The Giant Beastcast: Episode 41

I will listen now pls.

beast!

Brad? What are you doing here?!

.rss pls

I haven't even heard this yet, just saw Factorio mentioned in the description... yeah that game is hard to stop...

Fuck, I'm up late enough on the west coast to see this posted. Time to go to bed/say I will and listen to this shit for hours

Here is the scoop on No Mans Sky: it's a game, that you play, made by a small team.

Factorio took me forever to stop playing.. I just couldn't stop....

The Beast will take on the Chameleon on this hot episode of The Giant Beastcast!

Jeff, Jason, and now Brad have called into the BeastCast.

When will Dan be called upon for his expertise?

What about Drew?

Great quality on Brads voice as well. Impressive tech yet again from the awesome Giantbomb!

Excellent!

Is there a reason that the RSS feed has been taking so long to update lately? I don't know if it's always been like that, but I've been noticing it a lot lately.

No RSS yet?

I'm unironically loving the beautiful and strange ballet in the No Man's Sky segment, trying to somehow dwelve into the gigantic hype that has been created and at the same time already setting up a defense to place the blame for those that will inevitabily be disappointed on those-selves (does it exist this construct of words in english?) :)

Also come on Austin, saying that they are already stated in 2014 what game this is is like saying about a film we know nothing about bar for the director "see? they said two years ago it's a thriller! You just have to search a little and you could already have known!" and have that as a satisfactory answer

edit: the education talk was interesting, it would be nice for a foreigner like me to have it expanded. The only things that usually you get while looking from outside it's highschool hallways from movies and pop culture and student debt for higher education (which i find insane, but eh, it's not the only thing) from the general college youth internet, so talk about children and early education is very rare.

radical podcast

No Man's Podcast.

More Quantum Break talk, aw yes!

Thanks.

You've always been able to pirate anything on PC. I don't know why it's something they'd focus on at all. It's a given, and most everything still comes out on PC and Steam is thriving just fine. Feels like a 90's mentality.

@austin_walker I now want to see your list of recommended books.

woo

Fist punching air out of happiness.

I'm at the Rock Band 4 pc talks, Rocksmith might have opened them up to the idea, that game has been cracked open, but people are still buying the official dlc.

There is a massive customs scene for it, IE someone made Lockdown for Rocksmith.

With No Man Sky I think when people are asking "What do you do in this game?" it's a blanket question to cover a lot of things that the developers seemingly avoid talking about in all their PR events.

Sure, we now know a slew of activities you can partake in crafting, flying, shooting and engaging cyber police. But the way these things have been presented at each event and showing of the game has been entirely singular. None of the mechanics have been explained how they hook into the grand scheme of the game.

For example, so there's crafting right? Cool why are you crafting? Is it simply just crafting as a singular activity? Is there end goal of crafting? Or is it to keep resource gathering and continue crafting? How else does crafting hook into the overall game outside of just making your suit/ship better? What is even the benefit of making your suit/ship better other than the ability to explore more planets? None of it seems to be explained all I get from the showings are "we have crafting" without the "this is why we have crafting" part.

Other games with crafting provide it as an avenue to overcome/aid in challenges, puzzles, system management or in some cases to forego existing systems that gate the players progress. The only one of these I can attribute to the way crafting has been described is the last one. Even then when you're talking about traveling to algorithmic-ally generated planets there's no real progress, you aren't going from A to B, you're going from A to another A but with green grass (reductive I know.)

In the end to me it all boils down to the framework of design expectation set out by the majority of existing games. This game doesn't adhere to that so much and that's what has caused a whole bunch of confusion and skepticism.

Please update the rss feed. Not getting anything on the Premium feed as of this post

I have to agree with Alex, the fact I can be just exploring 'By My Self' is what I look forward to - the solo experience just appeals to me. In fact I don't want to meet my friends or see people because I could see where that one point I DO see someone it will be impactful.

I also want to see a place NOBODY else will see because only I went to 'that one' solar system.

"...I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die."

Not up on iTunes yet. Just letting people know...

@baronsamedi: I think it's really strange how guarded the devs are about talking in detail about the game they plan to put out to the public. People don't really want to be "surprised" by their $60 purchase, and asking for pre-orders in this situations seems awkward at best. If the game is good, it will stand on it's own. If the player's entire enjoyment about No Man's Sky hinges on knowing almost nothing about the core mechanics beforehand then it's in serious trouble because past the first week everyone will know. The act of "finding out for yourself" that this is more Minecraft than Terraria is going to be a big make or break moment for a lot of people. If all this mystery isn't necessary, and as Alex mentions you can simply go online and watch someone play it, then why keep up the pretense? Why has Hello Games made these media rounds about a half dozen times already over the last few years when they just do the coy, nervous smile and dance around every single topic - "yah well.. you can fight" "you could do that if you wanted to.." It's just bizarre. When I went to buy Bloodborne I knew exactly what I was getting, I just didn't know the details and that was the perfect balance. In this case I just don't really know anything apart from vague generalized concepts that could be used to describe a dozen different games, and I don't think it's as weird as the Beastcrew seems to think it is that I might want to know more.

At this point in time I'm exhausted from reading another article about No Man's Sky and being none the wiser about it. How many times can I watch a video where someone aimlessly walks around a planet, looking around here and there before the scene cuts to going inside your ship and flying away? I oddly enough don't have the energy to keep getting invested in the hype. I'm curious to play it, the game is still a ways off, when it's here I'll check it out but until then it's a resounding shrug of the shoulders. From what I gather this is basically Minecraft without the building element, and I really liked Minecraft, but I liked it for the building so we'll see how much I like this.

Okay, I've managed to learn to deal with the terrible intro music but letting it trail into the conversation just too much.

I know this comes off as whiny, and it is, but please consider new music for the podcast.

The devs can afford to be a bit vague because NMS will probably be a huge success regardless. I like their strategy.

No matter how many previews, interviews, or pressers they give, most of us still have little or no idea what we actually do in No Man's Sky. This worries me a bit. If it were actually fun and engaging, I'd imagine those who've played it would have more information and enthusiasm. The way this hype train has rolled out is kinda turning me away in fact.

@cooljammer00 said:

Dan has been on before - Episode 28, when they were back in San Francisco.

@humanity: Yea, at this point I question why they're even having these press events. It must simply be to remind people that the game is still a thing because it certainly isn't to show off anything new.

@cyraxible: I like it, please consider a new opinion.

@dougfunk15: The game is about exploring planets with the "end game" being getting to the center of the universe they've built. Crafting is a big part of the game, building your own equipment, spaceships etc. Building better spaceships will make you capable to fly greater distances. There's also NPCs that will have you collect shit but no real "story quests" as far as I know. The multiplayer aspect consists of naming planets etc., and you can meet people near you but taking into account how huge the game is that will be very rare. The universe gets more dangerous the nearer you are the center of it. I really don't think it's unclear what you "do" in the game. It's basically about flying and walking around the world, exploring and collecting resources you can use to craft with. It's a game that seems made for the "Minecraft generation" in many ways, people who don't mind games that are pretty aimless.

Some details might be wrong, I haven't followed NMS closely.

No Man's BEAST.

Premium beasting

@humanity: Bloodborne was a known commodity. Gaming media sat down with it for 10 minutes and could just say " it's a fast paced souls game with no shield." That's what Bloodborne is. Anyone could watch that gameplay trailer and see that.

I'm sure we will all have a much better idea what No Man's Sky 2 will be before release.

Anyway, I feel like some out there are either dense or have unfounded expectations that Hello Games should spew every little detail about its new IP before it has hit the market. I feel like we know most everything about the game, and if you are unsure if it is for you just wait for reviews.

this might have been mentioned elsewhere- but a large part of the reason i don't feel an insatiable drive to fully understand 'what no man's sky' is-

are you ready?

-MINECRAFT. no but seriously- that's a 'game' where if you break it down to its most base elements- you're collecting and placing blocks, while doing a fair bit of exploration. and yet it's gone on to be this cultural phenom with all sorts of emergent gameplay.

i'm not saying no man's sky will have the elasticity of minecraft- nor the eventual overwhelming success. but i think NMS and MC are similar as the sort of game whose energy is nearly impossible to capture with a traditional quicklook or preview. at the risk of sounding like a marketing cliche- you need to 'write' your own story by playing before the base product has any meaning.

anyway, i'm excited to dive in!

So much interesting news this week. Looking forward to listening.

I really wish that No Man's Sky did not spend so much time in the press so that it became hyped beyond expectations. NMS would have been much more appealing if the game was released very quickly and allowed to organically grow into something great (i.e. Minecraft). I still have hope that NMS is good, but the hype is no longer contained.

@austin_walker Ah i see you have met Fluffy... http://thelongdark.gamepedia.com/Fluffy

Factorio is a good game.

@clockwork5: See I really don't like this weirdly hostile attitude towards what has, up until now, been common practice in the industry - aka asking questions. Suddenly people wanting to know more about a game before release are entitled, and needy and they just need to know everything! No, not everything, just the usual - whats the story, what do you do, why do you do it etc. No one is asking them to sit down and break this game down one iota at a time. When did curiosity become some dirty thing to be shunned? My example of Bloodborne is just the first thing that came to mind but that game was a big unknown because people didn't know how it would really play because it was seemingly so different from the rest of the series. From Software showed enough to let people know what it was about without giving away the meaty details.

I don't feel like Hello Games has shown all that much at all. I know you can walk around, shoot a laser, get in a ship and fly away. Thats cool. So whats the story? Whats the premise here? What are you ultimately striving to do? Oh "get to the center of the galaxy" huh, why? Who are you playing as? Can you tell me literally anything at all? No? Ok thanks, let me go pre-order the $150 collectors edition purely based on the cool art style and that I can craft. These questions aren't probing in any way, they are the bare minimum that we as potential customers usually know before putting our hard earned money down on the table - let's stop vilifying the act of wanting to know basic details about a videogame here.

Yes Factorio is amazing. Especially the trailer.

@alavapenguin: Seriously. I put 50 hours into the game since it was released on Steam last week. Just got to the point where I can make a tank and kill alien nests and start to expand my base. There is always some new challenge, always something to get better at, and it never gets boring.

That last line only really gets utilised by those already well within the gaming culture bubble, not to the average consumer.

This new Xbox One sounds like a Gameboy Color/DSi/New 3DS equivalent.

They've said that there's very little "story", so if that's what you come to the game for you're gonna get disappointed. They haven't talked much about that because there's not much of that there, which is pretty natural given the nature of how the game is built. The story is such an afterthought that the dev said in the interview with Brad that they're now working with a writer on the lore, which I took to mean that they built a game and then started to write some story justification for for example the robots being there.

The game is, and let me quote myself here:

The game is about exploring planets with the "end game" being getting to the center of the universe they've built. Crafting is a big part of the game, building your own equipment, spaceships etc. Building better spaceships will make you capable to fly greater distances. There's also NPCs that will have you collect shit but no real "story quests" as far as I know. The multiplayer aspect consists of naming planets etc., and you can meet people near you but taking into account how huge the game is that will be very rare. The universe gets more dangerous the nearer you are the center of it. I really don't think it's unclear what you "do" in the game. It's basically about flying and walking around the world, exploring and collecting resources you can use to craft with. It's a game that seems made for the "Minecraft generation" in many ways, people who don't mind games that are pretty aimless.

It's a survival game where the main draw for people will be the massive scope, exploring that world.

If that doesn't sound appealing to you then that's fine. But it's pretty clear what the game is by now. Your "motivation" will most likely be that you as a player will want to explore that world, if that's something that interests you. There's little to no story and "motivation" in most of the games in the survival genre, and this will probably fit right in.

My dream game would be a city builder with Anno style resource management and all the political options you would find in the Democracy games. A game where I can relax the regulations on oil processing. It increases jobs and tax revenue, but it causes the drinking water to become polluted and people are getting sick and need healthcare, but also the fishing industry is gathering unhealthy fish that people won't buy, so now I don't have enough food to feed my citizens and the fishing industry is going belly up and increasing unemployment which in turn caused homelessness to go up and a tent city is developing and creating an area of my city that is filled with crime.

@amyggen: I guess the biggest take away from all of this is that different people have very different views on what something being "pretty clear" really is. And I don't say that to be intentionally snarky or get one over on you or anything like that - I genuinely think we all have different "requirements" when it comes to info about games. What for you is very obvious, for me isn't as crystal clear, or rather not clear enough to be able to tell you if NMS is something I'll enjoy or not. I'll definitely buy it though, just because I think it looks cool. That said I'm pretty sure this "vast" world isn't going to be nearly as vast as most people think. I imagine it's going to be endless in the same way a Minecraft world is endless, even though after a few hours you've seen all it has to offer, it's just the pattern that changes.