Hey, all, welcome back to the official PlayStation podcast. You got Kristen here for episode 530. Can you believe it? It's the end of the year. And I'm joined by Sid Schumann. Hello. Oh, my gosh. Hello. I'm feeling loose. Oh, no. It's the end of the year. It's the last day. Yeah, it's our last day in office for the year. We also have Brett Elston joining. Hello, Brett. Hello. Normal greeting. Normal greeting. You have strange sounds. We are in a room with a gigantic drum in it that we were like, should we just bang on that? I was like, can you visualize the beginning of Blade Runner? where it has like the text on it goes, doom, dum, bum, bum, bum, boom. You can do that with your fingers on that giant kettle drum. PlayStation podcast. I knew you would know what I was talking about. I'm in it. Oh, my goodness. Well, we are in the holidays already. I know Tim, Tim Turrey and Odell Harmon Jr. are already out and about with their families. they're already out traveling for the holiday season. They'll be back in the new year to sort of talk through some of the things we're going to chat about today. But for us, it's game of the year. It's wrapping up the year. We're going to go through our PlayStation wrap, talk about what our top games were that we played through. we're going to talk about the PlayStation blog game of the year, 2025 minutes. What you voted this game of the year.

What did we vote?

What did you vote? What did everybody vote? And what did PlayStation Network think of our top games? And that's a different thing. We're going to share our top games most played in the 2020-25 wrap-up. Exactly. Big year for checkers. I'm just, I'm spoiling it now. Boursquare. To give a small preview of mine, another game that will show up later when we talk about are wrapped is Ghost of Yote, which our good friend Gillen, has an interview with Jason Connell, creative director from Sucker Punch for Ghost of Yote and Nate Fox, also both creative directors, I guess. So creative. So creative those directors. but they have a great chat. A bit a bit of a spoiler cast so if you guys want to say we'll make sure to give a big awuga a wuga spoiler so that you're aware before we hop in but it's a really great chat and especially the game's been out for a little over two months now I know I finished it and went in a new game plus there's a couple folks who are on their second play-through already. So it was a good time that we figured it was, we were ready to chat about Atsu's full journey. Taming the Bears and the wildlife. Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal. But for now, we'll dive into, I would say new release highlights, but it's the end of the year. So it's not really much on the horizon there. Crickets.

So many games this year in general, though. So go play some games because there's a lot that came out. Yeah. Play some of the games we'll mention in the next segment. Yeah. I was going to say, but we'll have some news that could be used if you so choose. So let's go ahead and drive into that. Sid, Do you want to grab this first one?

Sure.

A big update for Marathon.

This is Bungie's extraction shooter.

I'm really excited to grab this first one? Sure. Big update for Marathon.

This is Bungie's extraction shooter.

I'm really excited to play this one after playing so much Apex.

I always want to say Apex Legends, which I also love, Arc Raiders.

So Marathon, there's been some new features and updates.

So get all the detailed information on the changes and updates that are Bgee's making to marathon ahead of its March 2026 release. Extract all the data and be prepared to run as a squad or solo. Yeah. They're adding proximity voice chat. I was going to say that video doc was really sleek. So it was good to sort of sit down and sort of see what feedback they'd gotten from the community. They outright were like, hey, we heard you. We made some tweaks. You know, let's see, let's see how it

looks in the future. So I'm excited to hear more about that title, especially we've been diving into art grader. So I'm, I'm still playing that a lot? I'm still playing. I've still been playing other stuff so I wouldn't say it's the only thing but I'm playing it more than I

normally do. It's basically all I've been living for a month. It's been really fun so we still

need to play

together, but perhaps. Over the, I'm taking my PlayStation portal. Me too. Remote player,

home with me to Pennsylvania, and I've got PlayStation Plus premium, so I can stream from

the cloud if I want. Not exactly sure if our creators is supported, but let's pretend that it is for the purpose. None of this is legally binding.

I'll just grab the next one. We also had a deep drive into Soros, which we were able to see a little bit more at the game awards this year. There was a new story trailer. Rahul Kohli was up there on stage, and he's also on our Instagram and TikTok channels. If you guys want to check some interview content that we had with him. But the Housemark team sat down to sort of break down that story trailer and go a little bit through Arjun's emotional storyline, some of the through lines of the title, and working with the actors that are bringing it to life, because I believe they, they talked through this week that the actress who played Celine in Returnal is actually returning, but intended, to this game. Two different character. So different character. So they dive into a bit of who she is. You see her in the trailer, her new character.

But it was very cool to see that they're sort of having, you know, when they like talent, they're like, hey, stay in the family. And it's just like that you're starting to get a little bit of a taste of Saras and sort of the story and the world. And there's sort of, there is a tale here. I loved Returnal. I talked about it nonstop.

The story was very interesting the way they tell it,

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