Episode 544 - Atomic Heart Shaped Box

Waypoint Radio

VICE

Leisure, Video Game Development, Television, Rewatch, Replay, Tv & Film, Video Games, Games, Movies, Video Game Culture

4.6 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2023

⏱️ 133 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A specter is haunting Waypoint Radio—the specter of BioShock Infinite. That game’s influences are all over Atomic Heart, whose Russian origins (and sex robots) are its own discourse. After the break, we touch base on the ongoing Activision Blizzard acquisition, and the surprising raises across some of Japan’s larger gaming companies. Elsewhere, Rob’s reviewed Company of Heroes 3, and Patrick is happy to report Metroid Prime still whips. Then, a developer writes in to clear up why a studio wouldn’t make their own game engine.

Discussed: Atomic Heart 0:40, Microsoft Continues to Try to Acquire Activision 1:04:09, Big Gaming Companies Give Raises? 1:11:37, Metroid Prime Remake 1:35:35, The Question Bucket 1:44:49, Firaxis loses Studio Heads 1:53:42, The Question Bucket Again 2:01:45, Outro and Announcements 2:09:02

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What's good internet? It's February 24th, 2023, and you are listening to Waypoint Radio
0:22.2	episode 544. I'm your host Rob Zachney and I'm joined by Ricardo Contreras. Hello!
0:28.6	Patrick Lepic. Hi. And we're not a price. Howdy. So I guess we'll just dive right into it.
0:40.3	You know if you if you gave me if you told me that like we're making Soviet Sputnik era bio-shock,
0:46.3	I would find that an intoxicating pitch for a game and that is broadly what developer
0:51.6	uh, Monfish had served up with the release of Atomic Heart. And first of all, it checks a lot of
0:56.4	the boxes, a beautiful model utopian city built on magical technology thrown into chaos by what
1:02.6	amounts to workplace intrigue. And even Stereo's protagonist with magic powers who sent in two
1:07.8	sort of things out. I think we've I think a number of some playing a bit of this, but before we dig
1:13.0	into our experiences, we should probably know there's been a little bit of controversy around
1:17.0	this game tied to as you might expect. Primarily the ongoing war in Ukraine and alleged ties to the
1:23.4	Russian government that the game has. Ren, you wrote a bit about this. Can you outline for us like what
1:30.2	the discourse is here? Yes. So effectively, uh, Monfish was originally founded in Russia and then
1:40.5	moved to Cyprus in 2017. Uh, it is a studio that was that has like no previous, uh, released games.
1:47.8	Uh, they were working on like a VR title before they shut it down to focus on Atomic Heart.
1:51.4	And just really they're also dropped out of nowhere. Yes. Like when this game, part of the allure of
1:56.2	this game is that when the, in the absence of a new shock, anything, right? Like where that
2:02.2	series is essentially dropped off the map despite a template being established and no one picking
2:06.5	up on it. Atomic Heart drops this like really grandiose trailer. They're very much suggested.
2:11.6	This game is never coming out. Right. We'll never play it because how many times do you see the like
2:16.3	Unreal Engine adjacent pitch of a game that never amounts to anything? The ambition is fantastic.
2:22.7	We, I appreciate a good trailer, but I'm just seeing that thing back in 2017, 28 to being like, well,
	...

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