Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, A Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, how’s it going? How’s the big quiche been? Big quiche. So for the listeners who won’t be aware of quiche gate, we bought a big quiche. Well, we didn’t buy it specifically for Samuel. We bought it for a New Year’s Eve thing, but then it wasn’t consumed. So we were stuck with this massive quiche, this massive frozen quiche that we had to defrost and cook. And then we thought Sam was coming around on Friday, so we defrosted the quiche. Only then Sam couldn’t come for various reasons. And then we were suddenly stuck with this big quiche. And I realized I didn’t like quiche. And so we’ve been begrudgingly having to eat this quiche, while Catherine has been having to eat this quiche, while I have alternative dinners, because I’m that fussy. So yeah, we are very much living in the shadow of the quiche at the moment. Yeah, that’s my favorite of the Eidos trilogy of Tomb Raider games, the shadow of the quiche. So yeah, it’s interesting, because I did want to come over and take some quiche off your hands. But I thought it might just be weird to be like, Matthew, can I come over, have a kilo of quiche and then walk off with it? And then like, there’s no other interaction. I just come to your door, collect it from your porch, then leave. Is that too strange? Are we not at that point in our friendship where we can do that? I feel like quiche should be the reward for like hanging out with us, you know? Yeah, you don’t just get it. Like you talk to us and then you have some quiche. If you just came and we just sort of handed over some quiche, like some sort of secret spy deal, I think that would have been odd. I do like the idea of incentivizing me to like hang out with you. Like you don’t need to do that, you know what I mean? Like your company alone is enough, but hey. Buy your love with savoury snacks. Soon you have one of those stamp card systems where it’s like, come around three times, you get a slice of quiche. Come around 10 times, you get a whole quiche, something like that. That’s actually, that’s a great idea. That would make interactions a lot more fun. I wish people, I wish friends had loyalty cards. I think it would incentivise people to hang out more, but yeah, I suppose it would be a little bit too transactional, perhaps, something to think about. Yeah, unless it’s a complete bomb, unless it ends up being the Bath, Octoberfest, or whatever it was, of friend loyalty systems, like no one engages with it. Or you engage with it like I did, and then they don’t give you a fucking prize at the end, when you’re like, you’re keeping this fucking dead horse going. You know what I mean? Me and my friend Andrew properly propped up Bath, Octoberfest. I’m fucking livid about that. Yeah. Well, I’m glad we can carry that bitterness into 2023. I think so. Speaking of bombs, anyway, welcome back to a predictions episode of The Back Page podcast. Nice. Yeah, nice. I’ve been working on that. Ever since people pointed out to me that there was a great segue opportunity, I completely squandered in the RPG companions draft, I’ve been like, oh, fuck, I’ve got to pick my battles more. I actually did set that up as a segue too. I know. And then didn’t I ramble about some fucking nonsense for five minutes instead? That’s like… Oh, that’s fine. That’s exactly why we’re not on Radio 1, Matthew. That and the fact that we know nothing about modern music. But yes, so anyone who’s been listening to the podcast for a while now will know that we do two predictions episodes a year. We do one at the start of the year, then one at the end of the year to see how we did. Me and Matthew come up with like basically half the list each. This year we’re doing 23 predictions for 2023. And yeah, it’s basically a chance to look forward. It’s an episode that’s like not particularly heavy on research for us or, you know, you don’t have to play a game for 40 hours. So it’s a bit light touch, I suppose. So we enjoy putting them together. Matthew, how are you feeling about doing another predictions episode? I feel like every year you tell me, well, my predictions are shit, this sucks kind of thing. It is just nonsense pulled out my ass. Like I don’t want people to think that they’re getting some kind of inside skinny on anything here. You know, I’m not an analyst. Also the kind of stuff people do predict isn’t the kind of trends we’re typically interested in. You know, like if you were going to make some reasonable predictions, they would probably be more like business related, rather than just complete shots in the dark about how certain things will turn out. I always think the episode where we go back to the predictions is the good one. So like, you almost have to kind of eat your vegetables here to have pudding. In December. So it’s like, I owe you one good episode in December in return for listening to this. There’s a classic Back Page frankness there. Just like shooting the, killing the episode behind a barn before it’s even begun. It’s good. Putting this next to Mailbag. I mean, the contempt for the listener is unreal. Well, it’s because I’ve got COVID, I need to fucking recover. I know, I know, I know. We needed this. Yeah, we did. We needed this at the start of the year. They’re two, like, risky episodes to me. Do you think that’s the drop-off in audience will be enormous? And then, actually, you know what? Our listership was slightly up for the last 30 days. It’s nearing, like, 30,000 downloads in a month for the first time ever. So I don’t know, Matt. It seems like a good time to kill that audience, if you ask me. And yeah, buy a Mailbag combined with whatever this fucking nonsense is. Well, I think people are putting up with this because they know that they’ll be the Game of the Year 2014, which should probably be good. Yeah, oh yeah, that will be. And also the the Excel episode on Rockstar Open World Games Ranks. That’ll be beefy, too. So that was my thinking. Build the schedule around the two beefy ones. I think people enjoy the predictions anyway. Do I know that? Do I have any evidence to back that up? I don’t think I do. But hey, what can you do? Got Gamescourt coming up as well. That’s more contempt for the listener, Matthew. This is great. Contempt January is the theme for the month. So, yes, how this works then is we’ll alternate doing different predictions for the year. There is no inside skinny that we have as a result. So there’s no insight here. It’s just a load of bullshit. But quite fun bullshit, I hope. So I suppose, Matthew, I will ask you one question to set the scene. How are you feeling about the gaming landscape for 2023? Did you look at the schedule and were you like, hmm, this is going to be a good year for Matthew Castle and Matthew Castle related games? It’s a good Back Page podcast year, I think. There’s a lot of stuff we like or resonate with or stuff which is related to things we’ve loved in the past. It feels like it should be a good year for us. And it kind of came out of 2022, sort of surprised that most of my playing time had kind of gravitated towards slightly smaller or more unusual esoteric fare. You know, was it just a bad AAA year? Or have I sort of fallen out of love a little bit with AAA? And this is the year to put that to the test, because it’s like, it comes none more AAA than the mega blockbusters that are lined up. This feels like all the stuff which stumbled or slowed down because the pandemic is kind of happening again. I think it’s like, I can’t quite tell just from a cursory glance, for example, what the indie darlings of this year will be. Like I can’t quite figure that out. But certainly when it comes to big blockbusters, it is quite an array of stuff coming out. There’s a lot of potential for it to be a good year. This finally feels like the year that the pandemic catch up has happened. And there’s stuff scheduled throughout the year, you know, it’s like the Star Wars game in March. There’s, you know, a potentially cursed Harry Potter game out in, I don’t know, I think that’s March or February. I can’t remember now. I think it’s February. You’ve got Dead Space remake in January. You’ve got Final Fantasy 16 in June. You’ve got I think Suicide Squad in May. It’s like basically just stuff all the time. It’s going to be like quite starfield, Redfall, like both in the first half of this year, apparently. I think you said Garfield. I did say Garfield. Did you really? Bethesda’s Garfield. Yeah, it’s like you play Garfield landing on an infinite number of planets. And just being slightly nonplussed with all of them. Right then. So we’ve got 23 predictions between us. I’ve got 12. Matthew’s got 11. Am I going first, Matthew? Is that what we agreed? Yeah, I think so. Let’s cook, baby. I’m going to try more catchphrases like that in the podcast in the new year. Just kind of give it a bit of like, a bit of zhuzh, you know what I mean? I’m not really. It’s a joke. Don’t unsubscribe. I promise I won’t. I regret it immediately. First up, Machine Games’ Indiana Jones game is revealed this year and features the voice of Harrison Ford. And it’s set across many years in Indy’s career. And they use some kind of ILM THX bullshit to change Harrison Ford’s voice to make him sound young in some parts of the game. So I think that like, there’s a lot here. But I think because as for the reveal of this Indiana Jones game that we know Machine Games are making, the creators of the most recent Wolfenstein games, that was, I think it was first revealed in 2020. It’s been a while now. And obviously there’s an Indiana Jones film out this year, Dial of Destiny, you know, what will likely be the last Indiana Jones film. I mean, Jesus, how much longer is Harrison Ford going to be able to do this shit? That’s, you know, an open question. I feel like at some point in that film marketing campaign, they’ll probably reveal the game. And I think one way they can truly set this game apart from the other Indiana Jones games is instead of having a good sound like they get the actual man to do it. And because Lucasfilm has been big on, you know, ILM, I think it has been big on like de-aging actors for various appearances in, you know, The Mandalorian and things like that. I think there’s potential for them to try and do something like this where it feels like a legitimate Indiana Jones thing. And the Harrison Ford factor just brings extra level to it. I can see Bethesda doing something like this. They kind of like using big voice actors in their games on occasion. What do you think of this one, Matthew? This is also one of my predictions. What all of it is? Pretty much. I wrote, Indiana Jones games will be revealed to be a first person adventure. It will have its own original story, which is rumoured to be set after Rays of a Lust Ark, which is apparently one of the bits of information that’s out there, but will include recreations of famous set pieces from the other films. It will use AI technology to recreate young Harrison Ford’s voice. Wow. Wow. We are so fucking in sync, man. I think we’re just in sync of what we want to happen. Yeah, that’s it. These are predictions, but they’re kind of like a wish list, really. Basically. We should call this 2023 wishes and then how many wishes came true at the end of the year. It’s interesting this because there’s been like little drips of information kind of over the last year in terms of, I think Todd Howard said he was quite heavily involved with this and had kind of pitched, you know, he’d wanted to make an Indiana Jones game for a long time and had pitched it to LucasArts like 10 years ago. I think also didn’t they say that the lead developer or the lead mind behind Riddick and The Darkness from Starbreeze has like come back to machine games to head this up, which would suggest it’s going to be in a similar immersive first person, you know, where you really feel your body and you can sort of see how the Riddick model would make for a good Indiana Jones game. The physicality of capturing like the whip or a fist fight or those set pieces where you’re kind of clambering around stuff. You could see that being great with the whole machine games slash Starbreeze thing. So yeah, whether or not we do see it this year, I don’t know. But I would think that’s what it will be when we finally see it. Yeah, I do think that like Harrison Ford is maybe slightly more compliant with stuff like this than he used to be. Like, he seems a bit more up for things maybe than he did like 20 years ago or so where it would have seemed impossible to get him to return for a game. The voice is important though. I think that that would sort of like mark it out from the other Indiana Jones games. But they would. I don’t want to hear old Harrison Ford coming out of young Indiana Jones mouth. Yeah, there’s a balance to be done there. But I agree that there’s something like this just seems seems, to be honest, you know, I say it seems like they have no idea, but I think it probably would happen in terms of timing of this year as well. You are looking at so the last game that were the last Wolfenstein for Wolfenstein game that machine games made alone was the New Colossus in 2017. It’s a long time ago now. And so you after that, you had a Youngblood, the co-op sequel that came out in 2019, which was a slightly smaller game. So this really feels like the year four years is surely the right timeframe for something like this to sort of break cover. Yeah, I really can’t wait. It’s like, I think it’s number one of my predictions this because it’s like the game I want to see the most. You know what I mean? I can kind of imagine what it is in my head, but I want to see it because it’s going to kick ass. Could be a massive first year, couldn’t it? Okay, good. That’s funny. Well, we’ve wiped out two predictions and one there. So that’s good. Well, that’s all right. So I think I think I had one more than I actually needed. So perfect. That’s good. So what’s your next? What’s your first one, Matthew? My first one is, I think we’ll see a similar. Some of these are going to sound a bit like last year predictions, because many of them didn’t come true. I still think they will happen, but I’ve tried to like move the thinking along a bit. I think in the way that we saw Konami announce like a big new Silent Hill push, I think we will see a similar rush of game announcements around Castlevania from Konami. I think within those, we’ll see a collection of the DS games ported so that they can be played outside of the DS, sort of a follow up to the advanced collection, but they’ll need a bit more work because there was some like DS touchscreen stuff that you’ll need to remove. So that’s Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesius, I think we’ll see together. I think we’ll see a new 2D Castlevania made outside Konami working with a big studio. Now, originally I’d put down would they go back to like Mercury Steam, but actually I think Mercury Steam who made The Lords of Shadow for Konami are kind of accounted for in terms of what they’re working on. Then I thought what about Moon Studio who made Ori, but again, they already seem tied up with another thing. Then I thought, what about the Game Kitchen who made Blasphemous, but they’ve already announced their next thing, I think they’re making Blasphemous 2 for Team 17. So I was hoping to have like a really cool indie studio to pair up with this proposed game, but I don’t have one for it. Only on the back of what was surprising about the Silent Hill announcements was the fact they were working with no code on that game. I thought, oh, maybe they’re really open to like giving this stuff out to like smaller interesting studios who just match the material really well. So I still think 2D Castlevania, not a Konami team, look out for it. I also think they’ll do some… I think they’ll make a game. This is really vague. I think off the back of the Netflix show, which people really loved and it kind of created, I think, an interest in like the lore and kind of characters of Castlevania, more so than the actual… than the games have probably succeeded themselves. And I wonder if they might make something which is a bit more like a narrative or like character led. I didn’t want to say there will be a Castlevania visual novel. But I think there will be something that leans into the kind of… the reawakened fan interest in the kind of characters of the older Castlevania games, whatever that will be. I don’t know. Yeah. I think that’s kind of plausible. I suppose like the thing is, you could say this the same sort of like, oh, is a revival on the cards of Metal Gear as well. I think that was one of our predictions last year. Or maybe even the year before, I don’t remember. But yeah, it’s like, it’s that thing of, I suppose, how much can it make it once? How much will it make it once? Will it prioritize Silent Hill because it thinks it’s a banker? But I agree with you that like, surely the Netflix series is an indication to Konami that there is more to be done with this. You know, I’ve seen that those like repackages they’ve done of all the different Castlevania games have done well because they’ve kept doing them, haven’t they? They’ve kept putting them out. Yeah. And like, are the DS ones the only real classics left to be put into a package like that, Matthew? I know there’s the N64 ones, but yeah. Unless they went down the route of like the 3D Castlevanias, which basically haven’t lived outside of, you know, the N64 or PS2. You know. Did you go to bat for one of those on this podcast? I went to bat for the N64. I think the N64 one is like a very early example of a good 7 out of 10. It’s a bit janky and a bit fucked, but it’s like super interesting and really memorable and it’s full of like a lot of, I would say, quite iconic stuff. I have a fondness for them, but I do wonder if they’re just too ass and like generally unloved to kind of create much of a thing, where the DS games, like they were, they were like not necessarily like mega sales successes, but they were like critically acclaimed. They were loved and anticipated. You know, and the only reason that stopped is because Koji Igarashi leaves Konami and they haven’t made another one of those since. There was that one that was on Apple Arcade. I’ve not played that. I think they did like a mobile 2D Castlevania, but I have like no idea if that’s good or not. The fact no one talks about it would suggest not. Yeah, there’s also the, I suppose like the thing with the DS ones is that those are like considered pretty much classics or at least a couple of them are right? And like, was it the first two that you liked and you didn’t like the third one? I really like Dawn of Sorrow. I’m less keen on the other two. People are really into Order of Ecclesiast. I think Portrait of Ruin is a bit of a buffer. But after Dawn of Sorrow, that is. But if you bundled the three of these up, I would be very, very happy. Yeah, they are like beautiful pixel art as well. Just like, you know, waiting and waiting to be sort of put onto modern platforms. So, yeah, I hope that that happens, Matthew, for the same reason. So you say that Mercury Steamer accounted for. Have they like alluded to making another Metroid or have they got some other thing they’re doing? I think they’re making something for 505 games, maybe. I think they’ve got a publishing deal with them. I just think that they like, particularly with like Metroid Dread, really sort of sort of mark their territory in this particular genre. Like they’re good for it. I know I love the 2D Mirror of Fate that they did. I thought that I thought that was that was really, really solid. I’m just thinking, yeah, I was thinking if I was looking outside, you know, if I don’t if I no longer had my 2D Castlevania team internally, which they don’t appear to really have, you know, you’re like, what’s your dream? You know, who would I like to work with? Who would you love this to happen? Because there’s the Castlevania Dead Cells DLC, which you’d say like, well, that would be a great fit. You know, Castlevania is a great fit for that team, but they already have that that expansion. I don’t really see that being a dry run for them making a standalone Castlevania game. Yeah, that 3DS Castlevania was like a real stepping stone on the way to a Metroid Dread, wasn’t it really? Like it’s yeah. Yeah. So I fucking hope there’s a Metroid Dread sequel being made by that team. You’d think so, right, because it did so well. But who knows? They might have a couple of different teams there. Mercury Steam, who knows, Matthew? But I suppose we’ll see. But yeah, OK, I do agree with you that that is the most likely route, though, to a new Castlevania being made is them just finding a developer who’s the right fit for it. And yeah, I didn’t go into the Metal Gear stuff just because I feel like if we do see anything Metal Gear, the rumors are pretty standard stuff. It’s like remakes and remasters and that’s all fine. But like that Silent Hill batch of announcements just really took me by surprise by like how ambitious and interesting it all sounded. And I just want to see that apply to like something else I love. So Castlevania. Yeah. Which of those, by the way, do you think is going to come out first this year? Like all first, generally the Silent Hill games. It’s probably, isn’t it? It’s probably the Blue Poutine Silent Hill 2, you think? It did look the most, the furthest along, didn’t it? Yeah. And also just to kind of like, if any of that’s going to stoke like wider interest or maybe like press reset a bit, you’d think that’s like the most mainstream of all the things they’re doing. Yeah, that’s true. It’s been quite a while since No Codes last game, Observation came out though, right, as well. So that could, that could sneak up, you know, that was like… Yeah, I mean, I will happily, happily take that whenever. Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure it’ll end up being the pick of the bunch. Okay, good. Good prediction, Matthew. So my next one is a Nier Automata sequel is revealed this year and it’s the best game Platinum has made since Vanquish. Bold swing here. So you and I have speculated before that the Astral Chain guy is the one working on a Nier Automata sequel, right? I think that’s something that we’ve had, we’ve discussed before, because there is a big project that he’s working on that is, you know, that they have teased in the various VGC interviews that Andy Robinson has done, Platinum. And I think that, like, because they put the they put Nier Automata on Switch last year, and the fact that the series remains consistently popular, there’s an anime that’s just launched on Crunchyroll, for example, I think that we must be at the point where they’re ready to talk about this. But maybe it will be something like revealed around E3 time, maybe towards the end of the year. But there has to be a Nier Automata sequel. It’s money on the table. That previous game is, I think, something like six years old at this point. It’s got to happen, and it’s got to be super ambitious. It’s got to be, like, got to be like a mega, mega sequel. So, yeah, this is the, again, I guess, from the Samuel Roberts wishlist. But it does seem like there has to be more to Nier than just a remake of the original, which is all they’ve done since Automata. Yeah, and that wasn’t Platinum either. So it’s not like that was distracting them from making whatever they could be making. Exactly. So, yes, I think that, like, Nier Automata, I think something you can say about it is it’s a game where you can see the seams somewhat. It’s not like, you know, when you compare the budget of it to something like an Assassin’s Creed, you can obviously see that Nier is compromised in different ways, like the kind of bare bones way that some of the environments feel, that sort of thing. But obviously, no one would argue it doesn’t have an amazing amount of kind of like spirit and personality. That’s the kind of real magic of it. But the idea that they could go and make something that actually feels like, you know, comparable to a Final Fantasy or something in terms of scale, that feels like where this is going to me, where it’s like, you know, Nier Automata was the stepping stone and this is like the big blockbuster. Now Matthew, I know you’ve not really played the original that much, have you? Which is interesting, because I thought it would be your sort of thing. But how do you feel about this prediction? Nier Automata? Yeah, did you finish there? Yeah, I’ve not mined all the alternate endings and things. I’ve played through it a couple of times. Yeah, I really liked what I played of it, but I completely get where you’re coming from in terms of there’s room for improvement. When they made it, it was a bit of a gamble. The perception is that it is bigger than they thought it was going to be. Oh yeah. And so that you can head into a sequel with more confidence and more budget and tighten up, that all makes perfect sense to me. Any world where Mr. Papier-Machehead gets to do lots of weird trailers and press conferences is always good. You know, gaming needs its eccentrics. And it’s quite well behaved at the moment. So the idea of having that kind of slightly loopy weirdo doing his thing. That’s cool. I’m on board with that. Yep. It’s sold 7 million copies, Nier Automata. That’s a very rare blockbuster breakout these days. That just doesn’t happen. And I remember before that came out, not being mega confident in it. I was like, ah, you know, Nier. We’ve discussed Nier before. I think it came up on game review scores. We got wrong, the original Nier. And you and I didn’t maybe super dig it like a lot of people did. And then, yeah, it was a true surprise that this was as good as it was. So, yeah, this is the time. This is the time for a Nier or Tommaso sequel. So that’s my prediction. What’s your next one, Matthew? There will be a Super Mario movie tie-in game. This is one of mine too. Oh, right. Well, my prediction is it will be the next 2D Mario, not a 3D Mario. So is mine. Mine says, mine is New Super Mario Bros. returns in time for the Mario movie dropping. Mario movie dropping, which is a three-star joint at most. I mean, I hadn’t done much thinking beyond that it would be 2D. It just made sense to me the kind of trappings of it. I think what they’re pulling from is more Miyamoto Mario than necessarily like the wild imagination of what was EAD Tokyo Mario. The film doesn’t have like big Galaxy or Odyssey vibes. It’s quite trad Mushroom Kingdom stuff. I think it would be a bit of a waste to take the 3D Mario team and make them work in that world, which is the more kind of like iconic, but better behaved Mario world. They’re better working kind of on the sort of fringes of their imagination. Hard, hard agree. Would it be a Mario game which has the voices from the films? I don’t know if Nintendo would ever do that, but maybe aping the story or like taking us to the particular kingdoms or locations that you see in that film. I could just, I could just see them. Like, why wouldn’t they want to capitalize on that? Because you get the feeling that however that film works out quality wise, it’s going to be a monster. The buzz and excitement and the way Nintendo are talking about it, they’re treating it in quite a classy way. Yes, it’s very easy to dunk on the voice cast and the casting of it. That’s all fine, whatever. But it really has the feel of like this could be a film that makes a billion dollars to me. Yeah, I do agree with you. And I think they’re like whatever else you want to say about it. The animation quality looks incredible. Like it’s, you know, it does look like it was signed off by Nintendo, you know, it doesn’t look like they just took the license and made their own thing. So, yeah, I think as a kind of like authentic feeling product in many ways, it will please people. And yeah, well, you know, will it be a good film? Probably not. I don’t think so, because I think most kids animated films are shit these days. Yeah, I don’t think it would be good. But I do agree that as like a kind of a place to sort of launch a new 2D Mario game, it seems perfect. I could assume doing something like where maybe you get like a kind of DLC with the film characters or like, you know, it’s like an optional mode where you can switch on movie Mario or something like that. When you’re right, you know, if it’s a new Super Mario Bros. game, it could be co-op and you could, oh, you could pick regular Mario or movie Mario, that sort of thing. And something like a 2D Mario game feels like a good place to sort of isolate all of that, like you say. But yeah, you know, I’m not, I think we’ve talked before about how neither of us are like big 2D Mario people anymore. But yeah, I do think, I do think that something like this tying into it is spot on. Like, yeah, they can say, you know, we’ve got the, you know, New Super Mario Bros. Wii U like here, repackaged if you want to go buy that. But it seems much more likely they’d launch a new product off the back of it, doesn’t they? So yeah. Yeah, you think so. What I don’t want to see is them do it with Chris Pratt voiceover and then Charles Martini releases an 18 minute video that was looked like it was filmed on his phone. Looks like a hostage video of him slamming Chris Pratt and how he was done over by Nintendo. That would be awkward. Yeah, I don’t think that will happen. But dropping Bible references as he goes. One of the most cursed artefacts of 2022, that video. What an image of the man that you paint here. That’s really something. The star of the prologue of the game was starring Michael Douglas, Matthew. How can you say such a thing? Yeah, okay. Good. Good. I agree with you. I suppose I have to announce that pretty soonish, right? Because the film’s out in June or July or something. So they’d have to be like, oh yeah, here it is. Here’s the game. But that’s not inconceivable for a 2D Mario, is it? Okay. Next prediction. Suicide Squad kills the Justice League, radiates bad vibes until the last minute, but ends up being a game of the year contender. So yes. Radiates bad vibes. It does a little bit, right? Yeah. Because the two of the lead devs have just gone. They’re like, see you, we’re going to do something else, which is a really awkward message to put out there. The fact that the Suicide Squad, I like the journey that that IP, which I hate saying, has been through since they started working on that game of a terrible David Ayer movie, a fun James Gunn movie that absolutely bombed, and now it kind of like feeling like the Suicide Squad have no cultural cache at all. It’s a weird environment to launch a game into. That’s not Rocksteady’s fault, obviously. But when I was watching the trailer for when they revealed the late Kevin Conroy playing Batman in December, which was a good trailer, the character interactions just had very 2016 energy to it. You know what I mean? There was something about it. But you have to remember that these are absolute masters of cinematic action gameplay. They are so good at this shit and they have waited years and years to make this. Really put the time in and I don’t think they’ll put something out that’s disappointing. I think this could be really, really impressive even if the tone maybe takes them getting used to. So that’s the thing. What I’m saying is don’t count out Rocksteady. It’s been a long time coming, but I don’t think this is going to be like another Gotham Nights. I think this will actually be proper legit. What do you think, Matthew? I could see that. I mean, I’ve seen the little gameplay bits they’ve put out. I don’t think I’ve watched any of them twice. It was like, okay, I can sort of see what that is. I think the thing they’ve got in their advantage is that yes, the James Gunn one was definitely better than the first one, but I still don’t think there’s like a definitive suicide squad that exists in many people’s heads. You know, it’s not like this game is competing with a huge… it’s not competing with the success of a film, which is what has happened with Marvel a couple of times now. Avengers, people compared it when they don’t prefer the films. Guardians of the Galaxy, the game had its own voice and did those characters as well as the films, maybe, but I still think the stink of the film’s success kind of got in the way. This doesn’t have that, so maybe that will work in its favour. People don’t have those preconceptions. I like their version of the Batman universe. I thought it was absolutely fantastic. So, you know, I have confidence in their character work and how they represent these characters. I have no skin in the game when it comes to Suicide Squad, really, but I think that will be a big defining factor is whether people can get over the what is the correct version of the Suicide Squad and maybe it will become this game, who knows. I think it will help that they have the entire Justice League as basically boss characters throughout this. That alone could give it quite a tonal distinction. Yeah, and that’s a great hook. You know, the idea of you have to take down the most iconic characters of all time, that’s pretty awesome. Yeah, and some of them I don’t think they’ve shown yet either. I think they’ve just shown Batman, Flash and maybe Superman. They’ve shown a bit of Wonder Woman, I don’t think they have actually. So you know, there’s a lot of potential there and I agree that if anyone can overcome the sort of baggage of an on-screen version potentially overshadowing the game version, it is Rock Steady because they did it before anyone, right? Like you say, the Batman games released them, you know, amid the most critically acclaimed Batman films ever made and still managed to stand out. So yeah, I do agree with you. That’s a good call. What’s your next prediction, Matthew? My next prediction, oh, and this is really lazy and it’s just ripped off the internet of something that probably will happen. Which is Kid Icarus Uprising Switch port will happen. My wish is that that would lead to another Kid Icarus game from Sakurai. Obviously, this year he gave a sort of sly nod to an Uprising port where at the end of one of his YouTube channel videos he went, wouldn’t it be nice if someone ported Kid Icarus Uprising? Which given the fact that those videos are put through Nintendo, checking and everything, you think, well, would they let him say that if he wasn’t thinking it or it wasn’t happening? Especially because those videos are like, here’s a review of my cat. And then at the end he’s like, by the way, Kid Icarus has been remade kind of thing. So that’s, yeah, that makes sense. Namco Bandai have apparently been hiring for a team working on a remaster of a 3D action game for Nintendo. If that’s not this, I have no idea what it is. Surely they couldn’t be remastering the Bandai Star Fox game Assault. That would be like, that would be the maddest thing to happen. That just can’t be a thing that happens. I do like that, Dosh in the Giants gets redone. Yeah, it doesn’t really count as an action game, I suppose. That I’d be up for, but their Star Fox, nah. I wanted something that was probably going to happen on my list. That’s good. Yeah, it’s good to get to the end of the year and be like, oh yeah, I got one thing right, like I did with Yakuza last year. Right, yeah, I get you. And it’s a thing I’d like to happen, you know, uprising, fantastic game. I do think for me, some of its appeal does lie in the fact that it was the all singing, all dancing 3DS game and like did 3D amazingly well and I’d be interested in how it held up without the 3D because it’s also quite a portable experience, you know, it’s quite bitty levels, it’s quite short bursts of fun. So I don’t know if it would lose something, we’d have to like modify it in some way. You know, he has in his videos and other interviews Sakurai has talked about things he would change with that game in the past. The idea of something which maybe takes a bit of a hammer to it and does something a bit more with it, particularly like the on foot sections, which are a little bit long compared to the fun of the aerial shooting sections, you know, there’s potential for more there. I think it would be nice to see this excavated because we discussed this before, but this, the original Kid Icarus Uprising released when the 3DS wasn’t doing so hot. And so it actually never became like a mega mega seller. It kind of like, I don’t think it even got put in one of those like players choice style lines. So you always had to buy a full price basically. So yeah, I think that that is that that means that it’s still quite underplayed. I do honestly like, it’s so synonymous this one with touch screen control, I just can’t I can’t really picture exactly how you make it as compelling without that. But yeah, but then, you know, again, like this, this, there is probably some version of this that does work. Yeah, I just think the original control scheme was more him trying to come up with a solution to the fact that the 3DS didn’t have dual analog sticks. So you know, I can sort of see how, you know, lots of people have said, why, why isn’t there a mode on this that just lets you, you know, on a new 3DS or whatever, use the analog nubbing to aim it or whatever. We shall see. But it was a cool game. Like I’ve said this before, but like weirdly Western in its feel, like action wise, that the pacing, it’s a very cinematic game for a Nintendo first party game. Like the story and the voice acting and the volume of like cinematic happenings is quite unusual. Yeah. Is it? Oh, it’s classic. Oh, the soundtrack to this game is, it’s unreal, it is so good because they did basically sort of did what they did with Smash Brothers, but they got loads of composers in to like work on different tracks. So there’s all these different musical styles, but like big band versions of the Kid Icarus themes are super, super jolly. It was obviously the dialogue was written by that funny man of Twitter and America. Mike Drucker. Yeah, that’s the one. A legit funny game this, so. Yeah. Yes, please. That’s good. Okay. I’m excited for the third re-release of Pokken Tournament from Namkai Bandai instead of this, so that should be good. Okay. I can picture myself being in an E3 conference hall when something like Pokken Tournament, the third remaster gets announced, and just the room being like, ugh. Yeah, proper like GameCube era Pac-Man E3 room vibes kind of thing. Also like the idea that every time Matthew predicts something on this, you’ve got me at the end giving it like a horrible reality check and bitching something much worse. Just not really a good sportsmanship, is it? Okay, so my next one, is this a boring one? I think it is, actually. I do apologize in advance. The Oculus Quest 3 is released this year with some killer games and marks a breakthrough in VR adoption, but the reveal is weighed down by some metaphors nonsense no one wants. So I think that the release of PSVR2 is going to accelerate like Meta’s plans to release a new standalone VR headset. The Oculus Quest 2 is a really great bit of hardware, but I think it’s going to be, I think it’ll be like three or four years old by next year. So the idea of them making something that can handle more graphically intensive games as VR developers are starting to focus their attention more on that type of stuff with PSVR2 seems quite plausible to me. I think the headset would be more expensive in order to do the things that it does, which is potentially something that could put people off. But I think that like now Meta has accumulated enough sort of big-ish studios like Ready at Dawn and the developers of Asgard’s Wrath and the Iron Man VR developers that it seems plausible to me that they could have quite a bumper crop of stuff ready for a new VR launch and this could be the year when it happens. So I think this will be like a key year for VR in terms of like it’ll either really, really happen this year or it won’t happen. But I think that people will kind of be up for it because it will kind of… I think like VR is starting to be counter-programming to regular games and how they work because the stuff that you play in VR does not tend to be like 10 to 12 hour stuff or open world games that last for 40 hours, that sort of thing. They kind of exist as its own thing, sort of almost like how the Wii existed alongside the 360 and the PS3. I think there’s something in that. But at the same time, meta is still obsessed with metaverse stuff that I can just see them being like, oh yeah, you can play games with it, but also you can become a poorly rendered avatar and to walk around these cursed virtual worlds. That’s like my only fear for it. It’s like, we’ll be like, yeah. And then like, oh, please stop kind of thing. So because Zuckerberg can’t help himself. But who knows, Matthew, we will see. Any thoughts on this boring prediction of mine? No, well, I’ll throw in my VR related prediction. I sort of agree. I think this will definitely be a bump here. I think the key to it is that someone will allow there to be a subscription service of some kind on one of the VR platforms. And that will be the key to unlocking it. The problem I have with it, and I think the problem a lot of people have with it is you look at how cheap and readily available games are on like traditional platforms. Then you look at VR games. They are shorter, but you know, they still require a lot of effort to make a lot of developers to make them. They’re still quite expensive. I think there’s a bit of a pound per hour issue, whether or not there should be. I think there is. So I think someone who kind of gets on top of the idea of like buying into VR with a subscription game service, it will work wonders. I think that could come from a couple of places. I think Sony could be quite canny and work VR stuff into PS Plus, which would put them in a good place. My PSVR experience was I bought a headset, bought the Batman game, played it and then didn’t ever buy anything else ever again. And I think you need a reason to keep it in play and something like that would work. Microsoft are already working with meta in that Game Pass is coming to MetaQuest in the form of xCloud streaming so that you can stream and play things that would be available through streaming like in a bit like how you could watch a film in a virtual theatre. They’re not making VR games, but they’re making a way for you to see your games in VR, if that makes sense. It doesn’t take a huge leap to go, well, what happens if they did bundle up some popular VR games into Game Pass and were allowed to run those on MetaQuest? That would be really appealing to me. I can buy one of these headsets and then by having this subscription I already have, I have access to 15 VR games. Or Meta themselves, you know, do basically like an Apple Arcade and find a way to bundle up some older stuff. I think the people who have to watch out for it the most is PSVR too, just because none of the old games work on it again, because you’re starting from scratch. It’s quite a big ask. I think of people who’ve invested once already in PSVR. So something to lighten the load of that and go, here you will always have something to play on us. That would really speak to me. Again, it’s a wish list rather than a piece of industry analysis. So there is actually a VR subscription service that exists if you play on PC, Viveport it’s called. It’s basically like what? Well, this is how poorly researched this is. It’s easy to miss because it’s a PC VR only thing. And so obviously you can’t use it with a Quest 2, which is probably the best selling VR headset. Maybe PSVR is higher, but I don’t think so. There is precedent for this. You basically get a thousand plus VR titles when you subscribe to this thing. And it’s like $12.99 a month, which is pretty good. This makes me look very dumb, Sam. No, because there is no version of this on the MetaQuest 2. You do have to buy all the games, like you’re saying. You know, it is arguably quite costly. They do quite a few sales and if you can, you wait a little bit. Like I got, I think, 30% off that Iron Man VR game and it only came out in October. So, they will do sales and get ready for a good price these days. But I agree with you. I think something like that is key, because it feels dear somehow to drop the same amount on a game for VR that you would for like a Nintendo Switch game, for whatever reason that is. And I think it’s because, like, however you look at it, the VR headset is kind of like buying a peripheral or fancy peripheral. So, your upfront costs are already pretty high, no matter how you do it. So, yeah, the idea of something that is like, yeah, more of a subscription-based service does seem like it would make sense. This seems like something that probably the meta could do when they launch their next VR headset, because they have a whole bank of stuff already. They can be like, oh, if you pay 10 quid a month, it gives you a reason to keep checking in, you know, we’ll give you all the Beat Saber DLC if you stay subscribed, that sort of thing. These companies have to be looking at Game Pass and thinking, how can we do something like this for VR? Here’s a bonus prediction. I think that you’ll hear more about a Valve standalone VR headset this year as well. And I think I imagine this, but I think they said that maybe the Steam Deck was like one step in them thinking more about this, about standalone hardware. And so, yeah, it feels like that, you know, people really fucking like the Index as a VR sort of platform. But the idea of you could access all of your Steam VR games and, you know, basically use your headset as like an open sort of platform to access, you know, all the VR games you have on different platforms, that could really work quite well. So, yeah, I think we’ve ticked VR off there, Matthew, as a bunch of stuff, a bunch of poorly reset stuff. Yeah, I just feel bad for wishing for something that already exists. I wouldn’t feel too guilty about that. I knew what you meant. It’s all good. It’s all good. So let’s swiftly move on. What’s the next prediction? Starfield will be merely fine, but will be an unusually smooth launch for Bethesda game, not a cyberpunk sized shit show. I think we know too little about Starfield to make calls on how good it will be. I personally, I think it’s just too early. Yeah, I just think the stuff they showed of it just doesn’t like massively speak to me. And I just feel the constant pushing back speaks to something where they’re like, ah, fuck, we just got to get it over the finish line. I don’t know. Well, it sounds like the scope of it probably is like, you know, requires fucking hundreds and hundreds of QA people to iron out the kinks, right? Like that’s bound to be part of it and they were making it over the pandemic as well. So, you know, it’s yeah, yeah. Well, quality aside, the thing I was really trying to draw out was more is that I think it is the kind of quality of it, or the kind of performance or whatever of it at launch. I think post Cyberpunk, people won’t let that happen again. Right. It’s too damaging. It’s too precious a thing. It’s too much of a key title to allow that to happen again. Because originally I wrote, Starfield will come out and will be a Cyberpunk style disaster. But then I thought, actually, no, that isn’t what I think will happen. I don’t think it can happen. They’d be mad to let that happen. I love you looking at one of your predictions and going, no, I disagree with myself and then changing it. I disagree with myself. Well, you know, I just, surely it couldn’t happen again. Yeah, I think that’s something like… Microsoft depends so much on this. Like, basically, they’ve got away with not making any games last year or releasing any games by just constantly saying, Starfield’s coming, Starfield’s coming. Like, it has to land. Someone has already forgot Pentament, clearly, Matthew, but… No offence to Pentament. All the big Pentament heads. Deep into the Bavarian history. Yeah, okay, very good. Yeah, I think this will be good. I think the big thing about all of the different planets, I think they’ll basically amount to a new version of the Skyrim Radiant Quest system, where you can just go and do infinite numbers of, basically, fetch quests on planets if you want to, but there are people who will want to do that and just go to a planet that’s been, it could be a certain sort of color or things like that and do some nice digital photography. I think that the exploration aspect of it isn’t necessarily tied to the idea that you have to play it infinitely and do an infinite number of busywork quests. I think it’s kind of like they’ll tell you where all the key planets are for the story, but then you can wander off the beaten path if you want to and find a whole universe of stuff out there. I think that could work quite well if you’ve got the right guiding hand through the game. It’s sort of hard to get a grip on what the setting is, right? It’s like kind of realistic, sort of like a realistic, like Expansed style sci-fi setting, maybe, you know what I mean? Where it’s like, it’s more going for plausible than Star Wars, you know, kind of hard sci-fi. Bits of it they’ve shown, it feels like a little bit, you know how like Mass Effect 1 was like a little less kind of overblown? Yeah. It was a little bit more sort of straight and sort of serious, and then it kind of lent more into the kind of poppier characters in the second one, I think. I wonder if it will be a bit like that, but yeah. Very hard to say, I guess, about the quality of the game, but I just can’t see them allowing this to be like a mega like emergency landing, really. Speaking of Bethesda stuff, do you see the GamesRadar interview about Redfall with Harvey Smith? That’s quite intriguing. Massive. Yeah, it was the one where they sort of said, think of it more as Far Cry than Left 4 Dead, right? Yeah, and the play area is gigantic compared to Prey, for example, which was obviously that team’s last game. It’s quite an interesting interview, actually. Like a rare kind of interview where you shake a developer and a lot comes out kind of thing. So, yeah, that was quite interesting. So, yeah, big Bethesda year and therefore a big Microsoft year. All right, I’ve got a Starfield related one coming up, Matthew. I’ll save you for a little bit and then we’ll come back to it. Okay, this is the year Sony hard pivots into making, trying to make big multiplayer games happen. So, okay, for a little while, they’ve been sort of like, honestly, threatening, but like, certainly brandishing the idea of live service games being a thing they’re doing and like, almost like, the way it’s phrased almost sounds in opposition to the big single player stuff that Sony has basically built a modern console empire on, right? Like, this is the stuff that’s really defined them. And so there are like, you know, murmurings of like a Horizon multiplayer thing, a Last of Us multiplayer thing. And like, I think the Last of Us one is basically confirmed, right? I think there’s something like that in the works, like some kind of co-op thing or multiplayer thing. So that is going to happen at some point. I think that Sony wants more skin in this game, basically. And I think that whereas if you’re like me, you kind of want to see, you’re absolutely happy to see basically like, you know, two to three massive single player games every year from Sony, that’s fine. This year, I think you’ll start to see them push more in a different direction and make multiplayer things happening, which does, I must say, doesn’t I’m not not totally excited about as someone who kind of enjoys a bit of the old single player narrative bits and pieces. Yeah, that makes sense based on the people they’ve bought and yeah, the rumblings of where they’re going. Does it particularly speak to me? No, not really. I don’t have time in my life for these things. That said, to see them like branch out into something, you know, I find the, you know, their narrative formula is beginning to get a little worn out. So the idea of doing something and going in a different direction is like, yes, thumbs up. Some of their worlds feel like they could have held different or other games in them, you know, like they didn’t necessarily all have to be, you know, there’s like the tension in say like a Horizon to be both this very kind of character led thing and also this vast huge open world space, you know, doesn’t always sit together particularly neatly. So the idea of just going, you were going to set out to make this entirely different thing. And where does that take us? Could be interesting. Yeah, sounds smart. I mean, it sort of sounds like something that we sort of know is coming really. Yeah, they’ve said that they consider live service games to be games of no end and they plan to release 12 such titles by 2025 fiscal year. So it would suggest that a bunch of them are going to come out this year, right? And it has been a while since the Naughty Dog thing happened. So yeah, I think this will happen. Yeah, I do agree with you a little bit on the single player front. So you’ve got Spider-Man 2 this year, right? And I think that is all that’s really from them that’s kind of known. But there could be more, I suppose. We’ll see. We will see the shape of that this year and people will either like it or they won’t. And then things will kind of go from there, really. A very, very uninteresting prediction from me there. What’s your next one, Matthew? Oh, well, speaking of uninteresting predictions. I owe you one good episode in December. I owe you one good episode in December. Remember that, listen. I think Netflix games will start to succeed where other mobile subscriptions have failed. I think it’s quite well created, as it is, and if they keep that level of quality up, it would be just an interesting library of games anyway. You know, the fact that it has Immortality and Kentucky Route Zero on there, that’s kind of interesting. Turtle Shredder Revenge is coming to it as well, so some pretty decent chunky stuff. The big problem it has is no one knows it exists and no one knows if they have a Netflix subscription. They also have access to some quite rad stuff because it’s hidden on a mobile app. That’s a big battle they have to overcome. The interesting thing, though, is they’ve acquired a few studios and they’ve worked with some of the biggish names and Netflix has some pretty juicy franchise stuff that they could play in those worlds and have some fun with. They’ve made a couple of quite shit Stranger Things 16-bit Zelda likes, which are just real phoned in mobile phone fodder. They have some of the biggest entertainment properties on the planet, so if they were to pair those up with some actual gaming ambition, I think they could make some cool stuff. I’d play a Squid Games Zero Escape, a visual novel, for sure, that would be rad. I can think of all kinds of fun things or fun people you could give franchises to, if they just have a little bit of ambition. I just feel like Apple Arcade just isn’t going anywhere, and the Android version is just very blah. They’re kind of… I can’t even remember what it’s called, the service that you subscribe to to get access to loads of games, but it’s just like all the games you’ve been playing for the last ten years kind of just shoved together and it’s very shapeless. I think Netflix are actually in a position to kind of fill it full of cool stuff, add cool stuff only they could have. And the fact that it’s tied into a movie subscription service that most people have and most people are generally happy with, it just feels like the best place for this to succeed. Yeah, the stuff is like… I think it’s starting to break through. So, if you look at Immortality on the Netflix, if you click on it and it goes to the Play Store and shows you the page, it’s been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Which is not bad, because I think it was released a little bit after the versions on console and PC. So, some people are finding this stuff, Point P, which I did play a little bit last year. I must admit I did find it slightly too frustrating, Point P, but that was like an original… I suck at it. It’s good, but I suck at it. Yeah, yeah, that’s it. It was obviously very nicely made and stuff, and it was cool that they got Devolver to make them an original game, basically. But yeah, so… You could say all the Point P heads. I know Scribd is a big Point P head, so yes, didn’t quite do it for me. But yeah, they’ve got Moonlighter on there as well, that game about running a shop. So they are dabbling with this stuff. Is it just on Android you can play this stuff? I only have Android, so I’m not quite sure. Because I do kind of wonder if there’s a question of like, will you eventually be able to play it natively through the Netflix app on your TV, for example, and then hook up on the job? Well, they are meant to be experimenting with streaming games through Netflix. They’ve definitely done more experiments with interactive content than any other streaming service. Yeah, they’ve also bought the Oxenfree developers, right? Night School. So that Oxenfree 2 will presumably just launch on Netflix alongside the console and PC. Is that not out yet, Oxenfree 2? That’s meant to be coming out this year. Yeah, but it’s not out yet. Fuck me, that game’s been in development for so long. Yeah, it’s been a while. They made that game about running a bar in hell before that, right? That was like a few years ago. Oh, After Party. I didn’t like that. I didn’t play that one. But like everyone else, it was like one of the big Indies, Oxenfree, wasn’t it? Netflix bought them and went, Oxenfree 2 is now Stranger Things game. Reskin it. Yeah. It’s got a similar tone. Yeah, yeah, it definitely does. Yeah. You can really see the crossover there. Or it’s Oxenfree 2, exactly as it was going to be, except Dustin from Stranger Things is just there. And he has like no real role in the story because it’s been too produced and scripted at this point. So he’s just there doing his catchphrase and everyone ignores him. Yeah, just kind of awkwardly cut in sort of dialogue kind of thing. Yeah, I can see it happening. Yeah, I think this is a solid prediction, Matthew. Every time I look on there, there seems to be slightly more stuff. And I assume that will continue and it’ll be a mix of original things they make and games they get ported to there. It’s a bit odd as a strategy, but like because it doesn’t, you don’t have to pay any extra for it. I’m kind of on board with it, you know. And I do agree that like you don’t hear about Apple Arcade as much, right? Like, two years ago, I felt like you really heard every time there was a big something on there or, you know, like an original Sakaguchi game or whatever. And now you don’t hear about it as much. I don’t know if that means there’s fewer titles on there. Yeah, they’re sort of filling these like plus versions of pre-existing games because one of the things you can only be on there if you haven’t got like microtransactions or whatever. So people are making versions, you know, taking games which do and maybe stripping out and then it becomes the plus version for Apple Arcade. But, you know, it’s like on its way to becoming just a dumping ground like the Android service that no one knows the name of. The thing that Netflix is a little bit cursed is the whole you go into the Netflix app and then it kind of pulls you into the Android store. It’s not the most satisfying experience. It’s a little bit. It feels a little bit like janking or like where these things actually live on your phone. Hacked in a little bit, you know. My next one. Actually, did you see over the Christmas holidays, lots of stuff was coming out about like Netflix cancelled so many shows that people loved last year and then there’s this been fact doing the round about like the most important metric to Netflix is and it is watch time, but it’s specifically watch time in the first month. Right. Like the first month is what decides a show’s fate. So now you see these fan communities who are basically like setting up streaming bot farms to stream their favorite show, like the day it comes out for a month because they’re like, what we all need to do is we need to get Warrior Nun and we need to watch it 24-7 for the whole month that it’s out. And you’re like, this is mad. Yeah. Don’t do this. You can’t fight the algorithm. Don’t even try, you know. I just like the idea that Netflix wouldn’t be able to tell that that’s what was happening. Like, I’m sure they’ve got sophisticated enough stuff that they’re like, well, this person’s watch that, you know, all they’ve done for the whole of June is watch just The Sandman. They’ve wasted a lot of electricity. A lot of electricity wasted there. But they have seen The Sandman 45 times. Whereas I kind of wait, I tend to wait 30 days to start a Netflix series to see whether it gets cancelled or not, which is like- Well, you’re not part of the problem. No, I’m not. You need to invest early. No, I’m not. They are, they are the problem for like making that their, the way they decide things. Like- If you had any interest or respect in Netflix shows you’ve watched from day one. I think I did cram in a couple of Sandman’s before the end of that 30 day period. Because I think Neil Gaiman was tweeting about, oh, this month, this first month is really important. I was like, oh, shit, I better get this, I better like, you know, chuck my fucking chip in the, in the pile just to make sure that, you know, my vote has been registered. But yes, I am pro Sandman. They’ve cancelled so many big shows in 2022. I had an idea of a new reality TV show where like, if you win, your show comes back. And it’s like the showrunners competing in like a Britain’s Got Talent to like bring back all the stuff that didn’t make it. I think that would be great. There’d be some real varying levels of physical fitness going on there, I think. Yeah, but that’s it. You know, like, I want to see the showrunner of Warrior Nun go up against the two showrunners of 1899 to like fight for their show to come back. Well, David Hayter is one of the writers of Warrior Nun. Like, so maybe he can join in. It’s like, oh, you think that the creators down then Solid Snake jumps in with a fucking haymaker or something. Like I just… Yeah, I like that idea. That’s really good. God, it’s a bit, it’s a little bit dystopian, all that, isn’t it? The good thing about the more nascent streaming services is they’ll renew things before they’ve even had an audience. Do you see that with Apple a lot where they’re like, we’re making four seasons of Sea with Jason Momoa. And I’m dubious that more than 50,000 people have watched that TV show globally, you know what I mean? I don’t really see there being an appetite for it. But yeah, Netflix is a lot more, well, hey, you know, we are in like recession times and, you know, yeah, the streaming gold rush had to come to an end eventually. Anyway, next up from me, a Nintendo Switch successor is teased right at the end of this year. Maybe the game was, I don’t know. So is this going to happen this year, Matthew? We have, you know, surely the bookend game of the Switch generation, the second big Zelda open world thing, you know, in Tears of the Kingdom launching in May. Surely after that, there’s not going to be like loads and loads more Switch games. You are looking at the six year mark this year, and then next year after seven years surely feels like the right time that a Switch successor comes along. And I think the idea of it being teased this year is plausible. I don’t think they like necessarily reach sales saturation with the Switch, but Nintendo tends to have a habit of like continuing to sell hardware after they’ve launched a new bit of hardware anyway. So I don’t think it matters that people are still buying the Switch as such. I think they’ll still have something planned. But yeah, seven years feels like the right time to me. And so seeing it this year feels plausible. What do you think? That feels about right. I was looking through kind of all the Switch Pro, Switch 2 rumors to try and work out where I sort of sat on all this. And the boring point I came to was I’ve never had less of an idea of what Nintendo would do next than I do now. Timeline wise, I think that makes perfect sense. What the hell it’s going to be? Probably the temptation is to carry on the kind of Switch form factor. The fact that they’ve basically recalibrated their whole company to be focused around one piece of hardware, they’ve merged their handheld and home teams, you know, which they famously did before the Switch. They can’t lose the portability or the home element of it. It’s just too beloved. It’s too established an idea, I think, for them not to make quite a boring safe follow up to it. You know, who or what drove the mad innovation before and the desire to try something new constantly? You know, they didn’t just do a simple Wii 2, but the idea of a Switch 2 sounds inherently un-Nintendo like, but it is also, like, I think the thing they have to do. I just hope that they don’t drop the ball and misread the room in terms of legacy gaming on it and how those things carry over. I think things have changed in how people think about this. I think Xbox have made such great hay from this guarantee if it plays now it will play forever in our ecosystem. The idea of a game collection that stays with you just feels so established and it goes against Nintendo’s desire to just resell everything and make you buy updated versions of everything. I think they could get away with it on Switch just because everything bombed so hard, no matter how good it was, that there was no embarrassment in reselling it to a whole new… most people who bought Mario Kart 8 haven’t played Mario Kart 8 or owned it before. I just hope it does everything on Switch, I’d love there to be something where I have a huge Switch collection and it’s on day one a little bit better. Again, the few kinks and hiccups that we’ve begun to see in the last couple of years due to hardware limitations are like ironed out, my wish is on day one I can plug Tears of the Kingdom into my next Switch or Xenoblade 3 into my next Switch and see it running slightly better than before. I’ll be going to say Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity, that’s the one you tend to. Oh well definitely that, I mean that game runs like an absolute pig. That would be nice, but god knows what it’s going to be, but timing wise it just makes sense. The idea of there being like a Switch Pro or something that lives alongside the Switch and that they still have to make games for the Switch for the next however many years, it just doesn’t seem feasible to me. No, I don’t think so. I think the Wii U was such a disaster that it’s maybe spooked them from the big concept gaming console or gaming handheld. I think the idea of something where the games can be easily ported from PC or PS4 or whatever to Switch, is they realize it’s too appealing. Because the thing is obviously they generate money for every digital purchase that people make on Switch. So they will see the upside of not making it hard to develop for. And if you decided to have a Wii U again, where you have like two screens or something, you are suddenly shutting off a massive part of that market. I think that I would assume that Nintendo has learned from that. Now I’m not saying that like there’s not something exciting about Nintendo’s traditional approach to making hardware that does something exciting. That’s why the DS was so amazing because they took a gamble with it. People didn’t think it would work. And then the games that made the most out of that system were our all time favorites that we discussed in this podcast all the time. So, you know, like that stuff has has like definitely like made hay for them in the past. But I think we are in a different era. Like you say, I think this kind of this kind of just needs to be the same thing again. Maybe you do something different, like peripheral wise of it. But I don’t think that like the idea of a 16 nine console that plugs into your TV, like handheld console bugs into TV, that can’t change now. It’s like it’s just too big to walk away from. Yeah, yeah. And like, the good thing as well for Nintendo, the incentive to have continuity between those libraries is that it’s like, yes, you can’t necessarily like repackage Mario Kart 8 Deluxe again and resell it to people, but you could you could I was thinking this, I was going to make one of my predictions, they re-release it with all the DLC tracks included as Mario Kart 8 Ultimate. Yeah, and it runs at like 8k or something. Yeah, I am. That’s, I suppose that’s not out of the question or they sell some kind of upgraded version that you pay like 10 quid for if you own it and then yeah, we’ll see. But the thing is that like because of the way the digital marketplaces work, they can just keep selling that forever. Plus, they’ve got to fucking make a new Mario Kart at some point, right? Like, just do that instead of re-releasing old stuff. Yeah, yeah, I suppose we’ll see. Yeah, so I think this will happen this year. And I do like my Yeah, it’s not a bold prediction, but I do think it’ll be the same thing again, but more powerful. And it’ll play all your existing games. But I don’t think Nintendo will bother doing the, it will run better on it. I don’t think they just, they don’t seem like that kind of publisher to me. You know what I mean? They don’t think about things in that terms. They don’t think what’s our days gone and how do we get it running at 60 FPS? Those kind of leaps speak to me so much because it’s so fun rediscovering like your old library. That’s where Xbox has just trumped everyone this generation, you know, with regards to backwards compatibility. It’s just a treat seeing what happens when my games from 10 years ago, I popped them in. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of that, Matthew. Oh, actually, no, because it’s not my prediction. I was going to do a segue, but it’s not my prediction, it’s yours. Good radio, innit? What’s your next prediction? My prediction is about Tears of the Kingdom. Not really, but based on anything other than one detail in the trailer. I think it’s actually going to have the shape of a more traditional Zelda quest embedded in the map from Breath of the Wild. I think it’s going to be like seven big dungeons job. Maybe you tackle them in different orders, but I think they’re going to tackle the criticism that the last game didn’t have like the big traditional dungeon showpieces. You know, it had the ancient beasts, which were kind of like, you know, its version of that. But I just think that’s going to be a thing that happens. In the trailer, there’s an image of someone with seven doodads, which practically looks like a Link inventory screen. You’re like, I can see you collecting those seven things to activate this thing to get to the final boss or whatever. It’s not going to dial back the kind of like survival-ish gameplay of the first game or the exploration freedom. I think it’s just going to embed a slightly more traditional Zelda thing into the mix as a, not an evolution of it, but a kind of nod to another side of Zelda that people didn’t get from the first. My big dream was that this was going to have a big seafaring element to it and that there’d almost be a sort of a wind waker within it. Maybe either launching from the coastline to go to lots of islands or maybe given that the map has changed or, you know, seems to have been physically scarred by whatever’s gone on in the story, that there may be like a flooded region. But in the trailers, what they’ve shown, you know, it seems pretty comprehensive in terms of this really does look like the old map, but maybe with stuff under or over it. So I’m kind of cooling on my sailing angle and going for something slightly more conservative but that I could see them doing. Yeah, that’s fair enough. It’s actually quite funny that we know so little about this game at this point when I feel like when the publicity cycle for Breath of the Wild was so much about like, let’s get this and press his hands, they can mess around on the first bit of the map and see how it works and stuff like this. People are in the weeds of YouTube trailer analysis about really granular stuff and it’s just such a different proposition. It’s hard to tell whether they’re keeping it quiet because they’re about to ramp it up massively in the run up to launch or if there are secrets they just want to keep. So it’s kind of a mystery. But I do think that what you say about dungeons is probably true. It’s another way they can flex their design muscles and give you new things to see if perhaps it is reusing the original map to some extent. So yeah, I can see that Matthew. Okay, good prediction. I’m really excited for this game. Yeah, it’s just going to be a massive event. I keep forgetting it’s coming out. I don’t know. I feel like I’m not allowing myself to get excited because the concept of a sequel to the best game of all time is like, I just can’t, you know what I mean? I can’t quite fathom it. But that’s the thing, the time that they’ve spent on it is that how much of it was misspent, how much of it was panic, how much of it was fuck, we’ve got to make the sequel to this fucking thing, because that would be my fear, is that they’ve been paralysed by not knowing what to do with it. Six years, though. It’s a long time. It is a long time. I know they did a little bit of DLC, but it wasn’t anything too substantial or that exciting. The detractors of Breath of the Wild are willing this to be a glorified DLC pack that they can dunk on. Then you’ve got a big chunk of the internet who’s like, this is going to be amazing, but it’s probably going to be knobbled by tech issues, because the original game could stumble at launch on Switch. So now, can it possibly work? That would be sad if that were to happen, but… That thing ran out of Wii U. Let’s have a bit of faith, I reckon. It’ll be good. I fucking love skydiving. Maybe it’ll be the game that actually gets the Skyward Sword concept and does it justice. We’ll see. As someone who has a lot of firsts, Skyward Sword stock, I wish you well in that endeavor. Okay, my next prediction. Sony unveils native PlayStation 3 backwards compatibility for the PS5, leading to a broad reappraisal of the Resistance trilogy. It’s a little rumor a little while ago that I think that maybe they did actually hire someone who was working on, who specifically was hired to work on emulation compatibility and stuff. I think Sony further builds out its PS Plus tiers element. The thing that’s going to really set it apart is actually deepening that back catalog. It’s something they’ve not done in the way that Microsoft has. And I think that you have a whole generation of games just sort of sat there. A lot of these have been salvaged for modern platforms, but not all of them have. And it feels like it’s a kind of novel angle to get people more invested in paying for that stuff. Really, this is my kind of joke gag entry because the idea of the Resistance games coming back and being sort of reappraised is quite funny because they are brown shooters from the noughties that I feel like me and three other people liked. So, yes, I think this also like the idea of only being able to access games via like cloud streaming. It just hasn’t seemed to have the appeal to people that having backwards compatibility has for Xbox. It just isn’t quite seen as the same thing. I think that’s pretty much fair enough. As someone who played God of War Ascension via cloud streaming, Matthew, what was your take on it? It was hard going. It’s not the optimal way to enjoy not the optimal God of War adventure. Yeah, a very cursed endeavor that. So yes, that’s my gag one, Matthew. What’s your next prediction? My next one. Oh, this one’s so shit. I had no idea where I was going with this. It doesn’t even matter if this is true or not. I was thinking about how many Warriors games there have been, like Hyrule Warriors, Fire Emblem Warriors. I was thinking, I wonder what the next tie-in Warriors game could be, because there’s not currently one on the books, as far as I can tell. So my big prediction is that there will be a Warriors tie-in for either Lord of the Rings or Star Wars Clone Wars. Oh, what? Okay, interesting. Explain your workings. No, I mean, I was literally, the logic behind this, I was like, I was looking at my last few years predictions and was like, I can’t repeat these. I was like, what fucking thing haven’t I talked about? And I thought, oh, Warriors games, that’ll do. And then I sat there for all of five minutes going, what licenses have big battles that make sense with the Warriors format? The Warriors format, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is you play superhero, kind of historical figures fighting thousands of people. So it basically suits battlefield scenarios. And I was thinking, oh, if I had a big license, if I could have any battlefield license or a license which had a big war scenes in them, what could you do? And I was thinking, well, Lord of the Rings and cause rings are the powers, but it’s in the kind of public conscious again. So maybe that would work. And then I was like, oh, Star Wars, Clone Wars, people like Star Wars and Clone Wars is the bit of Star Wars which has big battles in it and like war. I assume it’s in the name. I’ve never watched it. Yeah, this is based on fuck all. It’s absolutely abysmal. You know, look forward to putting in December. I wanna see a poorly rendered Frodo Baggins battering the shit out of like 400 goblins while Gandalf with the same voice actor as Lubu rides in and batters the shit out of people. As I’m saying it, I was like, are they’re quite Western franchises for a thing which has tended to go JLPGs and things. Maybe I should have rethought that one, but listen, you know, you tried brainstorming 2023 predictions while you’re eating your lunch at Milk Bun. You’ve become a big Milk Bun stan these days. I thought it was just all right. Oh, I’m into Milk Bun. Oh, the sides are better than the burgers, I think. Like if you had the cheese fries, they do. Oh yeah, I have the cheese, they’re amazing. Fucking hell, that’s like the best side I’ve ever had. And like we had quite bad service there. We waited some like 45 minutes for the food and they treat it, you go in there and they kind of treat it like it’s fancier than it is. And the burger I thought was just okay, but the side was like life-changing stuff. That cheese, man, fucking hell. Yeah, I like the burger. I think we’re on a slightly different page when it comes to burgers. Right, okay, what’s your take on burgers then? Well, note in that, I know you’re a big Magu guy. Yeah, well Magu is really, like the Magu I think gets the flavors right. That’s the thing, like is it good? Oh, it’s a bit rich for me. Oh, okay, fair enough. You’d like a slightly more lean, sort of like scale back. I like a more anemic, unambitious burger done well. Well, no, but I’m like that too. I judge all burger places on the quality of their cheese, but like a basic bitch cheeseburger, basically. And like, that’s why I love Magu, is because their burger sauce is really, really good. And their cheese is really nice. And like it, that’s a great, simple burger done well. But I tend to find that if I go for any more complicated burgers on most menus, it’s slightly disappointing. Cause I do just want to see a basic thing done well. You know what I mean? It has to be the height of my natural mouth opening. I don’t want to have to like extend my jaw to fit around some giant stacked monstrosity. And I don’t want the embarrassment of having to eat it with a knife and a fork, which happens when it gets too stacked. I mean, I like basic bitch Schwartz Brothers. So yeah, it’s like, it’s a bit a bit overhyped as well. I think that we went in there the weekend it opened and there were loads of people there. And there was like a couple of families, three young kids. And I thought, why are you wasting these fucking fancy burgers or these kids? I don’t care. It’s going to McDonald’s on the way home. Like it’s, they’re not going to fucking appreciate having like, you know, really rich cheese fries and like, you know, truffle cheese burgers. But that’s very bath. Yeah. Having like an artisan burger place you can take your toddler to. Yeah. There was a yen sushi, which used to quite enjoy sadly shut down over the pandemic. Like when you see like eight year olds having sushi and it’s like, you don’t appreciate this. I didn’t appreciate sushi until I was like 18. You know what I mean? Like it’s, you’re like wasting 24 quid on like a toddler who just doesn’t know any better. You know what I mean? That’s me calling an eight year old a toddler. That shows how little I know about children, but still. Yeah, well, we all know that you have problems with this. Are you sure it was a toddler and not a benchaner? Yeah, it’s like when I got up close, it was a 94 year old woman, which is difficult. She’s old enough to appreciate sushi. That’s good. I can tell how bad my glorious prediction was that it pushed us down this burger tangent. Oh, I did have something to say about this. Do you think Final Fantasy is a more plausible offshoot for this sort of series? Because it feels like that’s something that’s not been done right. Have they done a Dragon Quest one? I don’t know. I don’t think they have, actually. But that feels like something where they kind of look for, they did Persona and they’ve done Fire Emblem. What else are the big Japanese RPG adjacent things? Yeah, I guess so. Because off the top of my head, I wouldn’t have said Persona was a great fit for it because you’re never overwhelmed with enemies in that game, which it just fits the militaristic setting of like Zelda or Fire Emblem. Yeah, Final Fantasy would be a lot more iconic. Yeah, that would make a lot more sense than making a Warriors tie-in for Rings of Power. They should do a Rings of Power tie-in and on the character select screen, multiple characters are just named Sauron, question that. Until you get to the end of the campaign and work out which one of those fuckers actually is Sauron. Yeah, it’s like Sauron, Sauron, Galadriel, Sauron, Sauron, Lenny Henry, and that’s the character selection screen. Very good. Okay, good. I enjoyed that prediction because this is wild. The Clone Wars thing in particular is quite wild, but I’d like to see it done. And we are in the era where there’s meant to be more Star Wars games, so yeah. This is really based on nothing. That’s good. This is based on me going, hey, Catherine, which licenses have battles in them? Poor Catherine. And she’s like, I’m trying to eat a fucking burger, Matthew, you know what I mean, and run a website. So my next one. Game pass increases in price for the first time as Starfield launches. All right, all right, Piers Harding roles. The roles are all beneath my chest, Matthew, and stopping me from breathing. Yeah, so this is like, I feel like this is bound to happen at some point, right? I don’t think game pass has ever increased in price from $7.99 a month and $11.99 for the ultimate tier. And that’s been at that price point for a long time. And the time you surely see something like this change and it become like 10 quid a month or something is when a game is bigger, Starfield Launches, because you know everyone’s going to sign up to it to check that game out. What do you think of this one, Matthew? That makes perfect sense. Last year, you were kind of like, the price isn’t going up, but they didn’t release anything. There was no PR moment. They could have possibly raised the price last year and justified it. This year, though, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, Piers Harding Tubby Rolls out. That should be a new strand of this podcast. Piers Harding Tubby Rolls. Piers Harding Rolls, for those who don’t know, he’s an analyst. Yeah, I don’t know. I just, yeah, that’s a fucking dumb joke there. But yeah, I think this will happen. I have nothing more to say about it. Next prediction, Matthew. There will be a Sega Saturn Mini announced. Oh, I hope so. That’s one I would actually buy, you know. I actually don’t think it will happen because… How is it a prediction then? Well, so the only, like, when they put out the Sega Mega Drive 2, there was like a survey in it of like, what would you like to see next? And it had, you know, like Master System, but it also had Saturn and Dreamcast on there. So that maybe suggests that there’s a timeline where this does happen. But the guy who like heads up their mini console projects has said in the past, like, the reason we did, like, Mega Drive 2 rather than Saturn or Dreamcast is that they would be very, very expensive. There’s this quote that does the rounds where he talks about, like, in pandemic times, the chipset would be so expensive that it’s just not viable to do a Saturn or Dreamcast. Now I don’t know if that means it won’t ever be viable or, like, things will level out after the pandemic or we’re now in a position where this could one day happen. But the fact that there’s that questionnaire glimmer of hope, this is one I have very little experience with the Saturn. I don’t think I knew anyone who owned one. And it’s something I would like to get to know through a mini console. It’s definitely something I would buy. Yeah, I mean, I bought the Mega Drive 2 because it had Mega CD stuff and I had no experience of that either. So, you know, the idea of, like, here’s a thing from your childhood that you didn’t interact with is very, very appealing. Yeah, I feel like Sega take these things really seriously as well. Like, the Mega Drive 2 was quite an esoteric lineup, wasn’t it? It felt like a collector’s piece. In fact, I think it just sold out on Amazon and they never restocked it. Like, it just came and it went and that was it. And you have one of them, which is baffling still, but hey, I’m very happy for you. Yeah, I would love to see this too. I agree with you. Like, there surely is, if you were like, oh yeah, we found a way to bring Panzer Dragoon Saga back, you know, that would get so many people to buy it. And it doesn’t seem that niche when you compare it to the likes of like a PC Engine mini, you know, and things like that. Like this is kind of where these things are trending. They are trending away from the, oh, we’ve done the Ners, the Snares and the Mega Drive for the first time. Now it’s time to do some more in-depth things. And there really does seem to be a market for this stuff from collectors. So yeah, I agree with you. Like I would like to see this too. Like it’s, I wonder, yeah, it’s interesting to hear about the chipset because you’d think that this stuff, a lot of this stuff is emulated on Steam Deck and Anbernic handhelds fairly well. So actually, no, I think Saturn emulation does have some, does have some tricky issues. But yeah, I mean, I don’t know, surely we’d need to release a £200 console to like get people to be able to play a Sega Saturn in like 2023. These things are about a hundred quid when they come out, right? Like, you could see it being 150, say, is it because it’s going to be a more complicated thing than before. Yeah. I do also like the idea that like, we need to rename this episode from 2023 predictions to 2023 things that may or may not happen, because you don’t believe your own predictions. That’s good. Well, that’s what prediction isn’t. I guess a prediction is it will happen. Yeah. There’s a hard fact that this prediction has to kind of hurdle over. But yeah, I did wonder about like, a GameCube mini or something, something to kind of sort of fill the period between Breath of the Wild 2 and Switch 2. Something just to have like a big shouty Christmas theme. But you feel like that would be a big distraction for them. And I’m still holding out for GameCube to turn up on Virtual Console. I still think bolstering their online subscription service would make more sense than selling a bit of plastic that you play for 10 minutes and then never again. Oh, is there even a fucking GoldenEye on there? How long have we been waiting for that now as well? Why is the PR campaign for GoldenEye on Virtual Console like the length of Cyberpunk 2077? Just put the damn thing out. Anyway, yeah. I was hoping that would drop over Christmas, weren’t you? Just give it a bit of GoldenEye would have gone down great on Christmas Day, wouldn’t it? One of my predictions last year was that it will be out in 2022 and we’ll play it for five minutes and be powerfully underwhelmed, so that rolls into 2023. I think you’ll play it and be like, oh, yes. Yeah, I did actually. One of the predictions I cut off this list was GoldenEye comes out and Millennials complain that it’s not as good as they remember on Twitter, but then that was too similar to your one. So yeah, I think we’re missing the end. Okay, my next one, Final Fantasy XIII and its two sequels are updated for modern platforms. Now you can play these games on Xbox backwards compatible, no problem. But I can see Square Enix being like, we’ve got all the other Final Fantasies out onto the Nintendo Switch, etc. Now it’s time to get the three slightly cursed HD era RPGs out, which are quite interesting. They’re all very different from each other. The first one is a very linear, but like quite trad feeling Final Fantasy game with a great sort of class system. The second one is a really weird and wacky time travel game with like a kind of like monster collecting element to it. And a bunch of different- And a very sexy chocobo lady. Oh God, chocolina, fucking chocolina, man. And then the third one, Lightning Returns, has like a counting down a day element, like a timer element. I’ve not played this one, but it’s a game that I think people who like it just really like it. It’s got people that are going to go to bat for it. But I feel like it came out after the PS4 launch and there wasn’t that much interest in it. But I think there’s like, there is something to be gained in like excavating this and putting it everywhere. You can play this on PC too, but I think like Switch is the one where people kind of want to see all those Final Fantasies in a single place. So that happening this year doesn’t feel implausible to me. Small prediction, but one I think might happen. Thoughts Matthew? Yeah, I mean, I’ve only played the first one. So yeah, up for this for sure. There’s a big Chocolina head as established. What’s the next one Matthew? E3 is back, but the E3 experience will grow even more fragmented. I think the idea of E3 being back and being a solution to the kind of horrible E3s we’ve had the last few years where everyone’s sort of doing their own thing. I just think it’s going to be an official E3 voice in the mix and everyone will continue doing their own thing. You know, I obviously wish my former employers read Pop well with their relaunch of E3, but I just can’t see it being the same thing. I think E3 or the summer announcement period, probably a better way of describing it, is just permanently broken and fragmented now. I think some people are predicting a big war between E3 and Summer Games Fest. I don’t think it’s going to be as spicy as that. I think it’s just going to be you have to watch twice as many streams as you normally do to pick up on everything, which is going to be very, very irritating. I think just the upside that Sony and Microsoft have seen of direct marketing, just having a live stream where it’s all there, people will watch it and they’ll base buying decisions on those streams. That’s the power of them now. They are like, they don’t need to be in a room that’s got loads of people in it to do it. That could definitely bring a bit more of a sort of like, we just discussed this on the Excel episode about E3 moments, but having people in a room reacting to something is the one thing that you have been missing the last few years. It was what set aside, for example, the God of War 2018 reveal when people saw Kratos for the first time and were like, oh my God. Those things define E3 and that has been lost as we’ve kind of gone to this live stream sort of approach to doing things. But yeah, I do agree with you. It doesn’t seem like you can put this back in the box. It certainly doesn’t feel like we ever get to the point where it all happens in three days again. You know what I mean? Like it really didn’t used to be like Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and then you go to E3 for three days and then it was over. And like, yeah, I can’t see it now because you were away last year when me and Jeremy did the roundup of the games. I watched so many live streams that I felt really exhausted by the end of it. And like, you know, I do enjoy watching the like wholesome game stream, for example, but I don’t know if that needs to be around E3 week. That could probably just be like in July or May or something. Yeah. So yeah, I’m a big Warhammer E3 guy these days. That was that was quite fun. Skulls where they put all the Warhammer games and you see Space Marine 2 and stuff like that. That kind of like theming I quite like. But when it’s I just think like Jeff Keighley so sort of established himself as the voice of game hype now that it’s going to just be very you are in competition with him. You know, like when he started off when E3 was a thing and he was just doing like his little side streams or whatever, you know, he was kind of it almost felt like they sort of tolerated him and and you know, people were there so they may as well pop across the road and go and do half an hour his bit or whatever. But he really has eaten a lunch now when they weren’t doing it proper and like the Game Awards last year, you know, whatever you think of them, they were just so like big and mad in terms of like the people that were there and the money that was clearly spent on it. Like fucking like Al Pacino was there still mad to me. Great trailers as well, like actual like it just felt like, oh, well, this is the thing, you know, if there is a video game Oscars, you know, this is this is the closest it will ever be. You know, like this is this is going to be that you can’t you can’t kind of compete with that. It kind of it kind of needs to be the same thing, like for the consumer’s sake, really, like it needs to be like there is a show floor element. Maybe that’s what like the you know, the actual E3 party is and then there’s the live stream stuff that is the Geoff Keating stuff. Those to me that feels like he is going like he was like last year turning into a kind of an E3 of sorts like there was an event people were invited to, you know, journalists went to Geoff’s thing and played the demo. It basically like turned Judges Week into a more formal event. And that’s that’s the seed of like an alt E3. That’s what I really want. I want literally two E3s on either side of a road competing journalists are like, oh, it’s not it’s no longer a question of like, which hall is my next appointment in? It’s which E3 is my next appointment in? Oh, God, it’s the other one. And this will be a big litmus test as well for like an in-person E3. Like, it’s how many people exhibit and then how many people actually go. This will be like, it’ll either live or die this year, I think. Yeah. So yeah, I’m with you. I like an in-person E3. So I hope it kind of goes off. But yeah, I just don’t I don’t know about two weeks of like 25 live streams. I just I don’t know if that’s the only that I mean, there’s so many good things slip through the cracks because they’re like, I know I’ll go up against the Sony stream. It’s like no guerrilla collective don’t do it. It’s not going to happen. Yeah, yeah. I’m with you on that one. Okay, good. That’s a good prediction, though, Matthew. Yeah, by 2025, there’ll be 19 different E3s and it will be yeah, we’ll be doing our own back page E3. What would be at our E3 or Randy Newman talks about it. Randy Newman falling out of the car. Hotel Dusk HD, of course. Barack Obama. I don’t think people even remember my one because your one like canonically overwrote my big Sammy Holden. John Mulaney. That feels a bit like mid compared to Barack Obama, doesn’t it? You can see why people remember your one. That’s good. Back page E3 coming 2024. I look forward to it. Just drop us a line if you’d like to reveal your game with us and we’ll see how it goes. Okay, I’ve only got two left now because my next one was going to be the new Super Mario Bros. one. We discussed that. So my next one is Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind remake gets announced. So if there’s like one thing that Bethesda has been able to bank on in recent years, it’s been able to port Skyrim to everything and it’d be a massive success because there is still going to be probably five years before you see Elder Scrolls 6 come along, which was announced a long time ago. Now, you know, like Starfield has to release and they have to go make an entire Elder Scrolls game. That feels like a while away. The idea of excavating an interesting kind of like almost cult favorite sort of like early noughties RPG and putting it into the Skyrim template more, you know, giving it that kind of quality of life, first person experience thing, feels like it could be like a big a big smash and then they’ve got another Elder Scrolls. They could just keep rolling out onto other stuff. And this this feels like the one where remaking it is like is plausibly doable and not like a complete headache. So I think this will happen. And there was some rumor that they set up a studio to do this. But I don’t know about I don’t know about all that. But I just I just feel like there is money on the table still with Elder Scrolls and the idea of tidying people over until the next one comes along seems plausible. Thoughts, Matthew? Not a series. I have like a huge amount of like level connection to so like, you know, I have no desire for it to happen, but I think you make a very feasible case for it. Good. Well said. What’s your next prediction? Yeah. Well, my last one was was a very desperate attempt to I was just going to guess what the top five games on Metacritic are going to be. Oh, yeah. Go for it. I want to hear this. This is more fun than predictions. I think the top five scores on Metacritic for 2023. I think it’s going to be Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. I think it’s going to be Hollow Knight Silksong. I think it’s going to be Resident Evil 4 Remake. Oh, yeah. Now, after this, I was going to pick two other upcoming games. I was going to probably pick Final Fantasy 16 and I can’t remember the other one. Final Fantasy is always a roll of the dice, you know. Yeah, you know, but I just got I got a feeling it’s going to be like properly good 16. Yeah, same. Based on very little, but then I looked at this year’s Metacritic Top 5 and I remembered that actually, like, what happens is games that are really good from old years come out and they get really over scored. Like the two highest scoring games this year were Elden Ring and Portal Companion Connection. So I was trying to think, well, what could get announced this year? What could happen this year from old years to have high scores? And so I think one of the other high score games of the year is going to be Half-Life Alyx on PSVR2. And this one’s a bit boring, so I apologize to end on this on this low note. I think there’s going to be a very high scoring cyberpunk complete edition. Oh, interesting. You think they’ll get like a big reappraisal when that DLC drops and they put it back? Yeah, I think the DLC would be good. That’s also influenced by one of the highest scoring games of last year was The Witcher 3 complete edition. Isn’t there always some fucking Out of the Park baseball 2024 that gets like 96 or something on Metacritic as well? I could see that make in the top five, you know? It’s just interesting looking at last year’s. It’s pretty conservative. The top five games is like Portal companion collection, Elden Ring, Persona 5 Royal on Switch, The Witcher 3 complete collection and then God of War Ragnarok. First party, I don’t think it’s going to be Starfield. I think Starfield is going to be like low 80s. Forza, Forza always scores high. Motorsport, I think that will come out. But that’s very, that’s just boring. I can’t imagine. I just, that’s too boring to be to be a 90s game, surely. But it’s going to look shiny as hell, right? They’ve been making it for years. Spider-Man 2 feels like it’s got a cap of 90 to me. All right. Yeah, I guess like we don’t know what its big idea is yet, right? Like there’s, there’s got to be something else. If it’s New York again, I just, I’ve got no interest in it really. That city is so exhausted. The thrill of swinging around New York is sort of done. What if they build some dungeons underneath it, Matthew, and some floating islands above it? Well, now, now we’re talking. If there are seven dungeons and a Wind Waker style ocean in the river. Oh, that’s really funny. Sailing to New Jersey. Does Spider-Man ever like go out of Manhattan into the, into the boroughs? Um, I think, like, I can’t really remember a sort of like New Jersey Spider-Man comic, you know, or like, you know, that, yeah, I just, it doesn’t necessarily come to mind, but you kind of need some tall buildings. Just the idea of swinging around flat Brooklyn doesn’t really do it for me. It’s got some big-ish buildings and nice rooftops and stuff. I actually don’t know what they’ll do with that. It is one of those unanswerable questions when you have a big franchise, but the environment is kind of like part of the IP. That is tough to overcome, but it makes me wonder if there’ll just be a load of venom shit that’ll stick around Manhattan to try and give it a little bit of a facelift. But I think it still needs something more than that. So, yeah, hard one to call, Matthew. I enjoyed that, though. Was there any other numbers you want to throw in there? No, so while I feel bad to pepper my top five with re-releases, I really do think that is just how Metacritic works. Like, it’s interesting, if you do that fantasy critic league thing where you basically pick games and then the Metacritic score is how many points you get at the end of the year, they don’t let you pick things which are re-releases or ports because they’re established successes. You know, if you remove Half-Life Alyx, which hasn’t even been announced, if it is a thing, and Cyberpunk from the mix, then yeah, I’d say Final Fantasy 16 feels like a good bet. I can see Forza Motorsport being a high-reviewed one, even though it’s not for me. Yeah, okay, good. I enjoyed that list. I think you’re probably about right, to be honest. Resident Evil 4 is a bit of a risky one, maybe. I think as long as they’ve done the whole game, which they probably have. It sounds like they have. If anything, the word is that they’ve expanded the Final Island section a bit. Oh, fuck, that’d be good. That is quite a brisk section, I suppose, but by that point you’ve been playing it for 16 hours, so it’s fine. But, I don’t know, we’ll see. I can’t wait to play that, actually. That’s out in two months, isn’t it? We can just play that. That is reassuring. Okay, cool. My last prediction, then. Last prediction here from Piers Harding Tubby Rolls, me. So after Tears of the Kingdom releases, there’ll be an avalanche of celebratory Zelda bits and pieces that are revealed towards the end of the year. And I think among these will be a Link to the Past remake for Switch. So you had Link’s Awakening, right? And you could have seen the Oracle’s games being done, but there’s two of them. There’s maybe like, they are like beloved, sort of like critically, and they definitely have like a big fan following. But I think that the bigger fish would be tackling a Link to the Past in the same art style. So was it Gresse who did that? I think it was Gresse, wasn’t it? Yeah. So I could, this would be a more ambitious project. You have like, you know, a lot more map to make basically and like a different sort of art style in the, you know, when you switch worlds basically to accommodate for. But I feel like this is, this is kind of the game that had the GBA sort of re-release and it’s readily available on like, you know, the virtual console stuff that they do. But I feel like something that pushes it along a little bit that updates it like this could be, that feels about right to me. Like there’s, that has to be on their minds a little bit of like, I don’t know, they did the 3DS versions of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. And if it quite gave A Link to the Past the same treatment, what do you think, Matthew? Not something I thought of, but that’s a really great shout. Yeah, I mean, that would just do mega, mega numbers. I mean, Link’s Awakening is loved, but Link to the Past is still like the main event. I think one’s a good trial run for the other as well. Like, because it sold, I think it sold super well that Link’s Awakening redo. I would assume that would give Nintendo confidence to take that to the next level. So that’s my last prediction, Matthew. I’d like that to happen because then people can play it for the first time in 30 years and go, oh yeah, Matthew’s right, the dungeons in this are pretty bad. So yeah, that would be nice to be vindicated by Nintendo. Yeah, that’d be good. Yeah, your Zelda list, yeah, just stand the test of time. Okay, good. Well, that’s it, Matthew. We did the predictions. Was it good? Was that a good episode? I don’t really know. I think we had some last long ones. I think it was alright. I think we covered some good ground. I was secretly thinking about what will make good discussions in pudding episodes, and I think we’ve covered a lot of the trends. We’ll be able to talk about E3 and subscription services and VR. Yeah. It didn’t get too businessy, didn’t get too HardingTubbyRolls, so. The Indiana Jones one is the one I’m like, I’m like the most certain that will happen for some reason. I just feel like, oh, I could just really see it happening, you know, like. When I was thinking about it, the thing that came into my head is I can see a first person perspective holding that staff in the map room, putting it in and the beam going down and how many iconic sites to like be in his shoes or like pulling the gun and shooting the guy in the market. I was just like, oh, this is going to be, you’d be mad not to put those moments in it, whatever it is. Yeah, and him kind of going, going evil in the around the racist tribe in Templar Doom. I actually just watched. And Chilled Monkey Prince. I just watched that for the first time in like 15 years. It was rough. But the other two fucking immortal films, aren’t they? Like that’s the first time I’ve seen Last Crusade in 15 years, actually. And yeah, I’ve got a massive appetite for a good Indiana Jones game. But with aging Harrison Ford voice going, snakes, why do they have to be snakes? And you’re like, oh, this is really not what I wanted. Making lots of like pained old man noises as he goes, oh, oh, oh. Like escape bits and pieces. I’m excited about seeing a very well rendered Alfred Molina as well at a certain point in this game. OK, that’s good. I think we’re out. So the podcast, what’s coming up? Game’s caught next week. Best games of 2014 the week after that on the free feed. And then very soon in the Excel feed for Patreon subscribers at patreon.com/backpagepod. Rockstar Open World Games ranked. And then at the end of the month on the XXL feed, some bullshit about comic books I’m going to bore Matthew with for two hours. That should be fun. No, at all. You enjoying Batman Year One, Matthew? Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, I will say to people actually, if you just for Patreon people, if you do want to sort of like, you know, do a bit of reading ahead of that, I’ve got Matthew to read The Fade Out by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips and Batman Year One, and we’re going to talk about those a bit. But Matthew, where can people find you on social media? At MrBazzill underscore pestle. Back Page Pod if you want to follow the podcast, Samuel W Roberts if you want to follow me, and we’ll be back next week.