Game Scoop! 846: Requiem Is a Dream

Wolverine. What's up, everybody? Welcome to I-Chin Game Scoop. I'm your host, Damon Hatfield. Joining me here in studio is Nick Limone. I'm back, baby. We're also joined by Sam Claiborne. Hey, I wish I was here with you all, but it's good to be here. And Mark Medina. I'm here with Sam. No, we're not. We're not the same. I'm Mark. And we've got a great show for you this week. Sean Astin is here. Oh. Sam Wise Gamgee himself. Sam and I will be talking to Sean Astin in just a little bit. Resident Evil Requiem is also here. We can finally talk about that. We've all been playing it. It's very good. I can give it a 9 out of 10. So amazing. We'll have a spoiler-free discussion on that. And there is, of course, the gigantic news from last week of the huge shakeup at Xbox. Oh, man. It dropped right after we stopped recording. Yeah, yeah, basically, yeah. People have commented on that a lot. They're like, oh, you guys got this in right before the news. They're like, it's very clear this happened before the news. Hey, sometimes you get the scoops and sometimes the scoops, they get you. That's true. Phil Spencer retired, Sarah Bond designed, and now an AI executive is running Xbox. Well, it's a human. It's a human executive. An AI is now running Xbox. An executive of Microsoft. Do we know that 100%? We don't. We don't actually. We will return to buying Bungie. But first, for all that, you guys, it finally happened. The other day I picked Kingo up from school, and he goes, Daddy, have you ever heard of a video game called Fortnite? No! I thought you were going to say Roblox. Just tell him no. I've never heard of it. Did you say no? I tried to play it off and be like, yeah, I've heard of it. So how was your day at school? Then he was like, can we get that game? And I told him, it's not for kids. Then he was like, but kids told me about it. I mean, the logic checks out there. He's tearing down your defenses left and right. Let's never speak of it again. This is like when Damon and I came home from school in the late 80s and we said, have you ever heard of Faces of Death? The kids are talking about it. Which apparently is coming back. We had a trailer for Faces of Death. It's getting like a home release, yeah. But like with the original or something new? It's the original, yeah. No, they shouldn't put that out. That's garbage. Oh, man. That's stupid. They shouldn't do that. Anyway. I will say, though, I heard about it from other kids. is an impenetrable defense. That's great. It's so funny. There's no answer to that. He's like, can we get that game? I said, maybe when you're older. Then he was like, can we get it now, and I'll play it when I'm older? Dang, he's good. Debate club over there. We all went through this with Nintendo. We had a politician on our hands. If you can beat me in Mario Kart, son, then whatever game you can destroy him in, that's when he said, if you can beat me. You know, I've never played Fortnite. I know it's like, I know kids play it, and I know it's kiddie. It's very fun. And lots of kids. Okay. That's what you do. Francis stuff is in there. But, like, he's six. Should a six-year-old? He cannot play online with people. But he's even, like. You basically, you can do, like, offline, like, online stuff where you're in a solo lobby. You can also do the thing where you just. Or what's the game it launched with that's, like, a single player? You save the world, yeah. But you can also turn off communications as well, so there's no voice chat, no proximity chat or anything. Now he's going to watch this episode, and then he's going to know all this stuff. I mean, we know he's a very avid GameScoop listener, right? Here we go. Just give him Fortnite Lego. Dad, what's the gritty, and how do I hit the gritty? He's going to come home when he's 44 and say, Daddy, have you ever heard of GameScoop? The other men were talking about it. So this is what you do. It's April Fool's Day coming up. But what you do is you have him walk into the room, and you quickly turn off the television while you're playing Fortnite. That's very good. He hasn't brought it up since, so hopefully we'll see. We'll see. I don't want to go down this road at this point. Anyway, Resident Evil, Requiem, 9 out of 10 from IGN. It's so good. It's very good. It turned out really, really good. I know Sam has beaten it. I haven't beaten it yet. Mark, have you beaten it? You want to turn my second plan? I have beaten it. You've beaten it. Oh, nice, Mark. because the last time I talked to you a couple days ago, you were... You thought you were closer than you thought, but I think it was a bit more. There's a little bit of a... You feel like it's almost over, and then the last section is pretty long. Which every good game should have. Yes. Well, as long as it justifies it. Looking at you, RE7, with your boat chapter. Oh, yeah, the boat. No, no, no. Every section... I don't want to spoil anything, obviously, but there is one section... That Sam likes, that none of the rest of us like, and I didn't really like it either. And that's the section before the last section. There's sections in the game that are about old school Resident Evil that they want you to play in first person with Grace, and then there's these Leon sections, and one of the Leon sections gives you a little bit of a Last of Us 2 open world area to explore. And I think it's great. I have no problems with it because that's when you get to use all the weapons you've been saving the whole time and just do a bunch of killing with Leon. And that's what I think makes Leon feel powerful. I like that moment in the game for that reason. Other people didn't like it because I don't know why they didn't like it. It's just totally likable to me. It's like a construction zone almost, and it just starts to look a little samey. But I guess you could kind of say that about any of the areas. now now i will say you are right about the combat though because that is when you get to really just use his arsenal for a long time oh yeah and it's great because playing as leon is so damn fun so the difference between leon games and that are like resident evil 4 is that sometimes you're in a place where you cannot back yourself into a corner and expend your ammo and get away with it there's too many sides and too many everything and the zombies fall from the top and they crawl up from the bottom and they're just everywhere and all over and that's what that part the game is good at, so I give it a total pass on that. Now, I think this game is an absolute knock-out-of-the-park 10 out of 10 wonderful game. I think it's so good, and I think it's like, I've never had more fun with Resident Evil besides the first time I played Resident Evil 4. And I love those remakes, and I think they're just as good as this. It's just really, really great. And because of the mix, it's really good, too. And then the replay value is just even better because it does that thing again where it's just like, you know, you played through it this one way and there's like absolutely different ways to play Resident Evil. It's like more sandboxy than it lets on, you know? I've not asked him. I know there's the whole thing where it's like but this game got this and this so that means it's worse than this and usually the answer is it's different outlets or different reviewers but Tristan reviewed 4 remake and gave it a 10 and then reviewed this and gave it a 9 and I would be curious what his rationale was because I agree with Sam. I think this game is I think it's a 10. I think it's equally fun playing as Grace and Leon. They're very different. Yeah. I would say so. I like the escape room stuff with Grace. I love Village. Village was such a haunted house tour of all these supernatural things. I loved it so much. I love the escape room. I never felt like Grace was too underpowered. I feel like she's just classic Resident Evil. You gotta be good with your ammo and sneak around and solve puzzles. I loved it. It's the contrast that Leon has where it's like, oh yeah, by the end of Resident Evil you are like loaded with stuff and it's still difficult. So in this game, you don't have that progression. You go between those two things. You can actually clear out an area that you've been in with Grace. It was really hard that you decided not to clear it. Maybe you left some zombies around with Jule. Last time I did that, this is so gross. That right there, what you just saw, It's like one of the best editions ever to Resident Evil. The hemolytic injectors. But I love the mansion stuff where you leave zombies because you're like, I don't, I don't, this zombie's so stupid that you can just outrun it every time you go through and you can manage it that way. I love that. And then like when you're playing as Leon, you have an incentive to kill more than the zombies than you need to do. Like they knew exactly what they're doing, contrasting the two types of Resident Evil gameplay. and how smart like i just i i can't believe they did this and i think this is a better game than rising before remake which i think is one of the best games i've ever played but i think rising before i still am like go back to that as like a you know even a better game than remake in that sense but i think two and three remakes are better than two and three leon is like the revenge tour yeah it's like you're all scared running around as grace and then you just double machine gun Leon just comes through and he's like oh great, you left all these zombies for me. So Damon, tell us about the gore because I really like the gore in this. It's noticeable. So what we were just talking about, this hemolytic injector for our listeners, it's a new consumable weapon that you can stealth one shot kill an enemy. If you can sneak up behind them, you stab them with it and they basically pop like a blood balloon basically. And not only that, it stays, it splatters the walls and the floors and the desks, whatever is around it's also a permakill because they're you know they don't come back can get up again yeah the blister heads not quite crimson heads this time around but it's like let's be real these are just crimson heads come on it's great you can do it if you uh push them over as well as grace like if you if you hit them and then do the melee you could jump onto them and and get them and not just to mention that hemolytic injector is great but when you play as leon you get these special animations that went like they're kind of random but you can kind of put yourself in situations where it happens where you know we're looking at footage of him using the chainsaw there's a bespoke animation of him shoving the chainsaw in a zombie's chest and then just going to town there's him using the requiem gun where he spins around a dude like john wick style and executes the zombie point blank and it's just effortlessly cool and that's why yeah the power the the way i likened it to is leon you are playing the end of the resident evil game when you are fully powered up and your inventory is maxed out his inventory is literally maxed out when you start the game whereas grace has the limited inventory that you'd be used to in a traditional resident evil game and it is such a delightful i said it in the is it still fun podcast for resident evil resident evil is at its best when it's the cat and mouse game where the cat becomes the mouse and the mouse becomes the cat and it is constantly fluctuating between making you feel like the prey and then making you feel like the predator and that is such a good feeling in this game now i i genuinely love this game uh i have not finished it yet my biggest problem with it and is based on what they showed in the like i think it was uh one of the resident evil directs that they had they talked a little bit about the fact that you would go through areas again as leon and you would be able to wipe up any enemies that grace didn't finish off but personally for me i found it where i was like well i killed everything as grace like i didn't need to like and i was and i was chilling you know i was like i worked my way up sure but i killed everything and so when i went through the area as leon i was like well shoot there's nothing to do here as leon and it's like oh i found a charm that makes one of his weapons more powerful i was like i don't need that for leon i need that for grace dude what's going on here that's the only criticism i have i wish i wish resident evil could go back to the re2 on playstation and n64 and give me the perfect zapping system i know that's asking for a lot but it felt like that's what they were trying to do here and maybe maybe i'm just too mlg maybe i'm too too much of a capital g gamer but i i that was the only problem i have uh but i didn't think nine or ten for me i i haven't finished it yet So currently sitting at a nine, but we'll see how it wraps up. You might be experiencing something we were trying to test and we couldn't really figure it out. All the Resident Evil games, specifically Resident Evil 2 Remake, if you are trigger happy and you use a lot of your bullets, the game will give you more bullets. Oh, 100%. That could be happening. I think that's 100% the case here, yeah. Yeah, where you're emptying your ammo so much with grace that it's just giving you more bullets. That's probably what's happening. So then you're just becoming a grace powerhouse. Yeah, and I think that you'll be able to, on a more difficult mode, never take advantage of that or something. But what's good is that they do stop that thing where you're like, you're just going to go through this again with Leon. That only happens once. Oh, okay. That's good to know. That's good to know. Yeah, the care center. That said, the scares that I've had with this were very evocative of Resident Evil 7 for me. I think Resident Evil 7 is genuinely one of the scariest games I played apart from PT. and i think that the opening chat like not the opening chapter like the tutorial section as grace but the first the first time grace gets to play in an actual resident evil game you know where you're finding items that opening moment is just so good at like i feel helpless i have no weapons yes i need to figure out where i need to go to find a weapon and that was such a beautiful like opening hour to me and i was like this is the essence of resident evil and you die right so You have to, like, you know, this game has a little bit of, like, a liberal save system until you play the classic mode. So that does help with that. But I was so tense while playing this game. I've had house guests, and, like, you know, I would be, I'd be like, I have to go play this game for work. And then the house would be dark, and then it would get quiet in the house. And then, like, my wife or a friend or somebody would come up behind me and be like, how is this going? I'm like, oh, my God. You cannot do that while I'm playing this game. you it was a really rare occasion where i was like getting jumpy in my house that never happens yeah i highly recommend the intended way with first yeah i haven't changed the perspective yeah it works so well and i don't even notice yeah i don't i don't care me neither it's so good also they fix the aiming for first person because the the way it feels in first person feels so much better than it ever has in like village or anything like that like the my biggest criticism of village is that it's like RE2 remake. The enemies don't actually feel like there's any impact when you hit them with a gun. And so in this, the enemies stagger nicely the way they do in three remakes and four remakes. It feels very satisfying. You can push them into each other. I love that. Super useful to push them into each other. That's a good pro tip. Also, play the traditional mode, the classic mode or whatever. The one where you have to get ink ribbons. The one where you have to use ink ribbons specifically as grace. Leon is still basically autosaves, but the ink ribbons, I think, add a nice level of tension. And you can actually craft ink ribbons, so it's not all that difficult. But I think it feels nice, and it feels like a more intended way to play the game. Leon doesn't say autosaving either. Again, there's a huge part of the game. The thing that everybody thinks that this game is is not what the game is. It changes to be a lot more separate ways, they said with Ada. Yeah. So I'm deep into the hospital area, which, playing as Grace... That's the opening area, right? It's not the very first area. The first time you're playing a Resident Evil game as Grace. Yeah, yeah, yeah. First you go through, there's like a hotel where you're investigating a mysterious death, and then you go to this hospital facility. And it's set up just like Resident Evil 1, the mansion, Spencer Mansion. The east and west wing. Yeah, just like the raccoon police department. It's got a west wing and an east wing, two levels. It's exactly like that, so it's great. But yeah, playing as her in this area, I think it's maybe the most scary Resident Evil's ever been for me. And like Sam was saying, it's almost to the point where I was a little bit nervous to start playing for the evening. So I'm like, okay, I've got to suck myself up. Because she's almost useless half the time. And I ran out of ammo completely for a long stretch, and I was just sneaking around trying to run away from zombies and stuff. Oh, and there's also some hero enemies in this area, too, that are just absolutely horrifying. Yeah, the fuckers. Well, I think the singers are really spooky because you hear them from so far away. You'll be in other rooms and you hear the horrible singing. They also laugh. They laugh in between. Yeah, yeah. And you know you haven't taken them out. You work around them for so long. And then finally, you're like, I'm so happy I can get rid of this person. Yeah, the zombies are very chatty in this game. I like it. I like it. It's a good version of a zombie. They retain their personality. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So another thing I'll say is... The guy that turns the lights off and stuff like that. I love those. Too much light. A good tip there, too, is that they can't see your flashlight. I played the whole game thinking they can see my flashlight. Oh, good to know. So... Go ahead, Sam. Well, I think the puzzles are really hard to the extent where, like, I always 100% these games. But, like, I couldn't in my first round. I was like, I want to move forward, but like several of the things of like, there's like literal scavenger hunts. I did some of them, but not others. And I didn't know if it was like, do I have to loop the game to solve this? And it was like, nope, I just didn't do it. I thought that was awesome. That rules. That's so cool. One small detail I really like about the game that, again, I think it goes back to what I was saying about when you play as Leon, you're playing as a veteran at the end of the resident evil game basically and grace you're a newbie grace is uh whenever you're aiming with her she's constantly shaking she's very clearly terrified and it's very evocative of leon in the original re2 re2 remake as this rookie cop this rookie who's been thrust into this weird situation of just extreme circumstances but one thing i've noticed is as the game progresses, Grace starts to get a little more sure of herself, not only in the dialogue, but also in just her animations. And I think that's such a nice little touch that just follows Leon's journey from RE2 remake to RE4 remake and all these things. So it's really, really cool. Capcom did a great job with Grace, and honestly, I think she might be up there in terms of an RE protagonist. Really? At least so far. I hope she stays around. She's great. Maybe with that costume you can get with your pre-order. She's always breathing heavily because she's terrified, right? She's always out of breath. But they didn't record very many takes, so it's kind of always the same breathing that you hear over and over again. When she's running, she'll trip and stumble too, but you don't see it if you're in first person. Oh, that's really cool. That's a nice touch. She drops F-bombs in a really funny way. Something will happen and she'll be like, what the F? yeah it's really funny I think this is also just because my you know I love the Leon verse and like this is if there was a if Resident Evil was just a Leon series I know there's other games he's in I know there's spinoffs and all this shit but like there is this kind of two you know for this game which is like feels like he's in six but I'm saying like that's what I said He's in other games, but you're not going to play those games, right? But these feel like the games. They feel like this series. And then this one does a series of best ofs and callbacks. I do recommend playing 2 and 4 before playing this. I usually don't care. And if you play this, you can go back and play those too. but like i wouldn't start here just because two and at least four i guess two is essential too but yeah they just feel they they just feel like a perfect trilogy of leon games i saw that actually jump up in the facebook group i think it was this morning they're like uh i'm not a weirdo like nick and sam or nick and justin who have to replay all the resident evil games but do i really need to play re2 and 4 and i didn't want to chime in because i was name dropped but be like what are you doing of course you should play resident evil 2 remake and re4 just in general those are just good games but i would i agree with sam i think that this game a lot of the beauty of this game is the fact that it is this kind of uh culmination of resident evil that i think uh you'll really appreciate if you've played the games that said it is a fantastic games uh in its own right but it is but but you there is a there is a series of infinite easter eggs for part of this game where everything is referencing an old Resident Evil game. It doesn't matter if you've not played them, but if you know, you know, and it's really, really fun. It's fun to be in the know. There is a section later in the game that, if I mentioned it, wouldn't technically, it was in the trailer. I'm not going to mention it, though. I'm talking about beyond that, too. There's just, like, the leonness of it. It's not just, like, you revisited an area you've been in before. It revits a scenario you feel like you've played before. I don't know how to explain it without spoiling it, but it is incredible. All right. A couple of story observations before we move on. In the first area, Grace is sent to this hotel to investigate a mysterious death. The hotel is run down. It's decrepit. It's in horrible shape. She goes into the bathroom. It's absolutely disgusting. You can look at a toilet. It's the dirtiest toilet you've ever seen. And then she just lifts the lid with her hand. Dude, it's the first time I've seen Dookie in a video game rendered with such high fidelity. What? Livs live with her hand, and then the faucets don't work, so she just has this, like, disgusting hand now. I wish the rooms turned green. The rooms don't turn green. They do not turn green. Oh, well. The save room music is nothing to speak of. They do show the items that were in that room if you get near them, so you can look back and be like, oh, there's blood here, there's, you know, a knife here and stuff. So that actually ends up being that version of it. That's like R2. They don't turn green. No Saber. We just replayed the Resident Evil 1, and that's why it's fresh in my mind. They turn green. I don't remember where they stopped. It is helpful. Yeah. Anyway, it's a fantastic game. When this was first announced, I had a little hard time getting excited for it because I was like, you know, I loved the settings for both 7 and 8. And then I was like, well, we're just kind of in a city now. But no, no, nope. This is just, it's another great Resident Evil game. I cannot wait to play it. I cannot wait to play it. Even on Switch 2. Yeah. It's wild that this runs, has near parity on Switch 2. Oh, and one thing we haven't really talked about, just the RE engine, it's, what a feat of engineering. It looks so good always in this game. Oh my gosh. Even when you're looking at disgusting stuff, I was like, this looks incredible. Yeah. It's so pretty. It just helps that they, you know, there's no day and night cycle, anything like that. So they just are able to set up the lighting and everything perfectly every time. So every time you look down a hall, you know that the developers wanted you to look down that hall the way that you are and seeing everything how it is. But that's been the last few games. Yeah, they hide zombies in the funniest ways with that perspective. They know there's a dark thing and the lighting is so good that you don't see it. This is a Resident Evil game a year now, right? That's what we're at? Yeah. Like the 4 remake was last year and then the 4 remake was 2023 so it was like a two year break right? Two year break still absolutely bonkers delivery of Resident Evil games over the past five or six years Capcom, they're one of the only devs that have figured it out they're regularly delivering incredible games. From 2019 all the way through, I know people like to dunk a little bit on RE3 remake revisit RE3 remake I did that some recently in that game rules. I think people just don't like it because of how short it is. I think because it's like four hours. It's short, it's cut content, but I'm like, dude, this game still rips. I played that game recently, and I'm like, this is so fun. Well, and Capcom's not done. They got Pragmata in a month. I know. Oh, dude, and that demo for Pragmata. The demo is fun. It's tasty. The demo is super good. Every modern AAA developer should study what Capcom is doing and figure out what they have figured out. Roundhouse kicks and leather jackets. That's all you need. And they didn't do Mercenaries for this, but we presume there's going to be some modes added and stuff like that, which really makes these games these kind of like Desert Island games for me. Like if I had a bunch of time I always loved spending it with Resident Evil 4 back in the day just 100 Oh yeah man It would be great in this game too Well, in honor of the release of Resident Evil Requiem, I've put together some Resident Evil trivia for you three. So here we go. I have questions for each of you, and we've got three rounds. Let's see who knows their Resident Evil the best. Sam, we'll start with you. What average review score did EGM give the original Resident Evil? Resident Trivial. That's interesting because I remember it being really well received. So I'm going to go with, but also sometimes they were contrarian. But I'm going to go with, and it's out of 10, right? Yep. But with point scales? Yes. Like with 8.8? How does fun factor play into this? That was game pro. Yeah, I'm going to go 8, 9, 9, 10. Whoa, so I asked you what average. So what would that... Oh, that would be 9. EGM gave the original an 8.75 on average. Two 8.5s and two 9s. We rounded up to 9, this IGN way. That's true. That's what we do here. All right, Nick, what is the name of the first non-mainline Resident Evil game? Resident Evil Gaiden? No, wait, not, wait, not spin-offs, you're saying. Yeah, so not the main line. It's either Survivor or it's Gaiden, and I'm going to go with Survivor. It is Resident Evil Survivor. I think it's Survivor. What is that game? It's like a first-person. A light gun game? Yeah, it's a light gun game. It's not a light gun game. It's a house of the day. It's a first-person dungeon crawler where you have a gun and you play as a dude who thinks he's a serial killer. Kind of knows Leon a little bit, but then it turns out the serial killer sets you up. Sorry if that's a spoiler. I was just about to go back and play Red Devil Survivor. You should look up gameplay. The gameplay genuinely looks like it's not a great game to play, but it looks cool. It looks really cool. Gaiden is the Game Boy game, I believe. Yeah. Game Boy Color. This is it? Yeah, yeah. This is it? It's a first person like that. Resident Evil Survivor. Yeah, it's a first person. The graphics are a lot better than I thought they would be. Yeah, it's a cool looking game. It's just not that fun. Why do they still have the doors? Look at them, gal. Look at those zombies. Okay, Mark, you're true. What Resident Evil game received the lowest review score from IGN? Oh, man. Let's see. The lowest review score from IGN. I mean, you would think it would be Survivor, because it's not very good. But does that game predate IGN? It wouldn't, right? No. No, it doesn't. I don't know. I think of a time where they, like, screwed up Resident Evil from porting it. Yeah, I'm going to go with Resident Evil 6. No, I don't remember who gave that. Is it Mercenaries 3D? No, it's not. Does anyone remember Umbrella Corps? Oh, yes, that's the Wii game. No, 2016, PS4 and PC. It's like an online live service game. Oh, this looks terrible. This is the game they made after Operation Raccoon City. I was like, well, surely they'll never make another game like this. This one bricked my PS4, and I've never been able to. I had to replace it entirely. You hear that catcom? Yeah. Oh, Brian Albert. Brian Albert gave this a 3.8. Wow. That's the lowest reviewed Resident Evil. Maybe I'll play this. This looks interesting. No. It was live service, so it might be shut down. Oh. Yeah. Okay. Round two. Sam, what was the first Resident Evil game to allow 180 degree turns? Well, I think it's four because I remember doing it in four and it was really fun. They added it in three. You could do that in three. Wow, really? So you could flip around in a set camera angle? That's really cool. Don't let anybody else do a spoiler cast. We should do that on GameScoop because it would be fun to return to this once everybody's got to the end of the game and talk about the ending and what it means for Resident Evil stuff because it's pretty cool. Cool. We'll do that for sure. All right, Nick, what was the first Resident Evil to include a Mercenaries mode? Resident Evil – well, technically RE2 has something. RE2 directors – no, RE2 does technically have something, but Mercenaries mode would be RE3. That's right. Also, Resident Evil 3 had Mercenaries mode. Nice. It's also a really fun – it's a really fun Mercenaries. It's a little bit different from the modern one in that you have an objective that you have to find a certain npc on the raccoon city map and then you get points as you make your way towards them so you have to basically know 100 where you are at all times and know how the map is laid out it's very fun very difficult and you can extend your time by helping out survivors that are scattered throughout the map it's kind of like an arcade racing game yo there's a delorean what the hell an arcade racing game because you can extend your time exactly exactly it's really fun i played it semi recently and i was like I could play this for a long time, but it's really hard to unlock all the extra stuff. You have to play, like, 40 times to unlock, like, the unlimited rocket launcher and stuff like that. They must have added this because they knew RE3 was so short. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, RE2 also has something similar where you, you know, like, third survivor or fourth survivor in, like, the tofu mode. Right. But this is the one where it feels like they actually nailed it in terms of making it a game. And that's in Resident Evil. They redid that in 2 and 3, right? Because I remember there was like a 30-minute run that's really hard to do. Dude, RE2 Remake, the fourth survivor where you play at Hump, I think that is my favorite video game experience I've had since 2019. It is so fun to try to S-rank that. Yeah, we were in the office while that was out, and I just remember the days we were all trying to work together to just get to the end of it for the first time because it was not easy. All right, Mark. Resident Evil 4 was first released on the GameCube in 2005. Yeah. In what year was the PlayStation version released? 2005. Let's see. The guy chopped his own head off in 2006. So I'm going to go with 2007. I'm sorry. No. No, the PlayStation version was also released in 2005. They were nine months apart. It was fall, right? Oh, okay. With me, it was 2006, I think. It was right after that. Well, the Wii was released in 2006, so it would have been a launch. I think it was like 2008 or 2009 for the Wii version. Okay, so it took a little while. It's so good. I love that version. That one's really fun. A little easy, though. All right, final round. Final round. Sam, what is the best-selling Resident Evil game of all time? Hmm. I wonder if they're stacking at this point, but I'm going to go with seven. No, it is the two remake. Oh, wow. I thought it was five. What? Resident Evil 2 Remake is the best-selling game in the franchise. Good, good. Good. Nick, both the GameCube Remake of Resident Evil 1 and Resident Evil 0 were brought to the Wii. What branding did Capcom use for those versions? Oh. Resident Evil Wii Edition? No, it was the Resident Evil Archives. Archives. Resident Evil Archives. Resident Evil Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. I think that's what they used for the GameCube versions, right? Oh, yeah, that's what you just said, yeah. GameCube plus the Wii, yeah. Yep, and RE0. All right, Mark, last question. Resident Evil Village was released in 2021 for PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, and one other platform. What was that platform? Switch Cloud Edition. No, it was not. It was Google Stadia. I knew it was going to be a Stadia joke. Sorry, I forgot Stadia ever happened just like the rest of the world. Yep, yep. For it all. Nicely job, everyone. Thank you for playing Resident Evil Trivia. That finally brings us to last week's big topic. Phil Spencer retires. Sarah Bond is out. Matt Booty is promoted to what is it? COO? Or CCO? CCO. CCO. CCO. And then Microsoft's AI exec, Akshay Sharma, is now the next boss of Xbox. Yep. A literal huge scoop from Ryan McCaffrey. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. What's crazy about this is that Phil's just gone. Like other executives recently, like Bob Iger and Kathleen Kennedy at Disney, they announced their retirement later this year. I'll be stepping down. Like, nope, he's just gone. Today, Phil Spencer is no longer at Xbox. Hold on. I thought he was staying on as an advisory role until October. Is that incorrect? Through the summer, he was going to be help advising, but he's not the boss of Xbox today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's not the boss anymore. He's just taking photos with everybody. Well, he always did that. Do we think this was Phil's decision? No. No. No. Sam, what does Sam think? I think that Phil would have had some kind of bearing on who succeeded him and his retiring plans. I think he had that much clout that he did have some say in this. I think he was going to retire. I think that was going to happen this year. The dude's worth like $30, $40 million. And I know that doesn't mean people are automatically going to retire just because they're rich. But he had been floating the idea for a while. But for it to happen so suddenly, alongside the Sarah Bond resignation, tells me that it was one of those, if you're going to retire, I need you to do it now. Because we need to get the new CEO prepped for the console launch next year. and you retiring at the end of this year or whatever is not enough time we need this to be done that way we can start working on marketing plans and strategies and stuff like that for 2027's magnus launcher whatever you guys want to call it nick what do you think uh i yeah i think this is just the nature of the c-suite executive world right like i think you know when people are afforded that option it gets telegraphed in advance i'll add the bob eiger and whatnot And I think that when things don't go according to plan, I think is when it happens suddenly. And granted, I'm sure that Phil and Sarah have earned enough goodwill to try and go about it in the best way they possibly could. But to me, this reads of this was not ultimately their decision to make, and this was something that kind of happened that surely there will be some story about what actually unfolded 10 years from now or in that timeframe, but nothing that we're going to learn about soon, especially coming from the fact that we know Microsoft as a whole is pushing its co-pilot AI technology a lot more. and the fact that they are kind of leading that charge in terms of having Asha, is her name, if I'm not mistaken? Asha Sharman. Someone who is basically using that as I am ushering in this age of AI just feels very corporate-y to me. And very just, this is a Microsoft decision. This is not an Xbox decision. I want to be clear about something. I'm not saying Phil was let go. or forced to retire. I'm saying the timing. I'm saying that if he wasn't going to retire, he likely would have been around for a few more years. But because he was going to retire, I mean, companies do that all the time, right? If I tell my boss, who's sitting right next to me, uh, that I'm going to quit right before GTA comes out, it's possibly an IGN's best interest to have me quit now. So they could get someone trained in my role before GTA comes out. You know what I mean? And so I, think that's what's happening i think phil was going to quit and the timeline got moved up the sarah bond thing is the big mystery because she was supposedly the heir apparent to the ig to the xbox throne yeah i mean resign on the same day is wild and like i i think that it's not helpful and i've seen a lot of this is to speculate about like the palace intrigue here But to think about, and by the way, this is what the Next Gen Console Watch episode is about this week. What would you want Microsoft to do going forward? And what can they do to correct things that are often perceived as fans don't like it and stuff like that? It's helpful to think about that. But then you have to remember that Phil's legacy is buying Activision Blizzard and Bethesda. It does not matter what Microsoft does ever again to sell a console, to not sell a console, to do anything. They have a software mega empire in those two companies, let alone all the other stuff that they are producing and own and all the, I hate to use the term, IP that they have now. The outward things that we've talked about internally here with the shakeup is there absolutely should be an Elder Scrolls game out. And after Microsoft bought that company, like, making Starfield and not an Elder Scrolls game is bonkers. And whatever control Microsoft has over that is neat. That can be fixed by anybody. You don't need, you know, a 20-year industry veteran to be like, hey, maybe we should force Bethesda to make a Fallout game. Like, that's just so natural, and it's such, like, an obvious thing. and now they're so far away from those games still that it's like there's that legacy of, like, what great decision-making in buying these companies, and then there's the what's happening right now of mismanaging them. I don't know. And that could be fixed. I don't know about ZeniMax, but I do believe that either the A, the B, or the K are going to get sold off soon from Xbox. Yeah, I don't. I don't imagine them keeping them. Why do you say that? Because it was just so expensive to buy that. $80 billion was such a... Two of those are just passive moneymakers, though, because they develop, and then there's subscribers, and then they just make money. They are passive moneymakers, except for that now... True. But Xbox is now funding the development of it, right? So there's this whole thing, right? Oh, I should have mentioned back there, Minecraft. I always forget that one. They brought Minecraft. They do have Minecraft. Like, this is crazy to talk about, like, oh, Xbox is showing signs of failure. No, Xbox is probably showing signs of, like, we can do more with our incredible potential, right? Yeah. I have a hard time answering the question. Did Phil Spencer leave Xbox in better shape than when he came in? Because he came in in 2014, a year after the disastrous launch of the Xbox One. And he did a lot of cool things. Game Pass was a great deal for gamers at first. Whether or not it was good for developers or sustainable, that's a separate question. It was initially a great deal for gamers. He launched the Xbox Series X, which I think is a terrific console. He made these acquisitions. Backwards compatibility. So he did all this great stuff. But over his tenure, there was never a very long period where something terrible didn't happen or a perfect dark is canceled or there's just long droughts with no games coming at all. That's been fixed also, by the way. But I have some numbers. Oh, okay, go ahead. I have some numbers. So when Phil took over Xbox in 2014, their revenue was $9 billion. Last year, the revenue was $23.5 billion. But what about profits, though? In 2014, Xbox made $700 million in profit. Last year, they made $5 billion profit. $5 billion straight into Microsoft's pocket. That's exactly that. Also, active users, 35 million in 2014, 500 million in 2025 because of King and Candy Crush and all that. So, right. I'm just saying that when you look at these numbers. Yeah, it doesn't look that doesn't look like a failure. It looks fine. And what we are measuring this as is as is Sony versus Microsoft and console sales. It is just not a big part of the equation. And that's why having somebody come in that maybe is just a good business and people manager that can handle a bunch of people that know about selling software is not that scary and it's not that surprising. And what I think they're losing is a figurehead, which basically no other company has right now. There's nobody that walks out and talks about Sony that anybody cares about right now. And definitely not Nintendo. They've really tried. But even moving Miyamoto into Iwata was kind of awkward for a while. And then now after that, it's been like, yeah, there's a couple of lead designers that come out by game. Doug Bowser never walked out in a Bowser outfit. Reggie was the last time they had that. But who was it? Ken Kutaragi? Ken Kutaragi. And then after that, it was... Sean? Sean, yes. Sean Layden. Yes. Yeah, and even Xbox before had Peter Moore, right? So it's like there's always been these kind of people that are the faces of the companies. And like already, I'm saying like I'm not making any judgment on, you know, Asha's, you know, abilities to run this company. But like this is a figurehead. It's been mixed and interesting. I mean, she's putting herself out there. Yeah. She's responding to Ryan McCaffrey. Correct. Yeah. I mean, they did that. That stuff's like kind of coordinated, in my opinion. Like when she first came out and did her big article about like, this is my vision or whatever. Like people are like, she's saying the right things. And it's like, I mean, I could be the guy could be the head of Xbox if that's all it takes. Like I can come out and type a PR thing and then follow a bunch of people with Xbox in their name on Twitter. Like I don't buy any of that as like. But it's the right thing to do. It would be much more worrying if somebody came in and said, I don't need to know about this at all. I'm smarter than all of you. Yeah, I think that's all fine. I don't think it proves or makes me hopeful about any sort of future of Xbox, her following people on Twitter. I don't think that does anything. Or her saying stuff about, like, console first. Like, because here's the thing. There she is. You know, they were exclusive. Forza Horizon 5 and Starfield and Redfall and all these games. And it didn't work, right? And so then they had to go more third party. I don't know because the big draw on what she said was that it feels like she's signaling that things are going to go exclusive again and I just don't think that that is a winning formula. What they need to do is they need to make great games. Like Phil said we're not going to sale a trillion consoles by making great games and I just disagree with that. Xbox has a lot of games but none of them jump out at the screen at you, in my opinion. They need to figure that out. I love Avowed as much as the next guy. I thought Outer Worlds 2 was cool. They need to shut down the internet with a game. And I think Fable will be it. But until they do that, you know, of course, Forza. Yeah. Fable, I'm not, you know, we got to see what it is. I'm not going to give the game a 10 out of 10 based on a trailer. But it's like that's what they need is like they need the games that are going to shut down the internet. And they just don't have that. They just have a million different games that just come out and get put on Game Pass, and nobody's talking about them after the first weekend. And I think that that's what they need to solve. Elder Scrolls 6? I thought Indiana Jones was really good. Yeah, it is Elder Scrolls 6. I thought Indiana Jones was great, too. I think just, like, there's, like, this third-party, like, corralling that's like, yes, Microsoft can, like, produce all these games that they've been producing for a long time, but just what they acquired, like, how do you get Call of Duty to be the most popular shooter of the fall, that takes a little bit of a reset. But it probably should have happened a while ago because now they just have to deliver Call of Duty every year. Two years ago, Call of Duty was really good. It just was. It was really good. There's just a different world right now. Call of Duty is just such a rough sell for them because no matter how good it is, people are just going to be like, it's Call of Duty. The last one, though, was pretty bafflingly different In a way, I was like, anything but this one. They do need Fable to come out, though, and it just be this incredible thing. I don't even know if Gears... If I were them, I would say, like, look, you have the biggest stock ever. You have the biggest company of all these resources. Put Elder Scrolls out next year. Yeah, that's... Just do it. Yeah. You can figure this out. You can start, like, Lord of the Rings was filmed in one year. You can do this. All three movies. Elder Scrolls 6 and then Fast Track Fallout 5 People are a little disenfranchised on Bethesda games though and knowing that Not for Elder Scrolls I don't think so There has not been an Elder Scrolls since 2011 We can't live in this world that Elder Scrolls is always just going to be perfect when there hasn't been one in 15 years I don't even think Skyrim is perfect but I think that's the game that's going to make gigantic waves I think Skyrim actually I think is kind of the worst one. Unless the characters look like shit like they did in Starfield and the game plays more. I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true. I think the problem with Starfield is that you're fighting for the audience that will just eat it up because it's called Elder Scrolls. I don't necessarily agree with that. I think this is a little bit of – yeah. I just don't agree with the fact that because Elder Scrolls was once good, that every single one is going to be good after that when they haven't made one. I don't think that's what I'm saying. I'm saying that it's going to make gigantic waves, regardless of the quality of the thing. I think it'll make waves. That doesn't mean it's going to be good. The crazy thing, Mark, is that everybody bought and played Starfield anyway. Exactly. Just because of the pedigree. And it damaged their studio, though, because everyone bought it, And then people were like, this game kind of sucks. Loading screens every five seconds. I mean, it was ridiculous. But I just don't think it's, I don't think it damaged the hype for Elder Scrolls. I think it did. So another thing they could do is buy CD Projekt Red and then put out Witcher 4 next year also. And then Cyberpunk. Oh, Ryan. And then Cyberpunk. I mean, seriously, there's going to be better ways to produce these massive games and make them deliver on a non-16-year cycle. Microsoft is more likely to figure that out than Sony. They have more resources. They're bigger. They're just this massive company that can put things behind it and make it happen. Seamus Blackley had these quotes this week also that he believes Xbox is being sunsetted. He's the co-creator of the original Xbox. I don't believe that, but it is interesting. He makes a really good point that Xbox is the only part of Microsoft's business that is content-rid. Everything else is being turned into AI. Xbox is the only part of their business where they have to think like a Netflix or a Disney where they have to think about content. When you look at it that way, it is a little strange. But I think the fact they spent all this money on Activision. Let me offer you the most depressing counterpoint to that ever. What are billionaires on Earth doing right now? They're buying content. That's an insane supposition. supposition that's like Microsoft wants to get rid of content because they want to only do AI. No. Every billionaire owner on earth is trying to buy up all the content and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are just buying sites and news sites. This is a huge deal for prestige for a company like this. The margins are incredible. Too bad they bought all these assets and now they're making content that could reach more people than Netflix. Yeah Xbox is one of Microsoft only consumer brands Like I know everybody uses a Windows machine but for the most part that like one and done right You buy well I mean most people use a Windows machine It's been a while. But it's like you use a Windows machine, right? It's like you buy it once, where it's like this is meant for consumers, right? Consumers usually aren't out there buying Microsoft Word. But also, I don't unless Asha is getting a huge bonus to do this, I don't think a person would take on the role of CEO that is meant to destroy a company, which is basically what Seamus Blackley is saying. That happens all the time. I don't know if a person would do that. You think she would? I mean, sometimes it's not up to them. People get sent out to die all the time. I don't think that's happening here. but that happens all the time. Yeah, Satya would basically be using her as like a fall guy kind of person. That seems mean. It seems mean to me. Well, it's... Would you do it for a billion dollars, though? Would you be the face of the person that tanked Microsoft for a billion dollars? What's the price point? If she's getting some secret bonus to be like, hey, this is like, not gonna probably look great on your resume, but we're gonna give you you know, 50 million dollars to do this and you basically just have to be the fall guy for Xbox going out of business, then she'd probably I'm trying to think of a company which even I mean Sega got out of the console business that was interesting, but their software became extremely valuable after that as a business for them yeah, it's hard to say if there was a future in which we don't want to make Xbox as a platform anymore, they would still have these incredibly lucrative sets of IP, including World of Warcraft. They have their, I don't know the correct name for it, Umbrella Corporation or whatever. They have Microsoft Game Studios, and Xbox is part of that. Microsoft Gaming. If they wanted to revert back to that, that's an option, but they're not going to get out of the gaming business. They're definitely not going to get out of the gaming business. I also don't think they're going to get out of the hardware business either. I think their future hardware will look a little different than a traditional console, but I don't think they're leaving the hardware space at all. It's going to look like Windows. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's going to look like the handheld just as a console. All right. We've got to bring the temperature down a little bit. Everything's getting a little heated here. This week we did get some fun news. We got the release date for Wolverine. Yeah, we did. With a very... I'm so happy with that release date. Very exciting trailer, too. It was only like six seconds long. Yeah. I didn't even watch it. People are like the ads were like three times as long as the trailer. It's like an end card. Anyway, it's coming September 15th. If anyone's wondering what they'll be doing around that time, it's the week after Phantom Blade Zero. Oh, damn. I might still be playing Phantom Blade Zero. That's a toughie. That's a toughie right there. So it's good to know when we'll be playing this. Obviously, they steer clear of November and the GTA 6 of it all. But Cameron McKee in the GameScoop Facebook group asked an interesting question. Asked, do you think Wolverine will have an option to reduce or remove the blood and gore effects? And I hadn't even thought of it. I played Super Spider-Man 2 with Kingo. But then when I saw this trailer, I was like, well, I'll just be playing this one by myself. I don't know. Maybe you could turn the blood off. I mean, it seems like this memberment's kind of an important part of the game. Cyborg people. Insomniac is like, they're kind of known for their accessibility. Maybe somewhere in the accessibility options, you could be like, make the blood sweat. Like Mortal Kombat stuff. I don't know. That sounds a little bit worse than seeing blood. I'm just sweating out of my arm. I mean, it makes sense because there's an audience of people that are like, I love X-Men. and I love Wolverine and I want to play a Marvel thing, but I don't like disgusting amounts of gore. There's an audience for that. It's like turning off spiders, right? Yeah, exactly. I don't think so. Wolverine's kind of just always been the exception in the Marvel world, right? Like Logan being R-rated and all that stuff. It's like it's always Wolverine has been the like watch this if you don't mind seeing someone's face get ripped off. I think that'll probably translate over into the game. They invented new blood tech for this game, so I want to see the new blood tech. Will his fine... I mean, like, because they're cyborgs, it is funny to think about them being turned into having bright neon predator blotters. Will Wolverine skeleton get ripped out by Magneto? I watched the new Predator movie, and it was great. It's great, right? Badlands? It's so good. It's a lot of fun. It was really fun. I liked it a lot better than the animated movie, but just because it subverted my expectations, and I just couldn't believe that they matched up the Weyland-Yutani universe. I know Aliens and Predators have been together, but this was in a smart way, and it's confusing and mysterious and not overly explained. It's good stuff. And Elle Fanning is great. She's great. I think the performance of the guy that plays the main Predator, he's great. Yeah, it was a ton of fun. And also, A Night of the Seven Kingdoms ended well. Dude, great first season. I loved it. I think I'm on episode four. I just did the one. I just watched the flashback episode, the one where he's a kid. Okay. Yeah, you're near it. That's the penultimate episode. Oh, really? It's a short season, yeah. Yeah, it's only six episodes. The book is also very short. I started reading the book. I was like, oh, shoot, this is like 100 pages. What the heck? Yeah, I went back to the book and I was like, did all this stuff really happen? I remember two of the other stories better than that main one. But that was the episode you guys were talking about last week, right? Where you were like, oh, it's so bloody and stuff, right? I love the melee. Yeah. The seven battle. It was brutal. Yeah, that was cool. I was tired. The entire season reminded me a lot of Kingdom Come Deliverance. I was like, I just really like this, like, very boots on the ground story. The fact that multiple people were using flails, that just looks so cool. Also, the camera shot inside the visor of the helmet is so sick. Oh, my gosh. Dude, I love when it, like, right there, where it's doomsday. Yeah. Oh, it's so cool. Yeah. It's so cool. And then there was a couple times where there would be fighting on the ground, and, like, an action thing would happen, but just in passing. Yeah, yeah. And I think you even see the guy get maced in the back of the head at one point. Yeah. And the ending of the episode is just absolutely fantastic. It's sad, too. It's like they didn't build these characters that much. It's like the stakes here are so much smaller than they were in Game of Thrones, but a legitimate tragedy for the kingdom occurs. A legitimate tragedy. It reminds you it's a Game of Thrones show, right? It's that in the world of Game of Thrones. I love the Baratheon guy. He's great. I love him. Lionel Baratheon. He's awesome. He's great. Everybody's great. Egg is incredible. Egg is great so well, too. I like the, get up, shot. Yeah. Get up, shot. I started laughing because I was like, Jesus. I love. And then just when he's watching the tilts earlier, too, and he's just like, yeah. He's going like, you can tell he's just like, he's like a little gamer fan. It's so funny. That's so good. The friend with the apple crest, he's great, too. Everybody's great in it. my hype before the show was non-existent, and now it's just, it's so good. And then they played the trailer for House of the Dragon in the last episode. I was like, give me more of this one. More of a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, please. Time to get your boards back out to try to remember who everyone was in House of the Dragon. I like House of the Dragon, although I think season two was not as good, but it's like, this is on a whole other level. Yeah, this one, If you're daunted by reading Game of Thrones or whatever, continue to be. These are really easy, fun novellas to read, and they go fast, and they're funny and fun and cool. And the show, I think, translated them perfectly. I highly recommend you by reading them. More of the show? Yeah, three seasons total. Oh, cool, cool. I would assume each new novella is its own season. Nice. yeah and then like george r martin either said i think he said he has eight to ten scenarios leading them through their entire lives scenario designer george r martin yep he's like he's he's like selling concessions at his theater in new mexico and coming up with these ideas and then his agent's like did you get any writing done today george he just hangs up the phone Scoop Nation, we are now joined by a very special guest, long-time viewers and listeners. We are big fans of two things, Lord of the Rings and The Goonies 2 on NES. So imagine our excitement to be joined now by Samwise Gamgee and Mikey Walsh himself, Sean Astin. Sean, welcome to the show. Thank you. I was just thinking of that song, Dream the Impossible Dream, but instead with Goonies 2, it was Play the Impossible Game. Yeah, that's exactly right. That certainly was. As soon as you go into first person, game stops. There was a first person in it? Yeah. Apparently. Yeah, that's where you have to punch the old lady five times, for real. Anyway, thank you for coming. I want to go play Pitfall on Atari right now. I'm tired of games. Pitfall is a much better game. Thank you for taking the time. We know you're a busy guy. You've got a new movie, Matter of Time, out this week, not to mention your duties as president of SAG-AFTRA. So tell us about Matter of Time. I think there are a couple of connections to gaming. It's about a game developer. Anyway, I'll let you take it from there. Yeah, it's about a magic ring. Aha. I don't know something about it. It actually is about it. Oh, wait. There's the ring of which we speak. What it does, basically, the sci-fi conceit is that it freezes time or slows time or kind of slow freezes time. basically you can do things in the amount of time like you know you could run a marathon and then when you take it off you did it in one second i think that's right oh that's my daughter i don't know if you recognize that one girl yeah um credit in there that's super cool yeah so basically this young man is and i'm kind of yoda i guess or no i'm ben kenobi you can see there yeah see love it or a little bit of doc right a little doc yes no i think they were going for Doc, yes, yes. Oh, look, you see, time is frozen, and he can move around in that little frozen space, but basically, he's a game developer, and he's trying to make a name for himself, and he gets himself in over his head, and so he basically goes to his friend, who is a D&D master, owns a toy store. Oh, look, my daughter. See, there you go. And he discovers, he learns of the existence of this ring, which has passed itself down through the generations, and he gets permission sort of over time to use it to basically help himself deal with all of the things he has to do in his busy schedule, in his busy life, and his inability to complete the development of this game and the prescribed time, but like a lot of these movies, he's He's losing – he loses time as he goes along, and it affects him in ways that are, yeah, unsatisfying and unhealthy for him. And ultimately, he learns to – yeah, well, you've got to see the movie. He learns an important lesson. But the guy, Jeremy Sneed, who made this movie is my friend, and he has been a video game – wow, you could – impresario, video game, master video game. He owns a company that does – that works with all the big video game companies. When it comes time to sell their games, he does, like, the ads for them. So when I met him first, he had decided that he was, you know, he had done that work with all of the big companies, and he was ready to kind of do a documentary about the history of video games, and he wanted to interview me, and we became fast friends, and I ended up becoming an executive producer of sorts on that and helping him, and he put together this, it's called Video Games the Movie, it's really cool, And then he had enough footage for about 500 movies because he interviewed everyone and he went everywhere. And then he decided to do a video game series called Unlocked. And that was seven episodes, eight episodes, where there was kind of like three things each episode that people who love video games would see kind of in documentary mode, like video game design schools and just where stuff is built. And it was pretty cool. And this matter of time is his first feature film. And so, of course, the subject matter of the feature film of the guy who lived that life is about a young video game developer. And he kind of exists in that world. Of course, there's the bad, big, bad video game people who the corporate, the corporate video game people who are demanding. But, you know, for me, it was really a chance just to support him. My daughter was in it. I really enjoyed playing this character where I, like, let my full beard grow out. And just was kind of like this Doc character. And it was fun. We shot it pretty quickly. It was a lower-budget film. But I just loved it. I just loved working with the younger, you know, crew, this crew that was smart and they had experience. But, like, it was a fast movie to do. Anyhow, I'm just enjoying watching the trailer here. I look good. Well, we got to break it down for people, too, scene by scene. Yeah, this is like a live reaction. This isn't the first time you've appeared in a film with your daughter, correct? She was in The Lord of the Rings. Allie was in the – she played the little girl at the end of The Return of the King who runs up to Sam when Sam returns home. It's his daughter. So she played Sam's daughter, Eleanor. There she is. Oh, my. That's amazing. I like doing interviews where you can actually see this stuff being illustrated. Whoever's directing this gets, like, major kudos. That's Jobert. It's all Jobert. Is this one of the shots that happened in sequential order, so it was a pickup later, or was this pretty early in the shooting when your daughter was older by the time the movie came out? No, I mean, she was two when we went down here. In this, she may even still be two here. She looks so young. Oh, my gosh. So, yeah, no, we filmed this sequence returning to back end in the normal principal photography, so probably halfway through or something. So she's probably three years old there. And Sarah McLeod is there with her baby. And, yeah. There you go. Have you ever thought it was cool that you get the last line of the entire trilogy? It's you. You get the last word in. I'm back. Pretty good. Well, I'm back. I remember it's just so simple, right? Like that's the beauty of it. Well, I'm back. but I was so nervous because I was aware of the fact that like this massive you know experience was the over for people and so I was walking around like I'm back I'm back I'm back I'll be back nope not that one oh that's different it's the 25th anniversary of the fellowship so they put the whole trilogy back in theaters my wife and I went to see fellowship obviously we just had the best time. I've seen it a million times. Great to see it in a theater again, but no matter how many times I see it, every single time at the end when Frodo's trying to leave, and Sam runs after him, and he's like, I made a promise. Oh, I was bawling. I don't think I've ever not tried. I think that's the movie. It's amazing. I love it. When he says, I made a promise, though, you made the end of Fellowship, you're talking about? Yeah, at the end of Fellowship. That was, yeah, that scene was not in there. Okay, neither was this. This whole, oh no, that's the Ringwraith. that was in there and dumb Gollum oh wow the 25 I don't know if I've seen the advertising that logo it's cool it's way cool so yeah they sort of figured that out way way way into shooting and I remember Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh his partner and Philip O'Boyans the other writer had us come to a they were like Peter and Fran want you to come to this diner and we were in I think it was Dunedin or something. We were south of the South Island in New Zealand. And we were like, oh, shit, we're in trouble. So we went there and we're just hearts racing. Like you're reporting to the principal in a diary? Yes. It didn't happen a lot that you got summoned like that. Everybody's pretty busy doing a lot of different things. And so we were summoned and they looked like little school kids. And they're like, we want you to read this. And they handed us each. It was like a page. So they handed each of us a page. I think it was just a page. And we read it. And you're like, oh, my God, this is so good. This is so good. And we looked at each other. And they just wanted to enjoy us learning about it. You know, I mean, if you think of it, Peter Jackson said at one point that if he had a wish, it would be to erase his brain so he could watch the movie and just enjoy it. rather than always be thinking about all the things that a filmmaker thinks about. And I think that's what they were doing with Elijah and me. They were like they wanted to experience the, like, first-person joy of what happens when they – because they hadn't nailed it, the ending of the film. In fact, I don't even know – I didn't know when one movie ended and the next one started. It all just felt like one long movie. until literally when I saw the two towers, you know, and the lights went down and the screen opened and the movie started, I literally had no idea where it was going to be in the story. You know, I'm like, did the spider happen yet? No, the spider didn't happen yet. Speaking of kind of wiping your brain, I've heard you speak about how you read the books three times, just kind of back to back in learning the character. But then you did, what was it, a book club later? and you revisited the books then. Yeah, there was this company that was doing kind of e-book stuff, a book club. And so I joined it as one of the, you know, I think anybody could become an author or, you know, whatever it is, like a host or something. And so I got the three little leather-bound edition. Have you seen those? They're like small, but not so small that you can't read it properly. It's a floppy leather bag. So it's almost like a paperback leather bag, right? Yeah, those are really cool. Yeah, I don't have it here. But, yeah, they are. They're really cool. I autograph a lot of them, actually. And then I would, yeah, I would, yeah, just go through. But you got to revisit the books, like, almost as a 25 years on. Like, try to separate yourself out, I'm sure, from the character and kind of read them as just reading them as a fan. Yeah. Well, it was pre-COVID that we did that. But I think it was pre-COVID or middle of COVID. But, yeah, I definitely – I don't think you can ever not see it from when you've spent so much time. It could be a million years. I'm sure it's the same. But what always shocks me is, like, how much of everything else feels so new. Like, oh, my God, I didn't even remember that this happened. And you start to get more and more. It sounds so stupid because there are fans of these books who have them memorized. You know, like Stephen Colbert, you know, he could tell you, you know, Isildur and the Bane of this, something of that. And, you know, and the fans that I've seen for 25 years at the conventions, they know all of it. But, you know, so it's like, well, I should probably know it better than I do. But then you do start to get familiar with some of the places and some of the names and the ideas that you kind of – yeah, you relive, I guess. I think I'm ready to read it again now. It's always a good time. Always a good time. Well, I knew this one guy who was a naval officer, and he was an Olympic competitor. and rowing. And he said that he read it every single year and reads it every single year. And he says he cries in the exact same spots. So he came to visit my house at one point. And I like I went into the backyard or something. I came back in and he's got the book open and he's he's dropped in. He's just dropped in. He is in the book and he's crying in the same spot he always cries in. And I'm like, when I think about them, I'm like, all right, where's I got to sit down? what am I going to be doing you can almost feel like the dust come off read it and it's a not a chore but it's like an endeavor to read it but some people just you know the book is like turning on the movie they can just look and go drop in at any point and be in the story that was my biggest feelings I don't think I ever even after all the times I've read it I don't think I've ever disappeared in it the way I have with other things. And I don't know why. I think I'm sort of self-conscious maybe about not just as an actor, but like I went to UCLA. I got my degree in history and American literature and culture. And so it was pretty appalling that I had never heard of Lord of the Rings before. I got a degree in American literature too, and you don't get it because they don't do the British teachings in those classes. Well, I had a survey course in British literature where we got the Norton Anthology, like these big Norton Anthologies. I remember that one. Yeah. And there's like – I read everything. How did I miss Tolkien? But there's something about the music in the language that is so expansive and immersive and sort of heightened that in a weird way, instead of just enjoying it, like putting on a song, I'm like aware of it. so it's really kind of I think it's a not a superpower but I think it's a really cool thing to have the kind of intellectual ability to see the structure and to appreciate things but it's really bad because I don't get to enjoy it the way it's obvious that other people are enjoying it I don't know if that's too much for it before we let you go we were talking about Goonies 2 were you an NES kid? did you have an NES when you were growing up? the video game? Yeah, playing Nintendo. Oh, absolutely. Well, no. The most I've done with the Goonies video game is Autographic. Oh, okay. The time that I've spent actually trying to play it, oh my god, look at that. Yeah, it's basically Donkey Kong. Well, much less playable than Donkey Kong. Yeah, it's bad Donkey Kong. It's bad Donkey Kong. It's with the vines, and it's sort of like, I don't know, like it wants to be Dragon Slayer, but it's not even that, or it's like Wolfenstein, I don't know, it's the worst video game ever made. Honestly, it's... What's the object? Where are you supposed to go? Are you killing things? Well, the object is to rescue the mermaid. There's a mermaid! Yeah. And there you kill some sort of a walrus, why not kill the walrus, where the bear is marching anyone knows that there should be a bear there Go hit tools Take Oh my god I mean you got to love This is in our lifetime Yeah, I know. And it's made by a Japanese developer named Konami, and no one was paying attention to what they were doing, obviously. It's great. Yeah, but then they still around making great games. Konami came on pretty good after that, though. They did. They were breaking their teeth with Goonies 2. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was going to say, it's such a pleasure to talk to you. We're a big fan of yours and so many of the projects you've been involved in, not just Lord of the Rings, but Goonies and Stranger Things and Rudy and Ninja Turtles and so much more. So really, thank you for taking the time to chat with us here on Game Scoop. We're big fans. I'm telling you, you've got to change it to Game Soup. We'll do that. It'd be cozy. It'd be so cozy. Oh, I mean, so that's the show. We play cozy games and eat soup and talk and just chat. We will give you a title credit for that one, Sean. I need that. Credit's important. Matter of time. Matter of time. It's out now by the time this episode goes live. Check it out. And, of course, it is always a good time to rewatch Lord of the Rings. All right, that brings us to Video Game 20 Questions. Our suggestion this week comes from Mark Esposito from Landing, New Jersey. Mark. Mark says, my suggestion for Video Game 20 Questions is one of my favorite games from the Redacted. It was such a fun time playing through it, Redacted. I always suggest it for anyone looking for a great Redacted game. And with that, let the questioning begin. Dreamcast, some collection, and then back to Dreamcast. Stealth Games. I don't know. Is this game in 70s, 80s, or 90s? Nope. Dude, it's Splinter Cell. Boom. Done. We got it in two. Has this game appeared as part of a collection? No. Not Splinter Cell. Let's see. Is this game exclusive to the platform it came out on? Yes. Oh. Nice. That was a good one. is this game on a Nintendo console? No. We've got to figure out the era. We're still 26 years of video games. Let's see. All right, I'll just go PlayStation. Is it on a PlayStation? Okay, cool. That's five. We've just got to figure out which one. So PS, I guess it could be anywhere between PS1. Yeah, yeah. Damn it. So this means that it was... Wait, but it is multi-platform. He said it is exclusive to the platform it came out on. Oh, that it came out on. Great. Okay. Which was one of the playstations. Do we need to know if it's developed by Sony internally? Oh, yeah, that'd probably be good. We don't know yet. Is this first party? Yes. Oh, okay. We are in business. We have five playstations to look at. It's also got to be a game that represents the genre. That's the vibe I'm getting from that email from Mark. Every time we get five or six questions in, I'm like, I want to hear the email again. Knowing what I know now. Can you play as a woman in this game? No. It's Uncharted. Is this game a part – because I want to limit it to PS1, PS2 versus PS3. Is this game a part of the HD era of PlayStation? Yes. Okay, so PS3 and up. Good way to try that. Is Vita HD? I don't think it is. Well, that's a great question. I'm actually not sure. I mean, I guess technically it would be. I'm pretty sure it's like at least – it might not be a 720p, but that's besides the point. So it's at least, what, 2006 and later. Is this game part of a series that is still existing today? Still running today? No. Resistance or Killzone? Yeah, or stuff like Uncharted. All-Stars Battle Royale. Could be All-Stars Battle Royale. Siphon Filter. Oh, that's true. Could be Siphon Filter. Now, because... How modern did Siphon Filter go? Yeah, how far did that go? There was a Vita one, and I believe there was one on the... I guess PS2 was the last one, Omega Strain. But we're... What else? What else? You play... Could it be Lair? Oh, man. I don't think anybody's going back to Lair and be like, man, I always recommend Lair as the motion controls. really nailed it. Is the studio that made this game still making games today? Yes, that's 10. And we know, do we ask the Japan question? Okay, let's hear it. I guess technically no, but I want to say yes. to that. Is the studio still around? Oh, wow. That's okay. That's interesting. Technically, no. But we do not know if it's Japanese. That's 10, by the way. We do not know if it's Japanese. Apart from it being just a first party. We should figure that out. Was this developed in Japan? Yes. Okay. So, it could be medium. No, Media Molecule is not Japan. I mean... Why am I drawing a blank on what that would mean if there was Japanese studios? So who did Concrete Genie and stuff like that? Was that like PlayStation Asia? I can't remember. I want to limit this a bit more, but I'm getting like Studio Japan vibes because technically Fumito Ueda is making games but not under Studio Japan anymore. Or Japan Studio. So that would be the Shadow of the Colossus? Like Shadow of the Colossus or Eco. Last Guardian for PS4. Yeah. And Shadow of the Colossus and Eco were part of a collection, right? Oh, yeah, you're right. They were part of a collection. Last Guardian was not going. So it could be Last Guardian, but, man, I can't imagine Last Guardian being anyone's favorite redacted. You do not. It's an okay game. And then did Sony internally do Heavenly Sword? I think that was... Wasn't that like Ninja Theory? Sure. That sounds right. So what does Sony Japan make? Gran Turismo? Gran Turismo, yeah. Yeah. Which is still very much like in development. Is this game a... platformer? Is this game a platformer? Yes. Last Guardian is a platformer. It could be Last Guardian. What if it's like LocoRoco or Patapon or something like that? Yeah, that's true. But those were released as part of a collection. Were they? Oh, Patapon was? And LocoRoco 2? And LittleBigPlanet. Again, that's all Media Molecule, which is not Japan. What else can we say? um we're at 11 questions you've asked 12 12 um let's just is there a big floof in this game you know not last guardian okay so it's a platformer made in japan in the hd era it sounds like it could be even like a smaller game maybe it is like a loco roco or something maybe maybe because i could have before they just released like a Patapong collection like this year or something. Like what are there any like 2D platformers that they kind of went back to? Soundshades? Well let's just ask. How many do we have? You have like 7 questions. We've asked 12. Okay yeah. Is this a 3D? Is this a 3D game? Yes. Okay. Mark you want to hear the redacted email again? Yeah, let's hear it again. It's one of my favorite games from the Redacted. It was such a fun time playing through it Redacted. I always suggest it for anyone looking for a great Redacted game. Man, it could be Vita. Dang. RPSP. You're hanging out with poor people if they're talking about a Vita. We don't know if it's portable at all. We don't know if it's portable. Is this a portable game? No, that's 15. Okay. Okay. So, huh. And GT games aren't fun, so it wouldn't be that. Was this game reviewed well by IGN? I can look right now. I have that up. Can you hear how many letters he's typing out? Yes, it was reviewed well. It was reviewed well. Hmm. Now what does Damon determine as a good review? I got a 10 guys. Back then the PlayStation team just reviewed everything well. That's true. Got the PlayStation bump. So well reviewed. I'm not really sure. It's not Death Stranding right? No because that wouldn't say that's a platformer. And that wasn't internal. Also very much in development. Could it be like a Sly Cooper game? There was a Sly Cooper for PS4. Yeah, but the thing is it's like... But that's Insomniac. Naughty Dog. Oh, what about Sucker Punch? What about Ratchet and Clank? It's a good... I like the PS4 reboot of Ratchet and Clank. Well, Ratchet and Clank is Insomniac though. That's not Japan. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Those are their kind of platformer go-to-use. A Japanese platformer. Do you play as a human? You can. I think. Twisted Metal? Twisted Metal. That's not a platformer. That's a gun shooting game. What is this game? Is there like a Heavy Rain company now? Because that's not internal. European. PlayStation exclusive that's made in Japan. That's a platformer. Series is gone. It could be licensed. But the dev, there's like a weird thing with the dev too. Yeah. I guess there's like Bloodborne. I don't think it'd be FromSoft though. No, we said first party. yeah the first party thing should make this very easy I just don't know what we're missing you know I mean it's like I can think of a lot of first party games that don't exist anymore but none of them are platformers like stuff like SoCal stuff like Syphon Filter Asobi is French but there's a male human and then there's also not yeah you have the option of being a male human Maybe it is PlayStation All-Stars. I guess it is kind of a platformer. It could be. You can play as some girl. Maybe you can't. They didn't have very many female mascots back then. It's not a platformer. It's clearly a fighting game. Do we want to determine PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5? We could. because, yeah, I'm stuck in the PS3 era because that's what it feels like it would be. Is this in the PlayStation 4? Yes. Okay, it's a PlayStation 4 game. You've arrived at one question and one guess. PlayStation 4, Japanese platformer, where you have the option. Maybe platformer is too of a specific... Maybe that's putting me in too much of a specific mindset. Maybe they're just jumping. Yeah, because you would consider stuff like Infamous a platformer, even though it's like... It's 3D also. You know. It's 3D. Astro's Playroom? That's also Team Asobo or whatever That's a French studio right? It is? I believe so I don't know Quick name a Playstation 4 game This should be in the next one They didn't make like an ape escape or anything medieval there was like that era late Playstation 4 I feel like they brought back a lot of old stuff I haven't seen that there was like a medieval reboot or something right there was a medieval reboot hold on yeah I think that was done by digital clips or something right I have no idea But if we're referring to the original studio, that would make it where it's a little strange because that's a remake. Well, is there one other question that we can – like is it a downloadable game, like a download-only game? Is it a – like was it a physical release? What else? I think the only question we have left is do you play as a skeleton? No, I wouldn't ask that one. Why don't we just use the hack Have we mentioned the game No We have not mentioned the game Oh no Oh no And with that We arrive at your guess PlayStation 4 platformer Where you have the option to play as a A male dude But not a woman I can't think surely I have a Playstation I gotta have it David this isn't a question but like are we about to be pissed off you can only have yourselves actually so yes 19 questions to play if you don't have a guess I can reveal the game Okay. Yeah. I mean, Nick would be the only person here that would have a guess. I guarantee you, you all know this game. That makes it hurt even more. Maybe not. What if it's like a Metal Gear Rising type game where Sony developed it, but we would have missed that? Or Final Fantasy or something like that? Jumping PlayStation game. There's not that many of them. Devil May Cry or whatever the Bayonetta type stuff. I think I must concede. Okay, I will read the answer. It was a Japan studio game, but I think maybe the tricky part is people don't realize this was made in Japan. It is Knack 2. Oh, no! Oh, no! I never considered Knack. I thought about Knack earlier, but I thought it was a mustard game. Which is crazy. The Knack Station 4? Yeah. Never considered. Wait, so you play as Knack, but it's a cooperative game also. And does the other person play as a human? Does Knack have a friend? That's what I'm thinking. I think it's like a little knack, right? You play as Mark Cerny. Well, so I always confuse. There's a studio in Japan and also a Japan studio, correct? That's two different studios. I don't know about that. This was Japan Studio, which was just absorbed into PlayStation. That's why it doesn't exist, but it does. What was that? I just don't think of this as just to help Japan. All right, let's hear the email again. It's because Mark Cerny is like the guy behind the Japan studio. So the unredacted email, this is one of my favorite games from the PS4 generation. It was such a fun time playing through it with my son. I always suggest it for anyone looking for a great co-op game. Perfect. But maybe there aren't any humans in this. I thought, doesn't he have like a little boy who's his buddy? No, there is a boy. I thought there was a little, I thought there was a scientist guy. I've never played a Knack game. Dude, they're not. They're not great. Yeah. I mean, the first one was a launch game, right? Yeah. For PS4. And then this one came out in 2017. Those are some wild-looking humans. Yeah. Yeah. Knack 2. Well, nicely attempt, everybody. Thank you for the suggestion, Mark in Landing, New Jersey. Viewers, listeners, if you have your own suggestions for a video game, 20 questions, email them to me at the email address, gamescoop at IGN.com. And that is all the soups that we have for you this week. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Jobert, working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. Everyone from the tech team working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. Everybody have fun playing Resident Evil Requiem this weekend. I know I will. My name is Damon. This is iTunes GameCube. And we're out. When the cold wind blows No one cares, nobody knows I don't want to be buried In a pet cemetery I don't want to live my life again I don't want to be buried In a pet cemetery I don't want to live my life again Fallen sacred to the sacred place This ain't a dream I can't escape Wallers and fangs, the clicking of bones Spirits moaning among the tombstones And at night when the moon is bright Someone cries, something ain't right I don't want to be buried in a pet cemetery I don't want to live my life again I don't want to be buried in a pet cemetery I don't want to live my life again The moon is full, the air is still All of a sudden I feel a chill Victorious grinning flesh is running away Skeletons dance, I curse this day And at night when the wolves cry out Listen close and you can hear me shout. I don't want to be buried in a pet cemetery. I don't want to live my life again. I don't want to be buried in a pet cemetery. I don't want to live my life again. I don't want to live my life I don't want to live my life Not again Oh, no Damon, why didn't you tell them to have fun playing Marathon? Because no one's playing Marathon. How many people were on there? It was like 100K or something? There was a lot. There's a lot. So that's such high guard vibes when you see that now. Yeah. I'm like, what's it going to be at the end of the day? What was it, like 18 hours later or something? That game dropped hard. RE6, 9 p.m. tonight. Is Marathon good, Mark? I've only played like two matches. Did you play for 45 minutes and nothing happened? Or was it pretty action-packed? If you're referring to Arc Raiders, the rounds are much faster than Arc Raiders. The maps are way smaller. And, yeah, I don't think it's going to be like Arc Raiders in that sense. My biggest problem is that the menus are just atrocious. They're really bad. And everything looks like a Lego. I don't know how much I like that. It's Lego, our creators. Is it an open beta server slam? Like anyone can download it? Yeah. Okay, I might check it out. Yeah, it's free on every platform. You can just download it and play it. And I've had no server issues, and 150,000 people are playing on Steam, so it should be easy to get in there. I was out last week, so I didn't get a chance to talk to you guys about it, But, dude, the Bluepoint news was the biggest bummer of last week. I'm still like... Yeah, I'm actually still bummed out about that, too. I'm sad about it, man. That's like one of the stupidest moves I think I've ever seen. Like, they bought them in 2021, never shipped a game under Sony, and then just closed them down. There's so much going on. And we're past the Resident Evil embargo. That's great. I think Mark played Marathon today. I did. So it's crappy, huh? I don't think so. No. Oh, okay. Were you the person that said it looks like Legos? It does look like Legos. That's not good? No, I think it plays fine. I've not played it enough, though. So far, the menus suck, but I also just don't know what any of them do. The menus in Arc Raider suck, too, when I didn't know what any of them did. Yeah, the Arc Raider menus are really bad. No, I think Marathon is, I think it's fine. I'm going to play it more tonight with my Rivals crew What Bungie, a company owned by PlayStation right now Really needs is a just fine game That took out Yeah We'll see We'll see if this is it Might be the end of Bungie It's super fair to them but like man That is what That's what they're counting on It has to be the triple A's biggest thing ever I asked Malcolm So is this going to save Bungie? And he goes, no. I don't think this is going to pull the Ark Raiders crowd. I can firmly say that. The thing is, is that Bungie could have just saved all of that Destiny money, and then everybody could have retired a multimillionaire. They could have just split it all up or walked away. Or they could have made Destiny 3. Thanks, you guys. Yep. Thank you, Sean. That was awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah. Okay. I think we spent more time setting up than actually doing the interview. Yeah, that's probably true. Probably true. Oh, Joe, I'm just kidding. Yeah, give us one second. Let me just double check the records. Yeah. And Joe had A plus B roll going on there. Yeah, I mean. Oh, I had a bunch more queued up, depending on what you guys were saying. That was top notch B roll, 100%.