I’m Samuel Roberts, I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, welcome to 2022, happy new year. Happy new year to you as well, Sam, how you doing? Yeah, very good, thank you. The funny thing is, because we’ve recorded this first bit of the podcast twice, because I accidentally ripped out my power cable from my PC when we started recording this, me and Matthew have already greeted each other with a happy new year. So we’re kind of living in a sort of Edge of Tomorrow-style nightmare here. Who knows if this will be the last time, I hope so. But Matthew, to kick off with a really important question, what did you make of the Matrix Resurrections? I was puzzled why they bought the French guy back from the Matrix 3. It was in the second one as well, right? It was the Chateau guy. He has the Chateau. Oh, is he in that one as well? He kept closing the door and he goes, Oh woman, you will be the end of me to Monica Bellucci. I don’t even remember that. Oh, right. You see, in my head, I put that in the terrible Matrix 3 rather than the merely okay-ish Matrix 2. But yeah, he turned up and you could hear a collective, not a sigh from the audience, but not even a shrug. Who’s this guy? Because he’s not the most memorable of characters to begin with. And in the film, he’s like made up to look even madder. So, Catherine was like, who’s that? What was that all about? Why is there a French man shouting at everyone? And you’re like, it was him, your favorite character. All your favorites are back. Him, Naomi, brilliant. A load of quite smelly looking people in a horrible dark city. That was back as well. Yeah, it’s quite the thing in terms of like, I like how we got Naomi in the Merovinian. That’s the French guy. That’s him. But we couldn’t have like a full fat Morpheus or Agent Smith. Morpheus is so confusing in this film. It’s a different bloke. He’s like made out of other characters as well. Obviously, it’s a different actor. And he spends most of the film as basically like a bunch of magnetized ball bearings, which is just like they kept that hidden in the trailers. Weird. This is such a weird film. They had him like disappearing down pipes. He looked like a Super Mario power up. Very, very strange. I was thinking, does Lana Wachowski know that Lawrence Fishburne is still alive? Like not only alive, but really good. Going, watching that thinking, oh man, I can’t believe they didn’t ask me back. And like that’s this is what they did with his character. And they just forgot about me in the last half hour. Big time. Big, big old mess. I thought it was quite a bold swing in terms of its interaction with the original trilogy. Hilariously, a lot of people talk about it. They sort of say, a lot of people say I really like the first 40 minutes and then I kind of hated the rest of it. I actually kind of flipped on that. I actually found the first 40 minutes incredibly irritating and confusing. And then once it settled into just being another average Matrix film for the sort of the second two acts, I was like, oh, OK, you know, you know, this isn’t great, but at least I can follow the plot. I found I don’t know that opening is very confusing. Yeah, I think it’s because like the whole I guess like this is some light spoilers to Matrix Resurrection. So if you’ve not seen it, go forward about two minutes and we’ll start talking about something relevant, I’m sure. Allegedly. But yeah, I think that I sort of like wondered why they went with this whole angle of him being a game designer when it was obviously a film that they were showing as the game. And it was like, I feel like maybe Lana Wachowski was a bit more tuned into like games culture and stuff about 20 or so years ago, but maybe not so much now. And I felt that I felt that a little bit. I imagine like, as a concept, it’s fairly easy to grasp to someone who doesn’t pay attention to video games. But when you’re watching footage of the 1999 film The Matrix and they’re telling you it’s that video game you made, you’re like, well, that’s just daft. Like, you know, just you could you could have done something different here, as I suggest on Twitter, Matthew, they could have used some path of Neo footage or enter The Matrix. But yeah, that I kind of like the first half where it’s actually did slightly prefer the first half. The first half was like Black Mirror episode that doesn’t entirely commit to the premise. And the second half is like straight to DVD Matrix sequel. So, yes. And I did the big the biggest reach I heard on the criticism of this film is that the fight scenes are bad because it’s subverting your expectations of what a Matrix film can be, which is having good fight scenes. And I was like, that’s like, definitely not. Like, that’s garbage. Because whenever you think of two or three, when fights kick off, they’re at least very entertaining to watch. Yeah. You know, technologically astounding at the time. And this has none of that. Like, the action is so half arsed. The editing is terrible. You can’t follow any of it. It makes these allegedly, you know, incredible warriors just look very flat and boring. I mean, it’s, I don’t know, I thought it was kind of embarrassing on that level, which was sad because normally that’s the one thing they do have going for them. But the idea that you’re above making a good film, that’s, that’s horseshit, you know? Yeah. I sort of like, I think there’s some ideas in there that could have just, I don’t mind the sort of meta aspect of it so much as long as it was like done better. But I just think that I would have like fully committed to what that first hour was and made it like really kind of mind bending and weird and interesting. But like, yeah, when it becomes a regular Matrix film, it doesn’t really do much for me. Jessica Anwy was good though. And obviously, yeah, she is good. Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne Moss looking fantastic, of course. Like, I still think it’s one of Keanu Reeves better roles. Like the character and the vibe of the film fits his slightly bad acting quite well. Like I think his whole kind of I’m slightly confused by this sort of energy as a person suits those films. He seems like a better fit. When I watch a Matrix film, I think Keanu Reeves isn’t as bad an actor as I thought. But then you watch like New Bill and Ted and you’re like, oh yeah he is. Yeah. He doesn’t have to astound me. I kind of like I know what the deal is with him at this point. And like, yeah, he did also star in, you know, he has starred in so many of the best action films of all time as well. The guy’s got some taste. So yeah, okay, good. Well, that’s the Matrix chat done with Matthew. So let’s move on to the subject of this episode. So for long time listeners, you’ll know that we did 21 bold gaming predictions about 2021 back in back at the start of last year. And then we did we revisited those predictions for an episode recently. And we thought that was a fun format because, you know, it’s sort of you can check in at the end of the year, see how right or wrong you were. Hear my bullshit thing about GTA being set in two different time frames, all that nonsense. And so this year, we’re doing the same thing, Matthew. We’ve got 11 predictions each year to add up to a total of 22 predictions for 2022. Tell me what your vibe is with this. How easy or hard did you find making these predictions this year? Very difficult, because I feel like a lot of stuff from last year sort of shifted into this year. This year, you know, when you look at the schedule, it looks a little bit like sort of 2021 part two, you know. So that makes it initially confusing. And the second thing is that a lot of the kind of discourse around games at the moment is about stuff that I simply don’t give a shit about, namely, NFTs, blockchain stuff and the metaverse. So in terms of people having kind of deep conversations online, which I do require, you know, I like to read through other people’s predictions to kind of give me an idea of what everyone’s into, what everyone’s talking about. Doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of chat about games, doesn’t feel like there’s a huge sort of rumour mill about stuff that could potentially happening. It’s just a lot of people kind of either rubbing their hands with glee that all this bullshit’s coming, or loads of people railing against it. And I don’t know, I don’t know whether or not you’ve absorbed any of this into your bold gaming predictions, but I’ve kind of I’m a little bit head in the sand about it myself. No, there are no NFTs in my predictions or metaverse. It’s funny, I saw, I’ve seen some people sort of say, well, you know, these kind of scary developments, or whatever you want to call them, come along every once in a while, and everyone gets in a fluster. And actually, the games industry is quite good at targeting specific people with specific things. And, you know, when they when free to play suddenly starts becoming a big thing, and everyone’s like, all games are going to be free to play. And they’re not. You know, the games companies you know and love are still making the games you want, your big kind of retail games or whatever. But there is also like a world of free to play stuff that everyone’s doing that you maybe don’t know about, or because they’re just good at targeting it, you never hear about it. You know, often when people do like, you know, their annual, their yearly finance presentations or whatever, and they’re like, oh, and our weird Capcom card game made like a billion dollars or whatever, and you’re like, what, they’ve got one of those? So maybe it will be one of those, just, you know, fools and their money will be easily parted kind of in secret, and the rest of us will just get on business as usual. That’s what I’m kind of hoping for. If I play the next Mario and like I hit a question mark block and a new power up comes out, but I can’t use it because it’s owned by like one bloke, then I would be sad. I would not be happy about that. Yeah, that’s it. Toad is now the possession of like Elon Musk or something. So I’ve avoided all predictions like that, Matthew, this year. I want to make them fun and not depressing. So that’s good. Yeah, so they’re all all of mine are like gaming related, I would say, rather than like wider industry stuff. So yeah, how about you? What’s where do you all sort of skew towards? Yeah, I mean, there may be a little dry. I was trying I did try to go in with like, oh, let’s be really zany or whatever. But I this is this is how strange 2022 is. I was looking at it and it was just like sucking all the silliness from me. Oh, God, I really battled against it. So they’re I don’t know, they’re reasonably rational things. Oh, a lot of them just felt like total shots in the dark because you’re like, this is based on nothing. I have nothing going for this. But maybe it’s something I’d like to happen. Yeah, I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out in 12 months. Yeah, it’s tricky because there’s a bunch of things back when I was a journalist on PC Gamer that I knew about in secret. And those are still secrets. So they haven’t come to light. But I can’t just drop them into a podcast because of… So instead, I have to pick things that are entirely founded in speculation, which is what these are. There’s no authority behind these whatsoever. They’re definitely a punt in the dark. I guess the conversation starters, Matthew. And with regards to zaniness, we all know that on this podcast, we just have to sharply reverse into zaniness, sort of like collapse backwards into it. That’s kind of how it happens on this podcast. So we can’t force it, I agree. I do have one that is quite funny, I think. But the rest are all sort of just very dry conversation starters. So should we kick off, Matthew? Should I go first? Yeah, you go first. I’m going to start with one that Matthew has no interest in whatsoever. So, sorry, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and Tiberian Sun get remastered this year. So this is definitely like a hope rather than a sort of… I guess it is a prediction because I think that last collection they did did do well. The one that had the original Command & Conquer: and Red Alert on it. I love that compilation. It got me through the pandemic summer quite nicely in 2020. Absolutely just like scorched through every single mission in those games. Really, really good fun. And great, they got the artwork completely redesigned. I’m anticipating that EA will do the same with Red Alert 2 and Tiberian Sun. Red Alert 2 to a lot of people represents the peak of the series. And so it kind of dials up the sort of alternate history Soviet nonsense of the first game and adds things like floating tanks and I think like dolphins that have guns and shit. It’s just like full of nonsense. Which is the one which adds Tim Curry? That’s Red Alert 3, I’m sorry. Red Alert 3 you can play on modern formats. But that’s the 2007 game I think. But Red Alert 2 is the one that features Twin Peaks’ Ray Wise as the president of the United States. And that’s good fun. That is not a guy I would ever vote for to be president. Not after watching Twin Peaks, no. Oh, definitely. Well, yeah, exactly. He looks evil. He looks like the devil. He was the devil in something, right? Yeah, that show Reaper. But he seems like a very nice man in real life, just to kind of balance out there. But Matthew, any thoughts on this, as someone who hates real time strategy? I don’t hate them. I just never kind of kept up with them, and I suck at them. Yeah, and I never played the series beyond Red Alert 1, so I don’t have a searing hot take on these games. I think I just sucked so bad at Red Alert that I would probably flip any pages about Command & Conquer: in a magazine after that point. So I really only know Tim Curry saying space. That is the extent of my knowledge on this. I think that’s a lot of people’s modern relationship with Command & Conquer:, to be honest. Yeah, well, that’s all you need. For most things, to get by is just one good meme, and then you can just pretend to be an expert. And everyone’s like, yeah, nice. I think someone… Sorry, God, sorry. I was just saying, I’m up for floating tanks, though. That’s what I cut you off to say. No, I think this one really strikes the balance nicely between fun sci-fi unit types and being just a genuinely kind of exciting sort of strategy game. I think one of the lead designers of this went on to work on StarCraft 2, so quite ended up in quite a sort of serious deal. Red Alert 2 is probably the peak of my interest in the RTS, just in terms of it’s an old favorite. So I hope to see it again this year, but we’ll see, Matthew. Does it still have a Tanya or a Tanya alike? Yes, I think Tanya is played by a kind of like an unknown actress in this one, and then I think it’s like, I don’t want to guess who it is because I’ll get it wrong and it’ll be really embarrassing, but it’s like a lady with blonde hair, can’t remember who, maybe it’s Jenny McCarthy, someone like that, but anyway, that’s- Kate Winslet. Yeah, you know, she- It was that one really highbrow bit of casting. That was 80% of the budget went on that, yeah, it was worth it though. On the subject of Tanya, I called her Sonia in the Game of the Year episode. When were you referring to- what, you mean the 2021? Yeah, I think we were talking about- I think it was during Age of Empires. I think I probably thought you were talking about something completely unrelated. Yeah, I thought- I think I referenced a super-powered unit called Sonia running across the battlefield. I thought you meant Red Sonia, and I was like, what? Oh no, no, I was referring to Tanya. Um, that, like, just an insight to my mind there, when I heard that back, I was like, ah, curses, seeing for the fraud that I am. Yeah, oh no, it’s Sonia in Blue Alarm. Oh dear, yeah, very good. That’s that one done, Matthew, what’s your first one? Uh, so my first- this is quite a boring one. Um, and it’s the only one which does brush with bullshit. I think it’s gonna be a big VR year, powered in part by the Metaverse, which is Facebook’s Oculus-using thing. It’s Oculus even called Oculus anymore, isn’t it? Been renamed to be more Metaverse-friendly, isn’t it? I don’t know. I think it’s called the MetaQuest 2, but the app is still called Oculus, so. So a combination of them pushing that quite aggressively, and PlayStation VR 2. I just think we’re gonna see a bit of a VR resurgence. I don’t know if this is gonna be like the now or never. I thought VR had kind of sort of been and gone, and had kind of settled at the level it was gonna be, but I just, I know it persists, you know? You keep hearing people talk about it, like, I particularly with the Quest 2, I just feel like it’s definitely not like out for the count, which I thought it maybe was about a year and a half ago. Yeah, I just get a feeling like, especially if whatever PSVR 2 is can solve just the 8 million cables problem of the first VR, you know, a device so complicated, it makes the Wii U look sleek. Wii packed ours away within a week. It was one of the worst purchases I ever made, because I was just like, I’m not having this strewn around my living room. If they can solve that problem and make it, I don’t know, wireless or at least a bit simpler, I think it could be good. Yeah, I think that this is a dead sir. Like, can I ask, do you think this is going to be the year of VR because I bought a Quest 2? Is that why, Matthew? Well, you had one and like, hearing people like you bring up VR a little bit more, you were like, oh, okay, this isn’t like a total bust. It’s actually like in quite rude health. I think that it helps that Facebook is just like, as a kind of like a depository of money that can throw cash at like making it big. In terms of software, that’s exactly kind of what it needs. It’s just like, you know, basically someone who will bankroll having a really nice version of Resi 4 made for their platform. And I think that that’s only going to grow now. And honestly, like, as somebody who switched it on, the library is pretty good. Like, there’s at least 40 things I want to play in VR, which is pretty good. And it is a proper put-it-on for the first time, and it’s a fantastic experience. I agree that the thing that PS5 has in its favor is that it’s obviously an incredibly powerful console, so they can build all of their experiences with that hardware tech in mind, whereas the Quest 2, as a standalone device, isn’t super-powered. It’s moderately powered, so Sony can set it apart by being more fidelity-first, I suppose, with the VR headsets. But I have a VR prediction coming up as well, Matthew, so I’ll save that one. Mine was super-broad, but that’s the name of the game, the predicting game. Not that it is a competition. I should have predicted that Matthew will be self-deprecating about his own predictions. That would have been like a real winner, because you were like this last year. You were like, oh, yours is so much more interesting than mine. I was like, I was expecting a repeat of that this year. This was like one of those formats I’ve kind of like bullied at you. Yeah. So good stuff. So my second prediction, Matthew, is quite a conservative one. Follows on from a prediction I had last year that came true, hoping this will come true too. GPA and Game Boy Color Games come to Nintendo Switch Online. So I think that they have this more expensive tier now of the Nintendo Switch Online service of which I’m on your family membership, which I’m delighted about, of course, as a longtime member of your family. And so I think that they sound like, I think like a statement they made to the effect of like, we want to make this expansion pack tier like really more valuable or something like that, which makes me think that they’ll probably or hopefully just turn the dial up on getting some of these games on there and these formats on there. So I think if they want people to pay for it, throwing GBA games, which are relatively like hard to sort of get hold of, you need a Wii U to really like play them. It’s like virtual console games, which is not ideal. I think having a nice library of them and Game Boy and Game Boy Color games on there would be a good way to get people talking about it and potentially, potentially buying it, particularly the excavate stuff like Original Advance Wars and Golden Sun and maybe even some of the older Pokemon games. They could do really well. So, yes. Any thoughts on this one, Matthew? Yeah, I mean, that makes perfect sense. I’ve been much more excited about Game Boy Advance than Game Boy and Game Boy Color games coming back. Yeah, this just sounds like a sort of no brainer to me, unless everyone else sees what Konami did with the Castlevania Advance Collection and went, well, I could just do that instead. I could just sell my games as a big anthology instead of putting them on a service like that. But, you know, who knows what will happen? Yeah, I suppose like at least Nintendo’s own games, you can see them doing that because it’s worthwhile to them financially. But yeah, it would be cool to see stuff like the, oh no, they’ll never put those Final Fantasy games in there, will they? But hey, a man can dream. Any, no temptation to throw DS in the mix? I don’t know how they do it. How would they do it with the two screens? Like, you turn it sideways? Yeah, I mean, fundamentally, you’ve got touch screen interface. Like, you can duplicate it and have a touch screen on the Switch, so it would sort of technically work. Yeah, I think it could work. Whether those games would just look a bit, ugh, now, I don’t know. I’d be up for sort of revisiting some stuff. I know saying that, like, you can play DS games on so many different things, so it’s not the end of the world. But, you know, why not go whole hog? Yeah, I’m with you on the Game Boy Games thing, by the way. Like, when I look at the library of that console, this is not to say they’re bad, but I look at, like, Link’s Awakening and Oracle of Seasons and Ages, and then, like, everything else. And I’m kind of, like, not so bothered. Don’t forget James Bond 007. Oh, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah. Of that is essential, Zelda ripoff. Everyone wants that. And though super hard, they’re not Final Fantasy. They’re like Final Fantasy Adventure or Final Fantasy Quest series, which, you know, while your mates are playing Final Fantasy 7, you’re like, well, check this out. And it’s a really super difficult, super old school RPG. And you feel quite sad about it. Yeah, I think, like, the original Game Boy, yeah, does not so much want to play. Game Boy Color, though, has got some good stuff on it. Yeah, a bit for the old Metal Gear and Perfect Dark. Game Boy Color games. Those are actually pretty rad, those games. They ran them, they looked real nice for the time. So, yes, fingers crossed that happens this year. So, that’s my prediction too, Matthew. What’s your second prediction? My second prediction is that video game movies will continue to be shit, but video game TV shows will, I say, continue to be excellent, will be excellent. You know, I feel like we’ve had two successes in Castlevania and that League of Legends one that people seem to like. Arcane. Yeah. And maybe TV is just a better fit for the kind of, like, widespread lore and expanded universes that tend to come with video games. TV feels like a better fit, feels this year like lots of people are going for TV with, like, The Last of Us on HBO, there’s the Halo TV show, Netflix are making a Resident Evil show. I just feel like, yeah, I just got a feeling that these things are going to be okay. I feel like there are TV people involved who know how to make good TV, which is key, which sounds really dumb, I know, but, like, I just can’t see, like, HBO putting out, like, just a huge piece of shit, so hopefully it will overpower, because normally you get the feeling with these projects that it’s, like, the tinkering from studios, it’s the tinkering from the games side that derails these things, but I’m hoping that the TV brains can keep this stuff on track. Yeah, so the last of us is Craig Mason, right? The Chernobyl writer, creator, so, you know, like, a real bit of talent, host that scriptwriting podcast where I was thinking, oh, maybe I could be a scriptwriter, and I listened to that and think, I’ve got no patience to listen to any of this. I can’t even listen to two hours of scriptwriters talking, let alone do this as a career. This is proper, like, I will, like, disregard the advice and just start writing my script. That’s how I work creatively. It’s always steered me right, question mark. Yeah, so, I’m kind of curious about that Halo 1 because they spent so much money on it, and you kind of just want to see what it looks like. Kind of hope it won’t be like one of those 2005 YouTube-only sort of tie-in video series they would make where… I don’t think it will be that. I think they’re seeing it like their version of The Mandalorian because it’s like the Paramount Plus sort of flagship show, so they obviously want it to do well. I think that stuff can work. I think really… like NAF but Super Sincere Sci-Fi can work quite well on TV, which is what I’d put… I would sort of… maybe not The Mandalorian, but it’s what I’d put Battlestar and The Expanse under. They’re super nerdy, but they really go for it, and I think you can make that stuff work. It’s when you kind of slightly half-arse it, that’s when it becomes a bit of a problem. And it’s got an interesting cast of… well, I say it’s got an interesting cast of characters. There seems to be a lot of characters around Master Chief. Master Chief is the problem in Halo, in that it’s this big, unknowable sort of pile of armour. It’s not very interesting. I don’t really care to know more about that guy. But, like, the world around them, that could be interesting. Isn’t it the actor who played Nicholas Sobotka on the wire playing Master Chief? It’s quite interesting. He sounds nothing like him. So probably have a very different energy. But, yeah, I think… Is it Natasha McKellan is in it as well? She’s Halsey, I think. Yeah, I hope she does her Irish accent from Ronin. That was an all-timer. I just want them to cast Ziggy Sobotka as Master Chief. Speaking of that, actually, have you seen For All Mankind on the Sincere Sci-Fi Front, the Apple TV Plus show? Yeah. It’s pretty good. That’s mega sincere. Frank Sobotka is in that though. He’s in phenomenal shape. That dude looks great. I like that that’s your takeaway. Frank Sobotka looks great. It’s like 20 years later and he looks better than he did then. I was like, wow, great glow up there for Frank Sobotka. But yeah, for all mankind, I think it’s pretty good. I’ll have to get your thoughts on it at a juncture, Matthew. Frank Sobotka glow up. I wish that was the name of the podcast now. So yes, then there’s like a Mass Effect show in the works as well. Is that right? That’s not the issue. Yeah, like allegedly all these things feel like ripe for it. But on the flip side, that uncharted film will be just two star guff. Yeah, I think like the key thing here is that streaming services, what they really get is they can like look at data that tells them how many people are watching their streaming services on games consoles. So they have a serious incentive to get that right. Whereas for media studios, it’s a bit more detached from that. They’re probably not looking at it in the same kind of like data driven way. It’s much more driven by like, what will the people who go to the cinema want to see? They’ll want to see Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg without a moustache. And like, that’ll be the conclusion they came to. No love for the Sonic Movie 2, Matthew? Not looking forward to that? No, I didn’t think the first one was very good. Like, it’s not like a total car crash, but it’s definitely not good. So let’s all grow up and stop pretending it is. There you go, slammed there. The people who like the… Well, come on, come on. Yeah, okay, fair enough. Okay, so my third prediction, is that right? Yep. Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2 is announced, and it will be an open world game. So I think that because they’ve already established the fundamentals of what the FF7 Remake is, I don’t think we’ll be waiting a million years to see this one break cover. This is also the 35th anniversary of Final Fantasy Year. Good time to do that best Final Fantasy Games podcast, Matthew. And so I think that this second part, like maybe towards the end of the year, you’ll see it announced. And the reason I think it will be an open world game is because you’ve left Midgar, and I don’t know how they can do the next part of the game just with the kind of corridor structure that they had in the first remake, just because you kind of need to be able to wander around a little bit. Going around that first and second continents, that’s like a key part of the FF7 experience. They managed to avoid by just keeping you in Midgar for the whole first game. But I think they need to have a bit more of a degree of freedom and sort of traditional RPG style to that second one. Any thoughts, Matthew? Yeah, I mean, couldn’t that just be a kind of… You still have those very scripted linear sequences when you go and do the story events in the various towns or whatever, but then you have basically an equivalent of the field area from Final Fantasy XV where maybe you can just do some grinding and there’s some stuff, you know, there’s endless amount of stuff to do there. But rather than being fully open world, I don’t know. I just think they had such success with the more linear moments of the first game that I could still be a bit of a hybrid, I think. Yeah, no, for sure. I don’t see that being abandoned. I think scripted story stuff will be in the mix, for sure. I think it’s more like having a few big fields to wander around. When you go and find the Mid-Kazalim, for example, I think you need to have a bit of… They need to show you a bit of getting from A to B. You need to be able to go find that chocobo farm on the First Continent. I think there’s a dude in a house who needs to go find him. He needs to go to the Village of Calm. I think they need to do a bit of open-world something. I must admit, I’m quite shaky on Final Fantasy VII post-Midgar because I’ve never finished it myself. Where’s the cutoff point? Aren’t they meant to be doing it in three parts? They have to do it in more parts, just from how they’ve already done it, because they’re not even close to the end of the first disc. I think this will end with how the first disc ends, which is, that’s Aerith dying in the original game. Wait, what? In this remake version, no spoilers for the game, but who knows if it will play out the same way? That’s unclear. But I think that getting to the city of Ancients and that bit where Aerith is praying, Sephiroth turns up, that feels like probably where it’s going to end up to me. Maybe that’s stretching it too far and they really will make like 12 games out of this, but I don’t think so. I think it will really help them as well. I can’t see them keep doing them on PS4. I feel like they’ve just become next-gen games at a certain point. So I’m hoping that kind of happens here, because I don’t know if you’ve played the integrated one they did for PS5, but that’s very, very shiny. So yes, I think that will break cover this year, Matthew, and we’ll see how it goes. So, Henry, what’s your third prediction? A Halo Infinite campaign will be expanded with free DLC. Ah, that was my fifth prediction. Uh-oh. We’ll just merge them into one. That’s fine, we can merge them into one. We’re stepping on each other’s predictions. This is mainly because I feel like it doesn’t really feel completely finished in a satisfying way, and there’s just lots about this game, which it feels a bit more like a platform. Admittedly, that’s more on the multiplayer side, like with the fact that it is free to play and there’s these rolling seasons, and that suggests a long ongoing relationship with the game. Whether that bleeds into the campaign side or not, I don’t know, but it feels like it would. I’ve always thought this was more of a deal with this, like it was going to be more of a Destiny-styled project. I imagine it being free, like within Game Pass. They’ve got some form with this. They gave out that mini extra campaign for Gears 5, which sort of came out of nowhere and was quite strange. I don’t know if it was great, but it was also quite strange. I want to say it’s called Hivebusters. And yeah, I don’t really know what the thinking was behind that, but I feel like this will kind of continue on. Oh, and I hope it does as well, because I just want to see something other than just grass and trees, which is in that game. I want to see some other biomes as developers love to bollock on about these days. So, yeah, maybe more of a hope than a prediction. Yeah, I think that… So my prediction, I’ll just bring this forward, actually, and we just talk about this in one go, is that Halo Infinite gets a story expansion that finally gives us a scarab. That was my prediction. I think I’m with you on the fact that they’ll keep it going, because it is quite a short campaign. And you would think that, probably without thinking with the HiveBusters thing and this, is if you bought the game on Game Pass, or you just played the game on Game Pass, and you kind of drift away from it, it gives you a reason to dive back into it. And it’s a bit like the mentality of dropping second and third seasons of TV shows on Netflix, where it’s like you know people will come back for the thing that they’re most interested in. So it’s worth the investment. And I can see that. It does also seem like they could probably flex their design muscles a bit more with this infinite expansion, because they’ve got the game out there, and it’s like a claim. So all they have to do is make some good single player content for it. They don’t have to design the game from scratch, and they can probably learn a bit of lessons from the criticism they had from Halo Infinite’s campaign. And yeah, I think that’s a good one, Matthew. I hope that does happen. I like that they have a Halo that kind of, you just get new chunks of world to go explore over the course of like… Yeah, it kind of makes sense. It’s based on the design of the ring and what’s going on with it in that game. It just sort of, that would be sound. Knowing our luck, you know, they’ll be like, something’s coming over that mountain, and there’s a great big shadow, and you’re really excited for a scarab. But it turns out to be like eight horrible boss characters just walking together as a group, and you’re like, oh shit, now I’ve got to do this. Eight space gorillas, Matthew. Eight space gorillas standing on each other’s shoulders to look like a scarab. So Matthew, I guess the order of hit this has blown my brain up a little bit. I think it’s your next one again now, because we just integrated my one. So what’s your next prediction? My next bold prediction is that that Sonic Frontiers game is going to be good. Ah, okay, interesting. I don’t think you truly believe this, but go ahead. Well, in terms of… I admit we only have that little teaser trailer to go on, but the fact that a big, bright, colourful, next-gen world, that’s really what I’m excited about. You know, this came up a few times in our Game of the Year podcast, where people start using the kind of power you have to make slightly, you know, but applying them to your kind of Game Year kind of worlds, your more artificial kind of fantasy lands. And while I’m not a big Sonic guy, I like the visual design of that world and, you know, the silliness of, like, here’s an open world made out of, like, loops and Sonic race tracks. I think that’s interesting. I guess the difference is, they’re trying to sell it on, here’s an interesting Sonic world, rather than, here’s something interesting about Sonic, which is impossible, because Sonic the character being terrible and all his friends being terrible. And that’s usually what they sell it on, like, Sonic can become X, or Sonic can transform into X, or Sonic has these friends and they’ve all got an insane attitude. This does seem to be like, here’s a sort of generic Sonic, here’s an interesting Sonic world, that’s the balance I’m more likely to be interested in. It’s like, I was surprised by how Breath of the Wild that trailer was. Like, it had towers making noises and stuff, and I was like, oh yeah, just like Breath of the Wild. Yeah, I mean, I just want every game to be like that, basically. So, if it’s like that, then that’s fine. I mean, we know it will probably be an uncontrollable mess, sadly. But you’ve got to make some spice. I don’t know how we quantify it being good at the end of the year as well. I don’t know if that’s like Metacritic at 75 or above or something. I guess we can figure that out in December. We don’t have to rush that yet. This is where it’s like a fat 30 on Metacritic, and it’s like, whoops. I’ve been playing Metroid Dread, Matthew, and how do you feel about the fact that by the time you get the screw attack in this game, you’ve basically turned Samus into Sonic the Hedgehog? Just to upset you, because even the turning into a ball and going through pipes thing is very Sonic, and maybe this happens in all Metroid games, but how do you feel about the fact that by the end you are basically Sonic the Hedgehog with a gun? I’d say she’s the original ball hero, and if anything, Sonic’s stealing her moves. I’m absolutely fine with it. I like how late Morph Ball comes in the game. Relatively late. It’s still not the longest game in the world, but it holds off for quite a long time, which I thought was one of the pleasant surprises of Metroid Dread. I know all the sequence breakers can probably get it within ten seconds or something. I’d say she’s still sufficiently Samus-enough alike to not break into the Sonic Zone. That’s fine. I certainly wouldn’t have picked it as my game of the year if I’d made any Sonic comparisons. My side note, Matthew. I absolutely fucking adore Metroid Dread. I just wish if we’d have done that game of the year list like a month later, I’d have had it as number one as well. And I’d have kicked Ratchet & Clank out of there. I felt bad about Ratchet & Clank, but there you go. That’s fine. People have been very nice about that episode. It’s all good. But yeah, a bit of continuity correction there from me. So my next one, Matthew, is Night’s Dive remasters a South Park game on N64. So this is like, I guess, based on the fact that they did Shadow Man. And I just think like the kind of like the audacity of like adding widescreen and graphics options and like make ultra wide to the piece of shit South Park game from Acclaim on N64 would be baller. I’d like to see it done. I guess this is probably like the least likely to happen of the of the of the predictions on this list, because I think that Parker and Stone like hate that game. And that’s part of the reason why the Stick of Truth games were like much, much better. But yes, I would like to see it done. The fucking Endless Turkeys, Snowballs, FPS brought back in in 4K by the specialists at Night Dive. Any thoughts, Matthew? I mean, you know, you get to piss in a snowball and throw it at someone. It’s a dream. That is a game which is so funny in magazine box outs, but so depressing when you spend 60 quid on it. Is it one you had as a kid? I don’t think we had it. I think the boys across the river had a copy of it. Someone in our social circle definitely had South Park. It’s just abysmal as well because in accurately capturing the visual style of that world, it’s so sparse. It’s just terrible. It’s really barren. Like a barren wasteland with like 10 sound bites and weapons that are funny once and never satisfying to shoot. I mean, this would be so cursed to bring back. I had a mate who had it as well. By the way, anyone playing the Back Page drinking game, Matthew has mentioned the boys across the river, so take a swig. When I was 10 and I played this, I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. And that’s exactly the only age in which you can appreciate this game on any level. Doing the four split-screen piss snowball death match. That seemed hilarious when I was that age. I think this is the least likely thing on my list to happen, but if it did happen, I’d be like, well done. I’m glad that happened. And hey, Night Dive, continue the acclaimed remasters. Bring us this Lost Classic. Okay, that’s that one, Matthew. That was a great takedown of this game by you. I do agree with you. The sound of turkeys in this game as well just drives you completely mad after a while. It’s a proper cursed object of the 90s. I guess when you think back, though, at this time, this was an era where if you wanted to buy South Park episodes, they sell them at four episodes on a videotape for 15 quid. So maybe in that context, a whole video game of South Park seemed like good value for money if you liked South Park. But really now, in this day and age, it’s kind of unacceptable. I don’t think that this seemed as bad at the time versus other FPS games, just because the landscape wasn’t as rich for them on consoles. There were so many South Park games. You don’t want them to bring back South Park Rally or Chef’s Love Shack the quiz. I think a lot of these got good reviews at the time as well, which is unfortunate. But yes, South Park Games are in 64. Wow, we’ll probably won’t do an episode about that one. But yeah, let’s move on to your number five, Matthew. This is perhaps my vaguest one in terms of what it actually entails. But I think this is going to be the year where we have a big Konami comeback. And in my head, the three prongs of attack are Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and Castlevania, all of which have myriad rumours that they are in production in different places. Some of them are meant to be multiple Silent Heroes. Obviously, the best version of this prediction is that all three of these come back in some form or are revealed in some form. But I will settle for basically any one of them either. That’s why it’s a bit of a broad prediction that can be satisfied by many different criteria. But I just feel like we’ve heard so many rumours and seen so little from them that something has to give. They have to make something. They have to be doing something with this treasure trove of stuff which is still so fondly thought of. Whether that’s remakes, remasters, new entries, that’s sort of hard to say. But yeah, I just feel like this has to happen. Yeah, so I think I had a version of this on my list last year where I said that Silent Hill and Metal Gear will make an appearance. And I was tempted to have that again, but I’m happy to give that one over to you. Yeah, I think you’re probably right. I think Konami were meant to participate in E3, then pulled out at the last minute due to some reason. But I think that they kind of said something about expecting more from us at some point. I think that these seem like very solid rumors. I would like to see them happen for sure. I agree that they just sat on the shelf. All these games, like all the classic Metal Gears and Silent Hill games just sat there, not really accessible. Some of them are, but not really enough of them on all formats. It seems like there’s just money to be made in getting them on to Switch and formats like that. I’m hopeful that happens this year. I guess I don’t have as much invested in them making a new Castlevania. I never asked you this actually, but what did you think of Bloodstained? I did like it. It’s very much a continuation of his handheld series. I liked it enough. The art style is not quite my cup of tea. I prefer the sprite-based stuff you did before. In terms of the core magic of what makes that series work, the exploration, the huge mass of powers you can accrue, and the secrets and digging stuff out, it’s pretty great. The problem with all their games is that all the people who are famous for making all of them good, they simply can’t work with anymore because they’ve either publicly distanced themselves from them or they left because they just got so burnt out and bummed out. So you can’t see that happening. You hope that there was a generation of developers there who came up under them who still got the stuff to make these things happen or indeed they farmed them out to other people. During the game awards, I swear that Guillermo del Toro, when he did his little bit, still dropped a big reference to how much he wanted to do Silent Hills or a reference to PT or something. I just can’t see that ever being something that could happen in terms of… I think there are some people who are still holding out for one day Kojima will make PT or Silent Hills or whatever it’s meant to be called. But just due to the nature of the breakup, it surely can’t happen. No, I don’t think that will ever happen. I think that… Two things. One, I think it’s really funny that you were clearly eating a renny when I got you to start talking in that last bit. Like, it’s the most obvious it’s ever been to me that you’ve been eating a renny on this podcast. Am I right there, Matthew? Yes, you are. Because I could tell that you were just, like, caught completely off guard by me asking about bloodstained. And then, like, I had to hear you gobble up a renny while trying to answer. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all the people listening to deal with that straight in areas. No, it sounded like you were doing a comedy voice. It was quite good. Um, yeah. So I think, yeah, I think, like, the rumour is that obviously Kazuma Productions is making something. Rumoured to be an Xbox game. Rumoured to be a horror game. And we will hope to see a horror game from Kazuma, of course, because that seems like a perfect genre for that studio. So, yes, hopefully on that front. But, yeah, I long ago gave up on Silent Hills, the concept. I think a good way to kind of come to peace with Silent Hills is knowing that what you played in PT is not what Silent Hills was going to be. From what the footage they released was, it looked very, very different. I think that PT was kind of a tech demo that just ended up becoming a sort of thematically linked prelude. And then the actual game would have been very, very different. Probably would have been third person. Why would you have a first person game where you play as Norman Reedus and you can’t see his face? They wouldn’t have done it. Everyone wants to see his world famous hands. Exactly, yeah, holding a torch. So yeah, I think that was not… I think that’s the way to make peace with it. If you love PT and I adore PT then I think that just imagine that’s only like a one self-contained thing and that Silent Hills was another thing and you never really saw what it was. And then you come to terms with it better because then it means that whatever Konami makes next and whatever Kashima makes next you can still get excited about them without that baggage, I would say. So yeah, the Del Toro thing, I suppose, is a different factor, but hey. Anything more to add on that one, Matthew? Or should we move on? No, no. Okay. That was super broad, that one. Come on, give us something a bit more specific. Okay, so this is a VR one. More PS2 era games come to VR. So I make this prediction because there’s a version of GTA San Andreas on the way for the Oculus Quest 2. Did you know this? I did not, no. Yeah, I think it was announced during that very strange Mark Zuckerberg video a few months ago. And yeah, so there is a version of San Andreas coming to VR. I assume it’s different completely to the remastered edition they’ve done. I think it’s like the company that made… I think Rockstar has a VR company, I think, like quietly ran by Brendan McNamara, who made Ele Noir, like I believe. And so I think that that studio is presumably the one making GTA for VR. But I really like the idea of this. And I’ve put down PS2 era games here, because I think that the reason this makes sense for Facebook to do is that the Quest isn’t that powerful a platform. It doesn’t have that much memory, so it can’t be doing like a hundred gigabyte games. But if you can make a really shiny looking version of a PS2 era game look really crisp, you can theoretically use the nostalgia people have for PS2 classics and then just reinterpret them for VR, so you can drag more attention to the platform. I think Rezzy 4 and GTA San Andreas are quite specific as picks. You could have picked a later GTA theoretically and done that instead, but I think here the combination of nostalgia, see a game that you used to love in first person VR, along with it being a classic in its own right, that’s quite exciting. I think they’ll just do more of that. What the games will be, I’m not sure, but maybe you will see Vice City if San Andreas does well. Maybe Red Faction. Get to blast some holes in the wall and then really look through them with your VR. You know what, you could definitely do Silent Hill 2. That would actually rule. Walking through the foggy streaks and then seeing Pyramid Head and First Person. That would be amazing. I think that this is so unusual to retrofit Resi 4 into a First Person game. But they did it and people loved it. I think there’s a solid foundation there for the future, Matthew. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, that’s a great theory. I dig that. That makes perfect sense. I can’t believe that San Andreas needs to pass me by. I can’t wait to get up in Big Smoke’s Grill. I’m going to double check that I didn’t make that up. Let’s see. Yes, it is real. Announce that San Andreas is in development for the Oculus Quest 2. I think that really did pass a lot of people by, for sure. Where are you at with VR currently, Matthew? Are you interested in the Quest 2? Is that something that appeals to you at all? Yeah, we’ve got one in the house. I saw Catherine had one for work purposes. I think the last VR thing I played was Alex way back when. I just don’t keep an eye on that scene too much, so I’m sure there’s lots of interesting stuff happening, but it would really be game-based rather than, you know, I’m never really just in the mood to pop it on and see what happens. It needs something like an Alex-sized scale experience to draw me in. Yeah, we should definitely dig more into VR and do some VR episodes this year. That would be good. That’s a good area to kind of get our heads around. Yeah, for sure. I found it very exciting. It’s like the experience of getting a console for the first time. So yeah, the other reason I thought San Andreas could fit was that, I think that probably Facebook wants to do more in the way of full game experiences and not just something that’s a bit like an advanced version, like a Wii Sports kind of game. So I think that doing these kinds of games that take hours to get through, they probably see that as the future where they want to keep people playing longer and they want people to feel like they can play these quote unquote core games on the platform. So yes, very exciting. More PS2 era games. Don’t know what they’ll be, but hopeful to see it. So good stuff, Matthew. What’s your seventh prediction? I think Nintendo will announce and have available relatively soonish Xenoblade Chronicles 3. There was this rumor doing the rounds this year, well, not rumor, a report that at some comic convention, Jenna Coleman of Doctor Who fame, she voices one of the characters in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and said, Oh yeah, I’ve done a load of voice recording for a new one. And it was like, Oh, I think that’s known about, is that known about? Well, she said it either way. Now that could be she just lost track of time and she’s referring to like, she voiced some stuff for the, when they did Xenoblade Chronicles 1 definitive edition, they included this sort of new chunk of the game, this new kind of playable sort of epilogue, and her character was in that, so she could have been talking about that. She recorded some new dialogue for that, which she definitely did. But that playable epilogue itself seemed to hint at more stuff to come in terms of, I won’t spoil what Xenoblade’s sort of deal is, but Xenoblade 1 and 2 are set in very different worlds, but there is a connection of sorts between them, and it’s almost like setting itself up for, would there one day be a kind of crossover between these two games? Would there be other sort of Xenoblade worlds in this sort of wider sort of fictional universe or whatever? So it feels like a series which is still ripe for more stuff. It’s always been very popular, like it’s the thing Nintendo have always wanted for so long, which was like an amazing JRPG of their own, after consoles and consoles of missing out and losing out to PlayStation. This is just, you know, they have one of the best ones going. So they’ll definitely return to it at some point, I think. But we just haven’t heard a huge amount from Monolithsoft. And yeah, again, this is more, probably more of a hope than a prediction, but it’s about time we had another one of these games. Catherine’s brother has played Xenoblade 2 for like something mad, like 600 hours or something. So, you know, it’s these are big, these are big games, but eventually they do run out and you need something new. Yeah, OK. I think that this is a good shout. I think that this has quietly just been like a big success for Nintendo. Shout out as well to Jenna Coleman, who became a big TV star in the time since that first game was released and still does the voice acting for it. Like that’s respect. That’s good work ethic. I like that. Yeah, so I did wonder as well from what she said, if she was just referring to the remaster, honestly. Yeah, it sort of sounds that way, doesn’t it? But to be honest, if they did do another one, I’d actually rather it was just another world with another set of characters. I think they are good at world building, as in physical world building. I want to see a different place to the two places I’ve seen already. And I do like their cast of characters. I like them in one and two. So while I have affection for them, I don’t necessarily need to see them come back in any way. They should just keep making Xenoblades. And then one day, far down the line, they do the Avengers Endgame of Xenoblade, where loads of portals open up at the end, and you hear like, it’s Ryan Time come through the portal and then the crowd goes fucking nuts. But it’s got a better theme tune. Yeah, oh, it’s got much better music than any Avengers film. Here’s a question for you, Matthew. We never talked about this game on this podcast, but Chronicles X, would you like to see that make a comeback on Switch this year? So, I must admit, I’ve never actually finished Chronicles X. I don’t have a very deep relationship with it because I didn’t really like it. I found all the stuff I liked about Chronicles 1 that it kind of didn’t really have. I found it very cold, very unapproachable in a way. It was a much harder sci-fi edge. I’m not a big mech guy. You know, I don’t go nuts for just seeing a mech like some people seem to. Which that game very much hinges on and it holds it back for so long before you get there. Yeah, like, I would probably play a slicker version of this on Switch for sure, but I would rather more Xenoblade in the mold of Chronicles 1 and 2 than X. Yep, okay, fair enough. That’s a good prediction. Terrible soundtrack compared to the others as well. It hasn’t got the same edge and it’s mad because when they announced the composer of it, because I was so into Xenoblade 1, I got really into his anime soundtracks to the point where I became absolutely obsessed with the soundtrack he wrote, Gundam Unicorn, which is a series I haven’t even seen, but I loved the soundtrack so much and I didn’t think his ex soundtrack was anywhere near as good as that. So it doesn’t like mechs but is big into mech music. Yeah, I really like this mech music. One day I’ll watch that show because I’ve listened to that soundtrack probably more than any other soundtrack I’ve ever listened to. And it would be so weird to see the show that goes with it because I’ve conjured up an entirely different show in my head about what it’s about based on how the tune sounds and it probably wouldn’t be anywhere near as exciting as my version. Just from the name Gundam Unicorn, I imagine it’s like Gundam but with kind of My Little Pony style characters, a giant mech unicorns. That’s my kind of like guess there. I think it’s just every Gundam show ever except the robot has like a big horn. That’s a much better prediction. I like that. Yeah, I think so. That’s good. All right. Cool. So my seventh prediction Matthew is Nier Automata gets a proper sequel from Platinum Games announced this year. So I think it’s weird we still haven’t seen a sequel for this announced. Nier Automata is five years old this year. It’s like, yeah, 2017. And like, that’s really snuck up. But obviously we’ve seen that replicant kind of like re-release of the original game. But I feel like there has to be surely based on the fact that it sold like six million copies, a proper sequel to this game. And you would expect that you’ll have a similar collaboration between Nier Kataro and Platinum as they did the first time around. It works so well. And you would think that with a bunch of money behind it, it could really, really be impressive. So I think that this year we’ll learn about what the full continuation of that series is, just because it feels like there’s too much money on the table for it to not continue. So I think there has to be. And surely they know that the Platinum difference with the combat is what made that game so much better than the original and so much more appealing, along with the fantastic character design, of course. So yes, I’m hopeful we’ll see that, Matthew. Any thoughts on that one? Yeah, that makes sense. Platinum still have made quite a lot of stuff. They seem busy. Platinum are a weird one in terms of it’s quite hard to gauge how many people there it takes to make a game and how many people there are, because they all seem to be working on lots of different projects. I almost included… It’s not one of my predictions, but some people thought there might be another Astral Chain game from them for Switch, because Mr. Astral Chain is unaccounted for and has been since Astral Chain. Have you read any of Andy Robinson’s Platinum interviews? Yeah, they’re really good. He’s got this amazing contact to them, which obviously is really good for him, but he basically has a big annual chat with them, and in one of them the guy was Mr. Astral Chain, who I keep calling him that because I’ve rudely forgotten his actual name, but the heads of Platinum are like, this guy’s like our superstar up-and-coming director, and Astral Chain was like a really great game, a really good game. I was probably Platinum’s best game since, I don’t know, Ben Hattie? Anyway, just a real stonker, I thought, and Andy Robinson asked them this year about, hey, what’s that guy up to? What’s your superstar doing? And they’re like, oh, he’s still working on his sequel project, you know, not ready to announce that or whatever. But based on, like, basically the critical acclaim, and I think it sold reasonably well, I really wouldn’t be surprised if it was Astral Train 2, which is a very long-winded way of saying, I find Platinum quite confusing in terms of how much they seem to be making and who’s working on what. But this would make sense. They do have two games on the release schedule for this year, I think, so you got Bayonetta 3, obviously, and then something for Square Enix they’re making. I can’t remember the name of it. Is it that Babylon’s Tower thing? Yeah, Babylon’s Fall, something like that. Yeah. I guess we’re going to see how they sped out. But I feel like, shortly after that, they’d roll on to making that Nier game. I mean, you’d hope so, right? It felt like the remake of Nier was… Well, just a remake was probably a bigger deal than it would have been just because there’s so many cheerleaders for that series. They have this natural inbuilt advantage now, in that it’s a game that draws such fulsome praise that its fans are of a particular breed that will kind of elevate things to some base level of success that means it’s worth doing. Yeah, and I think Nier Automata was a proper masterpiece as well. Like, just a real kind of rough diamond, I guess. It didn’t have the production values of other AAA games, but reached so high and got there a lot of the time. And very, very sad at the end. Very interesting use of multiple playthroughs. So yeah, hope to see a proper sequel of some sort, Matthew. So yes, what’s your eighth prediction? Probably the most boring one because it brings up a lot of old news. I still think Breath of the Wild 2 is going to be attached, not exclusively, but attached to the launch of a new, more powerful Switch. And because of that, I think its release is actually going to be dictated by whether or not Nintendo are able to get that console made given the hardware problems everyone’s having. I think if it gets delayed again, I don’t know if it would be the games for. I’ve just got a feeling in my bones that’s what this game is intended for. And so its fate is just intertwined with this console availability, more than anything. Do you think that it’s not just a bit soon after the Switch OLED to be rolling this out? Especially because they already said that Breath of the Wild 2 is this year. It’s hard because they have been fast like this in the past. And I still don’t see it as a full replacement. I still think that they will be… I don’t think it’s going to be a Switch 2 and things play on Switch 2. I still think it will be a part of this family. But yeah, I still think this makes sense. Whenever that renewed model comes, whatever it may be, I think it has to have something massive with it. And that’s the only thing I can think of that’s big enough. I just don’t think… Given that they made Bowser’s Fury, I don’t think the Mario team is actually quite there to have a whole new Mario for this year. Yeah, my prediction as well is that a bunch of that team is working on that Kirby game too, which looks pretty full on. Yeah, I mean, the mysteries of how Nintendo structure everything internally is equally way more confusing than Platinum, I guess. But yeah, I just got… Again, it’s something I kind of want to happen, because Breath of the Wild was already kind of pushing the Switch in certain ways. And I just want to have a version that absolutely sings. And the OLED this year renewed my interest in so many games just by having better colours on the screen. So the idea of a thing which also played things better, I think would be so amazing to me, so exciting to me. That would probably be majorly wrong. Well, yeah, I would certainly buy such a thing if it existed. So we’ll see. But I agree that hardware limitations might be the thing that keeps it away. The actual production challenges of making electronics at the moment. But who knows, maybe they’ll leave it a bit this year. It’s slightly easier to get an Xbox and PS5 before Christmas this year. But yes, I’d like to see that one happen, Matthew. OK, my eighth prediction. The two Yakuza historical games, Ishin and Kenzan, are released this year on modern formats in some form. That would be good for this podcast. It would. So I was thinking, I guess I’ll probably have a new, like a Dragon sequel out this year or something like that, but on the off chance they don’t, I feel like revisiting these games could be like a majorly big deal. And I wonder if, like, over the years they’ve been asked about it a lot, but I do wonder if the success of games like Ghost Tsushima and Sekiro make them think that, well, we’ve got a couple of games where there’s a version of our main character getting into, like, sword combat and shit. Like, maybe we should kind of, like, excavate this and do some, like, Japanese period drama stuff with the series. Yeah, I feel like these just sort of sat there on the sort of table, and I feel like they would go down well if they came to the West. Any thoughts on this, Matthew? Yeah, I’d certainly be up for playing them. And yeah, like you say, they appetised there. It’s weird that these are still deemed just a little bit too hardcore. I must admit, I don’t know a vast amount about them in terms of how hardcore they are in terms of story and setting. But yeah, I’d be up for it. I think this team’s going to have a bit of upheaval, isn’t it? Because basically it’s two creative leads are leaving. You’d think that wouldn’t affect whatever they’ve currently got in the works for this year at least, which, like you say, would probably be like a dragon. They tend to do alternating years, but yeah. My main hope is that them leaving doesn’t ruin or destabilise this series in any way. I imagine enough of the people are still there that it wouldn’t, but that would be very sad because I think they’re on a real winning streak. Yeah, I think they’ll probably be okay. There is the threat, though, that if Nogoshi goes off and makes a bunch of Yakuza-like games somewhere else, are they going to be like two of these a year I have to keep up with? I’m already behind Matthew. That’s going to be a lot of games to play. I suppose it depends what he makes. I can’t remember where he’s gone, but somewhere with money bags. I feel like judgment as well has shown that they can make these spinoff-y things for the series and have them be successful. Whether these come in the form of remake-y things, a bit like the Kiwami games, I’m not sure. I just feel like there’s probably that appetite now for this in the West. Hopefully it happens, Matthew. I think that would be a cool thing to roll out this year. I’d get people excited about Yakuza once again. Not that the world really needs it right now. So what’s your ninth prediction, Matthew? Okay, this is the broadest one yet. Why do you keep saying that? No, because I keep forgetting how broad they are. I’ve literally just written, someone buys Capcom. I don’t know who buys Capcom, whether it’s Xbox. It’s more likely to be Xbox than Sony, I guess. I just look at who Xbox own, what they have access to, what they’re trying to do with Game Pass genre-wise. And this is probably based purely on the fact that I think someone would like to properly own a fighting game on there as well, which is really not the most sophisticated take. They just don’t have that covered by anything they do or anyone they have. Whenever studio acquisition talk with Xbox does come up, it’s always with regards to, you know, we’re thinking about Japan, we’re looking to Japan. Not necessarily to get like a foothold there. I mean, I think the thing Xbox has done very well is like buy studios, which have got stuff that lots of people already like. So whether they choose to make it exclusive as they will with Bethesda or even just continue running things on other platforms, you know, I think Xbox are quite pragmatic with how they use the stuff that they own. I just see Capcom as a sort of small enough but big enough to be worthwhile. Yeah, I think it didn’t go much further than that. I was just trying to make an acquisitions prediction. I was surprised you didn’t go for Nintendo buys Mercury Steam, actually. Like, I thought… Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe that would have been a better prediction. But no, I’m sticking with I’m sticking with my Incredibly Vague. I’ll update it to I think Xbox will buy Capcom, which is… A slightly firmer, yeah. But really based on literally nothing. We went basically like a whole year without an Xbox acquisition last year. It is funny how much like these have become such a part of the news cycle and the speculation. It didn’t feel like that was ever the case. But then like, I feel like maybe Microsoft turned this into a bit of a battleground when they revealed all those studios at E3 and now everyone’s like, who’s buying who? And like, you know, it’s sort of like, I guess like, there’s a clear consumer benefit to when if they buy Capcom, suddenly you have every Devil May Cry game on game pass and stuff. But yeah, what happened this year with that stuff? I’m not really sure. I can’t really think about it. Like, I do quite like that Sony has mostly been seemingly quite pragmatic, like buying studios it already works with or buying like support studios who can like help them finish games basically. And like, like buying Nixis who are PC port specialists, for example, like those are all quite like level headed purchases. There’s a bit less drama, you know, but yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I just don’t think they don’t seem to have A, the kind of things that they’ve bought in the past suggests that they’re a bit more thinking about like production line stuff and also like money wise, you never really get the impression that they’re in a place to just spend like Microsoft money doing this kind of stuff. Yeah. So yeah, but Capcom made us just just chug along quite nicely, just doing kind of big exclusive deals with Sony, which is sort of seem to kind of work for them in the past. Yeah, this started off as I was looking at Ace Attorney trying to work out if there was any more Ace Attorney predictions for this year, but beyond me saying, oh, I think there’ll be Ace Attorney 7, which I’m still not entirely sure about given that the kind of the leaders of the Ace Attorney projects sort of left over the last couple of years, not Shootakumi, but the other the other kind of branch of the family. So yeah, I panicked and just wrote someone buys per Capcom. Fair enough. We’ve got to the root of it. Let’s move on. So my ninth prediction, Matthew, is a Jedi Fallen Order sequel has announced this year and it will let you play as the Sith. That’s my prediction. So EA is still making Star Wars games, even though the license is sort of entering this period where it seems like anyone can pitch them making a Star Wars game. In the next few years, which I’m very excited about as someone who who has traditionally loved Star Wars games when they’ve been good, which is about 40% of the time. So yes, Jedi Fallen Order was one of the best Star Wars games, I think, and Bruce Vaughn did a great job with that. Sort of God of War-y, Dark Souls-y take on Jedi combat, a little bit, a tiny bit Metroidvania-y. And yeah, I think that a sequel, I can see this being more of an anthology than I kind of like following the Cal Kestis character, just because his story isn’t complete by the end of the first game. But like, I wonder if, I don’t know, having a game where you can have a similar power set, but play as the Sith might be more exciting to people. Just because I think that like, that’s still something that games haven’t done as much as they could have done. You saw it in like the Jedi Knight games, where if you follow the dark path, then you do become a Sith in the second half of the game, and then it all gets a bit grim and nasty and the story changes as a result. But a full-on commit to playing as the Sith game, I think could be really, really rad. Particularly if you’re like one of those sort of post Episode 3 Sith hunting down Jedi. That could be really, really cool. Matthew, any thoughts on this one? Will we get to slay some younglings? That would be the tutorial level. Just going to the Coruscant Temple. Just up in the corner, it says the HUD element saying Younglings, zero out of seven. Yeah. Taking them off. Yeah, I really like this game. It seemed to arrive quite fully formed in terms of what it wanted to do. Didn’t feel like a slightly clumsy first attempt. Felt like a good base. Quite traditional. Quite old school. Not the most cutting edge of things, but just quite a traditional idea. Done really well. I must admit, I can’t really remember any of the story elements from the first game. I remember thinking the story and the characters are quite bad, but I don’t know if that’s widely held opinion. I’m not sure. So, you know, I’d be quite happy if it just went off and looked at something else entirely. That would be fine. Going down the sit-through, isn’t that kind of what Forza Unleashed is trying to be? I can’t remember how they pitched that, really. It starts that way, but they abandoned it pretty quickly. And it basically becomes the kind of actually fight back and form the Rebel Alliance. Oh, that’s it, yeah. You kill a couple of Wookiees, though, right? Yeah, the tutorial is you’re killing Wookiees, and then, yeah, you’re throwing Wookiees off of bridges and stuff with wacky physics. That’s the deal. I want it to open with a really photorealistic scene, quick time event of you stamping on a Porg. That’s the dream. You’re not a big Porg guy, Matthew, not a Porg head. No, I’d quite like them, but I think that would… That’s what true evil looks like in Star Wars now. If you could hurt a Porg, you’re capable of anything. Yeah, I suppose we’ll… The Empresses kill the Porg. I hope to see a Porg and younglings. That will be the tutorial of that game. The rest of it, a complete mystery. Yeah, I thought… I think actually the story of the first game is pretty well regarded. I actually really liked it and I really liked the character. But, you know, I know that Star Wars is kind of like… You’re always a little bit 50-50 on Star Wars, aren’t you? It’s never quite like… You’re never massively on board with some of the kind of franchise offshoots side of things, you know? Yeah, that’s probably true. I’m surprised they haven’t licensed out Mandalorian, given it’s so video gaming. Well, we know there’s a Ubisoft open world game in the works, right? Like, that could be bounty hunter-ish, I don’t know. You’ve got… And then obviously there’s a Kotal remake and then there’s the Quantic Dream games. There’s already three Star Wars games that are kind of in the works, but I imagine we’ll see many more. Hopefully we see that Indiana Jones game this year too, that’d be cool. But yes, that’s probably more a Matt Castle thing, but yeah. It’s a remake. It’s an all-singing, all-dancing remake of fricking The Emperor’s Tomb. Or Staff of Kings. Like, finally get the fight on top of the San Francisco rail thing. OK, so what’s your tenth prediction, Matthew? I think we will see a new game from Kazuki Yabuki, who is at Nintendo. He’s Mr. Mario Kart, also Mr. Arms. We just, his group, which is the Mario Kart and now Arms department, like, they both made pretty much launch games for the Switch. Haven’t really seen a huge amount of them. They were involved with the Mario Kart Remote Control thing, which I actually haven’t played. I should probably get on that at some point. Whether that’s new Mario Kart, because it is, 30th anniversary of Super Mario Kart this year, that would feel like a big, like, a sensible Nintendo thing. Also, it wouldn’t be sensible because Mario Kart Deluxe sells, as we discussed before, like 30 million copies or something obscene. Like, there is no need for them to make a new Mario Kart. I just feel like that team has… it’s just been too long. So I think they’re actually more likely to make a new Nintendo sports game from the ARMS slash Mario Kart team, is my prediction. Was ARMS good, Matthew? I never played this one. I liked it. I liked it enough. I didn’t love it. You know, it has a couple of cheerleaders who are absolutely obsessed with it. I mean, it’s sort of very elegant and beautifully made and very cleverly Nintendo. I think, you know, at its heart, it’s still a bit of a fighting game. Well, it is a fighting game. And that doesn’t interest me massively. That is just too big a hurdle for even Nintendo to get me over, even though, you know, they solve a lot of the kind of problems I have with fighting games in that you can pick up on player and, you know, it’s designed to be like a beginner’s fighting game in a way. But, yeah, I just think something has to come from this team. The promise of, like, towards the tail end of the Wii U, we had this generation of, like, innovation from Nintendo, which really actually just boils down to Splatoon and ARMS. And I feel like those younger developers who they were kind of championing as, like, the new thinkers at Nintendo, I would like something new from them, you know. The Splatoon team is tied up making endless Splatoons and good for them. But, yeah, this lot unaccounted for. So let’s see what they’re up to. So on this podcast so far, we’ve had Mr. Astral Chain, Mr. Marikart and Mr. ARMS. This guy is Kusuki Yabuki. I know his name. I just like that it’s always Mr. and the name of the game they made. Well, they’re the men that made them. Yeah, I don’t just beat that. It’s more just the fact that that’s how you refer to them. Well, I haven’t written their names. I’m a little out of the loop and I’m not as good on the newer generation of Nintendo Mega Brains because I don’t write about this stuff on a daily basis. That’s fair. That’s completely fair. All the people I like are now just like… All the old people I know are now just extremely old senior managers who don’t seem to sort of touch any game. Okay, yeah, good stuff. But yeah, regardless of all that, something for Mario Kart 30th Anniversary, do we feel like that’s something that might make sense? I think so. I think that there’s no bad thing to releasing another Mario Kart. That’s another game that will sell 20 million copies. They could just bundle in eight and nine together if they want to and just sell them. It does feel like, to your point about Nintendo having new hardware, it does feel like a Mario Kart and having Breath of the Wild at the same time would be a rad way to kick that off. Will it happen this year? I don’t know. I really don’t know. The Switch OLED makes it a bit confusing, I think. I think that the idea that they’re making something makes complete sense, Matthew, particularly stuff in that kind of mold where it feels like there have been less of that type of game in the last few years, that slightly multiplayer-ish couch stuff. Yeah, and it feels like, while they’re not super on it in terms of pushing their online service, now that there are more expensive tiers and there’s more of a conversation about that, I feel like they need to inject something into it. Because at the moment, it’s basically a service you pay for to play multiplayer games that they made three years ago. And something more has to come from it. Okay, I know you’ve got your Mario Golfs and your tennis or whatever, but I don’t really see those as serious, serious contenders. I think they need something big and shiny to kind of plug that gap, keep the conversation about online going. Okay, yeah. So good prediction, Matthew. So we reached my tenth prediction, which is, by the end of the year, I will be at least one expansion into Final Fantasy 14. So I think this is what I’m in control of. I think you had a prediction like this in your last list. Yeah, it’s like, I will buy a playdate. Yeah, so I thought I could have one of these because you did that. And you don’t have a playdate, do you? No, it’s not out. No, very good. So yes, I think this has been on the cards for a long time. And I’ve just, I think it’s reached breaking point in the last few weeks where Final Fantasy 14 is so popular, they had to pull it from sale, which is like, what a great position to be in, frankly. And so I think everyone’s been telling me for years, the best Final Fantasy story is happening in Final Fantasy 14. I see Sakaguchi posting very like wholesome images of his adventures in FF14, which is quite nice. He’s well worth following on Twitter, very wholesome Twitter account there. And yeah, I think like seeing these, and seeing the Endwalker reaction be as strong as it is, makes me think I just have to get involved with this somehow. And this is probably the best position to do it from just because I know they condensed down the story of the original game a little bit so you can get through the expansions faster. And this is an ongoing project, feels like a good fit for me. Matthew, I’m guessing you would never even think about playing this, but has Catherine thought about it? Is it something you’ve discussed much? Yeah, there’s always this conversation. I do have some interest in it. I remember being on a press trip with Oscar from Play Magazine. He’s a big evangelist for this and was saying like, you know, it’s just the best Final Fantasy story ever in a Final Fantasy game. And just that sort of single player connection with it, just enjoying the story made it worthwhile. But it’s just with every passing year, it’s just so out of reach for me. I think Catherine’s definitely got interest in it, but she also likes to kind of keep on top of everything, you know, editing the site and everything. She likes to have a nice wide range of things. I feel like you just have to kind of commit. I can’t commit to one game. It’s just not my deal. So, I don’t know, maybe I’ll just watch the story on YouTube. We might hit a quiet spell in the middle of the year this year. That might be when I properly go for it, so we’ll see. But they have to actually put it back on sale first in order for me to play it. I’ve never played an MMO. Yeah, me neither. I’ve never played a proper MMO. Like, only games that people have told me are a bit like MMOs. So, no monthly fee games. That’s a lot of pressure, actually. So, yeah, I’ll give that some thought. So, what’s your final prediction for this episode, Matthew? My final prediction is that there will be a new Famicom Detective game, and it will actually be amazing. Wow! That’s, like, bold. Do you think this is likely? Uh, it’s based on nothing. But I think they reintroduce… it depends whether those games last year were reintroducing the series or literally just a nice thing to do. I personally think they put way too much effort into, like, they’re just so high quality, the actual ports of those games, the Switch, for them not to want to make more. Like, I feel like the response, whatever you thought about the games, I wasn’t particularly into them, but, like, as a production thing, I was like, wow, these are amazing. These were so nice to play, like, to look at. You know, they were so beautifully made, and so much kind of thought went into it. Like, they’ve now reintroduced that character. I would just, I would love them to make another game in the series with those production values, a new story that’s a bit more modern feeling, and also solve the pacing, structural problems of the originals, which are very much like straight NES, you know, they are still the NES games they always were, or the Famicom games they always were. But you could basically get around that by writing a new story and dealing with those problems now by not having a template to stick to. And I think it would be, like, really, really immense. I’d love them to do it, you know. The whole thing in that game is that you’re kind of, you’re a teenager, a teenage detective. You know, they could even, like, update it to modern day, where you’re now, like, an adult, have that character, I don’t know, being a mentor to, like, new characters, or just, like, revisiting, or, like, we’ve got to get the Famicom Detective Club back together or something. I just think they’ve, like, established enough of a world now that they could actually go back and have some fun with it. So, yeah, that’s, you know, they probably won’t. I don’t really know how these things sold, being, like, digital only a bit harder to kind of place, but it would be a waste of some good thinking not to. Okay, interesting. Well, this is not what I expected you to come back with for the last one. I did have another one, which I thought if I missed one out. Oh, right, okay. I think because it got confusing, because I had the other Halo Infinite one. So what’s your other one then? My other one was that we will all regret going back to GoldenEye when it comes out. Have you seen this GoldenEye rumour? Yes, I have. And I kind of wondered, like someone suggested it might just stealth kind of like release on like Game Pass and just be here. I just got, I got, I don’t really have a huge desire to revisit it. It’s locked in my head as a really happy memory. I just got a feeling that if I go back and play it, it will just seem creaky as shit and make you sad. So yeah, that was my final prediction. Well, you see, if it was like, if it had the exact same treatment that that Perfect Dark version did, it would be perfectly playable now because that Perfect Dark, that’s a really good version of that game. It’s still very modern. They updated the controls. So you do the twin stick thing. You don’t need three hands like you did with the N64 controller in order to do it properly. It’s got enough going on in terms of atmosphere and nostalgia that people will still be up for it. But I do like the pessimism of this prediction. So I’m going to let it go. That’s good. Like, it’s fine being locked away. Also, it would only devalue your N64 mini further. Yeah, like this is the game that 52% of back page listeners voted against, Matthew. So, you know, they said no to this. Because they were too busy wanting to play Space Station Silicon Valley. So, who am I to tell them they’re wrong? For the 18th time. My New Year’s resolution is less salt. Yeah, it’s funny because me and Matthew have our next Draft episode is next week. It’s the Nintendo Weedraft. And because of that, I’m thinking strategically about it. I’m thinking I don’t want to do anything that’s like really upsetting in this one. I kind of just want to pick my 10 games and then see how it goes, as opposed to like kind of like doing a Shakespearean betrayal like I did in the N64 one. So we’ll see how that goes, Matthew. But yes. Yeah, it should be good. It should be spicy. I think so. Well, we’ve reached the end of our predictions. We’ll revisit those later in the year. But let us know what you think on Twitter at BackpagePod. If you’d like to email us, backpagegames at gmail.com. We are two weeks away from doing our third Mailbag episode. We’ve had plenty of correspondence for that one. So this is like a final call. If you want to send us a question to answer on that podcast, you can. We’re looking forward to it. What just a thought? You could send us an opinion. Yes, I’ve had lots of nice messages about the podcast lately, actually. People DMing me on Twitter and emailing the inbox. Matthew doesn’t have access to the same lines of communication that I do, even though he does have all the passwords. People have just been really, really nice about the podcast. I do greatly appreciate it. Also, I did ask if people could give us a score on Spotify because you can do that now for the podcast. More than 60 people did, which is awesome. Thank you so much for that. Your continued support is much appreciated. We’ve got a good year of episodes ahead. Me and Matthew have a creative summit coming up in the next week where we’re going to talk about ideas for the podcast for the year. So, yeah, any thoughts on where the podcast is going this year, Matthew? Stuff you want to talk about? There’s a few anniversaries I’d like to go into. I’d like to do a few more series deep dives along the lines of Ace Attorney and Zelda. But I feel like I need to kind of… Those were like the two at the top of the pile for me. So wherever it’s going to be, I need to kind of dig in and play some stuff. So I’m just sort of mentally preparing myself to, you know, what am I going to dive into this year? Like I definitely need to play more Final Fantasy games for the Final Fantasy one, for example. Yeah, I mean, I saw that one as me doing more of the heavy lifting on that. But, yeah, I don’t know. I’d like to be able to contribute. So, yeah, just thinking about what to revisit. I’ve got a little bit of a hankering for a LucasArts thing. Okay, yeah, interesting. Well, like, maybe, didn’t we talk about doing like a Hall of Fame kind of format? Stealing that from a podcast that we listen to, like we do with all of our ideas. Yeah, yeah, so that’s cool. I’m up for a LucasArtsy thing, particularly if there’s going to be more in the way of Star Wars games happening this year. So that’s good. Yeah, I thought the series retrospective I wanted to pitch to you was Metroid, Matthew, because it gives me an excuse to play through them. Yeah, I’d need to go back and revisit a few because it’s definitely been a long time. But yeah, that would be good. And you know, there’s a broader Metroidvania thing to be done as well. Yeah, obviously your favourite is Federation Force, so you’ll be revisiting that very keenly, I’m sure. That and Metroid Prime Pinball, those are your two favourites. That’s alright. Yes, good game that, yeah. Shouldn’t diss it. Okay, great. Well, thank you very much for listening. I’m Samuel W. Roberts on Twitter if you want to follow me. Matthew, where are you on Twitter? I am MrBazzill underscore Peste. We’ll be back next week with a Nintendo Weedraft. Thank you very much for listening. Bye for now! No. Hi, this is Sammy Roberts from The Back Page Podcast. Attentive listeners may have noticed that in this episode, I only picked 10 predictions for the year instead of the 11 I was supposed to pick. That’s on me. I’d also like to apologize for my shoddy audio this week. I think it’s because I put my Blue Yeti mic in the cupboard and some dials got turned while that happened. So, for a final prediction to see out this episode, I’m predicting that PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale 2 happens this year, baby. It’s based on no facts whatsoever.