Bombin' the A.M. With Alexa Ray Corriea: 09/29/2014

I don't even particularly care for Lord of the Rings, and I'm stoked for Shadow of Mordor. And I really need D4 to come to PC, because I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

Same here would love to play D4, so i hope they release it on other platforms at some point.

Awesome episode. Kinda bummed to hear about the Destiny ending was not all that good.

That preview image makes me profoundly uncomfortable. Good work, @patrickklepek.

I would let Viggo Mortensen lick me.

"You're not the lord of the rings!"

Except that it's not an "ending". It's the final story mission currently available in what will be years of story progression. I'm not saying it was amazing, but it's quite apparent that Destiny is about far more than just running through each campaign mission until you are done. It's an MMORPG, meaning content will continue to grow as the years progress.

Glad the video is up! I had to miss it live because I was working and junk. Ugh.

Patrick talking about D4 makes me really sad that I don't have an Xbox One and can't play D4.

"You're not the lord of the rings!"

@patrickklepek, calling yours and Alex's facial hair halfway to beard braids is being mighty generous.

I knew in my heart Alexa Ray was awesome, but then she goes and says Dwarves are her preferred race and well, now she is my favorite person, period.

eh, not really. I very much disagree that it is an MMO, it is a coop game with some public areas that only support 8-16 people at a time and very little in the way of actual interaction.

Also, the fact that they are selling more content within 3 months of release for a 'massive' game is silly. Truth is, Destiny 2 will be out in 2-3 years...with a crop of expansions as well and then 3 to follow. In my opinion, It is a shallow platform to sell DLC. A plan to hook whales that will invest hundreds of dollars per game through the life of the series.

If a game claims to be as intriguing and exciting via the narrative as Destiny has claimed to be, then you should get your Narrative in the $60 product. Not $60 + $35 for the expansion pass + reading a bunch of garbage on a website. I don't like any of that approach.

They got $60 from me, I'm not going to spend more money to try and squeeze a little blood from that stone.

Everyone has their tastes, and maybe it just wasn't for me, but looking in even from the outside, trying not to be cynical, I still see this as a shallow shell to sell things.

Fuck Tolkien's son, certain types of media when they becomes so culturally synonymous no longer can be controlled by a single creator (and in this case, the creators fucking son) and they belong to everyone.

This clown stopping anyone from making anything about The Silmarillion is basically giving the middle finger to it's fans.

also funny to hear klepek call Chris Tolkien a kid, he's 89 years old.

Holy crap, 89?!

@patrickklepek: Yup! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Tolkien

I watched the last hour of Return of the King yesterday as prep work. And oh, hey, that thing's pretty good.

I'm trying not to think about D4 because I'm a month away from an Xbox but I WANT IT!

I will never get tired of hearing Alexa talk about Lord of the Rings. I'm not even a fan of Tolkien, but her enthusiasm is utterly infectious, and it's really cool to see her channel it into great writing like last week's retrospective.

@conmulligan: Word. She is one of my favorite guests (though I love them all)!

@zabant: Christopher Tolkien is a stubborn person, but I think maybe he's better than the alternative, where a Warner-Brothers controlled Tolkien estate starts making sequels to the original books, tie-in TV shows, and so on.

Bill Watterson (creator of "Calvin and Hobbes") has a similar stance, and I know I will similarly lament the day when Watterson dies and some less picky relative sells to Disney for the inevitable CGI kids movie adaptation.

Interesting side missions like.. go kill 9 archers.. Ahh..

I worked for a company who made licensed goods (blankets, glassware, keychains etc) and we had the Bob Marley license. The license is managed by a larger company but Ziggy (Bobs son) is involved with the approvals. At some point a few years ago they decided they wanted to disassociate the Bob Marley license with marijuana.

I'll let that sink in.

So a large part of my job was photoshoping joints out of photos (that they provided) so they could be slapped on blankets and posters and sold to teenagers. Fuck all licenses.

Very fun and interesting episode. Ever since I started seeing stuff from this site a couple years ago (via the site, YouTube, and the Roku channel, before I became a member), this show has become one of my favorite features all week.

I love Destiny, I'm having a blast, and I will buy the DLC. Maybe I'm "part of the problem" but this just interests me more then just about everything else out there. I get that people are going to continue complaining about it on every single games related anything because a lot of people feel let down, it's just getting discouraging and boring to listen to people say the exact same opinions on the game over and over again. Listening to game journalism since launch has actually become more repetitive then playing the same strike missions over and over again.

Interesting how we don't want internet hate but this video has multiple insults thrown at individuals or estates I am sure they have had little to no contact with.

Bad story? There is no story!

Destiny is a game about shooting things. Primary themes? Don't get shot. Narrative devices? Fireballs and lightning daggers. Climactic moments? Actually getting a legendary from a legendary engram.

I'm excited to play Shadow of Mordor tomorrow, then Dragon Age next month. Hopefully that's good too. Not really into horror games, but The Evil Within is lookin pretty cool.

With Patrick saying people expecting the extra content as a cynics take I just think it's more of a take of what people have seen in video games recently. How many games have given out there dlc and expansion packs free of charge? I mean it happens but rarely do we see it happen without a price fixed to it. I just think it's one of those things that people have come to expect to happen cause it feels like that's just how the business goes with DLC.

To anyone curious here is a gaf post with the reddit content that patrick was talking about on the Destiny segment.

Ehhhhh poh naaaah.

"I'm gonna beat the shit out of Zelda." ---Alexa Ray Corriea

Gonna jump on the bandwagon here, as I really hope D4 is ported to the PC since I'm not getting an Xbox One any time soon. Don't really need those Kinect controls anyways; reguardless of how cool @PatrickKlepek makes them sound.

I think the Lord of the Rings is okay, but that's not really my reason wanting to grab Shadow of Mordor first thing tomorrow. game just looked really interesting from the get-go with the Nemesis System and after reading all the glowing reviews and listing to this, I'm sure I'll enjoy it.

Viggo pulling a Frakes right there.

Turn the graphics back up!

He's not licking. Its a New Zealand Maori haka thing, he's basically doing a war greeting ;)

I've got to go with Alex on this one. They totally stripped that stuff out to sell it as DLC.

my screen froze on this for a good five seconds

This was a good episode but I was really disappointed by the treatment of Christopher Tolkien and the Tolkien Estate. It's really unfair the way they described him as just a dick who's impossible to work with, he's 89 years old and I doubt he personally had any direct contact with any of the specifics of game production. As far as I know he spends most of his time (which I imagine isn't that much any more at his age) curating his father's notes and releasing new books. From everything I've read about how he feels about the films and video games and stuff, he sounds more like he's just sad that something that he grew up with and helped create is being whored out by large corporations. I mean he might have some extreme opinions about the movies, but he also had to actively work to stop Warner Bros. from making Lord of the Rings slot machines so I can kind of understand where he's coming from.

I think Alexa's my favorite semi-regular guest.

Also it's interesting that "Lord of the Rings" is not anywhere in Shadow of Mordor's title. Speaking of licenses, here's the legal copy at the bottom of the game's Steam page:

MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF MORDOR © 2014 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Developed by Monolith. In association with WingNut Films. © 2014 New Line Productions, Inc. © The Saul Zaentz Company. MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF MORDOR, THE HOBBIT, and the names of the characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks of The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises under license to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

MONOLITH LOGO, WB GAMES LOGO, WB SHIELD: ™ & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

(s14)

@schonebaby: That needs to be the new Alex chat emoticon.

I was thrilled to hear some D4 talk, and even more thrilled to listen to Alexa nerd out about Lord of the Rings because that's a series near and dear to my heart, near and dear enough that I have multiple copies of LotR and The Hobbit, and a first Edition of The Silmarillion. Also, I know how to spell Silmarillion.

D4's Kinect controls are as perfect as Kinect controls will ever be, for anything, ever.

In terms of other games that could use a Nemesis-like system, I just beat the Cold Cold Heart DLC for Arkham Origins. There's a bit in there where you interrogate a guy, and then a few missions later you run across him again and he's basically like "Please don't beat me up again!". He's given a special name (Loose Lips) but I only realized he wasn't just a random thug cause I was reading a walkthrough that mentioned "You come across a familiar face".

So other games that wanted to use a Nemesis type system need goons you can fight who aren't just nameless goons. GTA might work in terms of gang warfare, but I highly doubt one particular thug could become your nemesis. And we all know most people die via cop in that game anyway.

@schonebaby said:

my screen froze on this for a good five seconds

Or he did actually freeze...for a good five seconds. Might be half-goatee paralysis.

Emailed Patrick about the follow up to You're Next a bit ago. The rottentomatoes description makes it sound absolutely insane and must-see.

A game put out by Activision is exploitative? No that possibly couldn't be the truth.

Alexa Ray's great because she's direct and not PC in a joking way. It clears the air super well, way more than people might notice.

There is no story and no ending in that game only some fizzy background lore thats just out of reach while you grind.

I completely agree. His work releasing the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales alone put him in my good books, and I can't fault anyone for being wary of "tie-in's" considering how many terrible adaptations there have been over the years. Wanting to demand quality and consistency should not ever be discouraged.

On a side note, sure, the White Council could have been great, but if you're already a year or two into a project, and ask for another 3 years…you need to have some serious pull to get any company to sign off on that. I was also looking forward to it at the time, but was not surprised to hear it was canceled. Sad, but not surprised. :/

@patrickklepek: Do you have a source for Jason Jones leaving Bungie? He's not just any employee, he's one of two co-founders, and the only one still there as far as I know. I think you're thinking of Joe Staten, who left Bungie earlier this year to return to Microsoft.

Well, this just confirms my long held suspicions about @patrickklepek and Alexa Ray Corriea...

They both are in the pockets of the pop filter lobby. How does it feel to be a shill for Big Pop Filter?!

#gamersgate

It seems like the multitude of control options for the WiiU is causing some grief for the games media, particularly for multiplayer. For instance Alexa Ray not having a pro controller for Hyrule Warriors or Giantbomb not owning a nunchuck for the Wii Sports Club Quick Look.

I hope the multiplayer WiiU Smash Bros coverage by Giantbomb won't be constant complaints about only having Wii Remotes for players not using the GamePad.

The Two Towers and Return of the King games were pretty great for their time. Though I went back to 'em again a few years back and Two Towers in particular has not aged very well at all. A lot of moments early on where you're stunlocked by arrows.

S'funny, after listening to you complain about being faster than the game in Hyrule Warriors, I just hit the exact same problem in Shadows of Mordor. I'm on I guess the first story mission to interrogate a captain even though I've already done it a bunch of times. Unfortunately the game decided to pop up the tutorial on how to interrogate after I had already initiated the interrogation. Now my game is stuck with me holding this orc by the head with a prompt on the screen telling me to press RB and A to hold this orc by the head. Guess I have to do this mission again because fuck you game.