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Dreams · The Long and Short of It

• 0:00
  Thanks for checking out the Long and Short of It podcast.
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  You can find us on all good podcast platforms.
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  Please consider following or subscribing.
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  We hope you enjoy the show. Hello and welcome to the Long
• 0:17
  and Short of It, the podcast where we discuss each of the
• 0:21
  games on the Open Critic Top 100 list.
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  My name's Dan and I'm joined by. This is Lawrence, welcome to the
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  podcast. Welcome to the podcast everyone.
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  How are you? Everyone including you.
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  Yes, very well. Thank you.
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  Busy week as always. But I'm quite well.
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  I have no complaints that I can complain about.
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  So there you go. What about you?
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  Ask for an update on your training for the marathon.
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  Yes. I've been doing some runs, which
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  you know is requires. I've had a little bit of
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  soreness in my legs but powering through I've accepted my fate.
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  That's April. The 26th is going to be
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  horrendous, but it is just a day.
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  I'll make it through and then you know, it'll be done.
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  I'll never have to do another marathon again.
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  So as you can tell, I'm going into it with a really positive
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  attitude. Yeah, height of positivity.
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  There as I always have. Well.
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  We're all rooting for you. Thank you for me and the
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  listeners and Mr Blobby of. Course and your cat.
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  Will be will be in your corner. Fantastic.
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  Mr Blobby will be waiting at the finish line for you, Andre.
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  As I turn up in a St. John's ambulance.
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  And are you wearing a blobby costume?
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  I will be, yes. Yes, that was that was the main
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  stipulation for me running actually, as I had to wear a
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  blobby costume. And would it be some sort of fun
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  run? You could say that that would be
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  a fun run at that point. However, I get the feeling that
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  running 26 miles, I don't think I'm going to find very much fun
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  about it at all. But you know, I might be
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  surprised. You could be surprised.
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  You could be surprised. Yeah, I'm good.
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  So today we're here to talk about a game.
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  We're here to talk about #90 on our open critical list.
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  And that is a bit of a different game, a game of the imagination,
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  a game called Dreams. Dreams has a score of 90 on the
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  Open Critic Top 100 list and was released on the PlayStation 4 in
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  the year 2020. So let's kick straight off and
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  I'm going to ask you what on earth is Dreams?
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  2020, almost as old as we are. So almost, almost.
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  I thought of is it Bilbo Baggins, Lord of the Rings?
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  It's almost as old as I am. Is that Lord of the Rings?
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  We're expecting that reference really.
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  You weren't expecting. That were you?
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  I wasn't, I wasn't expecting that.
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  No, that was. That was out of left field to
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  say the. Latest that That's Fellowship of
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  the Ring, isn't it, anyway. You sounded like a a a cockney
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  felon in in that rush. As Bilbo did in.
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  Yes, he did. This is true.
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  So I, I think it's, I think it's interesting.
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  I think it's definitely up for debate as to whether or not you
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  can call Dreams a game. Really it's we, we've said a few
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  times on the podcast, there are games that you would just kind
• 3:31
  of dub down as experiences. And I kind of put Dreams in that
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  camp. It I don't really know where to,
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  to kind of log it, if that makes sense.
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  It's a very unique entry, and I think it's a very strange entry
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  to have in the top 100, but it is a blend of, at its root,
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  Dreams is pure creation, isn't it?
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  If you dream it, you can create it.
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  But yeah, that's a very brief overview of what Dreams is,
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  unless you want to add anything to that.
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  Yeah, so so Dreams is a creation suite for budding game
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  developers that do not know how to code.
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  So there is no coding involved here, but it's a very powerful
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  creation suite that really lets you start from nothing and build
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  something. And some of the stuff that
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  people have built in Dreams is quite literally mind blowing,
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  given that these are people on their own that have spent the
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  time to learn the system, to put together these experiences.
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  Yeah, I find it quite mind blowing.
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  And then on top of that, Dreams lets you, the player, experience
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  the dreams of other creators. So you can you can go through,
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  you can play these dreams, you can recommend these dreams.
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  Yeah. So that's essentially what it
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  is. It's a forum for creating and
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  playing the creations of other people.
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  And at its core, it is this. Yeah, it is this game building
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  software. It's and it's, it's interesting,
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  isn't it? Because it's like it's a
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  continuation of, I mean, this is going back years.
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  When we we played it, it was in the early days of the podcast
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  where we played Little Big Planet.
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  Yeah, I remember us talking about like there was a Titanic
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  level creation that we played, and then there was a Metal Gear
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  Solid 4. Metal Gear Solid, yeah.
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  A medium molecule have really kind of taken the idea that
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  people had in a little big planet and just made it its own
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  entire thing but without parameters.
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  And I think that I've mentioned it a few years ago now it's,
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  it's a long time ago that I mentioned it.
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  But with With Dreams, there was not, it was discontinued in
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  2023, wasn't it? They stopped supporting it.
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  And I think one of the reasons that it didn't pick up as much
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  as maybe people thought it would or or maybe it should have done
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  is that it there was never any kind of incentive for developers
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  or creators to make stuff on there.
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  There was never like a monetary incentive like there is on games
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  like Roblox or Fortnite. And there are probably 2 games
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  that I thought of when like we were looking when we started
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  looking at this when I played it a bit.
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  So the first one is something that I mentioned a long time
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  ago. Do you Remember Me ever
• 6:52
  mentioning Net Euroze? Yes.
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  So I don't remember what episode that was in, but Net Euroze was
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  something that you could purchase from Sony and it was a
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  black PlayStation one back in the 90s.
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  And it allowed people to develop their own games.
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  And then the games that they created would be put on the demo
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  discs. So with every entry of
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  PlayStation magazine that gamers will pick up, they get a demo
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  disc with it. And if you're a similar age to
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  what you and me are, you'll probably remember those demo
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  discs. And it would have a net EUR, a
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  creation on there from, you know, someone who'd just made a
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  game in their bedroom. It was a little bit more
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  technical than what Dreams is, but this feels like a
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  continuation of what that is. And obviously linked with the
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  Internet, you can just play anyone's games.
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  It might have even been on the little big planet that I
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  mentioned Net Euroze originally, but.
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  Yeah, it could. Be it is a really like Net
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  Euroze. I find it so interesting.
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  There are a couple of videos on YouTube that kind of go into it
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  in a bit more detail. And Kid Icarus did a video where
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  he played through all of the Net Euroze games that were ever
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  released. And it did make me think of
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  Dreams a little bit when we were playing it.
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  But the other one is suddenly not.
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  I never played. And you, you probably had a go
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  on it at some point, but do you remember Super Mario Maker and
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  Super Mario Maker 2? Yeah, I haven't actually played
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  them, but yeah, there's a huge following for for those games.
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  Yeah, and the Mario Maker games are a little bit more
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  streamlined because it is Mario and they've.
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  It's 2D Mario. Yeah, they've made it in a way
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  that you are limited as to what you can do, but within those
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  limitations it is limitless, if that makes sense.
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  So yeah, those were the two big things that I thought of whilst
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  kind of playing this and looking at it, as well as obviously
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  Roblox, which I've never played, and then going back to when we
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  were talking about Minecraft a few years ago when we played
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  that. Yeah, there's a lot that you can
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  compare this game with. Yeah, so there's Lego, Lego
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  world builders or something like that, I think.
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  Yeah, something like that. And you're basically using Lego
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  to build your own worlds, which is similar to Minecraft.
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  Yeah, this this creation suite lets you control everything from
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  creating the assets yourself to designing the art style to
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  adding voice work sound to animating the rain.
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  Is it really is a powerful bit of kit if that is what you're
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  interested in. And I think the idea behind this
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  is if you are interested in game development, it gives you an
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  access point that I suppose you'd then go on to learn coding
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  and and maybe get into game development in that way.
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  So yeah, it's a it's a really interesting proposition and
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  certainly an interesting one to talk about for the podcast.
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  So where did you first become aware of Dreams and where did
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  you play Dreams podcast? I mean, I heard about it a few
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  years ago, but it was one of those things that was like, oh,
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  there's this thing called dreams and you can just create
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  anything. And I'd heard that.
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  I think I'd maybe seen a clip where someone had created like a
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  model of Princess Peach from Mario.
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  And I was like, oh, OK, that's interesting.
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  Because obviously licencing and that was all I ever really kind
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  of delved into it. And to be honest with you, when
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  you mentioned this on our last episode, because I don't think
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  we'd spoken before, had we, about what we're going to be
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  doing this week. No.
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  So I was a bit like, Oh yeah, I know what that is vaguely.
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  But also, that's on the top 100 really because it is a bit of a
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  rogue choice. Oh, it's certainly different
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  from most of the other things that we've played.
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  Yeah, and I mean this is exclusively on PlayStation.
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  It originally came out for the PS4 and then there was
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  eventually VR integration for it but they never re released it
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  for the PS-5. I don't think no.
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  It's so so it runs on the PS. Five, yeah, which is interesting
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  seeing as it came out in 2020, which is the same year as the
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  PS-5 came out, although you can bloody get one for love, not
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  money. Yeah, so I mean you, you and me
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  looked at it and to get it as a digital download on the
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  PlayStation Store, it's about £35.
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  So I think you did the same as me and just bought a copy from.
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  No, see, I, I, I just signed up for the first time in many years
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  to PlayStation Network right on the middle tier of the yeah, the
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  PSN. So, and the reason for that was
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  I bought Battlefield 6 and I completed the single player and
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  I thought, I'm going to, I'm going to give the multiplayer a
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  go. And then you're obviously met
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  with the big barrier to entry, which is you have to pay for
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  online multiplayer. So, so I just thought, OK, I'm
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  going to give it a go. And I bought, I bought a, a, a
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  voucher, like 100 LB voucher. And I did it that way because
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  you can buy vouchers online for like 10% cheaper.
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  And then I just, I use that to get PSN and to be fair, it has
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  improved since I last. Yeah.
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  You've not had it for a long time, have you?
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  No, it must be going on five years now.
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  I've not had it for a. Long time maybe, yeah.
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  It must be around the the pandemic sort of time where I
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  let it lapse because I thought the offering was quite poor.
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  But it has improved since then and certainly well, I wouldn't
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  necessarily recommend the basic tier because all you're getting
• 13:01
  there is online play and the monthly games, which seem to be
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  a real drought in kind of what they offer the.
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  Thing is, I mean, I used to get PS Plus every month like back in
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  the day before I had APS 5, and because of that I'd always make
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  sure that I got the the monthly game.
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  So my PlayStation library is quite full of games that I got
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  on PS Plus. I mean, obviously I can't play
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  them if I don't have an active membership, which I've not done
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  for a while. But there was some, there was
• 13:32
  some chaff in there that was rubbish.
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  However, there were sometimes games.
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  Oh, OK. Actually, yeah, decent, not bad,
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  but it was a very kind of hit or miss.
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  Whereas I think you step up to the middle tier and you
• 13:45
  automatically get access to what they call the game library.
• 13:49
  A bit like Game Pass on Xbox, isn't it?
• 13:50
  Yeah, Yeah, it is. And there's some, there's some
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  good stuff in there. And, and I think the, the
• 13:56
  premium tee gives you access to classic games.
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  However, it's a limited number of classic games.
• 14:04
  And even even to this day, there weren't a huge many that I
• 14:09
  thought, OK, I need to play that on the PS-5.
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  So yeah, I, I think the middle offering is probably the best
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  bet, but obviously that's just my opinion.
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  But yeah, so, so that gave me access to Dreams and it was just
• 14:28
  convenient, really. So I'd just done that and I
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  thought, oh, OK, so we'll do Dreams.
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  And I just downloaded it there and then.
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  So yeah, played it on the PS-5 Pro.
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  But yeah, this is not a native PS-5 game.
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  Now I'm going to throw you the the curveball.
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  And it's only a curveball in this episode because it's going
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  to be tough to answer. So good.
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  Our ever present feature gameplay is king.
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  Is Dreams fun to play? Good luck answering that.
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  There are two ways that you play this game, either creating or
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  playing other creations, and I think you've got to have a lot
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  of patience and you've got to have a certain ilk to want to be
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  a creator on this game because it is a really, really steep
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  learning curve. Yeah.
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  So to describe to us, the listeners and me, how your
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  experience with the Creation Suite went and how you felt
• 15:31
  interacting with that and when maybe you decided to move away
• 15:35
  from. That I didn't stick it long.
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  I mean, to be honest, the only game where I've ever stuck at
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  creation to some extent was probably The Sims.
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  And The Sims is very much, these are the parameters in which you
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  can build and you can create, whereas this is so open that you
• 15:53
  can just do whatever you want. And that's never really been how
• 15:57
  I play games, even when it's intimidating, isn't it?
• 15:59
  Yeah. And I mean, I'm the reason that
• 16:03
  I always say that I was an actor.
• 16:05
  And you probably know this you, you kind of branched out a
• 16:08
  little bit, didn't you, with acting.
• 16:10
  You wrote some of your own stuff here and there.
• 16:13
  Yeah, I've done some writing over the years, yeah.
• 16:15
  I think you've got to have a certain creative mind.
• 16:17
  The reason that I always said that I was an actor is I always
• 16:21
  saw myself as a bit of a blunt instrument in that give me the,
• 16:26
  the, the, the stuff that other people have created.
• 16:29
  Give me the writing, give me the scripts, give me the plays, give
• 16:31
  me the poems. And I can do something with
• 16:33
  that. I can create a version of it in
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  line with what I I see it as. It's an interpretation.
• 16:40
  When you're an actor, you're an interpreter of someone else's
• 16:44
  work or creation. Exactly.
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  However, I do think there is a creativity in acting in how you,
• 16:50
  how you interpret, how you perceive, and then how you
• 16:54
  translate that into a performance.
• 16:56
  And yeah, so I, I completely get what you're saying.
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  And obviously I, I understand it probably more than other people
• 17:02
  would, but yeah, And I, I get it in terms of what you're saying
• 17:07
  here as well. For me, this creation suite I
• 17:13
  feel like I could create if I had the building blocks to
• 17:17
  create because. If you put the time into it.
• 17:20
  Yeah, exactly. It's so intensive.
• 17:23
  Now, my, my own experience was, and I don't know, obviously
• 17:28
  this, although it's still online, they're not supporting
• 17:33
  it like they were back in 2023. So the, the interface here is, I
• 17:40
  don't know, it was strange because first you kind of pick
• 17:42
  your category of game and then you can start to build within
• 17:51
  the parameters of that, or you can just completely go off
• 17:54
  script with it. And when you go off script,
• 17:58
  you're quite literally moulding a world.
• 18:03
  Yeah. And it just, it was
• 18:06
  overwhelming. And I thought I would like to
• 18:12
  get into this, but given how long it's taken me to, like,
• 18:16
  mould A doorway and, yeah, I thought it's just going to take
• 18:21
  too long. Like, I don't have the time to
• 18:23
  do this. And when you look at some of the
• 18:26
  stuff that people have made, it's so incredibly detailed and
• 18:30
  you just wonder like how much time that that bit of work took
• 18:34
  to put together and it and it's impressive and, and hats off to
• 18:39
  those people because some of the stuff that is out there is, is.
• 18:42
  Yeah, it's mind blowing. And I, I genuinely hope that
• 18:45
  some of these people are picked up as game developers because
• 18:51
  for my money, they've got all the makings of a game developer
• 18:53
  and they've got that skill to use those tools and build
• 18:58
  something using them and the patience to do that.
• 19:01
  So yeah, hats off to them. All the power to them.
• 19:04
  This is it. And The thing is, I mean, I'm
• 19:07
  the person that never even bothered trying to make my
• 19:09
  escape Parks and Tony Hawk Pro Skater like some people who just
• 19:13
  got that in them. And I think the big thing is
• 19:16
  patience. And, and I used to watch this is
• 19:20
  going back to when we were at uni.
• 19:22
  I used to watch like nerd Cube, let's plays on YouTube of him
• 19:25
  creating these massive worlds on Minecraft.
• 19:30
  And I remember watching one video where someone on Minecraft
• 19:35
  had made a huge massive Game Boy like a like a Game Boy.
• 19:41
  Classic like a Game Boy. Yeah, it was a working Game Boy
• 19:44
  in which you could play the original Pokémon Blue and Red or
• 19:47
  and Yellow, I think, on there in Minecraft.
• 19:51
  And like, he delved into it and he'd like he broke some box to
• 19:54
  get into it. And the amount of stuff that was
• 19:55
  in there to make this thing work, I just can't even
• 19:59
  comprehend how A, technically sound this is it to be first.
• 20:06
  And then B, who wakes up one day and thinks, oh, that game where
• 20:10
  you go around? Like knocking out creepers and
• 20:14
  building houses and like waterfalls and stuff.
• 20:17
  I'm going to make a fully functioning Game Boy game from
• 20:20
  1995 that works within my server on Minecraft.
• 20:25
  Like Baffle honestly baffles me. Blows my mind.
• 20:28
  It's incredible. I can't imagine being at that
• 20:30
  level, you know? And I think you.
• 20:33
  Just hit on something really interesting there, which is game
• 20:37
  development is a is a combination of creative minds
• 20:40
  and technical minds and I think. I have neither.
• 20:45
  The very rare, well, you've got a creative mind.
• 20:49
  I mean, yes, OK, you maybe you're not, you're not creating
• 20:53
  from scratch, but you you have that creative mind to interpret.
• 20:56
  And I think rare is the individual that melds creativity
• 21:04
  with technical. And I mean, I remember him work.
• 21:12
  We've got engineering departments who work in the job
• 21:14
  that I do. And someone said to me, are you
• 21:17
  mechanically minded? And I've never, I've never, it
• 21:22
  never been posed to me that that way before.
• 21:25
  And I thought my response was probably more than some, but
• 21:31
  not, not naturally. And I don't think I am thinking
• 21:38
  about it hindsight. I don't think I am mechanically
• 21:40
  minded and I don't think I'm technically minded.
• 21:42
  That isn't my Forte. And I think the really
• 21:48
  impressive stuff in dreams, you've got to get a grasp of
• 21:52
  those technical things. And that's just never been me.
• 21:56
  Like I don't really have the interest or the inclination to
• 22:00
  do it. So I can draw a picture on a
• 22:03
  piece of paper with a pencil, but I can't build something in
• 22:08
  that way. I can create a landscape through
• 22:12
  text, which are sort of your building blocks, but I can't
• 22:15
  again, build something physically that way.
• 22:20
  And sometimes that's just the way things are.
• 22:23
  And, and, and I just think those people that have put together
• 22:26
  these great creations have, have either focused on one side
• 22:30
  creativity or technicality, or they've got that rare blend of
• 22:33
  both. And and it is impressive to see,
• 22:37
  but yeah, I'm glad you, I'm glad you mentioned.
• 22:39
  That you can also see the difference in the people that
• 22:42
  just want to have a go at it and create like a little bit of a
• 22:45
  meme video on there. Like I saw this one where you
• 22:48
  play like you had to go and get the cheese as Wallace from
• 22:51
  Wallace and Gromit. You go and see Homer Simpson and
• 22:54
  then you go and see Rick from Rick and Morty, and then you go
• 22:57
  see SpongeBob SquarePants. Like that's cool, but it's just
• 22:59
  kind of like, what's the point of this?
• 23:02
  Then after that, I saw someone had basically created like a
• 23:08
  Banjo Kazooie game to to the point where it looked so, so
• 23:13
  real authentic. Yeah, that apparently the devs
• 23:17
  from Rare who created the original Banzo, Banzo Kazooie in
• 23:20
  the 90s, they commented saying, like, this is incredible, like,
• 23:24
  how have you done this? And I think that's cool.
• 23:27
  The thing with Dreams is the best moments of it come from the
• 23:31
  community and not from the game itself.
• 23:34
  The game itself gives you the the the blocks, but tools.
• 23:38
  Yeah. If the community wasn't there, I
• 23:41
  don't think this game would be even not talked about half as
• 23:45
  much as it is, you know? Yeah, I think you're you're
• 23:49
  completely right. And I'm going to I'm going to
• 23:53
  ask you. So for our second question for
• 23:58
  Gameplay is king. If you could change one thing
• 24:02
  about the game or the gameplay, what would it be?
• 24:07
  I, I don't know because I, I wasn't conscious of this game at
• 24:13
  the time when people were playing it, but originally,
• 24:17
  apparently Media Molecule said the same thing that Bungie said
• 24:21
  when Destiny came out in 2013. There's a 10 year road map for
• 24:25
  this game, and three years into that 10 year road map, they
• 24:28
  pulled the plug. Right.
• 24:30
  And I guess that's because they weren't seeing the returns on it
• 24:34
  that they wanted. But what I would say is that
• 24:37
  this could have been like, I, I think it's probably one of the
• 24:41
  most ambitious PlayStation projects ever, but it struggled
• 24:46
  because it asked people to create more than to consume.
• 24:51
  And when I'd say probably about 75%, if not more of people
• 24:58
  aren't really that way inclined to create, you're going to be on
• 25:04
  a ratio of where there's not going to be as much great stuff
• 25:07
  as there potentially could be. And I think that they should
• 25:10
  have pushed it more. I think that they could have put
• 25:12
  in, you know, incentives for people to create cool stuff.
• 25:17
  And all you've got to do is I don't know bugger all about
• 25:20
  Roblox other than it's a game where there's a lot of creation
• 25:27
  involved. And probably if I'd have been 11
• 25:30
  years old at this point in history, Roblox probably would
• 25:35
  like rule my life. And they incentivize people to
• 25:39
  create stuff on that game by, I'm pretty sure by paying people
• 25:44
  to develop stuff. And if Media Molecule had really
• 25:52
  pushed with this, I think it could have become absolutely
• 25:55
  massive. And another reason that I don't
• 25:58
  think it took off is it's one of those PlayStation games that
• 26:00
  could have really, really like, what's the word I'm looking for?
• 26:06
  It could have done well out of being pulled over to PC.
• 26:12
  I'm glad you said that. Yeah, this is absolutely
• 26:15
  something that would have really, really done well on PC
• 26:19
  because it would have just swung the door wide open.
• 26:23
  You see so many games on Steam that people have modded to do X
• 26:27
  amount of creative things. And if you gave them this, I
• 26:31
  mean, look at Gary's mod. Gary's mod is still massively
• 26:34
  played now because people would just create whatever they want
• 26:37
  in there. And and Garry's Mod I think came
• 26:40
  out in what, 2004, maybe 2005, I'm not sure.
• 26:44
  But you still see compilations on YouTube with people playing
• 26:47
  that game, and Dreams could have been that, but it just wasn't
• 26:51
  kind of utilised in the way that it perhaps should have been.
• 26:53
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I completely agree with you that
• 26:58
  if they were going to select any game to go multi platform, and
• 27:04
  they have released games on PC, although they've stopped doing
• 27:08
  that now. They've even released the odd
• 27:10
  thing on Switch. So they released the Horizon
• 27:14
  Lego game, and I think they've released on Xbox as well, the
• 27:21
  MLB games, baseball games, Yeah. So it's not unprecedented, but
• 27:29
  this is a game that I think would really have benefited from
• 27:33
  different ecosystems. I when I think of PlayStation,
• 27:41
  the first thing I think about is not people wanting to mod or
• 27:46
  develop games. Whereas when I think of PC,
• 27:51
  they've been doing it for years. Even Xbox, there was the ability
• 27:54
  to to mod things within the Xbox ecosphere.
• 27:58
  Think of of Bethesda games it like a few.
• 28:01
  Years ago they. Opened up didn't they on fallout
• 28:03
  and Skyrim that you can use mod mod kits on console and it
• 28:07
  completely changed the game. Yeah.
• 28:10
  And then you've got things on on Nintendo like like Mario Maker
• 28:14
  and things like that. So yeah, I feel like by
• 28:18
  expanding that audience, this would have had a much longer
• 28:21
  life. And I'm, I'm a bit curious as to
• 28:24
  why they didn't when they've done it with other projects.
• 28:28
  So for me, if I could change one thing, I would just, I'd have
• 28:37
  more building blocks in there. What I mean by that is things
• 28:41
  that the player can use to build their world or, or, or at least
• 28:47
  an interface that allowed you to access those things because they
• 28:49
  might be there. But I find this interface pretty
• 28:53
  overwhelming and I I didn't know where to start.
• 28:58
  But that shouldn't be the case. Like it shouldn't be.
• 29:01
  Oh, if I want to just create a 3D thing, how do I get in there?
• 29:07
  It just isn't that user friendly, even if it probably is
• 29:11
  user friendly. More user friendly than a lot of
• 29:13
  creative games. I think if you really want to
• 29:18
  get that mainstream appeal, you've got to get that interface
• 29:21
  so simple, so easy to read and interpret that anyone can just
• 29:27
  pick it up and create something. But when a lot of people's first
• 29:32
  creation experiences, oh God, like it's so big you, you scare
• 29:40
  people off. So I, so I did, I dabbled with
• 29:42
  it and I just didn't want to go back.
• 29:45
  Whereas I was messing around and dabbling in other people's
• 29:49
  creations for for quite a while, like more time than I thought I
• 29:54
  would. And that brings us nicely on to
• 29:58
  our next question, which is what are some of the dreams that you
• 30:01
  experienced that you that stood out to you?
• 30:05
  So obviously there was the Banjo Kazooie one that I mentioned
• 30:08
  earlier. And I think that like there was
• 30:13
  some cool 2D platformers, There were some cool FPS games, and
• 30:20
  the ones that I can't remember the name of it, but there was
• 30:23
  like a puzzle game that I was playing that to me again, made
• 30:27
  me think of Net EUR, Eh, But as well as that, because I knew
• 30:31
  that there was Sonic stuff via Dreams and Mario stuff I had a
• 30:38
  look at, it's kind of like a bit of a recreation of Sonic
• 30:43
  Adventure. I think I saw that, but I didn't
• 30:46
  play. Yeah, like I played probably
• 30:49
  about half an hour of that. And I'll be honest with this
• 30:53
  game, if we're calling it a game, a lot of how I experienced
• 30:58
  it was through watching stuff like watching reviews and other
• 31:02
  people play games. I played a little bit of the
• 31:06
  story mode, which was interesting in itself.
• 31:09
  Art Store, yeah. But I didn't stick with that for
• 31:15
  very long because I knew that this game was primarily focused
• 31:18
  on the community stuff. He's.
• 31:21
  Impressive that though. Yeah.
• 31:23
  Oh, absolutely. Like playing the different
• 31:24
  instruments and. Yeah, and just just what they've
• 31:28
  been able to build. It again shows how powerful that
• 31:31
  creation suite is if you know what you're doing with it.
• 31:33
  Definitely. And I, I, I just can't find
• 31:38
  them. How people created like the, the
• 31:40
  whole Sonic Adventure thing, it's like blows my mind.
• 31:42
  The Banjo Kazooie thing blows my mind.
• 31:45
  But yeah, like the thing that I enjoy most of this is like the
• 31:47
  little puzzle games, because that's kind of what I enjoy on
• 31:52
  this kind of hardware, if that makes sense.
• 31:55
  Yeah. What about you?
• 31:57
  A few different things and not all of them would be classified
• 32:01
  as games. Someone recreated the famous
• 32:05
  scene in Jurassic Park with the way the T Rex comes through,
• 32:10
  yes. And you've got the Jeep and all
• 32:13
  it is is is a sort of they've they've recreated it and
• 32:17
  modelled it from scratch. They've animated it.
• 32:20
  They've put the sounds in. This is like a grain for grain
• 32:25
  recreation of this, but it's in dreams and you can mess with the
• 32:31
  camera angles. You can it just replays over and
• 32:35
  over again. So it is purely that scene, but
• 32:38
  the fact that someone was able to build that and it looks
• 32:44
  stunning. It's, it blows my mind because
• 32:50
  that's not just footage from the film that they've just plugged
• 32:53
  in it, that they've built it and that was really impressive.
• 32:57
  There's also the food ones. I don't know if you dabbled with
• 32:59
  any of those. I tried the the the southpaw
• 33:03
  one, the one where the the chef has got one hand and he's on the
• 33:06
  phone with the other. Oh, so, so the ones that I'm
• 33:11
  thinking of are people have just created scenes of plates of food
• 33:17
  and they've just modelled the food.
• 33:20
  There's like there's, there's one for an English breakfast,
• 33:24
  which people unaware is sausages, eggs, beans, hash
• 33:29
  Browns, toast, bacon. Yeah.
• 33:33
  So they've modelled this really ludicrously detailed plate of an
• 33:43
  English breakfast and you can zoom in and out, you can change
• 33:45
  the camera angles. It's it's mind blowing.
• 33:48
  It's, it's really impressive and it looks appetising.
• 33:51
  And again, I just think how much time has someone put into that
• 33:58
  to build that? It's really impressive.
• 34:01
  Then I was, I was sort of like you did with Sonic.
• 34:05
  I was searching franchises, so I searched Lord of the Rings.
• 34:08
  Some people have put together some really interesting scenes
• 34:11
  from that. Some people have rebuilt the
• 34:13
  Shire in various forms and I searched James Bond which didn't
• 34:20
  really return much actually, which surprised me.
• 34:22
  There are a couple of Metal Gear on there.
• 34:25
  I did search Metal Gear, yeah, there's quite none of them.
• 34:28
  Sometimes you play some of these and it's like a cardboard
• 34:33
  imitation and it just feels wrong.
• 34:36
  And I played one with with MGS 1 with the the helicopter area
• 34:42
  near the beginning. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:44
  And I thought this is this is depressing in a way, because
• 34:48
  it's just not what it should be. But yeah.
• 34:53
  But there are some hugely impressive ones, some of the
• 34:55
  ones that Media Molecule themselves made, again, Which?
• 34:59
  You hope would be good. Yeah, because if they can't do
• 35:03
  it, then yeah, who can. But yeah, it really is
• 35:09
  impressive. I I often think, and this struck
• 35:12
  me while playing. I think the thing that probably
• 35:16
  limits a lot of these is just the low number of people working
• 35:19
  on them. It's tough to create something
• 35:23
  like that on your own. A. 100.
• 35:25
  Percent and again, hats off to those people that have done it.
• 35:30
  OK, Talk to me about the look and the audio of this game.
• 35:36
  It's going to be a tough one to talk about, but what do the
• 35:39
  games tend to look like that people are building?
• 35:41
  Some of them look amazing and some of them look like it was
• 35:44
  like programmed through a potato.
• 35:47
  I think it just depends on the competency of the person that
• 35:51
  that made it. I mean, I'd say the only fair
• 35:54
  one that you could comment on is the the story mode, the art
• 35:57
  story, because that is what is packaged and what they would
• 36:01
  expect you to play. So I mean, the art thing is very
• 36:05
  kind of noir, isn't it? It's very art decoy to some
• 36:10
  extent, yeah. And that works because we've
• 36:14
  noted numerous times on this podcast that when you create
• 36:18
  something with like an up to date or modern look, it gets
• 36:22
  dated in a couple of years, whereas you do something that's
• 36:26
  cell shaded. I played another cell shaded
• 36:28
  game during the period that we've been playing this game,
• 36:32
  and I know that that's going to look amazing for the next 10
• 36:38
  years. Yeah, yeah.
• 36:40
  And that's probably, again, I'm going to suggest that we play at
• 36:42
  some point because it was very good.
• 36:44
  But I think that the look of this game is kind of what you
• 36:50
  make of it, how good and how competent the people that are
• 36:52
  making the community levels are. The sound, again you can add
• 36:56
  whatever you want into it. So again it depends.
• 37:00
  But like in Art Story, the sound was very good, the music was
• 37:04
  very good. I don't really know how to
• 37:07
  answer the question because it is just so open-ended.
• 37:11
  Yeah, I think it's, I do think that there's a limit because
• 37:20
  obviously this is APS 4 game. There's, there's going to be a
• 37:24
  limit to graphical fidelity here and you see some of those games
• 37:31
  really pushing that limit. And there is a, a look, if
• 37:36
  you've played a few of the games, there is a look that that
• 37:40
  a lot of them seem to have. And I don't know if that's the
• 37:42
  the tools of the suite that make it look like that.
• 37:45
  One of the other things that I noticed was that people tend to
• 37:50
  tended to be not very well modelled.
• 37:54
  Like if if they weren't realistic, then fine, they they
• 37:58
  looked all right. But the realistic ones just sort
• 38:00
  of like puppets and had like sausage arms.
• 38:04
  And again, I think it's all of the Creator, isn't it?
• 38:08
  Yeah, you're probably right. And it's, and I think for years
• 38:13
  game creators have struggled to create realistic people and it
• 38:17
  took a long time before people started to look realistic in
• 38:20
  games. So the development community is
• 38:23
  probably going through that teething issue with it.
• 38:27
  But yeah, it's not not an easy question to answer.
• 38:29
  What do you feel about the presentation of this game in
• 38:31
  terms of the menus, in terms of the tutorial stuff and and how
• 38:36
  you're introduced to this game? I think that it's quite clunky.
• 38:42
  The tutorial stuff you get, you get to choose your imp, Yeah,
• 38:48
  which is kind of like an avatar, isn't it?
• 38:50
  Yeah. Which you you kind of have as
• 38:52
  your cursor. And then it kind of gives you
• 38:56
  the basics and then just says, OK, here you go, like go and
• 39:00
  create something which is very overwhelming.
• 39:05
  So I'd say that again, if you want to put the time into it and
• 39:09
  if you're willing to be patient and learn everything that there
• 39:13
  is to learn about this game to get good at it, there is the
• 39:17
  information there to show you and to guide you.
• 39:19
  But you need a really long time to get to grips with this game.
• 39:25
  Like I'm probably talking like 100 hours plus like.
• 39:30
  Minimum. Yeah, so it's OK to just pop
• 39:36
  into and like try like dream Surf, but the creation stuff
• 39:41
  take a take a few weeks off work hope, hope front of the hope
• 39:45
  front of the pandemic and another lockdown so you can get
• 39:47
  to grips with that, you know, hope that you get put on
• 39:50
  furlough. I wonder if that fed into the
• 39:53
  initial. I think so I must have done.
• 39:55
  Buzz with this. Game, it depends when it came
• 39:57
  out in 2020, but I mean if if they if they had an early launch
• 40:02
  in 2020 itself, then absolutely like the perfect time for it.
• 40:05
  It's the same. You might be in August sort of
• 40:08
  time, but even even there you still smack bang in the middle
• 40:12
  of. The not not quite as not quite
• 40:14
  as fortuitous as Animal Crossing New Horizons coming out because.
• 40:18
  It came out the. Week before people went into
• 40:20
  lockdown, didn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:24
  OK. Question of the week If we do
• 40:30
  get a dreams too, what refinements would you like to
• 40:34
  see to the formula? I don't know.
• 40:39
  I think that it would just have to be, but part of me says it
• 40:44
  should be simpler to pick up. But then in doing that you're
• 40:46
  kind of watering down what it is.
• 40:48
  And I think the complexity of it is what makes it so impressive
• 40:51
  when people really get to grips with it.
• 40:53
  I think that the reason that you see so much chaff on there is
• 40:58
  because it's being made probably by people like me who have no
• 41:02
  creative spark in that way, and they're just creating something
• 41:06
  just out of curiosity or to test it, which is absolutely fine.
• 41:09
  That's what the game is there for.
• 41:11
  But I don't know, I think the way to answer this question is
• 41:16
  there won't be a Dreams too. And I don't think there should
• 41:18
  be a Dreams too, because they perfected what it should be in
• 41:21
  Dreams One. It just didn't get the backing
• 41:23
  and the support that it probably should have done because it
• 41:26
  could still be going today if they'd done it properly, you
• 41:28
  know? Yeah, Media Molecule has said
• 41:32
  they're working on their next thing, whatever that will be.
• 41:37
  So I'm interested to see what that will be because there's
• 41:39
  always a bit of a creative element to their games.
• 41:44
  But I, I think I agree with you in that Dreams is what it was
• 41:50
  meant to be. The only thing I'd like to see
• 41:53
  is a simpler entry level interface.
• 41:58
  I don't think you have to take away from the complexity of it,
• 42:02
  but I do think you can probably build people up to that point
• 42:06
  and and there probably are things in there to help you do
• 42:09
  that. But they weren't always easy to
• 42:11
  find either. OK, does Dreams deserve to be on
• 42:19
  the open critic top 100 list? No.
• 42:22
  It's, it's a really interesting concept and it's a really
• 42:25
  interesting thing, but I'm, I'm amazed that it's #90 on the top
• 42:31
  100 games of all time. I think that's outrageous, the
• 42:38
  the scope and the amount of potential that it has would put
• 42:42
  it in #1 but if you're going off, is this one of the best
• 42:47
  games ever, of all time? Absolutely not.
• 42:51
  This, this, this is a tool. It isn't a game.
• 42:55
  Yeah, it can be used as a game to some extent, but I don't
• 42:58
  think that it's fair to compare this and compete with games on
• 43:04
  this list. It's it's own thing, as have a
• 43:07
  few. It's not a curated experience in
• 43:08
  that way, is it? No.
• 43:10
  And I think. That there are a couple of
• 43:12
  things that we've played on this list in the Metacritic list that
• 43:15
  would fall into that category. But in that category, this is #1
• 43:20
  it's I, I don't know how better to describe it then.
• 43:23
  It's a tool and you get out what you put in, but it's a very
• 43:28
  unique thing, experience, journey, you know?
• 43:35
  Yeah, to some people, this is going to be the Holy Grail,
• 43:37
  absolutely. And it's going to be exactly
• 43:43
  what they've always wished for. It's what they've dreamed for.
• 43:46
  And yeah, and I don't think it would ever like, like you said,
• 43:54
  they've kind of perfected that. Yeah.
• 43:56
  So as a tool or as a creation suite, they've really done a
• 44:00
  good job here big time. But I, I, I also find it really
• 44:05
  hard to rank because I, I love the fact that it's different.
• 44:12
  I also love another thing. When I was playing this, I was
• 44:17
  reminded of PS3. Sony.
• 44:18
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 44:19
  You've mentioned something a lot in the past, haven't you?
• 44:22
  How much you enjoyed that era? Yeah.
• 44:26
  It was like, it was like when Sony would throw things at a
• 44:29
  wall to see what would stick. And the modern day Sony I see is
• 44:36
  really playing it quite safe. But this game is not them
• 44:40
  playing it safe. And I like it for that.
• 44:42
  It has a charm and it and it Harkins back to that that era
• 44:47
  that I was so fond of. Yeah.
• 44:50
  But yeah, it's it's very difficult for me personally to
• 44:55
  rank because I've not had probably the joy that some
• 44:59
  people have had with this game in creating or experiencing the
• 45:04
  other dreams. And we're not playing it in that
• 45:08
  time where it was buzzing. We're playing it several years
• 45:13
  later and it's kind of hard to come on board at this time.
• 45:19
  It is. So for me, no, it doesn't.
• 45:23
  But I could understand why for some people that it would.
• 45:26
  I get that, which is probably a bit of a cop out answer, but
• 45:30
  there we go. Yeah, there we go.
• 45:33
  That's what I do. OK, I don't know the answer to
• 45:38
  this, funnily enough, what we got coming up next time.
• 45:42
  So I don't know how far along this is our every every episode
• 45:47
  we do the Persona 3 conversation.
• 45:51
  I don't know how far you are with that game.
• 45:53
  I I've gotten significantly further since I last spoke to
• 45:57
  you on the podcast. However, I don't know how close
• 46:00
  or I think you're probably better than me.
• 46:02
  Now, I would say that Persona 3 probably needs a little bit more
• 46:08
  time as we found was the case with Persona 4 and Persona 5
• 46:11
  when we played them, because I think I.
• 46:14
  Reckon I'm not far off halfway. Yeah, I'm probably not there, so
• 46:18
  you're ahead of me. I need to check where actually
• 46:20
  keep asking me how far along. I don't know, I've not played.
• 46:23
  It come on the floor. 65 now Oh yeah, I'm not there, I'm not
• 46:26
  there. So that probably shouldn't be
• 46:29
  our next game. I mean, something that we could
• 46:33
  possibly throw in there. It's something that we very
• 46:36
  briefly took and this is, you know, behind the curtains of
• 46:39
  what goes on in our podcast you and me spoke about a week ago
• 46:44
  with our listeners. We we do check our reviews and
• 46:48
  we do. Look in sometimes.
• 46:50
  Just to see how we're being received.
• 46:53
  And I think it was a a listening from the USI believe who listens
• 46:57
  on Apple suggested, you know, said they enjoyed the podcast,
• 47:02
  which, you know, thank you, thank you, much appreciated.
• 47:04
  But they mentioned that they'd like to see us play our one
• 47:07
  listener. Yeah, our one listener that
• 47:08
  enjoys us. Thank you.
• 47:11
  But they mentioned hopefully one day in the future playing one of
• 47:16
  the Deus Ex games, and I've never played either of them.
• 47:20
  And I'd be interested to play the original 1 because I think
• 47:22
  that's very much in the same kind of ilk as the first Half
• 47:26
  Life. Yeah.
• 47:28
  And that could be gaming gold. Yeah.
• 47:30
  It could be interesting to do that as a little bit of an extra
• 47:33
  1 while we're still chugging away at Persona 3, if that's
• 47:38
  Tickles I. Think that's a good idea?
• 47:40
  Yeah, I think that's a good idea.
• 47:41
  And I also think it's one of those games that honestly
• 47:47
  baffles me a little bit, though it wasn't on the original
• 47:50
  Metacritic list. And I've played this game before
• 47:54
  and I had a very enjoyable experience with it.
• 47:58
  It's it's quite dated now, but yeah, I definitely think it's
• 48:01
  worth a play for the podcast. Superb.
• 48:03
  I've actually just moved my gaming PC setup around so it's
• 48:07
  now in my office with all of my other stuff, so give me a good
• 48:10
  excuse to spend a bit of time in here.
• 48:12
  So I might be able to play a handheld.
• 48:14
  We'll see how that goes. Very nice.
• 48:16
  There you go. That's to the listener who
• 48:19
  suggested that. There you go, we're going to do
• 48:22
  Deus Ex. So yeah, that will be.
• 48:25
  Keeping our one listener happy. Keeps that one listener who I
• 48:27
  believe was in the US pleased. So there you go.
• 48:30
  We listen, we do. But yeah, so that will be next
• 48:35
  time. It'll probably take us a couple
• 48:36
  of weeks to get through that. Won't I won't it because I don't
• 48:38
  think it's a particularly. Yeah, it's not massive, but.
• 48:42
  I think it's. Probably off the top of my head,
• 48:44
  about 15 hours long. OK, that's fine.
• 48:46
  That's a nice middling game for us.
• 48:48
  So that'll be the next episode in a couple of weeks.
• 48:52
  In the meantime, if you want to leave us a review, because as
• 48:54
  you know, we we know we do check those, please feel free or give
• 48:59
  us a subscription or even an e-mail at the long and short
• 49:02
  fitpodcast@hotmail.com or a little message on Instagram is
• 49:06
  it is always very much appreciated.
• 49:08
  But yes, that concludes our real dreams for today.
• 49:15
  Is there anything to add from from your good self?
• 49:18
  No. Mr Bobby's already got his
• 49:20
  mentions, so he's happy. Yeah, absolutely.
• 49:23
  He pays us to to mention him every, every episode.
• 49:27
  He does and we do. As we do, we are diligent in
• 49:29
  that aspect. That's correct.
• 49:31
  We are. We are.
• 49:32
  Well, lovely. Well, he's our sponsor in that
• 49:34
  case, producer. We will.
• 49:37
  We'll leave it there before this derails any further, but thank
• 49:40
  you very much for listening and we will see you next time for
• 49:44
  Deus Ex. All the best Cheerios.
• 49:46
  See you on the next one.