704: The Medium and Call of the Sea on Xbox Series X
Guests
Transcript
Larry Hryb:
Hi, it's Larry Hyrb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson. Welcome to the show. Joining me again from his remote studio, Jeffrey. Good to see you as always.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Good to see you. Look, I listen to you. You're the radio guy. I actually got a thing that moves the mic up and down.
Larry Hryb:
We call that a mic arm and do-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Sure.
Larry Hryb:
... my eyes deceive me or do you have a little bit of... there's a little bit of light going on there too. Did you bring-
Jeff Rubenstein:
It's my glow. No, actually I've been jealous of your lighting. I am now looking at this two box still jealous of your lighting, but it's a little less bad than it's band. I got a ring light. I actually had to talk to one of my friends there. There was somebody that we... Whoa, Hey, are we bringing a friend in? Is this-
Larry Hryb:
Well, we're going to. In case, we have somebody that I can actually bring somebody here, but we're not going to do that.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Is this the representation that I have no friends. If I had a friend, they would be right there in the middle. We have a friend who uses a ring light even when she's just FaceTiming and it's just like, come on. And now I'm that person, but I'm doing it for you, Larry.
Larry Hryb:
I do that as well. So let me just show you, this is what it looks like if you have no light. When I was in college at Syracuse University, I took actually a course in lighting and you're probably laughing-
Jeff Rubenstein:
So did I.
Larry Hryb:
... And you think, you're like, "Oh, this is goofy," but you realize how incredibly important. So this is no light.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh boy.
Larry Hryb:
It's grainy. It looks terrible. You put a little bit of light, I got a couple here. Lighting-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Look at you Larry.
Larry Hryb:
... lighting this room.
Jeff Rubenstein:
You look amazing. A pinkish you to you. You look like you have a Vim and or Vigor. This is me without it. It just-
Larry Hryb:
I got the Vim light.
Jeff Rubenstein:
I got the two-faced.
Larry Hryb:
I'm ordering the Vigor next week.
Jeff Rubenstein:
You want to get the Vigor light. Without the light, I have a little bit of like a Harvey dent, two-face thing going on. And then with it, at least somewhat less-
Larry Hryb:
When I need to get a-
Jeff Rubenstein:
... I'm 30% less to two-faced.
Larry Hryb:
... I need to get a hair light in the back, just a little bit to put in the back here. It looks good.
Jeff Rubenstein:
That's like a fill light, I think we would call that. Not a Phil Spencer, fill with an F. We're on this podcast and we mentioned fill people are like, "Excuse me? What?"
Larry Hryb:
Yeah, exactly. What's funny is we had a meeting, that's why we were talking about Phil and I remember getting the spelling of his name and whatnot. That's really good lighting. This is, I think, the only YouTube channel I subscribe to.
Jeff Rubenstein:
What channel are we talking about?
Larry Hryb:
Captain Disillusion. Have you ever watched him?
Jeff Rubenstein:
I have not watched Captain Disillusion.
Larry Hryb:
Alan. I can't pronounce his last name is his real name. He goes and basically he disproves popular internet videos and whatnot. It takes them forever to do videos. I'm talking like once every six months. I would love to get Alan on the show because he is absolutely-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Go in that middle box, but he's got to become my friend. That's the prerequisite-
Larry Hryb:
He's got to show up as Captain... We should have him up, Captain Disillusion, to talk about, well, I don't know what we can take out.
Jeff Rubenstein:
So I'm not going to disagree with you that Captain Disillusion isn't worth subbing to, but I'm a little concerned that that's the only person on YouTube you sub to. I must subscribe to like hundreds of creators.
Larry Hryb:
Of course, you do. This is the same methodology that I have with Twitter.
Jeff Rubenstein:
You're on Twitter.
Larry Hryb:
Of which you are one. My wife, you, Phil Loris. I still follow Lorek-
Jeff Rubenstein:
That's it. And here's the thing that you probably don't understand. You sort of joke that I'm the complaint desk tweet all complaints to me. When you're not following someone on Twitter, they don't ask you why you're not following them. They asked me, "Can you get Larry to follow me on Twitter?"
Larry Hryb:
Do not.
Jeff Rubenstein:
And I'm like... And it happened last week.
Larry Hryb:
Did it?
Jeff Rubenstein:
It happened last week and we're talking like brands sometimes. It's just like, "How come Larry doesn't follow?" I'm like, "You don't want to touch this."
Larry Hryb:
I don't want to be precious-
Jeff Rubenstein:
I'm not messing with it.
Larry Hryb:
I don't want to be precious about it, but I guess I am.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Don't you though? Don't you?
Larry Hryb:
I guess I am. Anyway, we're glad you could join us. As you've seen, we've got this new format in the show going. We're now about a month in. I think it's going well, a lot of great comments on YouTube and doing videos. We got some interviews this week coming up that I did earlier. We're going talk about The Medium and Call of the Sea, two different games coming to Xbox Series X. We're going to talk about the games and how they're harnessing the power of Xbox Series X.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Both these looked really good. Medium looks pretty creepy. I feel like we're going to have some good horror stuff early on in the generation. So very much looking forward to that.
Larry Hryb:
What's the name of that horror game we had early on in 360? I'm blanking out here and I'm sure by the end of this, maybe during-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Dead Space or?
Larry Hryb:
No, no. It wasn't Dead Space. I'll have to go look it up. It was real slow and it was creepy.
Jeff Rubenstein:
I always say, "I see those games, I'm not going to play them." And then I end up playing them. I'm not a big horror movie fan. I don't like not being in control, I guess of, it's like, "Don't go in there."
Larry Hryb:
Is it horror or suspense? Do you mind the suspense?
Jeff Rubenstein:
I like suspense. Suspense is good. No, I do like to get suspense, but horror, just like jump scares. I don't even mind the gross stuff, I just don't watch... I don't want to see stuff that is Saw. I don't want to see stuff like that. But Hogan, to the extent you could call RE2 and RE3 pure horror, more survival horror, really into those games. I love the Dead Space. I guess I would say survival horror. There are some definite scary games, like Layers of Fear and in other games, actually we have in the ID program that are absolutely frightening. I can't do that. Resident Evil seven, that was tough. That was a horror. The first person makes it whole... the ball game is a Resident Evil village coming to Xbox Series X. I'm going to give it a shot. We'll see how long that last.
Larry Hryb:
Hey, a lot going on this week. I don't know where you want to get started. Should we talk about the news? I'm playing Crossfire. I actually played a little bit of CrossfireX. We've got a beta going on, right?
Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, it's part of the news. So CrossfireX there was a closed beta for people in the Xbox insider program that was earlier in the week. But right now, as you're listening to this, assuming you're listening pretty soon, going on from the 25th through 9:00 PM Pacific time on the 28th, Sunday. There is an open beta for CrossfireX and there's three different modes. I've been playing a bunch of it. You can just go into the store on Xbox and you can just type in CrossfireX and it will pop up. You download. It's not that big of a download, go to town. Obviously, one we're in beta, two, this is a free to play shooter game. Quality, from a technical perspective is really high. I'm playing this game with the 4K 60 and you feel it. It has a good feel to it.
Larry Hryb:
This is in beta.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Different modes-
Larry Hryb:
And this in beta.
Jeff Rubenstein:
That's what's so impressive. And so this is a game that's going to feature a ton of variety when it does come out. And so we're getting a taste of three very different modes. If you like shooters, there's a chance that one of the modes may not work for you, depending on what kind of game you like, and then one might totally-
Larry Hryb:
Some of the modes are very different. They're very different.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Exactly. One might just be your style. So for me, it's divided in half, there's classic and there's modern. Within classic, there's two different maps. One, you're planting a bomb or diffusing a bomb. It's sort of offense, defense. It's kind of like a CS:Go situation. And if you've never played CS:Go, you might find out this is for you, but there's not really like aim down the site and sprint. It's not like a Call of Duty S type of shooter. It is more deliberate. Now, if you're using a sniper or something that specifically has that type of scope, yes, you can ADS.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Then there's another mode which people seem to really be gravitating to in this classic mode, which is it's also plant the bomb, but one group is invisible and one group is not. And so on defense, you have the visible troops and they have the full arsenal that they can choose from, the invisible, or I should say transparent, if you're really focusing, you can see them, they only have melee weapons. And so they've got to very quietly sneak, they become completely invisible if they hold still, so it's very much a cat and mouse, hide and seek situation. It's very tense. It's very fun. There's your suspense right there.
Larry Hryb:
We played a little of that.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Then there's-
Larry Hryb:
We played a little bit of that.
Jeff Rubenstein:
I think you like that one, didn't you?
Larry Hryb:
I stood perfectly still and everyone was running by me. It was very predator mode. I soaked into the wall and they're running by me. It was awesome.
Jeff Rubenstein:
You're not going to win or you're unlikely to win by just wiping out the other team, if you're that invisible group because it's just very hard. If they see you or they detect you, shotgun and your dead. Super zoom. And the final mode, which worked I'd say the best for me was the modern mode. This is where you can sprint and you can ADS and it's a territory capture. I really enjoyed the feel.
Larry Hryb:
Is that the one where you and I were going shield v shield?
Jeff Rubenstein:
Well, so in this mode, you get a plus ups. I wouldn't call them kill streaks, but after you've you get a couple of kills, you can then allocate a point into how fast you regenerate or there's one of them that's defense. And that gives you a riot shield and a pistol. And you did that.
Larry Hryb:
Here's a little tip. Right now in the beta I'm sure they'll fix it. The riot shield OB.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes. So you did that.
Larry Hryb:
I didn't know this. I just started playing with it and I was like-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Well, you gravitated towards it and I couldn't touch you. It didn't go well with me.
Larry Hryb:
You tried. It was a valiant effort
Jeff Rubenstein:
Don't patronize me, Larry. Don't patronize me. So anyway, worth checking out, it's a beta, so you can let us know what you think. There's a full CrossfireX social channels and everything.
Larry Hryb:
We're still doing videos now, aren't we? Are we going into news? It feels like what we're doing.
Jeff Rubenstein:
We're just talking. Well, it's a bit of what we're playing in the news and everything else.
Larry Hryb:
Well, we talk about what I had on, in behind me here, which as you can see is CrossfireX, but what I really want to talk about is what's behind you?
Jeff Rubenstein:
Look, it's the summer, a lot of games have been pushed out. And so this has been me going back either playing stuff on Game Pass that has been continuing to come. We'll talk about the next batch of games or really tackling some of the more egregious games on my backlog. And so a couple weeks ago-
Larry Hryb:
Agree. So what defines an egregious game for you?
Jeff Rubenstein:
So Valkyria Chronicles One is one of my favorite games of all time. It is unfortunately not in Xbox. It was when it came out at PS3 exclusive, I think it may be available on, it's definitely available on PC. I know I bought it there. And then Valkyrie Four was pretty big surprise to be announced at all. And then it came out on Switch and it came out on Xbox One and I bought it day one and so excited. And then I played probably the first 10 hours and I don't know what happened and I got distracted and I just didn't finish it. So now I'm back in and I'm playing every night and it's so good. It's such an amazing game. It's an anime action, sort of tactical RPG where you actually, instead of moving little sprites around on a grid, you actually take control of the character in third person. Sometimes there's some stealth elements and you position, and then it goes into... and then you aim and then you hit the button and it does sort of the RPG thing.
Jeff Rubenstein:
So anyway, I love it. It's amazing. I will be playing this nonstop until I finish it. I think I'm about two thirds of the way through. I actually ended up picking up The Last of Us, two and I was about to start and I was like, "No, I need to finish this first-
Larry Hryb:
It's dark.
Jeff Rubenstein:
... because otherwise if I get distracted again, well, there's that too, if I get distracted again, then it will be bad." So anyway, I'm focused on this then I'll play two v two. What about you?
Larry Hryb:
Well, the other point CrossfireX is last week was a big week for, or this week I should say-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Apex Legends.
Larry Hryb:
... for Apex Legends, the update came out, which as you know, we've been playing a lot of Apex Legends, so it's been a lot of fun there. So that is something that I've been playing a lot of. My new main is Bloodhound by the way. We haven't played a lot of my new main on Bloodhound, but I'm all bloodhound, bloodhounda.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes. I guess if that's what you want to call her. The major change to Lifeline, she was my main at the start and then Loba is awesome, but the rework of Lifeline, she's an absolute must have on the team again. I think it changes the meta. Wraith is I think a little less valuable now, but I mean, we're not playing at the highest level, so what do we know about the meta?
Larry Hryb:
Please, we're just-
Jeff Rubenstein:
I just pick whoever. I got a cold skin for you. I'm using it right now.
Larry Hryb:
What's below farm team? What's below varsity, JV?
Jeff Rubenstein:
We're single A. We're the-
Larry Hryb:
Not even that.
Jeff Rubenstein:
... In all in a perfect world for a single A.
Larry Hryb:
We're having fun there, but we're playing that. I just haven't had a lot of time this week. One thing I do want to talk about because a lot of folks may ask about it is we talked to, and I'm going to stop for just a minute. We'll talk about this, is we probably saw some of the Mixer news earlier this week and that is something that we announced, Phil has a blog post up and I urge everybody to go read the blog posts from Phil on Max. It really explains it all and it's about focus for TeamXbox. We're excited to see what happens with Mixer as it moves on to its new home, but Phil has more details on that on the blog post. So I don't know if you have anything you want to add there, Jeff?
Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. I've worked with creators a lot and I would say if you're a Mixer creator who is moving to Facebook gaming, if you're moving to YouTube, if you're moving to Twitch, get in contact with me. I want to know where you end up moving your community to. So this is what I do. I work with creators-
Larry Hryb:
Hit him up there.
Jeff Rubenstein:
... and I've been reaching out to a lot of folks. So yeah, you've got my... that's the best place, honestly, is just ping me on Twitter. I want to see where you end up and it's going to be... It's an exciting year for Xbox and no matter where you're at, you mean a lot to us and I want you to be a part of it.
Larry Hryb:
I'm sorry. I just got totally distracted. So this weird thing has been happening, I have to tell you. At my house here, this is my office and gaming room. Jeff, you've seen it.
Jeff Rubenstein:
I haven't because I've never been there. I haven't even been in your zip code.
Larry Hryb:
But outside-
Jeff Rubenstein:
This is going to be ongoing thing.
Larry Hryb:
... out in my garden, in my lawn here, for some reason I don't know why, but since I've started playing Bloodhound, there's a pair of crows that sit out here.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Crows, yeah.
Larry Hryb:
And it's the creepiest thing because they just appeared the week I start... you and I were playing, I said, "Oh, let me checkup later." And I start getting into it and then they're out there now all the time and they sat there. For those of you who play the game, you'll get a kick out of that because that's one of-
Jeff Rubenstein:
They're very intelligent creatures.
Larry Hryb:
... He has a crow, which is... What's the crow's name?
Jeff Rubenstein:
I forget. There was a story maybe a month ago where they did a full animated thing.
Larry Hryb:
You can probably hear them. I don't know if you may be able to hear them. I don't know, but they're getting angry out there. You're right. Crows are very intelligent.
Jeff Rubenstein:
You do not cross a Crow because they will remember you. They will tell their friends what you look like and then they will all yell at you and attack you. We have a vicious strain of crows in Seattle.
Larry Hryb:
Well, that's only fair. That's why they're called a murder of crows, I guess.
Jeff Rubenstein:
That may or may not be true. I can't fact check that. Someone should fact check.
Larry Hryb:
How do you know about the crows in Seattle?
Jeff Rubenstein:
Because I live in Seattle and I have been attacked by a crow.
Larry Hryb:
You've been attacked.
Jeff Rubenstein:
More than once.
Larry Hryb:
Up in my area we have a whole bunch that flows. Every night they go to a certain area and they come back. They're very-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. Apparently, where you see them during the day is not necessarily where they live at night. They commute, if you will, into different places where they know they get food. It's strange. But anyway, this time of year, I think they're laying their eggs and they get really defensive. You go anywhere near that tree, you don't have to be climbing up that tree. You just be minding your business, walking down the street.
Larry Hryb:
You could just look at the tree and they'll get angry.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Look at them the wrong way, they get really loud, really angry. And yeah, you will hear it from them. I told you a couple of weeks ago, how we rescued a bird and the crows put a stop to that pretty quickly. It was funny, the week after I was like, "I can't use Bloodhound. I don't even want a crow to be in my daughter's line of sight." Anyway.
Larry Hryb:
I apologize as we're recording these shows or during the interviews, if you hear-
Jeff Rubenstein:
I don't hear the crows.
Larry Hryb:
Good.
Jeff Rubenstein:
So I think probably or maybe I tune them out.
Larry Hryb:
I've got the crow filter on the microphone, so they're kind of-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Exactly.
Larry Hryb:
... on me. Anyway, so what else are you playing? Otherwise, we've got these interviews lined up. We're going to talk to the producer and lead game designer for the Medium. We're going to talk to the co-founder and game director for Call of The Sea, both really very different games, but both beautiful games. So we've got those coming up.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Let me know. How about this? Why don't we go into some of those? I would love to learn more about both of those games and then maybe we come back, we do some news, because there's some cool stuff about Xbox Game Pass, about new games with Gold announced for July. Some free stuff to play this weekend. We can come back to that after we hear from the creators of the Medium and Call of the Sea.
Larry Hryb:
The Medium is coming later on this year to Xbox Series X, very excited to have a couple of the team here. Let's bring them in here and I'm going to do terrible with their names, but I'm going to try my best. Jacek Zieba is the producer and Wojciech Piejko is the lead-
Jacek Zieba:
Hi, hello.
Larry Hryb:
... game designer. So did I get that close at all, gentlemen?
Jacek Zieba:
It was close enough I think.
Larry Hryb:
Thank you there. First of all, again, I want to thank you guys for joining me. It's great to see your faces. I want to hear a little bit more about The Medium. We talked about it in may on the Inside Xbox, but for those folks that may have missed it, this is quite a little bit of a horror game. So tell us a little bit about it and get us started?
Wojciech Piejko:
At the very beginning, I would also like to thank you for having us here.
Jacek Zieba:
Yes, of course.
Wojciech Piejko:
And jumping into The Medium, The Medium is our new psychological horror game built around a central motive. So how your perspective changes your perception? Nothing is what it seems. Nothing is simple. Nothing is black and white. And only playing as a medium gives you a very unique vantage point that's beyond the reach for ordinary people. So you play as medium. She's called Marianne. She's living in two worlds, our real world and the spirit world. And Marianne is being hunted by visions of a child murder and you travel to an abandoned hotel resort to try to solve this horrible mystery.
Larry Hryb:
Abandoned resorts, whatever good happens there. When we saw the trailer, we kind of got this Silent Hill vibe, and I know that your teams have done a lot of work and done a lot of games, but this game has really unlocked a lot of your visions because of the hardware. And I want to talk a little bit about that because we've been talking a lot about the power of Xbox Series X. Tell me a little bit about some of the things you're able to do that you really haven't been able to do on previous generations?
Jacek Zieba:
I think this a little tough to talk in a way because we have a little secret with our game, how it works and we want to reveal it in the future. But of course, without this new generation of consoles, it will be impossible to do what we want to have, what we're aiming for. To have this really strong hardware I think is the most important for us as the foundation of how we want to create this game was necessary. This game cannot exist on current generation maybe I don't know like some secret talking now from my side.
Wojciech Piejko:
So maybe just a little look behind the curtain because as Jacek we didn't announce our most important feature yet and it will be revealed soon, but today we can tell you that The Medium will be too challenging to bring on the current gen. Of course, you can downscale any game idea, but it will not be the same game as it is. So I can tell you that this is something about these tools that we have and we a really powerful hardware, which Xbox Series X is to bring this idea to life, so yeah.
Larry Hryb:
When we look at the game and certainly it was a lovely reveal and we've seen the trailer and folks can go out and check that on YouTube. What is the reception been like for you guys? Because it's one of those where people kind of turn their head and took a look at it, some people that stopped in their tracks. So tell me about the reception for you in the studio?
Jacek Zieba:
Wojciech maybe you start.
Wojciech Piejko:
Because of the pandemic we were watching the reveal live on Skype, I think, or no, at company's Discord channel. It was great to see-
Jacek Zieba:
100 people on Discord.
Wojciech Piejko:
... video game of course. So of course it was great to reveal the game that we've been working on for like two and a half years or something like that. So of course, keeping it as a secret, keeping Akira as a secret was always hard thing to do. It was also a relief for us to show the game for the first time and we got a very good reception from fans here because they are excited about our silent, hideous approach to the game. They are excited about return of Akira Yamaoka to horror genre. So yeah, we are also very hyped and I think this is the best reception we've got after our trailers. When I think of Layers of Fear, Blair Witch or Observer, it didn't have so much buzz in the internet as Medium got. So, yeah, we're very happy.
Larry Hryb:
First of all, congratulations on that. When you look at that, do you think a lot of the buzz around, Hey, here is a game that's really unlocking the potential at the beginning of this generation because we're going to see some things and we're going to get fast loading speeds and all these other elements that come with next gen, it's really around that. Tell us about some of the areas with Xbox Series X that you guys are really excited about? We've got auto latency mode, we've got a direct storage, dynamic. All those different things and ray tracing. Tell me about some of the things that you look at the... as you've had a chance to work with the hardware, what excites you about this?
Wojciech Piejko:
So from the developer perspective, I think it's almost the same as gamer's perspective. Of course, you're super excited what you can put your hands on the next big thing always, but in terms of technology in Medium, we are using direct drive that you mentioned. We were building our games with the level streaming system from the Layers of Fear. So for us, it's a great move because for the first time we don't have to build the game, for example, to build a longer corridor to upload the level when the player is going through it. It's perfect for our approach to games and in terms of new technology, we are also using ray tracing, 4K of course. And it's great for us because with Medium, we are aiming for very seamless cinematic experience and thanks to the power of Xbox we can deliver it.
Larry Hryb:
When you guys got a chance to talk about or get a chance to look at the Ray tracing. Cause certainly a lot of folks understand fast loading and things along those lines, but what is it like to see something that has ray tracing versus not ray tracing? Can you describe that a little bit? Because I think a lot of people, you can only look at screenshots, but it's tough to really internalize isn't it?
Jacek Zieba:
I think it change emotion of the players, you see all this reflection, and as you say, on screens it's really hard to capture the feeling, but when you are in the game and you can see things kind of reflect the world to you and see how it works and see your character is going through that kind of level. I think is bumpy the emotion for me, it's the most important thing. Okay, the character is there, the place looks really real for me.
Larry Hryb:
It feels alive.
Jacek Zieba:
Yeah, like it's happening there. It's not like by cleverly.
Larry Hryb:
As you look through the game and, again, it's tough to talk about the game. I certainly haven't played it yet and you guys frankly haven't finished it yet, and I don't want to do too many spoilers on the game, but when we go through, we talked a little bit about Silent Hill about the gameplay. What can we expect from the gameplay?
Jacek Zieba:
The medium is evolution of our psychological horror genre. You see Layers of Fear, Observer, Blair Witch, each game changed something for us and I think Medium is like big step further in the case, of course, graphic and cinematic experience and of course with gameplay, because now it's not only walking and finding things and maybe being scary, you need to think how to use Marianne powers. You need to think how to use both worlds, how they interact with each other in the gameplay, in the story. It's like constant being driven by the story, but also thinking what I should do now? Which power I need to use in which situation? So I think here it's like more gameplay, more difficult, but how to say it? Maybe Wojciech will help me now.
Wojciech Piejko:
Yeah. So maybe from my perspective, so the game is designed to flow between worlds, so sometimes you are in one world, sometimes in another, of course each got their pros and cons of being there. And as Jacek said you have to think how to do something in one world and it will have a result in the second one. So you have to think of two worlds, flow between them and use them against something terrible sometimes. There are encounters in a game, but no shooting. So still no shotgun, but Marianne has some powers that can help her to get rid of the trouble.
Larry Hryb:
Who needs a shotgun when you have supernatural powers?
Jacek Zieba:
I think shotgun is always the best. Give the players shotgun and jump pack and this is done. You can do anything.
Wojciech Piejko:
Plus slow motion.
Jacek Zieba:
Yeah. Done. You can ship everything. Yes. I think, well, what I also want to say, it's not important to have some dexterity in playing games and to do something fast. The more important thing, how I need to do it, to figure it out. Like the puzzle that game gives you. The game can be a really big puzzle, which power to use on which level on, in which world, how we correlate, et cetera. So it's more about thinking.
Larry Hryb:
You made a comment about you give the shotgun and jump and that's actually pretty funny, but when you guys design, when you're approaching game design for a game like this, how do you create in the story and the atmosphere that tension? Is it the absence? Is it the music or all things come together? Tell us a little bit about what do you guys see as the recipe for real good tense encounter in scene?
Wojciech Piejko:
Of course-
Jacek Zieba:
I don't know if we came to reveal all our secrets.
Larry Hryb:
I don't want to give away too, but when you just at a top level, when you look at some stuff?
Wojciech Piejko:
Yeah, of course. It depends on the situation you want to build because sometimes silence is more scary than other sounds. It always depends on what emotions you want to tackle with current event or level. But if I can choose one thing, I would choose music. It gives you really good introduction to everything, to other emotions. So music plus something that your brain can relate to. So for example, scaring people in Observer were harder than scaring people in Leverage because your brain can easily relate to being alone in the forest because-
Larry Hryb:
Sure.
Wojciech Piejko:
... everyone has been in the forest. If you have a good music and a place that your brain can relate to it's pretty easy.
Larry Hryb:
You guys talked a little bit about that. You have a dual soundtrack. Tell us a little bit about what that means?
Jacek Zieba:
That means our central is composed by two composers, Akira Yamaoka from Silent Hill series and Arkadiusz Reikowski our composer from Bloober Team that compose most our games like Layers of Fear, Observer and of course Blair Witch. So we have two approach, Akira, the guy in some way create new approach to horror game music and Arek, his approach is more cinematic may be and we collided, the same way like we collide the two worlds in our game. And of course, whole soundtrack is composed by these two people. Of course, soundtracks are more composed by one, some by the other, but it's still big corporation, but we collide two different personas with themselves.
Larry Hryb:
It sounds easier than it probably is. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Wojciech Piejko:
Sorry. So basically Arkadiusz Reikowski is taking care of normal world because as a Polish guy and the game is happening in Krakow. He knows the vibe of our city and stuff like this and Akira Yamaoka is composing music for the spirit world. And of course they are exchanging ideas, but they are my main responsibility are like this.
Larry Hryb:
Just from the vibe you were getting from the trailer, it was pretty powerful. I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys are doing in the game. I want to get back to the technology a little bit before I let you go.
Jacek Zieba:
Yeah, of course.
Larry Hryb:
When you guys look at this, what do you think the biggest difference is that players are going to notice from the current generation of hardware to the next generation? You've been working on the next generation for so long. We talked a little bit about some things. Tell me from you guys who have used it, what you think?
Jacek Zieba:
I think Wojciech said before we can downscale any game and this is like not a problem. And I started thinking about it when he said, I think the most important thing with this new generation, this new hardware is you don't need to downscale. You can have your ideas and then can be really broad and you can create them. There is a place that everything will be like works as you want and feel it as you want. So I think because we can focus of course on graphics and cetera because generation looks better. Yes. But I think with the generation and I think Medium will be one of the examples it's like to show you new ideas, new ways to play games, maybe even new genres because of this possibility to not downscaling games. Now, downscale is your ideas, your dreams.
Larry Hryb:
And when you say downscale, you mean graphically, you mean speed, you mean level design?
Jacek Zieba:
I mean anything, like we have idea for a game and we think, okay, but it should run on this generation. Okay, so we need to downscale our ideas. We need to downscale scopes of everything. And when we have the information, "Okay, but you can do this on Xbox Series X." Okay. So this is the place to go.
Larry Hryb:
I know we're very excited to have you guys over here. Tell me a little bit about, we kind of should have talked about this, your team, the [Bluebird 00:33:15] team. Tell me about you guys are located in Poland, you kind of referenced that earlier. Tell us about your team size?
Wojciech Piejko:
So we are around like a hundred people strong right now.
Jacek Zieba:
This is our team on site. Yeah.
Larry Hryb:
I imagine as you get closer to ship, it's going to scale up accordingly for testing and whatnot.
Jacek Zieba:
Yeah.
Larry Hryb:
We've all seen that in the development cycles. I know you guys are getting ready. For lack of a better term, you're months away, the game is going to come out when?
Jacek Zieba:
In holiday 2020.
Larry Hryb:
Soon or later this year.
Jacek Zieba:
Soon.
Wojciech Piejko:
Soon, but we don't have an exact release date, but it will be holiday 2020.
Larry Hryb:
Totally understand.
Wojciech Piejko:
You mentioned our external help and of course we are using and cooperating. We fixed around companies, so we are using outsourcing artists, there's houses and stuff like this. So this 100 people is our core team here.
Larry Hryb:
Has the current pandemic impacted you or is everybody just kind of working from home and doing that? That's gotta be a little bit of a challenge.
Jacek Zieba:
Pandemic? I don't know what you're saying. That there is some problem? Yeah, of course-
Larry Hryb:
It isn't in the U.S.
Jacek Zieba:
... I think it affects us really strong at the start, as I think anybody, we were scared what's happening, how it changed everything. We really like working on site. We have this direct contact with people in our company to share ideas and everything. And we don't believe it can happen to create the game and not being in the office, but I think in the maybe three days or four days, everything changed, everybody go to work from home. And we set up whole infrastructure and most of us work that way, like three months or even four from that time and it works. We have really creative and brilliant people that can win every encounter or something like that.
Larry Hryb:
I will tell you this, is that shipping a game is ridiculously hard. I've known a lot of developers that obviously have done it and some that, unfortunately haven't done it, but doing it in the middle of a pandemic, hats off to you. I don't even know what to say except I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys do. And I-
Jacek Zieba:
Shipping a game as normally like, okay, you play on hard or you play on hard plus. Shipping the game in pandemic, it can be nightmare.
Larry Hryb:
It's insane mode or nightmare mode.
Jacek Zieba:
Yeah, it's insane mode.
Wojciech Piejko:
Then plus, plus, plus then solves.
Jacek Zieba:
But people manage to do it.
Wojciech Piejko:
And probably all the products that will be released during the pandemic should have like a pandemic affected sign there or something like this.
Larry Hryb:
Achievement on unlocked. Shipped a game during pandemic.
Jacek Zieba:
Achievement unlocked. We made it during a pandemic.
Larry Hryb:
I know you guys... I appreciate you taking the time today and talk to us a little bit about-
Jacek Zieba:
No problem.
Larry Hryb:
... The Medium. I really appreciate your time looking forward to it coming. It's coming to Xbox Series X and Windows. I know we've got a lot of excitement for both sides looking at it there. So gentlemen, I appreciate you taking the time. Have a great day and good luck on shipping.
Wojciech Piejko:
Thank you-
Jacek Zieba:
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Wojciech Piejko:
... again for having us. See you. Thank you.
Larry Hryb:
My pleasure.
Jeff Rubenstein:
That was Jacek and Wojciech coming from Poland.
Larry Hryb:
Well done.
Jeff Rubenstein:
I didn't realize-
Larry Hryb:
Well done with the names.
Jeff Rubenstein:
You watch enough soccer, you're exposed to a lot of different names that we just don't see in America that often, but Major Nelson Radio going international. I like that. I like what I'm hearing about The Medium. I think that's going to be really cool. It's great to see the Xbox Series X optimized features that they are taking advantage of.
Larry Hryb:
Lovely studio there. Those guys have a lot of history. Think Silent Hill, as you heard during the interview.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Speaking of optimized, we put up a story this week on MajorNelson and Xbox Wire, we're hearing Xbox Series X optimized. You might've seen this badge that says optimized for Xbox Series X. What does that mean? Well, we actually put all that in one place. I would say what it means in a one sentence terms, it takes advantage of a major Xbox Series X capability and that might be something like your hardware accelerated Ray tracing. It might be super high frame rates could be up to 120 frames a second like we've seen the Dirt Five. It could be quick resume. It could be any number of things.
Larry Hryb:
It could be one or more of those.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Exactly. So there's a lot of features that Xbox Series X, the new generation empowers and these games take advantage of that like Cyberpunk 2077. Did you see a Night City Wire this week?
Larry Hryb:
I did.
Jeff Rubenstein:
All right. I actually was lucky enough, I got to see quite a bit of footage-
Larry Hryb:
Tell us about that?
Jeff Rubenstein:
... from Cyberpunk 2077. I got to tell you, this is the most I've seen. I had gotten to sit in at E3 2018 on a gameplay that was ended up being released, but got to see like hours of gameplay, the very beginning of the game and skim is the real deal. This is shaping up exactly what I was hoping it would be. It actually probably exceeds any of my expectations from what I've seen so far. So you've played-
Larry Hryb:
Let's be clear. This is the amazing teams CD, who brought us one of my favorites-
Jeff Rubenstein:
The Witcher.
Larry Hryb:
... which is The Witcher: Wild Hunt.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes, absolutely. The Witcher Three: Wild Hunt is my favorite game of all time. I will say that. Definitely game of the generation. I think it's my favorite game of all time.
Larry Hryb:
Jeffery, I think your switch wants to talk to you. Zelda: Breath of the wild may have a word with you.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Breath of Wild was very good. Witcher Three is also on there. Even on its own platform-
Larry Hryb:
There's no bad choices.
Jeff Rubenstein:
... might not be my favorite game. That's why it's so hard to pick your favorite. But what I would say is, so if you've played a Western RPG, like let's say Mass Effect, you remember at the beginning of the first Mass Effect, you choose your background, on a menu, you chose could you survive? I can't remember that. Just a bit of a backstory. You kind of selected from a menu and then everyone just sort of reflects that and sort of mentions that and talks about that as the game goes on. In this game you actually play us a different opening to the game based on which of those backgrounds you choose. So you can be you can be, I believe, they're called a street kid. You can do a corpo, a business person who gets turned on by their business and then a nomad, which is like a smuggler and the opening of your game is very different and then other things happen later on the game are very different based on that. So the one I saw the most was the nomad and they were smuggling something from Northern California down to night city.
Larry Hryb:
Now, did you play it or did you watch the game play?
Jeff Rubenstein:
I personally got to watch someone else play which is torture.
Larry Hryb:
So you were over the shoulder?
Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes, but it was somewhat actually playing and-
Larry Hryb:
Could you say, hey, go left, go right? Or do you feel like it was-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. For sure. And there was a number of different ways to tackle things. One of the things that was just really interesting is we went through the whole character creator situation is you create via your avatar. And you can allocate, do you want to be like a muscly person or do you want to be like more of a stealthy, hacker person? That's generally the way I do it. I think of DSX, I put all my points into hacking and stealth skills, as opposed to just like the brute force method. But the thing is once you do that, you really need to actually role play because there were situations where was I was like I'll just shoot my way out of this like I normally do and it did not work out. Did not have enough hit points, but I was able talk my way out of, or bribe my way out of, or deescalate in some other way. And that's just really awesome.
Jeff Rubenstein:
I would say in The Witcher, there's multiple ways things can turn out, but you are girl and you're really good with a sword, two swords actually and you're going to be using those sorts of quite a bit. There's just a lot of different ways that you can handle situations and I think that's pretty awesome.
Larry Hryb:
They announced that last week that the date was moved, right?
Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, to November 19th.
Larry Hryb:
November 19th. Anyway, that's great. Thank you for sharing that. We're looking forward to hearing more about that.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Very, very much so. So there's a video, a lot of the stuff they talked about you'll be able to see, it should be on Xbox Wire by the time you hear this.
Larry Hryb:
That's exciting.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Or on the Xbox YouTube page.
Larry Hryb:
I'll get somebody from CD Projekt hopefully in a future show.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Put them in that middle box. That would be really-
Larry Hryb:
Hold on a second. Let me pull up right here. I can put them in this box. Where is it? Hold on. Where did it go? Here it is. I can put them in that box. So right here-
Jeff Rubenstein:
There we go.
Larry Hryb:
... right here is where-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Your name here.
Larry Hryb:
... My name here. That's where you're going to... or you know what maybe I'll kick Jeff out and we'll even fill the other two boxes.
Jeff Rubenstein:
I think people would probably be fine with that. You want to talk a little bit more news?
Larry Hryb:
You know what? I would love to. In fact, let me bring up this box and then we can go ahead and bring up the news ticker. So go ahead.
Jeff Rubenstein:
All right, here we go. Yes. Some extra content that was added to some existing games this week that I think will be very interesting. One, State of Decay Two-
Larry Hryb:
This is a crazy match up.
Jeff Rubenstein:
... I did the plunger pack and then The Green Zone update. And look, if you've played State of Decay Two is a demanding game. It is tough. You're managing resources. You're managing your stamina. You're managing your health. You're managing the health and the wellbeing of your community. The day night cycle is so much harder at night.
Larry Hryb:
It's stressful.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Green Zone, it takes the edge off of that. So, if you're having a hard time, you want to be able to play through the game, but you're having trouble, you can either start a new game in the Green Zone, or you can migrate your existing community into the green zone. Things will be a little bit less demanding. The cost for upgrades will be a little bit less expensive. I'm going to do this. There's a certain point you get-
Larry Hryb:
The last time you and I played together, did I throw a Molotov in the car? Did I dive out of the car? What did I do? Do you remember that?
Jeff Rubenstein:
First of all, all of the above, but the funniest part is you were going to the... We had done a run, a supply run, and I think we met up with the person you gives you the different quests out of the back of the van. I can't remember his name right now. And we were going back to our base, you put things into the inventory and you were going, you were sorting through your inventory and I don't know what you did. You hit the wrong button, you just dropped a Molotov cocktail at your feet. And I'm sorting through my ammo and I look over and you start dropping and rolling in a pile of lit gasoline. And I was like, "How did you hurt yourself in the inventory menu?" That is like a new low for you. I just lost it.
Larry Hryb:
I was playing so many games. You know what it's like? And I hadn't played it in a while and one thing led to another and I'm on fire.
Jeff Rubenstein:
I know. Do I hit B to drop it or A. I know, for sure. Anyway, so I would definitely check that out. That update is live now. Another update I'm so excited for Control's, first expansion, the foundation is now available for Xbox one. I just downloaded it before the show. Control was my favorite game of last year was made by Remedy. Very excited to see what that team's going to be doing and CrossfireX for the campaign. It's more control, yes, please. I will take more control. So that is coming. And then I know at some point there'll be an expansion too that apparently is Alan Wake related or something. So having just played through Alan Wake, I'm very excited just to see how they integrate the universes together.
Larry Hryb:
Did you finish? Did you finish yet?
Jeff Rubenstein:
I did finish Alan Wake and it was really good. And you could really see, having played control first and then going back, I'm like, "Oh, all right. I can see some of the DNA of control back here in Alan Wake." Also a number of the voice actors were the same. I was like, "I know that person's voice that used to be the director."
Larry Hryb:
Remember those days.
Jeff Rubenstein:
All right. Do we want to talk about Xbox Game Pass?
Larry Hryb:
Of course. Why wouldn't we? The greatest deal in gaming ever why not, Jeffery?
Jeff Rubenstein:
That is true. Why not? Why not? So coming soon, some new games were announced this week. Not for the first time, I don't think this month, but The Messenger, Streets of Rogue and Night Call are coming to console. Observation is coming to both console and PC. So The Messenger is actually new to Xbox one and it's included. They won with Xbox Game Pass. This is a cool game that if you ever played like Ninja Gaiden on the NES back in the day, this is going to be for you. It is a Ninja game, but one of the cool sort of tricks-
Larry Hryb:
Ninja Gaiden. It's how it's pronounced.
Jeff Rubenstein:
... thank you Larry Son. Is that it switches between 8 bit and 16 bit, so you're playing the same game-
Larry Hryb:
Fun.
Jeff Rubenstein:
... in different modes. So that's part of, it's not just like changing a filter, but it actually factors into the gameplay. So anyway, part of Xbox Game Pass, so you should check it out. I will be doing that. We also got a launch date for Dirt Five. We were talking about Dirt Five being optimized for Xbox Series X.
Larry Hryb:
Talk to the tech guy a couple of weeks ago on the show, so scroll back or-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Exactly.
Larry Hryb:
... you'll see that show right here.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Whatever you got to scroll. So we have a date October 9th. And so you can play that game through magic of Smart Delivery or you can get it on Xbox One on October 9th. And then when Xbox Series X comes out through smart delivery, you will get delivered the correct version of the game for no extra cost onto your Xbox Series X.
Larry Hryb:
Sweet.
Jeff Rubenstein:
So that'd be cool. And they're really excited. Chris Groves had a blog post from Code Masters, he just said, "Dirt Five on Xbox Series X is going to blow your mind." I love rally racing, so I'm very excited for this.
Larry Hryb:
You and I should do a rally race. You can drive and I can... call actually I'm the one-
Jeff Rubenstein:
No, I bet I'm a pretty good navigator. I think it's probably best that way.
Larry Hryb:
... for our entire professional lives you and I have driven around the world. I drive you tell me where to go and it's worked out great for the most past.
Jeff Rubenstein:
You generally don't get lost for the most past. Anyway, that's another podcast. This was a surprise announced that came out earlier this week. There's no end to the novelty to me, the fact that Crash Bandicoot is on Xbox, but Crash Four, it's about time, which looks actually pretty doing good. It has been a long time since we had a new Crash Bandicoot games, so that's coming out for Xbox One on October 2nd, and we have a blog post up about that. And then we're coming up to the end of the month. What do people tweet at you once we get to this time of the month every-
Larry Hryb:
GWG?
Jeff Rubenstein:
... every day? Games with gold. "What are the games with gold for July?"
Larry Hryb:
Yeah. And it's never a complete sentence.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Hey, people want to know what their free game is today.
Larry Hryb:
It's like communicating with you. I have to fill in different words go, "I think he means asking, Hey, do you have any information on games with gold?"
Jeff Rubenstein:
It's called economy of language. We don't want to waste time typing on the phone. All right. WRC Eight, I believe that's a World Rally Championship Eight is coming out on July 1st. That's an Xbox One game. And then your backward compatibility game is Saints Row Two, which we've all had a good time with Saints Row.
Larry Hryb:
Sure.
Jeff Rubenstein:
And then in the middle of the month for Xbox One Dunk Lords, and then for backward compatibility, Xbox 360 is a game called Juju, which I've never actually played. So anyway, you can read about those and you'll be able to start downloading them in about five days.
Larry Hryb:
All right. Well-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Last thing.
Larry Hryb:
We've got more.
Jeff Rubenstein:
It's the weekend.
Larry Hryb:
It is.
Jeff Rubenstein:
People want to know where they can play. We've mentioned a number of things that you probably already can play for free, whether it's from games with gold or-
Larry Hryb:
But wait, we have more.
Jeff Rubenstein:
... Xbox Game Pass. Well, we do free play days. Just about every weekend there's some cool stuff to play. And this weekend Hitman Two is a free trial. We saw Hitman Three was announced last week, it's going to become on Xbox Series X. Looks really good. No better time than to start playing Hitman Two and Stardew Valley. Have you ever played Stardew Valley, Larry?
Larry Hryb:
I started playing it and I realized it was going to be one of these things that's just going to suck me in. I know you played it for a while and a couple-
Jeff Rubenstein:
Ton. It's such a great game.
Larry Hryb:
... of the team played for a while.
Jeff Rubenstein:
If you've never played Stardew Valley, but you were sucked into Animal Crossing-
Larry Hryb:
By the way-
Jeff Rubenstein:
you shouldn't really give Stardew Valley-
Larry Hryb:
... As if on cue, here comes the scroll that tells us what's going on.
Jeff Rubenstein:
There it is. It's almost as if the director is a baby. Stardew Valley it's awesome game where you're a city person who moves out to the country and inherits a farm, I think and it's dilapidated. Anyway, for where we are, everything going on and if you need to unplug and decompress, this is a great game for doing it. You wake up, you plant stuff, you harvest stuff. You make friends in town and you go to bed at a reasonable time. You can't stay too late.
Larry Hryb:
I haven't played that much of the game. Are their crows?
Jeff Rubenstein:
There're birds. I don't think there's crows. Anyway, it's free. Give it a shot, but you should buy this game. I'm going to tell you. You can buy it for $10 and 49 cents. You should absolutely do that because-
Larry Hryb:
You kill your price?
Jeff Rubenstein:
... I promise you, you will... Well, it's marked down. During free play days, it's free to play it during the weekend and it's marked down if you decide you want to keep playing it. And it's marked down from 14.99 down to 10.49 so 30% off. It's math. I can't argue with them, Larry.
Larry Hryb:
You can't argue with them?
Jeff Rubenstein:
You can, but you're going to lose literally every time. That's why it's math. So that's it for the news.
Larry Hryb:
All right.
Jeff Rubenstein:
That's all I got.
Larry Hryb:
Why don't we do this? We've got Call of the Sea. We have the co-founder game director, Tatiana Delgado. So we talked about international early on. She's going to join us from Spain. So what do you say we do that right now?
Jeff Rubenstein:
This is a very European show. I love it.
Larry Hryb:
We can't travel there, so the least I could do is talk to them. Call of The Sea is coming to Xbox Series X later this year, joining me on the line is Tatiana Delgado, the co-founder and game director of Out of the Blue games. Tatiana, great to chat with you. Thank you for joining me.
Tatiana Delgado:
Thank you for the invitation. I'm glad to be here.
Larry Hryb:
My pleasure. Now, your studio, you're located where?
Tatiana Delgado:
We are located in Madrid, Spain. So that's my accent.
Larry Hryb:
That's quite all right. I appreciate that. Well, thank you. Again, thank you for joining us. I know it's a little different time zone for you over there. It's interesting because you don't think of majority as a game development area, but it's great to see that you guys are based out there.
Tatiana Delgado:
Yeah. And the funny thing is that we actually don't have an office. We work here remote. We work from home. So that allows us to get people from different parts of Spain and also we have people from other parts of the world too.
Larry Hryb:
It's funny, obviously we all have to work from home now with this pandemic, but adopting that model like your studio has earlier, it's really helped you to kind of look around and go, "Well, we've been doing this forever, so this is much... what's the big deal." Let's talk a little bit about your latest project. Your latest project is Call of The Sea. We saw the trailer in May. If I can, I'd like you to kind of walk us through a little bit about what the game is about because it's a beautiful game and I'm looking forward to hearing it from you about what this game is about. So let's roll this in here and why don't you tell us about the game?
Tatiana Delgado:
Call of The Sea is a story-driven, puzzle game that is set in a lost Island in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean. And you take a Nora, that is a woman that is looking for her husband's missing expedition and what you will do is explore the island and try to figure out what happened there. You will find as you can see the remains of an old ancient, mystery of civilization, you will have beautiful scenes. You have to explore, figure out things. We want the players to be immersed in this beautifully crafted world that we have prepared and spend hours trying to see all the details and have fun.
Larry Hryb:
We saw a little bit of what looks like to be the main character at the end there. Do you play as a man, as a woman, or does it matter?
Tatiana Delgado:
You are a woman, is Nora. As I said, she's looking for expedition that is lost. Her husband when there to this Island and she never knew more about him. So she is going to this island and trying to find out what happened.
Larry Hryb:
We saw little bit about the game. Would you call it a puzzle exploration game?
Tatiana Delgado:
Yeah.
Larry Hryb:
When you look at the game and of course we talked about it coming to Xbox Series X and Xbox PC, but tell us about developing and looking at Xbox Series X and the power of the platform and some of the areas that you and your team were excited about and to unlock what this generation?
Tatiana Delgado:
Well, the first thing I think is the visuals for our game is really important that we highlight the environment because since it's a first-person game, you are going to be playing alone. You'll never see the character, but the island is a character in itself, so with the power of the Xbox Series X, we can bring 4K and is going to be amazing to show the quality of the environments for the players. Also, the amount of details we can bring. Although, as you can see, the style of the game is bit, the light is not realistic, but still we can play a lot with all those features to make it shine, bring emotions to the player through the environment.
Larry Hryb:
As we look through here, there's the lighting, the colors. Parts of it, what we're seeing here is just it's a very vibrant and obviously very tropical. You said we'd go to a tropical island, here we got some inside, which is a little darker. But it's certainly got a different look. And so when we look at this generation, we talked a little bit about ray tracing and fast loading. What are the things that your team has looked at and go, "Wow, this feels next-gen?"
Tatiana Delgado:
I think as you said ray tracing and 4K, but also what we really love too is for example, the smart delivery that we are going to have, because I think we love how Microsoft has put the players first. We can bring the game for those that still don't have the console, but enjoy when they have it at the full, with all the bright colors and everything. So I think this is amazing.
Larry Hryb:
The smart delivery, we talked last week about that on my show with Jason on it and it's great. So if you have an Xbox One right now and you upgrade to an Xbox Series X, whether it's later this year or next year or beyond, and you buy Call of The Sea, you just get the best version of whatever your hardware can handle. That's got to be great for you as well. When we look at the game and some of the puzzles and things along those lines, there's so much going on. I guess the fast loading also has really remove this need for load screens. Tell us about that as well?
Tatiana Delgado:
These kind of games when immersion is so important, when you have a smooth feeling and a smooth experience playing. And here it plays a big role with the fast loading, the direct to storage hardware, the compression, all these things that make the game run... will help the player get more immersed into the game.
Larry Hryb:
It's really been a beautiful game to look at and kind of walk through and it looks like one of those environments that you want to play in and have some fun with because it's just so beautiful and vibrant. Would you say it's, I don't want to give too much away for the game because we don't have any spoilers, but I assume it gets a little darker in areas. Would that be accurate?
Tatiana Delgado:
Yes. We can say that.
Larry Hryb:
Yeah. We can say that.
Tatiana Delgado:
Every level is going to have a different experience for the player. As I said, we want to convey emotions with environment, so sometimes you will see this tropical, very beautiful, colorful place, but it might get a bit darker in some places.
Larry Hryb:
A little bit darker. When you were designing the game, tell us about some of the inspirations you had from video games or other forms of art that is going to help bring Call of The Sea to life?
Tatiana Delgado:
The team has a long love for adventure games. So we want to bring something back from those classic adventure games and put it in next-gen somehow. Reference we have is inspiration of the H.P. Lovecraft world, his books, but this is not a horror game, as you can see. So we take this mystery, this hints of occult, the inspiration of ancient, lost civilizations. This is the kind of things that we are putting in our game. Also, we want to bring the classic feeling of adventures like Indiana Jones, for example, but not the action part, but the exploration. Again, it's the lure of finding all secrets and trying to figure out what the civilization was and that kind of things.
Larry Hryb:
As somebody who has played games for a long time, and I'm sure you have as well, do you look at things like Myst, the classic Myst is kind of one of those games, because this feels like that, but obviously much, much, much more updated. There's much more action and much more vibrancy in the atmosphere, right?
Tatiana Delgado:
Yeah. Mist was one of the games that I think inspired me to become a game designer. Yes. Is one of my favorites. Also, most of the team love those games and I think we are taking inspiration from that of course. We really love the second part of Myst even. We love that game and I think we want to put it here. Is that the puzzles are part of the environment. They are very well integrated, so you don't feel that they are out of context. Everything is in context on the environment.
Larry Hryb:
You talked a little bit about Myst and how maybe that got you into the industry. Tell us a little about your history and your past in the games industry?
Tatiana Delgado:
I've been a game designer for 17 years now, so it's a long time. There was a moment in my career that I realized I've lost the passion for making games. It was when I was a game design workshop, like five years ago, and I saw some students with projects, they have this bright in their eyes and they have passion that I've lost. And I realize, okay, I need to do something because that's the reason I was making games and I lost it. I want to have it again. So I decided it was a moment to make my company and I started developing games.
Larry Hryb:
And then here we are. I don't mean to trivialize, but you make it sound easy, but I know there's a lot of work behind it.
Tatiana Delgado:
I think I'm extremely lucky to have a team of amazing people. They are really good people. They are not only good in their craft, but as a person, they have a very good attitude and we have a lot of fun and a lot of passion for the players. And I think it's something you can see on the game reflected that. Everybody is having a lot of fun making this game.
Larry Hryb:
You talked about at the beginning of the interview, you talked about how your team is distributed. There is really no office. Most of the folks that work on the game are they there in Spain? Are they in Europe or are they all over the world?
Tatiana Delgado:
No. We are actually 12, so it's not a big team. Most of them in Spain, but we have three that is in Greece and we have an America writer.
Larry Hryb:
It's truly an international collaboration on a lot of levels. That's great to hear. When we look at Call The Sea, we talked about, it's exploration puzzle game, but it's something that really, it looks beautiful. Looks like a really lovely world. When you were developing the game, how did you settle on this aesthetic? Because the aesthetic is obviously so important to the game. Tell us about that?
Tatiana Delgado:
I think for the beginning, we got inspiration in the aesthetics from games like Firewatch or The Witness, these games that have very vibrant colors, very beautiful environments. Actually make you want to stay there because we want the players to stay in the island. One thing I say for example, is when I play a game that I really like, I don't want to run. I want to walk and I don't want to miss anything on the environment. This is the kind of world we are trying to make. Of course, people are going to run, but we want to make you stay there and enjoy. And just looking around is going to be thing that you are going to enjoy.
Larry Hryb:
It's interesting because I always thought about that since I've been in this industry, I think about there's so many gamers and players who will just kind of rush through a level with perhaps one or two or more artists have labored hours, if not days, if not weeks in this area and it's over in mere seconds. So I agree with you. It's really important as gamers to kind of stop and look around and look at the detail. And that's what really brings the worlds to life. The stuff that you may not be aware of, but your body picks up on and your visuals pick up on. That really just make this Christmas come to life. Was that accurate?
Tatiana Delgado:
Yes. Totally agree.
Larry Hryb:
It's certainly exciting. Well, I know folks are excited to get their hands on Call of The Sea later this year. Do you have a release date yet?
Tatiana Delgado:
We're going to a release at the end of this year.
Larry Hryb:
I know folks are excited about that, especially considering they can get it on the Xbox One and then, through smart delivery, they can get the really upgraded, for lack of a better term, version. The really crisp version on Xbox Series X. Tatiana Delgado, the co-founder and game director of Out of the Blue Games. Of course, Call of The Sea coming later this year. Tatiana, thanks so much for your time.
Tatiana Delgado:
Thank you.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Thanks Tatiana Delgado, the game director of Call of The Sea. And that's going to be coming out later this year. Can't wait to play.
Larry Hryb:
It sure is coming out later this year. Great to hear how they're using Xbox Series X. They're one of the studios that has distributed like a lot of the studios are now. They have no office. They're just working from home like you and I are. You're in your game room. What do you call that room? Is that your office, your game lounge, you man den, your game den?
Jeff Rubenstein:
All of the above, Larry. This is typically where I would play and this is the guest room, really. There's a sofa bed right there, but this is where I play-
Larry Hryb:
Maybe I should get a sofa bed in my office.
Jeff Rubenstein:
... this is where I will be playing Apex later.
Larry Hryb:
I feel like I should get a sofa bed in my office.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Do you ever allow anyone in to visit?
Larry Hryb:
Sure, I do. Sure. I do.
Jeff Rubenstein:
No, you don't. Save your money. Save your money, Larry.
Larry Hryb:
Do you sleep on that couch frequently? Does your wife have you sleep on the couch frequently?
Jeff Rubenstein:
Here's the thing. It's on the lowest level and so if it's really hot, sometimes I come down here-
Larry Hryb:
Because physics.
Jeff Rubenstein:
... I wake up in the middle of the night. Because physics and because we don't have air conditioning because somebody thought that was a good idea.
Larry Hryb:
Now I'm going to go get a sleeper lounge so I can put you in here.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Why would I come sleep over your house, Larry?
Larry Hryb:
I have air conditioning.
Jeff Rubenstein:
I'm in.
Larry Hryb:
Done. As somebody who spent much of his years, earlier years in Florida, I'm surprised you don't have air conditioning, but I know it's not a thing in Seattle.
Jeff Rubenstein:
It's not. At some point it's going to have to be, but it's really expensive. So I sweat-
Larry Hryb:
It's hard to believe we're already-
Jeff Rubenstein:
... sweating's free.
Larry Hryb:
... we're already at the end of June. 2020. Is it over yet?
Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh my God. Yeah.
Larry Hryb:
Is it over yet, Jeff?
Jeff Rubenstein:
This is like that old meme from 30 Rock where it's like, "Oh, what a week." And, "Lemon, it's only Tuesday." And that has been like the entire year. "Lemon, it's only June."
Larry Hryb:
Let's be clear. As we say in [gamer parlance 01:07:39] 2020 has been a grind.
Jeff Rubenstein:
That's not even the half of it. A grind can be enjoyable.
Larry Hryb:
Sometimes.
Jeff Rubenstein:
2020, not so much.
Larry Hryb:
Do we have anymore news or should we just kind of wrap it up because we have these great interviews-
Jeff Rubenstein:
No we're news out.
Larry Hryb:
Yeah. We're news out.
Jeff Rubenstein:
This is good. We've been going for a while here. It's good.
Larry Hryb:
Hey, if you want to follow Jeff, you can see, we talked about that. If you're an influencer, you want to get hooked up with some cool stuff, hit Jeff up at his... In fact, let me throw. Well, you've got it on screen right there @JeffRubenstein.
Jeff Rubenstein:
There we go, Twitter. Thank you.
Larry Hryb:
If you want me to follow you, hit up Jeff. If you have any questions about that, hit up Jeff.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Anything else, If you have any sofa bed recommendations for Larry, just let me know. I'll filter them out and I'll give the best ones to him.
Larry Hryb:
I already bought one on my Kia. I got to get you a Futon.
Jeff Rubenstein:
Had a futon before.
Larry Hryb:
We've all had that Futon life. Haven't we?
Jeff Rubenstein:
I mean, there's worse lives out there.
Larry Hryb:
There are. Anyway, all right, gang, we'll let you go. Let us know what you think. Do you want to do the fun YouTube part, Jeff?
Jeff Rubenstein:
Like and subscribe, please.
Larry Hryb:
Hit the bell.
Jeff Rubenstein:
And make sure you set the notification. Hit the bell.
Larry Hryb:
Hit the bell. But no, we appreciate you guys bearing with us as we get into this new mode. We got more interviews coming up in July and beyond as we get ready for Xbox Series X launch later this year. So we're looking forward to sharing more details on that. Find me on Twitter, right below as you can see @MajorNelson, my blog @majornelson.com. You want to check out a bunch of... What are you looking at? I can tell you're pointing.
Jeff Rubenstein:
I was pointing to... Anyway, ignore me, Larry.
Larry Hryb:
I can't do that. You're part of the show now. All right, gang. We'll talk to you later. Have a great day. Be well, be safe out there. And Jeff, do you have any final words?
Jeff Rubenstein:
Goodbye everybody.
Larry Hryb:
Bye-bye everybody. (silence)