Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, A Video Games Podcast. I’m Sammy Roberts, and I’m joined by Matthew Castle. Hello. How’s it going today, Matthew? It’s going well. I’m feeling pumped for 2021. Yes, so in this episode, we thought we’d do a 2021 preview, because not a lot else is going on in games at this time of year. And people like this kind of forward-looking stuff, I figure. Plus, it’s bookending two extremely chunky episodes, the first of which was our Game of the Year episode last month, and this month, we’re gonna do something else that’s kind of fun around magazine covers next week. So we thought this week we’d keep it kind of light and just look forward at some of the stuff that’s coming out for like Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and on PC in 2021. We think that might be fun and frothy to do. So we’re gonna talk a bit about kind of our past in covering like upcoming years, because we think that might be sort of fun, what it’s like to write sort of preview issues of magazines. And then we’re gonna talk a bit about 2021 itself. We’ve got 21 bold predictions about the year to come. Matthew, can you tease anything about your predictions? They are pretty weak. When I heard you say the word bold, I suddenly looked at mine and thought, are any of these bold? I don’t know. So I think it may be 11 bold predictions from you and 10 lukewarm. I think you’ll find that really about four of my predictions are bold and then the rest are like, oh, that’s quite conventional. But. Oh, nice. I’m looking forward to that section. Yeah, exactly. It’s gonna be fun. So, Matthew, what do you think the overall vibe of 2021 is looking like for games? I think it’s, it feels like it’s going to be kind of the proper first year of a next generation, which is the kind of grace period. I think a lot of consoles get where everyone is kind of just happy and excited to be getting something new and shiny. We may be over score everything one or two points and then come to regret it in five years’ time. But it’s, I don’t know, it feels kind of defined by those new machines still. It’s, you know, on paper, the list of games, I’m kind of into them and there’s lots of stuff I’m really looking forward to. I don’t know if this is going to be the year where we feel the repercussions of COVID delays from last year. You know, it’s very, very hard to tell. Cause I think this year felt relatively untouched in terms of the games we expected to have out and the ones which then came out, you know, it was pretty much what they said. So yeah, whether or not next year is just going to sort of unfold to be a wasteland, who knows? But on paper, if they can deliver, I think it will be, I don’t know, it’s looking pretty solid, I think. Yeah, I think so. Like some good exclusive titles, particularly from Sony. Nintendo is a bit of a kind of unknown, which we’ll talk about, and Microsoft, Microsoft has to have a big year, really, in terms of software. Although, perhaps not, if you just look at the way that the Xbox keeps selling out, regardless of how many units are available. So yeah, there’s some interesting stuff coming up, but I agree with you, COVID delays probably gonna play a bit of a part. Also, like you say, this is the kind of, this is the point of the generation where I feel like we’re waiting to figure out what the big thing is going to be. So last gen, the equivalent of this year would have been 2014, right? Which is when you saw Destiny release, and like Alien Isolation and Wolfenstein, and then, yeah, like Shadow of War, or Shadow of Mordor, rather. And so, yeah, these kind of like, like you say, they’re not necessarily like the best, the very best of generation in all cases, but you do get some good games that get you excited about next gen. I think there’s a few of these on the horizon, for sure. Definitely, yeah. And it’s also just, I think, worth mentioning that, you know, arguably the biggest games of 2020, which were games which came out before 2020, and then suddenly became very exciting, like Among Us. So I don’t know if that’s just thrown a complete spanner in the works, and we’re gonna see, you know, other resurgences, and it’s gonna be just, you know, another kind of totally unpredictable year, but, yeah, for sure. Fumble tale. Yeah, something like, I think Hades released technically in 2019, right, in early access, and then in full last year. And then, yeah, I feel like no one was talking about Hades at first, when you could only get on the Epic Games Store, except like a couple of games journalists. And then over time, yeah, obviously it releases on Switch, and then suddenly everyone’s playing it, which is always the way. Yeah. But yeah, so, yeah, I’m looking forward to discussing that in more depth, Matthew, but I thought it’d be fun to have a little bit of chatter about what it’s like to do the preview issues of magazines, because I remember these very well as a staff writer and as an editor. So each year, basically, you get to the end of the year of making a magazine, and you don’t have much time left to make your last issue of the year. It’s usually about three weeks. So it’s quite a mad scramble to the finish. Doing a preview issue is a good way to make things a bit simpler, because you’re essentially rounding up a load of games that people might want to play next year, which is a handy service to give readers, because often in magazines, you’re covering games individually and not collecting them all in one place and being like, oh, this is what you should be excited about. So it definitely has a good reader function. But it’s an interesting issue. I think I enjoyed doing some of them and not others. And it all kind of came down to how exciting the year ahead actually was. What’s your memory of doing these? Yeah, I guess very similar vibes. They always felt like they were a necessity because of the short deadline. And all through the year, it felt like everyone had the nightmare Christmas deadline hanging over them. Or I swear it got shorter every time in the way that games just have a way of kind of exaggerating stuff for pity, you know, it starts off as a three-week issue. And then, you know, I remember people were like, oh, it’s the old two-week issue. And you’re like, is it really two weeks? You know, an issue in fight, because that’s five-day working day, 10 working days. But yeah, so I kind of, you know, we always knew it was coming. I’d always kind of dread them, but then putting them together, like you say, you’d get a really good snapshot. You’d sort of basically forced you to get a feel for what the next year was going to be like. And sometimes that was great. And what came out of them was really exciting. And you felt like, wow, in, you know, those 20 pages or whatever, tell a really, you know, cool story. Other years you were like, oh man, this is going to be a long 12 months, especially towards the tail end of Nintendo magazines, where it felt like every cover line was always like, this is the year Nintendo fights back. But then you’d look at the games and you’d be like, yeah, they’ve got a lot of treaps hidden, I hope. Here comes Mario Party 8. Yeah, who are we kidding? I am, what I liked about your sort of note on this is it said, I think every year for five years was the year Nintendo slash Xbox fights back or some other balls, some such balls. Which is a great description. That was, so I’ve never worked on a PlayStation mag and I’ve, you know, so the platforms I’ve worked on was the Wii and Wii U and the Xbox One. And at most times they were always the underdog. So the only narrative could be like, is this gonna be the year they aren’t the underdog? You know, it’s never gonna be like they’re gonna conquer or smash it again. You could never say like, oh, it’s a continued winning run for the Wii U. Where the PlayStation, there was always something a bit more effortless about their excitement for the new year. So yes, it was always like Xbox fights back or Xbox bounces back and well, you know, it just doesn’t happen. Well, there’s a kind of Trojan horse aspect to doing these covers too, where the kind of having the big preview hit on the cover kind of means you can get something on the cover that might not necessarily be like your game of choice or like a massive like blockbuster kind of like Call of Duty sized game at other times. So I think of an issue, I did a PC game where Prey was on the cover and Prey was a game I really liked and it was really cool. We had a lovely bit of cover art for that as well. But like it was married to a kind of like 51 games to play this year. And that’s a nice big hit. You look at that and you think, oh, that’s a lot of games. And on other years, I had like 15 games to look forward to this year. It’s like, what the fuck happened in 2016 though? There’s nothing to get excited about. That’s bleak. Yeah, exactly. That’s only enough to cover like covers just. My favorite version of this actually was when I worked on the magazine Sci-Fi Now. Obviously this is not games, but worked in TV and film. And we just picked like 11 in 2011 basically, which is just, you know, it was like two to four pages on all of the big stuff. So it’s ultra selective, but it meant you got to have these lovely splash pages of kind of like, you know, promo art for, I don’t know, Doctor Who or Captain America or whatever. So yeah, but- The other nice thing about these preview issues is from a kind of cheeky perspective, because it’s like this game leads, you don’t necessarily, you’re not necessarily promising anything particularly new on that game. So it felt like you could basically make a cover out of any game as long as you had the art. And it wasn’t like, I don’t feel like Access was expected as part of that. In fact, so it’d be like, Halo 5 leads our thing, and you hadn’t seen Halo 5, you hadn’t talked to anyone about Halo 5, but you could get excited about Halo 5 as part of a massive 30 page preview, where it was only like 1% of the words were about Halo 5. Maybe that’s just because I was a cheesy editor, and I saw it as an opportunity to tell some fibs, but it always worked for me. On PC Gamer, actually we had some good cover features to go along with all of our preview issues, but I’m sure I’ve done it a couple where it’s been like hard at work, because the tricky thing is that the games industry, certainly on the marketing side, basically closes down around mid-December, so actually getting Access after that point is really tough, so you really want to have that kind of issue lined up, your cover lined up before December hits, basically. So yeah, yeah, little bit of, you’re sort of like Trauma Relived there. Good stuff. Well, Matthew, we’ll take a short break then, and then we’ll get into our big predictions for next year, bold in some cases. Let’s do it. Welcome back, Matthew. Thanks for having me here, I guess. Yeah, you’re very lucky, a very lucky young man. Okay, so yes, in this section, we’re going to do the kind of beefy preview content that we promised in the kind of intro. So we’ve got 21 predictions about 2021 in gaming. Some of them are serious, some of them are really silly. Some of them are just so straightforward, you’ll have no opinion on them. So that’s something we can promise on this podcast. I think it will be fun. Then after that, we’re gonna go through the Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and PC and talk about what’s coming up in the year of each. We have left Stadia out, sorry, Stadia, but yes, or Stadia, is it Stadia? I don’t know. Does anyone know? No one knows. So Matthew, let’s alternate. Should I go first? You go first, yeah. Okay, yeah. So prediction number one, I feel like this should be some kind of drum roll, but I’m not gonna do that because it’ll require more editing than I’m prepared to put into the podcast. But Microsoft buys Sega. Really? That’s my prediction, yeah. Oh my God, is this a serious or a silly one? Well, it’s a bit of both, I guess. I mean, it’s not based on anything real. It’s just a prediction. There was a rumor about this going around a few months ago, and I think it was refuted by all parties. But the reason I think this is kind of possible is that Microsoft has obviously been buying a lot of studios and you get a lot of really silly commentary of saying, 10 studios, Microsoft should buy an X. And it’s like, that’s not how money works. But nonetheless, I kind of get the impulse. And I think it is possible that Microsoft will buy someone big in the PC space. So I think Paradox is possible as well. But I think Sega, they’ve kind of done quite a lot of teaming up with Sega on stuff. Like there’s quite a lot of Yakuza games on Game Pass and they have that Yakuza marketing thing for the latest- Like a Dragon. Yeah, like a Dragon. And so yeah, you’ve also saw Football Manager on Game Pass when it launched on PC. So I think the prospect of Microsoft buying a PC publisher or developer next year is quite likely just because they’re interested in growing that side of things. PC had an enormous 2020. They were 250 million, I think, active Steam users. So that’s basically the pool that Microsoft is playing for. I don’t think anything makes a bigger splash than buying a big PC publisher whose games always get that fan base excited and Sega own a whole bunch of them. So that’s that prediction, Matthew. Thoughts? Yeah, I kind of like that. I know there’s been rumours throughout the year of Microsoft buying some kind of Japanese studio, whether it’s developer or publisher, kind of unknown. And Phil Spencer was a little bit like, to the best of my knowledge, we’re not, which you’d think he would know. Yeah, if anyone was gonna know. Imagine if he came in and found out like one of his underlings had bought Sega. He’d be like, what? Oh my god, yeah, that’s pretty strong. They’ve got a nice crossover with PC and enough console stuff. I guess they’ve got form with this. In terms of the studios they’ve bought so far, a lot of them have kind of been quite PC focused, particularly Obsidian and the Wasteland guys in Exile. Double finer kind of PC background as well. Yeah, and they kind of clearly want to push into that. Yeah, I mean, I could dig it. I don’t know what that means for Sonic. And that’s the thing you’re most worried about, I assume, is what happens to Sonic. Well, just, I mean, what I’d really like is someone to buy Sega who doesn’t like Sonic, and they’re like, we’re buying Sega, and part of our guarantee is there will be no more Sonic, and we’ll just like imprison him, and I’d be on board with that. That would be a big win for me. Is this a glimpse of what your life would be like if you were like an activist billionaire, like just sabotaging sort of platform icons that you don’t like? Like Croc is going away, and that’s how I’m using my trillion dollar fortune. Yeah, that is basically what I’d do. Yeah, okay, good stuff. What’s your prediction Matthew? What’s number two? You started with quite a big and sexy one, so I feel like I need to, mine seem a lot limper in comparison. Cyberpunk will get a patch this year. Well, that’s kind of is one of them, but we’ll get to that later. Very good. I’m glad that, and that was one of my stronger ones. All we should do is my predictions of your 2021 predictions, like, yeah. Okay, this is a bit vague. It’s maybe a little vague, but along similar lines as your last one, I think one of the big film streaming services will buy a big games publisher. Oh, and to push into the game streaming space. So probably a Netflix or a Disney Plus, I would imagine would be the two which are the natural fit for this in terms of size and money. I think as people ramp up the film and TV streaming war, I think they’re going to need even more kind of ammunition to fight each other. And I think games and game streaming will be a part of that. And the best way to kind of get your instant foothold is to buy someone who has, you know, a substantial kind of footprint, I guess. So maybe like, I don’t know, I’ve seen some people online sort of talk about sort of similar things and throw like, you know, oh, what is it? Disney bought Electronic Arts, for example, and got hold of all their goods. It’s not saying they pull them out of the, you know, traditional kind of games publishing as well, but to have them as a thing would be, you know, quite a big move in that streaming space, which feels like there’s something there, you know, it feels like it’s something that is going to grow. So the idea of them pushing into it kind of makes sense to me. Yeah, that’s a good, I think that’s a good prediction. I think Netflix is probably the most likely, just because they’ve showed an interest in the kind of choose your own adventure sort of interactive movie stuff of Black Mirror and Kimmy Schmidt. But also they did they do some kind of Minecraft version of Story Mode that was on. Yeah, they did. I like the idea of someone going like, well, we’ve made an interactive Kimmy Schmidt, so the next stop is let’s buy all of FIFA. Yeah, yeah, I sort of I think that makes sense for them, though, because they are in the US, I think nearing their kind of limit on subscribers. So they probably will be looking at other ways to kind of make money that don’t just involve jacking the price up, so. You know, and they can make things happen. You know, they can buy the licenses to various fictions or whatever, but they don’t have the existing sort of library they can dip into in the way that Disney has all this stuff, which you can basically cut off from everyone else now. And games just feel like it’s right for that. Yeah, that’s a really good prediction. See, that’s as good as my Microsoft one, don’t it? That’s like the best of my serious predictions. They get weak real fast. This is the whole podcast of caveats about what’s to come. Okay, good stuff. The number three then of 2021 predictions is Starfield is going to be the biggest game reveal of 2021, and it will be a good game. That’s my prediction. Really? I think this is going to be the thing that gets people the most excited next year. I think they’ll do some kind of classic sort of Todd Howard on stage. Like you explore a planet, you get in a spaceship, you fly to another one in this system and it blows people away. That’s what I think is going to happen this year at some point, and almost certainly at some kind of Microsoft event, because obviously Microsoft is acquiring Bethesda this year. So yes, that’s what I think. I think Starfield will be good. It’s been a long time since they’ve talked about this, and so yeah, I think they’re going to make something good, Matthew. I’m excited. Yeah, well, I hope so. I feel like the pressure’s on in a big way, because it feels like, you know, obviously the backlash to Fallout 76, but also a general… I feel like there’s been a general calling on Fallout 4. Yeah, I think so. And also obviously 76, people didn’t like, like say. So yeah, I think that… You’ve also been a long time since Skyrim came out. That was kind of their last very well-regarded game. Yeah, it’s been a while, for sure. Yeah, I’m intrigued what they do, because they’re kind of a such a weird studio, because they’re not massive in terms of people, I don’t think, compared to like an Ubisoft kind of, that giant kind of games factory or whatever. It’s still that kind of slightly sort of bespoke feel, which is probably why they take quite a while to make stuff and announce stuff. But yeah, I’m definitely intrigued to see if it’s just Fallout in space. Yeah, well, like you said, I think someone calculated how much it costs per person, the actual overall Microsoft deal, and it was like an extraordinary amount of money per head. They basically paid for Bethesda. Yeah. Yeah, so Matthew, hit me with your next prediction, number four. It’s going to be a really good year for Ace Attorney fans. This is based mainly on that big Capcom leak, which seems to suggest that we’re getting ports or localized switch ports of The Great Ace Attorney, which is the Phoenix Wright prequel set in Victorian times. So Phoenix Wright meets Sherlock Holmes or Phoenix Wright’s ancestor meets Sherlock Holmes. It came out, there’s been two games on the 3DS in Japan, never got localized over here. Word is that’s coming over as a little collection, which would be amazing because both games were written and directed by Shutokumi, the original creator of Ace Attorney, who hasn’t been involved with the main series since Apollo Justice. And, but the other exciting thing is that there should also be at some point, Ace Attorney 7, which is the games that they now make without Shutokumi, which were a little shit. Well, they’ve, they made, you know, they made Ace Attorney Investigations and then they made Five and Six. Five was okay. It was solid enough. A bit of a, didn’t quite have the same magic, but the last one, Spirit of Justice, was absolutely brilliant. About as good as the Shutokumi games, I think. And so the idea of like an actual Shutokumi set and the new game, which is as good as, could be a very, very, very strong year for that. It’s like one of my favorite game series. So yeah, I really hope that leak is true. Yeah, I think I read a Kataki UK story about this some time ago about a similar thing, like not the great detective games, but getting a release, but the kind of compilation of the different older Ace Attorney games and then the creation of a new one. So yeah, feels like it’s been a few years now since we had heard about that. So yeah, fingers crossed, Matthew. That would keep me very, very happy and in some lucrative freelance. I also wonder if, I don’t know, I kind of wondered what the holdup was with those games. It always seemed like there’s quite a state like holding on to the Sherlock Holmes rights here, even though he died fucking years ago. Yeah, they always say as well like there’s just elements which are difficult to localize like in the puzzles. You know, like it’s all based on very complicated Japanese wordplay or dah, dah, dah, dah. It has been the line in the past, but they can kind of, you know, I think you can localize most things if you put your mind to it. Also, I think the HD compilation which came out last year or the year before, caught my mind. It was the year before. Yeah, was like, I think did better than they thought it was gonna do. Yeah. You know, particularly on Switch, which all these games you just talked about are rumored to be on. So yeah, Ace Attorney is back in a big way, baby. Yeah. I think that I agree with you that the, I think on PC as well, it found quite a big audience. If you look at the number of Steam reviews for that collection, people really wanted that game on PC and visual novels are like pretty massive on that platform too. So yeah, hopefully it has ensured the future of your favorite series, Matthew. Okay, cool. So my next one, Anthem re-releases this year on next-gen consoles, but despite being better, no one cares. What a bleak little narrative. Well, I just think that it would have been two years since they released it in, well, whenever it would be, I think it was like spring, they released it in 2019. So yeah, I think that you’ll see whatever the kind of live servicey people at BioWare have been working on with it, I think you’ll see it re-emerge this year, but like it’s gonna reappear in an environment where no one wants this kind of like service, sort of loot shooter kind of game. But even though it will look very, I think it will look very nice, it’ll probably be more fun than it was before. I don’t think there’s actually anything that bad about Anthem’s basic kind of shooting and kind of movement. That was all fine. It was just a kind of shell of the game around it was quite bad and obviously the story is pretty terrible as well. Yeah, and it had a nice world, but it was very small. So yeah, I think you’ll see Anthem in some kind of like, I don’t know, Anthem Reloaded or something like that. And probably like a good thing to have on the EA Play sort of service that sits on Xbox Game Pass as well. But yeah, I think they will give it another punt this year. I think they’ll be like, oh, this is more what we wanted to do with Anthem originally, but it didn’t work out. Yeah, and I think Bioware generally will have quite a big year, because obviously you’ve got that Mass Effect Trilogy remaster coming up and they are actually making another Mass Effect and another Dragon Age. When they’ll come out, who knows, but it’s been a long time since a very good Bioware game came out, so it will be definitely gonna be a big test. What’s your next one, Matthew? It kind of continues on from the last one. I think Phoenix Wright will be one of the three remaining Smash Bros DLCs. Yes, there are three to come in the Fighters Pass. I think because this is gonna be a big Ace Attorney year, we’ll get a bit of Phoenix Wright. Is there anyone, Sam, what would it be if you could put any character into Smash Bros, what would it be to fill one of those remaining three slots? Well, I’ve actually got another prediction for this in my list, but it doesn’t answer that question, it’s just one I think will happen this year. So I’ll do that one next. But I don’t know, I think Sephiroth is quite close to the sort of thing I kind of like to see in there. I know you weren’t excited by that, but I like… I chuckled at the image of Mario impaled on his sword, the shadow of Mario impaled on his sword. Definitely there is that element of, oh, I never thought I’d see this in Smash Bros. But yeah, I don’t know, maybe… I feel like the Final Fantasy quotient is kind of taken care of. It would be funny if they added that guy Clive from the new one, Final Fantasy 16. I don’t know. I’m not sure. I really like Phoenix Wright, but I feel like they did him so comprehensively in the last Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom game. He’s such a good creation in that. And remember when he puts Galactus on trial in his story? That’s really good. I mean, he puts him on the stand, which is still like pretty… It’s actually still pretty kind of like straightforward as the Phoenix Wright games go in terms of how the lore is depicted. Yeah, I would have to think on that a little bit more, Matthew. Sorry, I thought it was a bit of a gotcha question. No, it’s fine. Yeah. Why don’t you tell me more about why you think Phoenix Wright will be one of those characters? Well, I just think in terms of what that game is as a collection of basically important faces to Nintendo history, it fits. I feel like he’s earned his place. He’s never been a massive sales success, but I think he is so connected with Nintendo as third party characters. I mean, I’d say he’s got better ties with Nintendo than the Final Fantasy VII characters do. They’re in there. There would have been a time I would have also said Professor Layton, but I don’t know if Professor Layton’s kind of glory days are behind him a bit, but you know, as a… I don’t know. I just don’t think, you know, it’s getting close to being this like almost comprehensive collection of like Nintendo history and celebration and I think he’s a big missing puzzle piece for me anyway. Yeah. It does also feel like there’s maybe kind of potential for there to be one more big Nintendo’s own character added out of there. I don’t know what it would be because it feels like Ultimate is so comprehensive, but I don’t know if there are any more gaps there for them to fill. You’re getting into like quite niche characters or like stuff, you know, you’d be getting into the realms of like Star Fox Adventures characters, which I just don’t think we should be doing and indulging those people. Could you see like a kind of Breath of the Wild version of like Zelda being added where she ends up being like a playable character in Breath of the Wild 2? You see a kind of more militant bit, but different to the other, the two existing ones. Yeah, that could be a good shout or one of the Breath of the Wild sort of champion characters, you know, because they’re quite prominent now in, you know, across Breath of the Wild, the DLC and the Hyrule Warriors thing. Yeah, they’ve still got plenty to go. It’ll probably end up being like some rants, you know, some guy from Tekken or something. What’ll actually happen, Matthew, is it’ll just be three more fucking Fire Emblem characters. Just like identical looking boys and girls with swords. I don’t think they can do any more Fire Emblem characters. No, I don’t think so. Okay, so my next one, Matthew, is Master Chief gets added to Smash Bros. Here’s why I think this is plausible. So you’ve had Banjo-Kazooie, you’ve had Minecraft, right? Those are two really good like additions and they feel very much like part of Microsoft’s whole thing with trying to seem like, hey, we like gamers, you know, we try and give you what you want sort of mentality. But I think the kind of rub would surely have to be that you get Banjo-Kazooie like an undisputed like N64 kind of icon. And then, you know, Minecraft, which is obviously huge, probably good for everyone involved in terms of how much attention that got them. Surely, in a year where like Halo is coming out, you’ll see Master Chief as one of those characters. Like that feels like the exchange to me is you get Master Chief. I feel like they’re saying, in order to have, you want Banjo-Kazooie and we’ll give in to you, but you have to put Master Chief in too. Yes, yes. I think that’s possible. My curse tray. That’s my prediction of what happened here. Yeah, I just, I think, I also think that Master Chief has enough going on in terms of iconography to make it work, although all of his weapons are guns, so it’s going to have to be like softened, I guess. He would also quite look quite odd next to a lot of the characters. Although I suppose he got Snake in there. He’s kind of similarly proportioned. Yeah, I just think, I don’t know, the fact that he just hasn’t appeared on, the fact that he hasn’t been, you know, in a Nintendo game, he hasn’t, he definitely hasn’t, has he? No, but then, you know, Cloud and Sephiroth, they didn’t, I don’t think Cloud had appeared in a Nintendo game before. Maybe he might have had a guest appearance. Yeah, I guess, yeah, and I guess it’s got the guy from Persona 5 that’s not on Switch. Yeah, that’s true, that’s true, Persona 5 very much the same thing. I mean, just there’s something quite obnoxious about Master Chief. I don’t know, like, I don’t know if their brand guidelines would allow him to be, like, you know, being hit over the head with a comedy mallet and then people taking photos of that. I don’t know if they’d get cross about that. Like the potential for kind of chaos and kind of undermining Master Chief is pretty high with that, I’d say. I don’t know, I think they were pretty into like Red vs Blue and that sort of thing. I guess he’s been in Fortnite where you can shoot him with all kinds of nonsense. To be very clear, he’s not like, we wouldn’t be my ideal choice. And the kind of like, the sort of bizarro sort of Smash Bros fans seem to be really into that Kingdom Hearts boy Sora being added to it, which I don’t really see the appeal of because if you take him out of those Disney worlds, why not? What’s the difference between him and like Cloud, basically? Yeah, like, you know, I’d understand if you brought over like Donald Duck or something. That’s like, you know, he’s iconic. Yeah, Master Chief is Smash, yeah, and I could see it happening. I think it’d be a bit disappointing, like, for the for the Nintendo faces that haven’t made the cut. You’d be like, oh, this guy, you know, but. And it could have been Funky Kong. I hope all the existing streaming services get a little bit slicker because none of them are quite there for me yet. I feel like I just can’t make that leap and I can’t get into it because there’s just enough lag and disconnect for me not to enjoy it and on paper, these things are growing, particularly the fact they folded in the Xbox cloud library, whatever they’re calling it, into like your game pass subscription. But I just can’t quite get into it, but I’d love it to be a thing because in our household where both me and Catherine play a lot of games, there’s only one living room for the console gaming, and we’re both playing a lot of console stuff at the moment. And it just means only one person can play. And I’d love to be able to sit in there and also play some stuff on a laptop or phone using the streamy stuff, but it’s just not quite there yet. Yeah, that’s kind of a shame. I can sort of see like this being something that’s still going to take five to ten years to get really good and really slick. Yeah, and I’ll admit, I haven’t read massively on the subject of like where we are at tech-wise with it. But it’s, I don’t know, it just feels like a lot of people, you know, a lot of people are kind of surprised. The reaction to it seems to be they’re surprised it’s as good as it is, which is like a cool initial magic trick of like, oh, look, it’s, you know, Gears 5 on my phone. But yeah, it just doesn’t, I don’t find it massively enjoyable unless everything’s a turn-based tactics game, in which case it doesn’t really matter. Like if it’s just XCOM, that’s fine. There you go, you can play Disgaea 2 on your phone right now. What the fuck are you complaining about, Matthew? Jesus. Oh, okay, I have a similar one about services. So Sony revamps PlayStation Now to make its own version of Game Pass. I think this will happen this year, and I think they’ve talked a little bit about examining PS Now or doing something different with it, but I could see it happening where you basically can buy PS Plus or you can buy PS Plus with PS Now and you get some kind of discount for the whole thing. I don’t know whether the service generally gets revamped to be a bit more competitive. I don’t think Sony will ever give away its big blockbuster exclusives because it’s not in a position of weakness where it has to, but I do think that it’s undisputed really that Game Pass is a better service than PS Now, and it’s got people more excited about games than PS Now has. So I think it makes sense for Sony to do something, whether it’s a more definitive back catalog or maybe like it’s after a year you’ll see PlayStation exclusives roll onto there, so it’s still very appealing to people who’ve bought a PS5 and don’t want to spend 70 quid. But yeah, that’s what I think will happen with that this year, Matthew. Thoughts? I think you’re right. I think Games Pass, it’s literally sitting there pretty decent, good value for money as it is, but you plug the right games into it and it just becomes supercharged. And if Xbox deliver the line up they’re sort of promising and they’ve announced lots of stuff admittedly, stuff which probably fills years away. But the idea of everything they ever show you, you’re going to own automatically as part of this thing is such a good kind of angle. When they did it in, it wasn’t their E3 conference, I don’t think it was whatever their big kind of Xbox reveal event was where they could basically say like everything you’re going to see is on Game Pass and it’s just a really neat line just from a value perspective. But you only have to release two killer games a year and that thing’s kind of paid for itself, which is kind of like Sony’s hit rate is two killer first party games a year. It’s not impossible that Microsoft could do that. Yeah, for sure. Plus, obviously, hoovering up Bethesda means that you get their games, let’s say like Ghost Wire Tokyo and Deathloop end up being good next year, then you basically have your two games right there, right? I mean, they won’t be on Xbox because of their weird PlayStation exclusivity thing, but they’ll be on PC, presumably. And yeah, that’s just the start of it. All right then, hit me with the next one, Matthew. I don’t think we will see Metroid Prime 4. Yeah, I think you’re right about that. Yeah, it’s been a real long time since they even talked about that, right? Yeah, so it started off was being made by Bandai Namco, I believe. And then, in early 2019, they basically announced, it wasn’t doing what we wanted it to do or it wasn’t where we wanted it. So we basically ditched that and shifted the whole thing back to retro. Two years, I mean, that’s pretty enough to put something together, but it still just feels so far off for a game that has only ever existed as a logo. It’s not even like a proper teaser for anything. Yeah, I mean, I love those games back on GameCube and it just, it feels like such a sort of like mad, mad waste that they didn’t do anything more with it. And they’ve let it kind of grown sort of stagnant in this time. My worry is that it’s going to just be like quite behind the curve now in terms of if they just make quite a straight sequel to Metro Primes 1 to 3, which while great games, I think are sort of of their time. Yeah, I sort of I dread I dread for this one. But luckily that dread will be put off for a bit because as I said, I don’t think we’ll see any of it this year. Well, wasn’t it reported that Retro is actually working on some kind of Star Fox racing game? I remember reading about that. So kind of some kind of new weird spin on Star Fox that I think Eurogamer. Kind of a mad start. I heard a couple of years ago they were doing some kind of big mad like music projects. Okay. But nothing seemed to come of it. I mean, they’ve not put out masses. They’ve done the Donkey Kong Country games, but that’s been it, I think. Yeah. Two of those in the last 10 years. Yeah, it’s been quite a long time since that last one. So yeah, definitely time for them to release something. But yeah, who knows? So that’s a bleak prediction, that one that I feel. Good stuff. Appropriate for 2021, I think. Yeah. Okay, so my next one, Matthew, is Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid are seen again this year, but not made by Konami. There were some quite widespread reports on Silent Hill coming to PS5 as some kind of exclusive. There was enough smoke with that that I think there probably is a little bit of fire. Also, I listened to the podcast RetroNauts, they did a Silent Hill episode and they had some pretty well-connected Silent Hill kind of like community sort of video figures that seemed pretty certain that whatever it was wasn’t Silent Hills, the previously cancelled Kojima Productions game, but that something original and for PS5 was in the works. So I think you’ll see that this year. I also wonder if you’ll see Konami do a thing where they kind of license out Metal Gear. There’s also a kind of rumour that Bluepoint, their next remake after Demon’s Souls, could be Metal Gear Solid, but they also tease loads of other games, so it’s hard to call. But I think you’ll see both this year in some form. I think you’ll be reminded that Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill are alive in some way. Well, I hope so. Yeah, so a slight one, but a bit of wishful thinking there for sure, and not really based on anything other than the rumours, as previously mentioned. So what’s your next one, Matthew? Again, this is another hope. Again, it’s super vague, but it does connect into that. I hope someone makes a proper shit-your-pants horror game. Because I feel like horror games are quite bad at the moment. I feel like there’s a lot of kind of sort of flimsy psychological horrors, which have kind of basically lots of people who really like Silent Hill and haven’t, you know, just been trying to kind of recreate that without necessarily understanding what made it great in the first place. Games which are kind of clever, scary rather than actually scary. And yeah, I just I don’t know, it’s a sort of a genre I feel is quite kind of underserved and it’s more of a trend, I guess I’d like to see for 2021. It’s kind of a remote, you know, a step away from your kind of layers of fear type games to something which is actually like, I don’t know, really kind of hits the spot. That’s horribly vague, isn’t it? No, no, I get I get I get your point, actually, because you and I were kind of plotting an upcoming Games of the Generation episode, or two episodes rather. And for that, I was kind of thinking, well, PT is going to have to be in that list. And I was thinking, when will anything ever appear like PT again, where it’s so strange and kind of weird to unpack, but so fucking scary? It’s really scary. I still I still think that’s probably like the scariest game I’ve played. Yeah, it’s pure magic. Yeah, and that’s the thing. It feels like horror is so confident in other pop culture, you know, like it’s doing so well in film, particularly this last year, and you know, it’s a genre which is just growing and growing and growing, but it seems completely stuck in video games. I just love to I don’t know, I just love for it to kind of really work out, work out its problems and sort of move on. And I just don’t want another game where the, you know, the twist is like your guilt was the monster, which is what they all are. Yeah, my disappointment from the Evil Within, well, that was I thought it was a very disappointing game this this last generation, just in terms of like, it wasn’t really scary, and didn’t feel particularly original in either in a setting or ideas, but also very rare to see someone spend that much money on making a horror game now. So it’s, yeah, it’s kind of down to like, indies and smaller developers to, to actually make them. But I agree that there’s nothing’s really kind of appealed to me. Some of the games people say are good from the last few years didn’t really appeal to me either. Yeah, tricky. Okay, my next one Matthew. So Halo Infinite’s campaign is a bit disappointing despite a year long delay, but the multiplayer will be very good. That’s what I think the deal with Halo Infinite will be. Obviously Microsoft made the complicated decision to delay the game for a year and yeah, I’m sort of like, I think people are just going to be lukewarm on single player Halo. I just don’t, this is a very kind of wild prediction because I’ve only seen that bit of the campaign we saw, but also I would say 343 hasn’t made a great Halo campaign, certainly not one as good as the Bungie games yet. And I kind of question if they truly understand why those original Halo games were like amazing, but they really get the shooting. I mean, Halo 4 and Halo 5 both had excellent multiplayer. So I think that on that side of things, it will satisfy people, but I think people will be left wanting for like a truly great Halo campaign experience still. Yeah, one of the most baffling things was talking to 343. They always sound like they’re going to make a great Halo game. You know, like the stuff they say is exactly the stuff you want to hear. You know, the stuff they connect with is the stuff which made those earlier games great. And then it never manifests in the games they’re making. They’re like, oh, you know, it’s always that sensation of like landing on the ring and getting in the war hog and driving around it. And yet they never really do that. Like their vehicle stuff has generally been pretty bad. Like the kind of freedom and the size of the environment. And obviously that’s the big pitch with Infinity or Infinite is that it’s going to have, you know, it is kind of trying to tap into that kind of exploration. And, you know, it looks like it could be more open world than it ever has been. But yeah, a huge kind of question mark over that one based on their previous games and the fact this has had this sort of strange delay, which they definitely didn’t intend for. And now trying to turn into this very positive story of kind of like, yeah, this is just what it needed. And you’re like, well, you know, this game should have already been out for two months. That was your original plan in the summer. Yeah. You know, you were literally doing this because you got memed to death. Yeah. But yeah, I think you’re right about multiplayer, though. Halo 5’s multiplayer is absolutely brilliant, but I don’t think many people played it because, I don’t know, Halo seems boring to them now, or they didn’t have Xboxes. But it was great. Yeah, I think that the thing they seem to be very interested in 343 is like story and Master Chief story. And none of that stuff really, no one gives a shit about that stuff. Yeah. It’s very superficial in the Bungie games. People kind of forget this. They don’t want long cutscenes, they don’t care about the lore, all that stuff. They just want to fight some cool shit. And it does look like they’ve kind of picked a setting where it does look, like you say, traditionally Halo. But also when Bungie, each time they made a Halo game, managed to build new elements on top of the original Halo that added cool stuff. So ODST, I think that’s a slightly overrated game, but like the pace of exploring that world is really nice and the vibe of it is very different and the flashback stuff is cool. Reach also has a very successful space section, another section where you’re flying from one skyscraper to another. Like the range of Halo set pieces was expanded very well by Bungie, but I don’t think 343 have figured out how to put their own stamp on it in a way that actually makes for a fun campaign. Yeah. So yeah. I hope you don’t have to read like 20 novels to understand this one, because the last game was like you had to read several books, a comic book, and watch that terrible, terrible Ridley Scott TV show. Yeah, I mean, they’re making another TV show as well, like, yeah. Master Chief just, I don’t, well, actually saying that, like, there’s absolutely no reason you couldn’t do it like a Mandalorian for Master Chief. You know, he’s as stoic and unknowable. But yeah, I mean, I doubt he’ll be as good as that. No, we’ll see. But yeah, that’s going to be a big budget TV show. But yeah, I’m not interested in any kind of Halo franchise extensions. I just want the campaigns to be good. Yeah. So yeah, I wish them the best, but I don’t think it’s going to go great. Yeah, what’s the next one, Matthew? I think Cyberpunk is going to go into space in its DLC. Oh, OK, go on. I mean, this is space pure and this is slight spoiler territory. So I’ll keep it as vague as I can. But there are many endings to that game. And one of them ends with a character going on a sort of legendary final mission to space and then cuts out. But I feel like that is the canonical ending to the game. And they’re going to continue it with… I think you’re going to bust into… I think it’s called the Crystal Palace, which is like the giant sort of space casino. And there’s lots of references to it. And I just I feel like that’s going to be… I feel like that’s a teaser for their DLC. Get them out of that city as well. Get them into a nice self-contained environment. It’ll be weird because it will probably lose a lot of its open world charm. If it does do that, I say open world charm, I mean, yeah. But as an interesting location for you to use with your mad gadgets and whatnot, I think that could be quite fun. Yeah, I think that’s basically what I’m basing it on. It’s not the deepest analysis of it. Is that your only subpunk related entry, Matthew? Yeah, I mean, I feel like people have, by the time they’ve, quote unquote, fixed it, most people have played it and who are interested in it and just won’t care anymore. It’s almost like one of those, I mean, sure, it’d be nice for them to fix it, especially for the people who’ve bought it and are holding out for patches on platforms where it’s worse off. But most people played it on PC. I don’t think you’ll give it much of a second thought. I don’t think it’s a very replayable game given it is an RPG and all the choices and whatnot in it. I just don’t think it’s actually got the variety in its story to make it worth playing again, but that’s me. We’ll see if its reputation improves in 2021. Yeah, curious to see how it gets booted into shape. Right. My next one then Matthew is a very simple one. Nintendo adds N64 games to Nintendo Switch Online. Do you use Nintendo Switch Online much on your Switch? No. Yeah, so neither do I. But that’s because I’m not really in the mood to play SNES games most of the time. Or certainly not NES games either. The thought of playing a NES game now instead of the many other games I have in my Switch library from the last 10 years is inconceivable. I just can’t. Why would I play Balloon Fight instead of- Yeah. 8,000 games to play. What’s the first that I’ll go for? Oh yes, Balloon Fight. Yeah, Return of the Obidin or Ice Climbers. It’s a tough one to puzzle out. But I think if they added in 64 games, I would be into it. They’ll probably just release the same games they always release on virtual console. So you’ll see like Sin and Punishment and obviously Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, etc. But what do you think of that one? Yeah, I mean, that feels like it makes sense. I’d much rather they added GameCube games. It feels like there’s been a big… That’s the most underrepresented thing of all their games in terms of access to a lot of those games. It exists only on GameCube. You can never go back to it. I’d rather that then, just because the N64 is… They just look so dated now. A lot of them, I find them quite hard to… Not hard to enjoy and there’s still great games underneath it all, but just visually, I find it all so tired. Yeah, I definitely think you’re right about that. Yeah, that’s not too harsh if you ask me. So what’s your next one, Matthew? I will… God, yours have been so good, Sam. They haven’t. Yeah, they honestly have. I will give in to temptation and buy that Playdate console. Because it looks like a Nintendo toy. Yeah, yeah, it looks cool. This is their little hand-held thing with the LCD screen and a couple of buttons and a crank. It’s got crank-controlled games. Feels like the kind of mad nonsense Nintendo would have made like 30 years ago. You know, old Gun-Py-Yokoi type thing. He’s like, oh, what’s cheap? Cranks! Right, cranks away. Cranks it is. You know, it’ll probably be incredibly expensive for like what you actually get on it in terms of, you know, the games are probably going to be quite small and kind of cute little kind of tech demo-y things is what I imagine. But I think it might be like a really nice little kind of indulgent purchase for 2021. Getting that through the post in this lovely little yellow box and then cranking out some fun. Can you still pre-order them? I don’t think pre-orders have opened. Oh, right. I wonder if it will be anything like that Game Boy like emulation device that was kind of up for pre-order last year and they made such a fucking big deal about it and then like 30 seconds they were all gone and it was like complete nonsense. Hopefully it won’t be like that. Yeah, I don’t really but I haven’t bought anything like that. You know, there’s always these kind of like, you know, this console will play any cartridge you insert into it and all this, that and the other and I haven’t like engaged with any of that stuff so I feel like this will be my one piece of like weird idiosyncratic hardware that I do buy into. Yeah. That looks cool. Yeah, I hope it helps you get to the year, Matthew. Yeah. Okay, good. Crank my way to victory. So my next one is a Nintendo releases new versions of Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD for the Switch in time for Zelda’s, I think, 35th anniversary this year. Okay. Yeah, I think that you’ve seen pretty much every other, sorry, Wii U game release on Nintendo Switch in some kind of enhanced form. Some really odd ones now as well like Tokyo Mirage Sessions. These two feel like some of the only ones left that are like obviously set for a kind of re-release. Yeah, I don’t know if you’ll necessarily see them release this year, but you’ll definitely see them announced. I think that why would you make these HD versions of fairly well regarded Nintendo games and then not just put them out on a platform that can actually play HD games? I feel like that’s going to happen this year. What do you think? Yeah, I could see that. Maybe like a Zelda version of Mario 3D All-Stars, except they’ve put a bit more love into them. They’ll probably sell them separately though, knowing Nintendo. They like to get their money’s worth. What would be great is if they bundled those two up and did a HD version of Skyward Sword. Yeah, it does feel like… That would feel like the obvious kind of like equivalent to a 3D All-Stars, doesn’t it? I’d love for Skyward Sword to exist in some modern form. I think that would be neat. Well, we can talk about this later when we talk about Nintendo, but I don’t know if we’ll see Breath of the Wild 2 this year. It still feels like a very distant promise, but… Yeah. Well, I’m kind of hopeful. I think we’ll see some cool Zelda stuff happen this year regardless. So hit me with your next one, Matthew. I think Sony first-party games will make amazing use of the DualSense haptics, but no one else will. That’s probably fair. Go on. Yeah, this is the DualSense controller for PS5. It is full of interesting vibrating parts. It has special triggers which they can sort of adjust the resistance of the squeeze so they can be quite hard to pull, quite soft to pull. They can do quite sort of directional, locational vibrations which if you’ve played Astro’s Playroom, which is like the free sort of pack-in game that comes with PS5, shows how vibrations can mimic all these different surfaces and things like that. This launch game is a really great kind of demo reel, kind of tech demo for what the controller can do, but I feel like it’s going to be down to the kind of first party studios who they have control over and can kind of enforce them to kind of connect with it, who are going to do interesting things with it, you know, the kind of feeling, the kind of tension of a bow string in Horizon, for example, or the sense of different road surfaces in Gran Turismo. And I love it. I love the controller. I think it’s a really fun thing. But I worry that, you know, people just aren’t going to bother or it’s just such an easy feature to skip because it doesn’t have a, you know, multi format relevance. So I’d say you can sort of see that in the launch games. You know, there’s a couple of Sony first party games which use it better. Even some of them aren’t great. Spider-Man doesn’t use it in a particularly interesting way, I don’t think. But I hope that they basically enforce their teams, like you must use this in good ways because it’s cool and let’s not waste it. I do wonder if this sort of thing will be victim to the same kind of phenomenon you see with all of these console specific sort of gimmicks or, you know, innovations like motion control or connect where, you know, you just mostly see the first party devs using them, then interest otherwise there’s no incentive for other people to really use them unless they’re involved in some kind of marketing agreement for like promoting the game on that platform. So, yeah, I think I agree with you, I can’t see, I just can’t see this being as like widely adopted as it as it should be. It’s good at least that they kind of made the controller work on kind of PC as well. But yeah, I think that, yeah, hopefully, maybe just seeing a couple of really influential games this year though Matthew might might get people into it. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so my next one is a new Ken Levine game from Ghost Story Games gets revealed this year and releases on the same day. So for a long time Bioshock sort of developer Ken Levine has been working with I think what was like initially a small team built with former Irrational People when that studio was closed down in 2014 to make some kind of narrative Legos game I think is how he said it. So whatever they’ve been working on has been, you know, in the quietly in the works for a long, long time. And I feel like at the seven year point, you’re likely to see it come to fruition. I think they’re bankrolled by Take Two, but they’re not part of 2k games. So yeah, that’s one of my predictions. Don’t know what the game is. I think we’ll see it this year, though. What do you think, Matthew? Yeah, I mean, I hope so. I’m, you know, I don’t really know where we where people generally stand on Ken Levine anymore. But I, you know, I really, really love the Bioshock games. I really like Bioshock Infinite as well. I’m, you know, I’m into I’m into his stuff, keen to see what he’s doing. So I hope that it’s true, the less I have to wait for his new game, the better. Yeah, people fucking hate Bioshock Infinite these days. It’s cool. I think it’s because the politics of it are definitely like, they’re definitely going to worth examining and kind of critiquing for sure. It’s got all those pop songs in it, isn’t it? Yeah, so and nice skies. I agree with you as well, though, that it is. It is a it’s a very cool setting. I think as well, if you play it with the DLC, it does tell a complete story. But I think you do have to play those DLCs in order to actually see all of it. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yes, that was my one. What’s your final one, Matthew? Yeah, again, so ending on a bit of a hope, just that more publishers update their old games libraries for PS5, Xbox Series. Some of my favorite games of the launch have been on PS5 anyway, the Ghost of Tsushima and Days Gone, yes, Days Gone. Just playing on them with their big frame rate update has been really refreshing, shows those games off in an amazing light, and they feel slightly reborn. One of my favorite things from the last generation was when the Xbox Series X came out and Microsoft in their backwards compatible period brought it upon themselves to update things into like Xbox 360 games into 4K and things like that. It was just a really great initiative. Even if you’re not going to spend hours and hours replaying these things, it’s really nice having a reason to return to these existing games and see what you can do with them and whether that’s something the first parties do or third parties do themselves. It felt like Xbox had to do it for themselves, a lot of the stuff came through them. It’s a trend I’d really like to see come back because it always helps carry you through the quiet periods. Probably more so in Series X just because it doesn’t have the obvious games this year that PS5 has. It would be nice to have something, anything to go, oh yes, this is what this box can do. Yeah, I completely agree with you. Ghost of Tsushima looks so good on PS5. You look at it. Yeah, I wouldn’t, I don’t think anyone would look at that and not think it’s like a current gen PS5 game. What would be different about it? You know what I mean? Like maybe some nice reflections on the water, but otherwise it just looks like a modern game, but even better running at that higher frame rate is beautiful. So yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, damn, I really hope they do, but like you say, it’s very complicated to know if Sony is just going to try and do a load of remasters of some of these games and charge you for it. But why do it for some and not for others? Yeah, that makes no sense. Yeah. All right. So my last one, Matthew. 21, Endo on a Big N. Yep. GTA 6 gets revealed. It’s set in the same city across two different time frames, but doesn’t release until 2023. Now that is all wishful thinking. There’s no facts there. Well, that isn’t based on secret memos. Oh, no, definitely not. No. Yeah, that was, I think that, yeah, there’s no way GTA 6 will release this year. They’re plugging away at GTA Online still, that’s launching on next-gen consoles. And I think everyone kind of groaned when that was revealed last year. And I sort of agreed with them because I was like, well, I get why Microsoft wants to, sorry, Rockstar wants to put this massive money maker onto next-gen consoles. Because people like having, people like playing GTA Online, it’s a massive game. But I don’t know, I think that it would be cool to see what the future of GTA looks like. It will be eight years since they released GTA 5 originally. It sort of feels like, I don’t know, just a glimpse of the future might be a nice thing to do in 2021. But we’ll see, won’t we? Yes, yes, it would be good. I’m just intrigued what they do with, you know, if they’re ever going to replace GTA Online with GTA Online 2 or whatever it would be. I mean, why mess with the money machine? But yeah, but it’s definitely got some way to go in terms of user experience, GTA Online. So I’m hoping that’s the thing we see improve this year for GTA Online anyway. But those are my predictions, Matthew. They’re pretty good. You know, I’d be happy if only a handful of those came true. Specifically the one where I get the play date and a load of Ace Attorney. Yeah, I think I will buy a play date now, too, because what else am I going to do this year? I can’t go on holidays, so yeah, I too will turn the crank. If you don’t spend some of that money, it will fill up your bank account and then it will just start flowing into the streets. So Matthew, let’s take a brief break there and then we’ll come back and run through what the year looks like for the big, big manufacturers in 2021. Let’s do it. Matthew, what is Sony’s 2021 going to look like? Better than Microsoft’s. Yeah, isn’t that always the way? I think it’s the answer. From a first party perspective, they’ve got a lot of juicy franchises. They’ve also got some quite fun exclusives. I think I’m probably more interested in their third party exclusives than I am their first party games, which are specifically Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo, the two games from Bethesda, which is kind of strange now that Microsoft have owned them, but apparently they are gonna honor those, which is nice. Deathloop being the new arcane, kind of looping Groundhog Day assassin game and Ghostwire Tokyo being Tango Games Works, which is Shinji Mikami’s sort of horror outfit. But this looks like a bit more of a kind of a sort of spooky adventure rather than an out and out survival horror. So I’m quite excited for those. What are you excited for? So yeah, I mean, Sony does have quite a lot of exclusive games coming up next year. So expected are Returnal, that shooter from Housemarquee, is that how you say them? Yeah, Housemarque. Housemarque, I don’t know. I don’t understand. I should look that up. But nonetheless, it kind of looks a bit like sort of a third person Icaruga or something. Like there’s a lot of like, that’s kind of their background is, you know, sort of these quite frantic shooter mups, but you’re playing as this, I think Gwendolyn Christie voiced an acted character in this kind of like a rogue-like looping sort of sci-fi shooter. And it certainly looks nice. And I think it has some cool haptic shit, if that’s your thing, Matthew. Oh, I love it. So that is one of their first exclusives coming out next year, I think. I don’t think it has a date yet. And there’s also Horizon Forbidden West and the next Gran Turismo game. Neither of those. I haven’t really played the original Horizon properly still to get too excited about that second one. Gran Turismo has fans. I don’t really like cars, so unless they’re driven by Nintendo characters. Which I don’t think they will be. Not in this case, no. But I accept that to a lot of people, seeing those cars looking really nice will be a big selling point for PlayStation. And so, yeah. How do you feel about Ratchet and Clank? I was gonna ask you about that because surely on paper that looks like a pretty cool game, the way that it loads in all of these different worlds and you frantically shift between them. But Matthew, you’re a long-running grudge against 3D platforming icons from PlayStation history. Icons and inverted commas there. They’re less platforming heroes than action heroes. I can’t say their games speak to me massively. Like I’ve tried getting into them in the past, but I’ve never finished a Ratchet and Clank because I find them… Ah, just… They’re very old games. It’s like very old games design. You know, it’s like, Oh, it’s a gun that fires penguins. I mean, it’s just a gun, isn’t it? It’s not like… Just that you’re jazzing up and throwing in these extra gubbins. Like I much preferred it when they did Sunset Overdrive and kind of added in the kind of sort of parkour, kind of chaining elements. To me, Ratchet and Clank just feels like a sort of a… less fully featured, less interesting version of that. You know? Oh, God. It’s basically a game made for game magazine box-outs, isn’t it? Of like… Like, here’s the Ted Whackiest Weapons. You know? Oh, it’s a weapon. It makes them dance. And you’re like, yeah? And then what? You shoot them with the penguin gun. You’re great. And you do that for 15 hours. Game, end of game, 90%. Surely, Matthew, that over the years, that you’ve been working in print media, you’ll appreciate someone making something that is an easy box-out idea. Like, surely you’ll appreciate having a list of shit. I can understand, I can understand that that’s why people give it 90s. Because they’re just like, oh, thank Christ, this game is so good for page furniture. But, like, for the common gamer out there, I just don’t know what the appeal is. Well, it’s just a very meat and potatoes 3D platformer with shooter elements, basically. Like, I mean, I agree, I’m not massively into them, really. And, you know, you look at something like Spider-Man, or, like you say, Sunset Overdrive, a really cool game, which I’m hoping kind of gets a bit of a… That would be a nice candidate for a bit of an upgrade on Xbox Series X. But, yeah, I’m not massively into it, but I’m definitely curious about the kind of whole using the SSD to make the kind of game you could only make with this sort of hardware. It’s weird to see that Ratchet and Clank is the game that’s doing that. That is strange. Yeah, and it will be incredibly shiny, won’t it? Yeah. I’ll probably feel kind of obliged to buy it because I’m probably not going to buy Gran Turismo Horizon. All right, then. Microsoft then, Matthew. So there’s been some kind of rumour this year that already that Ubisoft Plus, which is like the Ubisoft version of EA Play, I think it’s just on PC at the moment, could be rolled into the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. But generally, how important do you think Game Pass is going to be next year for Microsoft? Oh, yeah, I mean, hugely. It seems to be the kind of the thing which drives all their decisions. All these acquisitions isn’t necessarily… I mean, they’re all fine studios in their own right, but it feels like Xbox is just trying to get games out and on to Game Pass. They’re trying to do the Netflix thing. Obviously, games, they take a long time to get made and to sort of bring them together. So it feels like they’re literally just throwing money at the problem by buying as many studios as possible. Because there was always this sort of rough figure of they were trying to get one first-party game a month, you sort of heard, sort of thrown around. It doesn’t… Currently, it feels like there’s not a lot for the next few months. That’s obvious coming from them. So, you know, and in those months, that shows a sort of weakness of game passing, that it does need sexy things constantly thrown in. But, you know, the flip side, as I said earlier, if you do throw the good games in, it suddenly becomes like the most exciting thing around. So, yeah, should they deliver on… Well, when they deliver Halo Infinite, what other first-party things are we expecting this year? Well, I’ve got down here like Hellblade 2 or Senua’s Sacrifice, Hellblade 2, I think it’s called, or something like that. Scorn, which is like a horror game, I think. That’s that thing that looks like the alien stuff. Yeah, basically. And then probably that Forza game that they revealed. Surely Forza is this year. I think that’s probably a dead set. And possibly Rare’s Everwild, which is still fairly unknown what that is, but some kind of like four-player Explore the Wild kind of RPG thing. Looks a bit like Sea of Thieves with no boats. That’s what I think. Yeah, I’ll be up for that. Yeah, Rare are like back in business as far as I’m concerned with Sea of Thieves and I’m into their sort of vibe. So I’m kind of looking forward to their next few things. I’d love it if there was actually a Forza Horizon this year and not a Forza Motorsports, which seems unlikely given that they’ve announced Motorsport. Or they’ve at least announced… I don’t know if that trailer is quite hard to unpick because I don’t know if it’s like a sort of an announcement of intent that it’s coming. Yeah, I think that’s the announcement that the next mainline Forza is next. That’s kind of… Yeah, it’d be great if they’re like, surprise, we’ve secretly got, you know, Forza Horizon 5 and it’s set in, you know, Japan, everyone keeps saying, don’t they? Or that’s like a fan favourite. That seems to be the case for every games franchise. When they’re like, where’s it going next? They’re like, Japan. Well, it probably won’t, but… Unless it’s Yakuza, it probably won’t. Yeah. Yeah, I think that this really… The fact that we don’t really know what Microsoft’s next year looks like shows just how far behind they are on sorting out exclusives. Obviously, they have made these big acquisitions, but they really do take years to pay off. I will say on the plus side, Matthew, with no Forza Horizon this year, whichever Forza Horizon they release next year will probably be fucking boss because of the extra time they’ve got to make it. Yeah, I mean… Oh, God, I can’t wait. Forza Horizon 4 is one of my favourites of the last gen. So, yeah, that’s a powerful studio. So what about Nintendo next year, Matthew? Well, the big thing here hinges on whether we get this alleged Switch upgrade. Yeah, what do you make of that? I don’t actually think… The whole thing is like this Switch Pro, which is going to be some kind of 4K Switch. And I just don’t know if… Like, if 4K is a necessary thing that they need to deliver on. Like… They’ve kind of made some of their best-looking games of the generation on what is, like, relatively old hardware. And, you know, some of the best games, looking games of… they’ve ever made, and some best-looking games of any generation. You know, Super Mario Odyssey is… You know, there’s not much I’d do to improve it, really, in how it looks. I just like a Switch that could play, like, Breath of the World with, like, no stuttering. I’d like a Switch which could play the new Hyrule Warriors without… I mean, that is games like a flipbook in places. You know, a Switch with a bit more juice. I don’t see them doing something where they, like, divide their audience substantially. Because just there’s so many Switches in play, and, you know, they just don’t need to do that. But, yeah, just something a bit more stable that takes the edge off certain things, should you want it. But, you know, they’re never going to be of a similar kind of power to what’s going on on the other consoles. So, you know, I don’t feel I need to go into, like, some kind of graphics arms race. Yeah. My personal feeling on this is that the 4K Switch they’re talking about is basically whatever the next-gen version of the Switch will be. And I think it will be far off. But I think that… I can see that the next Nintendo console just being, like, a better version of the Switch, similar to how, you know, the 3DS, obviously, had a 3D function, but was largely the DS again, and was still successful. So, yeah, that’s what I think people are talking about here. We are approaching four years since the release of the Switch. Like, it’s… You know, this is firmly the second half of its life cycle, you’d expect. But it was also setting massive numbers, as it stands. So, like, yeah, what is the burden on them to rush it out? I think that you will see a more powerful switch down the line, but I think that is the next-gen console that Nintendo is making. Yeah, and I think it’s a while away. What about on the game side, Matthew? So, we don’t know much about what they got coming up next year. As we discussed, like, Zelda anniversary content is probably expected. There’s No More Heroes 3, though, which is exciting, right? Yeah, I hope so. I love No More Heroes 1, less so No More Heroes 2. Like, it almost felt like it kind of… I don’t know, there’s this point where Suda51 kind of… not vanishes up his own backside, but he kind of… I don’t know, became too attuned to his own kind of zany sort of image. And I think his work wasn’t quite as interesting or good afterwards. And I feel like No More Heroes was like the last of his games, which I was like outright in love with. No More Heroes 1, that is. And then there’s been a bit of a sort of decline or an unevenness since then. I don’t know if that’s because they’re a bigger outfit and he sort of stepped away from it a bit. You know, he’s not necessarily there playing the same exact role he had in those earlier games. But yeah, I mean, I’ll definitely play it. I hope it will be great. But I just find that you just can’t tell with these games until you kind of get your hands on them. Yeah, I agree. There’s kind of like a roughness and an oddness to that first No More Heroes. It’s so like it’s unpolished in so many ways, particularly the open world and the kind of pace of it. It’s just quite odd. But it’s something really just fun about living in that world. And then the second one’s like, Oh, no, we’ll sound off all the kind of like rough edges that you actually quite liked in the first one. So it’s just combat basically. And yeah, I agree with you. I’m hoping that the third one’s got a bit more of that first one’s kind of spirit. But yeah, anything else you’re expecting this year? You’ve kind of mentioned Breath of the Wild too briefly. Like probably, you know, it’s a 50-50 on that one, isn’t it? Yeah, I mean, I think we’re in for… There will be a big Nintendo payday at some point in the next two years where we get like the next 3D Zelda and the next 3D Mario, and it’ll be like the Golden Age of Switch all over again. You know, I think we’ve talked about this before, you know, like there will be another Mario Kart and da-da-da-da-da, and that’s stuff I’m kind of excited for. But right now, I’ve kind of… There’s not a lot of stuff directly I’m super pumped for. Yeah, I think that’s fair enough. So, Matthew, PC, you and I both have, you know, professionally worked in covering PC gaming for quite a long time. Yeah. Looking like quite a good year. You probably have Baldur’s Gate 3 getting substantial updates this year. You’re a big fan of that game, right? Yes, yeah. I think, I mean, they’ve obviously never pinned down, like, the date they’re working towards for the final release. I mean, Divinity Original Sin 2 is in early access for a year, so you’d think it would be similar for this, sort of a similar scale there, early access. Yeah, I’ve absolutely loved this so far. I’ve, you know, I’ve had really good fun with it. You know, it’s one of the very few early access things I have kind of engaged with. You know, I played a lot of it at launch and I come back after the patches and see what they’ve done and I’m leaving feedback and all that jazz. Yeah, I’m intrigued to see how this one grows out. I mean, if, you know, I love the original Sin 2, this feels like that in a different setting with the slightly different combat system, but I’m, you know, enjoying how they’ve changed it. I’m enjoying the story. I think I like the characters a bit more than I did the original Sin 2’s characters and they haven’t announced the whole kind of spread of them yet. So, yeah, I think that it would have to go like pretty, pretty wrong for this to kind of derail massively before it comes out. Yeah, yeah, so I’m looking forward to see how it turns out. I was kind of surprised to look at Baldur’s Gate 3 and realize that, oh, this is the kind of like Dragon Age scale RPG that I’ve probably been waiting for. It’s probably right here and I didn’t really notice until I was looking at screenshots of it. Yeah, it’s definitely like, it feels like their bid to kind of step up as a studio in terms of like production values in that it has like a lot more of that Bioware feel in the cinematics and the fact that everything is voiced and you see the characters in a kind of cinematic view when they talk, which is like a big step away from the kind of more kind of classic RPG kind of text box stuff they were doing before. Yeah, it’s still quite packed with quite some idiosyncratic stuff, which I think isn’t quite, you know, they haven’t like dumbed it down or smoothed it out. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to have the obvious accessibility of like a Dragon Age or a Mass Effect, but I think it will probably have the kind of quality and look of one. Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. I’m really looking forward to see how it turns out. I’m sort of debating in my head whether I should actually just run through Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 first. Probably not at the time, but you know. Yeah, I mean, the connections are like, at least in early access there aren’t a lot, like mechanically it’s so different, and those games are old as hell now. I repaid them last year and I enjoyed them, but they are like, they’re a struggle in places. Yeah, there’s not loads else on the list I’ve got here, Matthew, that I’m that interested in talking about. It’s like, you know, we’ve got like Gotham Knights here and Diablo 4 maybe, and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2, which I feel like I only ever read about when a member of the team has quit or has left the studio. Yeah, it just feels like after all the talk of like, when they brought it back and they announced it, and it was kind of like, we’re gonna get it right, we’re gonna do it right this time, like we’re not gonna have the problems we had last time, and then it seems to be like one of those sort of troubled developments, of any other kind of mainstream game. I really hope this is good. Yeah, that team’s undergone some quite big changes, based on the headlines at least. We shall see. So that’s our summary of 2021, Matthew. In summary, a year of contrast. I’m not sure what to expect from this year. Like you say, I’m not sure how many of these games might just slip as a result of the weird kind of world situation we’re living in right now. I feel like we have another year of like, you know, we’ll watch the live streams from publishers and there’ll be no real events. I can’t see gaming events coming back this year in any way. Yeah, so, yeah, who knows? Maybe it’ll change in some other ways. But yeah, I think it’ll probably end up being solid. But like, I reckon that, I reckon 2022 is when you’ll start seeing that kind of solidifying of these are the big next-gen games. And like, yeah, that tends to be what happens a couple years in, isn’t it? So, yes. So Matthew, we do have quite a lot of correspondence on the old Twitter feed. There’s not many that I feel like we need to read out on here. But I’m definitely, you know, I like hearing from listeners when they tell us what they think of the podcast. And so we had like one kind of extended question on Twitter that I thought we’d go through, if that’s all right. So this is from Stagger Breasts on Twitter. I got their permission to discuss it on the podcast, just to make sure. Now on to an enjoying episode five. While it’s obviously not what you wanted to focus on, I’m glad you covered the ethical aspects of Cyberpunk. Got to ask, will you be doing the same with other companies when it’s appropriate? Episode one had a lot of Ubisoft and no mention of recent allegations, for example. I realize that may not be what some listeners want to hear about and I get that. If it was Nintendo, I’d hate it too. It just felt like an important aspect of Yubi at the moment that wasn’t touched upon. I think that’s a fair critique. We did talk about Ubisoft a bit and one of the big stories around Ubisoft in 2020 was, you know, a lot of senior personnel being like, you know, removed from the company because of some like seemingly deep, you know, seated kind of cultural issues. Do you think that’s a fair comment, Matthew? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s kind of a tricky one because it’s such a vast topic, isn’t it? And it feels like you need to kind of really delve into it to do it justice and it feels like just saying, you know, like a disclaimer, by the way, there’s also this stuff to take into consideration so you may not want to deal with it, which I feel like is kind of what a lot of people have settled on is how they deal with this. You know, I’ve seen in reviews and things people doing box-outs where they’re like, oh, and by the way, you know, before you make your purchasing decision, you should appreciate that there are also these stories so that it isn’t like part of the main discussion, but it is there as a kind of a, like a flagging these issues up when they come to light, which I sort of feel is probably like on balance, like a reasonable way of doing it. Yeah, it’s tough, though, because, you know, this is still just the information we know about. Like, you know, you kind of hear rumblings fairly regularly about, you know, this person or this studio, and like they’re not always your stories to tell, even if you know the stories yourself. A couple of, you know, there’s a couple from like recent years I kind of knew about quite a long time before, you know, they became public, but if they’re not your stories to tell, they’re not your stories to tell. So you kind of like relying on, you know, them being reported or widespread. And so it’s quite a complicated thing to factor in. In this case, I think that we did talk about a lot about Ubisoft without mentioning it. It definitely is part of the narrative of the year. So yeah, that was that I think, yeah, like you say, like some kind of disclaimer, I think we’ll just do our best to discuss it when it’s relevant and when we know that it’s a thing that has, you know, hang over the game. Yeah, it’s just tricky sometimes to disclaim it because you’re like, there’s all this terrible stuff, but man, do I love collecting fruit in this game. And it can seem like you’re being flippant when that isn’t the case. You know, it’s more of a, this is happening. You know, here are these better informed people who have explained it. You can read them here and da. And, you know, take that into kind of consideration. Another key thing is I’m keen not for the podcast to be like what you read on Twitter, but as a podcast, because that’s why I think in the Cyberpunk episode, I wanted to focus a lot more on what is this game actually like, because that’s not really what people are discussing on Twitter about the game still. But it’s something that I was kind of interested in. I just wanted to ask you loads of searching questions about you’ve played it for hours, tell me about it. So, yeah, I thought we did it well because we did cover it there, as mentioned, but like, yeah, it wasn’t just what the podcast was about. Yes. So, yeah, that’s probably how we’ll handle it in future. I hope that answers your question in a way that’s comprehensive and, yeah, hopefully that helps. So, Matthew, our next episode, Games Magazine Covers From Hell. Oh, my God, there are so many. Yes, exactly. And in no way is that title exaggerating the state of the situation that we’re discussing. It’s going to be a fun one, though. Kind of a sequel episode to our review scores we regret. Yeah. I think people will really get a kick out of it. So we’ll be back next Friday with a new episode. If you want to follow us on Twitter, we’re backpagepod on Twitter. You can also email us at backpagegames.gmail.com. And Matthew, you can be followed at MrBasil UnderscorePesto. Is that correct? That is correct. Yep. And I’m Samuel W. Roberts if you want to follow me for whatever it is, my Twitter feed is. And yeah, new episodes every Friday. If you want to review us on iTunes, that’d be much appreciated. We’ve had some reviews already. It’s not iTunes. I keep forgetting it’s Apple Podcasts. I’m terrible at this. And yes, thank you very much for listening. We’ll be back next week. Bye bye. Bye.