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Max Roberts 00:00 Hello everybody, Max here.
Max Roberts 00:02 Before we get into the show, I don't normally do this, but uh wanted to let everyone know that this was recorded.
Max Roberts 00:08 Well, in advance of the reveal of God of War Lao Fei.
Max Roberts 00:12 This was recorded the end of April.
Max Roberts 00:15 So we kinda speculate on like what will be next besides the the remake of the trilogy.
Max Roberts 00:20 We now know it is this
Max Roberts 00:23 mainline spin-off God of War Lao Fei game, which we will obviously be doing an episode on when it comes out sometime probably in the next year.
Max Roberts 00:32 Reports say actually early 2027, so
Max Roberts 00:36 We will see what comes out.
Max Roberts 00:37 But just so you all know, this was recorded way before that.
Max Roberts 00:41 So on to the show.
Max Roberts 00:42 Hello, everybody, and welcome.
Max Roberts 00:44 to chapter select a seasonal retrospective podcast where we bounce back and forth between a series exploring its evolution, design, and legacy.
Max Roberts 00:51 We are back.
Max Roberts 00:53 In season two of all things, talking about the God of War franchise, my name is Max Roberts, and I am joined, as always, by Logan Moore.
Max Roberts 01:02 Hey Logan.
Logan Moore 01:04 Hello, my fellow son of Sparta.
Logan Moore 01:07 How are you doing?
Max Roberts 01:09 How many times did you want to call this game Ghost of Sparta?
Logan Moore 01:14 Uh, surprisingly none
Max Roberts 01:16 Oh my gosh, almost every time I go to type it, I go gotta war g and then have to back back back sons of Sparta.
Logan Moore 01:25 I think it's so distinctly different with its art style and stuff like that that it doesn't
Logan Moore 01:31 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:31 I don't know the name, it's the naming.
Logan Moore 01:32 That's put one of the downsides.
Logan Moore 01:34 It's not even God of War in some sense to me.
Max Roberts 01:36 It's it's yeah, no, this is uh very much not God of war.
Max Roberts 01:42 Uh-oh.
Max Roberts 01:44 Dun dun dun
Logan Moore 01:46 Yeah, we're spoiling we're spoiling things up front here.
Logan Moore 01:49 Um let's just you know what let's just dive right into it.
Logan Moore 01:53 Let's not even beat around the bush.
Logan Moore 01:55 We're here.
Logan Moore 01:55 Uh, or actually, let's say this up front.
Logan Moore 01:58 A lot of things going on in the God of War universe, sort of.
Logan Moore 02:01 We've got this game, which we're gonna talk about today.
Logan Moore 02:04 Supposedly we're getting some new spinoff thing coming up in the future, which is the next mainline entry, but not prequel thing.
Max Roberts 02:12 I wanted to I'm glad you brought this up, because I wanted us to talk about kind of the state of God of War.
Max Roberts 02:19 And I don't know if you want to do that now or at the end, but
Logan Moore 02:23 We can talk about it at the end, but like this is I guess all I wanted to say is like this is gonna be the first of
Max Roberts 02:25 Okay.
Logan Moore 02:29 A handful of new episodes, it seems, in this season, uh moving forward.
Logan Moore 02:34 We obviously they're remaking the original God of War trilogy.
Logan Moore 02:37 We'll do something with that whenever it comes out.
Max Roberts 02:38 True, I forgot about that
Logan Moore 02:39 Sounds like that's gonna be
Logan Moore 02:41 Yeah, sounds like that's gonna be a few years down the road and then I mean at the time we're recording this, there could be another new God of War game announced within the coming
Logan Moore 02:51 month we've got a TV show that's being filmed and it looks real bad based on that image.
Max Roberts 02:59 Oh they could not have picked a worse image
Logan Moore 03:01 There's a lot going on with this series.
Logan Moore 03:08 No, Ryan Hurst uh he looks like he's taking a dump in the woods there behind his son.
Logan Moore 03:16 So
Logan Moore 03:17 Bad first image.
Logan Moore 03:18 Hopefully the first trailer's better, but I I I have doubts at this point.
Logan Moore 03:22 So yeah, um all of this is to say, if you've enjoyed our God of War season, of which there's an episode for every game in the franchise up until this point, hey.
Logan Moore 03:31 As new God of War Games come out, I don't know if we'll do an episode about the show or anything, but like as new God of War Games come out, we will be doing new episodes in due time.
Logan Moore 03:40 And that starts here with
Logan Moore 03:42 Sons of Sparta, Max.
Logan Moore 03:45 Uh God of War Sons of Sparta was developed by Mega Cat Studios primarily, but they did work in tandem with Santa Monica Studio
Logan Moore 03:54 It was released on PS5.
Logan Moore 03:56 It released.
Logan Moore 03:57 .
Logan Moore 03:57 it shadow dropped on February 12th, 2026.
Logan Moore 04:01 The game directors were Zach Menko and Nate Flynn.
Max Roberts 04:05 Nathan Fillion
Logan Moore 04:06 The producer.
Logan Moore 04:07 Yeah, that's what I was thinking actually too.
Logan Moore 04:10 The producer was Jeff Ketchum, Ash's uncle.
Logan Moore 04:14 And then the music was done by good old Bear McCreary.
Logan Moore 04:19 with some assistance from none other than Logic on at least one track, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, at some point in this.
Max Roberts 04:22 Yes.
Max Roberts 04:25 Oh, we will
Logan Moore 04:27 Uh and the Metacritic score for this game
Logan Moore 04:31 was the worst in the history of the franchise.
Logan Moore 04:35 It's got a 64 out of 100 score on Metacritic.
Logan Moore 04:40 That's based on
Logan Moore 04:42 Reviews from 79 critics, of which I am one.
Logan Moore 04:46 And uh over on comic book, I gave this game a 2.
Logan Moore 04:51 5 out of 5, Max.
Logan Moore 04:54 Did not think it was all that great.
Logan Moore 04:57 Um and I can go into more specifics from there.
Logan Moore 05:00 Uh let's where where did you land on this one?
Max Roberts 05:04 We need to start with two things.
Max Roberts 05:08 Yes, this game scored worse than God of War Betrayal, the Java Mobile game.
Max Roberts 05:15 IGN gave God of War Betrayal a 9 out of 10.
Max Roberts 05:19 They gave Sons of Sparta a uh 6 out of 10.
Logan Moore 05:20 Oh.
Max Roberts 05:23 So, you know, there's that.
Logan Moore 05:25 They were really tapping into the razor phone technology of the time period.
Max Roberts 05:25 I
Max Roberts 05:29 They definitely were.
Logan Moore 05:30 It was
Max Roberts 05:30 I don't even see a score on Destructoid, but I digress.
Max Roberts 05:35 Alright, we need to have a confession.
Max Roberts 05:38 Everyone step into the booth.
Max Roberts 05:40 Forgive me.
Logan Moore 05:40 Is this a first for the entire show?
Max Roberts 05:42 I think it is.
Max Roberts 05:43 I think it's the first for the entire show.
Logan Moore 05:44 I was gonna ask you about this.
Max Roberts 05:46 Uh one of us did not beat this video game, and it was me.
Max Roberts 05:50 I could not finish, I could not bring myself to
Max Roberts 05:56 spend more time.
Max Roberts 05:58 I think I have eight to ten hours.
Max Roberts 06:02 I could turn on my PlayStation and find out.
Max Roberts 06:04 I'm in the eight to ten hour ballpark.
Max Roberts 06:06 out of or how long did it be day I think says like twenty?
Logan Moore 06:10 It's surprising yeah, it's surprisingly long, like
Max Roberts 06:15 Way longer than it should have been.
Logan Moore 06:15 Yeah, that's one of the weird things about this game.
Logan Moore 06:17 Yes, yes, for sure.
Max Roberts 06:18 Oh, that cannot be accurate.
Max Roberts 06:20 How long debate says the main story is 21 hours?
Max Roberts 06:25 completionist is 36, but then they also have a s a box now that says just how long to beat and it says 28 hours.
Max Roberts 06:32 I don't know if that's like an average of everything.
Max Roberts 06:35 This game is way too long.
Logan Moore 06:35 That seems like an average.
Logan Moore 06:37 Yeah
Max Roberts 06:37 I'm just gonna tell you that right now.
Max Roberts 06:39 So I'm uh I guess I'm about a third of the way through the game.
Max Roberts 06:42 Uh maybe half, depending on certain things.
Max Roberts 06:47 I could not
Max Roberts 06:49 Do it.
Max Roberts 06:50 Now I paid for it.
Max Roberts 06:52 I don't think the thirty dollars of my paying like really reflected on it.
Max Roberts 06:57 I think more
Max Roberts 06:58 of that was just the time in which this game came out.
Max Roberts 07:01 As you mentioned, it was February 12th, a shadow drop.
Max Roberts 07:04 It was rumored
Max Roberts 07:06 uh quite heavily for the game awards of twenty twenty five to be uh potentially announced and dropped then, um, but a couple months later it turns out.
Logan Moore 07:15 It was it was rumored like multiple times last year.
Logan Moore 07:18 For their summer state of play last year it was rumored.
Max Roberts 07:19 Mm-hmm.
Logan Moore 07:21 For their fall one it was rumored again.
Logan Moore 07:23 Like we had been hearing about this game for
Logan Moore 07:26 a very long time we knew that it existed for a hot minute.
Logan Moore 07:30 And I think that's also what contributes to its
Logan Moore 07:35 the disappointment we have with it as well.
Logan Moore 07:38 And we've talked about this before with other games like how expectations j can just kind of
Logan Moore 07:44 Not s not sync, but like really diminish how you view the final product if it's not, you know, doing what you expected of it.
Logan Moore 07:51 And when we heard that there was gonna be a Metroidvania God of War game, my
Logan Moore 07:55 My mind immediately jumped to something akin to like the Prince of Persia game that Ubisoft released a few years ago, like The Lost Crown.
Logan Moore 08:03 Like something in that vein, uh, which is more action-oriented.
Logan Moore 08:07 This game is
Logan Moore 08:08 action-oriented in its own right, but like the combat and the Prince of Persia Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown is pretty fantastic.
Logan Moore 08:15 There's a huge emphasis on platforming as well.
Logan Moore 08:17 That game is
Logan Moore 08:19 Excellent.
Logan Moore 08:20 That is a tight, really, really good, like AAA quality Metroidvania game from a major publisher.
Logan Moore 08:29 That's what I anticipated this was going to be like.
Max Roberts 08:31 And it takes sixteen hours to be.
Logan Moore 08:31 And it's not.
Logan Moore 08:34 Yeah.
Logan Moore 08:36 Yeah.
Max Roberts 08:38 It um you know I just wrote about that actually.
Max Roberts 08:41 This whole con not concept, but just this thing that happens when a th something leaks.
Max Roberts 08:48 Especially so far in advance and how you really can't win either way.
Max Roberts 08:52 Like either the expectations are so high because wow, that sounds amazing.
Max Roberts 08:57 These this this is gonna be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Max Roberts 09:01 Or it sounds so bad and then you don't even want that project to come to light.
Max Roberts 09:07 And even if the thing is announced and it's different than the leak
Max Roberts 09:10 you kinda lose either way.
Max Roberts 09:12 There's no sweet spot.
Max Roberts 09:13 And I I wrote about that in relation to the uh Super Mario Titans.
Max Roberts 09:19 leak uh that was going around.
Logan Moore 09:21 Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Max Roberts 09:22 Um because I was talking about how I missed like leaks of that kind where you would see like off-screen pictures that are blurry.
Logan Moore 09:32 People taking pictures with uh mobile phone circa two thousand eight or whatever.
Max Roberts 09:32 And
Max Roberts 09:34 Yes.
Max Roberts 09:36 Right.
Logan Moore 09:36 Yeah.
Max Roberts 09:37 So I miss that energy.
Max Roberts 09:38 Even if this is a and it it seems like Titans isn't a super big, you know, fake leak of some sort.
Max Roberts 09:45 But I miss those like elaborate creative
Max Roberts 09:48 leaks.
Max Roberts 09:49 Um but this has happened with with God of War Sons of Sparta.
Max Roberts 09:53 It could be happening with uh at the time of recording to like break the space-time continuum.
Max Roberts 09:58 Nintendo is rumored to have a Star Fox game out very soon this summer.
Logan Moore 10:03 Yeah.
Max Roberts 10:04 Uh that could be great, or that could suck.
Max Roberts 10:08 And
Max Roberts 10:09 We don't really know, but the leaks are like it's classic.
Max Roberts 10:12 So if it's not classic enough, people will be disappointed.
Max Roberts 10:14 If it's too classic, people will go, there's no innovation
Max Roberts 10:17 You really can't win.
Max Roberts 10:18 And I think uh Mega Cat Studios and Santa Monica kind of got pinched a little bit with the leaks going on so long.
Max Roberts 10:26 Um
Max Roberts 10:27 And then having it shadow drop right before Resident Evil Requiem and at least personally for me, right before Marathon.
Max Roberts 10:37 Just is not a good time for a 20 to 30 hour mid mid-roidvania.
Logan Moore 10:38 Yeah.
Max Roberts 10:46 Mid mid.
Max Roberts 10:47 It's very mid.
Logan Moore 10:49 Well I think like I don't think expectations like sunk the I I think the reveal of this in the subsequent shadow drop was actually a really smart idea.
Logan Moore 10:59 Because diving into this game, I was stoked.
Logan Moore 11:02 Like immediately after it was announced, I was like, new God of War game, baby, let's go, Max.
Logan Moore 11:06 We gotta play this.
Logan Moore 11:07 We gotta do an episode for this.
Logan Moore 11:09 And like I totally hooked you in.
Logan Moore 11:10 I was like
Logan Moore 11:11 We gotta play this, we gotta buy it, I'm buying it tonight, I'm playing it.
Logan Moore 11:14 PlayStation ended up sending me a code, but I would have bought it, you know, immediately that night.
Max Roberts 11:17 I know you would have.
Logan Moore 11:18 I was
Logan Moore 11:18 I w I was ready to rock and roll with this game and the initial reveal trailer, I had some like hesitancies with it, but I I didn't think it was like
Logan Moore 11:26 like from the jump, like, oh, this is hot trash or anything like that.
Logan Moore 11:30 It was only once I dove into the game and had spent, you know, probably t uh like around where you hopped off, like eight to ten hours, that I was like, ah
Logan Moore 11:39 I think this might actually not be very good.
Logan Moore 11:42 Like it it it took a while for it to really sink in that this wasn't what I hoped it would be.
Max Roberts 11:49 Right.
Logan Moore 11:50 Um
Logan Moore 11:51 And so, like, yeah, I think expectations do play a part in that.
Logan Moore 11:55 But to to reel back though, I I my biggest takeaway and the thing that I had kind of anchored my
Logan Moore 12:02 review around, which you can read on comic book, is like on paper, this is like a home run, and this is what I want to see PlayStation doing more of.
Logan Moore 12:15 is partnering with outside studios, having their developers who, you know, like Santa Monica is the they are the lore masters of God of War.
Logan Moore 12:24 They hold the keys to the saga.
Logan Moore 12:26 Like if you're gonna do something God of War, they have to be involved.
Logan Moore 12:29 And they were in this case.
Logan Moore 12:30 And so, like to have Santa Monica involved with this project and working with an outside studio to develop a game in a completely different genre that tells a story from a different time period, like
Logan Moore 12:43 I would love to see them do that with all sorts of different IP.
Logan Moore 12:47 Like we could we could tap into, you know, the obvious ones like Sly Cooper or something like that, but like also resistance and kill zone and
Logan Moore 12:55 You know, infamous.
Max Roberts 12:55 Well, they used to do this back in the day.
Logan Moore 12:57 Like there's Yeah Like Yes.
Max Roberts 12:58 There would be those kind of spin-offs.
Logan Moore 13:02 Yes.
Logan Moore 13:02 And like so just
Logan Moore 13:04 The simple idea of what this game is, I want to be a huge vocal supporter of because this is the type of path that I think PlayStation needs to continue down.
Logan Moore 13:17 Unfortunately, this game is not very good, and it really is probably going to make them
Logan Moore 13:26 hesitant to do anything like this in the future that they would potentially see as, you know, like damaging the IP or something like that.
Logan Moore 13:34 Because like God of War is the largest of the large when it comes to PlayStation.
Logan Moore 13:39 Like it is their
Logan Moore 13:40 Especially like original IP.
Logan Moore 13:42 I guess the only other thing that would maybe be like larger would be like the Spider-Man games or something like that.
Logan Moore 13:47 Those have sold like 50 million copies across like two or three games.
Max Roberts 13:49 Sure, but but Spider Man's not original Sony IP
Logan Moore 13:53 Yeah, Spider-Man's not Spider-Man's not original.
Logan Moore 13:55 That's what I'm that's what I'm saying.
Logan Moore 13:56 Like original PlayStation IP God of War is probably their biggest.
Max Roberts 13:58 I mean the last of us, not a bias here, but they b they're up there.
Max Roberts 14:03 I would think Horizon, I think, is
Logan Moore 14:07 Horizons up there too.
Logan Moore 14:08 Yeah.
Logan Moore 14:09 Those are all like the top five.
Logan Moore 14:11 Uncharted, Last of Us, God of War, Horizon.
Logan Moore 14:13 Like those are the biggest ones for sure.
Max Roberts 14:15 Anything that was getting a TV show, that would include Concord.
Logan Moore 14:20 Yeah.
Max Roberts 14:22 Never forget.
Logan Moore 14:23 But like yeah, it's
Logan Moore 14:27 I I I'm just trying to I I think the weird thing to like learning more about this game is like this was Mega Cat Studios idea, which that's great.
Logan Moore 14:35 I like that they you know even went and pitched this idea to PlayStation and that PlayStation was was receptive to it
Logan Moore 14:41 Cool, that's awesome, but like they're not the team to work with, unfortunately, on a game like
Logan Moore 14:50 this like their pedigree their their past games I think was like the they had the WrestleQuest game I believe was from them and that wasn't super well received
Max Roberts 14:59 They're kind of the middling developer.
Max Roberts 15:02 They have some stuff that's like on the higher end of the spectrum.
Max Roberts 15:04 They've got things that are definitely certainly on the low end.
Max Roberts 15:07 I think
Max Roberts 15:08 Right now, they basically have the keys to the Backyard Sports series and are re-releasing the old ones and making new versions of them, which is
Logan Moore 15:15 Yeah.
Max Roberts 15:19 the the computer kid in me is thrilled.
Max Roberts 15:21 Uh they're apparently not very great ports, which is slightly disappointing.
Max Roberts 15:25 They did do the angry video game nerd 8 bit adventure game.
Max Roberts 15:29 That apparently was well received.
Max Roberts 15:31 So like, you know
Max Roberts 15:33 There's some hits, there's some misses, probably more middling slash hit, you know, misses than one would uh one would consider viable
Logan Moore 15:42 Yeah, I forgot they did the five nights at Freddy's Into the Pit as well.
Logan Moore 15:47 Um
Logan Moore 15:48 So yeah, like they're not they're not a horrible studio, but like for them to get this what they have made
Logan Moore 15:56 over the past decade does not warrant them getting the keys to the God of War car, in my opinion.
Logan Moore 16:04 And I'm not saying that every studio that works on an IP needs to be this, you know
Logan Moore 16:08 established, you know, because they're like Sansaru came out of nowhere and I feel like they did a good job with like Sly 4 back in the day, for instance.
Max Roberts 16:14 R I P
Logan Moore 16:16 Yeah, R.
Logan Moore 16:17 I.
Logan Moore 16:17 P.
Logan Moore 16:18 Um, so not I I'm not opposed to giving studios shots to work on properties like this, but uh I just don't think they had it cut out for them.
Max Roberts 16:30 I think that's part of it.
Max Roberts 16:32 I I do.
Max Roberts 16:34 I think there might be a case of too many cooks in the kitchen though with this game in particular.
Max Roberts 16:39 You know, to get more like to the game itself, it's both Mega Cat Studios and Santa Monica Studio.
Max Roberts 16:47 And it is apparent that Santa Monica um
Max Roberts 16:54 So, first of all, Santa Maka had complete they did the whole story, as far as I've read and understand, is like they were the ones writing the story, kind of all the narrative stuff.
Max Roberts 17:07 That is easily the worst part of this game.
Max Roberts 17:10 And then on top of it, all of the Ragnarok menus, mechanics.
Logan Moore 17:17 Yeah.
Max Roberts 17:18 and everything are packed into this game, and that stuff does not translate down to a 2D Metroidvania.
Logan Moore 17:24 Especially since those were like considered the parts of the game that like got the most pushback.
Logan Moore 17:29 Like God of War and God of War Ragnarok are considered like
Logan Moore 17:32 Two of the best and most acclaimed games of the past what ten or fifteen years.
Max Roberts 17:36 Certainly on PlayStation.
Logan Moore 17:37 But like when people complain about those games, the things they complain about is like
Logan Moore 17:41 I don't like the loot.
Logan Moore 17:42 I don't like how the like leveling system works necessarily with like the attributes and the abilities and upgrades.
Max Roberts 17:46 Or the menus, like the gear menus and things.
Logan Moore 17:48 Yes.
Max Roberts 17:49 It's
Logan Moore 17:49 Yeah.
Max Roberts 17:50 And so I have to wonder, well, who made that decision?
Max Roberts 17:55 And I kinda wonder if the the holder of the keys was like, this is what we need now in God of War Games.
Logan Moore 18:01 Yeah, that's a great point.
Max Roberts 18:01 And you gotta
Max Roberts 18:03 And I'm I mean, just and we'll talk about it, I think, in an overall story section, but if this is what we have to look forward to in future God of War Games narratively
Max Roberts 18:14 Something terrible has happened at Santa Monica.
Max Roberts 18:18 This is this is bad.
Logan Moore 18:19 Well I don't want to dive too deep into it, but like
Logan Moore 18:24 the story of beats that are out there for this next supposed game don't sound great to me right now like the
Max Roberts 18:33 We'll t we'll talk about that in the the the varied, yeah, yeah.
Logan Moore 18:34 Well we'll talk more about that, the potential, what is it, the Faye spin-off or prequel or whatever.
Logan Moore 18:41 Um
Logan Moore 18:42 But yeah, it's just you're you're totally right.
Logan Moore 18:46 Santa Monica could have screwed up with this just as much as Mega Cat, and I shouldn't get Santa Monica a pass because they are a co-developer on this.
Logan Moore 18:54 Like all of the
Logan Moore 18:56 Legwork was definitely done by Mega Cat when it comes to creating the game itself.
Logan Moore 19:00 Uh but Santa Monica, I I I do wonder though, if it's like
Logan Moore 19:04 Santa Monica was approved or sorry, Mega Cat was like approved to make a game like this.
Logan Moore 19:09 Did they just, you know, was it Santa Monica saying, hey, you if you're making a God of War game, you have to put
Logan Moore 19:16 these five systems in it?
Logan Moore 19:17 Or was it Mega Cap being like, uh, if this is a God of War game, then this means we have to do this.
Logan Moore 19:22 We can't deviate from this.
Logan Moore 19:24 Like, were they too
Logan Moore 19:26 Did they felt like they had to stick too closely to the structure of the games that had come before, the more recent games specifically?
Logan Moore 19:33 Like who made these choices?
Logan Moore 19:34 I would love to know.
Max Roberts 19:36 We may never know.
Logan Moore 19:38 Yeah, I would I would I'm I'm like very fascinated by this game even though I don't I didn't particularly enjoy it and I think it's like completely
Logan Moore 19:48 unremarkable and forgettable.
Logan Moore 19:50 Um I would love to s somebody to talk to me about what happened here and how this all came together.
Logan Moore 19:57 Um
Logan Moore 19:58 Let's talk about like the game.
Logan Moore 20:01 Here's the other thing too that I want to bring up is like I mentioned before like you know
Logan Moore 20:06 the m Triple A Metroidvania's and like what my mind quickly went to, even outside of like expectations and thinking that this would be akin to like a
Logan Moore 20:16 you know, Prince of Persia or whatever.
Logan Moore 20:18 To make a Metroidvania game right now, you have to really be on your game.
Logan Moore 20:25 Because there are
Logan Moore 20:27 Some truly astounding Metroid Radia games that have come out the past few years.
Logan Moore 20:32 Hollow Knight, Silksong, obviously
Logan Moore 20:34 Prince of Persia, yes.
Logan Moore 20:36 And then we've got, you know, Castlevania's returning to the fray this year.
Logan Moore 20:39 We assume that'll be great.
Max Roberts 20:40 But also returning from the developers that made one of the greats in um oh my gosh, I can see the dead dead cells, thank you.
Logan Moore 20:40 Hopefully, please.
Logan Moore 20:46 Yeah.
Logan Moore 20:47 Dead cells, Dead Cells, the r uh Yeah
Max Roberts 20:51 There's that.
Max Roberts 20:52 Um you've got Mercury Steam doing really great with dread.
Max Roberts 20:57 Uh Metro Prime 4, not
Max Roberts 20:59 as we've talked about on this show, not like the best, but at the very least, is a competent Metroidvania, gameplay-wise at least.
Logan Moore 21:06 Yeah.
Max Roberts 21:08 Uh narratively maybe in the same ballpark.
Logan Moore 21:09 I mean even even that earlier this year, this uh Mio Memories, I think it's Memories in Orbit game, you
Max Roberts 21:14 Mm, I've heard that's excellent.
Logan Moore 21:16 Yeah, I've heard that game's fantastic.
Logan Moore 21:18 I've been really interested in that one.
Logan Moore 21:19 Like pound for pound, this genre has been consistently killing it, pr arguably more than any other.
Logan Moore 21:28 So if you're going to
Logan Moore 21:30 Make a God of War Metroidvania, there's are going to be naturally a lot of comparisons to a lot of other fantastic games that have come out over the past few years.
Logan Moore 21:39 And I think that's where the shortcomings of this game really sink in because on its own in a vacuum.
Logan Moore 21:47 I don't think this game is that bad.
Logan Moore 21:51 Now, does it have problems?
Logan Moore 21:52 Yes, but like it's more just
Logan Moore 21:56 A comparison is the Thief of Joy type situation to me.
Logan Moore 21:59 Like just knowing that there are so many other better Metroidvania games out there, and this is the one I'm spending my time playing, it really
Logan Moore 22:07 paled in comparison to a lot of the others out there.
Logan Moore 22:10 So that's what I struggled with I think while playing this was just thinking of so many others.
Max Roberts 22:13 Right.
Max Roberts 22:16 Now I do
Max Roberts 22:20 I do think there are some I wanna try and be a little positive here.
Max Roberts 22:24 I think there are some neat ideas, Metroidvania-wise at least.
Max Roberts 22:29 that I want to see in other games.
Max Roberts 22:31 I think one of my favorites is the little photo thing they did where you can attach a yeah, so there's a a bust of some
Logan Moore 22:36 Oh yeah, with the bust.
Max Roberts 22:42 Greek whatever, then you get different powers for it, and one of them is to like take a screenshot of the area and then tie it to the map.
Max Roberts 22:51 Uh that that's super handy.
Max Roberts 22:53 I know every game console now has a screenshot feature built in, so you could do this, but you'd have to leave the game, go in the album, find it.
Max Roberts 23:00 They like built it in and tied it.
Max Roberts 23:02 That's like a great idea.
Max Roberts 23:03 Other people should take that for sure.
Max Roberts 23:05 I think that'd be fun.
Max Roberts 23:06 I uh maybe uh that might be where it stops.
Max Roberts 23:11 Um there's
Max Roberts 23:14 I do I don't know if this was intentional.
Max Roberts 23:18 Part of me feels like it wasn't, but there's like so it's very
Max Roberts 23:25 It's 2D combat with pretty second aerial combat, but like, you know, you hit, you dodge, you can parry.
Max Roberts 23:32 It's it's basically the 3D God of War system.
Max Roberts 23:36 truncated down to 2D where you can dodge roll, parry, block, or attack.
Max Roberts 23:42 Um same kind of colors for props and all that thing.
Max Roberts 23:46 But because it's a 2D game, you can get high ground, low ground, you can get next and under characters and stuff.
Max Roberts 23:52 And so there's these little cheese moments.
Max Roberts 23:55 Where like you can be on a ledge beneath an enemy and the enemy just keeps running and they can't fall off the ledge because there's a wall there, and then you can just like upstab them, which always feels fun in a game.
Logan Moore 24:01 Mm-hmm.
Max Roberts 24:07 But I can't tell if that's like on purpose or right.
Logan Moore 24:10 Is this a feature or a bug?
Max Roberts 24:13 Like if I I don't know.
Max Roberts 24:14 It still made me feel good.
Max Roberts 24:16 Because you can just get beneath an enemy and and jab them and uh that always is fun.
Max Roberts 24:21 But
Max Roberts 24:22 The combat overall really I don't know if it's just me or if it's because it's turned it's very complex in a 2D space and they throw a lot of menus and tutorial prompts and all these things at you.
Max Roberts 24:37 But like I could never remember what I was supposed to dodge, parry, or counter with.
Max Roberts 24:42 And so I just basically would
Max Roberts 24:45 See an attack coming, roll to the other side, and then stab, stab, stab, and then roll to the other side.
Max Roberts 24:52 Basically, just that was how the combat felt to me was this dodge, attack, attack, attack.
Max Roberts 24:57 Dodge attack attack attack.
Max Roberts 24:59 Um It had like the v the disguise of complexity and at times it is complex where like you have to juggle all these systems.
Max Roberts 25:10 But in reality it's just poke with stick over and over again, um, and dodge when you're supposed to.
Logan Moore 25:17 Yeah, it feels very
Logan Moore 25:19 button mashy to me, which I know this is a God of War game, and God of War has always kind of been button mashy, but every God of War game has a pretty in-depth
Logan Moore 25:29 combo system of some sort with various moves that you can use and there's benefits to using those different moves so it behooves you to you know
Logan Moore 25:38 memorize all of the different button combos and stuff like that, or at least r memorize as many as you can, or the best ones.
Logan Moore 25:44 Um and there are elements of that within this game as well.
Logan Moore 25:48 They do try to add some combo systems and stuff
Logan Moore 25:51 to it as well.
Logan Moore 25:53 In my experience, using all of the different types of combat prompts that there are in the game and different co uh combinations uh rarely like
Logan Moore 26:06 did anything all that different.
Logan Moore 26:08 Like there wasn't any like major button combo moves that you could use that would all of a sudden deal out like major damage that I was then trying to pull off in
Logan Moore 26:18 uh when fighting enemies or bosses or anything like that.
Logan Moore 26:21 Most of the time I found that the best way to quickly
Logan Moore 26:25 nuke the health bars of enemies was to spam the basic attack.
Logan Moore 26:31 And that was about it.
Logan Moore 26:33 So yeah, like that's
Logan Moore 26:35 a problem when you the game tries to, you know, push you towards doing all of these different variations of attacks, and when you find that there's really no reason to, uh, that's not
Logan Moore 26:46 Great.
Logan Moore 26:47 So I I think that they really the combat needed some further balancing to make those different uh
Logan Moore 26:56 to make the more complex c uh combinations and button combos like worth doing because I don't think there really was.
Logan Moore 27:04 And not only that, but like when you would upgrade your abilities sometimes, like, you know, you would unlock, hey
Logan Moore 27:11 Here's a shield sky strike move of some sort.
Logan Moore 27:14 If you buy it, you'll unlock this move and you can use it.
Logan Moore 27:17 And then there would be like subsequent, you know
Logan Moore 27:20 Buy a level two version of that and our level three and a maximum version of that with each progressively dealing more damage.
Logan Moore 27:27 And like
Logan Moore 27:28 The I would like buy the maxed out versions of those and the damage I felt like they would do was often negligible.
Logan Moore 27:36 Now, given you're facing
Logan Moore 27:39 higher level enemies over the course of the game.
Logan Moore 27:42 So like I guess the damage is gonna seem about equal because if you're using the level one version of that move against a level one enemy early on
Logan Moore 27:52 It's gonna be equal to you using the maximum version of that move against a level four or five enemy or whatever later on.
Logan Moore 27:58 So like I guess that's the trade-off there, but like it just doesn't feel good still.
Logan Moore 28:05 Um
Max Roberts 28:06 Yeah, it just
Max Roberts 28:09 My biggest one of my biggest frustrations, I should say, was it felt like the combo button, like what you needed to do, was the same button as shield or parry.
Max Roberts 28:20 And so if you entered it in incorrectly, you would like shield or parry at the wrong time or you dodge and you're like, I meant to hit there.
Max Roberts 28:29 It just it felt like they were trying to cramp too much onto the buttons here.
Max Roberts 28:34 without maybe laying it out the right way.
Max Roberts 28:37 It just and they keep interrupting you with tutorials and prompts.
Max Roberts 28:41 It just
Max Roberts 28:42 And I think this is trying to incorporate all of the three D Ragnarok and twenty eighteen systems into a two D plane.
Max Roberts 28:52 Like they
Max Roberts 28:54 When you're making a Metroidvania, you should follow Metroidvania design principles, 2D combat principles, not 3D stuff and bring it to 2D
Max Roberts 29:04 And it just really frustrated me.
Max Roberts 29:08 Um the I re I one of the bosses I fought, I think was the wine boss in the winery.
Max Roberts 29:14 He's like all airborne.
Logan Moore 29:15 Oh yeah, yeah.
Max Roberts 29:15 And fighting anything in the air sucks in this game.
Logan Moore 29:16 Yeah.
Logan Moore 29:18 Yeah.
Max Roberts 29:19 It's just like you c you can't hit anything.
Logan Moore 29:19 Anything airborne stinks.
Max Roberts 29:22 You gotta jump at an angle and get close.
Max Roberts 29:24 There's sure you gotta slingshot but then you run out of your magic or whate it just was like
Max Roberts 29:29 It gets not fun very quickly and it's it's uh it it wears on you
Logan Moore 29:37 One of the things that I remembered here kind of scanning back through my notes and seeing something I mentioned my review that I also wanted to call out is like
Logan Moore 29:45 There's a lot of different equipment pieces in this game as well, like different um like spear handles and
Logan Moore 29:53 uh shield parts, like yeah, like they there's all sorts of different pieces of equipment that you can uh equip to Kratos.
Max Roberts 29:54 Shield
Logan Moore 30:00 And they all do different things.
Logan Moore 30:01 And one of the things that they do is give you like different
Logan Moore 30:06 uh attacks or different like finishers or something like that uh which are unique to those and
Logan Moore 30:15 The problem with that is that like you feel very early on like you need to kind of choose one of these that you want to start indexing your resources into.
Logan Moore 30:25 Because your resources feel pretty scarce for the vast majority of the game.
Logan Moore 30:29 And it's not until you get much later on and you've kind of unlocked everything and have
Logan Moore 30:35 uh ac been able to access the full map that you then have a lot of resources and feel like you can start dumping your uh um your upgradable resources into these additional equipment pieces and seeing how they are.
Logan Moore 30:50 And that sucks because I feel like I don't know if there's like a respec system in this game where you can like remove the upgrades you've put into the equipment pieces or something like that.
Logan Moore 31:00 I don't think there is.
Logan Moore 31:01 But like I would have enjoyed being able to upgrade some of these items at like lower tiers to get a better grip grip on like which ones I actually liked and which ones I didn't, and then really learn, you know
Logan Moore 31:14 I would like to pour more of my resources into this one to upgrade this.
Logan Moore 31:17 And instead, it just feels like you're kind of funneled into choosing one relatively early that you're putting most of your um
Logan Moore 31:28 your resources into.
Logan Moore 31:31 Maybe that's just how I played the game.
Logan Moore 31:34 But I really did feel like it wasn't really promoting any sort of like experimentation.
Logan Moore 31:41 um like a system like this would want to push you to do.
Max Roberts 31:45 I found myself really sticking to the gear that did damage over time.
Max Roberts 31:52 So I think early on I got a spear handle that would burn enemies you hit with it as you did and then I think I found one that poisoned over time and I kinda just stuck with that because everything else didn't seem
Max Roberts 32:06 It either was adding more complexity and I wanted less, or it just didn't seem worth it.
Max Roberts 32:13 So and it again, it was this
Max Roberts 32:18 It's this whole build and RPG type systems that just doesn't feel compatible.
Max Roberts 32:23 Even with a
Max Roberts 32:25 you know, this in God of War you would just I did it just because it was a necessity.
Max Roberts 32:29 Like I did not I was not in there building kits and and and trying to, you know, optimize my Kratos.
Max Roberts 32:35 And then when you get to the end game you just all you do is you look up best gear and then you go get it.
Max Roberts 32:41 Like you d it didn't
Max Roberts 32:43 It was never a system I wanted to engage with in the last two games.
Max Roberts 32:46 It's certainly not one I wanted to engage with here.
Max Roberts 32:48 And so I kind of just found what worked really early and focused mostly on upgrading
Max Roberts 32:55 defense and maneuverability like dodging and the shield parry timing and things like that.
Max Roberts 33:01 I was just like, I need to be able to move better in this world instead of trying to, you know
Max Roberts 33:07 maximize my combat skill with all these different moves and attacks.
Max Roberts 33:12 It just was like I just need light and heavy and maybe like some combos within that.
Max Roberts 33:19 And just
Max Roberts 33:20 It was overly complex
Logan Moore 33:23 I think this is something with gaming as a whole that's really starting to drive me nuts is like the
Logan Moore 33:29 I don't know, the menuification of everything.
Logan Moore 33:33 Like it feels like every game has like these various menus that it wants you to spend so much time within.
Logan Moore 33:41 Either like, you know, tweaking your gear or tweaking your upgrades.
Logan Moore 33:44 I mean Marathon does this a lot, which I know Marathon's a different type of game.
Logan Moore 33:49 I'm not throwing shade at Marathon, but that's like I know you've been playing a lot of that, so I invoke that
Max Roberts 33:52 Death Stranding.
Logan Moore 33:55 Yeah a little bit.
Max Roberts 33:57 Do you remember that?
Logan Moore 33:57 Uh I yeah.
Max Roberts 33:58 At least in the I haven't played two yet, but the first one it's like, now read an email.
Max Roberts 34:03 Here's the map.
Logan Moore 34:04 Yeah.
Logan Moore 34:05 There's just which I think is fine for certain games, you know, RPGs and stuff like that
Logan Moore 34:11 But like this like constant need to keep you in the menus, tweaking the things that you've collected is like way over the top.
Logan Moore 34:20 Like
Logan Moore 34:20 Uh I know the Neo games are really bad about that too.
Logan Moore 34:24 Um and I mean this is just
Logan Moore 34:28 Apropos of like nothing but like I just played Soros and that's like kind of the total opposite and it's like like you're getting upgrades and you're getting guns and stuff like that, but for the most part you are like
Logan Moore 34:41 shooting a lot and running and dodging and like it's great to have a gameplay centered game that feels like it wants to keep you
Logan Moore 34:51 Focused on the gameplay portion of it.
Logan Moore 34:53 And like that's what I feel like a lot of games are doing wrong right now.
Logan Moore 34:57 And the Sons of Sparta here is also at fault with that.
Max Roberts 34:58 I feel like
Max Roberts 35:02 I'm no game designer, so who am I to tell people how to do their jobs?
Max Roberts 35:06 I feel like if you want to have all these menus and systems and and you know, building and min-maxing and all that sort of stuff.
Max Roberts 35:14 I feel like the best place for it is like one is a hub.
Max Roberts 35:18 You know?
Max Roberts 35:19 Soros, you do a run.
Max Roberts 35:21 And I haven't played Soros, but I imagine it's a lot like Returnal.
Max Roberts 35:24 Like you do a run, you get the gear.
Max Roberts 35:27 And when you die, you go back to your ship or your base and then you could do some stuff.
Max Roberts 35:32 Hades is a great example of this.
Max Roberts 35:34 You wanna
Max Roberts 35:35 unlock new stuff in Hades or Hades 2.
Max Roberts 35:38 You do it when you're back, you know, at the home base.
Max Roberts 35:41 But when you're out on the run, the only time you're in the menus is when you clear a room and you're picking which boon you want to grab.
Max Roberts 35:49 And I think it I I have a I don't re I have a thought.
Logan Moore 35:49 Anthem did this.
Logan Moore 35:55 Anthem was structured in that way, sort of.
Max Roberts 35:55 I mean
Max Roberts 35:57 Right.
Max Roberts 35:58 I mean Destiny kind of in a way did that too, where you weren't you weren't building it out out while on patrol, but you would do it back at the tower or when you were in orbit.
Logan Moore 36:00 Destiny, yeah.
Logan Moore 36:07 But I think that worked to I mean to Destiny's credit, like I think that format, I agree with you.
Logan Moore 36:11 I think that works way better because like when you go to the tower, there's like more intentionality of like what you're doing.
Logan Moore 36:18 And it is
Logan Moore 36:19 Pilfering through your your your gear
Max Roberts 36:21 Yeah.
Max Roberts 36:22 And so if in God of War, like when you go to a shrine or you go to a bonfire, which is like the
Max Roberts 36:29 the save point where you do pour in your skill points.
Max Roberts 36:32 You're actually the only time you can change your skill points or upgrade gear is at a fire.
Max Roberts 36:38 But then all the other menus and equipping gear and stuff you can do out in the world.
Max Roberts 36:43 I feel like if we kind of just tied it all to one place and focus purely on the combat outside of it
Max Roberts 36:50 uh that could have helped in some ways.
Max Roberts 36:53 Um something.
Max Roberts 36:56 It's a thought
Logan Moore 36:58 There's a lot of things I could have done.
Logan Moore 37:00 One thing I will speak to that I know you cannot speak to in this game.
Logan Moore 37:06 Uh I think once in typical Metroidvania fashion, once you do get all the various like unlocks and items and upgrades in this game that allow you to fully access the world.
Logan Moore 37:21 It's fun to backtrack.
Logan Moore 37:22 It's fun to go back to all the areas.
Logan Moore 37:24 It's fun to get all the collectibles and stuff like that.
Max Roberts 37:24 Sure.
Logan Moore 37:27 I think that might speak more to just the format of this genre, perhaps, than it does.
Logan Moore 37:35 Sons of Sparta specifically and what it's doing here.
Logan Moore 37:38 But I kept telling you, like, if you just push forward in this game, like you will get to a point where you're having more fun with it.
Logan Moore 37:46 Cause I did get to that point as well, like
Max Roberts 37:49 How how far is it after getting a double jump?
Max Roberts 37:53 Because they make you wait eight to ten hours to get the double jump
Max Roberts 37:56 Which feels like I get that new movement is a key part of a Metroidvania.
Logan Moore 38:01 Yeah.
Max Roberts 38:03 But if if you're pacing those items hours and hours apart, especially like
Max Roberts 38:10 I get it also the tease, like, oh, I can go there eventually.
Max Roberts 38:14 That's exciting.
Max Roberts 38:15 But like when you're teasing the same thing for eight hours and I still can't do it, like stop.
Logan Moore 38:21 Well, there's some things in this game that you can actually this was the other thing I didn't like to about it.
Logan Moore 38:27 Maybe this was just
Logan Moore 38:28 me.
Logan Moore 38:29 Um but there are some things that block your way.
Logan Moore 38:32 Like did you see like the big red doors at any point in the game?
Max Roberts 38:35 Yes.
Logan Moore 38:37 Yeah.
Logan Moore 38:37 You can actually get through those with a secondary fire, I think on the like fire branch or whatever that you have.
Max Roberts 38:46 Okay
Logan Moore 38:47 Um there's like a secondary fire option.
Logan Moore 38:49 Every every weapon, every ranged weapon like that that you have has a secondary fire option.
Logan Moore 38:55 And that secondary fire, the main fire allows you to get through, you know, if you're firing the branch, it allows you to burn the thorns away or whatever and get through there.
Logan Moore 39:03 But the secondary one is a bomb and it just blows up those doors.
Logan Moore 39:08 And so like for probably 15 to 20 hours in this game, like I kept seeing these doors.
Logan Moore 39:15 And I was like, man, when am I gonna unlock the thing that allows me to tear these down?
Logan Moore 39:20 And then
Logan Moore 39:22 lo and behold, it's something I've had on my person for well over half the game at this point in time.
Logan Moore 39:29 And I just again maybe I totally missed something.
Logan Moore 39:32 You clearly are in the same boat as me where you didn't know this.
Max Roberts 39:34 Yeah, I had no clue
Logan Moore 39:36 Um but like yeah, there's there's a handful of things that block your progress or don't allow or not block your progress, but don't allow you to get to some of these secondary paths or unlock certain chests or
Logan Moore 39:48 g collect certain items uh that you have a way to get through.
Logan Moore 39:52 You just don't know about it because the game didn't really do a great job of telling you.
Logan Moore 39:57 Which is weird because when you get these items, there's like the whole tutorial section where it's like
Logan Moore 40:02 Teaching you how to use it.
Max Roberts 40:04 Yeah, they tell you what to do constantly in this game.
Max Roberts 40:07 I'm shocked that they would
Logan Moore 40:08 Yeah, yeah.
Max Roberts 40:10 Uh That's that's frustrating.
Logan Moore 40:13 So yeah.
Max Roberts 40:14 I dug see I th that's again just a
Max Roberts 40:19 That's like falling short in a Metroidvania.
Max Roberts 40:21 It's cool, like Samus in Super Metroid, right?
Max Roberts 40:26 You can do the wall jump and if you do combine the um
Max Roberts 40:30 the super fast running you can like shine spark up, right?
Max Roberts 40:33 Like that that's not explicitly told to you on the Super Nintendo.
Max Roberts 40:37 Those are things you can you can figure out or you read the manual.
Max Roberts 40:41 But those don't bar crucial progress or like they're just kind of things that you discover about the movement in the kit.
Logan Moore 40:45 Yeah.
Max Roberts 40:53 Okay.
Logan Moore 40:55 Yeah.
Logan Moore 40:56 Shouldn't have even told you that, I guess.
Logan Moore 40:57 I mean I guess it's a good thing I did because if you ever went back to the game, then yeah.
Max Roberts 40:57 And uh yep
Logan Moore 41:01 I would say this, like if you weren't enjoying the game, then I would not recommend going back to it.
Logan Moore 41:05 I again I think the enjoyment of collecting all this stuff
Logan Moore 41:10 largely stems from the fact that I have completionist monkey brain and just get the simple satisfaction of seeing
Logan Moore 41:19 100% of everything collected in these types of games and I enjoy that.
Logan Moore 41:25 Um But yeah, as far as like
Logan Moore 41:29 what makes it special otherwise.
Logan Moore 41:31 There's really not anything of else special.
Logan Moore 41:34 It's just, oh cool, I can now access this area and stuff like that.
Logan Moore 41:38 But I don't know.
Logan Moore 41:39 I mean I mean in that sense they didn't do
Logan Moore 41:43 irreparable harm to the Metroidvania genre as a whole, I guess, in in that way.
Logan Moore 41:47 Like, is it a great one?
Logan Moore 41:49 Is it does it feel like this is w a Metroidvania game that's pushing the genre forward?
Logan Moore 41:54 No, but like it it's
Logan Moore 41:57 It does its job, I guess, like it's it's fine.
Logan Moore 42:01 Um Yeah
Max Roberts 42:04 Yeah.
Logan Moore 42:07 You want to talk about the story?
Max Roberts 42:09 I do.
Logan Moore 42:10 In the characters?
Logan Moore 42:11 Let me say this first.
Logan Moore 42:13 Um
Logan Moore 42:15 When I heard this game was gonna have Demos in it, I was so hyped, dude.
Logan Moore 42:19 Because like those were the original rumors.
Max Roberts 42:20 Mm-hmm.
Logan Moore 42:21 I guess we're getting back to like talking about how expectations ruined.
Logan Moore 42:26 uh this game in some sense.
Logan Moore 42:27 I was so bummed that we played as Kratos in this game.
Logan Moore 42:30 I did not want to see Kratos.
Logan Moore 42:32 I I I I
Logan Moore 42:34 First off, cool C T T Carson back in a God of War game, even if it's just like, no whatever, this little odd spinoff.
Max Roberts 42:42 He probably did all of his lines in one day.
Logan Moore 42:42 I like I like
Logan Moore 42:45 Probably.
Logan Moore 42:46 It's cool how they set up the story though and like, oh, Calliope, I'll tell you this story.
Logan Moore 42:51 Like I like how I like that aspect of it.
Max Roberts 42:52 It's nice.
Logan Moore 42:54 Yes.
Max Roberts 42:55 It is
Max Roberts 42:56 I will just say it is strange to hear TC Carson be gentle as Kratos.
Logan Moore 43:02 Yes.
Max Roberts 43:02 Which I'm I I'm not saying that Kratos as a character does not have those moments.
Max Roberts 43:07 Just look at 2018 in Ragnarok.
Max Roberts 43:09 or even Chains of Olympus a little bit.
Max Roberts 43:13 But it is weird to hear the original voice of Kratos do that, which is cool.
Logan Moore 43:16 Yeah
Max Roberts 43:20 I'm I'm not knocking it.
Max Roberts 43:21 It just was weird to my brain because, you know, there's like six games of him being Zeus Athena Now he's like, Calliope, I will tell you a story.
Logan Moore 43:30 Yeah.
Logan Moore 43:40 Nice to see Kratos in it.
Logan Moore 43:42 But the original rumors that this was gonna be like a Demos game and you're gonna I mean that was like the thing out there.
Logan Moore 43:48 It's like, oh it's a God of War, it's a Metroidvania, and it involves Demos.
Logan Moore 43:52 Like immediately I'm like boom.
Logan Moore 43:54 Demo spin-off, let's go, like uh
Max Roberts 43:57 Demos trapped in Hades, you know, or trying to get back to his brother like this would be sick.
Logan Moore 44:03 Yeah, something like that would I mean I yeah, we had all sorts of ideas going through our heads.
Max Roberts 44:08 Come on, because oh my gosh, I that would have been so sick.
Logan Moore 44:09 And then we find out that
Max Roberts 44:11 The end game could have been the boss fight with Kratos Ghost of Sparta
Logan Moore 44:16 Yeah, they could have done so many cool things.
Logan Moore 44:18 And instead you just get Demos as uh I don't want to say annoying.
Logan Moore 44:25 Cause I wouldn't say he's annoying.
Max Roberts 44:25 Oh, I will.
Max Roberts 44:26 He's atrocious
Logan Moore 44:29 He's kind of annoying.
Logan Moore 44:30 He's not in it enough, I guess.
Logan Moore 44:33 Or he's in it, he's in it a lot, but like he's not constantly with you because at the end of every scene, each character like strangely
Max Roberts 44:39 And he leaves
Max Roberts 44:44 You know hold on, we've kind of we didn't mention it
Max Roberts 44:52 But this game is co-op as well, but only after you beat the game.
Logan Moore 44:55 Only at the end.
Logan Moore 44:57 Yeah.
Max Roberts 44:58 And I'm telling you right now, listener, if this game had co-op out of the gate.
Logan Moore 44:59 Which is really insane.
Max Roberts 45:06 I would have beaten it because we did that with Resident Evil 5 and 6.
Logan Moore 45:06 You would have beat it.
Max Roberts 45:11 Like the actually co-op would help this game so much just because playing with a friend would have been, you know, we could suffer together.
Logan Moore 45:19 I would have pulled a Sam in Return of the King and would have thrown you on my shoulders and carried you up the Sons of Sparta Mount Doom.
Max Roberts 45:25 I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you
Logan Moore 45:30 I would have we would we would have we would have done it.
Logan Moore 45:33 I bring that I just watched that movie like two hours ago, so that's very fresh in my mind.
Logan Moore 45:38 Um
Max Roberts 45:38 I think about that all the time, so you're not alone.
Logan Moore 45:41 Yeah, the co-op we didn't mention that.
Logan Moore 45:43 I didn't play it, but like that was one of the selling points of the game though it's like hey there's co-op in it and then
Max Roberts 45:49 That would have been cool with because you can feel like every cutscene, demos just leaves
Max Roberts 45:57 And then when a new cutscene starts, Kratos will go, Demos, and then he just like jumps out of a tree.
Max Roberts 46:02 And I'm like, where you been?
Max Roberts 46:04 I've been struggling over here.
Max Roberts 46:05 You could have like helped me this whole time.
Max Roberts 46:07 Why are you, you know?
Max Roberts 46:09 And just whatever.
Logan Moore 46:09 He shows up for the boss fights though.
Logan Moore 46:12 He throws down in the boss fights with you.
Max Roberts 46:12 Sure he does.
Max Roberts 46:14 Yep, thanks.
Logan Moore 46:16 He d hardly deals any damage, but like he's there.
Logan Moore 46:19 He's doing it.
Logan Moore 46:23 So you hate Demos
Max Roberts 46:25 Yeah, it was
Logan Moore 46:27 You hate the Robin voice actor.
Max Roberts 46:30 No, I love I love Scott uh where is it Scott Menville?
Max Roberts 46:35 So yes, uh Demos is also voiced by Robin from Teen Titans and many other things.
Max Roberts 46:40 So that immediately throws me off because it's all I hear now.
Max Roberts 46:44 But he's just both him and Kratos.
Max Roberts 46:49 talk way too much, are way too like sensitive for a pair of Spartans in training.
Max Roberts 46:57 I remember a scene, I forget which God of War game, and it may have just been like a thing, like a dialogue.
Max Roberts 47:03 But Kratos basically talks about how they raise a Spartan.
Max Roberts 47:06 Like they throw you on a mountain and you gotta kill the wolves and get back in three days, and like whoever survives, like they go on
Max Roberts 47:15 None of that is here.
Max Roberts 47:17 Like none of that energy that you would expect from everything pop culture has taught you about Spartans and then what you may uh actually know about Spartan history.
Max Roberts 47:30 It just doesn't feel like any of this fits in the world of God of War.
Max Roberts 47:35 And I'm reading the plot, and like there's a part where Krat you know at the end I guess Kratos feels guilty for pushing
Max Roberts 47:41 Vicilus Vassilis away.
Max Roberts 47:44 I'm like Kratos doesn't feel guilt and d except for killing his wife and daughter, and then not until he's in Norse land.
Max Roberts 47:53 Like it
Logan Moore 47:54 I think Kratos defin I mean I think Kratos definitely had emotions and depth prior to where we see him in the mainline games, for sure.
Logan Moore 48:02 Like, but
Max Roberts 48:03 Sure, I just think maybe we talk I don't know, he talks a bit much.
Max Roberts 48:07 And there was
Logan Moore 48:07 There's a lot of dialogue in this game for sure, yeah.
Max Roberts 48:10 There was a part.
Max Roberts 48:12 This is one of the last things I did in the game.
Max Roberts 48:14 That really kind of was like maybe the straw that broke the camel's back.
Max Roberts 48:19 You get to this griffin in the game.
Logan Moore 48:23 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Max Roberts 48:23 Oh, it's time to fight a griffin.
Max Roberts 48:26 Let's go.
Max Roberts 48:27 Like and if this was a PS2 God of War game, pfft, we'd be ripping the wings off, snapping the net, you know, the whole shabang.
Max Roberts 48:37 They like get ready to fight it and it goes, wait children, I will help you.
Max Roberts 48:42 And it's like this motherly griffin that then later shows up for you to do a shmup section.
Max Roberts 48:48 Which honestly, like, that's fun, you know, to throw in just a completely different genre for free.
Logan Moore 48:51 That's fine, yeah.
Max Roberts 48:52 Yeah, whatever.
Logan Moore 48:53 That's the only time that happens too, I think.
Max Roberts 48:55 Sure
Logan Moore 48:55 It's just that one brief sequence
Max Roberts 48:56 But it was just this like motherly griffin that's like, oh, I haven't seen this missing boy, but thank you for freeing me.
Max Roberts 49:02 I'll leave now.
Max Roberts 49:03 I was like
Max Roberts 49:05 What are we doing?
Max Roberts 49:07 Why am I not murdering this thing?
Logan Moore 49:07 The one
Logan Moore 49:10 I think to me the largest issue with the game's story is is Vasilis because he serves as the MacGuffin of
Logan Moore 49:20 The game, which is, you know, the thing they're trying to often uh he's the center of this entire journey that they're going on.
Logan Moore 49:27 They have to find Vasilis.
Logan Moore 49:30 But he's invoked
Logan Moore 49:32 So many times, and they talk about him so much, and you never see him, and you have because you never see him, you don't have connection to him as a player.
Logan Moore 49:43 So you don't really have any sort of like
Logan Moore 49:46 emotional bond to this character and they're like, oh my gosh, I hope he's really not dead.
Logan Moore 49:51 And it's like, well, I I don't really care if he is, I guess, because like I don't know who this person is
Max Roberts 49:56 And Kratos doesn't seem to care.
Max Roberts 49:59 Like Kratos just is doing it because Demos is doing it
Logan Moore 50:03 Yeah, like the whole adventure is about it's supposed to kind of be about evolving Kratos and Demos' relationship, but even the way it does that is not
Logan Moore 50:14 I don't know, it's fine.
Logan Moore 50:16 Like there's there's some nice little moments throughout where Kratos kind of lets his guard down and talks about how important Demos is to him and stuff like that.
Logan Moore 50:24 It's like, okay, like that better contextualizes why
Logan Moore 50:29 Like the events of, you know, God of War Ghost of Sparta and stuff like that, why Demos was so important to him as a child.
Logan Moore 50:35 Okay, that that's fine.
Logan Moore 50:36 But like this constant pursuit of Vasilis.
Logan Moore 50:41 Is just especially with what you had said before.
Logan Moore 50:45 This game is twenty to twenty-five hours long.
Logan Moore 50:50 And when they introduced this quest too, like near the start of the game, I thought this was just gonna be like a quick little, like, hey, this kid's missing.
Logan Moore 50:59 Like, can you go to see if you can find him?
Logan Moore 51:01 And I thought like
Logan Moore 51:03 On the way to trying to find this kid, like something would happen and would kick off like a larger chain of events.
Logan Moore 51:11 that you know would then like fall into like the actual huge thrust of the plot.
Logan Moore 51:17 And it turns out no, like this is the plot.
Max Roberts 51:17 Zus
Logan Moore 51:21 Is like you're just looking for this
Logan Moore 51:24 Lost Spartan kid to have fun for 20 hours.
Logan Moore 51:28 And obviously, it's not a things happen throughout the course of the game, you fight plenty of bosses and you do all sorts of things.
Logan Moore 51:35 But like
Logan Moore 51:36 That's it.
Logan Moore 51:38 Like, there's nothing really changing at the heart of the plot in this game.
Logan Moore 51:42 And you get to the end and you finally find him, and the whole reveal is that like
Logan Moore 51:47 Oh, he wasn't weak at all, actually, 'cause like I don't know, Kratos had like been hard on him because he thought he was weak, and you find out that he died fighting like a Spartan should, and he had an honorable death and
Logan Moore 52:00 that makes Kratos feel bad and stuff like that and Kratos learns a lesson or something.
Logan Moore 52:06 I I don't know.
Logan Moore 52:07 But like you don't feel bad once you actually find this kid because you just
Logan Moore 52:13 Like I said, he's the MacGuffin.
Logan Moore 52:15 He is a plot device more than he is an actual person that we as the player are ever meant to care about.
Logan Moore 52:24 So it's just like
Max Roberts 52:25 It's
Logan Moore 52:26 Okay, like
Max Roberts 52:29 Yeah, it's so it's honestly exhausting just even reading it, you know, 'cause so I got
Max Roberts 52:39 I got basically on the Wikipedia page.
Max Roberts 52:42 I'm like three, four paragraphs into the story here.
Max Roberts 52:44 And like so basically we, you know, I'm
Logan Moore 52:46 Well, did you read the part I was gonna ask you about this?
Logan Moore 52:49 So the one big there's a couple like revelations, I guess, in this game.
Logan Moore 52:54 I don't even want to say revelations.
Logan Moore 52:56 It's too strong of a word.
Logan Moore 52:57 There's a couple moments in this game where they try to, like, hey, let's hone in on this aspect of the God of War lore a little bit and try to further flesh this out.
Logan Moore 53:05 A lot of that is the relationship with like, you know
Logan Moore 53:08 Kratos and Demos, and then also the relationship we mentioned before, showing a softer side of Kratos before Ares took control of him, before he killed his family, stuff like that.
Logan Moore 53:18 But also
Logan Moore 53:21 Uh we meet Atreus.
Max Roberts 53:24 Yes, I di Yeah, I did read that.
Logan Moore 53:24 Did you get to that part?
Max Roberts 53:26 So we the inspo
Logan Moore 53:27 Or I guess you meet him, you meet him.
Logan Moore 53:30 It's Aeus or whatever, or Aeus or however they say his name.
Max Roberts 53:34 Yeah.
Logan Moore 53:34 Uh and then eventually it's revealed that like, oh, well his full name was Atreus.
Logan Moore 53:40 And it's like, oh my gosh, because like that's a big
Logan Moore 53:44 moment of God of War 2018 because like isn't that told like at the very end of that game he's like son
Max Roberts 53:45 It's a huge moment at the Yeah.
Max Roberts 53:49 It's at the end when they're walking down uh the hill after spreading the ashes, they're like
Max Roberts 53:56 Yeah, the one thing I don't get dad is all of the giant murals call me Loki, and he's like, oh, Loki, that's what your mother wanted to call you, but I named you after
Max Roberts 54:06 you know, a fellow Spartan, like one of the greatest Spartans I knew, you know, blah blah blah.
Logan Moore 54:10 Yeah, but but then the kid you meet, Aeus or Aeus, Atreus, whatever you want to call him, is like just li is just less like
Max Roberts 54:11 Atreus.
Max Roberts 54:15 Is Atreus, yeah.
Logan Moore 54:19 dopey kid kind of in the game.
Logan Moore 54:21 Like, I don't know, he's not dopey, but like we when you think up like who the original Atreus was when Kratos tells this story in God of War twenty eighteen, you're like, oh wow, I bet that's like this like
Max Roberts 54:33 You know who popped into my mind?
Max Roberts 54:36 I know this isn't actually who it was, but like in my head, it's the Spartan you fight in God of War 2.
Max Roberts 54:41 Like this
Max Roberts 54:43 Which is the way like they told more emotional storytelling for Kratos in a five-minute boss fight, silhouetted a beautiful oh my gosh, what a fight.
Logan Moore 54:43 Yeah.
Max Roberts 54:53 And then, you know, a great reveal.
Max Roberts 54:55 And like
Max Roberts 54:58 You know, I'm all for the I'm all for the name drop.
Max Roberts 55:00 I'm all for like these little Easter eggs.
Max Roberts 55:02 I mean in that same paragraph here on the Wikipedia page that you know
Max Roberts 55:06 Kratos the Kratos is making her the flute that she plays in Chains of Olympus.
Max Roberts 55:10 Like cool.
Max Roberts 55:11 Like I love it.
Max Roberts 55:12 Little lore dumps, super neat.
Logan Moore 55:14 Mm-hmm.
Max Roberts 55:15 That's fun.
Max Roberts 55:16 It's not gonna impact future games really.
Max Roberts 55:20 um in any meaningful way.
Max Roberts 55:23 So I'm I'm cool with it.
Max Roberts 55:24 Honestly, you know, the boat captain.
Max Roberts 55:27 Like he keeps getting name drops in subsequent games.
Max Roberts 55:29 Like he's obviously in the core trilogy, but like every game afterward, there's some Easter egg with the boat captain.
Max Roberts 55:35 It's just fun.
Max Roberts 55:36 Um
Logan Moore 55:38 They should have kept who Atreus is a m a mystery, and I say this because
Logan Moore 55:44 I don't I guess I'll never if I were if we were to replay God of War 2018, like I would never really think about this game, really.
Logan Moore 55:51 I'm not saying like, oh, Sons of Sparta ruined how I think about this, but like
Logan Moore 55:56 Our only touchstone to who the real Atreus is, is like just this kid.
Logan Moore 56:03 And all of the kids in this game are kind of
Logan Moore 56:08 G goofy.
Logan Moore 56:09 I I don't know.
Logan Moore 56:10 Like I don't know.
Logan Moore 56:12 It's just it doesn't help that you know
Max Roberts 56:15 Mm-hmm.
Logan Moore 56:15 Maybe not goofy.
Logan Moore 56:16 Again, that's a horrible way to put it, but kind of what we said at the top.
Logan Moore 56:20 Demos being voiced by Robin does not sit right with me.
Max Roberts 56:23 It doesn't compute.
Logan Moore 56:25 It doesn't compute at all.
Logan Moore 56:27 So like D AS being
Logan Moore 56:29 Played by Jack Quaid, who is playing this like this just does not work in my brain.
Logan Moore 56:36 This is not what I'm thinking of when I'm playing the other God of War games.
Logan Moore 56:40 It's like, oh yeah, you know, the original Atreus, he was just this little eight-bit little boy.
Max Roberts 56:40 Yeah.
Max Roberts 56:44 Does Jack Quaid reprise the role in Atreus Goes to College?
Logan Moore 56:45 And uh maybe
Max Roberts 56:48 You know, like I don't know.
Max Roberts 56:50 Um
Max Roberts 56:52 It's I wrote down like ran into other Spartan boys.
Max Roberts 56:56 They do not like teenage Spartans, I imagine.
Max Roberts 56:59 Like I it just
Max Roberts 57:01 Everything narratively about this game was off-putting and did not feel in line with the franchise in a way that I've come to expect over the course of
Max Roberts 57:12 six, seven, eight other games over twenty years.
Logan Moore 57:12 Twenty plus years.
Logan Moore 57:15 Yeah.
Max Roberts 57:16 And the fact that this was written by the team at Santa Monica, I like something
Max Roberts 57:23 I don't know.
Max Roberts 57:25 I don't know if they're like, hey, it's a side thing, we'll just crank it out.
Max Roberts 57:30 But like this just did not feel in line with what I've come to expect.
Logan Moore 57:36 Yeah.
Logan Moore 57:37 I wonder if this game's length, which we talked about being an issue.
Logan Moore 57:44 I wonder if the game's length is because the story they wrote was too long?
Max Roberts 57:49 Possibly
Logan Moore 57:50 Or if it was the inverse and the game was too long, and then they had to write a story that matched that.
Max Roberts 57:57 Again, we'll never know.
Max Roberts 57:59 I mean, if we look at the credits, the narrative director was Matthew Sophos, lead writer was Yep.
Logan Moore 58:05 Who's the narrative Matt Sophos is like the narrative director of God of War.
Logan Moore 58:11 Like
Logan Moore 58:11 as a whole.
Max Roberts 58:12 He tw he he wrote twenty eighteen with Corey.
Logan Moore 58:12 Like he's like he's alongside Cory is like the
Max Roberts 58:18 He was the narrative director on Ragnarok.
Max Roberts 58:20 He helped write Valhalla.
Max Roberts 58:22 Like he should be good company.
Max Roberts 58:25 Richard Zan Zangrand uh Gaubert was the lead writer.
Max Roberts 58:32 He also wrote God of War, Ragnarok, Valhalla
Max Roberts 58:39 In good co you know, like good company still.
Max Roberts 58:42 Uh theoretically, Orion Walker, I mean again, same kind of crew.
Max Roberts 58:46 All these people basically brought in during the 2018 kind of reboot of not even reboot, but just the
Logan Moore 58:52 Yeah, it's like na it's not like these guys are nobodies.
Logan Moore 58:54 Like that's why it's that much more
Max Roberts 58:56 They've worked on God of War for the last almost I mean, actually worked on God of War for over a decade because of obviously the game was in development beforehand.
Logan Moore 58:57 Disappointing.
Logan Moore 58:59 Yes
Max Roberts 59:07 So it's
Max Roberts 59:08 It's slightly concerning.
Logan Moore 59:09 This is in a situation where like with when God of War was it with Ragnarok when it came out or something?
Logan Moore 59:16 I don't know.
Logan Moore 59:16 I I know there was like wasn't there a whole controversy with that game?
Logan Moore 59:20 Where like people took issue with certain writing elements and they're like, Alana Pierce was the one who screwed this up.
Logan Moore 59:27 She probably wrote this in the game in the game.
Max Roberts 59:27 There was
Max Roberts 59:29 There was some backlash for Alana Pierce specifically.
Logan Moore 59:30 And
Max Roberts 59:33 Un unf you know, unfounded uh criticism, I believe.
Logan Moore 59:35 Yes, that well that's what I'm saying is like when people when people have issues with writing, they immediately go to like
Logan Moore 59:42 Well, some junior writer probably screwed this up in the game, and it's like you you actually look at the writing credits on this game and it's like, oh, it's the God of War Braintre that has
Logan Moore 59:54 led the franchise for the past decade or more, essentially.
Logan Moore 59:58 Uh okay, that's weird.
Logan Moore 01:00:01 Like, I I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:00:01 Yeah.
Logan Moore 01:00:02 You just don't expect this to from them.
Max Roberts 01:00:03 Right.
Max Roberts 01:00:04 And so it's just that's what makes it feel
Max Roberts 01:00:10 Weird and like disconnected, and uh it kind of goes back to my too many cooks in the kitchen.
Max Roberts 01:00:16 We'll never know what this relationship and dynamic was like
Max Roberts 01:00:20 unless some big, you know, story, oral history type thing comes out.
Max Roberts 01:00:25 And I don't think maybe just because the IP is so big, it is possible one day.
Max Roberts 01:00:32 But because of this game and its reception, like I don't think we'll ever garner enough interest for that type of work to be done.
Logan Moore 01:00:39 Probably not.
Max Roberts 01:00:40 I think it would be fascinating.
Max Roberts 01:00:42 To really learn how this game was developed outside of like the promo videos that PlayStation was putting out after the shadow drop to help kind of like promote the game.
Logan Moore 01:00:42 Yeah.
Max Roberts 01:00:52 Um
Max Roberts 01:00:53 It was I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:00:56 I'm I'm concerned, and we'll talk about the future of God of War here at the end, but I the story was
Max Roberts 01:01:04 was my biggest deterrent and reason for for quitting the game.
Max Roberts 01:01:08 Like the gameplay I can I could power through that and could get in a groove, but the story was really agonizing to me.
Logan Moore 01:01:13 Mm-hmm.
Logan Moore 01:01:19 What I think the other thing that wore on me the more that I played this game
Logan Moore 01:01:25 And this wasn't I I I was somebody who was more forgiving of it up front.
Logan Moore 01:01:29 I I know people kind of hated this element from the jump, and that's the the art direction.
Logan Moore 01:01:36 A lot of people were immediately like, oh, this looks like crap.
Logan Moore 01:01:39 And when I first thought I was like, no, this doesn't look bad.
Logan Moore 01:01:41 I think this actually looks pretty good
Logan Moore 01:01:43 I'm fine with this.
Logan Moore 01:01:44 And the more I played it, no, I don't took it.
Logan Moore 01:01:47 I don't think this looks very good actually.
Logan Moore 01:01:48 Uh I d I think this game is not
Logan Moore 01:01:51 Uh very good to look at for a long period of time.
Logan Moore 01:01:55 It looks the my problem with it is that it's like this fake retro.
Logan Moore 01:02:01 If you wanted to actually make
Logan Moore 01:02:04 A God of War game that looked uh 16-bit or whatever, 32-bit, I don't know.
Logan Moore 01:02:11 Like, you gotta go for it.
Logan Moore 01:02:13 Like, it's like the game is 3D
Logan Moore 01:02:17 Or 2.
Logan Moore 01:02:18 5D or whatever, and then they like slap one of these filters on it.
Logan Moore 01:02:21 And they're like, now we're retro.
Max Roberts 01:02:23 It ca it kinda gives that feel.
Logan Moore 01:02:23 And it's like, no.
Max Roberts 01:02:26 It I didn't like it from the onset
Max Roberts 01:02:32 And then I was like, okay, it's fine.
Max Roberts 01:02:34 Like it's it's totally passable while playing the game.
Max Roberts 01:02:38 I think
Max Roberts 01:02:40 My problem is it is it is art made of pixels, but it is not pixel art.
Max Roberts 01:02:48 I think that's like my key problem with it.
Max Roberts 01:02:51 Um
Max Roberts 01:02:52 And at a distance, it just kind of like you said, like has a filter over it is kind of what the it feels like.
Max Roberts 01:03:00 You know, you're sitting eight feet back from your your TV.
Max Roberts 01:03:03 It just
Max Roberts 01:03:04 It lacks something.
Max Roberts 01:03:05 And then the other part of it is the animation.
Max Roberts 01:03:11 Which I think is why.
Max Roberts 01:03:14 the art direction isn't pixel art, it's art with pixels, is because they basically did like
Max Roberts 01:03:23 I think the term is rotoscoping.
Max Roberts 01:03:27 Um Jordan Menture did this in the original Prince of Persia, where basically he would take picture videos of him doing something, like sword fighting.
Max Roberts 01:03:37 And then would animate over those pictures frame by frame.
Max Roberts 01:03:42 And that's why the original Prince of Persia has such smooth animation and is it was revelatory at the time.
Max Roberts 01:03:48 And what Madcat did here was they took animations from the original God of War games, like the Minotaur or something.
Max Roberts 01:03:57 and animated those kind of like not necessarily frame by frame, but like recreated the animations of a 3D object in a 2D space.
Max Roberts 01:04:08 So that would feel familiar.
Max Roberts 01:04:09 And some of that does come through.
Max Roberts 01:04:11 Like you you can you can enjoy it, especially if you have that lineage.
Max Roberts 01:04:16 But
Max Roberts 01:04:18 It just like they tried they basically tried to do Prince of Persia, and I don't think they did it well, or it didn't work with this style of com like there's a mismatch.
Max Roberts 01:04:31 somewhere in here.
Max Roberts 01:04:32 And I think it's art direction, animation, and gameplay like not coming together because they they're like, what if we did this?
Max Roberts 01:04:41 And what if we brought it in with this?
Max Roberts 01:04:42 And like those things weren't compatible.
Logan Moore 01:04:45 I agree.
Logan Moore 01:04:46 I think the games I think the game's color palette is also just not
Logan Moore 01:04:52 Great.
Logan Moore 01:04:53 It looks too brown, which I guess you could almost say a lot of the other
Max Roberts 01:04:58 Very PS3
Logan Moore 01:05:00 Yeah, a lot some god uh some old God of War games are a little bit too brown as well.
Logan Moore 01:05:06 Uh this is uh something that has plagued the series before, but like
Logan Moore 01:05:10 it it it stands out more like with this game.
Logan Moore 01:05:15 Um I like my Metroidvania's to look
Logan Moore 01:05:19 pretty vibrant, personally.
Logan Moore 01:05:21 Um, and this is not that at all
Max Roberts 01:05:26 It's just when you like look at a picture, like a screenshot of the game.
Max Roberts 01:05:32 It it it's there's like too much detail, but for it to be pixel art, like it's that same thing.
Max Roberts 01:05:39 It's it's art made with pixels, not pixel art.
Max Roberts 01:05:41 That's where I'm gonna stand.
Max Roberts 01:05:43 It's my final comparison.
Max Roberts 01:05:45 It just
Max Roberts 01:05:45 Like when the image is shrunk down, you're just like this looks stiff, but then you like zoom in on it, and you're like, oh, there's like tiny little pixels there.
Max Roberts 01:05:57 Yeah, it feels like fan art.
Logan Moore 01:05:58 The anime the animation looks really bad too, I think.
Logan Moore 01:06:02 Like it's not just the visual
Logan Moore 01:06:04 uh aspect like the animation, the walking animation, the like hunched over running animation that they all do, horrible.
Logan Moore 01:06:11 I hate it.
Logan Moore 01:06:12 Hated it for that is the one thing I hated from like moment one of this game.
Logan Moore 01:06:16 until the conclusion.
Logan Moore 01:06:17 And it looks even goofier when you get like the the sandals of speed or whatever they're called and you start really running fast.
Logan Moore 01:06:26 Uh it it looks
Logan Moore 01:06:29 Poor.
Logan Moore 01:06:30 Um, and I get the thought process there is like they're supposed to be looking like how they would hold their spear or their shield or whatever, because it's like a distinct look for Spartans, but like it doesn't work.
Max Roberts 01:06:37 It's just
Max Roberts 01:06:42 Yeah, it's not good.
Max Roberts 01:06:43 Like you just look at it and you're like, this isn't right.
Max Roberts 01:06:47 If you if a filter, well yeah, I I
Max Roberts 01:06:50 It's one of these things that you just like feel in your gut when you look at it, which makes it so Makes me feel like a bad critic that I can't express it properly in the right words, but
Max Roberts 01:07:03 This ain't it.
Max Roberts 01:07:05 And I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:07:06 Like I'm looking at this screenshot I from a Polygon review.
Max Roberts 01:07:09 And it's Kratos and Demos standing in Sparta talking.
Max Roberts 01:07:14 And like the first thing I see is that the font of the subtitles is not pixelated.
Max Roberts 01:07:19 It's just a regular sans serif
Max Roberts 01:07:21 Font and I'm like, well that on it that stands out.
Max Roberts 01:07:25 And maybe that's for accessibility, legibility.
Max Roberts 01:07:28 I get that
Max Roberts 01:07:29 But like if this was a Metroidvania, there should be a huge text box with like a uh a portrait of the character talking off to one side and like the big chunky text.
Max Roberts 01:07:41 But no, we we have to have the same subtitles that Ragnarok had.
Max Roberts 01:07:46 So there you go.
Max Roberts 01:07:47 That decision was decided for us.
Max Roberts 01:07:50 the detail on the building behind them.
Max Roberts 01:07:53 It actually looks really good zoomed out because it's not so chunky pixely.
Max Roberts 01:08:01 It's just
Max Roberts 01:08:02 It's just a good looking building.
Max Roberts 01:08:04 But then Kratos and Demos, again, probably because they're the player characters and they want them to kind of stand out from the background.
Max Roberts 01:08:10 They've got more of a
Max Roberts 01:08:13 You remember how Smash Brothers and the 3DS everything had a dark outline in the cell shading so that they would pop on the tiny screen?
Max Roberts 01:08:20 Do you remember that?
Logan Moore 01:08:21 I think so.
Max Roberts 01:08:22 Basically every character in Smash for 3DS would have a dark outline on them to help with visible legibility again on the small screen for portability.
Logan Moore 01:08:29 Okay, yeah, yeah.
Max Roberts 01:08:31 That's kind of how I feel about Krayos and Dimas here.
Max Roberts 01:08:34 Like they they have darker lines around them.
Max Roberts 01:08:36 They pop a bit more.
Max Roberts 01:08:37 And those lines are chunky.
Max Roberts 01:08:39 Their spears chunky.
Max Roberts 01:08:42 But then you can also see Kratos' rib cages and him breathing.
Max Roberts 01:08:46 And it I think a pixel art detail isn't all the f these tiny fine things.
Logan Moore 01:08:54 Yeah, you don't need to see Kratos' ribs.
Max Roberts 01:08:54 It's
Max Roberts 01:08:56 It's it's subtle it's subtlety but not detail.
Logan Moore 01:08:57 Like the definition.
Max Roberts 01:09:00 Do you get what I'm saying?
Logan Moore 01:09:01 Yeah, no, I totally get what you're saying.
Max Roberts 01:09:02 Like
Logan Moore 01:09:03 Yeah.
Max Roberts 01:09:04 Like they they they kind of went the wrong way here is kind of how I am feeling about it.
Logan Moore 01:09:09 And maybe this is an issue with because I well I guess not because I was gonna say maybe it's an issue this is an issue with like games that are trying to be like 32-bit
Logan Moore 01:09:21 Um but there's plenty of 32-bit like pixel art games that look Yeah.
Max Roberts 01:09:25 My thought kind of goes straight to the messenger, um, which was sixteen and thirty-two bit was kinda like its game's gimmick.
Max Roberts 01:09:37 And I so specifically the 32-bit, I'm trying to find a screenshot of said 32-bit.
Max Roberts 01:09:44 You know, I haven't I haven't beaten really the messenger.
Max Roberts 01:09:46 I've played the messenger a little bit, but not beaten it.
Max Roberts 01:09:50 But that game, I think, kind of really honed in on it because it understood its style and what it was going for.
Max Roberts 01:09:56 And this feels like, oh, what if we made it like a little pixely?
Max Roberts 01:09:59 Because Mega Cat Studios traditionally has
Max Roberts 01:10:02 Um, their release history is mostly in classic pixel art kind of games and heck, they started out making games for
Max Roberts 01:10:10 the Genesis, NES, and Super Nintendo that would actually run on those platforms.
Max Roberts 01:10:16 So like it's a studio that's familiar with pixel art.
Max Roberts 01:10:21 And I I don't know, they kinda miss the they kinda like Squirrenix out here with two HD2D and like that looks to me looks great.
Max Roberts 01:10:31 And these guys are like, what if HD pixel art looked like
Max Roberts 01:10:35 this and I I think it was the wrong it's the wrong direction to go.
Logan Moore 01:10:39 Well, if you didn't enjoy playing the game or you didn't enjoy the game story and you didn't enjoy looking at the game
Logan Moore 01:10:48 Did you enjoy listening to the game at all?
Logan Moore 01:10:51 Uh talking about Bear McCreary's little 8-bit score here?
Max Roberts 01:10:56 I think some of the music is good.
Logan Moore 01:10:56 Or not 8-bit, but
Max Roberts 01:10:58 Um it fits.
Max Roberts 01:11:01 I like that classic y kind of feel, and I like Bear McCreary playing with more
Max Roberts 01:11:08 classic video gamey pixely tunes.
Max Roberts 01:11:11 It's not full chiptune music, but it's fun.
Max Roberts 01:11:15 And then every now and then you get a little chiptune like boop boop boop boop type thing.
Max Roberts 01:11:19 I'm like, oh.
Max Roberts 01:11:20 It's kind of fun.
Max Roberts 01:11:21 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:11:22 It was good.
Max Roberts 01:11:23 I like it.
Max Roberts 01:11:23 I also like the Greek sounds.
Max Roberts 01:11:26 Um, you know, just I love I you didn't play the Valhalla DLC for Ragnarok, did you?
Logan Moore 01:11:32 No, I need to.
Logan Moore 01:11:34 Um, as like a God of War super fan, I feel really stupid for having not done so yet, but
Max Roberts 01:11:35 It's It's I don't blame you.
Max Roberts 01:11:42 I only played it when I went back and replayed Ragnarok last year.
Max Roberts 01:11:46 Um, because obviously I was like in the mindset and the full groove of the combat, and that's a very combat-heavy DLC.
Logan Moore 01:11:52 Yeah.
Max Roberts 01:11:53 But like getting them basically them playing again in Greece, both
Max Roberts 01:11:58 in the soundtrack and in the gameplay and the in the visuals w is a is a nice treat, um, as a fan.
Max Roberts 01:12:04 But this
Max Roberts 01:12:06 Bear does good here.
Max Roberts 01:12:07 I don't it's not his best work, but it's good.
Max Roberts 01:12:10 I d I'd like the main music theme, like when I hover over it in my XMB, I'm like, all right.
Max Roberts 01:12:17 I hear you, Bear.
Logan Moore 01:12:19 The music's good.
Logan Moore 01:12:20 My favorite thing is just simply that he did it.
Logan Moore 01:12:24 Like, cause he's an in-demand composer.
Logan Moore 01:12:27 I'm sure he has a lot of other things lined up on his plate.
Logan Moore 01:12:31 Obviously, he's done the scores for God of War and God of War Ragnarok.
Logan Moore 01:12:35 I imagine they brought this to him and were like, hey, we've got this like small little spin-off thing.
Logan Moore 01:12:40 Would you like to do that?
Logan Moore 01:12:41 Like we just wanted to offer it to you first.
Logan Moore 01:12:44 And the fact that he was like, Yeah, heck yeah, let's go.
Logan Moore 01:12:47 Let's do it.
Logan Moore 01:12:48 Or maybe I like that's cool because this is totally outside of what else he has historically done.
Logan Moore 01:12:55 Because he's usually doing movie scores or
Logan Moore 01:12:58 games obviously now.
Max Roberts 01:12:59 I thought he did a Walking Dead thing.
Max Roberts 01:13:01 Is that not true?
Max Roberts 01:13:02 What show did he do that I watch?
Logan Moore 01:13:04 He did Walking Dead.
Max Roberts 01:13:05 Oh, he did do Walking Dead.
Logan Moore 01:13:06 Yeah, the Walking Dead main theme is him.
Max Roberts 01:13:07 Okay, there it is.
Logan Moore 01:13:08 Yeah, and he did the Godzilla movies, I think, as well.
Logan Moore 01:13:12 Uh I think that's Nami being insane.
Logan Moore 01:13:16 I think he did like the newer ones or like the earlier ones of this whole monster verse
Max Roberts 01:13:19 Oh, he The Wikipedia says Astrobot.
Max Roberts 01:13:24 I'm like, he didn't do Astrobot.
Max Roberts 01:13:26 He did the God of War theme in Astrobot.
Max Roberts 01:13:28 I'm like, oh, okay.
Max Roberts 01:13:29 All right.
Max Roberts 01:13:29 He helped out.
Max Roberts 01:13:30 Yeah, he actually hasn't done a ton of video games, which is interesting.
Max Roberts 01:13:34 Most of them are God of War.
Max Roberts 01:13:36 Oh, I guess he did a League of Legends song.
Max Roberts 01:13:39 Did you know that?
Logan Moore 01:13:40 I think so, yeah.
Logan Moore 01:13:41 I think I knew he did something there.
Max Roberts 01:13:43 But he's done a lot of TV and and movies, which is fun.
Logan Moore 01:13:44 Um, I'm not sure.
Logan Moore 01:13:47 Yeah, he he normally plays around in that area and I imagine that keeps him very busy.
Logan Moore 01:13:51 So the fact that he's doing a God of War spin-off.
Logan Moore 01:13:58 It's cool.
Logan Moore 01:13:58 I I like it because that clearly to me says that he uh as an artist views God of war as something
Logan Moore 01:14:07 very integral to himself and feels like a sense of ownership over the IP now.
Logan Moore 01:14:12 Um which is cool.
Max Roberts 01:14:13 Mm-hmm.
Logan Moore 01:14:14 Like a lot of other I know there's obviously a lot of composers out there who
Logan Moore 01:14:19 you know, John Williams with Star Wars or Indiana Jones or something like that.
Logan Moore 01:14:23 Like there's certain composers that are attached to certain major franchises that you can always kind of expect them to come back.
Logan Moore 01:14:31 But it's also not
Logan Moore 01:14:32 rare to see certain composers be swapped up with major franchises over time as well.
Max Roberts 01:14:37 Mm-hmm.
Logan Moore 01:14:39 So I like that.
Max Roberts 01:14:39 Especially in a spin-off or a side project.
Logan Moore 01:14:41 Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Max Roberts 01:14:42 Uh or you know, and uh
Max Roberts 01:14:44 Like like Star Wars, for example, like John Williams does not do the TV shows.
Max Roberts 01:14:49 He's like, I do numbered, I do numbered movies, please and thank you.
Logan Moore 01:14:49 No, no, no, no.
Max Roberts 01:14:53 Um
Max Roberts 01:14:54 Rightfully so.
Logan Moore 01:14:54 Yes.
Max Roberts 01:14:55 But Bayer's like, yeah, I'll do this.
Max Roberts 01:14:57 And it I think we'll talk about it, but uh it makes me curious about where they're gonna go with Greece as they go back to it.
Max Roberts 01:15:07 and like how that's involved and and adaptations there.
Max Roberts 01:15:10 But yeah, it's uh it's fun to hear the music here in this in this particular context
Logan Moore 01:15:16 It's exciting to think of him going back to
Logan Moore 01:15:20 If he's the composer of the God of War remake trilogy.
Logan Moore 01:15:23 Obviously, they'll use the music from the original games to some degree.
Logan Moore 01:15:28 But seeing what his spin will be
Logan Moore 01:15:31 on those songs will be really fun if he does it.
Logan Moore 01:15:34 So I'm excited for that.
Max Roberts 01:15:36 Can we can we talk about the best part of the game, which I did not get to experience in context?
Logan Moore 01:15:42 Yeah.
Logan Moore 01:15:44 Getting the Platinum Trophy
Max Roberts 01:15:46 No, uh the other song that you just like messaged me
Logan Moore 01:15:50 Oh yes, yes, yes, totally forgot.
Logan Moore 01:15:54 I was getting ready to move on.
Logan Moore 01:15:56 Uh yeah, I I I let me tell this because you didn't get to experience this.
Max Roberts 01:16:00 Yeah, I want you to get a little bit more.
Logan Moore 01:16:02 So I beat the game, obviously roll credits, sitting there, and all of a sudden like rap song comes on.
Logan Moore 01:16:10 It's like, uh, yeah, rapping about Kratos.
Logan Moore 01:16:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Logan Moore 01:16:14 And I'm like, what the heck?
Logan Moore 01:16:14 They got a God of War rap song at the end of this game?
Logan Moore 01:16:17 That's kind of weird.
Logan Moore 01:16:17 And then like, I wasn't really listening.
Logan Moore 01:16:21 To I mean to set the stage, Max and I are like both big logic fans.
Logan Moore 01:16:26 So like it should have hit me like instantaneously, like holy crap, wait, that's logic?
Logan Moore 01:16:31 What is going on?
Logan Moore 01:16:32 But it didn't.
Logan Moore 01:16:33 And so I was just listening to it for a few minutes.
Logan Moore 01:16:35 or for a few seconds, and then it started to dawn on me.
Logan Moore 01:16:39 I was like, wait, is this logic rapping this God of War rap song at the end of this game?
Logan Moore 01:16:45 What in the heck?
Logan Moore 01:16:46 And I look it up, and lo and behold, yeah, he's
Logan Moore 01:16:49 Involved with he made the in-credits theme for God of War Sons of Sparta here and uh collaborated with Bear McCreary on
Logan Moore 01:16:58 This song, which uh I don't know what it's called.
Logan Moore 01:17:01 I don't know if you have the title of it, pull the Brotherhood.
Max Roberts 01:17:02 Brotherhood
Logan Moore 01:17:05 Um
Max Roberts 01:17:06 It's on the it's on the official Sons of Sparta soundtrack, which you can, you know, listen to wherever you get your music, and it it's a logic song, like straight up
Logan Moore 01:17:18 Yeah, it's just straight up a logic song.
Logan Moore 01:17:20 Um
Max Roberts 01:17:21 Which is so cool.
Max Roberts 01:17:24 It makes me uh I know it's like not related related
Max Roberts 01:17:29 But Logic is very close with Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dog.
Max Roberts 01:17:35 He was in The Last of Us Part Two.
Max Roberts 01:17:38 And I know Nine Inch Nails is
Logan Moore 01:17:38 Maybe he's an intergalactic.
Max Roberts 01:17:41 He is?
Max Roberts 01:17:42 He's in it.
Logan Moore 01:17:42 I said maybe he is, I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:17:44 Oh, that's what I'm yeah, I mean that's where I'm going.
Max Roberts 01:17:46 I know Nine Inch Nails is doing the score for Intergalactic, the heretic prophet.
Max Roberts 01:17:51 Thank you very much.
Logan Moore 01:17:51 Well, can I get a Trent Reznor and Logic collab?
Max Roberts 01:17:52 The full name.
Max Roberts 01:17:54 Yeah, like can we get a logic song in this game that game please?
Max Roberts 01:17:59 Can we please please?
Max Roberts 01:18:02 Uh that would be amazing and would tick so many Macs
Max Roberts 01:18:06 boxes in one moment.
Max Roberts 01:18:09 Uh gosh.
Max Roberts 01:18:12 Man, I hope we see that game this year.
Max Roberts 01:18:15 Just some gameplay, please.
Logan Moore 01:18:17 I thought you meant like see it release.
Max Roberts 01:18:17 Something
Max Roberts 01:18:19 Oh no, I know it's not out this year.
Logan Moore 01:18:19 I'm like, I got I got n I got n news for ya.
Max Roberts 01:18:21 I'm not I'm not a fool.
Logan Moore 01:18:23 Got news for you, that's not gonna happen.
Logan Moore 01:18:26 Uh yeah, did you so did you listen to this song?
Max Roberts 01:18:27 No
Logan Moore 01:18:28 I mean obviously you listen to the song.
Max Roberts 01:18:29 I did I listened to it before our call um on my new speakers and I was like dang it's like
Logan Moore 01:18:32 Okay.
Logan Moore 01:18:37 I mean it's not amazing.
Logan Moore 01:18:39 It's just a goofy little one-off song.
Max Roberts 01:18:39 No, but it's it's fun.
Max Roberts 01:18:42 Yeah, it's fun.
Logan Moore 01:18:42 It's fun and it like you said, it's distinctly a logic song, which is just funny that they're like, yeah, go for it.
Max Roberts 01:18:46 Yeah.
Logan Moore 01:18:50 Do your thing and we'll throw it at the end credits of this game.
Max Roberts 01:18:50 Mm-hmm.
Logan Moore 01:18:54 And uh
Max Roberts 01:18:54 Yeah, I I like that.
Max Roberts 01:18:55 I they I think it that fits in a game like this, not a
Max Roberts 01:19:01 Metroidvania or whatever, but like a spin-off of a popular IP.
Max Roberts 01:19:04 It's like, yeah, let's let's bring in a special musician who who has an affinity, at least for the brand of PlayStation, right?
Max Roberts 01:19:11 Like
Max Roberts 01:19:11 clearly works with them in their promotional same thing um oh who does cactus jack what's his thing like they partnered with um who's who does that brand
Logan Moore 01:19:21 Travis Scott, Nike
Max Roberts 01:19:24 Yeah, but he t partnered with PlayStation as like one of their brand, yeah.
Logan Moore 01:19:27 Oh yeah yeah and and the Travis Scott McDonald's meal, don't forget.
Max Roberts 01:19:30 Travis Scott, you know, like
Max Roberts 01:19:33 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:19:33 It just like this feels like a spot where a celebrity collaboration, a musician collaboration would make sense.
Max Roberts 01:19:42 And it's fun, you know?
Max Roberts 01:19:44 And like
Max Roberts 01:19:46 I I and obviously, like you said, we both really like logic, so this was just a treat for us.
Max Roberts 01:19:50 You know, if they put uh Adele here, you know, Adele Say
Max Roberts 01:19:57 That one it but it kinda reminds me Yeah, it kinda reminds me actually, because we talked about this not terribly long ago, obviously in a more direct way than this comparison, but John Mayer in Halo 2.
Logan Moore 01:19:58 Where she's singing Skyfall
Logan Moore 01:20:11 Yeah.
Max Roberts 01:20:12 Uh, you know, like clearly logic's just like, I like this, can I help?
Max Roberts 01:20:17 And he helped.
Max Roberts 01:20:18 Uh and John, same thing with Halo.
Logan Moore 01:20:23 It's fun.
Logan Moore 01:20:24 That I mean, I like you said, that's why I would like to see more games like this.
Logan Moore 01:20:28 uh created and just have a little bit more loosey goose fun with it.
Logan Moore 01:20:33 Even like s Marvel Spider-Man Miles Morales, like that had a song from Lecrae in it, I believe, which is just like
Logan Moore 01:20:41 Oh, okay.
Max Roberts 01:20:42 Or yeah.
Logan Moore 01:20:43 Sure.
Max Roberts 01:20:44 Or you could or you know, you could get um
Max Roberts 01:20:47 Uh, D'Angelo in Red Dead Redemption 2.
Max Roberts 01:20:50 Oh.
Logan Moore 01:20:53 So do you want to talk about this game's legacy, or would you like to do the state of the god of war address?
Logan Moore 01:20:59 Which one would you like to do first here?
Max Roberts 01:21:02 Legacy, let's let's let's button this sucker up.
Logan Moore 01:21:03 I was gonna say, let's just put it let's put a bow on God of War Sons of Sparta here.
Logan Moore 01:21:08 Uh I'll start, if you don't mind.
Logan Moore 01:21:11 I think this game's legacy is that it's the worst God of War game.
Max Roberts 01:21:16 Unfortunately.
Logan Moore 01:21:18 That's the legacy.
Logan Moore 01:21:20 Um I I think the real I mean that will be the legacy, but I just think this game will be
Logan Moore 01:21:27 ultimately extremely forgotten in five years from now will be like, remember when they made that weird God of War spinoff?
Logan Moore 01:21:35 It was a Metroidvania?
Logan Moore 01:21:37 That was kind of
Logan Moore 01:21:38 That was an odd thing, and no one will ever talk about it or dwell on it, because this game will not be important to the future of the series.
Logan Moore 01:21:47 Story-wise, like in whatever they do next, there's not gonna be a big, oh my gosh, they just made a callback to in God of War Sons of Sparta when this happened.
Logan Moore 01:21:56 Like that nothing like that is gonna happen in the future.
Logan Moore 01:21:59 So like this game will be totally inconsequential to the larger saga, pretty much.
Logan Moore 01:22:06 And it's already not got good reviews.
Logan Moore 01:22:09 There's nothing that's gonna change that.
Logan Moore 01:22:11 in the years to come, I wouldn't think, unless this becomes like a YouTuber video essay like
Logan Moore 01:22:20 four hour video.
Logan Moore 01:22:21 God of War Sons of Sparta was always a masterpiece and everybody was wrong.
Logan Moore 01:22:25 Like maybe we'll see videos like that in ten years.
Logan Moore 01:22:27 But I doubt it.
Logan Moore 01:22:29 I doubt it.
Logan Moore 01:22:30 Um yeah, it's just gonna be forgotten.
Max Roberts 01:22:34 It'll be a short chapter in eventual God of War retrospectives, series retrospectives.
Max Roberts 01:22:41 Yeah, it'll it'll be considered the worst God of War game, at least certainly at the time, and I suspect for a while, you know, depending on what comes out down the line here.
Max Roberts 01:22:53 This feels like a game that should have come out in the PS3 generation and I actually think probably would have been received better then.
Max Roberts 01:23:01 It feels like it's a l from a different time.
Logan Moore 01:23:01 Yeah.
Max Roberts 01:23:05 And I don't know if this is Sony trying to go back to that, where they're a bit more experimental with the IP, shorter dev times, more diverse projects.
Max Roberts 01:23:15 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:23:16 I, you know
Max Roberts 01:23:17 We will have to this is certainly if it is, it's certainly the first maybe alongside something like uh the Horizon Lego game, which is like totally a weird experimental title.
Logan Moore 01:23:28 Yeah.
Max Roberts 01:23:28 Um, th which is actually a game I'm very curious about and do want to play one day, maybe with my daughter, when she's much, much older.
Max Roberts 01:23:36 Um, you know, it's
Max Roberts 01:23:40 It's an experiment that didn't go quite right.
Max Roberts 01:23:45 And I'm
Max Roberts 01:23:48 I don't wanna see necessarily more.
Max Roberts 01:23:50 I'm, you know, googling around, have seen, at least according to one leaker who allegedly was first to talk about Sons of Sparta, says that there's plans to make a trilogy out of it.
Max Roberts 01:24:04 That's at least dependent on how this one performs and I'm I can't I can't imagine it yeah, I can't see that going forward.
Logan Moore 01:24:09 Can't see that happening.
Max Roberts 01:24:12 Um but I don't that doesn't mean I don't want them to try both them being Sony with other
Logan Moore 01:24:18 Yeah.
Max Roberts 01:24:21 experimental genres and things for their IP and also uh just for God of War to maybe
Max Roberts 01:24:31 do some other things.
Max Roberts 01:24:33 I don't know, but it doesn't seem like we're really gonna get that either.
Logan Moore 01:24:36 Yeah, I said the same thing at the top of at the top of the episode.
Logan Moore 01:24:40 Like, by all means, please try more things like this, PlayStation.
Logan Moore 01:24:44 Like, this is more of a plea with PlayStation than it is, you know.
Logan Moore 01:24:47 Santa Monica and the God of War IP, but like I I want to see more attempts of things like this.
Logan Moore 01:24:56 And if they don't work out like this really hasn't, then like, okay, whatever.
Logan Moore 01:25:01 We move on.
Logan Moore 01:25:02 I don't know.
Logan Moore 01:25:03 Like maybe maybe PlayStation d doesn't see it that way and they see that the Sons of Sparta is damaging the IP or has not has been not beneficial.
Logan Moore 01:25:12 I I don't know how they gauge this stuff.
Logan Moore 01:25:14 But like to me there's no
Logan Moore 01:25:16 real lost cost to trying something like this out because it probably had a much smaller budget.
Logan Moore 01:25:23 They probably made their money back on it, I would imagine, just purely based on the IP
Max Roberts 01:25:27 Maybe, I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:25:29 I think also though
Max Roberts 01:25:33 Maybe don't tie your big dog studios to this.
Max Roberts 01:25:37 I don't know how much time this took for Santa Monica, but like I don't think Santa Monica needed to write this story.
Logan Moore 01:25:43 No, I don't think so either.
Max Roberts 01:25:43 And if this is what they produced, uh, they shouldn't have written this story because it it kinda has me slightly concerned.
Max Roberts 01:25:51 Um
Max Roberts 01:25:52 They really should just let the teams that they partner with kind of show off what they can or cannot do.
Max Roberts 01:26:00 I I know we've made this comparison previously.
Max Roberts 01:26:04 But look at um Motion Twin and with Dead Cells.
Max Roberts 01:26:10 Or not Motion Motion Twin doesn't do Dead Cells, but they're they are helping with the
Max Roberts 01:26:14 Castlevania Belmont's Curse reboot and they did um the roguelite Prince of Persia game.
Max Roberts 01:26:21 You know, so there's that, and then there's evil
Max Roberts 01:26:24 whatever I th who is doing the Castlevania game.
Max Roberts 01:26:28 I again have not.
Max Roberts 01:26:29 There it is.
Max Roberts 01:26:30 Um Evil Empire.
Logan Moore 01:26:31 Yeah, Evil Empire.
Max Roberts 01:26:32 They're so
Logan Moore 01:26:33 I was gonna say Motion Twin, but you know it wasn't them.
Max Roberts 01:26:34 There's Motion Twin and Evil Dempire Evil Empire, who I think are both working on the game, but in different capacities.
Max Roberts 01:26:41 Either way, like those are teams that excel at making
Max Roberts 01:26:45 this type of, you know, project, right?
Max Roberts 01:26:48 And then Konami has partnered with them to bring back Castlevania.
Max Roberts 01:26:51 And that was after the Castlevania DLC
Max Roberts 01:26:54 Four dead cells, like kind of proving that.
Max Roberts 01:26:56 And Nintendo did the same thing with Mercury Steam and Metroid.
Max Roberts 01:27:02 They brought in the people who were working on Castlevania, made a 3DS game of
Max Roberts 01:27:08 middle in quality based off review scores and we'll find out for ourselves eventually here on the show.
Max Roberts 01:27:14 And then they rebooted or remade a Metroid game.
Max Roberts 01:27:19 And then they took that knowledge and made a new Metroid game.
Max Roberts 01:27:22 That was super great.
Max Roberts 01:27:24 Like maybe build these relationships over time and instead of being like, he
Max Roberts 01:27:30 Make us and maybe this is a start of a relationship for something, but instead of like, hey, make us a whole new canonical God of War game, maybe you
Max Roberts 01:27:40 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:27:41 I don't know where this particular one would have fit, but like maybe we experiment with some things or approach more established teams in this type of game.
Max Roberts 01:27:50 And like you said earlier, this is not to say that.
Max Roberts 01:27:55 uh the cat what mega cat ki cannot make a metroidvania like they're not allowed to by all means but maybe if they had like some metroidvania in their catalog
Logan Moore 01:27:56 Mega Cat
Max Roberts 01:28:09 Then do this?
Max Roberts 01:28:10 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:28:11 I just m explore more relationship, Sony.
Max Roberts 01:28:15 Um, but before you give like the big dog keys
Max Roberts 01:28:18 maybe build up teams and relationships first before you you start slapping.
Max Roberts 01:28:23 You know, you give us the last of us cart racer or something, you know, I wanna
Logan Moore 01:28:28 The last of us cart would be fire.
Max Roberts 01:28:31 Heck yeah, it would be.
Max Roberts 01:28:32 Are you kidding me?
Max Roberts 01:28:33 You could have you could throw cordyceps down as like a a road obstacle.
Logan Moore 01:28:37 I was gonna say all of the item blocks would have to be just bottles and bricks.
Logan Moore 01:28:43 That's all you get.
Logan Moore 01:28:44 That's all you're allowed to get
Max Roberts 01:28:44 Well yeah, and then like the cart you're driving, like you got a bloater, so like he has tanky damage, he's heavy, he can hit, like Bowser does, and
Max Roberts 01:28:52 Then you got little Ellie.
Logan Moore 01:28:52 Let's do it.
Max Roberts 01:28:54 She's like, we'd be fun.
Logan Moore 01:28:55 The Last of Us X combat racing.
Logan Moore 01:28:58 Let's go.
Max Roberts 01:28:58 Mm-hmm.
Max Roberts 01:29:01 It's totally indicative of like this old age, right?
Max Roberts 01:29:03 Where and that was when the big dog teams could make a spin-off game like a cart racer
Max Roberts 01:29:09 Or something, you know, but now gosh, before Insomniac got tied up with Marvel, they were cranking out a tower defense game
Max Roberts 01:29:18 um ratchet and clank spin-offs, like experimentation was so rampant back in the day.
Max Roberts 01:29:23 And I think the industry is moving back towards that as budgets have ballooned out of proportion and everything is so expensive now, they're like, oh, we gotta kinda rein it in a little bit.
Max Roberts 01:29:32 So maybe this is just a like a wobbly stone on the path to a new future.
Logan Moore 01:29:35 I hope so.
Max Roberts 01:29:38 I don't know.
Logan Moore 01:29:38 Yeah, I'm looking it's weird because like this is a larger discussion, I won't send us down this trail, but
Logan Moore 01:29:46 We're getting near the end of this generation, and I'm looking forward to the PS6, and I'm really trying.
Max Roberts 01:29:50 Are we getting to the end of it?
Logan Moore 01:29:52 I think so.
Logan Moore 01:29:53 It's what everything's saying, but
Logan Moore 01:29:56 We're it seems like we're getting near the end of the PS5, and I'm really hopeful that developers, publishers, everybody are gonna
Logan Moore 01:30:04 actually learn some lessons from this generation and like PS6, Next Xbox, whatever you want to call it, era will be a lot better if because of it.
Logan Moore 01:30:14 That being said, these new consoles are probably all gonna cost like $1,500.
Logan Moore 01:30:18 So who the heck knows if we'll even be playing video games?
Logan Moore 01:30:22 Um everybody's just gonna
Max Roberts 01:30:23 It will it will it will probably be the longest cross gen
Max Roberts 01:30:29 We will likely be getting new games for PS4, PS5, and PS6 at the same time, which is wild.
Max Roberts 01:30:37 That's never happened before.
Logan Moore 01:30:37 Yeah, but like console price drops don't happen anymore.
Logan Moore 01:30:42 So like even if you hold off even if you hold off until twenty thirty-five to buy a PS6, like
Max Roberts 01:30:43 I wrote about this.
Logan Moore 01:30:49 It's still gonna cost fifteen hundred dollars then, so true.
Max Roberts 01:30:52 It might be more, it might cost more.
Logan Moore 01:30:56 Anyway, okay
Max Roberts 01:30:56 Do you remember what do you remember that Kevin Butler ad?
Max Roberts 01:31:01 It's like
Logan Moore 01:31:01 Yeah, the pri PS three price cut ad
Max Roberts 01:31:03 Yeah, I was like, I got a rumor.
Max Roberts 01:31:06 The PS3 is gonna cost $2.
Max Roberts 01:31:07 99.
Max Roberts 01:31:08 Confirm or deny.
Max Roberts 01:31:09 And he's just walking around all the advertisements.
Logan Moore 01:31:11 Um all the banners for it.
Max Roberts 01:31:12 It's like
Max Roberts 01:31:13 Yeah, it's like I can't comment on rumors.
Max Roberts 01:31:16 Oh my gosh, what an ad campaign.
Logan Moore 01:31:20 I miss it.
Max Roberts 01:31:22 Bring Kevin back.
Max Roberts 01:31:23 That'll save the PS36, PS6.
Logan Moore 01:31:27 Let's talk about State of God of War quickly before we go, because it will probably be
Logan Moore 01:31:34 Well, it'll probably be about a year or more before we do another one of these episodes.
Logan Moore 01:31:39 That would be my guess based on the rumors.
Max Roberts 01:31:42 Probably.
Logan Moore 01:31:43 So current rumors
Max Roberts 01:31:44 You want to just kind of summarize
Logan Moore 01:31:46 Yeah, we'll summarize.
Logan Moore 01:31:47 So obviously, God of War Trilogy remake announced in development at Santa Monica.
Logan Moore 01:31:53 Sounds like a pretty ambitious little thing.
Logan Moore 01:31:54 We can talk about that in a second.
Logan Moore 01:31:56 Um
Logan Moore 01:31:58 The other thing though is that clear the long-rumored Cory Barlog directed game, which we all thought was a new IP or something crazy, nope, it's just a God of War game, it turns out
Logan Moore 01:32:11 is uh what their reports and rumors are saying.
Logan Moore 01:32:15 And uh it doesn't continue the series though.
Logan Moore 01:32:18 It's a prequel centered around Faye, who is Kratos' wife.
Logan Moore 01:32:24 And uh you will potentially I don't know.
Logan Moore 01:32:29 I mean that's that's the gist of it.
Logan Moore 01:32:30 There's other reports that say like uh
Logan Moore 01:32:33 Tier will be in it as well, and you'll travel to other realms.
Logan Moore 01:32:37 I don't know how true that stuff it is.
Logan Moore 01:32:39 And as far as like gameplay goes, it's gonna be action-oriented, but I've heard it's more
Logan Moore 01:32:43 akin to like a Devil Make Cry character action game.
Logan Moore 01:32:47 Sounds like a little bit closer to more like the roots of the series, more so than like how God of War and Ragnarok were more recently.
Logan Moore 01:32:57 So, okay.
Logan Moore 01:33:00 Um, I don't like that idea personally.
Logan Moore 01:33:04 I don't know where you're at.
Max Roberts 01:33:06 Well, there's there's at least one more rumor as well if we want to just like get them all in there.
Logan Moore 01:33:11 What's the other one?
Logan Moore 01:33:12 I'm Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.
Max Roberts 01:33:12 Oh, at least what I'm looking at was God War Six as Treyus sequel was kind of the idea.
Max Roberts 01:33:19 Was
Max Roberts 01:33:20 That's like floating out there too.
Max Roberts 01:33:21 It's like a trace goes to college, will become real.
Logan Moore 01:33:22 I forgot about that.
Logan Moore 01:33:24 Yeah, the Atreus spin-off game is gonna eventually happen.
Max Roberts 01:33:25 Um
Logan Moore 01:33:27 I forgot about that because that seems further off.
Logan Moore 01:33:29 That's after whatever this next game is.
Max Roberts 01:33:31 Right.
Logan Moore 01:33:32 So the Faye game is supposedly
Max Roberts 01:33:34 So basically two games that don't focus on Kratos.
Max Roberts 01:33:37 Yay!
Logan Moore 01:33:39 Yeah.
Logan Moore 01:33:40 Which we've had this conversation of like
Logan Moore 01:33:44 If God of War can survive without Kratos, and like I used to think yes, and now I think no.
Logan Moore 01:33:51 So now that we're doing this, I'm like, uh
Max Roberts 01:33:51 It kinda makes so let's start with the big fat asterisk that we started the show with, which is leaks and rumors.
Logan Moore 01:34:03 In expectations
Max Roberts 01:34:03 have consequences and set expectations a certain way.
Max Roberts 01:34:07 And at least right now I think both of our expectations are on the lower side.
Max Roberts 01:34:13 Corey, Barlog, has a tremendous track record at Sony Santa Monica.
Logan Moore 01:34:13 Oh yeah.
Max Roberts 01:34:18 God of War II.
Max Roberts 01:34:20 God of War Ghost of Sparta.
Max Roberts 01:34:22 Remember when he lost the entire script and rewrote it?
Logan Moore 01:34:26 Yeah
Max Roberts 01:34:26 What a what a moment.
Max Roberts 01:34:27 Obviously God of War 2018 and then uh influence on Ragnarok.
Max Roberts 01:34:32 He was not the director of Ragnarok, but so
Max Roberts 01:34:37 On one hand there's a lot of trust earned there.
Max Roberts 01:34:41 On the other hand, it's taken a very long time to make a game of
Logan Moore 01:34:41 For sure.
Max Roberts 01:34:46 What sounds like a like a a spin-off of Fay.
Max Roberts 01:34:51 And if it's a whole new combat, whatever, blah blah blah blah blah.
Max Roberts 01:34:54 I don't really want to play as Kratos dead giant wife.
Max Roberts 01:34:59 I want to play as Kratos.
Logan Moore 01:35:02 I just don't want to move backwards.
Max Roberts 01:35:02 I d
Logan Moore 01:35:04 Like here's my here's my I I've seen this point made a lot, and it was the first thing I thought of though too.
Logan Moore 01:35:11 Why was the what was the reason
Logan Moore 01:35:14 That God of war that Ragnarok happened in the second game and not the third game.
Logan Moore 01:35:20 And it was because Santa Monica said, we don't want to spend
Logan Moore 01:35:24 15 years making God of War games only in the Norse realm.
Logan Moore 01:35:28 We want to speed up this process a bit.
Logan Moore 01:35:30 We decide to fold the ideas we had for it.
Logan Moore 01:35:32 It was originally meant to be a trilogy.
Logan Moore 01:35:34 We decided to make it a duology instead.
Max Roberts 01:35:37 And we talked about that, how Ragnarok really needed to be split up.
Logan Moore 01:35:41 Yes, Ragnarok need to be split.
Logan Moore 01:35:43 That need to be three games.
Logan Moore 01:35:44 I I think it would have benefited that game so much if if it would have been a traditional trilogy.
Logan Moore 01:35:51 But they didn't want to because they didn't want to spend that time.
Logan Moore 01:35:54 That's fine, okay, that's that's cool.
Logan Moore 01:35:56 But now we're doing this, a Norse God of War game.
Logan Moore 01:36:01 Like it's not Kratos.
Logan Moore 01:36:03 But we're gonna be Faye, who's from the Norse realms.
Logan Moore 01:36:08 Like she's a giant, yes.
Logan Moore 01:36:10 So
Logan Moore 01:36:12 I mean, we're just.
Logan Moore 01:36:13 What are we doing?
Logan Moore 01:36:14 What are we talking about?
Max Roberts 01:36:14 Mm-hmm.
Logan Moore 01:36:15 Like this, and the thing is that's so confusing to me is like clearly they landed on this idea a while back.
Logan Moore 01:36:21 Like, this is not something that is just.
Logan Moore 01:36:24 fallen out of Corey's butt within the past like, you know, 12 to 18 months.
Logan Moore 01:36:29 Like this is something they've been working on for a long time.
Logan Moore 01:36:32 Because the reports say that it's going to be revealed
Logan Moore 01:36:35 Presumably at like a summer state of play here.
Logan Moore 01:36:38 So like late May, early June, that sort of window when they normally do a presentation.
Logan Moore 01:36:43 It'll be revealed there.
Logan Moore 01:36:45 And then it will release like first half of next year, and then second half of the year will be Intergalactic.
Logan Moore 01:36:51 And those will be like their two big tempole games of PS5 and 2027.
Max Roberts 01:36:57 One can dream.
Logan Moore 01:36:59 That'd be great.
Logan Moore 01:36:59 I would I would be very happy.
Logan Moore 01:37:01 I'm like yeah, and like you said, Cory has built up enough good Corey's built up enough good will to where like I'm super excited to play whatever this is too
Logan Moore 01:37:11 But yeah, just on paper I have so many questions.
Logan Moore 01:37:16 And like you're saying that, you know, the expectations might be throwing us off.
Logan Moore 01:37:19 Even if they like
Logan Moore 01:37:21 Shock revealed this and like, hey, like, oh, it's a Faye game!
Logan Moore 01:37:26 Oh my gosh!
Logan Moore 01:37:27 Like, I would have the same reaction because I just think we're moving backwards rather than forwards here.
Logan Moore 01:37:33 And
Logan Moore 01:37:34 For one of the great, I don't want to be.
Logan Moore 01:37:38 Let me choose.
Logan Moore 01:37:40 Being a game director seems like it takes a lot out of Corey, I will say.
Logan Moore 01:37:44 Um he has been more publicly
Logan Moore 01:37:48 I think open to the grueling nature of game development than a lot of other game directors even had.
Logan Moore 01:37:55 And I've always been very appreciative of his transparency in that manner.
Logan Moore 01:37:59 But that being said, that makes me think that we might not have a whole lot of Corey Barlog helmed games
Logan Moore 01:38:07 left to get in our lifetimes, you know, like who's to say that this is not like his final game or something like that, you know?
Logan Moore 01:38:15 So like when we do get a Corey Helm game, I want it to be a
Logan Moore 01:38:19 banger above all bangers.
Logan Moore 01:38:21 And maybe this will be that.
Logan Moore 01:38:24 I don't know.
Logan Moore 01:38:25 I I truly don't know.
Logan Moore 01:38:27 But just the broad concept of what this might be totally
Logan Moore 01:38:34 Do not love.
Logan Moore 01:38:35 So that's a disappointment.
Max Roberts 01:38:36 Yeah.
Max Roberts 01:38:37 And it is all out of context.
Max Roberts 01:38:42 These are leaks, these are rumors.
Logan Moore 01:38:43 Yes
Max Roberts 01:38:44 The only thing official is a trilogy remake.
Max Roberts 01:38:47 But it's hard not to take these r leaks and rumors, which presumably come from people who've heard from other people in inside.
Max Roberts 01:38:56 to take them and then look at the announcement for the God of War trilogy, which was super strange, where TC Carson comes up and goes, Hey, we're making a new, we're remaking the God of War trilogy.
Max Roberts 01:39:10 It's an early development, but I'm back as Kratos.
Max Roberts 01:39:14 Why is this project being announced before everything else that's deeper in production?
Max Roberts 01:39:22 When you are clearly just starting out development for this trilogy remake, if it not to be some sort of preemptive, like, don't worry, guys, we have the we have the classic game too.
Max Roberts 01:39:35 And then
Max Roberts 01:39:36 When I hear a God of War trilogy remake, what I hope for is a an honest to God genuine remake and a reapproach.
Max Roberts 01:39:46 It makes me wonder.
Max Roberts 01:39:48 Is the combat gonna be over-the-shoulder 3D action like 2018 in Ragnarok?
Max Roberts 01:39:54 And based off Valhalla, I totally could see that.
Max Roberts 01:39:57 We're moving in a Greek direction.
Max Roberts 01:39:59 like a Greek environment with the the the blades of chaos and other weapons, which were heavily prominent in one and two where you would wield other weapons, like they could completely shift that perspective down.
Max Roberts 01:40:12 I imagine they're gonna get rid of a lot of the like the the sex mini games are gonna be I imagine nowhere to be found in this game.
Logan Moore 01:40:19 No, T C Carson said he thinks they're in it.
Max Roberts 01:40:20 Uh
Max Roberts 01:40:23 Oh does he well early development again we'll see.
Logan Moore 01:40:23 He actually said that recently.
Logan Moore 01:40:24 He's like, I'm pretty sure they're in it.
Logan Moore 01:40:27 So
Max Roberts 01:40:30 But it's hard to imagine like you said w going backwards.
Max Roberts 01:40:33 It's like
Max Roberts 01:40:34 How far back are we gonna take Santa Monica, who's been working on God of War for over 20, or is it 25 years?
Logan Moore 01:40:39 Yep.
Max Roberts 01:40:41 I was like, we're gonna remake the trilogy again and we're gonna leave Ascension out.
Max Roberts 01:40:45 Come on, guys.
Max Roberts 01:40:46 I'm I want them to be bolder with this if they're gonna go back and they're gonna re-record lines, they're gonna rework this, they're gonna
Max Roberts 01:40:56 Maybe this is where we see Ease Atreus coming, you know?
Max Roberts 01:40:59 Like, what are we gonna tie forward to stuff?
Max Roberts 01:41:03 Or are we just gonna go back and relive like the greatest hit moments, which
Max Roberts 01:41:07 to be fair, are a lot of them.
Max Roberts 01:41:09 God of War 1 and 2 in particular are I don't think on PS5 as PS2 compatible games on PS Now or whatever, but
Logan Moore 01:41:18 I don't think so.
Logan Moore 01:41:20 They might be.
Logan Moore 01:41:21 I can't remember.
Max Roberts 01:41:22 They might be.
Max Roberts 01:41:22 They're very obviously very popular.
Max Roberts 01:41:24 But they're they're let's say less inaccessible than one would imagine, especially when you look at PS3 or Vita versions or or the original PS2 titles.
Logan Moore 01:41:33 Well, especially compared to like we mentioned the other big PlayStation franchises, which are
Max Roberts 01:41:37 Yeah.
Logan Moore 01:41:37 The Last of Us, Uncharted, Horizon, like all these things you can go turn on your PS5 and play them right now.
Logan Moore 01:41:43 Every entry, other than like the Vita ones or whatever for Uncharted.
Max Roberts 01:41:44 Right.
Max Roberts 01:41:47 Sure.
Max Roberts 01:41:47 And God of War 3 was remade on PS, remastered on PS4, so that is accessible in a modern form.
Max Roberts 01:41:56 Naughty Dog stand over here with The Last of Us being remade 50 million times and The Last of Us Part 2 already being remastered.
Max Roberts 01:42:04 Like, I get it.
Max Roberts 01:42:05 This is these games do deserve
Max Roberts 01:42:08 A remake, a touch-up.
Max Roberts 01:42:09 But it's knowing there are other games in the pipeline and you decide to go ahead and announce this while it's in early development feels a bit off to me.
Logan Moore 01:42:21 This felt like them responding to the speculation last year.
Logan Moore 01:42:26 Like remember when there was that whole
Logan Moore 01:42:28 Like the initial rumors were out that like oh new God of War game's in the works and somehow wires got crossed or s not wires got crossed, but I don't know.
Logan Moore 01:42:37 There was re reports and rumors out there that
Logan Moore 01:42:39 God of War remaster remakes for modern or for PS5 were coming.
Logan Moore 01:42:45 And then eventually those shifted into no, a new God of War project is in the works, but it's this like Metroidvania thing.
Logan Moore 01:42:51 But that didn't stop the fact that like
Logan Moore 01:42:54 that already kind of like generated that excitement for like, oh well, we wanted to see the old games brought back.
Logan Moore 01:42:59 And like that really kind of snowballed and plus it was what the twenty-fifth anniversary of the franchise over the past year.
Max Roberts 01:43:04 Yeah.
Logan Moore 01:43:06 So people thought that something like that would be happening.
Logan Moore 01:43:08 Like, well, if we're gonna get something like this, it would make sense to happen now in the 20, 25th, it'd be 20th anniversary of the series.
Logan Moore 01:43:16 Like
Logan Moore 01:43:16 If they were going to release something like that, now is the time.
Logan Moore 01:43:19 And I think Santa Monica just saw that excitement and was like, oh well, we need to like do something here, because clearly this is something people want.
Max Roberts 01:43:28 But it makes me so concerned if they're allegedly working Cory's game, if it is a God of War game, just period, instead of something new.
Logan Moore 01:43:28 So that's how that's my read on it.
Max Roberts 01:43:39 How much of Santa Monica's working on that?
Max Roberts 01:43:42 How much of Santa Monica is pres working on the rumored God of War VI, Atreus goes to college?
Logan Moore 01:43:47 That's probably like very early pre-production, I would imagine.
Logan Moore 01:43:50 That will probably only take priority after the Fey game.
Max Roberts 01:43:51 Maybe it's a little bit more than a little bit.
Logan Moore 01:43:56 You would think.
Max Roberts 01:43:59 So like
Max Roberts 01:44:00 So does that push God of War Six back because we're gonna take the time to remake three of the best PlayStation games ever?
Max Roberts 01:44:07 Like and we're gonna and if it is a a drastic remake like I talked about and not
Max Roberts 01:44:13 in just a modern adaptation of the original style, but like, no, we're rebuilding every environment to fit
Max Roberts 01:44:21 You know, like, is this a twin snake scenario where we are completely taking an original game and mashing it up with a modern style?
Max Roberts 01:44:30 Or is this more like a remaking this from the original perspective in gameplay loops and things like that?
Max Roberts 01:44:37 I don't know.
Logan Moore 01:44:38 This info might be out there already.
Logan Moore 01:44:40 I wonder if they're gonna steal assets or not steal, I guess it's theirs, but like take assets from that canceled multiplayer God of War game that blue Blue Point was making before they got shut down.
Logan Moore 01:44:52 I wonder if they're because that was like a Greek setting.
Logan Moore 01:44:54 I wonder if they'll be like, oh, let's just repurpose all this stuff and do something with that.
Logan Moore 01:45:00 Like
Max Roberts 01:45:01 Sure, part of that maybe is possible, but also Blue Point is gone.
Max Roberts 01:45:08 Um Sony shut them down instead of like, hey, be a support studio for the like
Max Roberts 01:45:14 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:45:15 I don't know what's there, but it feels like Sony Santa Monica is spending a lot of time not shipping and
Logan Moore 01:45:24 Well, it's only been what f are we going on four years now since Ragnarok?
Logan Moore 01:45:32 Which that's a pretty traditional if they ship this new game
Max Roberts 01:45:36 Four or five
Logan Moore 01:45:36 In 27, it was 22, because I remember playing it when I moved to Nashville.
Logan Moore 01:45:41 Um, like so Ragnarok was late twenty-two
Logan Moore 01:45:44 If this new game ships in early or first half of 2027, we'll say.
Logan Moore 01:45:48 That's five years.
Logan Moore 01:45:49 I don't think that's that seems that's about right nowadays in normal AAA development cycles, for better or worse.
Logan Moore 01:45:57 Um
Logan Moore 01:45:58 So like I think that's fine.
Max Roberts 01:46:00 So is this is this trilogy remake then five years out?
Max Roberts 01:46:03 Like why I don't know, why announce it?
Logan Moore 01:46:05 I don't know.
Logan Moore 01:46:05 Trilogy trilogy development I feel like can go
Logan Moore 01:46:09 more quickly um or like remake development I feel like can go more quickly but like historically you would say that but then I guess we see like this
Logan Moore 01:46:20 Like the splinter cell remake over Ubisoft is like taking t forever to come out.
Max Roberts 01:46:23 Please, it doesn't.
Max Roberts 01:46:24 I that game that game doesn't exist.
Logan Moore 01:46:26 Yeah.
Logan Moore 01:46:29 Yeah, well that game was a s much stranger situation, but yes, that too.
Logan Moore 01:46:33 Ubisoft's it uh in uh in the toilet though, so who the heck knows?
Max Roberts 01:46:36 Separate separate can of worms.
Logan Moore 01:46:37 Yeah.
Logan Moore 01:46:38 Yeah.
Logan Moore 01:46:39 So I would imagine that they can work on the remake stuff pretty quickly, especially since, you know, like you're saying re-re
Logan Moore 01:46:46 The scripts are written.
Logan Moore 01:46:47 I the stories are written.
Logan Moore 01:46:48 Like that's probably the hardest stuff a lot of times is being like, what the heck are we gonna do with this next game?
Logan Moore 01:46:52 Like what is the story?
Max Roberts 01:46:52 They at least do have an established framework, right?
Logan Moore 01:46:52 What is the plot?
Logan Moore 01:46:53 What is the Yeah
Max Roberts 01:46:56 They have gameplay, they know what the levels and the structure and the pacing are supposed to be.
Max Roberts 01:47:00 They're not gonna venture too far outside of that, if at all.
Max Roberts 01:47:04 They gotta do mo cap, they gotta re-record all the lines, they gotta tweak what they want to tweak, they gotta shove in all the little new Easter eggs if they want.
Logan Moore 01:47:12 I think the process of like, you know, creating environments and stuff like that is probably a little bit more
Logan Moore 01:47:19 Is probably a little easier, especially when you know what like the environments are supposed to look like and stuff like that.
Logan Moore 01:47:23 Like in theory, it should go faster, but it's still gonna be a long process.
Max Roberts 01:47:24 We'll see.
Max Roberts 01:47:25 I it
Logan Moore 01:47:27 Yes, this will be a PS6 thing for sure
Max Roberts 01:47:30 It's just well, it'll probably be both, honestly.
Logan Moore 01:47:33 Oh yeah, I crush in, yeah.
Max Roberts 01:47:33 I imagine it'll be cross gen, but
Max Roberts 01:47:37 It's frustrating any way you slice it.
Max Roberts 01:47:41 Just as a a fan of Santa Monica, as a fan of
Max Roberts 01:47:45 God of War, especially off of Sons of Sparta, where it just feels like, oh, this wasn't the next step we should have like this isn't a good feeling step.
Logan Moore 01:47:49 Yeah.
Max Roberts 01:47:56 Um
Max Roberts 01:47:58 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:47:59 I'm I want to say cautiously optimistic, but I don't even feel optimism.
Max Roberts 01:48:04 Like I just I'm cautious.
Logan Moore 01:48:09 I'm optimistic just because, like I said, I still trust Corey.
Logan Moore 01:48:13 So like I'll play anything that guy makes and I would will trust that it will be great.
Logan Moore 01:48:18 So there's that.
Logan Moore 01:48:20 Mm the one other thing, this is the last thing I'll say about all this, though, is like the disappointment with like the Faye game specifically.
Logan Moore 01:48:28 Like, I could live, you know, Gotta War Trilogy Remake, whatever.
Logan Moore 01:48:31 That's fine.
Logan Moore 01:48:32 I'm okay with that.
Logan Moore 01:48:33 But the Faye Game to me Tells me that Santa Monica is really pigeonholed in the God of War and God of War only.
Logan Moore 01:48:41 And
Logan Moore 01:48:42 That shouldn't necessarily be a negative thing since I love God of War and I like these games and I want to see more of them made in the future, but like I think this is one of the most talented studios in the world.
Logan Moore 01:48:52 I think this is one of the best video game developers
Logan Moore 01:48:55 around, especially when it comes to single player games.
Logan Moore 01:48:58 And I would like to see them stretch their legs and do something completely new.
Logan Moore 01:49:04 Like the thought the previous thought of, you know, like, oh, Santa Monica's making like a
Logan Moore 01:49:09 sci-fi game or something crazy is like was like really enticing to me.
Logan Moore 01:49:13 I was like very excited about that potential.
Logan Moore 01:49:17 And to hear now that like, oh, it's just actually it's gonna be a God of War game, but it's gonna be like a different type of God of War game.
Logan Moore 01:49:23 It's like, oh, well
Logan Moore 01:49:26 Okay, I guess.
Logan Moore 01:49:27 Like, again, love this franchise, want to see more of it, but I would also very much like to see what Santa Monica can do outside of God of War.
Logan Moore 01:49:39 And I feel like that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Logan Moore 01:49:44 Same sort of thing with like Insomniac too.
Logan Moore 01:49:46 Like Insomniac is.
Logan Moore 01:49:48 They're the Marvel company.
Logan Moore 01:49:50 They're the Marvel and Ratchet company now.
Logan Moore 01:49:52 Like, hope you're ready for the next 10 years of all that.
Logan Moore 01:49:56 So I'm sure those games will be great, but like, that's what we're getting.
Logan Moore 01:49:59 So
Logan Moore 01:50:01 Get ready for it
Max Roberts 01:50:03 Yeah, it's they're in a weird spot.
Max Roberts 01:50:06 And I mean, look at uh
Max Roberts 01:50:10 Sucker Punch, they're like the ghost of Japan team.
Logan Moore 01:50:14 House Mark is now the roguelike shooter team or something?
Logan Moore 01:50:18 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:50:20 Yeah, it's funny enough, Naughty Dog is the one that's like, hey, we're done.
Logan Moore 01:50:20 Like, I don't know.
Logan Moore 01:50:21 You you don't get you don't get new ideas that
Max Roberts 01:50:26 We're gonna make something new.
Logan Moore 01:50:28 Yeah, especially since everybody expected The Last of Us Three to be like the thing they were doing.
Logan Moore 01:50:34 And then they're like, wrong.
Max Roberts 01:50:36 A and they were making an online game for part you know, the last of us was like that th that actually is pretty funny.
Max Roberts 01:50:42 Um
Max Roberts 01:50:44 Yeah, I'm I want the best both for like God of War and Kratos and Santa Monica.
Max Roberts 01:50:51 I want to see them succeed.
Max Roberts 01:50:53 Oh my gosh, and Gorilla, talk about gorilla, they're the horizon team forever now.
Max Roberts 01:50:58 Like
Max Roberts 01:51:01 I want to see success I w and but I also want to see some experimentation and whether that's in spin-off games like Sons of Sparta
Max Roberts 01:51:10 Or in different side games, like a Devil May Cry, Faye, Corey Barlog action game.
Max Roberts 01:51:17 Like, I do want to see those things, but
Max Roberts 01:51:24 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:51:25 The messaging's gotta be right.
Max Roberts 01:51:26 We gotta see what comes out.
Max Roberts 01:51:28 It's uh this lull is frustrating.
Max Roberts 01:51:32 This gap of knowing, and we have these rumors that are influencing that.
Max Roberts 01:51:37 Perception is frustrating.
Max Roberts 01:51:40 Back in the day, you know, Corey Barlog comes out, goes, We're doing God of War, and then they're quiet until it comes out in 2018.
Max Roberts 01:51:47 At least we knew, right?
Max Roberts 01:51:49 But instead, since 2018, now granted, uh, Corey did work on Ragnarok.
Max Roberts 01:51:54 It wasn't like he was just doing whatever.
Max Roberts 01:51:56 But for the last nine years, Corey has been like toying around with
Max Roberts 01:52:00 Whatever this new game is, right?
Max Roberts 01:52:02 Like he's not been the director of a I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:52:05 It's slightly frustrating, but we'll see what happens, I guess.
Logan Moore 01:52:11 Maybe we can do another episode like this once the game is revealed and we can talk about our expectations and stuff
Max Roberts 01:52:16 We did do a Ragnarok prediction, so it's not out of the question, but
Max Roberts 01:52:23 We'll see.
Max Roberts 01:52:24 We'll see.
Max Roberts 01:52:25 Maybe, maybe soon, maybe this summer.
Max Roberts 01:52:28 Maybe it'll be one of our predictions on our annual predictions episode on my other podcast.
Max Roberts 01:52:35 We'll find out.
Logan Moore 01:52:36 One one last thing.
Logan Moore 01:52:37 I think I think the main reason they do have to make this Faye game though is we gotta find out who blew the horn.
Logan Moore 01:52:46 It's the whole reason they're doing it.
Max Roberts 01:52:46 Corey knows.
Max Roberts 01:52:48 Corey knows.
Logan Moore 01:52:49 It's the whole reason they're doing it.
Max Roberts 01:52:49 It's probably f
Logan Moore 01:52:50 They're like, oh shoot, we gotta explain this quick.
Logan Moore 01:52:53 Make a whole other game.
Logan Moore 01:52:54 Tie it to the Norse characters.
Max Roberts 01:52:55 Why don't they just make a spin off uh VR
Max Roberts 01:53:02 game, a spin-off VR game, and at the very end, just say, oh yeah, and uh the time traveling version of Mimir blew the horn and there you go, bam
Max Roberts 01:53:15 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:53:17 But anyway, I think that does it for God of War, Sons of Sparta.
Max Roberts 01:53:22 Thank you all so much for listening.
Max Roberts 01:53:25 If you'd like, you can uh check Logan out over at comicbook.
Max Roberts 01:53:29 com where he does all his writing.
Max Roberts 01:53:30 Go read his review of Sons of Sparta if you want, or anything else he writes over there.
Max Roberts 01:53:35 You can find my work over at maxfrequency.
Max Roberts 01:53:38 net.
Max Roberts 01:53:38 And my other show, The Max Frequency Podcast, which Logan will be coming on here sometime soon, uh, to do our annual E3 predictions.
Max Roberts 01:53:47 And yes, I call them E3 predictions because that is what they are and will forever be.
Max Roberts 01:53:52 Maybe we'll talk a little bit more about God War there.
Max Roberts 01:53:55 I don't know.
Max Roberts 01:53:55 We'll see.
Max Roberts 01:53:57 But thank you all so much for listening.
Max Roberts 01:53:58 And until next time, adios.
Max Roberts 01:54:05 Logic's going on tour this year