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Happy Hour #92: The Last of Us Remake Review · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is any and Samantha, and welcome to Stephan
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: never told you a protection of I Heart Radio, and
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: welcome to another happy hour halloweenish addition, Yeah, also, I
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: would like to say we're going to be talking about
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the Last of His Remake, Part one remake today. They
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: are not a sponsor, but like, at this point I
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: should really come. They didn't give you a cameo in
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: their show or at least voicing something. Come on, I
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: think it's only fair. It's only fair. Also spoilers. But again,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: if you have avoided spoilers this long and you listen
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: to this show, I'm really impressed with you. As always
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: with these drink responsibly if you choose to do so,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: and today I think you both have a bit of
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a fancier drink option. Uh, Samantha, what are you sitting on?
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: So I am seasonal here in Georgia where I am from,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: it is called l J Georgia, the apple capital of Georgia.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: So it's just significant in Georgia. All right, that's a
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: pretty big deal come by, um, and I was able
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: to find and procure uh some apple cider straight from
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: one of the orchards in l J. So I have
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: a giant jug and because I am cold um all
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the time. Now, anytime it dips below of sixty, I'm
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: immediately cold. Have an electric blicket. I decided it's time
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: for the fall. Uh cider and rum. Yes, some apple
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: cider and rum. I was fancy and cozy right now.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I'm a cozy bitch. Come on, cheer cheers and this. Yeah,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: this cider is from l J which around these parts. Yes,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I would go and you would get the like apple pie,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the apple Tonnut's apple cider. Yes, and you made this.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: We had a house at the Dragon finale party and
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: you made some of it. And it was delicious good.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: There's nothing like it. It's just it's perfect, very warming,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: very warming. Uh and kind of related. I still had
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: some orange left over from when we made the the gronies,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: so I was trying to find a way to use it,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and I made an interesting stand grilla concoction. That's what
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: I'll say. It tastes very good, but I there's no
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: real it was just kind of a haphazard and I'll
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: try listen there. What about the I think we as
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: are delicious. They are they're risky, but they're they're delicious.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: They are yes, yes, just yes, Okay, So yeah, I
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: did want to talk about my review and and some
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: issues around the Last of Us Part one remake, which
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: came out um last month, I believe, and I of
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: course purchased it immediately, and now I have a friend
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: of mine playing it for the first time, my little
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: brother is playing it, and I'm watching it, and I'm
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: kind of semi playing it every now and then because
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: I'm like how much how much should I watch people
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: play and how much should I play? Anyway, Um, it
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: did get generally favorable reviews, but as you probably heard,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of controversy amongst fans, particularly about
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: how some felt this was like just a cash grab
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: or it wasn't needed. The original game came out and
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: then there was a remaster in the high price point,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: which was seventy dollars is often thrown around like oh,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: seven new dollars. The creators and defenders argued, this is
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: not this is why it's not a remaster. It's a
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: remake with updated features, and we're going to talk about
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: that more in a second, and why it is important. Actually,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: they are continue to be very very funny reviews to
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: me at least about how sad these games are. So
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I was getting like all these updates about oh what
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: a sad review. I love this game and it makes
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: me so sad. And here's one, um, And thanks to
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: my friend Barry for sending me this one quote. The
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: last of Us. It's a tragedy in the true sense,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: a story where people make the same awful choices again
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: and again, even when they know the consequences will damn them.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: There is no version of Joel Miller who does not
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: do what he does at the game's climax, his heart
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: locked in stone by mountains of trauma and love and need.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: It is said, oh, y'all, it makes her real sad,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: it does English and oh so much despair. Um. And
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: as you know, I have gotten into some some TIFFs,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: some tangles about these games before, usually with men, almost
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: always with men, and I've gotten one with this guy
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: at Dragon Con. And either I changed his mind or
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: he gave up. But I'll take it the win. I'll
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: take the win either way. It was a win in
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: my book. I did see something that wasn't It wasn't
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: very scientific, but it was a side by side reaction
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: of gamers to the second game, and almost universally the
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: women were far more empathetic and far more likely to
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: like enjoy the game and not hate it and go
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: to Reddit and yell at people. But I thought that
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: was interesting. It was only like sixteen people in the study, so,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: like I said, it's not very scientific, but I just
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: thought it was like, huh, that's what I've been saying.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: That was my what I was feeling in my gut
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: was the truth. But alright, some things I wanted to
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: go over quickly about this remake. Graphics and playability, that's
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: a big one. If you've you've probably seen this side
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: by side glow up pictures as they're called emphatical quotation
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: mark she was giving me. I'm not sure that's that's
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: what I would say, but that's what most everybody calls them.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: So I'm like, all right, I'll go with it. It
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: is a pretty big improvement. But honestly, the first game
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: still looks really good. In my opinion, certain things just
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: couldn't be updated, so like, after you played the second one,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: you're playing the remake and wait, I can't just break
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: through this glass ridiculous because it just couldn't update that. Also,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: it did feel a lot easier. To me, the remake
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: feels a lot easier than the first one did, but
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: that could be because I played it a million times,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: but it also could be because of something we're about
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: to talk about in a second. But there's a way
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: more difficulty levels than there were when it originally came
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: out in this in the remake, the dual controller. It
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: feels so cool, but it's also very darring, and I
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: think it's meant to be charring. But that was that
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: was cool, Okay. So this is the big thing I
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: wanted to talk about, though, and that's accessibility. And I
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: think we could talk about accessibility and gaming for a
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: whole episode, and I would love to because this is
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: a pretty big deal. Um from the game director, Matthew Gallant,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: we're expecting this to be an accessible experience for blind players,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: for deaf players, for players with motor accessibility needs. The
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: biggest new feature we have our audio descriptions for cinematics.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: We partnered with Descriptive Video Works, a professional service whose
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: background is TV movies and video game trailers, and integrated
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: it into the cut scenes and across all our localized languages.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Another which started as a prototype but ended up being
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: really successful during play testing is a feature that plays
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: dialogue through the PS five duel Sense controller as haptic feedback.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: That way, a death player can feel the way a
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: line is delivered, can feel the emphasis along with the
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: subtitles to give some sense of how that line is delivered.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: And even though that technology has been around for decades,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: this is the first Triple A game to feature audio
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: descriptions like that. Um players with disabilities have expressed how
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: hurtful it was to see non disabled players essentially turn
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: this whole conversation into an argument about price, or to
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: say that it's not necessary because remaster has some of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: these features, which isn't really true and is a false argument.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: And this is a happy hour, so I'm not gonna
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: get into why, but essentially you had to like find
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: codes to do it, and they probably wouldn't work either
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: way for some with disabilities who maybe couldn't enjoy all
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: the aspects of the original, who couldn't see the cut scenes.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: For instance, this is a whole new game, it's not
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: it's like playing it for the first time. And there's
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: a really good Washington Post article about this, and here's
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: a quote I cannot understate how important it is that
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: this remake exists, said Sightless Combat and Accessible Gaming and
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Immersive Technologies, research officer at the Royal National Institute of
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Blind People in the UK who uses the Moniker professionally.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Having a game go from unplayable without constant sited assistance
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: to potentially completely playable on the hardest difficulty levels is,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: in a word, fantastic. It goes from a completely unplayable
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: experience until a fully playable one. Sightless Combat said, it's
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: basically an entirely new release. Yeah, and this this article
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: got me alteriority, guys, I really recommend it. It was
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: really moving and these new features built off the new updated,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: accessibility friendly engine of the last of US two. And
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: here are some of them. I just wanted to highlight
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: really quick so that you can do alternate control settings
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: to change the controls used to accomplish tasks. So forever
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: one there's one that gives you difficulty, you can change it.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Magnification and visual aids, motion sickness settings, mostly camera movements.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I know. I was like, we could have used that
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: um navigation and transversial settings. So this is mostly like
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: movement or survival options like if for whatever reason, you
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: have something that prevents you from being able to hold
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: your to move as quickly as you need to survive underwater,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: for instance, you can change that screen reader and audio cues,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: so those narrations descriptions. Uh yeah, and like audio cues
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: for if you can't see something behind you or whatever,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: it's a good way to turn your attention somewhere. Combat accessibility,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: you can customize difficulty of enemies and their behaviors. So
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: for instance, like if you don't want people to flank
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: you to come behind you, you can change that, adjusting
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: subtitles things like size, uh, speed, color. It's also coming
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: to PC, which is a huge deal for people who
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: can't use the PS five controller because that the controller
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: has had it's not the most accessible controller. Um, so
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: that's a big deal. Or even if like you can't
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: afford or find a PS five in the first place,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: is that is still an issue? And then okay, so
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: those are all the like things about the remake that
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I think are getting lost in this conversation with mostly
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: abled gamers just mad about the price, that I think
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: we should keep in mind. Um. And that's a huge conversation.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: And like I said, I would love to revisit that
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: and and definitely go check out that Washington Post article
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: because it just had so many points that I was like, Yeah,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: we need to think more carefully about that and the
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: conversations we're having around it um and making these games
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: accessible and why it's important. Like we've said in our
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: episodes around disability, everybody, could you know, temporarily be temporarily
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: able as they say, like one day you might have
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: something and you can't do it. And I know I've
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: used some of the features in the last of Us
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: that were described and I loved them, and I didn't
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: realize that they weren't available in the first one. So
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that that is happening. I also, very briefly
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: want to say I'm very excited about the show. Trailer
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: has just come out. Everybody's asking me like, how excited
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: are you want us from what to up? And I'm like,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: you don't even know. Your skin can't contain it. Yeah,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: she's already planning the parties, y'all. I am already planning
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: the parties, even though it's just says with no specific date.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I did really love Pedro Pascal's Texas accent. I love
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: that Riley, isn't it who's Ellie's kind of girlfriends? Who
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: was with her when she got bitten? I'd love that
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: there was some like exact dialogue shot from the game,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Like I was like, Oh, that's directly from the game,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: and that was really cool the clicker. Of course, I
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: have her rumors and I don't know if this is true,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: because there are a lot of like angry mostly fanboys
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: around the Last of Us that it's way too short
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: of a show. But I will see. I'm excited and
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: I think we'll have fun watching it. Even if I'll
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: have fun, I know I have fun. Yes, I can't wait.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: I can't wait. Well. Cheers to you, Samantha, cheers clank clank,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: mug Yes, and cheers to you listeners. If you have
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: any thoughts about any of this Last of Us, accessibility
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and gaming, all kinds of stuff, your your reactions to
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: the trailer, please let us know. You can emails at
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Stuff Media Mom, Stuff at iHeart media dot com. You
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter, amongst a podcast or Instagram.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Stuff one ever told to you. Thanks as ohays to
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: our super producer Christina Cue Christina, and thanks to you
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: for listening. Stuff when are told. Use prodction of i
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcast on my heart Radio, you
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: can check out the iart radio app, Apple podcast or
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: where you listen to your favorite shows.