Chapter 1: What are the major gaming news highlights for February?
If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany.
Chapter 2: What are the reactions to the 'Baldur's Gate' adaptation announcement?
I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about.
We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight, which streamer is on the brink of collapse, and which executive is on the hot seat. Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again. Follow The Town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello and welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor at the Ringer and your host here at Button Mash, where unlike the Steam machine, we do have a release date. It's today because we don't need RAM to run. Well, aside from the RAM and whatever device you're using to listen to this. Never mind that. We've got a good show for you today.
Chapter 3: What impact did layoffs in free-to-play games have on the industry?
And as many podcast participants as Jason Momoa will have video game movies on his resume once Helldivers comes out next year. Watch out, Jack Black. Momoa is coming for the crown. With me today is The Ringer's deputy art lead, Matt James. Hello, Matt. Hello, Ben. and also joining us, senior audio producer and Midnight Boy, Steve Allman. Hello, Steve. Hello, Ben.
Thank you for matching my energy today. I don't even have fancy pun nicknames for you two today because we just have that much to talk about. Some episodes, we have one big topic.
Chapter 4: What are the details about Sony's 'Horizon Hunters Gathering' live-service game?
Some episodes, we have a smattering of smaller topics. And today, it's the latter. So we have Several news items, four bits of news, six new games that we have been playing and that we want to talk about briefly. So we've got 10 total items here, and we're just going to speed run everything on our agenda, get into it all.
And we will begin, as we often do, with our patch notes, which is our newish name for our news section. And I think there was really only one bit of news that we could lead this episode with because it engendered some internet debate. What doesn't these days?
Chapter 5: What were the key moments from the February PS5 State of Play?
But Baldur's Gate is getting a TV adaptation, fellas. And people are pissed about it. At least some people are pissed. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are...
pleased about it and just are not nearly as vocal online you know the silent majority who are just saying this is great i'm so happy that this is being adapted and that the people adapting it are doing the adapting but we don't hear from them this is an hbo series and it will be steered by Craig Mazin. Yes, Craig Mazin of Chernobyl and also of The Last of Us.
Larian is not involved in any formal official capacity, which might sound strange to you, but that's because this is the D&D license. This is not owned by Larian. That's maybe why Larian is making Divinity next and not Baldur's Gate 4.
Chapter 6: What are the spoiler-free impressions of 'Nioh 3'?
And Mazin, the big gamer, the head honcho at TLOU, who is sort of solo running Season 3. is now taking on Baldur's Gate. And you know what? People are pretty concerned about this. What was your reaction to the news, Steve?
Well, my reaction was Last of Us is for sure ending after Season 3.
Yes, that seems increasingly certain.
And I got to hand it to Craig Mazin. He's gotten really good at becoming the guy that is going to adapt the game that has very irrational fans on the Internet that regardless of what he does, it is going to be a problem. I think it's a good match. He seems to like games, and he's very much in tune with, at least at a baser level, what it takes to make a decent adaptation of these properties.
As much as I had, you know... a lot of problems with The Last of Us Season 2. He kind of gets it. And I think I'm just more kind of curious as to what tone that he wants to strike with a Baldur's Gate adaptation, really only because it's very much based on a player's experience.
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Chapter 7: How does 'Mario Tennis Fever' compare to previous Mario sports games?
And this is very much in tune with what D&D lore... is malleable to be. And I think Craig is, you know, it's a good playground for that. And there's kind of like less opportunities to get something, I guess, wrong when it comes to the lore and adaptations. Like, you know what? I'm going to take that back. Anything could happen. Anything could happen.
But I'm kind of excited, but also very, very, very pessimistic.
Don't take it back. Stand on your corner. You're out here just shouting down everyone who is shouting down Craig Mason and saying, you know what? I think Craig knows what he's doing. And Craig, I trust, quote, Steve Allman.
Only when he does an Expedition 33 adaptation will I say that.
Well, we know one of those is coming. But as far as I know, he's not doing it. Matt, what did you think of this news?
I mean, Craig Mason is probably one of the names that gives it the best chance of being good.
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Chapter 8: What unique features does 'Reanimal' bring to the gaming experience?
It's wait and see for me, obviously, but he does give me some optimism. He has adapted well. very important games with very vocal fan bases before, at least for one season. So yeah, I'm just not ready to judge this yet. I think it could be a train wreck and it could be a great, great success. And regardless, it's not going to change my experience with the game.
I think it is a little bit of a different thing than The Last of Us, though, because The Last of Us is one definitive storyline that works and works really well. And Baldur's Gate 3 is several hundred potential storylines that mostly work really well. But I just think there's so much more of an unknown factor of what this is than when you adapt the last of us, you know? So yes, we will see.
I'm not ready to make a big call on this until we actually see something, some, some casting notes. Yeah. I mean, if the characters, if he is using characters from the game and they don't hit, it's going to be an uphill battle from there.
We'll see. Yeah, he is talking about casting some of the same voice actors as happened in some cases in The Last of Us, but in taking a wait and see approach and declining to prejudge something that we probably will not see for years, you are out of step with the internet at large. So I commend you on that. So we adopt a more measured tone here at Button Mesh.
We like to see what we're talking about before we leap to conclusions. And it is funny how fast people sour on certain creators.
Because of course, Craig Mason, coming off of the critically acclaimed Chernobyl and The Last of Us Season 1, which was immensely popular, critically acclaimed and rewarded, and also generally found favor with game players too, primarily because it was so faithful to the game and because it was just so clearly mapped out by The Last of Us, the first game,
what an HBO series of that would look like. It was essentially an HBO series, but a video game. So it was kind of, you know, not a ton of decisions to make. And the ones that they did make, I think were largely good when they strayed from that script. Now, season two is, was still popular, but less popular, a little less popular. It didn't build on its success.
There was much more of a backlash, which was inevitable. But I guess this would be the reason for maybe some concern is that as soon as he actually had to make some real creative decisions about how to adapt something, It went south, at least in a lot of people's minds and sometimes in mine as well. I don't want to overstate the case.
I think, yes, you should probably be more confident in him than in a lot of people. It's just coming off of the taste that The Last of Us Season 2 left in some people's mouths. But it is striking. I saw this with Dave Filoni, who's kind of the co-head of Lucasfilm now. Several years ago, Dave Filoni was the savior of Star Wars. He understands Star Wars. We love the Clone Wars. We love Rebels.
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