Bungie's new game is a mess.. | Asmongold TV

In the reveal trailer for Bungie's new extraction shooter Marathon, the first two minutes looked like "absolute cinema" to Asmongold — atmospheric, moody, and visually gripping. Then the characters appeared, and everything fell apart. "They look like toys," he said. "The design doesn't have any edge to it." The contrast between the hyper-realistic Unreal Engine 5 environments and the cartoonish, plastic-looking characters created what he called a "style clash" — and that clash, he argued, is symptomatic of a deeper problem in how Western game studios approach character design and game mechanics.

The friction problem in extraction shooters

Asmongold spent significant time analyzing a clip from streamer Shroud, who argued that many new extraction shooters fail because they try to remove "friction" — the complexity and opacity that makes games like Escape from Tarkov compelling. In Tarkov, you don't know what items are worth. You have to learn. You have to memorize. You have to fail. "The friction is what makes the game interesting," Asmongold said, paraphrasing Shroud. "Most people don't even open that game. But that friction is what makes the game so popular to its core audience."