Tag: Geoff Keighley | A Banana Peeled

Tag Archives: Geoff Keighley

GeoffCon and Elden Ring

Posted on June 10, 2022 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Today is GeoffCon, which has caught me by surprise. I knew it was coming up because Ian was going to it, but I thought it was next week. It was not. He’s almost on his way now (flight delays. He was supposed to go yesterday) and will be there for the next few days. The conference itself is now, but there is a whole host of things happening outside GeoffCon itself.

Last year, this was when the official Elden Ring release trailer dropped. It was the last thing at the con and generated so. much. hype. It had been leak ahead of time, and my stomach sank with each announcement.

Side note: I realized a while ago that I don’t like video games in general. It’s how I am with pop culture–I don’t like 99% of it. It’s just uninteresting to me. I’m watching GeoffCon right now (with Oxboxtra) and am only waiting for Elden Ring DLC. No, it was not announced, but Ian suggested it and I cannot get it out of my mind. So far, there’s been an Aliens game and the game by the Dead Space creator.

I. Could. Not. Care. Less. Both are sci-fi in which I have no interest. I didn’t like Dead Space after playing maybe an hour of it. It’s just of no interest to me.

My brother and I have a long-standing joke about how he’s all sci-fi and I’m all fantasy. But he’s anti-aliens. He just like futuristic worlds–but no aliens! Which I think it odd, but he can shine on. I, on the other hand, am very much a fantasy person. I’m currently into urban fantasy, which I have been informed is a dead genre.

Anyway. Once Ian mentioned Elden Ring DLC, I could not get it out of my mind. Geoff has said that this year is going to be more about what has been already announced and less surprises, but who could blame him for closing it out with a trailer for Elden Ring DLC?

Speaking of, I’m racing through it at breakneck speed (for me) in order to get the plat. I just have to get one of the canonical bland boring normal endings (plus Elden Ring, which is getting all the trophies) in order to get it. I think it’s hilarious that I need the normal ending to get the plat because that’s the one I would usually get first.

But. I put in 200+ hours into the first playthrough. I knew of the different endings. I didn’t seek them out, but it’s nearly impossible to miss if you’re looking in the forums at all. There’s a point in the game of no return–after which you get cut off from an area. you’re told to get things done before doing a certain thing if you want to get your plat. So I did all those things. And I backed up my save. And did everything I was told I needed to do in order to get the plat in one playthrough.

Waiting to exhale, er, for snow (and Elden Ring)

Posted on December 11, 2021 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I was watching The Game Awards with Geoff Keighley last night and was keenly interested to see how Keighley would address the Blizzard Activision bullshit seeing as asshole Bobby Kotich is on–wait. He’s CEO Bobby Kotich and the president is Rob Kostich. Until this very moment, I thought they were the same person. Anyway, it’s the latter who is on the board for The Game Awards and the former who is a accused of being a harasser and all around asshole. At any rate, people were interested in seeing how Keighley would handle the situation as he was mealy-mouth about it before the show.

Sadly, he was just as mealy-mouthed during the show, saying we all had to do our part to battle harassment in the industry, including online. He didn’t name any names and the way he phrased it sounded as if he was more concerned about online bullying (which is bad, don’t get me wrong) than systemic harassment and abuse in the industry itself. If you didn’t already know about the allegations against Blizzard Activision, you certainly wouldn’t have learned about it from Keighley. Many gamers would argue that The Game Awards was no place to get into the details because it’s about celebrating games, but there can be no true celebration with that much egregious abuse. It’s the big giant elephant in the room and needs to be address. Geoff Keighley has arguably the biggest platform in games right now. For him to turn it into ‘everyone needs to do their part’ is disappointing, but predictable. I would have been shocked (in a good way) if he had called out Activision Blizzard specifically, but I’m not surprised he didn’t.

Before that, there was the pre-show. The first trailer shown was my second-favorite of the night. It was for Tunic by Andrew Shouldice, a Zelda-like soulslike with a fox as the main protagonist. Several months ago, other-Ian at Eurogamer played the demo and I was immediately charmed. I cannot wait to play this game and it was a strong start to the pre-game. Er, pre-show. Tunic is coming out on March 16, 2022. That’s only a few weeks after Elden Ring. Oh dear. That’s not good because Elden Ring is going to consume my life for several months.

I am so incredibly charmed by Tunic. It’s supposed to be really hard and other-Ian did have difficulty with it. The dev came into the stream to give him vague hints, which was really cool. The fox is so cute and everything about it is just wonderful.

Then, there was a bunch of nonsense that I didn’t care about. I felt a pang of sadness at the Tiny Tina trailer. Why? Because I loved the first two Borderlands when I played them, but that was ten years ago or more. I and the world have moved on, but Borderlands hasn’t. I didn’t like the prequel and HATED the third game because not only was the humor tired and stale, it was actually offensive to me what they did to Lilith.

Let’s move on before I get too enraged.