A Walking Simulator IN SPACE - Replicated Vengeance

We hope you have your walking boots on! This week Scott and Matt take a dive into walking simulators combined with some Dark souls difficulty and the results are out of this world! 

They also take some time to discuss the reasons behind the closures of one of Matt's favourite studios, Monolith. 

Please be aware that this episode had to be uploaded again due to sync issues. We're very sorry for this. 

Thanks for listening and please leave us a review and subscribe if you enjoyed it. It really helps us out. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gaming-blender/id1597738101

Also please get in touch with us at @gamingblendpod or thegamingblenderpod@gmail.com with your ideas for new games and challenges.

We have begun to update our YouTube channel with video playthroughs and we hope to put more up there soon https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZTPuScm5BTf8DdwvaCj0jQ

Keep blending!

Transcript

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Joyce. Let's check the upload. Yeah, yours is all good. the moment I'll pause it if it goes a bit weird. Three, two, Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Blender. I'm Matt and I'm here with my good friend Scott. Wave to the audience, Scott. I shall. Hello everyone, I am waving. You can't see me, but I am. it, but I can assure you it's a lovely wave. This is the podcast of Hypothetical Video Games and we will be making a brand new video game for you today. However, first, the preamble, which is obviously pre-preambled with Matthew's Wheel of News. He's actually done it today, ladies and gentlemen. He's actually prepared for the podcast. I know, I I know. I can hear your astonished gasps from him. Matthew, please, take it away. Okay, I didn't do the wheel. for god's sake! But I did something better than the wheel. So are you aware? No, it's, it's well, yeah, it was, I don't want to reinvent it. I'm not even gonna justify responding to that terrible joke. But go on, what's your new idea? What's your new idea? It's not a new idea. I am furious. I am I don't know if you can't see my face, but it is read as a beetroot. And as I have a lot of face, that's a lot of beetroot. A lot of that do have a lot of face. That's said to me a lot parents evening when we're with my parents when I was growing up, they'd go well, your child has a lot of face. So can't teach him anymore, he has far too much face. is far too much face for me, but are you aware that Warner Brothers Games has shut down Monolith Productions? Monolith Productions, responsible for Shadow of War, one of my favourite series of all time, patented the Nemesis system so no one can use it and they have shut down the game, therefore cancelling the Wonder Woman game that was using the Nemesis system. And I am apoplectically angry about this. What a waste of talent. An absolute waste of a brilliant game submerged by the desires and the crooked crooked backs, the people that sleep on spiral staircases. They're that crooked. I am well, crooked is probably strong, just completely out of touch. So I did some research into this to find out what the story was. And I found an article, I found an article by Jason Schreier, who Jason Schreier, brilliant. He's done all the sort of deep dives into games. He's a brilliant one on Andromeda. Written some brilliant books as well. highly recommend his books. he can now give me that fiver. Right, So Shadow of War released, when did Shadow of War release, Scott? When do you think it released? Bear in mind, we've heard 2017. YES! Yes, well done you. We're at least in 2017. They then moved on to their next game. They wanted to create a game, no one's quite sure what it was, it was an original IP. There was never, I always thought they planned a sequel for Shadow of War. They hadn't, they decided that was enough, they were done. They made a game that was codenamed Legacy. Warner Brothers said to them, we have no interest in Legacy because it's not based on an official, on an IP. It's not based on it. it's because it's not based on one of our IPs. We don't want to rubbish it. Now Monolith. Now this is possibly the bit where Monolith might have made a bit of a boo boo because Monolith thought we're a pretty big name. I back us to convince them. So worked on with it for several years until 2021 where they presented it and Warner Brothers went, you've not got a chance in hell boys and girls. This isn't going ahead. So that's 2021. So that's four years, four years into this. So That's mismanagement right there. The response from Onlif was the entire senior leadership left. They all left. They all left. They said they didn't want to do it. They were furious and the remaining teams were told, actually the irony, I just have to jump in there. The irony to all that is those who left are now working on a Black Panther game. So they didn't want to work on an IP, go figure. those who stayed were then told to work on Wonder Woman. You know the Wonder Woman reveal trailer? Okay. That was done... Where was that done? I think that was done about 2021. I think I'm checking my facts here. Yes, it was a while ago. So that was done. They were only six months into development when that was done. Six months into development when they showed it off and were like, we're going to make it. They had no idea what was going on. They had no idea internally which engine they were going to use. There were discussions about whether they use the Unreal 5 engine or if they use their own engine, which they use for Shadow of War. They decided to use their own engine. But all the people who knew how to use it had left. you So yeah, so then in re it was rebooted Wonder Woman in late 2023 early 2024. And they said because they thought it wasn't like it wasn't wasn't up to snuff. Now, any other big game by Warner Brothers come out in 2024. I'm not sure what you're gonna have to tell me. You know the game, you know the game, we've mocked it multiple times on this. A little game called Kill the Justice League by Rocksteady. of course, yes, of course it did. That was really stupid of me, yes. that came out and lo and behold, lo and behold, they obviously made, that was a 200 million flop. Also they had multiverses, which was a bit of a flop as well based on proper IP. Harry Potter Quidditch Champions, which I, do you know anyone that played that? It was on PlayStation Plus as well. I think people were annoyed because what they did was rather than... rather than... because there was no Quidditch in Hogwarts Legacy and people think it was because the Quidditch Champions was coming up and everyone was like, could we not just have a Harry Potter game where you can do the Harry Potter stuff but also do Quidditch? So yeah, think a lot of people just went, no, no thank you. started? You know more about Harry Potter than me. Maybe it didn't exist in the legacy, because legacy is an old game, isn't it? Legacies. no no no no, I've played the whole of Legacy, it's referenced as soon as you arrive at Hogwarts, the headmaster says, by the way, no Quidditch this year! And everyone's like, K-Passa. It is literally just because they wanted, they were like, the thing in the game is just the most nonsense reason in the game, and it's obviously because this other game was being made. Well, so they did all those and the massive flops, Multiverses, Quidditch, Suicide Squad, lost loads of money last year, essentially decided to change tact and shut all the studios. And it's worth saying that other studios were also shut in this purge. The other studios being the ones that I can't think of right now, but I believe WB Games, I think might have been shut as well. Essentially, there were quite a few shut. And it's awful. And I'm very grumpy because you can say that this was mismanaged from on this side, if this is all true, and they should have just either back down or had the legacy discussion earlier not to waste time. But to have your games, there's a multiverses Suicide Squad killed the Justice League, Harry Potter Quidditch. I don't know about Harry Potter Quidditch, but I know Suicide Squad killed the Justice League had this massive live action, live action, live service element pushed on it. Therefore it made losses. which has therefore killed the potential of having a game with Wonder Woman in and also the Nemesis system. And now the Nemesis system is dead until 2035 because of the patent. It is dead and I am livid and I am upset. And I took the wheel of news this week and I broke it and I made it a pillar of news. I made it a pillar of fury, Scott. It's a spoke. took one of the spokes, you sharpened it and stabbed it straight into the heart of Warner Brothers. this is coming after a year after they said, I think on a call, we should definitely try mobile games more. That seems to be where the market is headed. I just said. there's a lot of game late gaming layoffs that's happening at the moment and A lot of it is because of this push from usually the big companies usually EA The terrible people Literally the terrible I will stand by those comments. They are the terrible people To put to push to push towards live service games I think it's a misunderstanding of the fact that there are only a certain number of live service gamers in the world yeah. And they all play Fortnite or Overwatch or all the other sort of, know, all the other live service games. But you're not going to get all of those people because the vast majority of them will stay where they are. you won't, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. probably two sessions of gaming a week, proper sessions of gaming. Yeah. we're in our 30s now and that's the time we have. forever be young Maya. My wife found a gray hair in my beard the other day. It was a I was delighted I didn't think I'd be able to get gray hair. I'm very excited. I'm looking for I mean I'm very excited because I because I've got no other hair. So therefore I was like, haha We don't have time. So therefore you develop live service It's you and you watch the success of things like Jedi Jedi Fallen was it was the Survivor was sequel so they wish did gangbusters and despite being a little bit buggy. Even that was a little bit buggy and didn't have great word of mouth, had decent word of mouth. then, then you look at, unfortunately it's tit for tat, isn't it? I'm sorry, I'm making my own point, just rambling now. But you also have ones like Star Wars Outlaws, which, which fell on its face sales wise a bit. So you can't Not doing Ubisoft, doing Ubisofty things. Anyway, we have rambled on far too, we are now many minutes into the podcast and my This is we do. This is true. This is true. was Matthew's Spoke of News. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed. That's all folks. That's very Warner Brothers. That's very on brand. There we go. Right. Can I breathe? You're ready. So at this stage, what we do, because I haven't said what we do, I have to selected for Scott a random genre for video games. Well, it's meant to be two. mechanics, however, I've upped it to three this week and you'll find out why shortly and a plot which we will leave for the end. So you rolled for, when I say you, I mean me using my dice because you can't choose numbers, you are doing a walking simulator. Now a walking simulator is generally plot heavy. Now, because you're generally, it's limited in mechanics and what you can do. therefore, it's very much in the vein of going from place to place and finding out more about your world. And you try and keep it very, very simple if there is any game play at all. So that's a walking simulator. Firewatch is a good example of one, if anyone's played Fire and Watch out there. Firewatch is a good game. And from there, we rolled for a Souls-like. Now, Souls-like generally would mean like Dark Souls and it comes with all the trappings. However, we've separated them in our list. So we have the Dark Souls bonfires under one list and one entry. And then we also have the souls like difficulty. This was the souls like difficulty. So all it needs to be is difficult. It's all sadness and there's no hope. Yep, cool, happy. you feel free to it any way you want, it needs to be a hard game. If you're going take the vibe, you can take the vibe. Mmm... It is slightly. Are you sure? Do we do jokes? There is no hope. No, I'm gonna stop you. I'm gonna stop you now. down, downtrodden, angry tone, isn't it? I assure you there will be jokes. There will be jokes. We don't usually, but why did the game across the road? Why did the game across the road? Because it was a walking simulator. you do these things okay right okay okay so I do I do blame you I do blame you I do blame you no don't know don't bring the fates into this so all can simulate it souls lie difficulty gimmick controller what's my what's extra third mechanic fat. It's random. Don't blame me. Don't blame me. Blame, blame the fates. The three sisters of fate. Don't bring them into this. Well, the extra thing, and I feel like this is quite good because what this ended up being something that drives you down a certain path, no pun intended, is a physics based system. So by physics base, mean, physics is a key part of gameplay, you react, it's the way you react to the world. thinking of is some sort of astronaut simulator. I'm thinking. I'm thinking, I haven't quite got to the gimmick controller yet. I haven't quite got to the gimmick controller yet, but I mean that would be quite funny. But you know, job that astronauts, when the astronauts used to go to the moon, although obviously it was awesome, you know, get to go around the moon and jump around and stuff, the job they had to do was relatively boring. You know, as in like they went around, they... picked up rocks, they drove around the moon buggy, it sounds cool, but it was a lot of very mundane... stuff, d'you know what mean? and... yeah. Yes. So I'm thinking perhaps, could you make it so that it's maybe slightly further along in, you know, maybe we're talking in the latter half of the 21st century. so not too far ahead, but enough ahead that you can do a small time jump of technology. And it could be mankind trying to... or mankind going to Mars, but it's not the first time they've been to Mars, this is like maybe the third or fourth time and it's starting to get a bit more... you know, bit more sort of standard. Maybe, maybe you... maybe you could do it a little bit like the Martian but not in the same way that he has to grow his own food and all that stuff. Maybe you get left behind and you have to... and you're given... they're like, oh, sorry. We've left you behind, I don't know how you do that. You say, oh, sorry, we thought you were inside. And then you have to make your way somewhere. Okay, okay, I'm gonna throw something out now. I, I know what the plot is. And I'm not going to give anything away. But what I would like this to be is I would like it to be a funny game. And this is also because we've started off the podcast so negatively. I felt like we should try and make this funny. So it's a so fact that lots of people take themselves incredibly seriously, but doing kind of silly things that as you say, yes. I feel like I spoke of new. Yeah. T-Bone. I like the idea of you just getting a call and very seriously, like everybody plays it po-faced going, I'm really sorry we left you behind, but we need the loo or something like that. Just really, really, but taking it entirely seriously, but giving all these really silly reasons. And maybe you have the fact that maybe your person is watching the Martian film on DVD trying to work out how survive. you could make... There are so many different ways that you can die in space. Like so many different ways. you know... Oh! Do you what? Maybe it doesn't have to be on a planet. Like it's a... I got another idea. So you know, so let's say it is in the future but there is some sort of ship that's traveling through space but the ship is massive. As in like really really long. Really really long. And you have to, let's say you are the ship's engineer, okay? And you have to keep going outside to repair stuff but it's so dangerous. So dangerous because obviously the things that breaking it also hit you or There'll be that you'll be going past a nearby star and the radiation will just will burn you have to stay on the other side of the ship but the ship rotates so you have to you know what mean like the ship spins again so you have to as you're going forward you also have to go sideways to make sure you don't burn to death. You can have like bits of the ship will will random will do stuff that it needs to do so like there'll be thrusters going on and stuff. That stuff will just happen and you'll just have no idea. and you have to look for certain clues you see you're trying to travel like, okay right so the end of the ship you know the command module one of the one of the clamps on the command module is coming loose you know you need to get up there and fix it but the only hatch is at the bottom of the ship you to go all way to the bottom of the ship get out go away and walk all the way along the ship obviously in your big astronaut suits you're really slow But how, how annoying. But that's what soulslikes are. Soulslikes spite their players. They are, have you ever played as Dark Souls again? are annoying as hell. You die so, so many times and it's so annoying. I feel like you're just trying to spite your gamers. No, no, no, not annoying, challenging. Look, I think that would be quite funny. You said you wanted it funny. You could die, like loads of different funny ways in which you can die. with us and telling us if it's annoying or good gameplay design that Scott's currently doing, let me know because I'm in the camp of what are you doing you mad man? I did want funny. Do you know what I like the idea of? I like the idea of you climbing and people watching you people like coming to the window of the space station and watching you with terrified faces like, you know, we've been playing headliner of late in the way that art style of when people are terrified, the mouth goes massive and the eyes go massive. I like the idea of them running up and just seeing so scared, but you're there to save them. But I really like the way you've incorporated the physics into this. I really like I think that's really good because physics is kind of that is everything that's going on in the gameplay, whether it's a thrusters or you can literally be hit because the ship's got its own gravitational pull, something comes off and it goes round around the ship. So you might have to remember that that's there when you come back. say if, say if you're trying to fix, say if you're trying to fix something, you're trying to fix like the thrusters and you go down to the thrusters and you take a panel off to fix the thrusters. And then you kind of, and then you'd let go of the panel. Then the panel gets stuck in the loop of the gravitational pull of the ship. we get the gimmick controller could it be yeah I'm trying to think of a I'm trying to think about what could be good then for the gimmick. I said gimmick, it's a dirty word, gimmick controller. You I have an idea. Carabiners. Carabiners. Yeah, so I have an idea. say, and this is gonna be a really hard controller to design, so sorry, whoever gets this job. What you have, you have a little belt with two, what they call clips, the carabine clips? What are they called? Carabine clips has two on there. What you have to do is when you get to you have to clip yourself on. So when one is clipped on, but then in order to move, you have to remember to unclip yourself and then clip yourself onto the next spot. And if you obviously forget, annoying. forget to clip yourself on, you could get knocked off and die and you'd like, I forgot to clip myself. I don't... that's game design. That's game design. That's a mechanic. you're annoying. Right, if there's a vote, if you're listening to this podcast, please message in, do something, write a review and say Scott is annoying or Matt is annoying. Actually, no, we're taking this entirely personally, but do not think that's quite funny just to you have the go? So you know that new film that's coming out of Robert Pattinson called Mickey 17? Where he's... So I'm thinking if you make it and you said you wanted people to like watch you as you're doing it, so let's imagine the ship is like a colony ship. So it's like this massive ship and it has this massive population that's going to colo... It could be this colony ship that's going to Mars. Okay, so it's got hundreds of thousands of people in it. It's going to colonise Mars. It's massive. But there is... one cloned bloke whose job it is to fix the stuff on the outside of the ship and he's constantly being cloned because and you could say like most of the ship is like loads of ship is glass so people can watch you as you're outside and you look down you see like families and children they're all they're all there and then all of sudden you look up and there's an asteroid just boom and just like you get smashed into a million pieces you know there'd be like little bits of rock that come along and like pierce your space suit and then it's like Sweet, now I freeze to death. you know, things like that. You could make it so that it could be quite entertaining and actually the aim of the game is complete the game while dying the least number of times. Can you do it without dying? No, no, no, no. I'll probably go on. Yeah, so it's like the ultimate, the platinum trophy is almost complete. It is version one. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Do you want the plot theme though? Because that might help because I feel that you're drifting into plots. It's forbidden. No, it's not forbidden. Right, okay. We can still do the clone, we can still do this, right? Okay. But... So, let's say on the colony ship, the private company that has arranged this massive ship to be made and is doing the colonization to Mars, they have... We can still do the clone. We can still lose, but you can always do it. never doubt. you were selected against your will to be the guy that gets cloned and constantly has to do this job, So you hate the higher-ups, okay? And we're gonna say that the sort of the penthouse part of the ship, so like it's like the bit right on the cone, is like the management level. It's like the presidential suite, it's where all the bigwigs live. And you decide... that as part of your job as you're going outside and you're gonna go up you're gonna you're fix everything on the ship and then you're gonna from the outside detach that module so it floats away into space and those people die in their capsule there's your revenge boom I like that. what I think the way you work that into gameplay is you have, you're essentially, are two engineers, one engineer for the specialist crew, who's like the top, sorry, not specialist, the big wigs. He looks after the big wigs area. You look after the general area, everything else. And you're like, you can have a few jokes about the fact the normal engineer's a bit of a dick, to be honest. and he is really lazy because he has literally nothing to do compared to you, the amount you have on. Now, throughout the story as it goes on, you have a moment where you can sabotage him slightly by stealing. Maybe you stole his screwdriver or something really subtle. Oh, do know what you could do? You could integrate the gimmick controller into one really big bit where he asks you to clip him on, and you don't. Nope. this is, I know we do this quite a lot with games where the game asks you to do something, but you actually benefit from not doing it. So I think there are certain points in the story where he will ask you, can you click me on? Can you click me on? Can you click me on? And if you do it, if you do it, the game just keeps going. You keep getting given jobs, but at one stage you just don't clicking him on. He dies and then all, and then you get the message through going, can you come and service the top levels? Because our engineers not responding. And that's the way you get your vengeance because you're allowed and then you go through and then and then maybe just the final shot is just everybody floating away. well. I think, is there anything more we can expand on the... on the physics base, perhaps? using the gimmick controller, you actually move forward in the game. Yeah. Yeah, and we've got the... We've got the ship, maybe, maybe, because it's walking simulator. So maybe we can say that certain parts of the ship, because it's got, because certain parts of the ship will have their own artificial gravity, you can say that... You can say that those bits of the ship on the outside you can walk on, because inside has its own artificial gravity, but on the bits that don't, that's those are the bits where you have to clip yourself in and, do what I mean? Like, and then have to do the... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I don't think that's a particularly long game. yeah. Yeah, you don't always have to do it. You only have to it whenever, maybe you have to make the call as well. It's like, it's your decision on when you use them. I like that. So. Yeah. Yeah. I think that makes sense. it's as long you want to make it. I like the idea of maybe it comes quite early on the opportunity to not clip him on. And if you wanted to, that was essentially the way you win the game, but you wouldn't know that playing first time. Yes, yeah, I wish I wish his clip would break left around. Like when you meet people, could say, they could be saying you could maybe just not click them on next time. So if you don't, if you're genuinely not doing it, yeah, I hate that guy. I wish someone would not clip him on. Um. Very good. Very good. Should we name it? Yeah. gone. There will be jokes. I got one in. I will be gone. I will be in. Clip that. B. Thank you. So I'm going to summarize. Yeah, no, no, I'm going to summarize and then you're going to have your usual panic attack while I'm doing the summary. So ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I am stalling to give Scott as much time as possible to think of a name, but we have built a walking simulator. with soul side difficulty, with a gimmick controller and physics based with the plot of revenge. You're an astronaut flying in, no, you're not an astronaut, you're an engineer, you pillock, you've messed it up at the first one. You're an engineer, you're an engineer in the ship taking the human civilization to Mars and you're in it and it is your job to repair the ship, to keep the entirety of it repaired apart from the top area, which is just for the big wigs and we don't like them. They've got their own engineer. They're all snooty. We don't like them. But you agreed to sign up to the cloning program. Little did you know that this meant that when you died, you'd be immediately replaced and you will die and you'll die a lot trying to repair the ship. You realize that the only way is to take your revenge and unclip the big Wiggs's spaceship because that's a feature it definitely has for some reason. And what you do is you use your gimmick control, your carabiner, to clip on whenever you need to be clip on. But what ho, the other engineer also has a carabiner. If you don't clip him on, he floats away to his death and you will be called to the top and you'll be able to enact your sweet, sweet, sweet revenge and watch them fly away like the end of Mary Poppins. Except they die. Well, we don't know when Mary Poppins, maybe Mary Poppins had no control of that umbrella and just went, God, I'm going to the sun. Yeah, yep. I have... No, I have four. Yeah. So I have replicated... I have replicated vengeance. Which is... I have copied vengeance, so they're my two, not so sure. I have revenge... I have revenge of the clone. And I have cloned revenge. I'd rather not hear them. It's all very clone and copy related. What's wrong with Venge of the Clone? you've replicated the replication. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with that? What's wrong with that? of them is essential. Three of them, Revenge of the Clone, you've mashed two Star Wars films together. I... We'll go... We'll have replicated vengeance. Yes. Good, you chose one of my names! I named a thing! Yes. replicated vengeance is funnier. think rep. Let's go for replicated vengeance. I just don't come out of anything at all. Because I'm useless. Yeah, you did name a thing. Well done. Rather than me going, essentially, usually it comes back and Scott goes, I think green and I go, yes, that's lovely. We'll call it red. So that was Revenge, no, that was Replicated Vengeance coming to all stores near you. Well, we hope you've had a lovely time listening to our low gravelly tones. And if you have done, please leave us a review, please get in touch if you want to set us challenges or if you have anything you would like us to try in a show. If you leave us any reviews, we will try and read them out. Otherwise. We will be with you next time for more gaming shenanigans, and I have been Matt. You know what I'm going to do in the edit? I'm going to take out that pause so you look like a Muppet. I have the editor control. Anyway, he's been Scott, I've been Matt, or Matthew, or whatever. Maybe I've been Dave, we don't know. Have a lovely week, everyone. Thanks so much for listening and keep blending. Bye bye.