762: NHL22, Alan Wake Remastered and Rainbow Billy

Larry Hryb:
Welcome to the Xbox Podcast. My name is Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson, and it's great to see you. First of all, I want to thank you if you're watching us or listening to us. Wherever you are, thank you for liking, subscribing, and doing all that stuff. Did I do it right, Jeff? Did I do it right?

Jeff Rubenstein:
No. No, you didn't do it.

Rebecca Gordius:
I think you did a great job.

Larry Hryb:
Thank you, Rebecca.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Don't enable him, Rebecca. You need to tell everybody that there's drops on Friday. We did all that stuff last week, and you had double the views, so I can't really take credit for that, but tell everybody what show it is.

Larry Hryb:
It's the Official Xbox Podcast. We release every Friday, most Fridays on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Google, all your finer podcast outlets and assuming things are well, you're going to get us, we've got interviews, we'll wrap up the Xbox news of the week. This is a great way, going into your weekend, where you can kind of check out, "Hey, what's going on, on Xbox? What did I miss this week?" Because I know that you're busy with your lives and we're here to kind of help you along a little bit. The one thing we can't help though is Jeff with his audio inputs. I don't think your mic is actually selected as the input.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right. Well, I'll...

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
And the reason I know this is because off the air Rebecca and I were troubleshooting this for her setup, right? Doesn't sound like it's right.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, you sound like me last week.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I will disappear and reappear, how about that?

Larry Hryb:
Okay, I guess we're going to do that. I guess we're going to do that. Until then, we'll just... Bye. Jeff's going to go away and he's going to come back, so I guess Rebecca we can go full screen on you, or no?

Rebecca Gordius:
Hi.

Larry Hryb:
How are you? Oh, you sound way better. Welcome back.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right. There we go. That's it.

Rebecca Gordius:
Oh, yeah. That sounds good.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Puppy had pulled the plug out. I don't have a puppy.

Larry Hryb:
You don't have a cat, you don't have a dog, you don't have anything in your house.

Jeff Rubenstein:
A lot of squirrels in this neighborhood, so occasionally... It's only a matter of time before one of them gets in here and starts chewing on the wires.

Larry Hryb:
Anyway. Great to see everybody. Rebecca, how are things out in New York City?

Rebecca Gordius:
Fall in New York is nice. Everyone keeps telling me to get out to Central Park to watch the leaves, but I have been mostly cooped up in my apartment though, but I'll probably get out, look at leaves at some point. They're not going anywhere, right?

Larry Hryb:
Go over to Grand Central, take the Metro North, go up to New Haven, walk around Yale, and then you can grab some pizza at Pepe's or Sally's, and then take the Metro North back.

Rebecca Gordius:
This feels like a long trip.

Jeff Rubenstein:
She just said she can't even get out of her house. Forget Central Park. Go 1000 blocks north.

Larry Hryb:
I'm just trying to get you up there. You've never been to my home state of Connecticut, have you, and I wanted to get you up there to enjoy that because New England in the fall is primo.

Rebecca Gordius:
I see. I did actually have brunch with a gal from Connecticut last weekend, and she complained about it quite a bit, so I don't know.

Larry Hryb:
What did she complain about?

Rebecca Gordius:
She said it's boring and there's no good food except for pizza.

Jeff Rubenstein:
She said Pepe's is no good. That was her direct quote. I'm just stirring the pot.

Larry Hryb:
I am not going to get involved with the pizza wars, the great pizza wars of Wooster Street. I will not do that. That's where all the pizza place are, they're on Wooster Street.

Rebecca Gordius:
Got you. That makes sense.

Larry Hryb:
All right. Let's move along and talk about games, shall we, gang? Because this is going nowhere.

Jeff Rubenstein:
This is the worst travel podcast of all time.

Larry Hryb:
It's the anti-travel podcast. I can't get out of my apartment! Oh, boy. Rebecca, we're going to start with you because Jeff and I, we'll share our co-op story this week, but what are you playing?

Rebecca Gordius:
So I got the chance to try the Halo Infinite beta this weekend finally.

Larry Hryb:
With a lot of other people you did.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. It was pretty great. I'm a little bit nervous for my future as a Halo player though because I feel like I'm starting to fall behind. Just all the clips that I saw of people posting and just the.... I mean, Big Team Battle has never been my thing, it's always been a little bit chaotic for me. I am really sad that I missed out on the 4v4 weekend last weekend, and I also don't really care for Capture the Flag. I would prefer if we were all just trying to think of a way to not, say, just killing each other, but I would prefer if we were all just in combat.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Just testing out our skills in shooting at each other's heads.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yes, testing our combat skills.

Larry Hryb:
Did you get to play Territories at all?

Rebecca Gordius:
No. So every time I matchmade, it brought me to Capture the Flag, so after four matches, I was like, "Okay, I'm done," because I don't like Capture the Flag.

Larry Hryb:
Jeff and I played a little bit over the weekend. You were on a little bit later. I was going to join you, to be honest, but I was so deep into Far Cry couldn't break myself free. But Jeff and I played a little bit, and I think we did a nice mix of Slayer, on Capture the Flag, Territory. It was all over the place, wasn't it?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, there was that mode, Total Control, which I thought was really interesting because in the Arena mode, there's sort of a Territory's mode where as long as your team has two of the three spots, you're sort of racking up points and it counts up to 200 or something like that, and then you win. This one, it was different. You had to hold all three points, but just for a second. If you could get all three, then you scored a point and it was first team to three points, but it was actually incredibly chaotic because you're so close.

Larry Hryb:
And the flag points kept moving. Once you got three, they're like, "Okay, let's reset it," and they would go to different parts on the map, so it was pretty-

Jeff Rubenstein:
But you're right, it's bonkers.

Rebecca Gordius:
That's pretty cool.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, it was absolute chaos. I'm with you where Capture the Flag... I'll stay back on defense, which is I do enjoy getting the flag carrier, just sort of depriving people of joy. Maybe if we were to have a breakthrough in my psychology, it's I just want this person who's so close to feeling happy, just to crush that and have their dreams turn to ashes in their mouth, but-

Larry Hryb:
Mr. Buzzkill, Mr. Joy Killer, Mr. Unhappy.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Rebecca's like, "See? Now I get it." See? I feel like I'm connecting with you on the right level. But yeah, tremendous amount of fun, and just a tremendous amount of mayhem, and it really sort of captured, I think, everything I love about Halo. It's very tight. I love the controls. I think they... Look, this is the Xbox Podcast. We're not going to get up here and issue a list of gripes. That is not what we do, but I will say as someone who missed out on most of Halo 3 and Reach and ODST because I was working elsewhere, and 5. We had a lot of fun with Warzone. I would say this more than anything brings me back to why I fell in love with Halo in the first place, and it just feels great and it sounds great. The sound design, it's just so good, and I just couldn't get enough of it.

Larry Hryb:
Jeff and I played a little bit. We played a lot with the folks from 343. I don't know, there was one session... I don't know if you were in that session, Jeff, but we played with the lead developer on the game, one of the lead project managers on the game, the head of community. I mean, it was like Halo royalty in this game, and we did pretty good. We lost, but we won, but a lot of the games were really close, and I remember when we were developing the matchmaking system for Xbox back in the day, we used to have this true skill concept. The sign of a good match is one that's kind of like a little bit of a tennis match. In other words, it's back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, and we ran into a lot of that. We ran into a lot of the games, which were 49 to 50 or just within close moments. It was really a lot of fun. Really looking forward to when it releases later this year.

Jeff Rubenstein:
One of the cools things... No, go on.

Rebecca Gordius:
I was just going to say, that's one thing I've heard from friends and then I also experienced it too, is just that the matchmaking feels a little bit more accurate to your skill set.

Larry Hryb:
I know that they've done some work on that. We'll get the folks from Halo on the podcast to talk a little about that. Jeff, what do you want to say?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. No, I was watching... When things first went live at 9:00 AM last Friday, Pacific, and Kinda Funny was streaming and they were just like, "Wonder if we can get 12 people in a party," and I just logged out on my meeting and just joined with them, and we ran the whole 12 party until that particular window of matchmaking closed, and it was madness, but it was really, really fun. If you can get a group of 12, which I know we ended up doing later on with 343, man, that was the way to go. That was really cool.

Larry Hryb:
We had 343, we played with members of the community, we had some folks in there which were frighteningly good. I don't want to speak for Jeff, but as I like to say, I'm usually on the left end of the bell curve.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. This is the button I use the most, right here, the View button because I kept hitting it to see the scoreboard to make sure I wasn't in last, that was mostly my goal, I need to not be at the bottom, and sometimes I did that.

Larry Hryb:
We'll get somebody on from Halo team and 343 to talk about their release coming later this year, so we should do that. What else you playing, Rebecca? Oh, I know one of the games you're playing.

Rebecca Gordius:
Rainbow Billy?

Larry Hryb:
Rainbow Billy!

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, so Rainbow Billy came out this week. I actually did an interview with Chris Chancey, he's the CEO and executive producer at ManaVoid, and it's pretty great game. I think one thing that's been interesting as someone who's been playing games for what I consider a long time, it's been really interesting to see how games have evolved as a medium and just seeing people creating games that are intended to have a positive impact or create positive feelings, or aren't just about killing someone as fast as possible, even though those are really fun too. And so, Rainbow Billy is really... I would have never thought I would enjoy talking to a trash can, but the trash cans are really nice and they have these witty things to say, so it's actually a pretty cute, well-designed game. The gameplay's also pretty nice variety of puzzles and dialogue and then also turn-based challenges, so it's pretty sweet. I'd recommend people check it out, but you can learn more during the interview.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Don't let Oscar the Grouch fool you.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, right?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Not everybody in a trash can is a grouch.

Larry Hryb:
It looks like a lot of fun you have to... And Rebecca will have an interview later on. You talked about the evolution of gameplay in games, Rebecca, it's interesting you say that because in the interview I have with Sam Lake about Alan Wake Remastered, he talks a little bit about that, about how not just necessarily the gameplay, but obviously the technology. So we're going to talk about that, and then Jeff, you're also going to talk to someone. Who do you talk to you next? Oh!

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's Clem Kwong from the NHL 22. Hockey fever is here, it's melting. The two do not coexist, the fever and the ice. I don't know what I'm talking about.

Larry Hryb:
I know. Have you been to a game yet in Madison Square Garden, Rebecca, in New York, or a show or anything? You got to go check that place out, that's pretty cool.

Rebecca Gordius:
Okay, on the list. Eventually when I leave my apartment.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So first step, look at the leaves at Central Park, then hop on some train, go all the way up to New Haven, Connecticut on Wooster Street, then get back in time, they're dropping the puck 7:00 PM at MSG. So you've got a heck of a day.

Rebecca Gordius:
It sounds like a very busy weekend, yeah.

Larry Hryb:
That is the Tri-state lifestyle, I'll tell you that right now.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Wait, which one is the third state? Is it New Jersey?

Larry Hryb:
It's usually Jersey, New York and Connecticut, but if you're from Pennsylvania, you'll say Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware is sort of the... That was the Delaware Valley Tri-state area.

Larry Hryb:
That was the Southern version of the Tri-state.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, New Jersey's sort of like... There's more Jersey in South Jersey and right around Princeton. If you see people in Giants and Jets gear versus Eagles gear, that's how you know which part you're at.

Rebecca Gordius:
I see.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You don't spend a lot of time in New Jersey.

Larry Hryb:
We're going to get you educated on that North-Eastern lifestyle eventually, Rebecca. Although Rebecca and I were commiserating. There's this weird thing in the Northwest, talking about food, that you don't find, and Jeff, this is teriyaki. There's no teriyaki in New York or not that she's found or I've found.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, it's just a really big thing around here. I mean, I'm sure everyone's had or heard of teriyaki chicken, but teriyaki restaurants, and oftentimes, they'll have their teriyaki plus Chinese food, or teriyaki plus Korean food, or teriyaki plus Vietnamese food, and for lunch, it's some of the best stuff that you could get. There's certain things that they all have, they'll have chicken teriyaki or yakisoba.

Rebecca Gordius:
Fried rice.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes, but then they'll have their own sort of specialties that go on top of it, and there are dozens and dozens, usually family-owned local places, a one-off, not a chain, and when in doubt, if I don't know what to have for lunch, around the Microsoft campus, there's at least a half a dozen teriyaki places and we all have our favorites. Oh, I miss it. I miss it.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, it's fine. I think the one around my parent's house was... I think it was... It's funny you mentioned Yummy Teriyaki. I think it was Yummy Teriyaki, but it was number five, but there was no number one, two, three or four, it was just... But you're right, they are independently owned, so I really don't know where the other four were, but...

Larry Hryb:
They're connected in name only, let's be clear. But yeah, we'll have to have some teriyaki if we get out to New York again. We're looking forward to... I know Jeff and I there was... What's funny, Jeff, I don't know if you saw that email with Jared. I know maybe you were on it, Rebecca. We were talking about, was it five or six years ago, we were in New York for the Windows 10 launch and Windows 11 is launching this week.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, that was a fun time because the event, as I recall, was in the headquarters where you're at in the first Division game. It's the big mail depository or something like that.

Larry Hryb:
It's the main post office, I think it was off Broadway.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, and that's your center of operations in the original Division game, and we're like, "We've been there. We know that one."

Larry Hryb:
We know that door.

Jeff Rubenstein:
We know that door. Oh, that door. The memories! If that door could talk, Larry. I don't know.

Larry Hryb:
Oh, boy. Anyway. Yeah, so you're playing those couple of games. We talked about I'm playing Halo. Jeff and I... And this is the segue to what Jeff and I are playing, and you know what I should do Jeff? I should just do the reveal when I go like this. We are playing Far Cry 6, which for those of you that have been listening to the show for some time, know that Jeff and I played 4 completely co-op, 5 completely co-op, and now we're doing 6 completely co-op. For some reason, the Far Cry experience in co-op is just bananas fun.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's a completely different experience because when you're playing by yourself, in this game especially, because I found it's kind of hard to open yourself. In previous games, you're like, "Oh, I killed 10 alligators and three panthers or something, and now I have some crazy armor, or something like that." This game works a little bit differently, it's more of a leveling system and there's plenty of times where if I go in loud, that's it. I have no chance at all to be successful.

Larry Hryb:
It's all over, everybody's dead.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Exactly. So you're just going in very stealthy and taking your time through it, but when you're playing together, it's just like, "Forget it. I'm going to launch a bunch of rockets, and you're going to take out your flamethrower. We're going to land a chopper right in the middle of this base and just go to town," and we've been having some just crazy sort of emergent moments, which is fun.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, we've had a lot of fun with that. Are you a Far Cry fan, Rebecca?

Rebecca Gordius:
I'm not, but I'm still enjoying your stories.

Jeff Rubenstein:
We killed a crazy mongoose together. I mean, it's-

Larry Hryb:
It was a mongoose-infested house and we had to clear it out. We were...

Jeff Rubenstein:
What happens every time is we try to go in quietly because there's always these alarms, you want to disarm the alarms before so they can't call in the cavalry. Inevitably we screw it up. Every time we screw it up. We're doing so well, and then it's just a mess, and we're just lucky to get out of there alive, which is fun, which is why we love doing it.

Larry Hryb:
Part of it is, you know what it's like, Rebecca, when you're playing games and you're unlocking weapons and attachments. You want to try that stuff out, so I don't want it to sit in the holster. Let's have a little bit of fun with this thing. So we had a lot of fun with it.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Can I just tell you my favorite part of the game, which was the least expected favorite part of the game is at one point I was playing a little bit solo and I was wandering around and my vehicle had gotten blown up, so I'm hoofing it, and I found a jet ski just sort of parked by the bank of the river. So I get on the jet ski, and the radio starts playing Ricky Martin, Livin' La Vida Loca, which if you were alive in the... When did that come out, late '90s, early 2000s?

Larry Hryb:
I would say '99.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Sure, and when you're living in South Florida, you heard that song. It was just pumped into your brain directly. It was just non-stop. You were hearing that song all the time.

Larry Hryb:
You're not going to talk about the other South Florida connection?

Jeff Rubenstein:
The other South Florida connection?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, remember when [crosstalk 00:17:49] of that character singing Informer?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh, my God! Yeah. That was really good, but he was Canadian. Anyway. So then my character just starts singing along with Livin' La Vida Loca, and it made a song that I don't want to hear super charming, and even to the point where I got where I was going, the song was still going and so I ditched on the side of whatever, this river bank, and I come off and she still just keeps singing. It was still in her head, and she finished the verse, and then it was like, "Okay, back to business of blowing something up."

Rebecca Gordius:
Oh, my gosh. I love that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, it was just a really col touch, and I've noticed in some other songs, which I was not familiar, like songs in Spanish and stuff, sometimes she'll just sing it and get super into it, which is really cool. In previous Far Cry games, a lot of times your character. You never heard from them, and this time you see your character-

Rebecca Gordius:
In most games, yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, and so your character is not a silent protagonist with amnesia or anything like that, but a fully-fledged character and likable, and kind of like in the Assassin's Creed games, you get really into your character. Even though it's a first-person, they let you see your character when you go into villages or areas where you cannot fight, it goes out to a third-person perspective, kind of like Destiny does that. When you're battling, it's first-person, but when you're in The Tower, or wherever it might be, you see your character and get to see how you're decked out and everything like that. I don't know, it's just a lot of fun. But yes, we did hear somebody at a radio station playing... Informer was this one hit wonder, at least in America. I think he was popular in Canada, rapper.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, I'm sorry. I said South Florida, I'm wrong direction.

Jeff Rubenstein:
South Florida, South Ontario. I mean, I see where you were going with on that, but it was a different version. I'm like, "Is this Informer, but in Spanish?" And it was.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, I just looked it up, Livin' La Vida Loca, March 23rd, 1999.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Wow, okay. So very much a Florida resident at that time, and Ricky Martin was everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere.

Larry Hryb:
Far Cry 6, check it out. Jeff and I are enjoying it. Rebecca, if you want to do a little co-op, let me know. Although, the one little area that they didn't have in this game that Jeff and I did in all the previous games is he would play some single player, I'd play some single player, and then you could come together in the previous games, then drop weapons for the other, "Here's the high-powered sniper rifle. Pick it up." Then it's in your inventory from that point forward. No, they sewed up that loophole as well.

Jeff Rubenstein:
But we've been able to do it with vehicles at least, where it's like, "Oh, I got this cool chopper. Now you take it and bring it back to your base," so at least there's that. Actually, I got to get that tank from you, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
Oh, that's right. I forgot about the tank that I got.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You've got the tank. Let me borrow your tank.

Rebecca Gordius:
Casually holding onto the tank.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
A lot of games out this week. We're going to talk about some coming to Game Pass later on, but right now, we're going to take a little bit of a break and start the interviews, where Jeff's going to talk about NHL. You're going to learn all about NHL 22, and then I am going to talk to Sam Lake about the remastered version of Alan Wake. If you haven't checked that out, it looks stunning. We'll play a little bit of that, and then Rebecca is going to wrap it up talking about Rainbow Billy.

Jeff Rubenstein:
We are fully into the fall, and all the big sports are rolling out. Obviously we're a couple of weeks into football, the Premiership, we're six or seven weeks into that, but there's one sport that is better adapted to the cold than just about anything else, and that is hockey. We are very close to the start of the NHL hockey season, and it's a particularly exciting one. Yes, I'm speaking here. From someone who lives in Seattle, we're very excited about the Kraken, but I think the excitement is going to really be spreading throughout the country. There's a new TV deal, it's going to be easier than ever to be watching hockey across ESPN and their family of channels, so what better way to get ready for hockey, for the new season than to play NHL 22, which is out next week, and we are speaking this week to Clem Kwong, the lead producer for NHL 22. Welcome to the show.

Clem Kwong:
Thank you, Jeff. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, this is a fun time, and I feel like there's some excitement, and I know being in Seattle, we're very much in a sort of a bubble here where the level of excitement is crazy. I live just right down the street from where they were doing the draft party, and it was choppers flying all over the place. It was actually really cool to see, and I say that as a Flyers fan. But I feel like there has been some real growth of the presence of hockey. Obviously, you're in Canada, couldn't be any bigger, but in the US as well. Do you feel that across the border and sort of this some new zeitgeist here for hockey?

Clem Kwong:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, as hockey fans, obviously we're big fans here, needless to say, across the border, but we'd look at markets within US, we look at Europe, specifically the Nordic countries, and we've seen just a lot of passion and a lot of excitement from our fans there, and even outside of the traditional, what we call the hockey hotbeds, right? The Original Six, Chicago, Boston, those areas, obviously Tampa having won the championship twice now. Hockey's getting very big there in Florida. Not a traditional hockey market. So definitely as a hockey fan, it's great to see the sport grow.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, it is interesting. I lived in Florida for a long time. My parents were effectively walking distance from where the Panthers play out there in the Sawgrass area. And hockey fandom's doing very well, and I will say, as someone who's been to some Lightning games as a Flyers fan, seeing them win twice, oftentimes with a lot of talent going back and forth, has been very tough, very tough to swallow, but one of the things I'm pretty excited about actually is with the Olympics coming up and the return of NHL talent to that because we get the Olympics just coming up in a few months. How's that impacting the team and what you're thinking about with NHL 22, and sort of people play games for a long time?

Clem Kwong:
Yeah. I mean, again, personally as a fan, that's very exciting. Obviously, when you get an opportunity to watch your best on best hockey, nothing gets better than that, especially when I guess the most lasting memory as Vancouverite was 2010 when Crosby scored the golden goal. I think we all remember the moment of where we are and just for the next generation of fans to be able to see and appreciate that, I think it's really exciting. For our team, what it really means is how do we elevate those superstars that are playing on the international stage? And that's something obviously we tried to do year-over-year is make these superstars feel bigger than life, and let's celebrate them maybe in ways that... Maybe you're in a market where you don't get all the games, so you don't know these players. I think both our game and the Olympics have a way of serving up those players and elevating their superstardom, so I think that's really exciting for the game.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right. Let's get into the game deeply. NHL 22, I've been playing since NHL '94 probably, but a big shift here in the game this year, some years are bigger jumps than others, but with the adoption of the Frostbite engine... So we've seen FIFA adopt the Frostbite engine some years ago at this point, and successfully at that, so I'm curious how the Frostbite engine affects NHL, how it improves things, and what that's been like?

Clem Kwong:
Yeah, definitely. It's actually been a couple of years in the making for the NHL franchise. It's great to be on Frostbite, where honestly, we have unparalleled visual upgrades across the game, and that's even before talking about the transition to the new-gen consoles and the Xbox Series X. In the Frostbite engine, in terms of what it brings us, what the players see on the ice, everything from dynamic lighting, shadows to when you get in and close and zoom in to all the micro-details in an environment, and then [inaudible 00:26:47] making everything that much more lifelike.

Clem Kwong:
So as developer who's seen the game come together in the last two years, really proud of what we've been able to achieve, and for us too, I think one of the most memorable things, speak of the Kraken, is being able to fly through the Climate Pledge Arena for the first time before anybody has had the chance to see it. Obviously, it's not a function that all our players have, but as a developer, that was one of the treats, zooming around, going to the press box. That's one of the more exciting visual upgrades that we've put in the box this year.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Knowing how hard it's going to be to get tickets for the game, I will 100% see the inside of the Climate Pledge Arena in the game before I'm able to actually go into the building, so looking forward to seeing how that all comes together. You did mention Xbox Series X and S, and now that you've had a full year nearly since the next-gen Xbox consoles came out, how has that extra time helped and what are you able to do to really take advantage of the power and the speed that they deliver?

Clem Kwong:
Yeah, good question. You had mentioned Frostbite, the first time that we're on that engine. The extra horsepower through the console hardware, that allows us to take it a notch up in terms of the visual effects, the quality of dynamic lighting and effects I mentioned earlier, but also even the user experience, faster load times on top of better visuals, smoother gameplay. That's at the core of our experience, obviously hockey being a very fast sport, the combination of stunning visuals and smooth gameplay, I think, were the biggest benefits that we saw in terms of the jump to the new-gen hardware.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, I've always felt like hockey games specifically show off the hardware so well because you have the ice, you have reflections in ways that sports that take place on grass, it's not as easily noticeable, and with hockey games, I feel like they look great first, which is really cool, all the reflections and lights coming from all different directions. Some new systems here in NHL 22. Can tell me about X-Factor and how that changes the game?

Clem Kwong:
Yeah. X-Factor is obviously something that we've thought about doing for a while in Madden. I know you guys had our friend Mike here just last month, but X-Factor was built on top of this idea where, like I was saying earlier, elevating the superstars in the game of hockey and making them feel larger than life, their personality nice, but even more so their ability. This year, we've been introduced and hockey-fied it in a way that makes sense for our game and our sport, bringing that in and adding what we're calling you know Zone Abilities, which are almost game-breaking abilities that highlight the skill and abilities that these players have, and then Superstar Ability is kind of the next layer down in terms of, "Hey, all these superstars have it," but not quite elite.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So one of my best friends on the team here... Oh. Please go on. Go, go.

Clem Kwong:
Yeah, I was going to say, the other that Superstar X-Factor gives us is obviously the benefit of changing the meta of our gameplay year-over-year, the strategies and how you approach the game is also different, but also, it's available in all modes, whichever mode you play, whether online, offline, Ultimate Team or multiplayer and World of Chel. Superstar X-Factor is definitely front and center.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Very cool, So I was talking to my... One of my best friends on the team is from Vancouver, big Canucks fan, he's very happy. We're going to be having a rivalry here pretty soon, and I was asking him what he's most excited about and what he's looking forward to for NHL 22, and he mentioned some changes that he believes are coming to the stick physics. Is that something you can talk to?

Clem Kwong:
Yeah, stick physic's something that is a bit more, I would say, a geared towards the authenticity of the game. We try to make upgrades to our core systems all the time and listening to our fans. With the introduction of Superstar X-Factor, we thought it was a perfect time to bring together not only these abilities as the Superstar X-Factor brings to life, but also the physicality of the game, and yet keeping things authentic. Example of having the drive to the net and power forward ability, and seeing the stick being knocked around against the player's legs, and your ability to drive in with your arm down to protect the puck and seeing the stick interact, that was a level of authenticity and realism that we haven't yet had before, and again, going to the new-gen consoles, that extra horsepower allowed us to do that with stick and physics all the time. And actually, the thing I should mention... Sorry I forgot to mention was stick and physics also interacts with everything in the environment, so it's not just in the moment-to-moment gameplay when you use these abilities, it's on all the time.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right. I'm sure that will lead to some different emerging gameplay and the puck going in more realistic ways, which will be... I mean, that's that's the pursuit of perfection that I know you all are after year-after-year. Just one last thing I want to bring up. I'm living in a city now where there's going to be a lot of new hockey fans, and I'm sure that happened in Vegas a couple years ago and is continuing to happen, and also with the Olympics, like you said, with the NHL players coming back. There's going to be a lot of new people turned onto hockey for the first time, and I'm sure picking up your game for the first time or the first time in a long time. How are you onboarding... What's a great place to start with new players? Because there's so many deep things, but when you're coming back too just like, "Hey, I haven't played in a while. I played on the Genesis. How do I play on this?" What's the best place to start for new players?

Clem Kwong:
Yeah, I would say... I mean, I'm going to give you two answers. If you're playing offline with a friend is... We know how social connection is very important, especially during this time in the pandemic here. We're talking about just hanging out, playing with your friend on Friday night, play now and jumping in with your favorite team, so Seattle and Philly in this case, that's a good place to experience the authenticity of everything that we've added in the game this year, from Superstar X-factor to all the next-gen visual and presentations, so you get the full package. But if we're talking about online, I would say jump into World of Chel, play a pickup game of pond hockey, outdoors through ones, or 3v3, where you'll experience the fun, fast hockey in a team-based environment.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Clem, thanks so much for joining us here. The hockey season is dropping the puck here pretty soon, and you get to play NHL very soon as well. Release date, there's actually two of these. So you're going to be able to play on Tuesday, that's October 12th if you have the deluxe edition, and then the global launch for the game, next Friday, week from when you're first hearing this, October 15th. Thanks so much for joining us, and who you got this season?

Clem Kwong:
Sorry, I didn't catch that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Who's going to be lifting the cup? I'm just putting you on the spot.

Clem Kwong:
You know what? Tampa for the three-peat. Can't bet against Kuch and Vasi there. I'm not the biggest Tampa fan, but I'm going to go with that.

Larry Hryb:
It has been over a decade since one of my favorite games, Alan Wake, came to Xbox 360. Joining me right now is the legendary Sam Lake to talk about the remaster of Alan Wake. Sam, it's great to see you.

Sam Lake:
Larry, this is awesome. It's been a long time, but kind of feels like a full circle for us to be here and talk about Alan Wake again.

Larry Hryb:
I have to tell you something. I mean, you and I were just talking before we started recording. You and I have talked to each other over your many, many projects from Remedy over the years, and it's always great to talk to you, but I remember this was the first time you and I were introduced to each other and we talked was talking about Alan Wake when it was released in 2010. The remaster's been out now, or is out now. It's available on more platforms than almost ever before.

Sam Lake:
Well, ever before, yes.

Larry Hryb:
Let's talk about what it was like for you to bring Alan Wake to a much wider audience.

Sam Lake:
Yeah, it's a wonderful opportunity and kind of like I'm proud of all the games that we have made, but somehow Alan Wake always had this special place in my heart, and to be able to come back to it now and kind of polish it up and offer it to a new audience is obviously for our longtime fans who have been asking for a remaster for quite a time again and again persistently and patiently, but also for a new generation of gamers out there. It's a wonderful opportunity and I'm really happy that we could make it happen.

Larry Hryb:
And I think it's important to point out that this is a remaster of the 2010 game, which by the way, award-winning, everybody loved this game. It was called the top game of the year on many lists in 2010, but this is going to be a real fresh look at it, and you guys provided a video for me here that I want to show here of the remaster, and this is really stunning. I mean, here we see welcome to Bright Falls. This all looks so familiar, but really, it's dramatic when you look at some of these visuals. What was it like for the team to kind of... I mean, look at this! That looks amazing. I mean, it's almost like a new place, isn't it?

Sam Lake:
Yeah. I mean, it's like visiting a place that is a special place for you, but at the same time, we kind of like... It's more real than ever before in many ways, and being able to kind of come back to it has been wonderful. I mean, this has kind of clicked into place on many levels. Our previous game, Control, obviously established this idea that has been kind of slowly building for years and years and years, this idea that we could be building games that actually share a connected universe, and with Control, we were able to make it official that Alan Wake exists in the same world. Then the final DLC for Control was very crossover to Alan Wake's world, and that in itself was really interesting.

Sam Lake:
Coming back to write more Alan Wake, that felt very easy and natural slipping into that world and his voice, but also interestingly, seeing how us at Remedy, as creators and as a writer, you have grown and evolved, and suddenly even if you are dealing with the same themes, suddenly you have a different perspective and you are exploring these same ideas from a slightly different perspective. But coming out of that then to have this opportunity for maybe new fans who have not played our previous games and not played Alan Wake, but have played Control and happen to know Alan Wake through that, and now giving Alan Wake Remastered to everybody, to experience again with kind of a fresh look.

Larry Hryb:
As someone who's the writer, and you're so creative and you're the creative driving force behind this amazing game, was it challenging or difficult for you to go back and say, "Oh, we're going to redo this and remaster it," or were you like, "Yeah, let's!" And you rolled up your sleeves and jumped in. Did you have any trepidation?

Sam Lake:
I mean, there was a discussion at the very beginning on how should we approach this, and obviously, if we look at classic games coming out as remasters, so remakes, these days, there is a wide spectrum of different ways to approach it, and we felt that kind of like taking the visuals, bringing them to modern world, and kind of like 4k and creating Alan Wake's model again now to match our actor, Ilkka Villi, in much finer detail, which obviously, kind of after Alan Wake, we made Quantum Break with you guys, and there we went with kind of digital doubles as an idea, that actors match the models.

Sam Lake:
That was not the case with Alan Wake yet. We were not there yet, but these days we are, and being able to come back and kind of remake the model and everything that goes with it, cinematics and mocap, and all, that felt like a perfect approach for it. And in a way that made it easy for me because from creative perspective, the idea of totally ripping it open and reimagining it, essentially that would have been a multi-year full-blown game project then, but this way, we were able to do this while still being... Get this up and running while still being busy with Control, and so that as an approach felt like the way to go, and very happy with the result.

Larry Hryb:
Now, you said, you talked about the actor looking very... Alan Wake now looks like the actor. So you're saying is that back in 2010, well before that, you were developing the game in 2007 and what have you, is that the technology just wasn't there to make the actor look like Alan Wake, right? We weren't there yet and that must be freeing for you because now you have all this technology.

Sam Lake:
Yeah. I mean, obviously, this being... I mean, technology is going forward at such a fast pace and it gives these new opportunities with each game. Each game is a discovery of something new, and it's been this kind of evolution on this path that... Yeah, I mean, this as an idea wasn't really yet there when we were working on Alan Wake. We were starting to get there bit by bit, and then with Quantum Break, a huge leap, especially with the TV show there, it just made so much sense to push this as far as we could so that the models match the live action actors, and these days it's a given, and so being able to upgrade Alan Wake into this as well.

Larry Hryb:
I also want to point out, if you're lucky enough to have an Xbox One X, you can enjoy Alan Wake in Equality Mode, at 30 frames per second, or you can get up to 60 frames per second. I don't even know what that's going to be like. I mean, that's just mind-blowing.

Sam Lake:
Yeah, it's wonderful to kind of bring it to kind of modern standards with that.

Larry Hryb:
The one thing I noticed, I was reading about this and I'm going to play a little bit of the trailer here is that for the remaster, we have... Of course, I go to play the trailer and it's a black screen. That's my fault. But during the remaster, you've done some commentary, so let's talk about that because now people can enjoy your commentary over the game. Tell us about that, and what that was like doing the commentary, like a director's cut?

Sam Lake:
Yeah, it was a great opportunity to kind of like sit down and reflect back. I mean, we kept the original commentary there, but we also noticed that it's probably interesting to certain segments of the audience to go back all the way to the process of creating the original game, and it goes to kind of quite a bit of into details, but then there was this idea that how about I just sit down and start thinking, reflecting back over 10 years, and how do I see the process now with this distance in between it, and kind of like maybe also have this opportunity to open it up in a fresh way to talk about the teams, and as I now remember the ideas, how they came about, and what was the intent there on the story side. So to me also, it was an interesting journey, sitting down and just talking about it.

Larry Hryb:
It was therapeutical.

Sam Lake:
That too. I mean, all of these game projects are huge endeavors, complicated things, and winding roads of discovery certainly. If you go back and start digging into all kinds of making of material of Alan Wake, it was a long and winding road to get to the end, but all the more reason to feel really proud of the achievement. That makes it kind of like... To have it finished and kind of like getting it done, and obviously, we share a lot of that with Microsoft and Xbox, and all. We were on this journey together, which was wonderful.

Larry Hryb:
Now, one of the areas sometimes when we get the rerelease games or the remastered is some of the things may not be the same as we remember, and we talk about the soundtrack because musical rights are so difficult, but my understanding is that the great soundtrack with Alan Wake, it's intact. It's there. It's all ready to go, right?

Sam Lake:
Yeah. I mean, there were some kind of tripping along the way that the original license agreements, as much as I understand, were only for seven years, and then we all realized that at some point. But we managed to negotiate all the rights back, and so the whole complete soundtrack is there. Obviously, we always have the wonderful, wonderful soundtrack from Petri Alanko, kind of the award-winning orchestral part of it, and then we had kind of our almost our house band, Poets of the Fall, who took this role of fictional band Old Gods of Asgard, and that's all there. But on top of that, with the help of you guys at Microsoft, we managed to license a pretty stellar selection of licensed music that kind of like pretty much a dream list from myself for episode endings, like David Bowie and Nick Cave and Poe, and these things that, to me, perfectly fit and added depth into the storytelling. It's all there and it's pretty unique on standards of games out there.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, and as I mentioned at the beginning of the interview, this was originally on Xbox 360, but now it's now available on a variety of platforms remastered. You've got it on Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5. I mean, I know folks get crazy when I mention-

Sam Lake:
For the first time ever, yes.

Larry Hryb:
And of course, Xbox One and Xbox Series X and S, but this is... I want to see if we can talk a little bit about... I mean, this is a pure single-player story-driven experience, right?

Sam Lake:
Well, as pure as it gets. And that was very much our intent, and me being kind of the story guy and writer, it's partly of course that's why it's so close to my heart in many ways. I feel that we managed to bring a very unique experience to gaming audiences out there with this idea that yes, it's a horror experience, it's a thriller, a lot of mystery in there, a lot of kind of like mysterious depth to dig in, but on the side then, it's not one-note horror fest, there is this kind of like strong feeling of place in Pacific Northwest small town. Close to your neck of woods, of course. And this kind of colorful, larger than life personalities, quirky locals giving these different sides to this experience. When night falls, horror comes out, but during daytime, we are preparing for annual Beer Fest, and we have the crazy locals going about.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, it's interesting because every time everybody I take that I know that comes out to visit me in the northwest here, in the Seattle area, we'll take them out to the woods and they're like, "This is like Alan Wake." So if you've been to the northwest of the United States, just play Alan Wake, play the remastered. Granted, I haven't discovered any of the dark side that we see in some of the game, but it's certainly you capture a lot of the beauty. One of the things we talked about, we talked about the remastered, we talked about the music and what it was like doing the commentary for you, but we talked about the look of it because you've got a couple things there that kind of show the difference between... Like in the diner, you've got the old school kind of coffee, your coffee thermos, right?

Sam Lake:
Yeah, I can show you the truth of why we made the remake, and I've been very open about being a coffee lover myself, and yes, in Alan Wake, as a collectible, there are 100 coffee thermoses to be found and it was getting to be pretty low poly and low resolution, these coffee thermoses, but now-

Larry Hryb:
That's from the original game.

Sam Lake:
Yes, it is. Yes. But now, feast your eye on this. It's so realistic and the coffee tastes much better. After we made the remaster, now every cup of coffee I've drank since, much more realistic. Yes. Obviously, manuscript pages like here, all around. I have the clicker here for you.

Larry Hryb:
If you don't know what that is, you will once you play the game. I'm so excited. The game's available now. Alan Wake Remastered. It's the full game and both DLCs. It's now available on Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S. Now available. If you have an Xbox Series X, you're going to enjoy it in 60 frames per second that you're going to just totally enjoy. Sam, any final words before I let you go?

Sam Lake:
Well, yeah. I mean, I was saying that was easy for me as a creator. We just went in and recreated the content, the objects and all to modern standards, like went in on the tech side and kind of made it run much more smoothly and from kind of a writer perspective and creative director perspective, an easy ride, and we had really, really talented artists in-house and with our outsourcing partner, D3T, working on it, but could not quite leave it to that. I guess that all of you who have played Remedy games, you know that there are tend to be Easter eggs there. So maybe there are a couple of new ones squeezed in and hidden in there for kind of returning Alan Wake fans to discover, and I hope you enjoy them.

Larry Hryb:
Well, Sam, I know we will. I really appreciate your time. It's always good to see you. I love chatting with you. It's been great knowing you and watching your success over the past decade and beyond, so thank you for coming on the show, and can we get you on again maybe some time in the future?

Sam Lake:
Thank you, Larry. Yeah, I'm sure that we will many times. This was a pleasure.

Rebecca Gordius:
Earlier this week, Rainbow Billy released on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. I've been fortunate enough to try it out a little bit today, so I'm really excited to be joined by Chris Chancey from ManaVoid Studios, so thanks for joining us.

Chris Chancey:
Thank you very much.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, do you want to just tell us a little bit about Rainbow Billy?

Chris Chancey:
Absolutely. So Rainbow Billy is an Adventure RPG Platformer, where basically you play this young character named Billy, who's going on a coming-of-age tale. You're in a really nice and colorful world, and suddenly the Greek Leviathan takes it all away, and it's up to you to recolor not just the different islands that you'll be exploring, but all of the different characters that have lost their way as you encounter them throughout your adventure.

Rebecca Gordius:
Very cool. Obviously, it has a very distinct art style, which I really enjoy. It reminds me of at least a couple different Cartoon Network TV shows that I've seen. I guess why did you decide to go that direction with the art and the design of the game?

Chris Chancey:
Well, I mean, initially, we Kickstarted the game back in 2018, and it was a 2D game back then, and we really inspired by games like Cuphead, and Bendy and the Ink Machine would use a old 1930s Disney cartoons to really good effect, and we wanted to make an RPG, and so we started exploring in that style and then as the game was developing the whole rhetoric of coming from black and white into color, we felt that we also needed to modernize a little bit of the art style, and we decided to kind of go more into the '90s cartoons, which I think is what you're referring to. Our art director's really insane at drawing the style as well, and we have so many different creatures and different bosses and areas that we wanted to create that having that cartoon not just art style, but animation style as well just allowed us to kind of go crazy and just work in an imaginary world, doing whatever we wanted. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Rebecca Gordius:
Pretty cool. Yeah, I see a little bit of the semblance to Cuphead, but the gameplay is pretty cool, where you actually have a few different methods of... I don't want to say fighting the different characters in the game. Just between puzzles and turn-based challenges, it's pretty neat. Can you tell us a little bit more about the gameplay?

Chris Chancey:
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that we're proud of with this game is that it's non-violent. So we kind of created a turn-based RPG combat system, in parentheses if you want, where basically the whole idea is... We call them confrontation. The whole idea is to have a dialogue with the character that you're confronting, and basically, this character has lost its colors, you're trying to understand which colors, what their personality is. You're just trying to understand them as a character, and then, with the friends that you've made along the way, which are kind of these tokens that you can put on the board, you can recolor them with specific colors, and then once they're re-colored, they join your team.

Chris Chancey:
So it's kind of like a creature collection game at the same time as an RPG in that sense. We wanted the game to be really wholesome and positive in its messaging, and so we really wanted to go the non-violent route, and it all stemmed from a GamesIndustry.biz article that we saw in 2019 that said only 17% of games that were shown at E3 that year were non-violent, and we thought, "Well, that sucks." There's so many cool things that you can do with video games as a medium that we just wanted to kind of explore that route and be different in that sense, and we leaned into it, not just in the narrative sense, but also mechanically. The game, it's all about empathy and understanding and just having a conversation.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, it's very cool. And I guess with games that are non-violent, it can be easy to maybe portray it as a kid's game or a soft game, but it's actually really... I feel like it's really cleverly designed. I really enjoyed going around and talking to all the different characters, they have little quips that they make. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I guess my next question is just around who you think the game is kind of designed for. I mean, it seems like there are a lot of different features. Yeah, I guess who was your target audience for the game?

Chris Chancey:
Well, it's an E for everyone, family-friendly game, so I think everyone can kind of... I think it's a fun game, so I think everyone can enjoy it. We really tried with the writing to go down that really thin Disney line, where it's accessible to children, but there's a lot of references to things that are going to make parents chuckle as well. So I think in that sense, anyone can really enjoy it. Kids obviously is one of our main targets because of all of the messaging around it, there's a lot of talk about bullying and stuff like that, and how to address it.

Chris Chancey:
We're trying to have kind of that positive feel, and there's a lot of characters that you encounter that are going through some stuff that I think anyone that has gone through or any child is currently going through, and so just having an open conversation about it and having that representativity might just make things a little bit easier, or at least stimulate a cool discussion with the kid and parents that might be playing with their children. So that was definitely one thing that we wanted to do, but in the end, this is an indie game that mixes and matches genres in a new way. We think there's a lot there that has never really been done before, a lot of stories that we're telling and characters that we're presenting that have never really been shown in a video game, and so I think in that sense, anyone that's just a fan of indie games in general can really, I think, try this experience and get something really cool out of it.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. So the game just released this week. How is the reception been so far? I'm sure you've been watching a lot of streams and people playing.

Chris Chancey:
Yeah, everyone's so positive about the game. It's kind of awesome. I'm pinching myself. As a developer, you're always so afraid of what the reception is going to be, but we got an 80 Metacritic on PC currently. Streamers have been super enthusiastic about the game. I think the positive vibes that the game brings out is... I think it's a good moment in time for positive vibes as well, so I think people are kind of rallying around just the messaging of the game as well. So I mean, so far the reception's been insane. We couldn't have hoped for a better, honestly, reception so far. We're super enthusiastic about it.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. So I've been playing on Xbox, and I like the controls, it feels good, but I actually have a trip coming up this weekend, so I'm thinking I might download it for Switch instead. I feel like it would be even better on Switch potentially. Yeah, nicely done. I guess, is there anything else you'd like to add, or where can people go to learn more about the game?

Chris Chancey:
So we're out on all platforms. The game has been optimized to work on everything. We're going to be releasing next-gen later in the next few months. Right now, you can go and just type Rainbow Billy on any search engine and it should be the first thing that you see. So it's pretty easy to find it. On Xbox, obviously it's fully optimized and we're super happy to be working with Microsoft on this project. Yeah, it's out there. Just Google it, you'll be okay.

Rebecca Gordius:
Cool. All right. Well, thank you for joining us. If folks try out Rainbow Billy, let us know in the comments. We'd love to know your your take on it. So thanks again.

Chris Chancey:
Thank you very much.

Larry Hryb:
All right. Thank you to our guests this week. It was a great week of interviews. Rebecca, Rainbow Billy. You did a great job. Jeff, you always do a great job with NHL, and I'm always fun to catch up with Sam Lake. Alan Wake Remastered. First time PlayStation people can play Alan Wake. That's pretty big.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All the PlayStation people listening to the show, they found out today. I'm sure there's some.

Larry Hryb:
All right. Now usually about this time in the show, we talk about news, so we're going to have big, big news for Windows fans. If you have Windows, Jeff has some news about Windows, right?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Right. I'm sure you should know by now, but Windows 11 became available this week, generally available as we say. Some of us, myself included, had downloaded the Insider version. I've been running Windows 11 on my gaming PC for a couple months now at this point. I will say from a transition from an OS, it is the smoothest I've done. It wasn't like, "Oh, it's going to take an hour to install." It went really very quickly. I was like, "Wait, is that it? Are we done?" We were done. Compatibility has been great. I played all of Deathloop on Windows 11 over the course of the past few weeks.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It has a really cool look to it. A lot of redesigns on just the look and feel, and it's here and you can get it when you're ready for it. There's a lot of really interesting features for gamers that this will empower and those are going to start to show up. Some of these are things that you've become accustomed to if you have an Xbox Series X or S. Obviously, there's that speed we call DirectStorage, that'll be empowered by Windows 11, and games will begin taking advantage of it, and I'm sure we will let you know when that becomes a case, but it's crazy how quickly things load up on your Series X. Can't wait to have that on my gaming PC as well. Another thing is-

Larry Hryb:
I was going to show something here, Jeff. I've got... I don't know if show it because... I was going to show, if you have a PC that's capable of it, you'll actually get a pop-up and I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this, but... I guess I'm not be able to do. But you just go into where you could do Windows Update, there'll be a little banner in their center that says, "This PC could run Windows 11." It'll kind of give you some links so how you know how to download it. So it's really straightforward, very easy, and it's a free update for most people.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Something that you'll see now. If you have an HDR-capable monitor, Windows 11, it has Auto HDR. Again, something that we saw at Xbox institute over the course of the last year or so, and it basically means over 1000 games that run via DirectX 11 or 12 will now automatically have empowered High Dynamic Range. Some of these games or games that were shipped and done before HDR even exists. Well, now when you get to enjoy that wider range of brightness and colors. So a lot of cool stuff coming. There's a rebuilt tool by which you are able to download through the Xbox app, Game Pass games, so give that a look. Of course, we're entering into an incredibly rich time of Game Pass games coming to both PC and Xbox, and on Windows 11. You can be able to enjoy Back 4 Blood for blood next week and a couple of weeks out we're going to be playing Age of Empires, Forza, Halo. So many great things coming to Game Pass, and it's going to be easier to find a download those things through the Windows 11 updated Xbox app.

Larry Hryb:
So are you using Windows 11, Rebecca?

Rebecca Gordius:
Not yet, but after Jeff's spiel about how easy it was to make the change, I probably should.

Larry Hryb:
Who needs Panos? We have Jeff.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I can't off the cuff quite to the level that Panos can. There's a reason you see him on stage. Also, he knows stuff and makes things and I don't, so really, I shouldn't be in the same room as him at any given point.

Larry Hryb:
Anyway. What else we have for news? Rebecca, what do you got over there?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, so October is Disability Awareness Month. Xbox, as always, has a lot of fun stuff that we're doing to support. We've talked a few times about Microsoft Rewards, so these are points that you earn from just doing things on Microsoft and Xbox platforms, playing games, using things, and you can use those rewards points to donate to different groups that are making a positive impact, like SpecialEffects, AbleGamers and Warfighter Engaged for this month, and Microsoft will match those donations throughout this whole Disability Awareness Month. We also have some good programming on our Xbox Twitch channel.

Rebecca Gordius:
I think next week for World Sight Day on October 14, we're actually going to be hosting SightlessKombat, and he's going to be playing The Vale: Shadow of the Crown, which is an audio-only game geared toward blind and low visibility players. So that'll be a pretty cool, interesting, unique stream I think. I recommend checking out the Xbox wire post if you're interested in learning more. We have an Xbox accessibility showcase video, which just has a different community stories, information on the features and updates we've been making to try to make games more accessible and enjoyable for all, and it's a pretty cool overview.

Larry Hryb:
Thank you for that, Rebecca. Yeah, there's some cool stuff happening. In fact, you were talking about it a little bit. You touched on it during your Rainbow Billy interview, how there's actually some accessibility options in games. In fact, Jeff and I noticed when we played, and maybe some people have noticed this already, right when you start Far Cry, there's voiceover that says, "Hey, this is to get you started." So I'm really excited to see some of the efforts that a lot of the developers have made to make games more accessible, so thank you for that, Rebecca. All right, Jeff. We're going to ping pong over to you.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right. Well I'm looking through, I'm scrolling through right now the Forza Horizon 5 achievements list, which was revealed this week. There's this cliche that they say on the first day of the season in baseball or something like, "Everyone's in first place. Anything is possible. We can all do this," and I'm looking at this list and I'm like, "We can all 1k this game. We can do it," then maybe we come crashing down to Earth, in some cases, literally in this game trying to get three stars on every stunt or something like that. But looking at the list, I'm like, "I can unlock the first player house for 10 Gamerscore. Complete any Horizon race event? I'll do that in the first hour." Then you start to see, "Okay, there's things like Event Lab and exploring other things," and then there's things where it's discover and drive every road in Mexico. That's always the one that gets me is the every road. I do try to get them all, and I usually fall short around 70%, but maybe this is the year because the roads do look beautiful.

Rebecca Gordius:
Maybe this time.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I'm hoping so. I'm hoping so.

Larry Hryb:
I am hopeful, Jeff, that you will be able to do this. There's no excuse.

Jeff Rubenstein:
If I 1k this game, I'm going to buy myself a new pair of shoes.

Larry Hryb:
Really? What kind of shoes should Jeff get, Rebecca? The ones to your right on the wall there? No.

Rebecca Gordius:
No, don't look at that. No, but for Xbox's 20th anniversary, we actually are releasing a special collaboration pair of sneakers with Adidas. I think it's the first-

Larry Hryb:
Woo, Adidas.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. They're the first console-inspired sneaker and they're actually going to be available for fan purchase. So folks just need to follow Xbox on Twitter to learn more, but they're pretty slick. Yeah, I don't know if they would match with all the things I have, but I would wear them.

Larry Hryb:
What I have to say is when we launched Xbox in 2001, I joined the team a little bit thereafter. I'm just showing you some pictures of what the shoes look like. There was actually members of this team that had sneakers very similar to this. I don't know if they were Adidas, or what brand they were, but the design was similar in terms of the colors and whatnot. So these actually remind me a lot, and I should get... I think he may still have his pair, but these are beautiful sneakers that you could only get, and you could work on the team and then they were gone. So the fact we're going to be selling these publicly, that's a big deal. So I'm really excited about... And Jeff, you know I love my Adidas sneakers.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You're an Ultra Boost man, if I recall.

Larry Hryb:
I've got my Lego Ultra Boost over there, I've got the James Bond ones. I've got a bunch of different ones that I do, so I'm excited to see our collaboration with Adidas. There you go.

Jeff Rubenstein:
This is going to be a tough drop to cop, I think, so definitely keep your eyes out, and I think... Yeah, we saw these in a deck before, but now I'm seeing them on people's feet. Is that my ankle? It's not. But they look good on the feet, and I know that I'll probably not be able to get these, but I really want them now. They're based on the Forum tech base. Adidas Forums are very comfortable. So I don't know if they're technically a skate shoe, but they're good. I want them. I want them, but I got to 1k Forza first. That's the rule.

Larry Hryb:
Then you get those, or not. Jeff, as you said, they'll follow @Xbox on Twitter. Of course, Jeff and I'll be posting about it as well. So looking forward to seeing those. All right. Rebecca, news to you. What do you got, my friend?

Rebecca Gordius:
No, that was the last of my news.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Larry, pay attention! Oh, and then you go full screen on Rebecca to not tell news. Are you all right? Are you okay, Larry?

Larry Hryb:
Well, I got to tell you something, I'm struggling over here. Do you know why?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Why? Oh, it's the gloves. It's the gloves. Tell us. Tell us, Larry.

Rebecca Gordius:
Sound more enthusiastic, Jeff.

Larry Hryb:
We have a pretty big announcement this week in that a brand new... Check it out. In fact, I should go full screen here. But we have a new controller, and maybe some folks noticed at the beginning of the show, it's right back here.

Rebecca Gordius:
I see what you did.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Do you need me to do the Johnny Gilbert narration over this?

Larry Hryb:
Look at that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That's right, Larry. You've got the 20th Anniversary Special Edition wireless controller, which also has a partner we'll be talking about soon. It's launching November 15th and available for pre-order right now. Now. Now, We were inspired by our favorite memories together from the last 20 years, and created not one, but two unique accessories to commemorate this milestone. You see the beautiful Xbox green grips, which is going to make sure this does not slip out of your hand while you are playing a high intensity game of Halo infinite. And now-

Larry Hryb:
Hold on. We got to take a look at the box. Now, it's interesting. I'm reading the copy on the back, and we love our marketing team and our marketing partners, but I was reading the copy of the back here. Translucent design because it's translucent. See through casing celebrates 20 years of Xbox. Okay.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I liked this description: Sleek and sentimental. Kind of like me.

Larry Hryb:
Exactly. Okay, right. Anyway.

Rebecca Gordius:
No, you are. You did a good job with the narration.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You have the other thing.

Larry Hryb:
I do have the other thing. Here we go. Let's bring it all up here. Look at this. Let me go full screen.

Rebecca Gordius:
That's pretty sick.

Larry Hryb:
I have not unboxed this one yet. This is the Xbox headset, and it's immersive sound, lightweight and flexible, comfortable fit. This is a-

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's the 20th Anniversary Special Edition Xbox stereo headset, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
Thank you, Jeffrey. Let me open it up.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's got a finely crafted name for a finely crafted piece of kit.

Rebecca Gordius:
Wow.

Larry Hryb:
Let me open this up because it is... I haven't even opened this box. You know what it's like to open boxes?

Jeff Rubenstein:
You got to open the box first before the gloves come on. There we go. You just brute-forced it.

Larry Hryb:
Here we go. Let me take this out and take a look at them. There we go. Let's get them on the screen. Let's go full screen so you guys can see everything.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Okay, the headset similarly features a translucent black body with silver internals, so you can see what brings the headset to life. Green accents on the boom mic, inside and outside of the ear cups, and the left disk is marked with our 20th Anniversary logo in our iconic green. The right dial has the Xbox logo imprinted as seen on the Xbox wireless and stereo headsets. How much would you bid, Larry?

Rebecca Gordius:
Nice work. Oh, my gosh.

Larry Hryb:
These were announced earlier this week and they're going to be available. Jeff, do you have the pricing and the availability there?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes. So the 20th Anniversary Special Edition Xbox stereo headset launches November 15th and is available for pre-order today at 69.99 in select Xbox markets. The controller is also launching on November 15th.

Larry Hryb:
What's that, Jeffrey?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes. I like the stand, it's really nice.

Larry Hryb:
The stand is available. All of this is available at news.xbox.com. We've got all of this there and it's available if you want to check out the details on it, and then I've got a little bit more here, Jeff. Hold on.

Jeff Rubenstein:
There's more.

Larry Hryb:
A few more shots of the headset. What is this?

Rebecca Gordius:
Those are nice.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, let's go back to the... We've got some gear that's also available that you can see mentioned in that post, so check that out.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, so just head over to gear.xbox.com for that. I definitely need the T shirt for sure.

Rebecca Gordius:
I like the hat.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah? It is a nice hat. More dad hat are always good. And if I wasn't clear, by the way, both the headset and the controller are $69.99 each, and available at the Microsoft Store and other fine retailers.

Larry Hryb:
And this stand right here, this is sold separately.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh, it's a charging stand. Very cool.

Larry Hryb:
So that's sold separately.

Rebecca Gordius:
Nice.

Larry Hryb:
But all the details are at news.xbox.com. I can take my gloves off. It feels like-

Jeff Rubenstein:
The charging stand is made by Razer, by the way. So if you're interested in the charging standard, head over to razor.com to sign up to be notified when the Razer Universal Quick Charging Stand is available to purchase.

Larry Hryb:
We'll go over to that right here. There we go. Now you can kind of take a look at that. The slideshows fighting against me, Jeff. It wants to just keep going. I don't know what's wrong. There you go.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Just got to keep it going. There it is.

Larry Hryb:
We had some good stuff this week. This controller's really quite nice. I mean, we've got... It's funny, with these controllers, I've got this controller then I also have the... This is now my kind of semi-permanent controller's the Halo one. I mean, look at these.

Rebecca Gordius:
It's real nice.

Larry Hryb:
This is [inaudible 01:18:42].

Jeff Rubenstein:
Larry, you're just showing off because we don't have any of those things. I've given you all the enthusiasm I can give you without having it my hands. I got to get that controller.

Larry Hryb:
All right. What else do we have there, Jeff? I mean, we had shoes, we have controllers, we have headsets, we have controller recharging stands, we have shirt.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All the things surrounding the games, why don't we talk about the game and one of the great opportunities to play this week? Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members with EA Play can... If you have Ultimate, you have EA Play, can start playing the Battlefield 2042 open beta. I see it right here. I'm just on the store, trying to steer without actually looking at the screen. Oh, there's Alan Wake. And you just come right down in here, and yes, I will install. It will be open, by the time you hear the show, open to everybody, I think, regardless of Xbox Game Pass, and this will go on until October 10th. So very excited to play.

Jeff Rubenstein:
We love Battlefield, really enjoy the more defined roles, being able to spend a lot of time in vehicles. So very cool, nice little perk. Early access for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members. Some more games announced this week for Xbox Game Pass ultimate, of course, we know Back 4 Blood, it's coming out next week. Very excited for that. There is a special edition early access today, but us Game Pass members, it will be included there on October 12th, which is very soon, very soon.

Larry Hryb:
I just have a pro tip, and if you don't know, go down at the Game Pass section onto your dashboard in your console, you go in here and certainly you'll see everything that's new, but you can actually scroll right down here, and we've got a section which will pretty much exactly tell you what you got, what's most popular, recently added, and here's-

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh, I got to get Phoenix Point. I forgot that's coming out.

Larry Hryb:
And here's one of my favorite features that we're testing right now is this little guy right here, play. We're testing this with our insiders. Game Pass ultimate members can stream games right to your console. So before you install, you can click this button and start playing. So we talked about that frequently on previous shows, but I just wanted to point that out. At the Game Pass section, and they just go right... Every time you boot up your console, you can just go down to it and see what's new.

Jeff Rubenstein:
The other way to do that, Larry... Actually, if you want to go full screen back to your system. So just back out, go back to your dash. And I'll tell you how I get to it is I hit the Nexus button and then just hit right trigger, and go right over there to the right, and that's how I get to that, and it takes you there.

Larry Hryb:
Jeff is doing me better, so there you go. Look at that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I live to find the fewest amount of clicks to get anywhere, take the fewest amount of steps.

Larry Hryb:
You can kind of add other games in here to play later. It's kind of this virtual stack of shame as it were, where you can kind of add some things in there. So there's some cool features there. So check that out. But thank you for that, Jeff.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's so good. So good. So new games announced this week, so The Riftbreaker, which will be available on October 14th, day one available on Xbox Game Pass for console, PC and cloud, and that means once you're in there, you'll be able to stream it like that. The Good Life is another one coming October 15th, available day one. We talked about Game Pass early access to Battlefield and then a couple of other games that are available now. The Procession To Calvary.

Larry Hryb:
I am excited about this game.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Tell me! Tell me about it. It seems like it's built out of Renaissance paintings. It seems like a really interesting one.

Larry Hryb:
It's got a bunch of classical music in there, it has... And you're right, Jeff. It's Renaissance paintings. I don't know. There's something about this game that's, I'm looking at right now, that's speaking to me, and I got to check it out. So it's in Game Pass. So again, why not, right?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Why not? And that's available now, when you're listening to this. Also, Visage or Visage. It's French for face, and it's a first-person psychological horror game. It's October, you want to play your horror games, and here's one that's coming in a Game Pass for you to enjoy on console, PC and the cloud. Last thing I just want to bring up real quickly because this one kind of surprised me. When we recorded our last week show, it was before TGS went up and there's some really cool stuff.

Jeff Rubenstein:
There's actually a game that went in the Game Pass, an RPG that seemed really cool, that I'll be trying to find time to play because my virtual stack of shame is virtually huge, but there is a Stranger of Paradise, which is Final Fantasy Origin has a trial edition, which you can... They're basically doing tests for it. Rhe full game will come out next year, but you can try it out now, but for a very limited time, only until October 11th, so I want to make sure. It's an action-based Final Fantasy game. Team Ninja from Koei Tecmo, they are the ones who built the game and so a really interesting combination, and it's available now, so you can try it out. And then they want you to fill out a survey and let Square Enix know what you think about it, which I like that, and you can submit that until October 18th.

Larry Hryb:
All right. One more thing about Game Pass before we let you go, and that is we've got a few games leaving Game Pass. So Gonner2, Heave Ho, Katana Zero, ScourgeBringer, Tales of Vesperia: HD, and The Swords of Ditto. Last chance, if you like them, you can get 20% off, otherwise they're going to be-

Jeff Rubenstein:
Get the sale. Get them.

Larry Hryb:
October 15th is when we say bye-bye to those games, but we'll get more games in there. Anything else, guys?

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right.

Rebecca Gordius:
All right.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Is that a segue to say bye-bye to this show?

Larry Hryb:
What a show we had this week. Guys, you did great with the interviews. We had a lot of news. We had shoes. We had headsets. Did I mention we have controllers? We have controllers.

Jeff Rubenstein:
News to shoes, and everything in between.

Larry Hryb:
There we go, that's what I'm looking for. Rebecca, I'm looking forward to you playing more of the Billy game.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, it was pretty cool. I'll let you know what the trash cans talk to me and say this weekend.

Larry Hryb:
What have they said to you so far is the big question.

Rebecca Gordius:
There have been some cute little quips, like reminders to recycle and not to litter, or... Gosh, I can't remember. Things like, "Everyone can be garbage if they aspire to be," or I don't know, little things like that. I don't know. It's like every now and then, I kind of go...

Larry Hryb:
Positive and upbringing. What's not to like? Anyway. All right, gang. We got to wrap it up. Jeff, I know you have meetings to go to. Rebecca, you certainly have meetings to go to, and I've got a bunch to do. Do you want to tell people to like and subscribe?

Jeff Rubenstein:
We already did it at the beginning of the show, Larry, but we do appreciate your comments.

Larry Hryb:
We do. Drop the comments down-

Jeff Rubenstein:
Most of them.

Larry Hryb:
Be kind. Be kind. Rebecca's mom reads the comments. Anything else?

Rebecca Gordius:
All right, thanks.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, bye! All right, gang. We'll see you guys next week. Thanks for everything and we'll see you online. So if you need to follow us, I'm going to hit the little button here to bring up our social handles. This is how you find us right there. Let us know what you think, what you're playing, and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye, everybody.