Intergalactic Reveal vs. Starfield Reveal - Delayed Input

CONTENT CREATOR: Next, we'll be answering
one of the weekend's biggest questions:

Who has the nicest coat?
Young Scar or Shadow the Hedgehog?

Let's begin with sheen.

KYLE: The Game Awards 2024
happened last week

and there were surprising winners
and funny speeches

and touching speeches.
But,

thing is, nobody cares about those things.
Get a clue.

Above all else, The Game Awards 2024 had
trailers, better trailers than ever before.

So let's talk about those.

If you told me a week ago The Witcher IV
would be in The Game Awards, I'd say,

"Okay, that will obviously be
the biggest trailer of the show."

And if we're going by YouTube views,
I'm not wrong about that.

But I guess beyond the confirmation that
Ciri will be the main playable character,

I don't feel like this trailer left a
massive impact on the public imagination.

It's a different person, sure, but
she's mostly still doing Witcher stuff.

Here we go, drinking potions
so she can do slightly more damage.

I'm just saying, as a reveal trailer,

it doesn't provide a lot to chew on
for the next 2 or 3 years.

Or 4.

Or 5.

Or six.
[laugh]

My favorite trailer for the show is for
Fumito Ueda's untitled Project Robot.

And what I love about it
is just how tangible it feels.

It's clear in the opening seconds

that you're watching someone
control a video game character.

But I do-- I can acknowledge that
it's kind of a low-key announcement.

Maybe some of that Ueda allure has worn off
in the years since The Last Guardian

but I do believe someday
people will come to realize

that this WAS the greatest game shown.

Until then, I can understand that 150-something
million people just don't get it yet.

After all, the rocket boosters
are the robot's ears

and that just looks silly.

Unlikely sequels for:

were announced.
But, in my opinion,

the biggest trailer of the show
belonged to a brand-new franchise:

And I guess we can't say
it's a new IP starting from nothing.

It from the studio who brought you:

Naughty Dog.
But

it's still cool to see a brand new thing
like this at this scale

at a time when it is riskier to do
than ever.

So I was rewatching the reveal trailer a lot
and it kind hit me how similar it actually is to

Concord, and not in the way that the
YouTube comments would suggest.

But it belongs in this strangely specific
sub-genre of:

'Cause, you know, it's hard for
normal people like you and me

to imagine ourselves
being space travelers.

But it feels more grounded when we
see things that we're familiar with

like cheeseburgers and

sandwiches

or soda cups.
"Whoa, that's what I drink out of."

So then I was watching
that Starfield reveal trailer

and it's actually even more similar
to the Intergalactic trailer.

There's a lot of shots in common.

Starfield.

Intergalactic.

Yeah, you got this
and you got that.

You got this.

You got that.

Flippin' switches,
flippin' switches.

Boosters on.
Boosters on.

And in putting them side-by-side,

you do begin to appreciate the
differences between the two approaches.

So here they are:

First, probably most obviously:

Starfield introduces you.
You are special.

You found the key to unlocking everything.

STARFIELD VO: What you'd found,
it's the key to unlocking

[inhale] everything.

KYLE: Intergalactic introduces:

Let me know of that's pronounced Moon,
which would be cool and funny.

But for now, I'm going to presume it's Munn.

In this game, that's-- You're--
That's you.

You are so badass and
you're the boss.

AJ: There, you're the boss.

KYLE: Obviously, two very different
choices and, you know, like,

in a Bethesda game,
you're going to be a created character

so the approaches are inherently different.
Neither is the right way to go.

But I am just-- I'm super impressed
by the facial animation.

Maybe it's because I spent too much time
playing Star Wars Outlaws

[HONK] this year.
But I was, like, studying this shift

from fearful apprehension

to space

to this almost darkly focused game face.

You're lookin' at the same thing
I'm lookin' at.

Maybe that's not impressive to you
but to me, that's just animators showing off.

Also, the eye patch was a good call.

An eye patch is like a narrative gimme,
makes anyone more interesting.

So Starfield referred to their look as
NASA punk.

ISTVAN PELY: We've been referring
to this approach as NASA punk.

This means a design language where
the tech is advanced yet

still looks grounded and relatable.

KYLE: And I guess we have the
advantage of hindsight on this one

but I have to say,
NASA punk didn't really resonate.

Hard to look at Starfield's spacecraft
and say, "Oh yeah, that is definitely Starfield."

Meanwhile, I'd say the most standout
aspect of Intergalactic

is how well it's nailed down its aesthetic,
which is 80s sci-fi cool.

One of the first things your eyes
settle on in the Intergalactic trailer

is the Porsche logo
on the back of this cool spaceship.

Now, your media training up to this point
has probably led you to believe that

anytime you see a recognizable brand
in a movie or TV show or video game,

that they paid to be there.
Pizza Hut paid to have the Ninja Turtles eat them.

SPLINTER: Of course, you've all
tasted the five-cheese pizza.

But this...

KYLE: I don't think it worked
that way this time.

To be frank with you, I think Porsche
was approached because it's cool.

And, most importantly, cool in the 80s.

Adidas?

Cool in the 80s.

Sony?

Incidentally, cool in the 80s.

So this kind of cool, 80s vision of an
alternate future that couldn't possibly be

but seems like a nod to the movies
that these developers clearly loved,

it's a cleanly defined aesthetic.

And also-- I do feel like
this maybe a little unfair.

I feel like a lot of game studios couldn't
get a deal like that, you know what I mean?

I'm imagining, like, a Porsche executive,
even somebody at marketing,

getting a phone call from a game designer
and they say, "No. No.

Is it a car game?
No. No."

But then you have,

"Neil Druckmann from HBO?
Do you know the HBO series The Last of Us?"

And they say, "HBO, you say?

Let him in.
Let's talk.

I have HBO."
[laugh]

Now, there is one aspect of Intergalactic's
aesthetic that I think is plainly weak.

And if you read through
300 negative YouTube comments,

it'll drive you crazy because
none of them even acknowledge this,

the actual thing that's wrong with the game.

This robot enemy is kind of boring.
It's kind of bland, compartively.

Game designers, you know this.

If you want to launch a franchise,

the design of your baddies
is just as important

as the design of your main characters.

It's why Borderlands
is so attached to this stupid mask.

It's the one thing everyone recognizes.

So we all know
it's gonna be a long, long time

until Intergalactic
is ready to be released.

There is, quite frankly,
plenty of time to fix that robot.

Let me give you a few recommendations.

Red eyes are played out.

Of all the glowing eye colors
in the imagined universe,

how are you gonna go and pick red again?
I'm gonna recommend

purple eye. Think about that.
You could own purple eyes.

Next, I can't explain this but,

I really think it would be more fun to
chop up that robot if it had a mouth.

See?
Now I really wanna fight this guy.

Fuck this robot.

And finally, it needs
a defining characteristic.

I'm gonna suggest

a big, full head of human hair.
Maybe they harvested it from humans.

Or maybe they just-- They became
obsessed with hair for some reason.

So they spent years developing
a method to grow it themselves.

And that actually adds a kind of
interesting dynamic with our protagonist,

who chooses not to have
a full head of hair.

I can't believe Naughty Dog
isn't considering these things.

Anyway, there you go:
iconic enemy design.

And the #3 Big Difference:

And now we get into
the sticky muck of the truth.

'Cause I feel like Interstellar,
in its reveal,

is selling me more of a franchise
than it is selling me a video game.

This is the title of their
PlayStation blog post:

Weird use of capital letters there.

Starfield was also very clearly
trying to sell you a franchise.

And looking at the provided facts,
Starfield is a massive success today.

However, I believe it has
limited potential as a franchise.

Hard to imagine genuine excitement
for a Starfield TV show or movie,

let alone the next DLC expansion.

This is a brand new universe
"25 years in the making."

I'm not saying they're going to bail on it,
but also,

I'm saying
they should probably bail on it.

Conversely, I feel like Intergalactic
did a better job of presenting a franchise.

You can imagine the world
beyond the characters presented there.

You could be curious about
what else you might see in this universe,

what other subtitles
they could come up with.

I actually think this shot is dorky.

Seems like it's just bait
for YouTubers to pause and disect.

'Cause when you're watching it
in real time,

it's too fast to even comprehend
what you should be looking at.

I think I saw Face Aces at one point?
I don't-- What do you want me to read?

But Neil Druckmann himself,
in that PlayStation blog post, promises:

Yet, the trailer made absolutely
no effort to convey that at all.

So I think there's a concern that maybe some
big studios are getting ahead of themselves.

Maybe you just need to focus on
making one good video game

before even imagining
the tie-in comic books.

But at the same time, I imagine that
it may be difficult to acquire,

to get the green light
for a AAA game budget

without promising to your bosses,
your Hermen Hulsts,

that you will provide them with
decades of transmedia revenue.

You can probably sell
that jacket at some point.

So I think this scenario we're stuck with
in our modern age

is if you want a game
as nice as Intergalactic,

if you want a team of hundreds
to work on facial animation like that

or, you know, have this budget

or, you know, have a
Porsche logo on the spaceships,

it needs to be a franchise
and not just one game.

Otherwise, the investment
would not be worth it.

If it is just one game,

you're gonna have a little jankiness.

And as you can certainly tell,
I'm quite the janky individual myself,

so no judgements there.

And that is Delayed Input for this week.

I will be back next week.
Until then, thanks for watching.

Something that's personally
kind of interesting to me,

coming out of The Game Awards,
is that

Fromsoft announced a
multiplayer Elden Ring game that is

deeply hard to care about.

Talkin' about:

If you're just an audio listener,
that's reign as in a period of ruling

and not, you know,
precipitation.

But it's an alternate universe run-based
co-op Fortnite storm game but

with Elden Ring.
It's just-- It's interesting to witness

a Fromsoftware trailer that has all of
the elements of a thing that you love

but is just missing
a certain magical intrigue.

It's almost exactly, like, why I think
it's scary to clone a dog after they die.

This is a multiplayer sequel, quasi-sequel,
to Elden Ring,

Bandai Namco's best-selling game of all time.
This should be huge.

We should be frothing for this.

I don't know, generally, you know,
I feel like even hardcore fans are like,

[mildly] "Yeah, let's go," you know,
at best.

So it Christmas still.
Maybe I can help you out.

Maybe I can give you a few tips to make
Elden Ring Nightreign exciting to people:

You know I'm right about this.
If you're taking--

If you're putting this whole thing
in some alternate timeline,

enemies from other Souls games
is not good enough.

I need Orochimaru.

This one's a very good idea.

So it kind of works like
how the scarves did in Journey.

Basically, if you complete a run,
if you're living at the end of the 3 days

and you defeat the boss,

your tongue grows a little longer.

So then, when you're, like,
lobbying up with people,

there's this process
where everyone goes, like,

"Alright, let's see them."

And everybody goes, "Wuh."
And then, like,

if you got somebody
on your team who's, like,

flopping down into the grass,
you know you're in good hands.

So you follow their lead.

Basically, like, it's like, "Okay,
longest tongue picks where we drop."

I really think
this would get people talking.

Has anyone done this before?
Here's what I'm suggesting.

Basically, I give you money for you
to ruin the game for my friends.

Basic-- Like, here's the--
I, like, I'll give you $5

and then you make sure that
they never get good loot.

They're, like, opening a chest
and it's like

just some fucking blue potion.
[laughs]