Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, A Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined, as ever, by my sidekick, Matthew Castle. Oh, fuck you. I had to do it, Matthew. I wondered if you’d forget. Should we explain the context there? Yeah, go for it. So Matthew, my comedy Dave, if you will, to my Chris Moyles, basically someone, I think it might have been a reference to something else, but a listener wrote in and said that I pronounced Sui Koden wrong on the What We’ve Been Playing episode a few weeks ago. It’s Suikoden, apparently. That’s what Matthew said and I was wrong. Who knows? But there’s been some debate about this, but in the email, I think it alluded to you being my sidekick. I think it might have been a pop culture reference they made, but they said something about, tell your sidekick it’s Suikoden or whatever. And then you took that to mean that you are my sidekick. How are you feeling about that, Matthew? I guess it sort of makes sense in that you do introduce the podcast and you sort of host it, though we are co-hosts. I like that the person who wrote the email directed it to you as if they knew that you’d be reading the email. I hope that doesn’t, because I come across as like disinterested in the admin. That’s not true at all. I just don’t think I have access to the inbox. I think you have the password. I think I gave it to you when I set it up, but you probably just never logged in and then the information disappeared. I don’t have the Patreon. No, that’s true. Because did we establish that if you have the Patreon, we have to lose 2% of what we get? And we decided it wasn’t worth it, even though it’s like what, 50 quid or something? So if I ever want to read any of the comments on the locked Patreon posts, which of course I do, because I’m a vain creature, I have to get Catherine to log in. There’s got to be an easier way. Why don’t you just, Catherine can unsubscribe and then we can make you an admin and then we’ll just lose 2% of the cuts. No, no, I refuse to lose that 2% to those greedy swine at Patreon. That’s half of Liam Richardson’s edit fee per Excel episode. We’ve got to keep Liam in nice shoes and such. I don’t know where he spends his money on. Probably shoes. Probably shoes. So, yes, speaking of the Patreon, Matthew, we actually just rolled out the first episode of our Stretchgold mini-series, PC Gaming Classics, although the host did go rogue and call it The Backer Page Podcast. So do you want to talk a bit about that, Matthew, and what the shape of that is and why we did it and all that stuff? Some of the cynical truth is that this was born from us probably not having time to do a third show in the mix and so we wanted to do something new. And, you know, I think we’d thrown a few ideas back and forth about, you know, if we were to reach a stretch goal and invite someone to create something as part of our back page ecosystem. A few kind of names came up. Obviously we’ve done a few episodes with Jeremy. We really love Jeremy. Also Jeremy is super, super knowledgeable on PC gaming, which, you know, you are as well, but I’m definitely less so and, you know, we saw a kind of space there. Did we pitch the broad idea to him or did he pitch the broad idea to us? I came up with it and then went to him with it. Because I just thought what I would like to listen to is Jeremy Peel talking about Deus X for two hours. I thought that’d be good. And while they’re not doing Deus X this episode, sorry, this little mini series, that was very much like what it was born from. And Jeremy was like, yeah, I’m up for this. And then it just timed perfectly with the amount of money we’ve made. We can pay Phil and Jeremy what I would call quite a reasonable fee for their time. So it all works out and they get to keep full creative rights to what they’ve made as well, which is surely the dream. Obviously, Phil has not been on the podcast before. Maybe a new name to some of our listeners. I mean, he goes back in games magazines on official PlayStation for a long time and is still heavily involved in games like Rites, PC Gamer. And it’s just a voice who is in the UK game scene. So great to sort of fold it in. You know, I’m pleased that they did it as a pairing because I’m on a loggy, kind of researched essay podcast style, while Doable is probably not like totally in keeping with Backpage style and actually what they’ve created, I think, does sort of fit the tone of what, you know, fundamentally, it’s two pals talking about something they really like. And Jeremy and Phil came up with some fun twists and extras of gimmicks to put into the episode. There’s a big sort of central section called Review War, where they both create a kind of sort of audio review, I guess, of the game that they’re discussing and they’re trying to kind of compete to make the best one. Written is in the style of like if it was a PC Gamer intro at the time. Yes. So yeah, they’re kind of slightly high concept, but also like sort of hilariously overproduced in a way which I’ve got a lot of time for. Reminded me of some of the nonsense in episode 100 actually. So yeah, it’s kind of got its own jokes, its own flavor, and they’re playing the games sort of fresh to refresh themselves. So it’s not me kind of half remembering something from 15 years ago, which a lot of this podcast is. The real kind of like a sting in the tail, I guess, is that Phil is actually playing the games on an old PC that he’s built. So it’s basically like a beige PC from the time that he’s slowly been assembling and he is replaying them on that, which is I feel like when he told me that I was like, wow, we’re definitely getting our money’s worth here. So yeah, that’s that’s funny. It’s like the anti. What was the name of the the mega rig at PC Gamer? Oh, oh, gosh. It had a really funny name. It was like something Collider was it. It was it was like a Large Hadron Collider type name was. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Large Pixel Collider. That was it. Yeah. So it’s like the anti version of that. Yeah, like really beige wasn’t even talking about buying paints that you can spray paint beige onto some computer parts. And I was like, that is fucking hardcore right there. I’m trying to make it look like a dad’s study. It’s circa 1997 and I respect it. But yeah, that’s that is available now. That’s the first episode on System Shock 2. Episodes on Westwood’s Blade Runner game, the original fallout. Trespasser. Fucking Trespasser, that’s in there for whatever reason. There is another episode of XCOM, the original XCOM, X-COM, not the For Access ones, of course. And then the series finale is Quake versus, was it Quake 2 versus Half-Life? I think it is. So yes, I think that’s correct. So yeah, like I said, they’re all rolling out monthly. Everyone who backs us at the £4.50 level is getting that. And after the six months of episodes have rolled out, they can have the episodes to do with what they please. We might run them on the free feed eventually, who knows? But yeah, very exciting, Matthew. So that’s the preamble done, the big sell. Just to encourage our listeners to go check that out if they’re supporting us. We really do appreciate the support. We are bewildered that we’ve gone beyond too ground at this point. I’m getting fearful for the growing expectation that comes with a rising sum of money, but I’m trying to hang in there. So this episode, Matthew, God of War Ragnarök, spoiler free conversation about this big Sony PS4, PS5 exclusive game. This rolled out at the end of the year, very much the kind of main event when it comes to blockbusters in this period if you don’t care about Call of Duty. That’s me right there describing. So first things first, Matthew. We did this Railroad and Ring before. We just basically, me and Matthew, did our best to play through as much of it as we could. We’ll go into how far we got shortly. First things first, Matthew, in this game, the start of this game, which picks up after God of War 2018, Kratos and his son Atreus are still living in this tiny house. Atreus is now like a teenager. There’s Kratos there, Atreus there, and the head of Mimir, a wisecracking Scottish disembodied head, all living in this little shed. That housing situation, let’s discuss it. What’s the deal there? That to me, basically a teenage boy and his two platonic dads in a tiny space like that, that’s got some issues, right? Where are you at with that? Yeah, I don’t know if I’m entirely on board. It’s sort of a nightmare for me. Yeah, I found the house kind of suggestive of a weird living situation in the first game because Kratos’ massive double bed is pressed up right against Atreus’ tiny single bed. When you start playing that game, you don’t know if he’s going to have any of the kind of horniness left in him from the earlier games. That whole setup would become nightmarish if so, but luckily not the case. I mean, his wife’s dead for one, so there’s no suggestion of any kind of nocturnal activity that Atreus has to deal with. Yeah, he’s not even sad horny like Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut. He’s just sad, non-horny. Yeah, I had a couple of like incredibly out of character, rude tweets that I was toying with that I was sorely tempted to do and then kept talking myself out of doing because I didn’t want to be like horny or mean. And we don’t do that here. I had this format, which is like, I can’t believe the sex mini game in this game is. And then I had lots of funny versions. Well, I thought funny versions of what the sex mini game in 2018 God of War or Ragnarök would look like. Right. But I just thought it would be shocking for people if I did it on Twitter. Cause that’s just not, that’s not, not my style. Like I’m followed by family members. And so I decided not to. That is fair. The house situation. I don’t know. I quite like Mimir. I wouldn’t personally have a problem having him around. Yeah. Keep things light. Are you, are you pro Mimir? He’s the sort of tonal missing piece when you play the first part of God of War 2018 and it’s a bit too dour and it’s a bit too much conflict between the two characters. You really need someone to cut through that. And here he is here. He also gets a bit more sort of going on dramatically in this game, like a bit more direct involvement in the story, which I think works quite well. Yeah, I like Mimir. Yeah. Big, big Mimir head. As I say. So Matthew, first up, one thing I do have to say, right, is I got a copy of this from Sony to play, which, yeah, very nice of them, but I do have to disclose that as part of the rules of doing it. So, yes, the disclosure should be placed where viewers are not likely to miss it. There you go, no viewers, but that’ll do. So, yes, that’s just saying that to get that out of the way. Now that I’m on the take, I need to just get it out there. I love that we’re legit enough now to get first party Sony games, that’s exciting. I did wonder if someone was doing me a favor behind the scenes, that kind of occurred to me, but I was very grateful for it, of course. And so, yes. I bought it. You bought it, and also, you finished it, and I didn’t, which I feel terrible about. I’ve just been too fucking busy. So, to start with then, Matthew, aside from the housing situation, which we’ve now discussed and sewn that up, that’s good banter in the can there, going into this, what were your expectations like for a sequel to 2018’s God of War? I felt like they kept under wraps so much of what this game actually is, and I just wondered what you brought to it as a player. I was excited about it from a sort of narrative perspective, and some of the beats I thought it would have to cover I was intrigued to see. So my big problem with 2018 is I’m slightly cooler on the last act than some. I feel like the game’s building towards something, and the first game, 2018, is the story of Kratos and Atreus going to scatter Atreus’ mother’s ashes atop a mountain. And it really is as simple as you’re trying to get up a mountain. And there’s obviously lots of things that kind of weigh you along the way. But I was sort of surprised that actually at the end, that kind of was what 2018 was about. And I felt it was quite anticlimactic given that the other games before that, while very different beasts, they ended with spectacle and you killing gods and most of these games end in quite a big way. And actually this game kind of swerved and went quite subtle with it. But I also felt like it had seeded a lot of gods and interesting characters who I was excited to meet, who then didn’t turn up. And I actually felt the third act was slightly underwhelming because of that. So in my head, this was like, well, finally I’m going to get to have the kind of grudge match with presumably Thor, presumably Odin, all these other gods, you know, I’m definitely going to meet someone because you don’t really meet anyone in 2018, not anyone of note. So that’s that’s sort of how I was approaching it. Do you have any sort of similar read? Yeah, so I was a lot bigger on that last act. I quite like the kind of ends. There’s like a big battle and then it’s sort of like a subdued sort of finale. We have famously discussed many times why that’s not your bag, Matthew, which is absolutely fine. I think, like, definitely the sort of giant realm is very brief. It’s like basically by one staircase you walk up and then there’s some murals and then that’s it. But I really love the world building of the first one. I love the way it would seed different bits of story that, like you say, putting a lot on the table to pay off in this one. They do that just incredibly well. They did really well at creating a world where they felt like it had so much history, but also that that history was kind of living on a kind of weird cycle where everyone knew where it was going and things that were going to happen had already happened and what had already happened was something that was going to happen. Like, it was quite a disorienting way of presenting that story, but one that I think suits the kind of Norse mythology element of these games really well. I think it just added to the mythical element of them. I would say for all that setup that it does, and there is a lot in 2018 which is kind of left hanging, like, you know, even kind of story missions which you deem relatively unimportant, someone might say something like you’ll regret this and Ragnarök goes out of its way to kind of pay off everything. It would be a terrible jumping in point. Yeah. Like, it really does feel like it’s in direct conversation with 2018 in a way which very few sequels genuinely require you or are better at kind of catching you up. And there’s a little recap video at the start, but in this one I think you’d be really missing the point if you hadn’t played 2018. It’s like the second half of the story, essentially. Well, arguably more than half, as we’ll get into. So yeah, I think that it can very neatly be described, Matthew, as if 2018 is telling, this one is showing in terms of storytelling presentation. You know what I mean? Like, it’s less hint and more, oh, here’s literally all the stuff we talked about in that first game. And so that is quite an interesting contrast. And it definitely feels like what has played into that with this game, we’ll get into some light spoilers here, I would just say, just generally, like just for the setup of the game, that sort of thing. So if you haven’t played it at all, you want to get completely fresh. I would recommend like putting this episode on hold for a little while, but we will avoid major story spoilers for sure. That sort of thing. Yeah, I just think that what is obvious is that they established the fundamentals so cleanly with 2018 that this one feels like the game where it’s like, they have changed things, but what if we just build loads of fucking stuff and put it in this game? You know, do you think that’s fair to define the approach here? The template was established. This just runs with it. They worked out how to make this game work in 2018. They worked out how to do this sort of over the shoulder combat perspective, what the kind of flow of the game, the overall structure of the game, and it took them a long time to find that by all accounts. And this is like, what happens if you 100% know what you’re working on? And can just make loads of levels and stories and maybe struggle to like move that formula on in any meaningful way? Because you went through such a arduous process of kind of nailing it the first time around and really getting it feeling good. But they don’t meddle with it too much, but I’d also argue they don’t have like a huge amount more to say mechanically than they did in the original. Yes, I think that’s the thing is I afford them that right to take what they built and then improve on it. This is like, you know, we covered this in the God of War games ranked episode. But like, you know, the first game really did establish all the fundamentals. I’m talking about the PS2 first game in 2005. And then the second one famously just like, you know, takes that arguably not to its peak, but certainly much, much further in terms of presentation, what they can do, that sort of thing. So, yes, it does mean that it feels incremental as a kind of sequel. But also, you just cannot deny the absolute volley of production values at work here. Like, it’s kind of an extraordinary thing in terms of like, you pay 60 quid for this game or whatever, 70 quid, 50 quid, wherever you get it, however you get it. You definitely get your money’s worth, I would say, for like, shit it shows you. Yeah. On that level, on that, if you measure value of a game in that sense, it feels like it really, it really pays off, right? This almost felt like two games at the same time, not in conflict. It just felt like there was like enough content to fill two God of War 2018s. And it really is the second and third act of a story, if God of War 2018 is the first act. Whether or not that’s, like, detrimental? Like, I still haven’t decided where I, like, land on that. Like, there’s lots of places where I think this could have finished and I wouldn’t necessarily have thought I’d been shortchanged. But because it kept on going, there were certain elements in it, I got on less with over time. It’s interesting to me that they decided 100% to, like, let’s do the all-the-North storyline, let’s tie it up here and make it a duology. Which, who does that? You know, this is the age of the trill- everything’s a trilogy, or worse, it’s, you know, ongoing, endless, universal sagas. A duology is a very unusual- it’s like, finally, all the answers to that one game. And you’re like, well, one game isn’t much of a buildup. You know, I always find that quite an odd pitch. I’m going to lay out some fundamentals here, Matthew. So, just to kind of like establish, you know, a bit more about where the game starts here, and why what you say is significant, about how it does feel like two games in one, which I completely agree with. So, yes, at the start of this game, basically, you know that Ragnarök is coming, which is, you know, basically like the end times for, you know, North- for Asgard. I think that’s essentially what Ragnarök means, right? And so, basically, Odin and Thor come knocking on your door and try and make a deal, Kratos says no, and then basically you’re at war with, you know, the gods of Asgard. And that’s essentially the premise of the game. It also picks up an element where, from the previous game, where an ally of yours is no longer your ally and is in fact your enemy. And then the story picks up from there. It is like a similar deal, over the shoulder, action-adventure, not really open-world, less open-world this one, I think even than the first one. But it does have like a kind of slightly, slightly Zelda-y structure, I suppose, or maybe a slightly Metroid-y structure where you can go back to places and use different abilities to interact with the world in different ways. And then, yeah, it’s primarily a hack-and-slash kind of like game, but the camera’s quite up close and sort of like goes from there, essentially. And what I find really interesting about this, Matthew, and I think this speaks to what you’re saying about how it’s like a heck of a lot of story and a lot of game in one, is how many second acts there are in the story of this game. Right. It’s like cascading second acts. You get that set up, and then it’s like, it’s kind of almost episodic, you know? It’s like, here’s like a big level, here’s a big like tension at the end of the level, here’s like a twist in the story that kind of like flips everything, and then like it’s time for another second act, and then another twist, and another second act, and another twist, and I feel like it does that a few times over, you know? It could have just been like basically a neat three act story game, which I think the first game was to an extent. And this is like, yeah, very generous, but it’s a lot, isn’t it? Normally, that would be exciting to me, like, you know, good, getting my money’s worth, I’m getting so much story, you know, this is all exciting. And in its individual moments, there’s loads of stuff I really love. Without spoiling it, I will say it plays a lot with the central pairing of characters. There are other support characters in the mix at times, and it can kind of change the flavour that way. And there’s a lot of fun in that. You know, you get to meet a lot of people and it changes the tone and flavour of the game for stretches because you get to talk to different people or hear different perspectives. But at the same time, it feels like it’s trying to take the narrative approach of 2018, which was quite slow burn, I would say a surprisingly deep study of a few characters. It’s a game with maybe like five or six central characters and it’s kind of investigating the kind of the relationship between them and particularly how the central relationship of Kratos and Atreus kind of thaws and develops through the game. It’s almost like they have the narrative chops they learned in that game and they want to apply it here, but also the canvas is so wide that it has some quite bad pacing issues because it spends so much time drilling into every fucking character. I just think they needed to kind of like self edit a bit or chop a couple of characters from the story. If everyone’s important, kind of no one’s important and I found it quite hard to grip on to any kind of hierarchy of what was important in the story. I kind of struggled to tell you what this game was really about because it wants to be about so many things. So, you know, there’s craft in all of it, but there’s almost like too much craft. Yeah, I know what you mean. So I kind of like a thing that I was surprised I was like not let down by but didn’t totally gel with is that I kind of missed the elusive element of the world they set up in God of War 2018 where there are these figures like Tyr that you hear about but you don’t see and you don’t expect to see. And like, you know, and indeed the Asgard gods and there’s there are tons of the giants and all these different figures who you never actually encounter. And in this game, almost every single figure that is set up in that first game is just like a guy you meet, you know? And like, I hate to be like to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I quite like the idea that there was an element of something above you that you didn’t interact with, that you didn’t see. And here, it’s almost all brought back down to Earth by the fact that the character that features at the heart of like one chapter of the game is someone you heard about very briefly in the first game, for example, which does happen. And that almost takes a tiny bit away from the magic of the setting of that first game to me. Because it does become a cast overload. And also the very like lonely adventure feel of 2018 can’t be replicated when you have like basically like a house full of like different sort of side characters and allies, which makes it feel a bit more almost like God of War Avengers-y, you know? Which is a choice. But I quite like the lonely like land battered by selfish gods element of the 2018 game. And that goes away a little bit here as a result of what you’re saying, right? Absolutely. It’s interesting. The review that got me most excited for this was EuroGamers, which I think was Chris Tapsall wrote that one, I think. There was like a hint in that of like the wild excess of old God of War is Back, which if you listen to our big God of War episode, you’ll know that, you know, while I really admire 2018, while we both really admire 2018 and listed it as the best God of War game, we had a lot of fondness for the kind of sheer momentum and excess of the earlier games. You know, those were games where you literally chewed through a pantheon of gods every game, and then it would be like, next up, here are these 10 myths and you’re going to destroy, you’re going to kill like a legend every half an hour or whatever in the old God of Wars. And to me, the idea that this was going to be stacked in that way got me really excited. And it probably has a cast list and a myth, you know, a list of myths that are kind of the equivalent of what you would chew through in, say, God of War 3. But the difference is like every one of those characters maybe has like four hours of screen time in which you get to know them. They get to explain their deep psychologies and then you get to feel really terrible when you do finally kill them or not or encounter them or not. And that’s that’s a huge difference. Like it has the grabby greediness of old God of War with like how much stuff it crams in. But it also wants to be this sophisticated, I don’t want to say more realistic, but more psychologically real version of those characters that were established in 2018. I just don’t know if those two approaches go together. You know, the excitement of having such a crammed cast is actually quite lost. You will forget a lot of characters in this until they turn up and you’re like, Oh yeah, I kind of forgot that this game was sort of about Odin and Thor because they’ve been gone for 15 hours. That to me is kind of odd. I was ready for this is like, we are going to fucking murder our way through Asgard and it’s going to be rad as hell. And there is a version of this game that is that. But there’s so much shit in the middle of it that impression is lost. It is interesting because I do feel like you say like the excess at work here is is kind of amazing. And if I bought this as a punter, I definitely feel like I got my money’s worth out of what they made as a result of that approach. I think that the other slight issue it brings is the number of characters and the deepening of like, you know, showing all these side characters in a psychologist or whatever is that it almost softens the edges slightly too much. It’s like there’s almost a bit too much empathy going on with some of these characters or like too much insight into their life story. Like, generally speaking, I felt like there were, and this is where we should probably explain, you finished the game right after 34 hours. And I’m like, I’m 16 hours in. I am at like basically an icy lake with some dogs. That’s all I’m saying. No spoilers there. So which is, I think, like not even halfway through the story, which is, you know, fine. It’s like a massive game, much bigger than the people of how long to beat said it was. But generally speaking, I felt like a slight, yeah, softening of the edges of God of War. Whereas I think that the 2018 game was so good at giving you this like tense kind of like feeling of Kratos is carrying around this personal history and he’s raising this son with, you know, his wife is dead and like, you know, his there’s that struggling kind of relationship. And here it’s a bit like there’s a bit of a the gang’s all here kind of element to it. Kratos is surrounded by so many people that his edges are softened slightly as well. And it starts to feel slightly un God of War to me in the sense of like how I how I perceive God of War. Now you could argue that that’s only needed to move on and fine. But there’s other stuff like there’s a lot of critters in this game, Matthew, or like kind creatures and things and that sort of stuff as well, like softens the edges a bit. You know what I mean? Did you notice the amount of critters? Yeah, it’s like it’s a game that’s like designed to be clipped and screenshotted like every couple of hours. There is lots of dogs and wolves and big wolves that get patted a lot. And there’s a lot of the animation and the kind of sort of fidelity of all this sort of fur parting as you rub your hands through various creatures. And it’s classic kind of meme bait. You know, Kratos likes dogs or Kratos thaws his cold heart towards some dogs or whatever. Like it does that trick over and over again. There’s also like there’s a very annoying squirrel. Oh yeah, really annoying squirrel. I think part of it comes from, like I say, this is allegedly the last game they’re going to make in this North setting. You know, a lot of these things, they are things pulled from myth and they’re just shoving them in because they shove everything in. And it just so happens that there are a lot of like weird and wonderful creatures in North mythology for them to include in the mix. So I think it’s partly that, but I think there’s definitely like they’re pandering to the kind of good boy lobby. What a great way of putting it, the good boy lobby. I fucking hate dogs. So like that stuff really leaves me cold. I’m like, yeah, all right. And like the dogs get bigger and bigger as well. This game’s got some big dogs in it. It’s just so you don’t see, you can’t miss the dogs when people screen grab them and with the peer share button and put them on Twitter, Matthew. Yeah, I don’t want to be too cynical about this because, you know, fine, the game’s not just made for me. And it’s like maybe it’s trying to speak to different audiences with this stuff. But I feel like I can draw the line at the squirrel. I feel like Spartan era squirrel, Pratos, would have had no fucking time for that squirrel. He would have like grabbed it with a blade of chaos and then like fucking lobbed it into King Midas or something like that. You know what I mean? Like it sort of drowned it in Atlantis or something. He’d have fed it so many nuts that its gut would have exploded. It’s just got a bit of a kind of like Narnia vibe to it. And I was just a bit like Mr. Tumnus, like, you know, in like Asgardian mythology or something. Like I’m not big on the squirrel. I’m not big on like very slow rides on the back of creatures, which this game likes to do. Like not, that’s not for me, dog, you know? Yeah, I think that there’s a particular stretch of this that I thought was kind of pure death. And I think I’ve seen other people say, like, who weren’t necessarily feeling it were like, I’m out. And there’s a section where you spend a considerable amount of time with this young girl. I can sort of understand why she’s in there. Like, it’s a very male story. There’s not a lot of like big female characters in it. And it’s kind of it’s interesting to have someone more atrius age for him to interact with. But it saps any any momentum you’ve built up, like just when you’re getting ready or getting into the kind of central storyline, you suddenly spend maybe 90 minutes with this character in a classic bit of like Pat the Ox kind of game design, which is, you know, that uncharted 2 kind of social beat where all fundamental gameplay stops and I think you can even draw your weapon and you just spend, you know, some time with a good hang and bantering and not solving puzzles. Like you really are just pushing an interactive cutscene forward, but it feels like you’re pushing it forward for a long ass time. And it’s a trick the game repeats so many times that by the end of it, I actually I’d really fallen out of love with it. I’d sort of fallen out of love with it before, you know, I already think Naughty Dog have have done that trick to death, which is the, well, you know, this game isn’t all violence and killing. We’re going to spend 20 minutes just larking around and, you know, look at our great writing and look at our, you know, beautiful character animation and, you know, we understand sweet moments in life too, but that is Sony’s, like, big first party trick. That is, that happens in so many of their games. Horizon, Uncharted, The Last of Us, this. Spider-Man. Spider-Man. That is as done and cliched as the Ubisoft Bell Tower for me. You know, I roll my eyes at it, even though, like I say, the amount of craft that goes into those moments, writing that dialogue, the voice acting, the motion capture, the world design. There’s so many bespoke animations as you go around collecting vegetables to feed some cows, which is fundamentally what this this particular section is about. It’s just run so counter to the rest of the game. And are people still wowed by that? So that was, of what I’ve played so far, like by far my least favourite bit of the game. It just goes on for so, so long. And I think it could be like a third of the length it is, maybe even a quarter of the length. It’s like, the thing is, right, that whole section is kind of about, if I have an issue with that character that you meet, it’s that she is basically a plot device, like a means to an end, quite a kind of like tropey plot device. And then I think the game tries to own the fact that she is a plot device by making you spend so much time with her and being like, but she’s got a rich and a life. So she can’t just be a plot device, but she still is a plot device, you know? It does that. It does that so much. There’s so many characters in this game that you go off on jaunts with. Where, actually, what you’re doing is collecting some meaningless MacGuffin, and this is a game with a lot of MacGuffins. There are so many strands to this game that are interesting. Like, none of them are terrible, I’d say. But if it focused on one of them, I think it would be that much stronger. Like, I think the first game really benefits from being fundamentally about Kratos and Atreus climbing a mountain and learning to live with one another, with quite an interesting B story about their relationship with Baldr and this Witch of the Woods character. This has like five versions of that, and at any one time you’re like, well, what am I actually meant to care about here? What is the story of the game? Is it still about Kratos and Atreus? You spend so much time with other people, you might think it isn’t, you know? And some of those other people reflect Kratos and Atreus in interesting ways. I mean, it’s very hard to talk about without spoiling it, but there are characters you can see Kratos in, there are characters you can see Atreus in, and it draws so many comparisons and it pulls you in so many directions. By the end of it, I was like, what is this game actually fucking about? What’s the message? What’s the journey we’ve been on? I found that very confusing for something which has clearly been incredibly finely honed and workshopped and tightened. It’s just so sprawling. One thing I will say as well is, despite there being this quite big cast of new characters, I still haven’t met one I like nearly as much as Freya, the witch in the woods in the first game, who I absolutely love that character and I think she’s so well drawn here and expanded upon. It’s such a brilliant creation. I think it just maybe feels a bit more self-consciously like they’re introducing characters and asking you to like them in a way that I don’t think they did with Freya in the first game. She felt more like, well, she just happens to live here too in this land that’s been like basically fucked up by Odin and his fat sons or whatever. That kind of feels quite organic, whereas, like you say, it is like you are rounding them up and then it is saying, and now you spend time with them and now you like them, right? And it is like, that kind of what it does instead, it can’t be as organic because it is trying to tell all those stories at once, so I think you notice it more when they are asking you to like these different supporting characters. God, I feel so grateful saying that though, because the situations in which you meet these characters are very beautifully made levels and amazing places and it is so well acted and directed and stuff like that, so I think it is more of a pacing issue than it is a content issue, do you know what I mean? Like it is just because the arrangement of it, you know? I think there’s like an even better version of 2018, like in a 20 hour cut of Ragnarök, but it’s for me 34 hours and that’s with just a shit ton of side content I didn’t do. I think I was doing a bit more than you and I think we’ll get to that a bit later, but the highs are higher, like I don’t mean to just endlessly dunk on it, like I fundamentally had a pretty good to great time playing this game. The whole time I was just like, man, it’s so overdone, it’s so overcooked, like the best bits of this are fantastic and I just wish they kind of came together a bit closer. I wish that, you know, there are stretches of it where you suddenly hit like a rush of set pieces and bosses and it just absolutely flies. But then it’s like, no, let’s go walk around this guy’s house for half an hour or let’s go and talk to this guy and just didn’t move those characters on in an interesting enough way. Yeah, so I do agree with you, though, I’ve got a long way to go. But let me ask you this though, Matthew, because you are you have finished the game. Do you think the pacing improves as it goes along? Or do you think a lot of the pacing issues are in that first half that I’ve played? I think the final run of missions, there’s a bit more momentum to them. You feel like, oh, I’m not going to go off and do side content, or it would feel narratively odd for me not to push on. I think it does build up a bit of head of steam and the last hour and a half of it is a pretty awesome payoff, the way it brings everything together and all these characters who I was grumbling about, you’re glad that they’re in the mix, but at the same time their fundamental role come the conclusion is so minor. Did I really need to know that person to appreciate this particular beat? Seeing someone do something cool on the battlefield, did I really need to spend an hour learning their backstory for me to enjoy them firing out some fucking mad spell or whatever? No, probably not. It’s not like the Mass Effect Suicide Mission in terms of bringing characters together, but it has a similar structure to it in that you’re like, you sort of amass people at this hubhouse throughout the game and there is a sense of you building an army and as you solve problems in different realms you’re earning the loyalty of different realms who are going to hopefully side with you against the big baddies and that in itself has some momentum but I felt like the first game going off and exploring fit the whole thing better because while you have this ultimate goal that you’re trying to climb this mountain it’s not like super pressing, it’s not like we have to deliver the ashes in five days or mother’s going to be cursed, we have to do this and whenever you go off you learn a little bit more about each other. Where here you’re like, well, it’s end of days, have I really got time to go and collect a cup that a guy lost? Yeah, it’s at least very signposty about this is side content and this is not. Yeah, I have mostly skipped it so far. I get the sense that the side content probably does have even more meat on the bones than the side content in the first game because, you know, some of it is tied to the supporting characters. They give you more reasons to spend time in these beautiful places they’ve created. And there are so many beautiful places in this game, which is absolutely worth pointing out. It’s like, again, speaks to the generous ethos of the overall game. But yeah, it just it depends whether you’re just in the right headspace for I suppose, as if you want to go after it. That’s the thing, because when the main game has so much stuff in it, my needs to see some supporting content diminishes somewhat just on a like human being in his 30s time level. You know what I mean? Like it’s do I have time for like 50 hours of this game total? Or do I just want to see the 20 hour version? The answer is I probably just want to see the 20 hour version, to be honest, unless that side content is extraordinarily good. Let’s talk about the combat instead, Matthew. Switch tack a little bit. I feel like we covered the story there quite nicely. My biggest issue with this game is like the slight changes to the combat make it a bit more frustrating than before. Now, I think it is basically it’s about 80% the same combat, I would say. They had a bunch of new enemy types in it to mix things up. Some of those enemy types are good. Some of the ones they’ve added, much smaller enemies that can kind of like run around you very quickly. Or these orb enemies that need to be hit with one attack and then hit with another, a separate attack in order to be destroyed. Those didn’t really do much for me. But I like the orbs. Fair enough. Well, I like the orbs because they become like explosive projectiles when they die. So when they start mixing orbs with other people, you can actually chew through people using the orbs quite a lot, which is what I liked. I like that too, because that’s the idea of like, you know, yeah, like basically like one thing impacting another as part of the combat. That’s new to this game, right? There was nothing like that in the first game. Nothing that sticks with me anyway. No, just like I think like the exploding sort of like red like, you know, urn things are basically the only thing I think like that in there. So yeah, that is interesting. The problem I’ve had with this so far is that I do feel like even I feel like I’m following the power curve quite neatly of how you’re supposed to upgrade your axe at different times, the blades of chaos at different times. The enemies are still a little bit too spongy for me. Just take a bit too much hitting and hitting and hitting takes a long time for them to give you new runic moves, which are like special moves for you to activate. So it doesn’t feel like you’re clearing them super fast. If there is a power curve at play here, it’s quite a slow one. And the amount of projectile attacks and AOE attacks in this game, of which there are quite a few, like a dude will just like blurt some poison at you or, you know, someone will hit you with a spell or whatever. Or some people will drop this ice thing that kind of explodes on the ground and causes a little AOE attack. I find that a lot of that quite frustrating for a game, a third person game that has the camera so close to the character and where the indicators of an enemy is attacking behind you don’t necessarily scream. There’s an enemy who’s about to hit you with a sword or an enemy is about to hit you with a spell that’s like an AOE attack and might damage you without you realizing you’re actually in the firing zone. And so I just had a few too many instances where I’m like, I’m dead because I got basically a dude burped some poison at me and I wasn’t looking. And like, I think that’s just there’s a bit too much going on on that level that made me feel slightly less empowered in how I was playing it. But you finished the game, Matthew. How would you describe the power curve generally of the combat? It’s an odd one because I felt the original game is also very slow burn because it is quite an original combat system. You know, that sort of over the shoulder kind of Resi 4 perspective, but a melee combat system first and foremost, you know, that felt quite new. And it felt like it had to kind of teach you its rhythms and it layered up extra special attacks and powers and then Atreus learns more powers. And it also wove that stuff into the story. So as as you’re kind of coming to understand each other, you’re both becoming more interesting combat abilities halfway through 2018. You get a return to a classic God of War weapon. And that’s like a very nice, like both narrative and mechanical beat where you all of a sudden you’ve got like two modes that opens up. After that very delicate pacing, this one like almost hit, you almost sort of slam on the gas quite early in that you have both those weapons from quite early on in this game. And I genuinely didn’t really remember how they worked. I don’t think they add the second weapon in any way near as careful a manner as they did in the first game. I was like, where does this fit into things? I don’t think it really explains itself. It sort of expects you to know how the combat works from the first game. So I actually kind of, I don’t know if I was making great use of those weapons. I really fight with the axe for probably like 80% of this game. And the other weapon, like less so mild spoiler alert, you may want to skip ahead to two minutes. There is a new weapon in the game. I won’t say what it is. It comes, I’d say quite late into it, maybe two thirds into it, which doesn’t like radically transform things. You know, it fundamentally has a lot of the same behaviours as the other two. Like it’s still a melee thing that also has a ranged element. Its ranged quality is slightly different in that you kind of plant it and then detonate it later. That’s quite nice punctuation in battle, it’s kind of trigger motion. But again, like I only really used it on like a couple of boss fights, which it felt like it was designed to do those boss fights. And then I went straight back to the axe. I mean, I really did like monster other people with the axes. And I don’t know if this reflects how you play these games, but I only ever dip into the other weapons to basically use their runic attacks, which are like very, very powerful, but very slow cooldown special attacks. So I basically have the second and third weapon as a bank of special powers. If I just need to nuke someone, I’ll switch to them, fire them off and then go back to the axe, just because I’m a bit more comfortable with how it behaves, like the speed of that weapon. I don’t quite understand how the elemental part of this works either, because sometimes they’re like, oh yeah, this enemy, the frozen axe won’t work as well as the Blades of Chaos or whatever. And I don’t really notice it that much, to be honest. Yeah, there’s a little bit like use the hot weapon on the cold enemies, use the cold weapon on the hot enemies. And like, I get that. And sometimes you have some encounters where you feel like if you match it, you really chop through. Half the time, though, like you say, there’s a sort of sponginess to everything. And I know some people really vouch for this and say that this game is full of, you know, mad complicated depths. For me, it’s got such a generous shield and parry that I don’t think of this as being like a Dark Souls or certainly not like a Devil May Cry or a Bayonetta style character action game. I think it’s you’ve got this very generous defensive maneuver you can kind of hide behind if you want. You can play quite cowardly and carefully and get through most encounters and it’s perfectly fine. One thing I do like in 2018 and this, and this definitely grows this aspect of the game, is the idea of like builds and like the army you have and the special abilities that are attached to each piece of armor can give you quite bespoke Kratos’ who benefit if you match the right things together. Armor sets having unique characteristics is nothing new, but here the way they kind of play into certain fighting styles. So like the armor I had made my melee attacks very, very strong if I attacked someone with who was poisoned. And then I equipped something else either to my weapon or in another slot. There’s so many fucking slots on this guy. Basically, if you attacked bare handed, that built up poison really quickly. So like the rhythm of most of my combat came about throw the axe, run in, punch a few times to poison them, and then unleash this damage boosted hell on a now poisoned enemy. And there I felt like, oh yeah, all these things, the sort of synergies, I guess, between all these parts are really working. And, you know, it wasn’t complicated. Like you just have to sort of read through quite a lot of conflicting armor instructions and go, well, if this gives me this and this is good against that, then if I put them together, that’ll probably be beneficial. And I quite like that there is a like an immediate benefit to playing with those builds. You know, you can make a Kratos who is an amazing ranged Kratos, or you can make a Kratos who is built around the hot weapon or the cold weapon. And it’s sort of broader, but like more satisfying than kind of getting lost in the weeds of, you know, individual sort of, you know, can I boost my strength by five? Because what the fuck does that really mean in the grand scheme of things? Yeah, I think as well, I really one thing I really love about it is that it has the conviction in the fact that those two weapons were already so strong and doesn’t like, you know, after playing some Bayonetta 3, which, you know, basically just like shot guns new things at you every single level, essentially, to have like a vast array of things on a cycle. This is like, nope, the acts worked, the blades of chaos worked. What will change is all the other stuff around it, the enemies you fight, that sort of thing. And then, yeah, like you say, there is this other weapon that comes into it. And I really admire the fact they held the nerve on that. Yeah, it’s funny you mentioned Bayonetta, though, because when it did introduce the third weapon, having seen how crazy the weapons got in Bayonetta, this feels very underwhelming that my big narrative payoff is a weapon which is basically the same as the other two weapons. Now, people who really get lost in the weeds of this game will say, that’s ridiculous. All three weapons in God of War are hugely different. But they’re not different in the way that in Bayonetta, one of your special attacks is you control a train and lay railway tracks to drive through enemies. And another of your special attacks is an entire clock tower comes out of the ground, has arms that come out and becomes like a giant punching friend. Like Bayonetta has like a wild originality that I was constantly thinking of when I was playing this. Particularly with the new abilities. I was like, these are pretty undercooked. You know, these are not, or just boring. Yeah, I can kind of see what contrast those two games are. Imagine Kratos had his fucking Norse god train or something like that. Like one is hugely polished and the other is Bayonetta 3. Yeah, exactly. I would have might have seen the gauntlets from the God of War games return, Matthew. Some big fist hands. They would be a bit different, wouldn’t they? Yeah. I guess they don’t do that, I guess. But I think I’m pretty close to getting the weapon you’re talking of. Yeah, I don’t want to spoil it for you. One of the things I really like in any Metroidvania is looking at the blockages and the obstacles and trying to work out what I’m going to get that fixes them. God of War is quite good at that in that there’s lots of holes with air spraying out of them. And you’re like, well, what’s that going to be? Am I going to do something with the air? Is it going to be like a wind thing? Is there going to be inflation involved? And when you finally see what it is, you’re like, oh yeah, that makes sense. But there’s certainly a lot of stuff in this, you think. What the fuck is that? Which is quite a key part of what makes a metroidvania tit. So let’s talk a bit about the world of the game, Matthew. So what I find really interesting about it is as discussed, it doesn’t really retain the same structure as the first game. It does give you freedom to navigate the different realms. And like I assume it reaches a point in the story where you can go back quite freely to all the different places you’ve been. And the presentation of these places is just astonishing, really. Like you got in the first game, you got like, you know, Midgard, the Dark Elf realm, Alfheim. And then you got the fucking score attack realm as well. Was that Moosevulheim or something? There’s the one with the maze full of gas and this one, which is just like a combat arena. Powerfully underwhelming. You came to the Horde mode realm, so tough break. Where’s the unlockable art gallery realm? So this game, this game just really like gives you an overload of like, North shit basically. Like some of the places it takes you, without spoiling it, just look better, look nicer than, you know, just they just look so lavish. You just see the money on the screen basically. Just really kind of wild feeling weird places. And even when it does take you to places you’ve been before, which this game does, you know, like spoilers there I suppose, they do feel like noticeably different. Some of the, some bits and pieces might remain in terms of like architecture, but generally speaking, they feel like totally different places. And on that level, I find it so, so lavish. Structurally though, it’s quite interesting because it kind of keeps you on a linear path. It like basically drops you into a new corridor level, quite, you know, basically every chapter so you don’t feel like you’re getting lost. Is that kind of what you noted about the structure too, Matthew? Is there ever a point where it kind of opens up more noticeably? Not an open world, but a kind of wide linear area. So like if you played the first one, you have the Lake of the Nine, which is kind of like the big, you know, quote unquote, open world bit, which is just a big lake that you can park up on limited jetties and then beaches or whatever and get out of your boat. And then there’s quite a linear bit of adventuring to be done there. And a lot of the realms have their equivalent of that in this. You know, they’ll be like you’ll go to a realm for a story, which is like a strictly linear path. But then at the end of the story, you know, or halfway through that level, you’ll find an area where actually there is a lake or a big plane that you can ride like a sled around on, because there’s a lot of snow and sledding in this game. I’d say rather than have like the one world which is constantly evolving. So in the first game, Lake of the Nine, as the water levels in the lake change, it’s constantly like revealing more and more of the surrounding land as the game progresses. Here, every realm has an open world bit. Discovering the scale of those, like you say, is pretty mind blowing in terms of like how much stuff they made for this game. Because there’s some where you go, I can’t believe this area had an open world, or had a large area, and then you’ll find a key and you’ll realise that there’s a door in that to an even bigger thing. And most of them have at least one truly worthwhile side quest that will transform it in some way. Like the big trick this thing does is you do something and like the level will physically transform or there’ll be like a huge creature will appear. There’s a lot of big creatures pop out of places in this game and then every time you come back, you’ll be like, oh, it’s the big creature from that side quest. You feel like you’re making a change in that world. It’s the cliche of you can’t really tell the difference between the main quest and the side quest, which I felt about the first game, but this trumps it in like every way in terms of ambition. Shit, I better dig into some of this side stuff then instead of rushing to the finish line. Now I failed to finish the game for this podcast, I might as well take my fucking time, might I? Last night I was like, I feel like if I put in six hours, I’ll get this done and Catherine was away, so I was like, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna want to get to the end of this game and see if it like actually lands the story. Even though I can’t talk about it for spoiler reasons, I want to actually, you know, see where I stand with it. But it was so, it showed me like several things along that way where I was like, I should really go and do that, like while I have the time. It’s got quite a nice trick where it actually hides how big a lot of the maps are on the map screen. So you can look at an area and think you’ve seen it all and then realize, oh, actually, this kind of flips in some interesting way or whatever. It’s a lot this game. What it reminded me of actually, the structure of it slightly was Uncharted 4, like those kind of open worlds where, you know what I mean, where like there are enemies out there and you can go and find them. But there are also secrets to find, you know, many secrets if you put in the time. If you want, you can just race past them and continue the story. That’s fine too. But you will be rewarded for exploring, except this takes us out even further, you know, like there are proper embedded reasons to stay there as opposed to, you know, a few cool Easter eggs to go and find around the map, you know. I think it’s maybe like a little bit closer to, I mean, it’s basically the same thing, but like The Last of Us Part II, where because that had, in its one open-ish area, which is that kind of overgrown kind of city that you go to quite early on, that had like a few key story quests. But then I think it even marked them as side quests. Bigger buildings you could go into, which had their own kind of structure to, and maybe a boss at the end. There is more structure to it. And I would also say, tying into what I was saying about the combat, a lot of the side missions reward you with equipment that’s not better, but maybe has a unique element to it that makes it the heart of an interesting build. This isn’t like a traditional loot game where the later thing you get is necessarily better. You can bring armour from the first mission. Honestly, I think my armour set was armour that I unlocked at like hour 10 and then I brought with me for 20 hours just because I liked the particular boons it gave me. Pretty cool. It’s pretty cool that they’ve done that. The way it sits between RPG and Metroidvania is quite unique and still quite specific to God of War. I can’t think of many other things which have that balance of permanent upgrades and the ability to slightly adjust yourself on a more granular level. Yeah. Alright. I might slow down, take my time and figure out a build I like. Maybe that will help me get my head around some of the sponginess of the enemies a little bit. I feel so bogus saying words like build. It doesn’t seem very you, to be honest. I mean, it’s a poison build because it does a lot of poison and it hurts a lot of poison and it’s not sophisticated. I’m not writing a fucking Fextralife or something. Right, right, yeah, yeah. Okay, that’s fair. I mean, I never pegged you as that guy, but that makes sense. I will say, though, that generally speaking, speaking of poison, whenever I get an ailment that drains Kratos’ health in this game, I’m like, what was the fucking point of that? Because this was early in the game. You do get the ability to heal eventually. I had no ability to heal. I just had a slow poison. Watching my health bar just go down knowing I was dead. It was like, why not just fucking kill me right now instead of making me wait like 20 seconds for the poison to kick in? I was doing that. Every now and then, this game will think it’s Icaruga, and you’ll just get an enemy who’s absolutely spaffing purple shit at you. You’re like, what the fuck is going on? Those are the bits that frustrated me, I think, was just being hit with just little additions to the combat that were designed to make you think differently about how to play, but maybe just didn’t entirely fit with the close to Kratos nature of the combat system that was so used to from the first game. Yeah, I think that’s true. I think they also pepper the world from early on with what is basically end game content. You don’t necessarily think about this character, like characters do have a level next to them, but you don’t tend to think about this character in terms of level. Like I don’t think, you know, I was ever like, oh, I’m currently a level six Kratos and a good match for level six enemies. But, you know, there are rifts and there are these like gravestones that sort of summon this game’s equivalent of the Valkyries, which were like the really tough end game content in 2018. You know, this time, some bosses who you’re meant to fight in 30 hours, but they’re there, right? And, you know, as you’re going past your stupid sons, like, hey, why don’t we check out that? And you’re like, yeah, all right, my boy, you know, if you’d like, you know, it’s like me asking my dad, should we go into HMV? And he’s like, yeah, let’s do it. Except in HMV, it’s not like a fucking Viking who kills you with one hit. You know, that’s the difference. At least not in the Winchester branch, but Winchester’s a nice town. Yeah, nor Bath either. You can get a full metal Alchemist on DVD for £25. You know, good purchase, according to Matthew Castle. Something like that, but I think that was true with the first game. I’d just forgotten it. Like, there’s stuff in this that was handing me my ass, and I was like, is it cowardly to step away from this? You know, I just got over it. That was definitely in the first game. That’s not the stuff I’m, like, I’m not stumped by anything in the game. I just feel like I’m getting frustrated a bit too much in, like, progressing in the way I am. There is that one, there is like a sort of more foresty realm you go to. I don’t think that’s a spoiler. And there was a big boss in that realm that was so process-y in terms of how you beat it. You just had to do the same two or three things in exactly the same order. And then it would kind of like go down. And that just, I felt so kind of like bummed out by that boss. I felt bad because I big that boss up too. I was like, you were DMing me like, oh, I don’t know about this. And I was like, stick with it because I think there’s a boss which actually actually feels like classic God of War. And then you were like, fuck that boss. Well, it’s kind of like, oh, yeah, you just got to fucking put these purple symbols on this thing and then do your thing. I didn’t feel like that was like very clearly explained. And it only took me four attempts. But I was still very frustrated at the end of it. And I just don’t know. I think I just haven’t particularly gelled with that amount of ranged combat stuff going on in it. That it just hasn’t entirely worked for me. But I’m also probably playing it too damn fast. This game probably isn’t meant to be played in like eight hour chunks of a Sunday. Also, if you’re not doing the side quests, like you’re not getting the upgrade materials and it all does add up. Come the actual end of it, I did the last run of bosses like without dying once. But not like I was pushed. I was like on the edge and I felt quite exhilarated when I finished it. But I felt like I’d done enough of the side missions that I was maybe slightly ahead of the difficulty curve. I think if you just did a pure story run through, this is a much harder game than if you do all that side stuff. And I like that because my big beef with Metroidvanias is when there’s no reason to collect the side content because the difficulty matches you. It’s why I like Metroid Dread actually. Every little extra bit of health or whatever, I felt like this is increasing my odds of surviving here. But there definitely comes a point where I feel like if it locks you into a big story mission, it kind of almost goes a bit gentler on you because it’s like, well, you haven’t got the option to improve really. So, you know, I’m not going to lock you in any dead ends. You know, I fundamentally want you to finish things, which is maybe why the last bosses weren’t as difficult as I was. I was I was worried about. Well, that’s a classic like, you know, Breath of the Wild or something similar, right? If you’ve basically rinsed the open world, then that last boss, Oh, yeah. Calamity Ganon’s like piece of piss. Just fucking bomb arrowed that guy. I just had like a hundred bomb arrows. Just like murdered him instantly. Well, that was that then. I guess that’s the end of the best game I’ve ever played. Yeah, it’s like that’s a proper like it’s about the journey, not the destination of the game, isn’t it? Yeah, so just to be very clear about this game, I think it is very, very good. And I really like it. My issues with it are just those minor combat things I’m talking about, the amount of ranged attacks, AOE attacks. Maybe I’ll feel differently if I churn through some of this side content. I feel like I’ve crafted my Kratos, a build, as Matthew keeps saying, with massive amounts of authority. And also, yeah, and the pacing issues as well, the narrative. That is probably my biggest gripe, like a major gripe, I would say. Just that maybe a tiny bit of the mysterious element of the original game is lost a little bit just through every single character being some guy you meet, and then he comes and lives at your house, and then he joins your little army. And that’s actually where I sort of saw what maybe Polygon were alluding to with their MCU comparison. I kind of saw it a little bit in this. Like the style of storytelling, and everyone’s got their little moment kind of thing. That maybe resembles modern pop culture a bit more than maybe the first game did. Go on, jump from there, Matthew. I think there are some exceptions along the way. I think there are some encounters where you meet something spectacular for a very limited amount of time, which feels a little bit more like Old God of War, where someone turns up, maybe has like five lines, and then does something kind of galaxy changing, and you’re like, oh, that was pretty cool. I’m glad, like, that was a lot of resources for a character who is in this for two minutes. Which this game doesn’t do enough. It feels like, like we say, it really, really wants you to kind of get to know everyone. But even in the main cast, I think there are a couple of, like, triumphs in there. There is one, like, just proper asshole who you kind of meet, who you don’t really get to know any better and remains an asshole throughout. Played by the guy who played Jason in Friday Night Lights. He’s a really, like, shitty, hissable villain who you, like, I really look forward to killing this guy. And he was most like an old God of War character. Yes. Like someone who turns up and is just a huge prick. And they’re all voiced by Americans, but I love that it’s just like, I’m this Norse figure, but I’m also hugely American. That is, like, very God of War to me. These are all people who live in LA who could just go to their motion capture studio, basically. But, you know, a really, really good cast of people, for sure. Yeah, that is a great asshole character. That is a good thing, actually, is that, like, I think as you get deeper into the game and some more of the Asgard characters kind of come into it, you do get a bit closer to that feel of, like, there are actually, like, there’s a cavalcade of bastards to kind of get through here, you know? I wish they hadn’t held them off for as long as they do. I think some of it’s because the end of God of War 2018, you know, is this, like, epic boss fight, but it’s also this, like, weird character piece where this kind of tangle of four characters is playing out and, like, all the drama of their story is in there, and it’s really, really effective. You know, you’re fighting this, and you know what you’ve got to do to survive, but you’re also questioning the whole time who is the real villain in this particular situation. Here, they’re just trying to do that with, like, 12 people, which is why it becomes quite unwieldy. But there are moments where you’re, like, certain character dynamics are pulled out, and there are some very, very cool sort of cinematic moments. There are some great entrances, some great exits, particularly in the final run where you’re, like, oh, yeah, this is more like it. I think it ends super strong. Just on the character note, I actually really rated the two dwarves in this one who are in the first game. I loved them in the first game too, but they’re great here too. Yeah, I did like them, but they were sort of comedy shopkeepers in that game. In here, they have their own story, and it’s one of the more effective stories in it. Their relationship’s quite interesting, some of the secrets they’re keeping from each other are quite interesting. One of them is very, like, bullish and unpleasant, and there’s this sudden moment of, like, absolute sincerity that involves him. That always gets me, like, when someone is suddenly, like, very open and honest, rather than this sort of, like, more sophisticated, slow-burning, kind of dawning of realisation that you get with, kind of, Kratos and Atreus and many of the other characters. Yeah, they’re just so beautifully acted and, you know, really well written for, like, the vast majority of it. It’s just, yeah, I just… It’s just so much of it, just so many characters, so much to get through. So that’s interesting. Here’s a question for you. So, I really love Kratos in this. I think Kratos is an absolute all-timer, kind of, video game character in terms of, like, you know, his, sort of, roots as, like, the ultimate bastard. And then how he’s developed in 2018. It’s just such a good use of, like, you know, a great bit of, sort of, 3D games era iconography, you know, to convert that into, like, a great character with a, you know, carries, like, a heavy burden with him. And I think he’s really well developed here. This game asks a lot of his son Atreus to carry the story, like, quite a lot. And I don’t know if that character, from what I’ve played so far, is up to it. But I’m curious to know what you make of that. You know, Kratos’ character in this is all about, like, wrestling with his past. There’s a lot of this game is about godhood, and what it is to be a god, and what it is to be someone who’s, like, defining characteristic is he’s really good at killing gods. Like, what happens when that person meets other gods? What happens when a God of War from one mythology, you know, potentially meets a God of War from another mythology? You know, there’s a lot of interesting stuff about that really relates to Kratos in this story. Atreus, you know, what defines his story is something that is potentially going to happen in the future. It’s nothing to do with his past. He has no reputation. Like, we don’t really have any stakes in this kid at all. So it’s just a lot less to work with, I think. And they spend a lot of time with him. The reason they spend time with him is they actually don’t want to spend time with him at all. They want to spend time with the characters he spends time with. Right. Kratos, due to the nature of what the story is, can’t hang out with some characters in this game because they’re enemies, where I think Atreus can sort of like tread across that line a bit more. Yeah, that’s definitely true. There’s like a plot device element to him, like of stitching things together. Yeah, I do think that only half works in places compared to just playing as Kratos and enjoying Kratos’ interactions with other characters. The other thing is that I actually really enjoyed the idea of Atreus as a kind of supporting character in the first game. That whole stretch where he becomes incredibly unpleasant and arrogant is great real kid stuff as well as seeing his cruel side is just really effective in the moment. I really loved that about the 2018 game. And here, I don’t know, for what I’ve played so far, he’s a bit more smug. I don’t know, he’s a tougher hang because he was never really a good hang. It’s not quite the dynamic of the game. But it’s just a tall order for a character of this age and type and the amount of story that orbits him. It’s just a big ask of that actor and that character. Weirdly, younger children, while on paper simpler beings than adults with all their complicated business, they have the greater capacity to swing wildly between extremes, which makes younger Atreus more interesting than teen Atreus. He’s generally meaner, but it never goes as far as maybe the first game. The first game has the sheer unfettered madness of what a child can be. Yeah, yeah. And it’s really, really good at it. I’ve not seen that in another game before. Do you know what I mean? Whereas I think what you see of Atreus here, I feel like I have seen that in other games before. Yeah, it’s tough. Right, some smaller bits there, Matthew. So, did you like the reference to God of War, Ghost of Sparta? To the brother. Did you like that reference? I genuinely like that this game has a much closer relationship with the entire series than I felt the first one did. Yeah. Like, he brings up a lot of, like… Yeah, I’m mainly Damus, but there’s a lot of, like, anecdotal stuff which refers to events in the earlier games. There’s a lot of this game is about fate, and so he can talk a lot about his interactions with the fates in, like, God of War 2. Having just replayed all of them for that podcast, this felt more God of War than 2018 did in the traditional God of War sense. Yeah, I think as well, I like that when you hear Kratos talk about the idea of what, you know, a Spartan has to go through to become a Spartan, essentially, I get that broader sense of how Kori Barlog holistically looks at the character and the mythos of God of War, you know, which feels very much like it drives the Kratos characterization. Obviously, a team of hundreds makes the actual game. I’m talking about a very basic understanding of who Kratos is and how that permeates the entire game. I feel like, you know, we talked about on that podcast, but Kori Barlog, there’s a reason he’s the guy making these games, right? It’s, you know, he’s as much the character’s creator as David Jaffe was, for example. So, yeah, I just really love hearing that stuff, because it tells me more about also how, you know, someone who’s been working on these games for 15 years sees the character and what they think is important for me to learn about them. So I really enjoyed that about some of those extra references. Did you either hear or have you heard about the PlayStation All-Stars thing? So one of the bits of side banter you can have with Mimir, and I didn’t hear this in my go, I don’t know what triggers it, is Kratos is talking about his past, and he alludes to have being in PlayStation All-Stars. Because he says, I once took part in a battle tournament with the greatest heroes from many realms. And then he describes the characters in PlayStation All-Stars in kind of Kratos speak. So like he refers to Parappa the Rapper as like the greatest bard who ever lived. That is incredible. That does make sense, I guess, because that’s a Sony Santa Monica game, PlayStation All-Stars. So yeah, some of the people there probably worked on it. But that’s really good. Well done. Apparently that was written by Anthony Burch from some of the Borderlands games. I saw something on Twitter where he was like, oh wow, I can’t believe they kept that in. I literally wrote that as a piss take. That’s awesome though. Well done. I love that. Literally everything that Kratos has been in, we have to cop to. It’s like his personal history. I really love that. So Matthew, here’s the other question. So you finished it. Something I really wanted to do after we did our God of War ranking was to come back and say, where does this sit in that ranking? You are the only one out of the two of us who has finished every single game in this series. Where does this rank for you versus the other games in that list? So at the top of the list, we had 2018. I still think that’s the more coherent game. This is maybe technically bigger and better in every way, but it’s just so much baggier compared to 2018. I’d actually be tempted to put it below God of War 3. And above God of War 2. I still think God of War 3, for all its problems, has just this drive to it that I think this could have had. I think the best God of War ever is in this game, but it’s just surrounded with a lot of fat, a lot of flab. I know you struggled with that. You didn’t like that boss fight as much as I did, that we were alluding to earlier, but this game has a much better balance of human sized bosses to big bosses. There are some spectacular takedowns in this, which are just pure, absolutely 100% what I want from God of War. It’s more violent. It’s definitely the combat. It’s a lot bloodier than one. There’s a lot of limb chopping and cleaving and blood and gore everywhere. It has a bit more of the obnoxious energy of old God of War, which I like. But it’s tough because I’ve seen some people who are like, this is just an all-timer 10 out of 10 PlayStation Classic. And I get it. Its highs are so good. And maybe you like the Sony character beat mechanic more than I do. If I had two weeks to play this and then I was playing two to three hours a day, I might feel a bit differently about it. Yeah, but I was playing it as I would have. I bought it. I was looking forward to it. This is a game, you know, OK, we’re doing it for this podcast. But like I would have bought it anyway. I was really looking forward to it. Like I didn’t buy many games this year. This is one I was like I liked the first game. I want to see where the story goes. Like I want to see how it ends, you know. And this definitely has that pull. You will want to see how it ends. So it works on that level. But I just there’s just so much plodding shit in it, which I don’t know. Maybe if you write your review just after you finished it, it ends so strong that you’d be like, fuck me, that was so exciting. But I was like cursing so many stretches of this game for being slow and boring. Yeah, the speed bumps are just really noticeable in it. Really, really noticeable. And yeah, I think like you, no more Pat the Ox for me in video games. I’m done with that stuff. This game’s worse because it’s ride the ox for like 20 minutes. 90 minutes of ox patting. If you want to press forward while a very slow ox walks through, fight, I wouldn’t say cutting edge water. The water looked fine. Cutting edge water? Now you’re fucking reviewing water. Well, we’re not Digital Foundry as we always say, but I will say this to me often looked like an amazing PS4 game. That is completely fair. It feels like it’s built firmly with the same limitations as the 2018 one was, because it is. It’s also on PS4. Every time you lift a rock and you crawl under it or climb through a gap in the cliff, I didn’t even notice that many gaps in cliffs you were going through in the first one, but here I seem to notice it a lot more. Part Me respects the desire for them to make a really great farewell game to PS4, and by all accounts this plays really well on PS4. It plays as well as God of War 2018 did, and it is much more ambitious in terms of scale and scope and the size of some of the set pieces. I was a bit more aware of non-interactive cutscenes in this one than I was the first. I think there’s a few more bits where you’re like wow this unbroken camera is amazing and then you’re like well it is just a cutscene. You know I’m not actually doing anything so it’s not impossible that this would happen in a metal gear cutscene. That illusion is definitely less impressive second time around. Yeah so every kind of like face I saw in this I was just like oh wow just the unbelievable amount of attention to detail in this is incredible. I can’t honestly say that I’m like I was massively jonesing to see what a PS5 version would look like. I don’t think it’d be vastly different. I just think some of those gaps between environments would just be seamless. But otherwise I don’t think the game would change massively. So yeah that doesn’t bother me too much. I suppose like no that was fine. That’s like yeah that’s definitely like low down on the list of gripes. I’ll tell you what is higher up on the list of gripes is people fucking talking to you about what to do every three minutes. Now this has been just like discussed already. But basically your companion characters in the game are always weighing in to be like you should try doing this over there. You should try doing that over there. And like every time Atreus was telling me how to like you know solve a water wheel puzzle or something. I was just there thinking my boy I killed every god on fucking Mount Olympus. Why don’t you shut up while I figure out this fucking water wheel? And like that like that it’s so persistent in this game. It actually started to like I think rub some of the hard edges off Kratos for me because I was there thinking there’s no way Kratos would let people talk to him like this. But also I think it just it became it becomes borderline intrusive. There are some like extended periods of the game where I don’t think you notice it at all. But then just like companion characters talking down to Kratos to give you very obvious puzzle clues, that bothered me throughout and you can’t switch it off. Thoughts Matthew? I definitely felt it in the early parts of the game. I do think it it goes away or I just didn’t notice it. Like from about Act 2 onwards people people stop talking and it gives you a bit more space. And it’s interesting because it gives you a bit more space when you start getting new powers. So all of a sudden it’s less handholdy and you are doing something new. So it’s kind of a double whammy. And actually some of the puzzles I thought were pretty satisfying. Like I quite liked there’s like an ability that hinges around sort of setting up chains of like elemental chain attack type things. Which I thought it used in some in some fun ways in places. Definitely in that early stretch I was feeling the same thing. It’s quite interesting though that there was that when this very first came out, which let’s remember was only like two weeks ago or whatever. There was quite a lot of noise about there was a mode you could use to make the puzzles go to that people thought dialed back the puzzle banter. But it didn’t at all. Sony Santa Monica came up and said that actually no, that that that option doesn’t affect the banter at all. Which maybe made me reassess like how intrusive is this? If you think there’s less but there’s not actually less, does that mean it was ever really a problem? I do know what you mean in terms of… from a character perspective it doesn’t really gel. I think from a mechanical perspective it sort of makes sense in that characters talk to you so much in this game. Like you’re basically always in a conversation, unless you’re fighting, that it would be weird if there were stretches of the game where no one said anything. And so they have to say something, and so what would they probably say in that situation? Like, wow, why didn’t we try that switch? Yeah, it’s just that sometimes that stuff is a bit too… It’s just quite patronising in how it’s written. Yeah. And Kamtsukasa’s patronising to a player. I think maybe I’m just more sensitive to it as someone who’s played games for so long and has finished every game in this series. Yeah. And it happens enough that it becomes incongruous. And especially as you’ve just come from 2018, where you’ve got your head around how this game world sort of works, you don’t need someone saying it to you all over again. It is a bummer. It’s just interesting that that has been the conversation. I remember when 2018 came out, it felt there was just a lot more excitement for it. People have loved this game, and I know that. But I felt like everyone was obsessed with how the axe worked, and there were blogs about how the axe worked, and everyone was like, wow, they’ve really come up with something new here. There was something genuinely fresh and innovative that people were reacting to. And I don’t see that conversation happening around Ragnarök in the same way. But we have to be completely fair. It’s okay for them to do a better version of the same thing. I’m sure you agree. Funnily enough, most of the problems I have with Ragnarök are exactly the same problems I had with The Last of Us Part 2. I think they are very similar sequels in terms of what they choose to grow and where they choose to put their resources. I think they’ve both got a problem with wanting to spend time with everyone. They want to show respect to every single character. Every single character gets their moment in the spotlight. They want everyone to be real and fully fleshed out, and that has a huge problem on pacing. Last of Us Part II has the wildest act structure in what the fuck are the first, second and acts in that game. God knows how you’d actually point them out. This feels like it’s playing from the same kind of playbook. Yeah, it’s even got the, without spoiling it, to show you both sides of it a little bit. And even that it shares with The Last of Us 2. I know everyone thinks it’s more sophisticated storytelling to show how everyone is a bit more real and a bit more complex. But it is okay to just have fun with archetypes and have a bit more momentum. You know, like not everything has to be shades of grey. You know, this happened in television and suddenly everyone was like, well, you know, everything has to be a lot more real. And it killed off like a, I would say it killed off a lot of like fun. And, you know, after the kind of rise of like your Sopranos and the Wire and Deadwood and what people were really into, suddenly seemed to be less buzz around things like Buffy or whatever. That seemed like old TV making. And it feels like that’s sort of happening in games as well. Like, it’s okay. Like, and we said this on the other God of War episode, it’s okay to make a game about a fucking maniac who chops up gods for ten hours. It’s okay to turn Hercules’ head into mints. That’s fine. Also, I think maybe we’ll reach a tipping point on this as well, where, you know, like in TV, the Mandalorian feels like a kind of a riposte to the rise of the prestige TV show. It’s simple, you know, Hercules slash Xena style storytelling. And it’s immensely enjoyable and dialed back. And very archetypal in terms of the different characters. So I could see that happening eventually. But I do agree with you like this. I don’t need it for all these characters. I’m actually fine just thinking, OK, there’s Thor and Odin. They are bastards. Let’s go fucking kill them. But that’s that’s OK with me. That’s OK by me for this game, you know? Yeah. OK, interesting. So, yeah, we’ve got it. You got it at third. I agree. I would say from what I’ve played so far, it firmly feels like it’s going just after God of War 3 for me. I just… But as established in that episode, we’ve both got a lot of love for that. That was actually quite… That was reasonably close to the clash between God of War 3 and 2018. They’re just very different eras of games at war with each other. And… Yeah. But that is what the 2018 and new God of War is about. You know, it’s about a character wrestling, you know, with a… Being from a different time in a different place. Being from PlayStation All-Stars. Yeah. So, yeah, like… And it is fun. It is fun. It’s just… It’s just a lot. OK, I think we’re about done, Matthew. One last question, then. Do you think there’s enough mileage for another one of these games? No. I think they should reinvent it again. I’ve had a huge amount of fun playing two of these games. I feel like I’ve seen this combat system kind of fully now. And I thought it was really exciting how they transformed it once. Like, I think this is a team with great imagination and great mechanical vision to make new things happen. And I would love him to go to another realm. That isn’t a sport. There’s nothing… I would say from what I’ve played of the ending of this game, there is nothing pointing me in a direction of a new franchise direction. But, yeah, like, let’s go to Egypt. Let’s kill the death gods of Egypt in something entirely new. Yeah, just like fucking battering Anubis with a giant catapult or something. Oh, you know that would be rad as hell. Yeah, it would. But I do also think, when was the last time Sony Santa Monica got to make something that wasn’t a God of War game? I suppose it was PlayStation All-Stars. You’ll find their name variously on things like Flower and like Unfinished One and stuff. But I would, I don’t know, you kind of say the imagination on show. I would like to just see it on something that’s not God of War next time. Yeah, I didn’t even think of that, actually. Whatever that is, it’s like five years away anyway, right? We’re a long way away from that. But yeah, that’s how I feel. I just play this game constantly thinking, okay, these are some of the best artists in the world right now making this shit. It looks and feels incredible and I really appreciate the level of craft that goes into this. Like you say, too much craft, perhaps. But yeah, I would say just from this, I already feel like this is… I’m firmly in the second half of my enjoyment of this particular formula and I’m ready to move on. Do you like Richard Schiff in this as well, Matthew? You should ask about that as well. Very American gods, which I like. I like that they’re not trying to kind of play up to what your idea of these gods actually like. They’re just sort of… He’s quite kind of weaselly and unknowable. He’s quite an unusual presence when he turns up. But the opening to this game, that interaction where the antagonists just turn up and hang out with you, you’re like, oh, this is a bit different. This is exciting because you haven’t had any of that in the first game. And then it’s like, well, here are all the gods at once. And that’s exciting. I actually thought Thor was voiced by Josh Brolin. He isn’t. But he really sounds like Thanos. Yeah. He’s sort of like, yeah, that’s a that’s really good casting. So the casting across the board is really good, actually. I was like looking through the cast list and just being like, well, that’s pretty amazing. They got this basically a TV show cast to bring this to life. Yeah. Yeah. I too like the it also made me think like how vanilla like the MCU version of these gods are by comparison, like how much I fucking hate some of those interpretations. They want to so much spikier and weirder in this universe. And I really dig that, you know, the gods design, the visual design on them is great. Like they’re just slightly bigger than everyone. So they’re quite unusual. They’re there. They’re an odd bunch. Even the smaller ones leave quite impact. I like the gods. I’m just surprised they hold them back as long as they do really. It makes you finish a whole other game basically. Then the other game begins. Well, that’s that’s what I mean. It’s two games in one like the second, the second half of this game is an entirely self-contained story basically. So, you know, but you know, we get them all at once. Me only have to pay 60 quid once. Well, you didn’t have to pay 60 quid at all. So you don’t really have to complain. I love that. I bet they’re like, why did we give this fucker a recode? He just moaned about the fucking AOE attacks. I like bits about it as well. This is probably why I just stick to buying my own games instead of getting into these weird situations where I feel like I have to… I’m basically a bastard, then at the end I’m like, sorry. Those things maybe sit awkwardly next to each other. But it’s important for the listeners to know that I’m on the take, Matthew, that my opinions can no longer be trusted. It’s good to get that out there, I find. Do you think this is going to trouble your gaming the year list? I think I’ve got to finish it and then I’ll know. I think by default it will be… I think I’ve still played fewer than 10 games this year, Matthew, this weekend. Yeah. I think I’ve played slightly more, actually, if you count all the stuff I’ve played for 10 minutes on Game Pass and decided, ah, that’s all right, but won’t go on the game of the year list and then binned off immediately, which is, I think, something you’ve been doing too, right? Is there even a 10 this year for me? I don’t know if I’ve played an absolute outright, I love it, 10 out of 10. There’s definitely a couple of nines, which are easily on the list, but there are so many eights, and I don’t know how to deal with that. I would say Ragnarök is one of those eights for me. Yeah, I think that’s the thing. I was there playing it thinking, this probably can’t go top five for me. I just don’t love it. I don’t viscerally love it enough, you know what I mean? From your DMs, it didn’t sound like a top five game. I think I was just in a foul mood, because I just had a really busy week, and then I was going into another busy week, and I just played Chained, Cyberpunk and God of War 2018, and the entire God of War series, and I probably just needed to slow down a bit. And you’re watching All the Bonds. I’m watching like fucking shit, I’m dual wielding shit Roger Moore James Bond films and this game, and one’s probably making me angry at the other, do you know what I mean? That’s a game I want to see, Kratos has to kill all the Bonds. Yeah, like 007 Legends, but he turns up out of like a fucking portal and then beats them to death or whatever. Yeah, kills all the Bonds, Q he can kill, M, probably some money pennies because he’s politically incorrect Kratos again. Q he kills with his own toys as well, like he just pops the exploding pen in his pocket and then just fucking kicks him and he blows up or something. Or just like that cast in GoldenEye with the rocket that fires out of it, he puts that, straps that on and shoots Q with it, that could be good. Going down a whole other route there. Yeah, so now the pressure is on Matthew to assemble 10 games that can go in that list. It’s actually like, this is going to be the hardest year for this ever, I would say. Or at least the hardest year for us to date. I think that games that might have previously been an honourable mention in other years will probably creep into the top 10 this year just because out of a sea of aches it’s about picking the ones that you just loved, you found yourself loving. Yeah. Yeah, tricky, tricky. But that’s not to be ungrateful for this immensely packed thing. We complained all year about the lack of blockbusters. Got one and then complained it’s got too much blockbusters in it. That’s a good problem to have. God, I hope we’re not growing out of AAA. No, I don’t think so. Maybe AAA is growing out of us. That would be a disaster. I don’t think so. I just think that maybe some of the bits and pieces of AAA I find myself butting up against. That’s what I thought with the people telling me what to do thing. I felt like a hand at work being like, we can’t let the player miss a single thing here. And I get it in some ways. Some ways it’s about accessibility. By the way, my eyesight is fucked. So the fact that you can put giant text on in this and the accessibility options, massively appreciated. That’s the kind of accessibility I like. Get glasses. Well, yeah. Instead of accessibility modes, I just need a pair of glasses. Because the world doesn’t have accessibility modes. No, that’s true. Do you squint at train signs on platforms? There’s a lot of people I think are toddlers, and they turn into old ladies. But toddlers are tiny. Yeah, but some old ladies are also tiny. They’re not like two foot tall. No, but you get like a four foot, like 11 woman. A four foot toddler? What are you talking about? Maybe not a toddler, maybe like a 10 year old or something, you know? You’ve got a specificity of language. It’s important. Yeah, no, it’s true. Especially on a podcast, that’s all you’ve got, isn’t it? Yeah. You know, it’s like, what are those 13 year old toddlers called? Do you think Atreus is a toddler? We have to go back to recording these on weekends, man. I’m doing them on like weeknights and it’s just fucking, my brain is like scrambled eggs and I’m just like, I’m just like, you can hear me struggling to get to the end. We have to go back to the… We got Bond on Saturday morning. Yeah, exactly. Bit and big oof. Just got to crush 10 more fucking two-star films before we can do that one. Yeah, good. Excited about my Dying of the Day re-watch. Jesus Christ. The things I do for 800 quid a month, Matthew. Okay, good. Well, that was a fun podcast. I enjoyed that. Bit of a strange ending there. Yeah, we do very much enjoy… We both recommend this game still. What we listed was basically all our caveats from a game that we otherwise very much enjoyed. So as we make or break the success of this game, Matthew, it’s important to point that out, I find. Okay, we are done. Matthew, where can people find you on failing doomed social media platforms? I’m on Twitter at MrBattle underscore Pesto. I’m Samuel W. Roberts, the podcast’s Back Page pod on Twitter. If you would like to join our Discord, because you’re worried that Twitter is going down, maybe you want to keep touch with the podcast, if you just go on to the Twitter page, you’ll see a Discord link you can join, where I think 580 plus people are in there. Very nice community, no bastards. If there are bastards, they’ll fucking ban their houses, so don’t worry about that. And yes, if you’d like to support us on Patreon, get that PC Gaming Classics mini-series we were discussing earlier. That’s patreon.com/backpagepod. We really appreciate your support. And you can email us as well, I should say that, that we’ve got an email for longer correspondence when you don’t want the scrutiny of the Discord dropping emojis on your questions. backpagegames.gmail.com That’s everything Matthew. See you soon, goodbye. Goodbye.