The Giant Beastcast: Episode 98

No persona 5?

Aww yiss.

Always wanted to try cannoli, but never found one.

Here's hoping for another Alex' Automata Minute!

Ugh I gotta go so I guess i'll grab this version

Holy cannoli!

gamefly? what year is this?

Is noone at Giantbomb playing Persona 5? They played for like an hour in that QL

@parthbagaria: Takes a bit in the game to really say stuff about it so maybe next week.

It has arrived!!

I want those. Can't get cannoli around here, and I don't know how well trying to make it myself would go.

I really want some cannoli now...

Why so hard on VR? The PSVR is sold out in Japan constantly.. The PSVR sold more than Sony expected and they have now bumped up their production.

PC VR is somewhat of a dud, but that's mostly price/space related. Roomscale is a no for a lot of us. People rarely say "I'm never getting VR." They say "I'm not paying 800 for that." I looooove VR, but I wouldn't pay 800 for that either. Microsoft partnered with Acer and some others for internally tracked HMDs that are substantially cheaper than Vive/Rift. (no external trackers or cams, no controllers necessary (tracks hands poorly, so you buy the controller addon)). These will most likely work on the Scorpio, why would they partner if not? Would people pay 350 for a VR hmd for their Scorpio so they can drive Forza 7 in full ass VR? Or maybe to play Elite Dangerous in VR with their friends? Or Fallout 4 if it turns out OK-ish? Or maybe a halo VR battle arena or whatever.. 350 is very different from 800 or even 500(psvr).

VR is still brewing and it'll keep brewing the same way phone games did. And then, once again, a new platform just appears seemingly out of nowhere without people ever really catching on. "Oh, phone games are major business now.. uuuh... THE SKY IS FALLING!" "Oh facebook games are big business now, huh.. THE SKY IS FALLING!"

It's like a sigh of relief everytime people talk about VR not having taken over the world in 1 year. "phew, good. Now there won't be fewer "real" games!"

Check out Pavlov. It's janky early access CS in VR. At some point a VR game will come along that scratches whatever itch you have much better than the screen equivalent can, and then you're hooked. I can never play racing, flight or space sims on a screen ever again. VR isn't going to get worse from now on, and sooner or later there will be enough people to keep the business rolling. If MS wants to leave Sony with a feature advantage for the next 5 years, skipping VR is a way to go about accomplishing that.. There ARE some xbox people out there who are envious of RE7 on PSVR. Those people exist. If Scorpio has nothing for these people, the PSVR gets awfully tempting if PC VR is out of reach price wise.

I get that people are disappointed by VR, but just dismissing it forevermore is silly. Microsoft hasn't dismissed VR for the coming 3-5 years. I mean they sold the Xbone with a Kinect. MS loves some "additional value" shit.

AW YISS!!

Leave the gun, take the cannoli.

The Scorpio, in my opinion, is even weirder than the PS4 Pro because Microsoft is actually talking like this is the decent step replacement of the Xbox One...while at the same time saying Xbone owners won't be missing out of anything? Also, if they can't fix their "games problem" its not going to matter. Their strategy this generation has been asking themselves "what did we do last generation" and then promptly putting out those near same games.

@mostlysquares I think people rag on VR like PSVR because of the lack of quality in the product.

I wonder how different the general GB opinion of VR would be if Jeff weren't the main person showing it off. Whenever another person on GB uses it they almost always have a great time/are amazed. Need to mix it up!

I can't wait for Alex to give us the deep spec analysis of the Scorpio!

@sammo21: that point about enabling developers to make Scorpio exclusive games seems like a hard shot to the foot too. I can't help but think that Microsoft might try to incentivize developers to try and make the Scorpio more appealing as well. First impressions kind of make it seem like they're trying to distance themselves from the 'failure' of the original One.

Vinny talking about putting off Andromeda and how that might affect stuff like GOTY talks reminds me of Brad's experience with Mass Effect 3 and how vastly different his experience with that game was compared to everyone else. Its an interesting thing, especially if they continue to tinker with things like visual bugs and writing and quest logic throughout the year.

The scorpio reveal stuff is coming at such a weird time where every other platform is getting these great games and they've had nothing at all. Seriously there's been like 10 highly reviewed games already this year and what, 1 of them is on xbox? (RE7) Instead they're canceling games like Scalebound and have barely anything announced for the future, while sony has a huge amount of big stuff coming like Last of Us 2, Spider Man, God of War, Death Stranding, GT sport, Days gone, Detroit and a bunch more i wont even list.

And MS's answer to all this is...6 teraflops. Good luck with that pitch I guess.

How much money does dan make to where he can drop 2 grand like it's nothing every year? O.o

Not featured: game that people have waited 8-9 years to play and are dying to hear what the GB crews opinions are on it but I guess no one on the crew gives a shit about Persona or jrpgs so let's continue to pretend it doesn't exist.

by "not featured" you guys mean "they talk about the streaming situation, Alex says he just started playing it and is like 2h in, then they discuss the localization", right? People loooooove to complain.

I liked Alex's shout out to Great British Bake Off.

Between Thimbleweed Park and Drawn to Death, it's a good week for games with a sense of humor that makes me want to throw my computer out the window.

@dastardry: Yeah, what @ratamero said. I just started playing, Vinny hasn't gotten his copy yet. We'll talk more about it next week once we've had a chance to dig in further. Just chill.

@alex: Good to know! Game is launching at the perfect time, with nothing else really coming out in the next few weeks. Hope you guys like it :)

You know, those Scorpio specs and especially the promises they make about already available games sound great. But how the hell did we skip having a 1080p console completely? Both Scorpio and PS4 Pro tout 4K gaming. Well, fuck that. I'd love to have a system with 1080p60 performance and higher res textures instead. Something we'll never get, I know, because for console devs 30 FPS is apparently good enough.

Edit: Oh right, this is the wrong podcast to write a comment on. Heading to the free one... NOW.

@mctittles: I don't think you paid attention to any of the PSVR stuff. They all ragged on PSVR quite a bit because of all the consistent problems they've had with it.

You know, those Scorpio specs and especially the promises they make about already available games sound great. But how the hell did we skip having a 1080p console completely? Both Scorpio and PS4 Pro tout 4K gaming. Well, fuck that. I'd love to have a system with 1080p60 performance and higher res textures instead. Something we'll never get, I know, because for console devs 30 FPS is apparently good enough.

Also, let me soap box for a bit: Having podcasts split up into common plebs and Premium users is kinda strange when it comes to comments and discussions. And the Beastcast isn't even the worst offender. There's four seperate comment sections for Bombcast content, 2 audio, 2 video. What did the community decide is the one everyone comments on? I'll happily go with the free version, but is it audio or video? There's usually a bit of a split there. Wouldn't it be more useful to designate one the "official" (or at least semi-official (or even unofficial classic)) thread to get more of a discussion going?

To the second bit, we've been trying to figure out a way to unify that stuff. Maybe make all the comments shared for various versions. Pretty sure it would be a good thing.

I think they were downplaying how powerful the new Xbox will be. It is an actual difference maker if it runs games at 60 fps and 4k without seeming to be sacrificing effects and things. Then it makes this actual "mid cycle console upgrade" thing real. The PS4 Pro did not. Which may actually be good depending on how it is handled. For now though I think the PS4 Pro was too much of a half step.

Yes the PS4 has games, but I just got one and got a PS4 Slim because I could get it for like $250 with Uncharted 4 and don't see the Pro as enough of an upgrade. I think Xbox clearly needs to improve on their exclusives game, but if all third party games run way better on this machine the GB guys were overlooking that being a nice thing.

For guys into PC, like Vinny, I get it. But to me it's a big improvement to have an action game running at 60 fps. Yes, Zelda should be applauded but why not have it run 60 FPS too? Not that it's on the table with that game but it will be for others. I can say Dragons Dogma is a good example of a game I just replayed on PC and it's really improved with the performance boost.

It's also right to give people the option to not sacrifice for 4K if they are going to buy the TV. At least Xbox will be really going for it.

I also think Alice in Chains is really underrated. Unplugged is amazing.

I also like The Thirteenth Step by A Perfect Circle but really not much else by that band or much of Tool.

I also still laugh about Drawn to Life shitting on GB commenters years ago when it was first announced. Jaffe is a pretty funny guy to me.

Welcome to everyone who was annoyed about The Witcher 3 on GB a couple years ago.

But I also have a complaint that really on GB lately they don't actually talk about games in much detail. When a new game comes out and I really just want to hear people talk about the details in it and stuff they just don't really do much at all of it. There is always a spoiler concern. They are always playing different things. It's been making me less interested in the site sometimes. They spend more time on news and stuff and that is increasingly of less interest to me. I think in specific game videos they go into detail so maybe they avoid it on the podcast but then it makes the podcast different than it used to be.

@vinny: It's a big request for me. Right now I just post in the free feed but it's very arbitrary.

@vinny About the DirectX 12 enhancements in the Scorpio: what Microsoft did there is they implemented specialized hardware in their customized CPU to handle some DirectX 12 functions. This can provide an order-of-magnitude speedup in performance without the game developers doing anything special (other than using DirectX 12). An example I gave in another thread: think of the h.264 decoders that all graphics cards have these days. It's a dedicated block that only decodes h.264 (and does it very well) and spares your CPU cores from having to do that math.

@giantlennonx_x: he's in his 30s with a decent job and no kids. he has disposable income.

Yeah, but if you wanna hear about the new Zelda over and over and over again for a few weeks, west coast got you covered!

I'm kidding (mostly) but man, it's a fuckin' bummer that Nier got glossed over too (I see you Alex, I know you tried). But we did get multiple discussions about how bad Wildlands is! And multiple videos and discussions about how bad ME: Andromeda is! I dunno, it just sucks that one of the best games in a long time got sidestepped by most of the staff, again.

I really hope at least some of them click with Persona 5. I can't take another round of Zelda discussion.

I realise none of this post is really about this week's Beastcast.

@planetfunksquad: For what it's worth, I'm planning on bringing Nier back to the discussion when I'm all the way done with it. I'm just about done with my Ending B playthrough.

@planetfunksquad: Zelda is one of the only games they really go in on so as someone who would play it but has little interest in their console I actually still enjoy that part because they are talking about a game in detail with opinions and anecdotes. They really don't do that for much else like I say in my post.

I have been off put by the Mass Effect coverage on GB so I avoided it. Like you say there has been more energy for hating on ME on the site than making video content or covering good games that are out in detail. Like I said in my post, I get that they have videos for that if you want to watch them, but the podcast loses something.

@danryckert C'mon man. That's Old Dan saying Persona 5 isn't for him. New Dan would give it a chance.

@alex: If no one else plays it I would love to hear you guys even do something like talk to someone outside GB who has played it (maybe Austin or something) for a podcast. I think that game would be perfect for it.

I really agree. I was disappointment by that. I actually think Dan could like it a lot but I think Persona 5 takes so long to get going from my time with it that might get him (also a lot of time on a creepy Volleyball coach which is a bit questionable, not because it is "problematic" but because it's like almost all the game has been about for the first 5 hours or so for me.). Really I think he would enjoy watching someone play it...

Anyone running a "time till wrestling reference"?

@rejizzle: It's same Dan, never was a "new" Dan. It's the same lovable goofball from his GI days.

Microsoft always releases games later in the year, Sony does the majority of their releases earlier in the year. Sure I hope MS shows more at E3, but people act like Sony was knocking it out of the park the last few years, and they weren't. Recently, and mostly 3rd party, they've had some amazing games. The big thing about PS4 that they seem to gloss over is that the slightly better specs made it so people bought it for the cross-platform 3rd party games. With Scorpio being far more powerful than the PS4 Pro that should change. It's only after the first few months of this year that the "exclusives!!!" bandwagon has really gotten any steam, and that's because the power difference is finally swinging the other way.

Also the "just build a pc" argument doesn't work for the vast majority of consumers. I've gamed on pc for a long time, but I greatly prefer consoles because gaming on pc is always a buggy shit-show, and MS is going for the normal family with the cheaper S solution (that also does 4k and UHD) and the more graphics focused gamer with the Scorpio (which can also be pushed as a 4k streaming and UHD box). It's a sound strategy, and much better than the odd minor upgrade that is the PS4 pro.

My only Mad Catz product was their PS1 controller. The D-pad didn't last but I remember it being much cheaper than the first-party controller.

I 100% agree with the xbox UI its been complete shit since launch and they're too stubborn to change the layout.

@paulunga: In all fairness, consumers signal that 30FPS is "good enough" when they purchase the games too.

It's easy to harp on the devs for their choices, but consumers are just as much in the "wrong" because they are spending money supporting such practices.

The entire point of this redesign is that everything loads far quicker and is available in the guide itself. Like most things with this site lately though they never do a deep dive, it's all just surface level stuff on almost everything that is covered.

Also this is a completely different UI than they had at launch, and I honestly don't get what is wrong about it. It's incredibly quick now.