68. Two Rooms and a Boom

Summary

Tony started playing Stray and loved it, and PlayStation released a detailed video on The Last of Us Part 1 that Tony got super excited about. The Pixel Boys also discuss when to use subtitles and Dan played a bunch of new board games. Recorded July 23rd, 2022.

IF YOU PODCAST PLAYER DOESN'T DISPLAY LINKS IN THE NOTES BELOW– Linked show notes available at https://pixelnoise.fm/episodes/68

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Show Notes

• 0:00:00 Topics Start!
• 0:00:14 Stray is Released
  • The Last of Us
  • Playstation Plus Premium comes with Stray
  • Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
  • Control
  • Owlboy
  • Horizon: Zero Dawn
• 0:19:50 The Last of Us Part 1, Features and Gameplay Trailer
  • NBA 2K
  • Inside, The Game
  • Xbox Game Pass
  • Tiny Tina's Wonderlands
  • Celeste
  • Anthony Caliber
  • Super Mario Bros. 3
  • Captain Disillusion
  • Magic: The Gathering Design
• 1:02:32 To Subtitle or Not to Subtitle
  • Symm
  • Framing isn't important to Dan
  • Thor: Love and Thunder
  • Bob's Burgers
  • Rick & Morty
  • Bojack Horseman
  • Apple TV
• 1:23:21 New Content in TLOU Part 1?
• 1:40:55 Dan's Board Games
  • Two Rooms and a Boom
  • Avalon
  • Codenames
  • Formula D
  • Coup
  • Betrayal at House on the Hill
  • Apple's Desk View

Bonus: Tony's notes on The Last of Us video

• TLOU Part 1 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRKIWQUucj0 “The Last of Us Part I Rebuilt for PS5 - Features and Gameplay Trailer | PS5 Games”. Terrible title, great video.
  • Tons more detail on how the game was rebuilt
  • Likely a response to public sentiment that the project is just a cash grab
  • Replaced all pre-rendered cutscenes with in-engine scenes, which also has the side effect of making the in-game characters have higher fidelity
  • Higher density of physics objects in a scene than ever before. More “bumpables” and “chipables”. Referenced the tank scene in Pittsburgh in particular.
  • Completely new AI tech, using AI developed for part II. Included cool screenshots revealing what the AI is doing in the video.
    • Enemy and friendly NPCs have a much richer understanding of the environment. Enemy “communicating, flanking, and tracking” are among the enhanced features.
    • Friendly NPCs have an understanding of present and future exposure to enemy sight, which makes their evasiveness much more intelligent. Also accompanied by some cool dev-kit screenshots showing enemy awareness and AI decision-making.
  • “Motion Matching” - new tech that matches in-game-actor intended movement to a large library of motion-capture-actor assets to make game-actor animation more realistic than ever before.
  • Quoted new features: Additional gameplay modifiers, additional render modes, evolved photo mode, permadeath mode, speedrun mode, more unlockable outfits, model viewer mode, award-winning accessibility features (including being the first playstation game with full audio-description tracks for all cinematics).
  • “Completely revamped art direction” - all new, more detailed environments
  • 3D audio and adaptive triggers add a lot to the stealth combat experience
    • Hear enemies moving in hyper-realistic space
    • Unique adaptive trigger, haptic, and controller-speaker sound profiles for every weapon
  • New part 2 like weapon upgrade table, complete with new animations and haptics
  • New haptics for all player actions as they traverse the world, climbing, landing, petting the soft giraffe