Episode 650: Walking Simulators

This week’s episode looks at the progenitor of all walking simulator games, Dear Esther, in this week’s Gaming Flashback. They also discuss the upcoming Game Pass games for May as well as voice masking on the Playstation 3 and Xbox. In addition, Scott discusses Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, the spinoff of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes that was crowdfunded on Kickstarter.

The news includes:

  • EA Sports officially ends FIFA partnership after 30 years of games
  • Starfield and Redfall have been delayed
  • Sony reportedly “will not approve any statements” from PlayStation studios on reproductive rights
  • Alan Wake developer Remedy provides update on five projects in pipeline

Let us know what you think.

0 thoughts on “Episode 650: Walking Simulators”

  1. Hi guys.
    As always: thank you very much for the episode 🙂

    I am playing not that much at the moment, but some rounds of Magic the Gathering Arena and some rounds of WoW are always there 🙂 I also started playing Itorah, which is a very nice Metroidvania game.

    Regarding your topics:
    Walking Simulators: I really like those games. For me games like “Life is strange” , “Journey”, “Heavy Rain” or “Detroid become human” were awesome and i played all of them. Most of them have a fantastic atmosphere, good story, awesome music and i did not get bored or it feels repetitive.

    Fifa:
    I cant describe how less i care about that 😀
    I never played any Fifa since i had one about 20 years ago for the PS1. The best soccer game of all time still is “World Cup” for NES oder GameBoy 🙂

    Starfield:
    It seems that i am the only person who is not hyped for that game … nearly all my friends are waiting for it since it was announced.

    All the other topics:
    Cant say anything useful or interesting about them… sorry 🙂

    Keep healthy and keep on with the good work guys.

    Greetings from germany,
    Ralf

  2. I’m hoping to see Starfield footage at the Microsoft/Bethesda show in June, even if the game is delayed.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 304: Heart of the Swarm GiveawayEpisode 304: Heart of the Swarm Giveaway

Despite being recorded on April Fool’s Day, the podcast has no pranks, just a long political discussion and has Paul demanding no one say anything about BioShock Infinite. Speaking of that game, the crew announces the winner of the BioShock Infinite contest. This week has a Gaming History about the development of XCOM: UFO Defense.

This week’s news includes:

  • Cruel April Fool’s Joke posts fake Half-Life 2: Episode Three Steam page (see image below)
  • Path of Exile to feature yearly major expansions
  • Gamers want Assassin’s Creed every year, states UbiSoft Montreal
  • Former Diablo III director states the auction houses were a mistake
  • EA prez Gibeau: “DRM is a failed dead-end strategy”

There is a ton of feedback, plus a new contest to win a copy of Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm. The rule is the same as BioShock Infinite: listen to the podcast and comment on what is discussed.

Diablo 3 Content Creation PhaseDiablo 3 Content Creation Phase

Now that Blizzard feels their engine is solid, it’s time to move on to creating content for the full game. Jay Wilson, Diablo 3‘s lead designer, says the game engine is in an advance stage of completion and much of the art team has moved onto Act 2. Don’t read into that, he said game engine.

Blizzard is obviously not hurting for money, given the success of World of Warcraft and they’ve always taken their time with projects to make them solid products. Blizzard’s name is on the line and they’re brand consists of three major franchises: Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. When you produce so few games you’re expected to do them perfectly.

How do they do it? As Wilson says, “If we haven’t rebuilt something five times it really doesn’t deserve to be shipped. That’s pretty much our policy.” (eurogamer) While a game engine is the foundation for a great game experience, the content is king. Blizzard is deep in the mire of content production so, although the engine might be solid, the final product is probably still far from complete.

End result, expect a high quality product once again from Blizzard.

TD Gaming Podcast 101: A Case of HubrisTD Gaming Podcast 101: A Case of Hubris

This weeks gaming podcast rains on a lot of parades, talking about the Sony PS3 and its issues in the market, Microsoft’s scratch disk conspiracy and ugly sales figures for some games. This weeks news includes:

This weeks gaming history and flashback cover some religious games. This week we look into the history of Wisdom Tree and Konami’s game Noah’s Ark from 1992. The show is a bit late this week because we were without power from Thursday night until late Monday night, four days without power is humbling.

We’re also asking folks what would be on their holiday wish list if you could have any game or gadget of your dreams. Maybe a hot RPG, or sweet new console, retro-remakes or something entirely different!