NT 028 - The Summer of Sequels

Hello everyone, Editor Chris here. I'm just letting you know that the audio quality of this episode is not great.

I am editing on my laptop and don't have the same tools that I would normally have on my desktop,

and I'm still getting used to those tools. But the episode itself is fine,

so I hope you enjoy it, and hopefully the next episode will be a little bit better. Thanks!

Alright, we're doing a car. So we're recording while we're in the car. As you heard me, maybe,

always buckle up. It's the safe thing, and it's also the law in many places. Anyway, hello sir.

So there's been some developments since we last spoke. I don't think that I'm going to...

Maybe I'll talk about the move more another time, but I wanted to bring up what I have decided to call

the Summer of Sequels.

Dun dun dun! Dun dun dun! Yes, so...

As we may or may not have mentioned multiple times during our last episode, the story of Carl,

or DRG, the story of Carl, which you should definitely go listen to if you haven't. It's one of the better ones.

In their sequels for the summer season. Now it is unofficially, officially summer as of today, because today is Memorial Day in the United States. And as we know, everything revolves around the United States. It's our Memorial Day that kicks off summer. Not your holidays. Clearly. Clearly. But...

In the lead up to Memorial Day, there have been a couple of major releases of games that we've been tracking.

We've been tracking. Yes. To use the news vernacular. So we, in the span of two weeks, have seen Subnautica 2 Early Access and Deep Rock Galactic Rogue Core Early Access both drop. And I will just say thank you, sir, for the birthday gift.

Yeah. So he gifted me Deep Rock Galactic Rogue Core, which I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to play because of technology issues. Yeah. I'm on Linux. And... Steam was working on Linux fine. And then something happened. And now...

Wow. Either Steam doesn't work. Either Steam doesn't work. Or DRG doesn't work. Or whatever. But I haven't even installed the new game because right now Steam's not working. I think it's... I have to reboot. So anyway.

Okay. But Kit has had the great advantage and pleasure of getting to play both of these Early Access games. I have been watching his progress via not stalking because he actually has been live streaming and recording and putting stuff out there. So it's been fun to watch. And Kit, I'm going to be relying largely on you.

Because... Oh, boy. Because... Oh, boy. You know, these... I have not played these. Me?

I have simply watched you play. So... It's kind of hard to go through... Oh, and there was one minor other sequel thing that's out there. But that's not a game. It's... The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Oh, no. Oh, yeah. I've heard things. Red Letter Media did their half-in-the-bag episode on it. And...

I guess the first 45 minutes are decent and then it just kind of dies because...

It sounds like... It sounds like... The Mandalorian. Yeah. Because... Because... What the theory is is that...

The idea for this might have originally just been a new season of... The Mandalorian. Yeah. And then they were like, "Hey, people really liking this little baby Yoda guy. Let's... Let's release it out into the movies."

Anyway. Let's start off in the order of release. Subnautica 2. Subnautica 2. What about it? So, your opinions thus far?

It's... It's pretty good. Except that a lot of the creatures just... Just feel like... They're put there to get in the way and are just obstacles. And they don't really live and exist. So, what are some of the different mechanics?

New stuff. There's... There's bio mods and adaptations, which... Bio mods have active and passive variants. Like, there's...

One that... If you... If you swim at the sea floor, you get a little speed boost, which is a passive one. And then there's a dash, which is an active one. And later on, I think... I think there... There's a bio scanner. And I think it might let you get more bio mods by scanning stuff.

And then stuff. Shocker. You get more stuff by scanning stuff in Subnautica. Wow. Wow. How original. Absolute cinema. And then the adaptations are permanent upgrades like heat resistance or being able to breathe the oxygen deeper down. Yeah. Like pressure. Yeah. Being able to deal with higher pressure and stuff. Yeah.

One of the things I don't think that you mentioned is that you are a 3D printed human. Yeah.

They 3D print you and implant your previous memories in and allegedly your previously dead body can't, you know, come back to life. There's a... There's things that are in place to prevent that. Allegedly.

Allegedly. And you can also just be, you know, printed back to an older version of yourself and forget everything that happened. That sounds great. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. And you're overseen by Robot Overlord, which is something that both games have in common. One-eyed robot that oversees you and definitely isn't evil.

isn't evil i i like the robot overlord in this one better like well i haven't really met a robot

overlord in the original game yet i just have the pda yeah but but there's a robot overlord in

subnautica 2 and it is much more friendlier and nicer than the pda which like i've only played

some of the original game and it's basically like congratulations you might barely kind of have a

chance of surviving yeah it's very cynical the robot in this one actually is like i'm here to help keep

you alive and i'm like oh you actually care sort of yeah uh something that they undid from the previous

game is that the food doesn't rot anymore i didn't even know the food rotted yes the food does rot in

the original oh and it will take away food and and water if you leave it to rot for too long oh some

people like that i i don't know it's fine it's more convenient with survival games there's always a

question of like how realistic do you want to dial this up really i'll be honest animal crossing when

i was growing up and was younger was a guilty pleasure of mine i would play it way way too obsessively but

then like when you stop to think about it you have to go and work you have to sell stuff to make money

and then you use the money to pay off your mortgage it literally is just a life simulator i think that's

kind of the point and and it's like so i would get off of work and come home to do more work for fun

yeah so you don't really want to make it to the point where it's so hyper realistic that nobody could

actually live in the game or survive in the game now what else is different um they changed the creature

mechanics a little bit where they'll stop pursuing you after a little bit and go back to their sort of

coded in territory which is nice because in the original subnautica only a day before i i lured a

leviathan over to my base and it will not leave so at least now they leave

they eventually get bored and go home yeah kind of like bullies in in real life before there was social media

it's like they would they would try to chase you down but like after you escape them they

they would just go on their way and look for somebody else to pound

there is also some mention of the original aliens from subnautica but there's a it mostly focuses on a

different alien species now boom so on a scale of one to five laser printers where would you rate subnautica to

so far in terms of both uh enjoyability but also completion completeness for a so-called early access

well for completeness it's just it's like five because it's pretty complete i mean both of them are

pretty complete but yeah maybe like 4.7 okay it's it's pretty good so it retains a lot of the mechanics

you like it adds some new things and it takes away some things that are annoying but then the community

might demand that they get added back in anyway all right now most people like the rotten food being

gone yeah in the interest of time let's let's move on to deep rock galactic rogue core now i've been

watching you play this subnautica 2 is officially dead to you at the moment no i'm gonna play some more

tomorrow tomorrow okay subnautica 2 has largely been on life support until i know i know and from what i've

seen because i've been watching i've been trying to watch your live streams and if not i've been trying

to watch the videos after so the vods the best way that i can think of to describe this is

deep rock galactic meets doom i haven't played doom so i wouldn't know uh well so doom even back in

the original doom although my personal favorite is still doom 3 it's about this science company that

or military rather that has an outpost on mars and they've been doing some experiments and they

accidentally opened up a gateway to hell or rather you know maybe not accidentally they opened a gateway

to hell and uh combination of people getting infected by the hell spirit uh and or creatures from hell

are invading and you have to you know destroy them similarly in deep rock galactic rogue core

the dwarves have drilled too deep and now creatures from from the core of the planet yeah are are coming

out and they definitely look demonic they're they're not bugs they're not bugs no they they definitely

just look demonic and and very doom-esque so it and i've noticed the structure of the game is different

too but what i'll let you get into that beyond that but that's my personal based upon what i've been

watching him do is that that's my description of the game kit why don't you go ahead and tell people

a little bit more about deep rock galactic rogue core oh boy so you you play as a group of dwarves called

the reclaimers who are uh basically the company military yeah i noticed though i noticed that they used a

lot of snare drums in the soundtrack which gave it a vibe of aliens not the alien the original alien

aliens which was the james cameron sequel yeah the soundtrack is very good yeah it's very good that's

why i have it your your goal is to uh reclaim facilities that got uh wiped out by the gray out that

destroy is most company property so you have to go in with nothing but your pickaxe your gauntlet and

cooper and ellis ellis is the meal replacement and cooper is the boss go replacement yeah and and ellis uh

unlike the mule flies flies so very very quick and easy to access um for good reason though yeah

because because you have a timer going the moment you enter the stage after grabbing a few weapons and

grenades at the beginning of the level you don't want the timer to run out because then there's infinite

swarm and uh tentacles that grab you i i didn't know that yeah there's tentacles that grab you

okay then anyway uh your your goal is to go through the level uh mine up exponite do exponite events uh to

get upgrades because get the wi-fi working again yeah which tells you where everything on the map is

upgrade your weapons upgrade yourself using uh bio boosters and uh the exponent which has

bio transmutable properties something i think like that something like that yeah which is how you can

improve yourself and those improvements generally only last one level correct like uh they will yeah they

last through the entire mission mission yes each each mission is split into levels of the facility and

then at the bottom level you have to fight a boss and there's currently three technically four in the

code but three actually finished yeah i think i've only seen you go up against one which is like the

the core guardian or something like that or the gate guardian uh it looks like the go to rack it's got

like a pumpkin pumpkin head looking yeah thing and then the face opens up

and you shoot it and then it doesn't actually take physical damage until you take the core stones and

blow them up yeah yeah you have to destroy the rip stones yeah that one's the go to rack gatekeeper there's also

the big flying fish one called the ramach and uh the walking rock slash cave leech thing

oh yeah cave leeches return they're like the one returning enemy aside from

the corresponding crawler which was also in drg they should have brought back the loot bugs i mean they do

uh but there's only exponite variants and uh the reclaimers don't care about killing them

you can still pet them though oh that's good so differences and similarities like so things they

added things they took away go i mean to be fair they didn't really take away much it was it was built

off of the groundwork of drg there's no more glyphids uh except for the bulk detonator kind of which

gets an extra night variant for one of the extra night events but otherwise there's there's no more

glyphids yeah i mean like there's not really much they removed well that's good uh a lot of it's just

taken from drg although they haven't added any driller weapons oh there's there's zero driller weapons

except for the drill and the c4 so how about new stuff uh new stuff there's corespond course yeah uh

which started with the corespond crawler for the core stone event in drg which was made to uh

build up to rogue core happening uh but there's also the creeper which looks like its head just

looks like a brain they're all very ape-like except for one called the edge stalker which is really

creepy looking it's really tall oh yeah yeah yeah i think i i'm trying to remember i know so i've seen

the standard ones and then there's the bigger beefier ones is that the uh no the edge stalkers are like

the ones that walk around the side they have four legs instead of well i guess all of them have four

legs but they're like really tall on four legs they look kind of like a centaur oh boy and then they

have the one big white circle that they shoot you with oh boy there's also a few new weapons like

the mag blaster and the gun that everyone calls the mac and cheese gun i haven't gotten it yet you

know what there was something that reminded me of the the bfg from doom it's like a boxy looking

weapon that shoots out missiles oh the hurricane yes yeah that's from original drg i didn't know that

but like but that's definitely in this in this context it reminds me of the bfg from doom it's

just a box that just unleash unleashes hellfire upon the enemies yep it's it's it's a beautiful thing

to behold i will say plus it aims for your cursor unless it has just a pick or overclocking drg but

otherwise the rockets aim for your cursor it's very nice yeah there's a few new weapons uh the falcon

well that's not a weapon uh yes the bird uh each reclaimer has their own gauntlet ability

uh valcana has the bird as i like to call it the bird the bird that flies around shoots stuff and can

revive teammates you also get as valcana a little stationary thing that forms a little bubble that when

you shoot enemies when you're within it uh it electrocutes them it's very nice nice nice now there's

slicer who gets sword and a dash and a projectile shield that will aim wherever you're looking but

doesn't completely cover you guardian gets a gauntlet that can either be used as a shotgun or as a sort of

area protection area like area denial where none of the no no melee no enemies will get within melee range

and you also get uh something that forms a bubble where it restores up to 50 of your armor which is an

important change uh armor doesn't regenerate and it also doesn't fully block damage like in drg it only

reduces it by 50 percent yeah i i was wondering about that because i was watching and i could be

wrong but like when you were using a supply pod which they're not really supply drops they're already

there you just have to find them but no more nitro you were doing the resupply and i noticed it didn't

like boost your health at all yeah uh resupplies don't give any health uh you can only get health

from red sugar which is pretty plentiful for the most part even enemies drop it as you're hitting

them yeah only only with specific upgrades like snap fire extraction or hemo forge which are really

good in a sense it's basically just free red sugar it's free health and you can usually it's free money

but your armor doesn't regenerate and it's also something you have to manage because some abilities

rely on having armor some rely on not having armor so it's all very different it's all very interesting

nice anything else um i i feel like to me the gameplay is also a little bit more rapid at least the way that

you're playing maybe like a more casual i mean you kind of have to play fast because there's the timer oh

yeah that's right you don't really have a choice so i have run past the timer a couple of times so on a

scale of one to five rock and stone where would you put both uh the game in general but also the completeness

of the uh early access i mean it's cheap rock galactic i'm gonna put it at a five anyway

also there's something very important that they added uh during the elevator which is how you get

between the floors yep they said they wouldn't do it but you can rock and stone when the loading screen

is playing and you're in the elevator nice they said they couldn't do it but they did it they pulled it off

nice so it's been an exciting couple weeks for you yes and uh it's been exciting i will honestly say

for me to watch you engage with this it's fun to see you really embracing and having fun with it

and of course then i'm going to start playing eventually and you're going to be like you suck

what's wrong why don't you do this why don't you do this why don't you do that don't worry i have

the bird i can revive you without having to revive you the bird the bird um what's wait what's the

name of the robot that helps you uh not the not the not the remote explanation processing drone no the

other one omega or cooper cooper cooper cooper's better than bosco yeah his a has been improved so

uh he actually shoots the rockets automatically instead of you having the right click so that's nice

so yeah a very very exciting time in gaming not not so exciting time in star wars we didn't mention

omega at all oh omega's the mission control replacement yeah and he's a robot but omega to me i don't know

i i'm suspicious of omega i like i didn't realize it wasn't until like a second or third watch of you

playing where i was like was his avatar always that really looking orange red color and did he always

sound like creepy because yes this this is just screaming for a betrayal that's gonna happen like

this definitely doesn't feel like otto from uh wall-e at all i mean yeah he doesn't feel that way at all

they they look almost identical yeah he doesn't feel that way at all uh he's made out of rival tech

he's kind of glitchy uh and he's programmed to do whatever's best for the company oh no oh no through

expendable but you've been having fun yeah you've been having a lot of fun and i'm glad to hear that

yeah and see that and i look forward to hopefully getting to play one or both of these games hopefully

at some point oh yeah subnautica 2s multiplayer probably should mention that yes something that

neither of the other subnautica games had yeah the only way to do it was through a mod that only worked

for very specific versions yeah we tried to do it and then i was like wait i don't want to install like

version that's 10 versions old just to be able to do multiplayer that's dumb but this time multiplayer is

intended yes have you dear listeners gotten to play or experience either of these new early access releases and if so what do you think

let us know feedback@nontopical.com and also as always this is what we like to call a value for

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always be notified when new episodes come out or just following your podcast player there's just one

problem with subnautica too you know and what's that if they didn't add any cheese quesadillas you know i was

going there you you and i you're very very well done sir i was thinking the same thing did either

game add cheese quesadillas either game for shame well they're in early access add that as a feedback

then then then they'll have to like you know some kind of weird cheese substitute made from fish

in subnautica you could somehow process the calcium from the fish or from uh from the the coral to to

make some kind of weird cheese substitute that would be interesting but so we have discussed the games i

think we're going to move on to a different topic which means that we'll uh we'll have to do a different

recording so until next time everybody thanks for listening bye you