Ever Forward - Dark Souls Survival Game

This week it's time for a discussion on all thing EA and the recent buy out. After that's done and we have a shower it's time to create a new game. This week we go for a squad manager walking simulator. Quite the collection!

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Keep blending!

Chapters

• 0:00 30 Second Intro
• 0:30 Main
• 3:00 30 Second Outro

Transcript

0:01

Three, two, one. Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Blender. I'm Matt with. Yes hello, yes I got my queue. I got my queue. It was much quicker than we usually do apologies. Usually I give them off more fluff, but welcome to the game blender. This is the podcast where we design hypothetical video games, uh creating a new video game every episode. So welcome to this particular franchise. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Scott, how are you? It's lovely to have you back. This podcast is coming out a little late because we tried to record and we weren't able to record. apologies on a couple of days delay, but hopefully it's coming to you as fresh and ready for action. Yeah, real life got in the way as it often does when you get past a certain age. the opposite, it's like the sequel of the Jeff Goldblum quote from Jurassic Park, as life finds a way, as life got in the way. Life continuously gets in the way. But no, I am good. Though I'll be perfectly honest and say that because of these real life events, my gaming over last few weeks has taken a bit of a hit. And so other than playing a few games of Crusader Kings 3 by myself, I've not really had a little branch out into anything. Have you had a little branch out into anything? out, we've got some stuff that we wanted to chat about. However, I'm just about to drop this on Scott completely unrehearsed. I was thinking a good idea for a gaming series and I was trying to brainstorm earlier and I'm going to, this is live brainstorming now because you've not heard one about say, I like the idea of every week doing a new video for a game that's on Steam that costs less than a pint. I like this idea. Okay. like the idea that you find an unknown game on Steam that costs, we're in London, so I'm in London and so a pint costs 4,000 pounds. No, so I'd say, so no, so if you get a pint of Guinness in a nice pub or an old Irish pub, you will find yourself being set about eight pound 50. Or with the current exchange rate to dollars, that's $400. I don't actually know, actually I'll quickly check. For those in the United States of America, that is $11.43. For a pint of beer? I think there's a challenge for baseball. We're going wildly off topic here. Going the challenge for baseball. I think you've got to drink a beer and have a pint of hot dog, have a hot dog and drink a pint of beer each innings. And I think there's like six innings a game. And I think the point was made though, like, that's not that big a challenge. It's like, it is when it's $20 a beer. When it's $20 a beer, it's a different type of challenge. Anyway, so that was my idea. My idea was a six pound 50. 50 week you'd find a new game. I thought it was appealing. It could make something stand out. So you may or may not see that appear on our YouTube channel in the coming days, depending if I actually pull my finger out. however, however, however, gaming news, news, news, news, is that, do you like that? was sound effects on the fly. Not as in the fly, the Jeff Goldblum film, as in the fly, as in I'm doing it on the fly. Anyway. So you did for anyone that there's no video going out, but Scott's just shaking his head at me. EA, EA, EA, challenge everything have now been bought out in an unprecedented deal. I say unprecedented, it is unprecedented. I'll come to that in a second. But EA has been bought out for 55 billion. My god. So this is, I believe, and apologies for my mouse scrolling, because I've just got all the facts here. This is at a 25 % premium on the share price, which puts the share price at $210 per share, which as we've discussed is the price of a pint. So it's the second most valuable gaming purchase after the purchase of Microsoft's purchasing Activision Blizzard a few years ago, which obviously went through the courts at the time. to say essentially, are you taking too much control of the gaming landscape? And this one's kind of just going through and it's bought by the Saudi Arabia. I believe it's one of the important families. I'm not gonna lie, I haven't looked too much into that. However, what's your instinctive reaction Scott to EA being bought out? It could go one of two ways because, now I'll be perfectly honest and I do apologize to anyone who is a fan of EA out there, I'm not a fan of the way that EA does business when it comes to video games. So this could be a good thing, could change in leadership, change in management, could be a change of uh focus, of goals, of ideals. That being said... uh There's an argument to be made that... This is not a political statement. There's... uh a bit of background because while you've been talking, I've essentially just tried to assemble the facts. So this is the PIF who bought Niantic who owned Pokemon Go. And the purchase is part of Scopely Incorporated, the makers of Monopoly Go, which itself was bought by the PIF for 4.9 billion in 2023. So this is a company that owned by the PIF who... ah because they're backed by them have been able to make this purchase. So think one of the issues is, I think, if you have one particular oil rich country buying everything, regardless of whether it's sport or gaming or anything, could there be a bit of uh a watering down of content? I don't know. But they already own Stakes apparently in Nintendo and Take-Two. So they've already got... So this is their big investment. This is their big feather in the cap. But they have been working behind the scenes, it seems, the recent history. Well the proof will be in the pudding I guess. We'll have to wait and see what the trajectory of the games that come out in the next two or three years look like and whether EA continues to be EA or whether it turns over a new leaf, so to speak. I think my thing is I'm interested and again, I'm going to phrase this sort of carefully. lot can be, a lot can happen when the Saudi Arabians or the PIF purchase something. And I think sometimes you can forget that there are people on the ground who are just working on the video games. And with how turbulent the video game industry is right now, I really hope that there's no uproar and there's no em fallback on them because it's not fair on them. They're there to create a video game. They're there to create whatever they want to create because they've just been bought out. It's nothing to do with them. So that's, that's my, main takeaway of it at the moment is let's see where it goes, but let's not start a witch hunt before witch hunts are required because those, those people don't deserve it. They've just released FIFA and the FIFA is, not FIFA, the EA, EAFC and the reviews are in and nobody cares. So moving on from that. Yes. It's interesting isn't it that now it's not FIFA, nobody cares. Oh. think it's one of these things where, although one of my great loves is Football Manager, which we've spoken about the podcast before, I do think yearly iterations can kill the love for a franchise. I think it pops up and you go, you're back, are you? Cool, great. Yeah, it's the problem with Assassin's Creed, isn't it? There's a million of them. Well, lots of people said that the Assassin's Creed, one of the best ones was probably Syndicate, but it suffered because by the time Syndicate came out, it suffered for all of the ones that proceeded it like Unity. Was it Unity, one that was absolutely... Yeah, that was the one that burnt, crashed and burnt in the next gen. So I think that's a perfect example, to be honest. then you've also got like, everyone loved Black Flag, but it really is... a small highlight if you throw enough stuff at the wall, they threw naval combat and they were like, my god, naval combat works. But unfortunately, because they're developing stuff so much, they'd already decided the next game would have no naval combat. Yeah. Yeah they had- actually, well no, didn't they do Odyssey after that? No, no they did Origins. Origins. Origins I started and went, this isn't an Assassin's Creed anymore. I'm very bored. And then they did Odyssey, which I just heard was, I didn't play Odyssey, which is remarkable really as a classicist. I thought it'd be up my street, but I watched it and I just went, this feels like content and nothing else. Level scaling can get in a bin. I'm sorry, this winds me up. Really, it irritates me. It is one of the most stupid level design. things. What you do in a video game, you start off in an area, there are enemies, you kill the enemies, you level up, you come back to those enemies later and you wipe the floor with them because you're so skilled. You do not have something where you come back to the starting area and the enemies go, we've been at the gym too. No, no, haven't. It just doesn't, really irritates me and I really don't like this thing. I don't come to this level because they're level 15 people and you stab someone in the face, which is pretty, you know, it will hurt. And the person goes Don't worry, I've got a level 12 face. We've turned down rant lane, I think. No, sorry. It's just something I do feel slightly passionate about. breathe. It just doesn't make any sense to The whole appeal of a game like that is where you come back and you're like, I now feel like I'm an armored tank. And it just having like a local scrub. It's essentially like imagine in Lord of the Rings, the whole point of Lord of the Rings, the narrative is they had the big journey and they come back at the end and they've all leveled up. It's the equivalent of right at the end and a solid story spoilers for Lord of the Rings, but you you had your chance. It's like if they come back at the end and they meet Wormatongue and Wormtongue goes, I've been in the gym. I've now got massive axes. I know the whole point is growth. You can't have growth. Anyway, no, I'm not okay. I'm not okay. I did. I did. I feel much lighter though. I could float. Anyway, any whom. 10 minutes in. Breathe Matthew. Now that you've got that off your chest, shall do the bug course? let's do the podcast. Right. So what I have done, ladies and gentlemen, in my calm, relaxed manner, he transfers back to podcast host, I have drawn Scott a genre and I have drawn him not one, not two, but three mechanics. And you will find out why shortly. And also I've drawn him a narrative. This was all randomized so I haven't been massively cruel of as much as I wanted to be. Do you think we should add level scaling to the... Okay, cool. So you have, sir, as your main genre, a walking simulator. Walking simulators infamously probably have very little gameplay. So they're generally just proceeding from area to area uh as the plot reveals itself. mean, everyone's gone to the Rapture by... Is it Blooper Team or is it the other one? They've got very similar names, but it's one of them. uh That's a perfect example of firewatches and have one of, you can, you can put certain amounts of gameplay into them, obviously, but the way we're defining this is something that is light on gameplay and more on story. So the next two I drew and I realized there was a very dark cynical way it could go. So I decided to draw something else. So I'll just going to see what you're going to say when I say the next two mechanics. Go on. So I'd said, drew dark souls difficulty. So essentially being difficult, like the souls like genre. And then I drew life sim. So simulator like the sims. And the only thought that occurred to me, and this might be my dark cynical nature, is you just recreate life and claim that that had dark souls difficulty, like getting up in the morning, doing your teeth, going to work, coming home, dealing with children. And I was like, that's dark souls difficulty right there. How miserable is that? Who's going to play that game? I know that that was that that was the angle I was going down. So I decided to draw another one because I thought that my brain would just drive us down that dark, dark route, which was squad manager. So aka when you send Assassin's Creed is actually quite a good example where you have those those bits where you can send various members of your squad off to do quests for you, or you could take control of the squad. It's really up to you. Okay, uh question. When it says life simulator, I'm assuming that doesn't have to be real life. Technically, technically the life simulator could be any version of life that I could come up with. That would be an interesting take on it and I would like you to carry on in that vein until I say no later on. Okay, so again with a walking simulator, that doesn't necessarily mean you can't have other gameplay mechanics, that just has to be the main one. I think the point in that is you're meant to like, it's meant to be traversal and the plot will reveal itself as you traverse. but I do think you it's a limit, limiter, you can't say, oh, and then you start fighting these zombies kind of thing, you need to try and stay small and, and limited. I think within the basis of a walking simulator you could have some sort of small scale battle system but that's not something that you necessarily control, it's more sort of narrative based. So uh let's say in this walking simulator you did encounter a problem which had to be solved by violence. The way that you would and gentlemen, he's a parent. The way that you would choose is... I mean we can get into the philosophical debate about whether some problems can only be solved by violence if you wish and I have some very strong views on that. with this I feel like, yeah, if you had a scenario that you decided to solve via violence, that you essentially get taken to... another screen which is almost like a text-based screen with maybe some art in the background depicting what's going on and you get to take steps that branch out to sort of say right how are you going to deal with a situation so you're still dealing with events but it's still very non-mechanic focused you're not doing like battles on a hex grid, you're not taking control of someone and running around killing people. You're making choices in a text-based... You see what mean? fair enough. Because you sort of I think walking simulator you what we're implying is you're going from event to event and making a choice that then you're in your world making a choice. It's not an active hands on like I'm gonna run around and charge. No, you're just reaching the next stage of the story and the story is going to choose how to play out. I think you can make the walking simulator so you're not necessarily on one set of rails, but it's obviously not on open world because that doesn't really work. I think it can work. I think it can work. you go to, as a walking simulator, if you go to certain areas and those areas react to you differently, I still think that's a walking simulator. I just think it possibly needs more clever design to make sure you access the right bits at the right stage. So I would do what I would describe as a multi-rail system in which you reach certain points and then depending on your choices they then branch out in various different ways from there and then they all can converge again much later on in the story. Have you ever played the Stanley Parable? Do you aware of what the Stanley Parable is? So I'd recommend it. But it is a game where you play and it's a walking simulator. But there's a narrator who's essentially telling you what you should be doing, like as part of the story. But obviously, as the gamer you can play so I guess Stanley then went through the red door. And if you don't go through the red door, goes, Stanley didn't listen. Stanley was supposed to go through the red door. And it brings you back and then you have the red door in front of you again, because he keeps saying, this is the one you're meant to go through. And then eventually this is just one joke. There's a million in there. So you keep going through the red, you keep not going through it. And eventually it gets a stage where it goes, we just, you just walk into the nothing and it goes, well, I hope you're happy. I tried to warn you. There's nothing in this part of the map. We didn't design it. So that's the kind of, that's, that's a kind of sort of, it's a walking simulator, but again, you can branching paths. So the way I'm imagining this is, and I've mentioned it before, I don't think you've played it, there's a trilogy of games called the Banner Saga. So the Banner Saga is a bit of walking simulator, but like I said, you've got different rails that you go on depending on which choices you make. And you encounter different events. There are battles and you go into a tactical battle map that you move characters around on a hex grid and blah blah blah. But if you dispense with that element, but you keep the same and it's quite is quite difficult game You can quite easily make the wrong move and people die all the time. It is quite hard So what you could do is Have us uh let's say let's say and how we always get post-apocalyptic select. Let's try something a little bit different If you say in space, I'm climbing through this microphone. So let's imagine that you create your own fantasy realm. In that fantasy realm, you start off as refugees fleeing a sacked city, let's say, and you decide that you're going to go and find a new home. And the game gives you the option to basically go in loads of different directions to find that new home. because you only are from this one city, you don't really know much about the wider world. So you take on the role of the person who's almost been appointed as the leader of this travelling group of refugees who are trying to find a new home. And as you go along, you pick up other waifs and strays and other people who help you or people you can coerce to help you or whatever. Very different stories which then assembles into almost like a squad manager. So you end up having these different NPCs, these different characters within your caravan of people that you can use for certain tasks and they all have different abilities. So some will be good at trading, some will be good at fighting, blah blah blah blah. Exactly, exactly. you're not familiar with Bellwright, you recruit villagers, all of whom have certain skills, you can get some who are good at crafting, literally some with good bowmen. It's a very, very well nuanced system. Exactly, as you, depending on what path you take, take you up to a variety of different events. And all of these events can be solved in a variety of different ways. So once you get to that event, it then cuts to like the text, I'm imagining sort of like a text based screen that has like a piece of almost like a concept art in the center, which continuously changes based on your decisions. And then you have almost like a description down the right hand side of what's going on. And then at the bottom you have a number of choices that you can make. And those choices, depending on who you've got in your, yeah, so if you have someone who's really good at um weasel charming, then the weasels that are based outside the city aren't going to be an issue at all. Correct. uh if you don't want to use the weasel charmer and you want to use your person who's very good at hunting to just kill the weasels, you can also do that. But you don't know. They might be some local centaur's pet weasels, in which case he's going to jump out and start killing people. You see, there's all sorts of different things that you can think of. It's a very nice simple what what's the so I say from there you've got you got the squad manager. The life sim element to how much is that a simulation? What do have to do that simulation here? So what you're saying, I think, okay, so the way I do this is I'd make it, rather than life sim where you're controlling one person, you've got to take them to eat and sleep and do all that stuff, I would say you make it bolt rigid when it comes to the needs of people. So you need to keep up supplies of food, you need to keep up supplies of water, you need to keep up supplies of medicine. So all sorts of the things that you need to keep people alive. you actually have to pay attention to. reminds me of, oh God, the game that is the World War game. Oh, it's gonna really annoy me. It's on the tip of my tongue. It's the one where you're essentially farming for the survivors after the wars, the ones who are still living there. So that's kind of vibe. like that. Not I like that, but you know what mean. what you do is you make that bolt rigid and you make linking into the Dark Souls difficulty you make it so that if you don't pay attention to it and if you pay lip service to it people will start dying and it won't be just the randos in your caravan the people you're trying to look after it will be people in your squad will start dying like they'll start dying of starvation like they'll get an infection and die they'll die first you know all this sort of stuff And I think, thinking again of the Dark Souls difficulty, you make the situations that you encounter, the events you encounter, very, very nuanced. And so you make it so that there are a variety of different ways that you can solve it, but you can't possibly think of all the possibilities of the choices you make. So you might make a choice that you're like, that is the perfectly logical, reasonable choice. But because of this pit- piece of information that you don't have, it turns out it's the worst choice and actually the person who you send forward to deal with it just gets killed, like right in front of you, um or whatever. Yeah, I mean, that's a that's exactly what I think that's a really good idea. And this game that I can't remember the name of is driving me absolutely insane. What I Oh, no, I am listening. I am listening. You spoke a lot about sandwiches. Oh, God, it's so annoying. know at the moment, it's like going to get to the end of podcasts, and I'm just gonna yell at the moment we stopped recording. Anyway, I think that was very nice. So dot and I think that also leads into darts all difficulty, doesn't it? Because you have that for one of them were difficult element because you lose the people that are key to you if you are not supplying for them. I think the way I'm imagining the walking simulator working is rather than it being like the Banasaga which is 2D so it runs across a 2D um almost like concept art type deal you do it more like an overworld and as you progress through the overworld um you've let's say that you sort of map out a route to roughly where you want to get to as you travel on that route based on the squad you've got, based on maybe your own attributes, you might see on the map things start to appear, just like the left and the right, like things that you can see, em and they could be things like, oh, there's an oasis over there, or em there's some ruins over there, and you can choose to divert your camera around to go and investigate these things, but you have no idea what's going to happen there, there could be nothing, or... it could be something terrible or could be something great so you then have to take the risk of there's that risk versus reward of right I've only got this much food left, much water left no I really need some water there's no aces over there but what if there's... you see what mean? then you... and I think you can make the world so that it changes each time so every time you play the game a new world is generated so you don't... do see what I mean? only thing I would say on that in the new generation is you lose the ability to be quite tight narratively. So it'd be quite a difficult balance. What I quite like about your suggestion is you can be making your way through the world and still have different experiences and different results depending on who you are, but with the same narrative. Now on that, using the link, I'm now going to tell you what your narrative is, because you might feel differently, because you might feel like you want to do something a bit tighter. So your narrative is the narrative of sacrifice. Sacrifice. And also, if anyone was still interested, that game that I was trying to think of was called This War of Mine. Yeah, This War of Mine. And if you want to know how I found out what was, that was the game I typed into Google, sad war game. And it was top. game. Okay, sacrifice. I think what you do is you very early on in the game, and this is going to be more of a meta understanding of the word sacrifice, so rather than individual sacrifice, which is you'd normally go for, never go for like the Jesus or something, that I'm going to say that really early on in the game you make it very plain that you cannot play this game perfectly. You are going to have to make a sacrifice here and there. You can't take everyone with you. There will be points where people will be by the side of the road or you'll encounter them and they'll ask to come with you and you just look at the resources you've got and you look at your daily consumptions and you go, I'm sorry, we can't do it. Or you can make the decision of okay right let's take them on but we're gonna have to we have to get rid of some of the horses or get rid of some of the mules in which case you're going to be slower but you can take those people on do you see what I mean that there's a there's there's Papers, please. Have you heard of this? Yeah, Papers, please, where you for those of you who haven't played it, it's a game where you play on the a border patrol guard. And essentially, you have to go and check people's passports for errors. Now, obviously, that sounds incredibly dry. But each person with the passport comes up and to you and says their own sort of sob story. And you have to decide whether to let them in. And if you let too many non correct decisions through then your own family suffers through through um not getting paid. this starts that this is a similar sort of vibe I feel of that sort of getting the balance and making it so you know you can't play it perfectly, but you just have to get after find a way. Yeah, yeah, I think that's what you do. You don't make it too personal. It's not personal sacrifice, it's more... Do you make it... no, it is sacrifice because it, while it isn't personal, it's relationships based. So if you make sure that all the characters join. So I know you were saying that previously, you've to make sure you have quite a few people joining, but if you make sure that they will have very distinctive personalities, it is going to be sacrificed because you're sacrificing those relationships. So it's going to be, it's people are going to hopefully it'd be like water cooler game where you're chatting going, Oh my God, did you make it? Did you make it with them? John or whatever. No, didn't make it with him. I used him to get... I turned him into a human bridge back at the first place. he was sacrificed to do this. oh sacrificed. He said he wanted to go though. Did he? Did he say he wanted to go like a human bridge? I'm sure that's what I'm pretty sure we overheard him at the bathroom. No, he said he wanted to play bridge. Oh, okay. Well, that's not what this hearing. I got the wrong end of said stick. Anywho, it does work, but that but that means it's got to your least favorite bit. Hmm, I know, I'm trying to make some now. Are you desperately trying? So I'm going to give the summary while Scott is going to desperately think of a name. And this has gone badly before. And let's see how goes this time. So we have created a walking simulator where you play as a refugee and you're wandering through this strange, land, but it has dark souls difficulty with life sim elements. Now for here, the dark souls difficulty is going to be getting through the various problems, which you can only achieve. by using various members of your squad, will join you throughout your quest. And as they join you, they become options for solving problems. However, they may not survive. And also the life sim elements, plus the Dark Souls difficulty, are keeping them alive, are finding the resources to keep your squad going, to keep them healthy, so to make sure that they're up for the challenges or that they don't just either leave or fully conk out. Now, the story is one of sacrifice, of losing these people as you fight through the kingdom to find your true home. You may not make it with all your men. You won't make it with all your men and women, but you will find a home. And when you get there, you'll just generally be sad and wonder why did I buy this game? And it's going to be called. So I've got three. You got three. We can workshop it. We can workshop it. To survive. Just to actually just rewind. Last week's game is called Survive to Party. Okay, not that then. In that case, because two of them had to survive, I'm down to one. I'm down to one and that one is called No Choice. No choice. think we can, I like the idea of it. But I think you can work short and reverse it. of a different one that was kind of the same vibe, the same sort of... that sort of... Don't turn back. Just the idea of moving forwards. uh Ever forwards. That's good. Ever forwards. Boom. Done. that's ever forwards coming to a smart fridge near you. Anyway, that has been the Gaming Blender. I hope you've had as much time as much time as much as lovely a time. I'm missing words out now. No, that's not right. That's not right. As lovely a time listening as we had saying. Recording as we have had. Hello. Yes, but please leave us a review ideally before. I messed up all of my talkie words. ah And if you have any challenges for us or anything like that, please get in touch or check out the YouTube channel if things start appearing on there. In the meantime, again, thank you so much. It does mean a lot to us. I've been Matt. Keep blending everyone. And yeah, just don't sacrifice your friends next time you have to like go anywhere with them. Yeah, don't do that. Just crack on, just crack on and keep blending, keep blending. Bye bye now. Bye bye.