Q&A: February 22nd, 2023

Alexander Asks
Thoughts on year zero both the album and ARG (witch btw was done by the same people who did the ilovebees thing for halo 2)

No opinion about the ARG, didn't know it was by ilovebees team, that's pretty cool. The album is my least favorite of NIN's discography. While Hesitation Marks really grew to become one of my favorites, the same hasn't happened to Year Zero... though it's also been a long time since I listened to it, and I've been meaning to give it another go start to finish, at least understand why it doesn't click with me if it doesn't.

Freakin Shane Asks
What is the worst or the "worst" QTE you've seen or played in a game? For me it is the rat knife fight from Battlefield 3's campaign.

Fuck... that's a really good question.

This might be cheating, and it's not for the quick time event itself, but the line delivered while building up to the button press.

"This little riding hood's got a basket" full of kickass has got to be one of the worst lines and one of the worst deliveries of said line in entertainment history.

The_Surviv0r Asks
I've been giving a shot to ANNO: Mutationem this week and it does something I quite like, realistic pixel art characters in a normal 3D World. It's a quite beautiful visual style and I wonder if we'll see more of it in the indie world. Thoughts?

I really want to see more art-style blends, like people have been doing with animation in shows like Arcane. As controversial as it was, I really loved the visuals of NFS Unbound, and I hope more games experiment with these.

It's really worth to do it now that we're hitting the law of diminishing returns when it comes to realism.

Joshua Lovejoy Asks
Favorite synthwave artist?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

The two artists I've got full albums saved for are Occams Laser and Gost... Gost wins out I think, that shit's more intense than most metal albums.

OzarkTempses Asks
It's now become kind of a meme to add roguelike/lite mechanics to every kind of game under the sun (card games, beat'em up, etc) but is there a genre you feel could actually benefit from such changes? Do you think bringing such mechanics into a multiplayer game is feasible and could be balanced?

I was complaining the other day about how so many games haven't bothered to use Outrun's structure outside of making Outrun games or clones like Slipstream.

Outrun's structure already has parts of a roguelite, and just needs some slight expansion to achieve that.

As for Multiplayer, I haven't really thought about it, though, there's certainly overlap in the new sub-genre of "Extraction Shooters" spawned by Tarkov. Really, the appeal is risk. For the last bunch of years, people have just been playing games where they're progression is a one way trip, where the only variable is how quickly you ascend.

Makes sense that people want to feel that rush of risk again in their games.

Juhana Asks
If you could travel back in time for an hour just to take in the atmosphere, where would you go?

1920s New York/Chicago, or 1960s LA/Vancouver to truly understand what my parents lived in.

Jake Malone Asks
Do you think the inclusion of a voiced protagonist in an RPG automatically limits flexibility in players choices? And do you think the amount of voiced Protagonist is modern RPGs has gotten oversaturated?

Absolutely.

However, Cyberpunk showed me that the issue isn't voiced protagonists, but just that they don't work for Avatars. Hearing a character sound believably scared for themselves was refreshing as fuck, and I hope more games do that.

However, I'm also glad to see that Starfield goes back to Bethesda's old system for instance, because there's a lot more flexibility in only needing a writer and programmer than a writer, programmer, voice actor, voice director, and the limited time had in a day to record their lines which are then super inconvenient to change.

Now that we've done enough games with both to see their strengths and weaknesses, I hope more games can now make an artistic choice regarding which method to use rather than a technical/marketing one.

Andrew O'Brien Asks
Do you think NFS is too afraid to go back to older physics engines (BlackBox) or are we doomed to forever dealing with brake-to-drift physics (Criterion)?

Yes.

While it's nice to at least have the option of grip builds in newer NFS games, they just don't feel as good as they used to in games like Most Wanted. It's crazy to think that Forza Horizon 5 has more of that Need for Speed feel than the recent games do.

SkyGenz Asks
How do you feel about Visual Novels?

No real opinion of them, but having more genres in the public eye is always a positive for gaming.

TakiFR Asks
Have you watched any of the Michael Fassbender: Road to Le Mans series? If so what did you think about it?

Only bits and pieces, but I do wanna sit down and watch them start to finish. Him and Frankie Muniz would likely get along.

tru3p1ayaZz Asks
I noticed that you used an 8 bit version of Knights of Cydonia in one of your recent videos. So now I’m curious, do you listen to Muse? And if you do, do you have a favorite song/album?

They're new album is irredeemable garbage, but I do enjoy a good Muse track. My inspiration of using Knights of Cydonia is that the placement reminded me of Rev Rants by Anthony Burch, and he used to use that song back in the lawless days of the internet where everyone just used whatever song they liked on every website.

The Great Leveler Asks
What is the worst racing game you've ever played?

Garfield Kart.

I didn't need to think about that one.

There might be worse games technically like Big Rigs, but I can't imagine playing a racing game that's more infuriating...

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