not particularly good in a large number of ways. In fact, the desktop client is just a fancy Chromium browser,
right?
But what it is is ubiquitous, right? So,
I wonder I wonder if there's a way and like you know obviously Nitro subscribers but like everyone who hosts a server like basically essentially messaging customer support and being like, "Yo, like you do these changes and we can't have our server here anymore." Right?
Like
I mean we just we just We kind of saw this and it is it's a completely different vehicle. This is not the same. It's not a social app, but

with Adobe Animate. Did I talk about this last week?
No, but it it essentially happened right after the show last week.
Okay. So, uh sorry, I'm going to tangent for a second because this was something that deeply affects uh our studio. So, Adobe decided last Monday, I believe, or maybe it was a little bit beforehand to deprecate Adobe Animate, which is what we use to make our animated shows. Um, there's there's a bunch of animation software. I won't get into the nitty-gritty as to why we still use animate, but the the to the TLDDR of that is it does exactly the right amount of certain things and not the amount of other things to do the exact thing that we do really well and efficiently even though it is a platform that has not been updated in like four years and constantly crashes. Like it is still the best. It is the best thing. Uh the artists and I have looked into various uh other versions such as Tounb Boom and even Blender and they don't all do what we need them to do in Animate did. And Adobe basically put out a cryptic

message saying we're deprecating this. It's going away March 1st unless you're in executive package or something else and then it's going to be another year maybe, but we're not sure. Haha, whatever. And it was a complete and utter cluster of actual non-information about when this program that actual and I'm talking like animation house animation house. I'm talking like bigger like I think lower decks uses animate like there there's there's groups that use this and have used this pipeline for years. Not to mention if they deprecate this we were running into the problem of we have what 14 15 16 years of FLA files of our vector art that all of a sudden we might not be able to open. So, we went into crisis mode and we we did a bunch of stuff and I messaged Adobe and uh you know, as as many people did. And then I kid you not, Red, who's in the chat right now, uh who's our who's our post soup, essentially was like we had a meeting in 15 minutes about discussing two things. One, how to

figure out the best way to take 15 years of content and figure out a new backup strategy. and two, um, what the best process was for organizing the animators and figuring out what we wanted to do next and and try to maneuver things around, find prices, etc. And I got an email from Adobe and Adobe was like, "We're so sorry. We've we've heard you. We've not we've we're we're not going to deprecate it. We're just putting it in in service mode or something, so there's not going to be updates." I'm like, "Oh, so like the last four years, cool." But now it's not going away because there was a large uproar. I told this to Nick Dit, artist of the channels, and he goes he he's like, "Yeah, wow. Wonder why." And he sent me a picture of their stock price, and it had tanked in the in the 72 hours after they had announced that. And they were they were moving it away specifically to use the resources on more AI [ __ ] And look, this does not mean that I'll I'll wrap up the story and I will tie this back to Discord. This does not mean

that like, oh, yay, we're safe and now we don't have to. No, we're still having meetings. I'm going to be working this week on figuring out like a longer form plan on like what to do when this happens because at the end of the day, none of these companies are our friends. They are not here for us and you need to try to figure out the best way around it. But my point is the right number of wallet and social pressure can do something. So, if we can if if people as a whole can figure out what Discord's endgame is, I personally think, and I could be wrong, I'd love other people's opinions, it is to go public and to make more money. If you start taking away paths to do that via your Nitro subscription, via whatever, and making sure that they know it's like why that's happening, um, that might be the only recourse that we all have. So, like Will, you and I could talk about this after the show, too, but like I know we we host a Discord server. You can join the Twitch, you can become a member on YouTube, or you can subscribe to our Patreon to get Discord access. It's a really fun place. I love chatting with people over there. Um, but

we can message our customer service folks and be like, "Hey, you do this. We can't we can't stick around, so do you like our money?" Again, it's not like we're paying an exorbitant amount, but if everyone who did that does this,
and um the other one that I've seen a lot of people suggest is if you are upset about this and you're a nitro sub, cancel your nitro sub.
Yeah.
Right. Like that is that is a immediate like and do it today, right? Don't don't delay. The announcement was today. If you want to make a very real statement that Discord can see immediately, cancel your disc, cancel your Nitro sub today so that it does the vertical line thing, right? Because if there is enough of a vertical line like oh god no that will get attention in the right places in the seauite for them to BE LIKE OH HEY WHY DID WE lose like some

double digit percentage of paying subscribers in one day. Oh it's because we made this announcement. Maybe we shouldn't make that announcement. Can we unmake that announcement? Right.
I've just canceled my Nitro.
Yeah. Right. [laughter] Yeah. I'm I'm gonna do mine after the show because I'm already got too many windows open, right? Yeah.
Um uh
the end. And listen, hey, it maybe we'll make this little bit into a short. You too can cancel your Nitro if you don't like this. It's real easy. I just did it while we were talking about canceling our Nitro. I will also email a customer service group and tell them why I did it.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, so yeah, that's that's where Discord's at. Um, they want to ju just to recap in case because I saw some people coming in the middle. Uh, Discord wants to globally verify everyone's age using either facial biometrics or your government ID.

And they have a terrible history of data privacy with both of those things. Uh, and they want to do it in preemptive. they're like sort of preemptively conforming with whatever laws may exist in the future without like a strong legal reason for them to do it in the present. Um, and no one likes that and we really don't want them to. So maybe don't
uh Rhythm, it did not have an exit survey. I'm wondering if I'm going to get an email. If not, I'm going to find the email. Maybe we'll put the email in the show notes of like uh where the customer service group there is. Um
yeah, cool, cool, cool, cool. And above all, if you don't like it, cancel your nitro. That's the first thing. And um yeah, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Shall we move on to other more interesting terrible things the companies have done?
Oh god.

Yeah. All right. Okay. So this picture, this picture shouldn't exist. This picture is an abomination. This picture is everything that is wrong with so many things. So this you might think, "Oh, that's a terribly done lowresolution picture of Expedition 33." No, no, no, no, no, no. It's so much worse than that. This is a picture from Roblox.
Yeah. What? You don't recognize the the wads uh control scheme?
Yeah, this is uh this this is this is Roblox because Roblox is rolling out a a new generative AI tool. And one of their tech demos for the generative AI tool was that it just made Myel from Expedition 33, which has which raises so many questions just so many questions on what they're doing. But like, bro, bro,

you could have not published this. You could have not published this at like any point. You could have decided not to publish this. Like, so there's two problems. You could have even you could have even gotten this result and been like could you make it look less like expedition 33 just another prompt like [laughter] right like I don't I insane
they and I cannot stress this enough I I need I need to stress this right they published this they published this isn't something that someone found. This is they were proud of this.
They were proud of this on their social media.
Unreal. Like I
this is this has the big like um do you remember the bit on socials where like

there were bots that were scraping every piece of art that someone asked to be on a t-shirt and then putting it on a t-shirt? Do you remember this era Matt? No.
Okay. So there's a while where there's a big problem with a bunch of artists where if you asked, "Hey, I love that. Could it be on a t-shirt?" a bot would come by and scrape your art and put it on like a terrible lowquality t-shirt thing and then never give money to the original artist, right? They would just steal the art and put it on a t-shirt. So, someone came up with the beautiful idea of using it on of doing that on pictures of Mickey Mouse.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay, great. Awesome. Because you know Disney famously loves when people make money off of copyrighted Disney imagery without without a billion dollar deal to Sora.
Right. Yeah. Exactly. Um so one of them was a picture of Mickey Mouse that said um this is not parody. We are committing copyright infringement on the copyright of the Walt Disney Company and we will pay all legal fees and agree that this

should go to arbit that this should go to trial not arbitration like on an image and then got a whole bunch of people to share it with. Hey, could this please get on a t-shirt so that a bunch of t-shirt companies made t-shirts with that image on it. It was beautiful. It was it was beautiful.
WE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO do all that.
Just everyone's seen this. Everyone's seen this. Like
they I I would be I would be shocked if Is this still up? Like can you still see this now?
Yeah, it's it is still up. It is a Roblox uh post on X from February 4th. And to the best of my knowledge,
Women in Glowing Cave.
That's what they prompted it. And then give me a sword. She has a sword now. She's holding it very realistically. And then the prompt is make the sword on fire.
And there are of course a bunch of other things that definitely look like woow that definitely look like a bunch of

other things. Like it's not
a dragon attacks.
Yeah. Like also it's bad. Like it it's not even it's not even merely that it's copyright infringement. It's that it's bad and copyright.
Also I want this is so insane. It's the same problem with all of this [ __ ] It says a d the last prompt it shows was a dragon attacks and a big dragon lands and then the the woman with the flaming sword who's totally not from expedition 33 in in that world runs at the dragon like holding the sword out like this and then it cuts away to be like what about a penguin on a glacier and it's like yeah cuz you don't have any gameplay.
Yeah. Right. Right. Right.
Um
embarrassing. Just just for the reminders, uh don't give Roblox money. Like there were already like a whole bunch of reasons to not give Roblox money, but definitely don't give Roblox money. Just like don't don't do it. Just don't. Okay, cool. All right, let's talk about a different story. Um because I

don't I don't want to talk about this no more. Uh Matt,
yeah, that's me.
You want to talk about Horizon Zero Dawn's Night Rain? [laughter] It's legally not night rain, but it's definitely
It's legally not night rain, but I love this image that I made, may I say. Uh, [laughter]
so this is
They're best friends now. They're roommates,
right? Yeah, exactly. 100%. So, it's a threeplayer tactical co-op action game for challenging and replayable hunts. And there's a rog light perk system.
Okay. Okay. Let's I want to back up a bit. We we just came from some very negative stories and I don't want that to bleed into this.
Horizon as an IP makes phenomenal games and have had a really rough go.
They had such a rough go. It's true.

Now, now was it the smartest to release both of their games at the same time as an open world Zelda game? Probably not.
Yeah,
but these are beloved games and worlds and they've had a really hard time sort of not breaking containment, but like staying like we all know these games, but for whatever reason they get steamrolled by everything else. Look, Hunters Horizon Hunters Gathering is an art style that is fine. I don't I like Horizon's art style better. I thought it like made it more unique. Um, and then I watched this entire thing. I watched the entire release thing about this. I really like Elder Ring Night Re. Night Rain has Night Rain has proven to me that you can take an IP that I love and turn into something I love even more. Like, so I won't write off that this is going to be bad or or or I won't like just say this

instantly. Um, what I will say though, and I don't think I found this anywhere, and if someone can uh sort of uh get me this information, I would appreciate it. I don't know what the monetization model is for this game. Night Rain I bought for $40 and I will buy the $15 DLC until I die. I like that model for this kind of game. It makes me want to keep playing it and engaging with it and talking about it and dragging my friends back into getting bodied by the dredge lord over and over again. Finally being it with Jay and Jess, by the way. So I I that's I've rolled credits on that part of the DLC. But if this is that if this is a lowerpriced game that you can just keep playing, then I'm I'm all for this. I would love to try this out. If this is another model, you're going to have to really really really convince me that

this is the best direction to go. The the director or whatever that they talk about about this game um starts with their CEO being like, "Hey everyone, we just want to say this upfront. We love making single player games. We love it. It's our favorite thing. We love it so much. Don't ever It's the best. We love it. We love it. But hold on. [laughter]
But hold on.
Like and I don't I don't think he's lying. [laughter]
I don't think it's a trick. But you but you know like you know what your audience is going to say about this. So you need to make sure that this game is pristine.
Yeah.
Like and maybe it is like the the uh the closed beta is the end of February.
Yeah.
I'm interested. I'm I'm genuinely interested in this. I like I like Horizon. I like this model. I did not vibe as hard as Matt did with Night Rain, but I like the idea of having like

more fun things to play because again, I think one of the best the best characters in Horizon is the world. The world is weird. The world is really weird and really interesting and has a lot of consequences of being like this weird post-apocalyptic robot dinosaur thing, right? All for that. 100%. Um, so if this gives me an opportunity to do that in a fun way with some friends, cool. I'm in.
Uh, I liked um, where was this? Hold on. If I find it, someone had the best goddamn line and I have to find it. I'm so sorry. Oh, this larky. This releasing the same day as Dusk Bloods would be so funny. Yeah. No, because because the Horizon cannot release on a day when they don't get stepped on.
The pact is fulfilled. I w I want to be very clear. I would love it if this game

was a was a success. I really really would. And nothing about it has turned me off on it on principle.
Yeah.
It's just if anything, it's actually kind of a compliment to Night Rain. like imitation is the greatest form of flattery and so neat like cool we'll see right uh I just thought this was a very very very funny story um
I agree [snorts]
and this image was too good to [laughter] not to not put up
it was very good okay
oh we got we got it's a heavy breather one oh I know
well we're just we're into for another slog this is a very good like light one but man like chat I the news this week has not been ideal for me maintaining my demeanor
will before you show the picture should we should we when the picture comes up

try to imitate
oh yeah
the thing as the thing would imitate the thing it's trying to imitate
you get what I'm saying
I smell toast but sure
yeah yeah okay
all Right.
What up, fam? Welcome back to the show. Wow, Will, it's great to be here with you talking about games while we also consume calories.
That is correct, fellow co-host Matt. We are here as podcasters on your favorite Sony PlayStation Network. By the way, I am playing the part of Kattos.
You sound just like him. No, really though. What's going on?
Can't keep it up. so bad.
No, really though. That's great. Hey, now a word from our sponsor, HelloFresh. Uh, look, look. I can't [laughter] I
I can't even, man.
No, Walt. This is not I can't It's moving too quick. This is not enjoyable.

No. Okay. So, that that Yeah. All right. So, here's the problem is that Sony has gotten a new Now, they might not do anything WITH IT.
THEY MIGHT NOT DO ANYTHING WITH IT.
THEY MIGHT NOT do anything. This is a patent only. Okay.
They just bought the gun.
They Yeah, right. They're not doing They haven't They own the gun, but they haven't pro They probably don't own ammo. We don't know.
We don't know. THEY MIGHT. WE DON'T KNOW.
We don't know.
They have patented the ability to use AI to bring characters from their IPs to life for the purpose of hosting podcasts. So they want [laughter] and I really liked this graphic too.
It's very good. I I do like this a lot.
Oh, cuz it's just like this is some real. And here's Wonder Wall like energy.

[laughter] It's just it's
I like
Oh MY GOSH.
BOY, HOW DO I MUTE THIS MICROPHONE?
YEAH. YEAH. LIKE, and the truly terrible part is, do you know what the most insulting part of this is? You could have just given Chris Judge money and a microphone. Just for less money than it took for you to file the patent, you could have given Chris Judge money and a microphone and said, "Hey, would you do a podcast as Kratos?" And Chris Judge, who is an S tier human being, would have said yes. Get Chris Judge. Get Chris Judge and Ashley Burch to come on as KRATOS AND ALOY. YES. AND JUST HAVE THEM SHOOT THE [ __ ] HAVE THEM DO THIS SHOW.
YES.
HAVE THEM DO A WEEKLY TALK SHOW ABOUT GAMING AND TECH news and then you just print all the money,
right?
Yeah.
I also want 10% of that. Well, you get you get 10% of that.
Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. Cool. Great. All just off the top. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh we'll keep an eye out for this. Just

remember that if if Sony starts announcing podcasts in this format, this is probably what's up. Um, keep an eye out.
Have you listened to an AI podcast before, Will?
No, because I love myself.
It's like it's like if a demon was reading its resume aloud like it's
that unfortunately sounds kind of metal, but go on.
No, it's not like not in the good way. No, because a demon's resume would be like a like 10,000 pages long and like it would be done in triplicate and have every large like 19 point Scrabble word. Uh it would be bad and not fun.
Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. [snorts]
All right. Deep breath. Let's talk ashes real quick. This is more of an update from last week. Um, sure. But the brief recap is as follows. Ashes of Creation is dead.
There was a

seasuete disagreement between a previously unknown board of investors and the lead developer slashpresident of the company um over some kind of ethical creative differences. and as a result of people leaving the company's been dissolved. Um, this is where it gets worse. And you might be like, "But how did it not get worse?" It turns out that there are like over a hundred employees for this developer in uh in California and they violated the War Act, which is like hella not good. By the way, this is like a more than 100 lawyers are like making calls to do this for a cut because they violated the War Act because no one got 60 days notice. No one is getting their final paycheck.
Nope. Um, it looks like this went from bad to like

this went from bad and a little shady to absolutely disastrous and there will be no money for people to take
because Yeah, it's Yep. It's going to be bad. Um, the Warren Act is an act that requires um companies to issue notice in advance of a layoff um and to behave in a certain fashion um with regard to employees uh who are laid off. And it appears uh that none of that happened for any of the employees who were let go. Um, and it all appears that this was hella illegal. Uh, is is my brief unawyerly take um away on this is everything I've heard from every employee who's spoken out is that this

is hella illegal and uh there will probably be court filings in the next couple weeks on this. So keep a weather eye out for that if you're um there. And of course we are uh always hopeful that the developers who are displaced by this absolute travesty um find jobs in the industry soon because as we discussed last week the industry is suffering an incredible unsustainable amount of brain drain and this is just contributing to that. Uh it's real bad.
Yep. Um,
so I'm taking so many deep breaths because I'm trying to like actually talk about these and not just have the rest of the show be me sitting back in my chair screaming endlessly.
So, in the pre-show, we were talking about some secret layer releases for Magic the Gathering. It's where the Magic Gathers, everyone. Uh, and uh, they just dropped some, I believe, like 15 minutes ago.

So, yes, uh, 45 minutes ago. It drops at noon Eastern on Mondays. Um, secret layers are cards that you can only order directly from Wizards as part of a limited run. They're called drops. These cards are sometimes mechanically unique. More often they are um new art reprints of existing cards like this one shown here which is in fact the object of today's story because it's the object of this week's controversy. [snorts] Normally there is a fixed price. Normally, it is $30 for a nonfoil drop and $40 to get four Pringles in an envelope that should be Magic cards but are actually Pringles.

Wait, you can eat them?
No, you can't eat them. They're cardboard.
Oh, yeah.
The joke
Zoe says, "Challenge accepted."
Right. Okay. The the the joke is that the foils uh that Wizards has been putting out recently have been curling pretty badly. Um, and so it is intriguing to me as always that they charge more for foils that often curl. Uh, it's not it's not great. So,
do they replace them?
No. I literally have a stack of foils from a recent set that like is just curved. Like the whole stack is curved. They all curve together, by the way. Anyway, not the point. Um they've decided on a new they they tried a new thing where there were some available at there were there were drop there were versions of this chaos vault available at 10 20 30 and $40. And when one group sold out you could

still buy the more expensive ones. But nothing.
Wait, they sold out?
Well, so so if the $10 bracket sold out, you could still buy it at $20.
Okay. Whoa. See that? So I was going to come at this and be like, "Oh, what an interesting sort of like uh model because we were talking about the Curse of Strod ones just dropped and while I will not be paying $30 for four cards, I might have paid 10." And I was curious like what the difference would be like how many more people wouldn't bounce off if they made them even remotely uh affordable or whatever. Right. I thought it was just different sites pulling from the same inventory pool. But so that you're telling me that across the four brackets they basically split their inventory into four sections and then the second that the $10 section was gone they had to go to the $20 section.
Correct. for the same product.
Like, don't get me wrong, I like the

idea of doing a um marketing stunt where there's four prices, but there's one pool of inventory and you can choose what price you would like to pay for that thing. But to lock 75% 50% 25% between different costs is batshit. That's correct. And that's the problem, right? Is that this this so that it's already been not great. There is exactly one singular secret layer that I'm interested in for the rest of the year. Um, and it's because I've already seen the product and I know what it is and I want it very badly. Um, and that that's the Dandan secret layer that's coming out next hopefully next month, but we'll see. Um, but they're not getting anything else out of me otherwise. And if this keeps up, I probably will pass on the Dandan secret layer that I've been excited for for a year.

Yeah.
Um, the Wizards keeps doing this thing where they sort of play around in the secret layer playground. The the system is not good as it stands and then adding this additional thing is just frustrating and insulting to people who have day jobs. For instance, one of the reasons that I can't get Secret Layers is that the drops begin in the middle of this show every week. I've done it. I've like managed to get I've been here.
I've been I've been able to get in a couple of times and like get things that I wanted. But like
this is artificial scarcity because they refuse to print um print to order, right? Or print print on demand. I guess they will only print specific size to to do artificial scarcity and now they're doing this price bracket thing and it just sucks. Like it was like originally there was a pitch that it was going to

be different that it was going to be like high quality, you know, collector's items and and you know that are reprints of existing things and only different arts and that's cool. And then we started getting mechanically different ones. And then we started getting like additional like weird time limited ones. And now we've got this. And just stop. Just stop. Just let us pay you reasonable prices or magic cards to play Magic with.
And also Mukinet says this. So anyway, Magic is hell. Play something else. Please God. It's funny because like I think the reason why magic is something that is so difficult to drop when when they do things like this is the longevity of the game and how truly special the core mechanics and how Magic the Gathering is played. Like how truly special that is. No other game, I think,

has knocked me out and pulled me back in as much as Magic. And it's not just because, and I I think I can actually confidently say it's not for the reason I'm about to say due to them releasing the Curse of Strod Secret Layers today and me not buying them. Um, it's because there are various ways that you can get pulled back into something, but the thing you're getting pulled back into, the packaging may have changed, but you're reminded as to why like it was special and you enjoyed it in the first place. Like I know, and listen, for for a collectible card game, there many different win conditions for people doing it, right? There could be the collector aspect, there could be the reseller aspect, there could be the tournament aspect, there could be casual aspect. Me, I like going to conventions, buying a pre-built commander deck, and playing with my friends when I get to see them twice, three times a year, uh, in a physical space. That's like my buyin for Magic. Um, and I think the

game is really lovely because despite throughout its 20 plus 30 plus year,
90,
no, earlier 94 uh the game has been the same. Like there's additional keywords and structures and things like that, but like it's still something you can always come back to. And I think that's the reason why I personally I will not engage with the parts of this hobby that I find predatory and stupid, but I will also have a hard time abandoning it like outright. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. [snorts] Anyway, this stinks. Wizards has already Wizards knows they've screwed up, by the way. They they have they have heard the message loud and clear that they have screwed up here. Um, lots of people have expressed extensive displeasure over this. They are very aware that they have screwed up and will not be doing this again.
Yeah,
but that just means that they'll try some other new thing and don't just just

don't.
And Muka, literally same. I'm just sort of going back to sort of your response to my response. I think I agree with that for me personally. Will, I know you have a bigger buyin uh than I do in this case, but I think that's why I engage with it literally on that level.
Yeah. Right. Yep. 100%. As sitting here shuffling a popper deck like
would would would my lizard brain love nothing more than to show up at PAX East with a bunch of Strod cards in a vampire deck? Absolutely. Will I be paying [ __ ] $30 for that privilege? Absolutely not. Like anyway,
yeah. Uh to counteract this, by the way, I will say that the um while Wizard sucks, the magic community is awesome. Uh over the past week, they've raised um as part of a fundraiser, they raised $600,000 through a social media push for Trans Lifeline. So, there's there's our good there's our good news. Wizards, not the greatest. The magic community, pretty dope. Uh and I I like that. Um, okay.

[snorts] We got two good stories to end on. Number one, Iron Lung. Uh, Matt, are you familiar with this story at all?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I've not seen the film yet, although I think we're going to be doing it on the podcast, so I think I'm going to be seeing it this week.
Okay. So, Iron Lung is a movie uh made by Markiplier. Um, and uh, it released in a limited theater run recently and it made like $21.5 million on a $3 million budget, which is pretty great. Um, he wrote, directed, self financed, distributed, and starred in Iron Lung. It's a live action adaptation of a 2022 independent horror game which I've seen some people play. It's dark and very horrific and

it's an indie horror game. It's going to be
This is a really great moment for independent filmmakers, specifically those coming from the YouTube trade. Uh again, as part of the Nebula Group, we they're they're doing all sorts of stuff over there. And to have something like this see this level of success is only a great boon and bolster for every other kind of creator wanting to do this.
Yes.
Um it is obviously uh not easy and you need to do many many many things right as Markiplier seems to have done. Um but I love this story. I I don't even care if I like the movie. Like that's kind of where I'm at. I I have no idea if I will or not. But the fact that it did this, the fact that it can actually turn a profit like this is absolutely huge. And if you were to ask me, I don't know, five years ago, if there would be a box office battle between Markiplier and Melania Trump, I don't know if I would have seen that

coming. Um,
would you have bet that Markiplier came out on top in that head?
I mean, yes. I mean, yes, I would.
Yes. I think most people would
uh but it's just a weird time to be alive. Movies are in a weird place. Uh I urge you actually if you want more movie stuff and we won't go into it here. Please listen to the latest episode of the only podcast about movies which I believe launched yesterday morning. We uh we talk it's Misha here and Izzy from Be Kindre talking about the the what the Oscar best picture nominated film The Secret agent which is excellent. But we do get into a long discussion about media literacy and there an article specifically that came out saying that film students are quote having a hard time sitting through movies these days like the attention span is dropping. I have thoughts on this. I often wonder if it's uh old men yelling at people to get off their lawn in certain ways. But it's a very interesting discussion about how not only media literacy is changing but where our our players are coming from and how they are engaging with stories

in mediums that we love. and that's is specifically for films over there, but we talk about that kind of stuff with games and all sorts of stuff here. So, if you want that, it's the only podcast about movies. Uh, that episode should be out now. It's also ad free on Nebula. So, yeah. [snorts]
Okay. And then one last good interesting story. This is the development team that made Clare Obscure Expedition 33. They are seen here uh receiving the award of uh knight under the French order of arts and letters. The entire crew got recognized by the French government for their significant contribution to the country's art and culture. Okay. So like on one hand, good, great. They deserve all their flowers. They made a banger. Awesome.
Yeah. More importantly than that, more of that please. Like more more

recognition, more big fancy honors, more hey, this is a real art form that does real things to promote culture and beauty in the world, right? Like I'm I'm I'm happy for the Expedition 33 crew. I would like this to be the first of more recognition in like high society culture like get knited for
that kind of thing. I think it I think it's really good. Yeah. Recognition that games matter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Time for some time for some other country's indie developers to get state awards. Yes. Yeah. Yes. It feels like legitimacy of video games as art and I think that that's like a big thing. Um and I'm really happy for them. Like I said, all the flowers there. I'm so much more excited that this sets a precedent and that hopefully other people will do this. Be very cool. Be very cool. Be very happy with that.
It's very, very nice to see. And it it's it's great that that that whole team got

to go and do this and get like it's just that's awesome.
Yeah, because they've always said that it's a collaborative effort from the getgo, which is which is really great.
And that, dear friends, is our show for today. brings us to the END OF GAMES FOR BREAKFAST FOR MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9TH, 2026. I kind of went like announcer human Skeletor there and I don't know why, but I'll take it. WILL, THANKS FOR doing the show with me today.
Hey,
and also everybody on Twitch and YouTube, Brad and Janet, and of course Rocky over on Nebula, thank you so much if you've made it to this part of the show. We really, very much appreciate it. Do us a favor. If you are here right now, could you please this I'm I'm going to try this. I I was thinking about this before and I meant to run this by Will before, but uh I didn't. Um could you please tell a friend about this show that you think would like it? like a actively like either message them, maybe send them a link, but honestly, if you

see a person, verbally tell them that you like the show and they should come hang out on the show or like with us when we're doing the show because I find those specific kinds of interactions are the best way possible to get fun and engaging people over here. And uh we'd love to have more of that and have more conversations with all y'all. And I want to keep it going.
Yeah, absolutely.
You can also message us on Blue Sky.
Yeah. If you need to get a hold of us for any particular reason.
Yeah.
Day or night.
We'll read it when we get to it.
Correct.
Uh where do we have our things?
Oh, yeah. It was set up for a different thing, but yes, we can.
I'm so sorry, Will. We have name name plates. Name plates with our names on them.
Wow.
Uh yes. And of course, don't forget to cancel your Discord subscription. Do it today. Today. If you're watching this later, do it now.
Yeah. Also, thank you, Whoopsy. Appreciate it. Um, yeah.
I guess that's it. I guess THE ONLY THING THAT'S left is to do our patented sign off that we all do together as a

family.
Uh, your two internet dad uncles.
Have we decided what we are?
No.
Grand granddad uncles.
I don't think we ever will.
Okay. Uh we basically want to make sure that at the end of the show everyone goes into the week that is you know in a sense of camaraderie and togetherness knowing that we're all here for a love of games and discussing them and just make sure we have the best possible week possible. So without further ado I need you to join me in the thing that we understand is the same every time. Oh no. Oh no. IS KNIFE STABBER IS KNIFE STABBER HERE? IS THAT NO. GOD, THE BLADE IS KEYING OUT. BUT I PROMISE