 It's been quite the morning, a whole lot of NBA 2K21 news just dropped from the trailer. Forbes was actually the first ones to come out with their article detailing some of the other behind the scenes information of the stuff we've seen in the trailer, and then 2K just dropped their own blog post explaining some of the stuff we've seen as well. And on top of that, Ronnie's been tweeting some trying to tease. And on top of that, there's a couple, hey, there's a lot! And we're gonna go through all of it here today on this beautiful Lush's channel where you guys can subscribe and click the big red button, you can do all of that. So this is our reaction, my first time ever watching it. The comment section said I was drunk, no guys, I just woke up. That's what it looks like, alright? And this is like an hour removed from that video, so I still kinda look like I just woke up. Besides the point, y'all knew, subscribe to the channel, second game dropped, we're going daily, but for now, we're just going at our pace, you feel me? Oh also, second channel upload dropped in a day as well, a reaction with Lowe. So if y'all wanna see that, link at the top of the description. Okay, so a couple things, once you read the Forbes article, you kinda come to the conclusion that there actually isn't four different parks. It seems as though there's gonna be one large park that includes four different burrows, which is gonna be the different affiliations in the four different corners, likely separated by that big tower of an event center in the very middle of the neighborhood, or should I say now, the city. They say in this article, the city is our most ambitious execution of a virtual basketball community ever. The sheer amount of variety of buildings and basketball courts that we were able to create to fill into the map still amazes me to this day. So they talk a lot about the next-gen possibilities and they're saying this is one of them right here. Saying this is some stuff that wasn't possible in last-gen. Are we already calling this last-gen or current-gen? Whatever. For those who missed it, the different affiliations include the north side, Knights of the Southside, Vipers, Beasts of the East and the Western Wildcats. They talk about bringing affiliations back and how they need to be praised because oh how badly the community wanted it. And they're not lying, a lot of y'all were asking for affiliations. You got it back. Stop. If you guys ever, guys, all right, okay. After begging for years for affiliations to come back since 2K17. If y'all don't go crazy over that, then you guys are hypocrites. Because I never really liked affiliations anyway, but it was cool little gimmick from time to time I participated. Hopefully the implementation of affiliations this year. And for what it seems, they're getting real ambitious with it. And we'll get to that in actually right now because they introduce this new concept called mayor. Seems like each borough, each affiliation is going to have its own mayor that is going to be an influencer. Well, they can make custom playlists for when you're on the court, music that plays. They'll have affiliation videos and messaging they can send to their constituents. They can change the court design and stuff on event courts, mm? Murial design, uniform selection. So they have the power to kind of change the vibe of the whole affiliation. So in the original reaction where I was like, I gotta be Northside. I mean, it only makes sense. Now I have to wait. I don't know who that mayor is going to be. I wasn't hit up about this opportunity guys. So don't look at me. I'm not trying to hold nothing back. I don't know. So I don't know who these mayors are. I'm going to wait to see who these mayors are. And then I'm going to my affiliation. Actually, Ronnie even teased as such. He said, he said this on his Twitter. Everyone announcing their affiliation decisions already. Crank laughing emoji. May want to see what other news is coming first. So I guess some other news is coming that might warrant us waiting before we make such a decision. Although for me, it wasn't much of a decision. Not like I'm choosing which college I'm going to go to. I'm just choosing which corner of the parking and the plane on. Actually, hold on pause. Unlike 2K16, I believe, or was it 15? I very badly want to be able to play with friends that choose different affiliations. I don't want to go through that thing where I can only play with my guys and you have to throw up my set. I don't want to do that. I'm not going to lie to you. Don't think they're going to make that same mistake again because they obviously moved in the opposite direction. So I'm not too worried about that right now. But this is how the 2K devs explained the mayor's responsibilities. Each affiliation will be represented by a mayor. They will be very influential in your day-to-day experience within the city. So what is a mayor and what do they do and how do they become elected? The mayor's will have specific privileges. Ah, 2K will begin the cycle with four influencers in place as mayor. And each term will last six weeks. There will be a new election to establish new mayors from the community or an opportunity or an option to reelect the last mayor. So for example, if they elect Chris Moove as a mayor, he's never going to lose that vote, bro. Chris Moove is going to be the mayor all year. I'm pretty sure. So I don't exactly know how the voting system will work. Like, do we have to log into 2K and be on our phone at a certain time to vote in the election? We got to hit the polls on 2K. Hey, excuse me guys. It's still the morning, man. My brain hasn't fully started to operate on full cylinders. I'm not a mayor. 2K, what's up with that, man? I want to be a mayor too. Sign me up for this thing, man. I'm a politician at heart. No, I'm not. They also went ahead and decided to explain the rent to court. If you've seen in the trailer, there was a Gatorade facility and on the second floor of that Gatorade facility, there was a Gatorade rent to court. Now, it seems as though you can bring anybody that you played with on the neighborhood to the Gatorade facility and then just run games on that rent to court. Now, I hope we don't have to take that name literally 2K because it will be quite wild if y'all started charging us VC to play games. I hope that's not the case. That would be actually wild. So 2K, if for some reason that is what you actually decided to do, remove that before the game launches, man. Trust me, it's gonna be a very, very bad look. The second floor house is a great new feature in the city, rental courts. Want an uninterrupted run of games with your friends or other bothers you just met? Rent to court in the Gatorade training facility and play games however you want. God, why do they sound like a 1980s commercial ad the way they were right over at 2K? What's up with that, man? They also mentioned here in this garage hoop section that 2K actually planted a whole bunch of basketball hoops around the neighborhood and there's actually pretty big VC bonuses for just you running games on that court. It seems like you can run ones, you can run twos here, you can run threes, and you can run horse. Basically, you have a basketball with you at all times you can pull out in the neighborhood. If you pull out a basketball and you put up a shot on one of these nets, there is a whole bunch of incentives. They just basically wanna introduce exploration. The likelihood that this is actually gonna be a feature that gets used after the first week is very low, but I like 2K's attempt at getting people to just explore the neighborhood. They've tried doing that in the past with disc golf and a whole bunch of gimmicks and the alleyways and the back of buildings, but this is a easily better implementation of a feature that enhances exploration. And it seems as though this city is much larger in scope than any neighborhood or playground in the history of 2K ever as so. There's probably gonna be a lot more, what's the word, potential for exploration and so we're probably gonna be seeing a lot of that in the first couple weeks of Games Launch. Past that, unless the VC bonuses are that crazy, I guarantee you nobody is gonna be doing any exploring. For some reason, this Forbes article references the blog that hasn't even released because the Forbes article came out before the blog, but 2K did drop their own blog in form now because it seems they've been doing this on their website for the last few weeks. Now finally, just a centralized place where we can find information. Okay, so this photo here actually gives us a good glimpse of what they mean by burrows. So this large obstacle in the middle, that's the event center. That's the center of this city here. And on this side, we can see a whole series of different courts surrounded by streets that lead you to the event building and to probably other burrows. And this seems like that Detroit looking one here. That's so interesting. Okay, so yeah, it's gonna be all on the same map and there's gonna be placed at different locations. So it's like, yo, where are you at in the city? Yo, okay, for some like this to be possible, 2K has to have the ability to add like 400, 500 people into the same city. Either that or severely reduced the number of courts available in any one burrow, which might actually impede your ability to just play the way you wanna play. If the two's court is full here on the Western Rough Riders, now you gotta trek all the way to the other side of the city to find another two's court just to see if it's available because they reduced the amount of courts. So the next gen capabilities, I'm assuming that's what they mean here just in terms of capacity. They way more people is gonna be in there. And yo, this looks dope. It almost looks like a futuristic metropolis when you look at the screenshots here. Of course 2K made space for a bunch of advertisements. They got billboards all over the place to promote everything from my team to Beats by Dray to whatever the else they got paid to do. Oh, okay, interesting. So 2K actually introduced a new area to the city called Rookieville and that's where everybody's journey starts. And so it's almost gonna be like a training ground where you find other rookies so you're not in the midst of try hard legend rep grinders with Zens at the same time while you're trying to play the game for the first time. They say here, it's an isolated cluster of basketball courts designed specifically for rookies. That's an interesting concept. First time they've done something like that. Each dedicated space in the north, south, east and west section of the city is what we refer to as the boroughs. Interesting. And each affiliation area houses a unique warehouse basketball court where new mind player progression features awaits. Even more interesting. Scattered throughout the city are quests and objective giving NPCs. If you've ever played an RPG experience, you'll have no problem spotting them. Every four to six week new quest and objectives will be added to people of the city. Okay, pause. Hey 2K, I tell you right now, Brian, play RPGs before. Now I'm telling you, it's the same three or four drills. Follow a person, kill the person, retrieve the person. Now that's about it. Those three encompass about 78.9% of all NPC drills in RPG games. And because there's no killing and retrieving in NBA 2K, I'm so curious what these objectives can be. What if the objectives were like, put up a bucket on the western rough rider borough? Drop a contact dunk on the north side punks. That'd be honestly, would that be dope? Play your games from Call of Duty to Valorant to whatever introduced daily objectives to get people signing on to the game day by day. But these don't sound like daily objectives though. Cause even 2K has done that in the past. Every four to six weeks, there's gonna be new objectives and quests. So I'm assuming it's something bigger or something a lot harder to achieve. It's also quite possible that this is like an affiliation large objective. Like the whole affiliation has to get 10,000 assists in the week or something like that. I'd love to hear more about that. That's actually pretty interesting. 2K is getting real bold and creative. I like that. Oh, hold on, they even explain it. There's two lines of quests here. First is a series of single player 3V3 games will be challenged to where, oh my God, okay, this is way less fascinating than what I just thought of. Okay, nevermind. The other line of quests will encourage you to get out and play games in the city and reward you for doing so. Simple as that. Okay, so hold on. That's along the lines of what I was thinking about then. I like that. It's about damn time, ladies and gentlemen. There in the past, there have been 4V4 courts, like in 2K17. And there's the 4V4 and 5V5 events that they would throw on from time to time. But 2K is verifying here that there are going to be special courts. I guess some of them are gonna be a tribute to Kobe where you can play forwards and you can run fives. And so thank the lords. You don't have to wait for an event to run fives and forwards in the park. Now, historically on 2K, these are the least played courts. But having the option to do so, like on 2K17 sunset when you could just hop on and run forwards was so refreshing. So I'm glad they've brought something like that into the game. I hope it gets used. Likelihood that'll ever be full is not high. Especially if they put it deep somewhere where nobody ends up going. Hope they put it somewhere where it's easily accessible or else it's just gonna be wildly pointless. 2K mentions here that if you reach a 10 game win streak on the park, the ball that you're playing with catches on fire until you lose. I guess that's a cool little gimmick for the people who like to run up streaks. That exists too. Oh, I was right in my original reaction. The pink diamond plaza is just my team triple threat. Oh, man. Why? Y'all got me gasped for once. For those who didn't see the trailer, you probably all have, but it's this big pink building with the fluorescent lights at the top, neon cord. 2K then proceeds to show off a whole bunch of different apparel courts. They got the Adidas, they got the Puma, they got the Converse, new balances in the game this year. The Aft Ultra Ego. Y'all know what that is? Oh, this is dope. This is dope. This is dope. We get some high res photos here of the different affiliations. We got the Northside Knights, there's I think the Southside Vipers, Eastside Beasts, and the Western Wildcats. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, so this is big news here. 2K is letting us know that you can put in a request at City Hall to get transferred into a different borough if you ain't like the one you got. But the penalty to that is your rep goes all the way down to Pro One. So once you start and you're like a week into this, there's no point of switching back. Interesting. I think the last time they did something like this was 2K17. I don't know if I liked that, but not probably won't like that. The only reason I like something like this is if I wanna do like rep wagers, like loser has to reset rep. I was hoping 2K didn't do nothing like this and it seems like they have. If you are playing on your team's home courts, you get regular rep. But if you play on another team's court, so you're basically playing away, even if you're playing with your friends, you get way less rep. I wish they didn't do it like this cause now I'm not even thinking about which affiliation I think would be cool and I'm thinking about which affiliation the people I regularly play with are gonna choose. That's very, very, very, very tough. It seems they've brought back rival days so like in years past, we'll have an opportunity to battle affiliation versus affiliation and crown one to champ. It seems as though they're gonna do this at the end of each cycle. They mentioned in the final two weeks that every major's term, they're gonna have these rival city day events and all these rep earning restrictions are gonna be removed from the city. Now, I wish they were removed the entire time to be honest with you, but rival day, I'd say this, is the one thing that the community really, really wanted back and every time a community was asking for something like affiliations, really what they was asking for was rival day. That was one of the most engaging events 2K has ever put together in the history of part 2K. So it was interesting they decided to bring that back on the coming next gen. For the launch of NBA 2K21, we've hand selected the initial candidates for mayors, spoiler, there will be some of the biggest names in the NBA 2K community. You know all of them. These four big time community influencers will be leading the charge for our mayor program, but these positions aren't permanent. Every six weeks we'll be looking to host elections in the game where you the community representing your affiliation. Hey, that means y'all gonna have to vote me in. I'm not in here right now, but y'all gonna have to vote me in fellas, all right? When the time comes, when six weeks is over, whoever has north side vipers, y'all gonna have to vote me in there, all right fellas? I'm relying on you guys big time here, you know what I'm saying? We will come through. Hash sitters, unites. Yo, my thing about to be all shark shooters, bro, we don't dribble on this side, we don't play defense, we just shoot, and we shoot better than the rest, man, it's facts. Yo, 2K, you didn't mention this in the article, unless I'm blind, I've been reading the article. First of all, 2K is saying that just dribbling a basketball around the playground is gonna be integral to the experience, which is what I've been trying to say 2K, because in years past, 2K tried to get you to, you have to get certain reps, you have to pay certain VC just to be able to have a basketball in the neighborhood. But it seems as though now, they want you to be dribbling around, they want you to put up buckets when you see a net. Cause that's what you do in real life, bro. You walking down your neighborhood, man, your neighbor got a goddamn basketball butt, and you know they're not home? You're putting up some shots, you have to on your way home, that's how we do it, man. But interestingly enough, I don't remember this being explained at all, and I've read the article, like the brand new dancing system described above, you'll be able to showcase your style real-time chaining together a wealth of dribble moves. Okay, 2K, you're doing a lot, right? You're doing a lot, 2K. Can that, does that mean we can also chain together dance moves? I'm gonna be top dancer in the NBA 2K community. We're in real life, guys, I have no rhythm, but in 2K, ooh, I'm about to hit you with every move I got, man. What if 2K sold dance animations? Oh, let me not give them ideas, hold on now. They also talk a lot about the improvement to the functionalities from the skateboards to the BMX bikes. We even seen in the trailer the dude was grinding the rail on the skateboard. So I guess they're really trying to push this exploration thing with the introduction of dribbling basketball courts and putting them buckets everywhere in the neighborhood to the skateboard BMX stuff. Are you guys gonna be right around in skateboards and BMXs? The only time people is really gonna do this, guys, I'ma let you know off-ramp is if it's way faster to get places on these. That's the only time people is gonna pull them out, I guarantee you. They also mentioned one of our new vehicles, the Chopper is a gateway, a great way to flaunt your style. It's not the fastest bike, but it's not supposed to be. This is the one about, okay, hold on, why'd they call it the Chopper? I thought there was gonna be a helicopter in the game. So I guess there is bikes that have different speeds and they might even charge out the ass for the fastest ones if you wanna get around places. Man, 2K is getting real creative with the monetization. I swear to God they are, bro. They're still off the wheels bike store here and the deck store that got all the skateboards. 2K does mention because for some reason this is the area I never care about, but for some reason the 2K community loves and 2K just never, ever, ever, ever even attempts to make an improvement. But for the first time in a very, very long time, 2K gave us to update our hairstyles, guys. Let's read. This is one of the big asks from you, our community. We're offering a number of new hairstyles this year that will keep you up to date with the latest looks. So there you go, guys. After years, probably over a decade of asking, it seems as though we're finally getting new hairstyles in NBA 2K21, next gen. They also mentioned you can get a whole bunch of accessories, bust down, Cartier watches, et cetera, et cetera at the embellished store. So some of y'all is gonna be wasting a dumb amount of money here at this store. I already know. It's like real life, you feel me? You just let the people that wanna get bamboozled, get bamboozled, send them right to the diamond store. So they have affiliation-specific apparel stores on top of all the other apparel stores that they've mentioned. I'm not gonna lie to you, this is a lot of information to drop in one day. From the trailer to this blog post, this is a lot of information. So a couple of interesting points and their closing thoughts they mentioned here. The freedom afforded to us by the open-ended nature of the city is one we plan to grow with into over the coming years. And that's bad news in that if we don't like the city as much as we're excited about it right now and we got it playing it for two to three years and there's not that many visual changes to it, I'm gonna be very disappointed. So if you're gonna re-skin it for 2K22 next gen, but we didn't even like 2K21 next gen, I'm gonna be very, very disappointed. But I don't wanna think all negative for no reason. I'm assuming this is gonna be great. I mean, there's a whole lot of new stuff, right? I like new stuff, new stuff. But at the same time, please 2K, you know what I'm saying? Switch it up, I don't wanna see the same thing year over year over year, please. I say this though, bro, visual concepts. Y'all did a great job, it seems like, and just introducing a whole lot of new stuff, especially after all that's went on this year, you know what I'm saying? A console jump year, you guys is working from home now. A lot has changed, I know. So we've seen the gameplay vlogs, it seems like this is the biggest jump we're gonna get in terms of gameplay that we've gotten in a very, very long time. That's true. And for the first time since 2K18, I'm genuinely excited about the environment that we're gonna be playing in. That's another W. I hope the execution on all the ideas works out. The mayor's stuff, it can be dope, and it could also be beyond corny and very annoying, one of the two. But I'm gonna wait back and see 2K, I like how y'all just try things, man. The whole bunch of years, y'all was just doing some of this as rehash, like affiliations, like we had that in the past. But the way they're introducing them is new and it's getting me excited about playing 2K21 Next Gen, and it's only a week away, guys, God damn. I tell you this, I've never seen 2K players this hyped about anything in like three to four years. All right, after reading this blog post, I'm even more excited, because the trailer really just teases a whole lot of stuff for you, but not only are they providing these higher-red screenshots to show you a whole bunch of stuff in and around the neighborhood, but they're explaining to you what the improvements are from the BMX bikes and the skateboards to the different boroughs to the whole rookie thing where you gotta play as a rookie and rookie dumb for a few games before you get introduced. Now you gotta put in a transfer at City Hall to switch. That's actually the one part about this I don't like, by the way. To switch affiliations, you gotta put in a transfer and then go all the way back to Pro One. But that does mean that the reputation system is back and hopefully there's a whole bunch of brand new rep rewards and it's not rehashed BS to make the rep race interesting, man. And yeah, I genuinely don't believe if they do that, whoever wins the rep race is gonna explode to a tier that we've never seen in 2K history before. I believe that to be the case. Remember when they used to have tigers following you around and stuff in 2K 16? Man, 2K, bring some of that back, no, no, no. Bring some new stuff. Sorry, don't bring that back. Bring something new that's as exciting. Hey, 2K, you've outdone yourselves here. Hopefully the implementation of these ideas is good. And hopefully you guys don't find so many ways to monetize this that it takes the fun out of it. Visual concepts, congratulations, man. My expectations were very, very high and so far not disappointed at all. So hopefully the servers are good so we can experience all this stuff without wanting to throw a PS5 out the nearest window. And hopefully the optimization is great so we don't have to struggle. But honey, next-gen possibilities. Y'all been telling us about the next-gen possibilities. I wanna see it in action, man. Hey, I am curious who these majors are. I'm gonna wait to find out. I'm pretty sure I can just find out by sending some texts. So I'm gonna do that real quick. If y'all enjoyed, man, make sure to drop a like, subscribe to the channel. And I'm gonna catch you guys in the next one. Second channel link in the description. Peace.