Death Stranding 2 Adds Fun, Subtracts Frustration

This week, the Besties deliver an episode on Death Stranding 2. It’s a big and heavy one, but we were happy to hike across the internet and leave it on your podcast app of choice. Plus, we dig into the mailbag!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  So I want, so, so when I want to get an honest answer from two separate people, I text them separately.

• 0:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:08Russ Frushtick?

  To see what they think on that perspective. And this happened recently.

• 0:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:12Russ Frushtick?

  I texted both Justin and Griffin separately, talking about how I felt about Death Stranding 2, which is the game we're talking about today. Apparently, they were sitting next to each other when they got the text.

• 0:24Griffin McElroy?

  It was absolutely insane, my man.

• 0:27Speaker 02

  We were at Origins Game Convention. Thanks, everybody who came out. Always love to see the hoops troops. And we both got the text independently, not in a group, but independently from Russ, and both sent to me and Griffin independently.

• 0:43Griffin McElroy?

  Identical copy.

• 0:45Russ Frushtick?

  Well, yeah, I just copied and pasted. You think I rewrote it?

• 0:48Speaker 02

  No, but like, we realized it happened, felt like we were in a Saw movie, and decided to confront you. And is that the verb? Yes, that's what I did. Confront you about your actions. And would you like the chance to explain them?

• 1:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I mean, I said it at the top. I wanted a honest response that wasn't tainted by the rest of the group.

• 1:10Griffin McElroy?

  So even before we get into the fact that you played us against each other, like a sociopath.

• 1:16Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 1:17Griffin McElroy?

  I am disappointed in you for not being able to wait until after dinner to get your sweets desserts. Reaching out to us to get our exclusive thoughts on the video game before everyone who has paid for it to hear these.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  The paying customers. You wanted to get our insights for free.

• 1:36Russ Frushtick?

  I want a little sneaky peeky.

• 1:38Griffin McElroy?

  That's disappointing too, my man. We got it. We have rules for a reason. The rules are we don't talk to each other until we do the best.

• 1:44Russ Frushtick?

  Right, that's fair. The question, I guess, the follow-up question I have is this.

• 1:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:49Russ Frushtick?

  How did you both find out that I texted you at the same time?

• 1:53Griffin McElroy?

  We were sitting next to each other.

• 1:55Russ Frushtick?

  But do you look at someone else's text?

• 1:57Speaker 02

  No, I said to Griffin, Russ says that Death Stranding 2 is the best game, his best, best game.

• 2:04Griffin McElroy?

  And I said, he texted me the same thing. And then we looked at each other like, that can't be right.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  And we started like, have to compare. We're like, Beverly, enhance, enhance these texts, Beverly. We think we have an impersonator.

• 2:17Griffin McElroy?

  Absolutely wild.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  My name is Justin McRae and I know the best game of the week.

• 2:39Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Griffin McRae and I know the best game of the week.

• 2:42Chris Plante?

  My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game ever.

• 2:46Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Russ Froschek. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club and just by listening, you have become a member.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  This podcast, this episode of the podcast is gonna have the guts to ask a question that I didn't actually think we would be asking. And that question is, what if Death Stranding 2 fucks? Chris Plant, what does that mean?

• 3:16Russ Frushtick?

  Speak on that.

• 3:18Chris Plante?

  Well, Death Stranding is the sequel to a game where you walked around and delivered packages in the apocalypse. But now it's back with a lot less story, a lot more delivering, and a hell of a lot more Metal Gear Solid. Did I mention it's made by the same person? I am now Hideo Kojima.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  What a wild, would love to diagram that sentence.

• 3:40Chris Plante?

  Yep.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  If I had a protractor and we'll be right back after this.

• 3:46Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of The Besties is sponsored by Lisa. You know, we are starting to get into the cooler months of the year. And you know what I love in the cool months of the year? An incredibly cozy mattress that you can just cozy up into. You got the blankets and everything and I will speak from experience, but maybe not my experience. Because Lisa sent me one of their mattresses. But it was timed as such where actually my son, who was becoming a toddler and needed like an actual bed, needed a mattress. So we had him use the Lisa mattress. And every time that I get into that bed to read him a story at night,

• 4:27Russ Frushtick?

  I am incredibly jealous of his mattress because holy cow, that thing is incredibly comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory foam mattress. By New York Times Wirecutter and is featured by West Elm as their go to mattress partner. You can go to lisa.com for 25% off select mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with promo code BESTIES exclusive to our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code BESTIES for 25% off select mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. lisa.com promo code BESTIES.

• 5:07Griffin McElroy?

  I had a moment where Rachel was out at a book club and I was like, all right, I'll have some time to dip into Death Stranding 2 on the beach. And I'm, I could probably-

• 5:19Russ Frushtick?

  Sorry, I was confused for a second. I thought you were playing it on the beach. People should know that's the subtitle of-

• 5:25Griffin McElroy?

  I am heading to the beach this week, so I could ostensibly make that happen if I wanted to bring my 500-pound PlayStation 5 with me as I went. I could probably, if I sat here for a couple hours, come up with a short list, but just like off the top of my head, I cannot think of a more bonkers game for a loved one to walk in on you playing than having her walk in from her club where she just discussed literature with her, with her friends and then come home to see me making Norman Reedus drink his own piss. And then she's like, what's happening on the TV right now? And I'm like, well, it's a game where you make Norman Reedus drink his piss and eat his bugs. And I don't see why that's

• 6:08Griffin McElroy?

  weird. We both consumed art today, and I'm going to discuss it later.

• 6:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I think that's fair.

• 6:16Chris Plante?

  I thought you were just going to talk about how weird it is when they come in and they're like, so what are you doing? And you're like, well, I'm hand delivering this package. Like, how long have you been doing that for? And you're like, oh, 30 minutes? And like, anything else happen? No?

• 6:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of random cross-sections of this game that you could place in front of a normal person and have them not immediately go-

• 6:38Chris Plante?

  So you just run, you run across the mountains and you drink piss and you're Norman Reedus from Walking Dead?

• 6:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 6:43Russ Frushtick?

  It was truly the example of an elevator pitch only working because it started with Hideo Kojima made this game. And then everything else is like, okay, I guess we have to.

• 6:53Griffin McElroy?

  I would love to provide my perspective on Death Stranding 2 on the beach because I did not like Death Stranding 1. It is a point of constant contention, I think, between the hosts of this video game podcast. I found it to be so laborious and anti-fun that I was unable to suffer through, I was unable to eat my vegetables to get to the sweet dessert of

• 7:18Russ Frushtick?

  And let me just say-

• 7:19Griffin McElroy?

  insane mind palace.

• 7:20Russ Frushtick?

  Let me just say, I agree that the beginning of Death Stranding 1, the like first five to seven hours, is pretty fucking brutal.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  I played 30, I probably played 30 hours of it and then I like took a break and couldn't go back to it. Because I will say that I think it is way too mechanically dense, period.

• 7:44Griffin McElroy?

  So dense.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Like, to me, that's unquestionably a failure of Death Stranding. Whatever else you want to say about it, it's just too complex for its own good.

• 7:53Griffin McElroy?

  Now, Death Stranding 2-

• 7:55Russ Frushtick?

  More complex.

• 7:57Griffin McElroy?

  I feel like Death Stranding 2, I had a tough time with at first. Death Stranding 2 presents itself very much as more of Death Stranding at the, at the top of the game for the first uh, five, six hours of it.

• 8:13Russ Frushtick?

  I wouldn't even say it's, I don't personally think it's that long.

• 8:16Griffin McElroy?

  There is a preface to the game. There is an act one to the game, after which point things really kick off. And act one took me about six or so hours.

• 8:26Russ Frushtick?

  What I, what I would say about the two act ones, because the first game-

• 8:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 8:29Russ Frushtick?

  This, I'm, I'm only making this point because I think there are a lot of people like you, Griffin-

• 8:33Griffin McElroy?

  Please, go ahead.

• 8:33Russ Frushtick?

  That played the first game and fucking bounced off hard and I totally get that. The difference here with the beginning of both games is Death Stranding 1, shitload of cutscenes, shitload of setup. Hideojima really won you to understand what every character was, why they were, what happened, blah, blah, blah. This game more or less puts you in control almost immediately.

• 8:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 8:56Russ Frushtick?

  And lets you start doing things almost immediately. You're getting vehicles almost immediately. Compare that to like Death Stranding 1 for the- First two hours, you're carrying the worst body ever. It's like the body of your mom or and.

• 9:10Griffin McElroy?

  She's nine and a half feet tall and she weighs 600 pounds.

• 9:14Russ Frushtick?

  Carrying bodies is the hardest thing to do in all of these games, including Death Stranding two. That is like, oh, you have to carry a body? Fuck that. And they let you do it first thing. So this game does learn that lesson where the things that you're doing first are much easier and more approachable.

• 9:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, the game makes a better first impression than Death Stranding one without a doubt. Death Stranding one makes a fucking bad first impression. So I'm not sure that that bar is particularly impressive to clear. However, after that first act, shit goes absolutely bananas in a way that makes me truly believe that Hideo Kojima is a madman at the height of his powers right now. Truly, truly, truly, and not just outrageous in like a, I don't know, man. The kind of way you'd expect from the guy at this point, like absolutely off the wall, fucking over the top even for him level shit. That also kind of dovetails with the same point where like the game starts to get kind of fun to play.

• 10:15Griffin McElroy?

  And that it really, really, really, really has clicked for me.

• 10:18Chris Plante?

  Share, share some of the stuff. I think it's fine to share. I mean.

• 10:23Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, after act one, you meet a whole menagerie of characters all at once, all of whom are more deranged than the last. I don't know how deep we want to go into it because I don't want to spoil anything because it truly is when the game starts to come alive. And I would not like to steal that moment of satisfaction from you. But like you get access to the little scooter really fast. And then all of a sudden your opportunities for running is dramatically decreased, which is absolutely wonderful. You can adjust difficulty specifically, like filtering out mechanics of the game that you just don't care for. I don't like having to press L2 and R2 every second and a half to adjust my weight onto my left and right foot because of the way that I put some box on my back.

• 11:06Griffin McElroy?

  You can pretty much just phase that out if you'd like to.

• 11:09Russ Frushtick?

  There's also a fucking ghost puppet, like there's a.

• 11:12Griffin McElroy?

  There's a ghost puppet. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm blending together. There's I'm saying there's a nice moment in this game.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Gelfen's trying to save some surprises.

• 11:19Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's worth pounding through the first part of this game because I really do feel like it becomes something that I wanted it to be and and I have been enjoying it a lot more since then.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  My my broad take on it is and and I'm somebody who like I did like the first one, but I it it took me a really long time to get into and it took me very little time to get out of because I just kind of dropped it.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  This to me reminds me of Assassin's Creed one to Assassin's Creed two. It's it's the first game was, okay, we're gonna try an entirely new thing, an entirely new sort of structure for doing video games. And it's not gonna be fun, but it it is gonna take us another iteration to figure out how to make it fun. It's gonna work fundamentally, but it's not gonna be pleasant. And I feel like what is so cool to me about Death Stranding two is for I I have always thought of Hideyokojima as somebody who is self indulgent, and I think that it's pretty easy to lay that at his feet a lot of the time.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  What I will say is Death Stranding two is not to me someone who is self indulgent. Death Stranding two is someone who took it on the chin a bit with Death Stranding one and said, okay, I actually am gonna make this fun. I'm actually gonna double down on this and I'm going to make it work. I feel like he is somebody who is at the height right in this game of editing himself.

• 12:47Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  To make it into a pleasant. This is somebody who I did not think had that in him. I thought Death Stranding was something that is just gonna continue down the road of like weirder and more self indulgent. This is weird and self indulgent, but it is it is absolutely disciplined and like practiced in how it's deploying it.

• 13:06Griffin McElroy?

  And also self aware. There's a great fucking beat where Sam is talking to Leah Sado's character Fragile, uh, who has these two fake ghost hands that float on her neck that she can that also sort of like controls and does little sort of mime comedy for her sometimes.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  But yeah.

• 13:23Griffin McElroy?

  Well, you can read the Kodak entry if you really want to fucking get into it. But there's a moment where she sits down and her and Sammy are having this conversation and she stops and the, the dark light of the, of the tar world shines across her face as she just kind of stops talking for a good 20 seconds. Pulls out a cigarette, lights the cigarette with the fake hands, takes a huge rip of that dart, puffs it out and just kind of sits there looking contemplative in this super artsy black and white shot. And then it hard cuts to Norman Reed. So Sammy just goes, "Cool. So..." Like the game is fully, fully like says like, "Yeah, we, it feels like it fucking gets it and it's kind of in on it." And that gives it license to do whatever the fuck it wants. And I'm down to clown absolutely.

• 14:07Chris Plante?

  My, my, my version of that, I agree. It feels like they, somebody there is editing him. I, I don't get the sense that Kojima himself is, you know, both the writer and editor here. It feels like somebody has been brought in that is editing both the gameplay and the story.

• 14:25Russ Frushtick?

  It feels like a producer, like, like bringing a producer in to work on the second album of like a garage band. That like cleaned off the rough edges.

• 14:34Griffin McElroy?

  That's a really good.

• 14:35Russ Frushtick?

  And I don't necessarily know that Kojima has that in him. Like that's not his thing is like doing that stuff.

• 14:40Chris Plante?

  One of the ways that they've changed this is Fragile Now, that character who was in the first game, who is played by Liya Sato. She basically is narratively consuming all of the cutscenes on your behalf. To the point where there, you meet a new character and they, the, literally you'll like kind of peek in, see, I'll peek in. And Liya Sato will be like, "Hey, um, it's a little crowded in here. Can you, can you go back to your bed and maybe just go run some errands? And like, I'll catch you up. I'll send you some text about what we learned."

• 15:16Speaker 02

  She is the, she is the exposition eater. Cause she has allowed her to consume it in your stead and then she will, she will barf it into you.

• 15:25Griffin McElroy?

  To the point that.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Little nuggets, little pellets.

• 15:27Chris Plante?

  I walked in on two characters singing Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head together, having this beautiful moment that's leading into a little bit of exposition. And Sam is sitting in the doorway, not even part of it. And at the very end, it cuts to them realizing he's there and then he starts singing, except for I had just run an errand and my character is covered in blood and excrement. And he's like, "Okay, see you later," and then just disappears. And I was like, "This perfectly captures the game," which is, these three women are having an entire adventure and then I'm out here like fighting blood babies. And every once in a while, you know, giving them some tools that they might need.

• 16:09Griffin McElroy?

  There's also, I have to shout out another, it's, I've yet to hit a cutscene that I felt like went too long. When they do introduce all those characters, it's that, that one's a little bit lengthy. But there's a great bit, bit where you go and you meet up with Guillermo del Toro. Dead Man, I think?

• 16:27Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 16:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, okay. And he's-

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Not Die Hard Man.

• 16:31Griffin McElroy?

  Not Die Hard Man, Dead Man. And he's giving you a lot of exposition. And right when you're like, "Fuck, man, I don't know Guillermo del Toro." He's like, "You know what? I'm tired. Let's take a break." And you're like, "Oh, okay, I guess we're taking a break in the middle of the cutscene." Then you go outside and do this huge fucking badass boss fight. And then you come back in and Guillermo del Toro's like, "Whew, okay, let's pick things back up." It really feels like someone was like, "Kojima, you simply can't have this one cutscene of Guillermo del Toro explaining about quake, gatequakes. You can't have that go on for five minutes, my man. You gotta throw in a big boss fight in there." And he's like, "Yeah, absolutely, let's do it."

• 17:07Russ Frushtick?

  Now, it's worth remembering, even for the like sickos of Death Stranding, the people that are obsessed with all of the fucking nitty gritty details of the world, that's all still in there. You get texts that give you that background, Plant mentioned. There's also a codex which has like probably an encyclopedia's worth of nonsense across every single like mechanical beat and world beat. So if you want to know about anything in the world, that's all represented, very easy to search.

• 17:36Griffin McElroy?

  But it feels in that way-

• 17:38Chris Plante?

  There's specifically a codex entry for Fragile's Ghost Hands, which is why I know what they are.

• 17:42Griffin McElroy?

  I appreciate it.

• 17:42Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I do kinda wanna find out what the fuck's going on.

• 17:44Russ Frushtick?

  It feels a little bit like the Souls approach, which is like, if people want it, they can find it. You just have to little dig for it. And for all the normies out there, fucking enjoy moving these packages around, cause it is pretty fucking fun.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Talk about that?

• 17:57Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 17:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, please.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Fun. I don't know why.

• 18:00Russ Frushtick?

  Here's, here's what's so interesting. Justin, you're still kinda early. You're still in like one of the earlier parts of the game.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:07Russ Frushtick?

  I'm surprised that you find it more dramatically more fun than previously, cause I think like you don't get a lot of the new wacky toys until.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  It's not the new wacky toys. I, I just feel like it's a lot of the, they, they from the very beginning, I, I tell you, here's how we would approach this. Plot a route. You see the hazards on a map. It is, it is like gamifying walking.

• 18:32Russ Frushtick?

  Yep.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  It's adding that layer, right? Which I think really helps, cause it makes everything more concrete and it makes the idea of like packing for a route. Really makes sense. Like you know what you're gonna need.

• 18:44Russ Frushtick?

  I'm gonna need a ladder when I get to this river.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Gonna need a ladder, cause I've got a place on here for a ladder. Gonna need some guns, cause I'm about to drive through these idiots. Like I'm, you know, you need a, you need a plan. And honestly, if you're, if you deviate from that, you're choosing to, but it's your choice. I mean, you could execute on your plan and it'll go pretty much the way, you know. You think it's gonna go, but then there's like, you'll see some sort of cool thing you wanna go look at, some sort of treasure you wanna go get, and then you get into the, to a bit of a pickle. But it is, uh, the, if you get into, I'll give you another one. This real, that's real good. If you see a, an encounter with enemies, you can look at it with your binoculars.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  You tag all your enemies. That's nothing new, but then you gotta count at the top of the screen. And then when you start eliminating enemies, it starts decreasing it. Four out of six. Three out of six. Two out of six. So you know exactly how many bad guys there are to eliminate in the encounter. Like, just like those sort of quality of life things. Make what he is trying to do feel more like it removes more of the rough edges and just makes it into more of a game.

• 19:50Griffin McElroy?

  Can I say my, my biggest quality of life upgrade? Uh, you can see the fucking monsters now. You can see the fucking monsters like, yeah, dog, the monsters shouldn't be invisible. You shouldn't be constantly pursued by invisible monsters while you're trying to go from point A to point B.

• 20:06Russ Frushtick?

  It did make the monsters in the first game more scary, but also miserable to deal with.

• 20:11Griffin McElroy?

  They are still scary and still frankly, my least favorite part of the getting around experience because I do not like being on my cool bike, take going on a interstate, international road trip, uh, and then getting stopped abruptly because tar monsters fucking appear and try to slow me down.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's out, but it's also like so early, by the way, where they're like, uh, good news. And we found some cool magic for bullets that makes them work on ghosts.

• 20:38Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, right. Uh, the other very nice quality of life feature that I think people sort of forget about the first game, you can actually stealth into areas now. There was a convoluted way to do this where you had to like revert a scan, but in the first game, every time you walked into enemy, enemy territory, the second you walked in there, a scan would ping you, know that you were carrying cargo, ping back, and all the enemies would run at you. There was like, there were again, ways to stealth it, but it was a pain in the ass. That's all gone. You can now play in enemy encampments like you can in Metal Gear Solid V or any other stealth game where you are sneaky and you hide in the high grass and

• 21:19Russ Frushtick?

  you throw decoy grenades and you sneak up behind people and tie them up. Like that's all completely fun and the combat in the first game was basically an afterthought. Like it fucking sucked.

• 21:30Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. So let's go down that route a bit because the first, the first act or whatever is a shorter area in Mexico, similar to how the first game had a like open world you went to before the large open world. The second area is Australia and all of Australia. It felt to me like the first act in Mexico is kind of a speed run of the first half of Death Stranding One, which is the, you know, walking as an action game.

• 22:01Chris Plante?

  I was surprised, once you get to Australia, and it makes sense because the size of this game, it becomes a bit like Blaster Master and the NES. And by that, I mean, there is an on-foot game, and there is a in-vehicle game. And vehicles were in the last game, but they were not nearly as predominant as they are.

• 22:21Griffin McElroy?

  I'm almost always on my turbo trike. That shit runs.

• 22:24Chris Plante?

  Or, once you get a truck, like, I feel like I go everywhere with the truck at this point, because I'm always carrying materials to build these highways that you'll come across. Or, there's mono rails in this game. And, yeah, it's, basically, the reason that you eventually have to get on foot is there's some train that forces you, but there's also a lot more Metal Gear Solid 5 in this game. Like, a lot, a lot more Metal Gear in this game than the previous one.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  What Metal Gear, what do you mean Metal Gear Solid 5 specifically, or Metal Gear writ large?

• 22:56Griffin McElroy?

  5.

• 22:57Chris Plante?

  I mean Metal Gear Solid 5 specifically, where it's the open-world Metal Gear, hey, here's a big fort, how are you going to go about solving this? Like, with, maybe around, like, the five or six-hour mark, there is a mission, and this is early in, I think, Australia, where you need to go into a base and bust, like, hack their satellite, or whatever, you know, some generic prompt. And you can snipe them, if you've unlocked that, from, like, a distance, but the sniper rifle is extremely loud, so it attracts a ton of tension, something you have, like, a horde of people running at you. You can do the usual Metal Gear Solid sneak-around, where, like, people never even see you. You can barrel a vehicle right through the thing,

• 23:42Chris Plante?

  and just kind of pray as they all-

• 23:44Griffin McElroy?

  Non-lethal, I have non-lethally shredded some fucking dudes with an automobile.

• 23:50Chris Plante?

  It has some, like, Spider-Man-like logic, where it's like, I mean, sure, I heard his neck break, but he's dead, he's still alive.

• 23:56Russ Frushtick?

  In the first game, there was a, there were a ton of weapons that were lethal weapons, that basically were worthless, because the second you kill someone in the world of Death Stranding, they can, a BT shows up, a void-out occurs, which is basically like a nuke going off in the middle of that area. You know, it takes some time, but so it made lethal weapons basically worthless in a lot of ways. This game corrects that by giving you a ton of non-lethal options. And most of them work on both BTs and people.

• 24:27Griffin McElroy?

  Yep. Helpful little icons too on each weapon that show, does it work on ghosts?

• 24:31Russ Frushtick?

  Right.

• 24:31Griffin McElroy?

  Does it work on dudes?

• 24:31Russ Frushtick?

  And you're, as you're doing missions for people, it's not just like, well, the bar is going up. You're also getting new gear every time you like rank up a relationship and things like that. And all the new gear has a purpose for some sort of gameplay style. Whether you're playing stealthy, whether you're playing like full on assault. All that stuff like just makes the experience of getting around the world more fun and more. This is where I think the big difference is and why this game has clicked so hard for me. This feels way more like an RPG. I feel way more in control of my character and like what I'm able to do in the world. There's like a passive perk system that wasn't in the first game.

• 25:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Russ Frushtick?

  All of this stuff kind of combines to make me feel, again, the middle of your solid comparison. I feel the same way about this that I did that game, which is you eventually get to a point where your snake is like very, or I guess big boss in that case. Your big boss is very unique to anyone else's based on like what you're bringing along.

• 25:29Griffin McElroy?

  Were you afraid he was gonna beat you up?

• 25:33Griffin McElroy?

  Ken, Russ, you're probably best equipped to talk about this because I think you're probably for this. I am, I think the game is delightful. From a narrative perspective, just because of like how much wild shit it keeps throwing at me. There have been some moments of emotional resonance, I will say, and I don't want to sort of like get too deep into what that is. But also I have hit wide swaths of the story where it kind of just feels like they're saying Kyrol over and over again. And, and maybe the, the narrative is not quite as gripping.

• 26:09Griffin McElroy?

  I am, I'm wondering your sort of take on like the narrative successes of this thing, barring the like obvious, like it's Hideo Kojima being a wild man.

• 26:21Griffin McElroy?

  Which we all love, but how is the writing sort of from a more traditional storytelling standpoint?

• 26:27Russ Frushtick?

  I think both this game and the first game are very, very simple stories, very straightforward that are obscured by Kyrol Bridge connections across the voided out BT death, et cetera, et cetera. But at its core, the first game is really just like, hey, we're trying to bring America together by connecting people and that'll make us all stronger in the long run. And this game is very similar to that, but there's also an element of like fatherhood and the importance of family and things like that that is kind of layered on top. That is really all you need to keep in mind. If you want to go down the freaky Kojima rabbit hole, you can, but most of that stuff is not in the cutscenes. Like, as you mentioned, the cutscenes are pretty short. Yeah.

• 27:09Russ Frushtick?

  Half of them are like, we're just gonna have Norman Reedus do some goofy ass shit. I went into a hot spring at one point and he just starts like singing a song in Japanese and his like little like baby carrier thing starts like spinning around in the water like it's like a fantasy musical. So like half of them are just jokes and then the other half are like, you know, it'll be like evil, bad guy shouting at you. But realistically, like your goal is still the same. It's still, you're trying to connect, in this case, Australia. And there might be, as with the first game, I think the final act of that game narratively was like a total shit show mess. I'm sure something similar will also happen here where it's a total shit show mess.

• 27:53Russ Frushtick?

  I don't care because I'm so compelled by both the goofy shit and also just like the minute to minute gameplay. Like scratches exactly the right itch in my brain.

• 28:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 28:04Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I will say I think there's a bit more there in the cutscenes as the person who loved the first game and, you know, sits through all the cutscenes here.

• 28:14Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I do.

• 28:15Chris Plante?

  I think that there's like a bit more about like, the themes of this one are. Kojima being still really upset about not making the rest of Metal Gear to like some pretty on the nose detours that the game takes. It is his really peculiar obsession with kind of natalism and like what it means to have babies and who gets to have babies, which is bizarre. And then there's a whole, whole lot about people need to log the fuck off the internet.

• 28:48Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 28:49Chris Plante?

  And I think that's like, again, like Russ is right, you can understand the story, the plot, I guess, on you need to connect all these people together and is that good or bad? But he's still doing Kojima, he's just doing it in three to four minute chunks instead of, I think of that die, was it not Die Hardman, Heartman?

• 29:14Griffin McElroy?

  Heartman.

• 29:15Chris Plante?

  Yeah, we're like, that was the iconic go on forever cutscene of Death Stranding One, where it truly went on for like 35, 40 minutes. We don't have any of that so far.

• 29:27Russ Frushtick?

  We haven't really talked too much about the like other identifying characteristics of this franchise, which really has no parallel in other game franchises, which is the fact that like people are contributing to your world based on what they build and vice versa. When you build things, it can appear in other people's worlds. When I was playing this game over the course of the last like week and a half or so, for most of that, the servers were off. The servers were on at the very beginning when I first started playing and then for most of it, the servers were off and then about three days ago, the servers turned back on again. And holy shit, it is like so fascinating to play this game both offline and online.

• 30:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 30:07Russ Frushtick?

  It's clearly balanced for online because there's a lot of like grindy resource management stuff that I was actually kind of getting a kick out of, but it just takes much longer to do anything. But when the servers flipped online, it was going from like a backwater Wild West town to going in the middle of Las Vegas and suddenly there's fucking neon signs everywhere and jump packs and a giant fucking.

• 30:32Chris Plante?

  Chargers, you just like run into a charger, yeah.

• 30:34Griffin McElroy?

  I will say, like, it is. I, that, that mechanic works for me as often as it does not, but it does frequently deliver this moment.

• 30:45Chris Plante?

  Sorry, just to clarify, do you mean works like actually technically works or works like you enjoy it?

• 30:50Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, maybe a little column A, little column B. I was also wondering, I think Russ has cleared up to me why like I've had stretches of this game where I didn't see shit. And it's possible that it was just like a pre-release server outage situation. But the number of times where I've had the moment where like I would be in the shit, uh, way far away from an outpost with a, a, a sack full of garbage, uh, and out of supplies, my shoes are all fucked up. There's BTs crawling out of my ass. Uh, and then I will just happen to come across like a shelter someone has built right where I need it, right? Where I would have built it if I'd had the supplies is a very, very cool moment. Cause you think like, oh, okay, someone, someone was thinking the same way that I was, except they actually bothered

• 31:35Griffin McElroy?

  to bring a, you know, a PCC with them or whatever.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Or you'll like look around with a tough situation. You'll see a watchtower nearby and like, okay, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. You get it. You get it.

• 31:45Griffin McElroy?

  It is, it is cool. It is, it takes, there's a pretty steep learning curve to that stuff, I will say, because like, there is a, learning the economy of this game takes a while. You have these resources that you need to make items and to build these big, uh, structures. And it, that, that resource is not constant. It's like you stockpile some metals at this one outpost. And then when you go to the other outpost, it's not necessarily going to be there. Cause if it was, they wouldn't need porters. They could just fucking teleport everything that they need. Uh, there is a helpful thing. And once you get to Australia that kind of negates this, but like the stress I felt in the first game about like, well, fuck, does it make sense to, do I have to keep my supplies with me every time I move

• 32:27Griffin McElroy?

  to a new outpost? I have to truck 200 kilograms of garbage, uh, from point A to point B? I, I, I feel like they, they mitigate that quite a bit.

• 32:37Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they definitely do. I mean, I, this felt to me like Monster Hunter in some ways. Cause because of the DNA that I learned in the first game, I was much, it was much easier for me to jump in and know that like, oh, chiral crystals actually have negative weight. So I should get as many as like I can at any given time. I don't think I ever absorbed that information from the first game. And also just like, oh, I should, you know, if I'm at a base and they have a bunch of materials, there's no reason not to take it out of that base, so long as I can carry them. So there's just like a lot of like DNA that I remember from that game that has helped me kind of get a little bit of a leg up, but it feels like, I don't know, man, this feels like a good

• 33:18Russ Frushtick?

  starting point for a lot of people because you're not, you're not suffering through what is just a really steep learning curve of that first game.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I frequently felt during the first one that Kojima was trying to like, teach me a direct visceral lesson about suffering, like the suffering that I was experiencing. I'm not even kidding.

• 33:40Russ Frushtick?

  No, at the beginning of the game especially.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Like the misery of the experience was part of the point. And a little of that goes a long way. It's like, thank you. I don't get that sense in this game. Like it, it, it is about hardship in some ways, but it's not trying to like as much to give you the visceral experience of, of struggle that the first game I think was trying to like get across.

• 34:02Griffin McElroy?

  I do think, I do think it is worth mentioning because we keep talking about this is a good starting point. Um, the recap that is provided for the first Death Stranding game is a 17 slide info dump that you can shoot through in about 100 seconds. It is so tight.

• 34:22Russ Frushtick?

  It's great.

• 34:23Griffin McElroy?

  It's tight. It tells you literally so far, I feel like I know everything I need to know, which is kind of damning, I think of the story of Death Stranding one, because that game takes longer than 100 seconds to, to shoot through.

• 34:34Russ Frushtick?

  That's what I mean by simple. Like it was a pretty simple plot. I mean, if you're not looking at the themes, it's pretty straightforward.

• 34:40Griffin McElroy?

  But I did not play a ton of Death Stranding one because I didn't like it and I do not feel at all lost here in Death Stranding two. So.

• 34:48Chris Plante?

  I, I agree that this is a good place to start. I do think if you really enjoy this. And you want more after you play, you know, 200 hours of this game. The director's cut of Death Stranding 1 is still gonna be enjoyable, I think, for that sort of person. It's, the director's cut has a lot more in common with this game than the original version of Death Stranding does. It's just infinitely more forgiving and has way more things to play with. It has way more combat, has a lot of the stuff that they ended up doing with this game. Um, I will say there is a certain sicko like myself who will miss some of the rough edges.

• 35:27Chris Plante?

  I don't miss having two hour cutscenes interrupted, but to your point, Hoops, of a little goes a long way. That's true, but I found in Death Stranding after like 40 or 50 hours and I had built, you know, zip lines over a mountain. The feeling of success, of achievement was one of my favorite things I have ever felt in a video game. And here you are, achievement comes like constantly. You are constantly being rewarded. And it really wants to make sure that even for like the smallest action you do, you're getting a treat out of it.

• 36:08Chris Plante?

  I don't think that's bad. I'm, I'm like, to be clear, this is like my, no, no, I really don't.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  It's for filthy casuals, just saying.

• 36:16Chris Plante?

  No, no, I, I, I like it. I just, I, I wish I could have like both at times.

• 36:22Russ Frushtick?

  I'll give you a concrete example of what you're talking about, Plan, and I think this is very fitting. The zip lines in the first game, zip lines could only go line of sight in the first game. You could go straight in a straight beam line and that was the only way to do it. And when you line them up perfectly, like, oh shit, I could see the bars of the other zip line. This feels really fucking good. I felt like I earned it here. In this game, they let you bend the line a little bit so you can go like around a mountain or up and over something. And it's just like that tiny little like, hey, this is a nice thing for you. That I was like, I kind of want to just ignore this because it, it feels a little unearned. This, uh, this, uh, help, a hand, uh, helpful hand that they've given me, but that's a very sicko point.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Oh, good. Okay.

• 37:05Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I acknowledge you.

• 37:08Russ Frushtick?

  The other thing I want to mention, Justin, you mentioned this earlier. I think if you quit this game for three days. You're never coming back to it and for the same exact notes that you gave previously. This game is, even though it's more welcoming and even though they're giving you a lot more things, it is incredibly fucking dense to the point of like, I don't like, I think this is like an all or nothing momentum thing that I don't know that I could keep bouncing back into. Like I'm gonna play this game for the end.

• 37:36Griffin McElroy?

  By virtue of the fact that it's not on my, on my rog ally, uh, I have taken quite, we've gone on tour.

• 37:44Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 37:45Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, since we've had it and, uh, I have streamed the game while I've been at home, which is fine. It's just kind of annoying that it takes that extra, you know, minute or two to get it like streaming. Um, and I usually play things in like pretty short little bursts. This would be kind of perfect for that. Uh, I, I, I would be delighted if it was there. Um, so I, I would disagree with that. I took, I took a couple of breaks from this game and I did not necessarily struggle to get back.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  I think that there is some, I think that I'm partially, this game is a lot more enjoyable for me because I played the first one and it is not having to do a whole lot of, it's not even like restructure my entire brain.

• 38:26Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  As to like what kind of thing this is. And I think that shorthand is really helpful. It communicates it if you haven't played them before, but one of the, the last one, but I think that like, having that as a basis to, to work from, uh, really, really helps.

• 38:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Also on the cutscenes, I just wanted to say it, I feel like with the editing and the writing and it let being less self indulgent to Kojima, I think having the random celebrity cameos feels a lot less, I think exploitative or like is the word that I, I want to use here, but I think that that's right. Like it feels less like here's someone I got in my game because I'm a fan of them. It feels like you get a little bit more of the actor's, um, personality and the, the person's like personality coming through that makes it feel like less creepy, like fan service and more a little bit like it's a fun collaborative.

• 39:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, sure.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Thing, if that makes sense.

• 39:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, like there, one of the, um, people who was in Terrace House is in this game for people who remember that Netflix reality show.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  And. Oh my God, yes.

• 39:36Griffin McElroy?

  She is. Yes, and she's an artist now and she does like.

• 39:42Chris Plante?

  Real art. She does exhibits across the world. And when you come across her, her character helps you, one, has the same name. Two, is an artist. Three, gives you like color ways that you can use to change your stuff. But four, her actual art from the real world is hanging around her like little her bunker. And same thing with like, there's a musician that you come across and he shares his actual music and the real vinyl records are hanging on the wall. And like, really wants to introduce you to these people in the real world through the game, rather than like you said, who's being like, oh, well, if you know, you know.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  There's, I think it's like, okay, the George Miller thing, George Miller pops up. It's a real fun character intro. It's 30 seconds long. It's fun. You move on.

• 40:29Griffin McElroy?

  He's pops up. He's like, what's up? I'm George Miller. Here's what's weird about me. Have fun. Have fun today.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  And it's not in the first S training, I think it would have been like, I'm George Miller. I'm going to talk to you for 20 minutes until you're so fucking sick of me that you delete Mad Max from your computer's hard drive. You know, like I, it feels a little bit more like respectful of the person like George Miller's kids and, and hit maybe even George Miller himself, as I, I think he plays video games, aren't gonna play and be like, God, I'm really, this is a really boring part of it.

• 40:58Chris Plante?

  You, you actually can access the 20 minute full backstory. And the way they do it is they make it optional in your room. You'll be like looking through a book and you'll see a photo. And it's like, ah, you should probably share this with George Miller. But do you really want to? And you're like, oh, I know what that means. I know what you're saying. Yeah. You're just saying, do I want that 20 minute cut scene? And then I, you watch it on your own and you choose to, turns out much more enjoyable.

• 41:24Griffin McElroy?

  There is a context sensitive skip button in the game. That is what maybe this game's greatest technological achievement. If you hit circle during like any non-interactive scene, it'll drop out to this thing where it'll be like continue or skip or options or whatever. Or you can just hold X. If you hold X, it takes like, I think you can adjust the amount of time it takes for this.

• 41:45Russ Frushtick?

  Highly recommend adjusting the time it takes because you skip a lot of fucking cutscenes in this game.

• 41:49Griffin McElroy?

  But because here's the thing.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  But no, there's different kinds of skips, for good cutscenes and bad ones.

• 41:53Griffin McElroy?

  That's it, right? So Norman Reedus goes and takes a piss for the 100th time and eats a bug. I've seen that. I can just hold X for a second and then zup, we're literally instantly right past it. That's awesome. But sometimes. I'll go to the mirror because I need to shave his fucking gnarly face and I'll start to hold in the skip button and it'll take a little bit longer than it's supposed to. I'll be like, oh shit, wait, like something cool is about to happen and something cool will happen. It tells you very discreetly like, hey, you should, you should watch this next part. It's pretty fucking crazy.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  It makes me feel all the more powerful when I do skip those scenes because I just want to get outside and haul some more boxes around.

• 42:30Griffin McElroy?

  It's, it's, I, it is so many of his, of Hideo Kojima's worst instincts have been almost completely neutralized. I feel like, and, and it is all killer, no filler for me so far.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  By the way, interest, interesting. I just thought this was interesting. Uh, I showed Sydney, I was very early and she happened to be in the room. Uh, it was when you had, uh, a toddler on your, on your chest at the very beginning of the game. You could take it out and soothe her and if she gets upset by your, by your walking, you need to take her out and soothe her or whatever. And Sydney was in, I was like, hey, look at this. And I showed her, she actually thought was like, and the way it's handled in the game was actually pretty impressed that there was a mechanic that was attempted in the game that wasn't shooting or tying people up. Like, and I felt like in the first game, it, it was, it seemed a lot more awkward and a lot more weird. And I feel like it feels more humane in this game and it feels less like a joke and a little bit more like a, I don't

• 43:28Speaker 02

  know how to make this fun, but it is part of the stuff that, that happens in the game is taking care of a baby.

• 43:33Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Um, so this is my game of the year so far. Uh, I still haven't played Blueprints because we've talked about it, but, uh, this is, this is the best game that I've played this year by like a lot, like not even a question. Cool. Uh, I'm a lot further than you guys are. Uh, it's

• 43:49Speaker 02

  always got to get the brags in there. I love that part of your personality.

• 43:55Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, it's, it's been great. Uh, so I, I hope people get to experience it. I'm bummed that it's exclusive to PS5 because more people should play this, but I'm sure it will come to PC as the other version has. And I think the other version even came to Xbox eventually. So yay. Good games. Love to see them.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Love it. Love it. Let's take a break. Then we'll come back. We'll talk more Kojima.

• 44:22Chris Plante?

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• 45:42Chris Plante?

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• 45:57Russ Frushtick?

  So I thought we'd just do a quick recap of like Kojima stuff coming because there's like basically two and a half Kojima games that are going to be coming pretty soon. So just as a reminder, pretty soon, it's going to be five fucking years. Anyway, the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake is coming out. He is not working on that. He has no association with Konami. He hates Konami. Konami hates him. But there is a remake of the game that was probably one of his best titles ever released that's coming out later this summer. I think it's an August release, so I'm very excited about that. There are two legit Kojima games coming. There's OD, which is a horror game that kind of looks like PT, I guess. And then

• 46:40Russ Frushtick?

  there's Fizzin', which I guess looks like Metal Gear Solid.

• 46:45Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 46:46Russ Frushtick?

  And both of these games basically feel like throwbacks to like things he's worked on previously and people really liked. But it kind of, it's exciting to like.

• 46:55Griffin McElroy?

  Fizzant has to be like a working title, right?

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Fizzant?

• 46:59Griffin McElroy?

  That's fizzant.

• 47:00Russ Frushtick?

  Maybe. Death Stranding sounds like a working title and they went with that.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  If it sounds like, hey, listen, check this joke out. If it sounds like a working title, it fizzant.

• 47:08Griffin McElroy?

  That's cool.

• 47:08Russ Frushtick?

  Pretty good. Uh, I don't know. How are you guys feeling about?

• 47:13Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, I'm very excited. I, I, the names attached to OD are exciting to me. And then, but there would, it would be cool to see what it is and what it looks like and what it does. What kind of game it is and anything, uh, anything at all about it. That would be so cool.

• 47:31Russ Frushtick?

  Stands for orange dick. Just a heads up.

• 47:33Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 47:34Griffin McElroy?

  We know that and now we're ready to move on, I guess.

• 47:38Russ Frushtick?

  We have some reader mail. Okay. Uh, first question. This one is from Matt. As a veteran game journalist, like as journalists, uh, did you ever take a hard stance against the game? That everyone loved at the time and what game made you feel like you were on another planet than everyone else playing that game?

• 47:58Griffin McElroy?

  Fucking, it happened on this show, my friend. Go back and listen to our Starfield episode and then go back and read any review. Uh, aside from maybe a small handful of reviews of Starfield. I genuinely, genuinely is, is the most poignant example of this where I absolutely felt like I was, I was being gaslit by the entire industry writ large.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  I still have no explanation for it. I don't know anybody that likes that game. I think it's crazy, but anyway, yes.

• 48:26Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I think the, the overarching narrative is people have come around to our side on the matter. Like.

• 48:32Griffin McElroy?

  But it's not, but the game, I don't know that the game has changed so fundamentally that.

• 48:37Russ Frushtick?

  It hasn't. I think, I think.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  It's just one of those cases where we were right and everyone else is wrong. And I don't know a nicer way of saying it than that. You know what I mean? Like we have been doing this a long time and we're probably smarter than a lot of other people doing it.

• 48:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's always, it's genuinely quite scary to be the outlier critic on a, on a thing. I say scary like it's like some horrible, terrible thing is going to happen to you, but it is, it is, it is troubling when you, the reviews come out and you're like, oh, wow, I was a lot harder on this thing than everyone else, or I liked this thing much, much more than everyone else.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  I will, I will also say for whatever it's worth, that if you are the solo game critic working somewhere and you don't talk to other people, and maybe it's probably a lot harder to trust that like your take on Starfield is accurate. Like, maybe the problem is me, because I, I think this sucks. Oh, well, I better just sort of go with the flow, because I don't want to be sticking my, my neck out, because that is a really uncomfortable position to be in.

• 49:38Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  To be the dissenting, but I liked near a lot less than a lot of people, but that's okay.

• 49:44Russ Frushtick?

  The example that I thought of was that Saints Row reboot game that I actually kind of really liked.

• 49:48Griffin McElroy?

  Hmm.

• 49:49Russ Frushtick?

  Remember that game? I don't, I had a lot of fun with that game and everyone fucking hated it. Part, part of that is like SJW, anti-woke, whatever, but also just like people hated it in general.

• 50:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 50:00Russ Frushtick?

  And that's what I mean.

• 50:01Chris Plante?

  Mine is Last of Us 2, and I have felt vindicated by the reaction to the second season of the TV show.

• 50:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it only took about like eight years to get, to get there. I, there is an inverse side of this too, where like, I remember giving Skyward Sword like a perfect glowing review. I was absolutely gaga about that game, and it would, it received fairly middling reviews, I would say, on average, from, from a lot of other places. And that is also sort of a very weird, kind of alienating feeling, but I can't think of too many examples.

• 50:33Russ Frushtick?

  Do you regret it?

• 50:34Griffin McElroy?

  When that happened. Do I regret it? Uh, no, I don't think so.

• 50:38Russ Frushtick?

  You would stand by your language about Skyward Sword?

• 50:41Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I mean, okay, knowing what Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom would kind of become, like, obviously it doesn't hold a candle, but I do think there's a certain amount of walking, so it could run, that, that could happen, so, no.

• 50:54Russ Frushtick?

  Last question. This one comes from Harry. With the increasing rise of popularity of game to movie adaptations, what is the key to picking the right IP? Is it a game with a well-written story like Last of Us? Fitting. Uh, trying to get those iconic giraffe moments, or is it better to go the Sonic route, where you pick a character we love with more freedom to do what you want to do with the story?

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's it's about finding the right match of the tone and structure with the right game and the right like people who who actually enjoy the thing and and know what's like fun about it. I think that like Sonic, the tone of Sonic is it just exactly as reverent of Sonic as anyone feasibly should be. I think that's a big, a big strength for Sonic.

• 51:43Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I I feel like folks get in trouble when they try to adapt the story of a interactive branching narrative to a non-interactive, non-branching sort of a format. And so I do think, I think Sonic represents maybe the most successful video game to film adaptation like ever. And they've done it three times. And that's just, that's really spectacular.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  I saw an interview, Alex Garland is working on a Elden Ring movie. And I saw an interview with him where he was, the interviewer was asking him, like he was gonna trip him up, what was, what boss did he struggle with the most? And he said, um, none of them, really? And I was like, oh, yeah, this guy does play Elden Ring. And then he said, and then the host said, I struggle with Radon. And then Alex Garland said, my Don is not hard. And then I was like, yeah, this guy gets it. I don't know if he's gonna make a good Elden Ring movie, but he certainly plays Elden Ring.

• 52:45Griffin McElroy?

  He's a legit Elden Ring fan.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  He definitely plays Elden Ring.

• 52:47Griffin McElroy?

  I bet you he beats Radon no summons. I bet you.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  Oh, no, he, he explains.

• 52:51Griffin McElroy?

  No summons.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  No, he goes to summons. He just explains you gotta get the right summons, and then it's not hard. And it's like, yeah, that's accurate.

• 52:58Griffin McElroy?

  So I will see. Elden Ring's a weird one, man. I don't know how the fuck you adapt that. I genuinely don't. It's not the story of the game of Elden Ring. That would be a bad story. My wet, my wet man ran through the blood fields.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  My dead wet dad.

• 53:12Griffin McElroy?

  My dead wet dad eats shrimp to get strong and kill God.

• 53:17Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, the manga does a very good job because it's basically a comedy manga of of the Elden Ring story, which works, but probably wouldn't work for an Alex Garland movie. I think there is one narrative related to Castle Mourn, where like the castle gets overrun by a bunch of monsters and like boots out the humans that were there, because the monsters were like, sir, there's like, I think that's the only way to do it, is you pick like one side story and around the edges of it, you have like the world of Elden Ring, but really you're just focused on the one side story.

• 53:47Griffin McElroy?

  I think a story about Radon and Melanie, not Melanie.

• 53:53Russ Frushtick?

  Melina, millennia.

• 53:55Griffin McElroy?

  Millennium. And the blight and like all that shit, like ending with the festival, like that would be pretty sick. That would be pretty rad. But yeah, I don't, there's so much story there, man. I don't know what you get.

• 54:07Russ Frushtick?

  I would like for it to not-

• 54:08Chris Plante?

  I just liked that he couldn't resist, you know?

• 54:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 54:10Chris Plante?

  He was like, I'm gonna make a movie about men. And they're like, yeah? And he's like, yeah. And he's like, I'm gonna make a movie about a civil war. And they're like, yeah, go for it. I'm gonna make a movie about warfare. And then I'm gonna make a trilogy about 28 Days Later, that's actually about coming to terms with death. And they're like, sure, sure, sure. And he's like, now I'm retired. Like, that makes a lot of sense. You've done a lot of work. You know what? I want to get one more. And they're like, oh, sure. Like, is it women? What do you got? And he's like, so I just played Elden Ring. I want that, I think that's gonna end my career.

• 54:41Griffin McElroy?

  I love it.

• 54:41Chris Plante?

  Go for it.

• 54:42Griffin McElroy?

  You guys been playing anything else?

• 54:45Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 54:46Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 54:48Chris Plante?

  So much Death Stranding.

• 54:49Russ Frushtick?

  A lot of Death Stranding.

• 54:52Chris Plante?

  I mean, people should go see 28 Years Later. That's my thing. People should go see 28 Years Later, because it's a miracle that movie got made. And it is not the movie that is being advertised really at all.

• 55:09Griffin McElroy?

  I didn't see 28 Weeks Later. Is that an issue?

• 55:11Chris Plante?

  Actually, for the better, because they retcon it into oblivion within seconds.

• 55:17Griffin McElroy?

  Perfect. Love it.

• 55:18Chris Plante?

  I will say, if you are the sort of person who loves just British comedy and history and the BBC, the movie is gonna really click with you in a way that it won't with everybody else. People, everybody, I think, will enjoy it. But it is a movie about British culture in the most blunt of, in fucking wild of ways.

• 55:40Griffin McElroy?

  I want to, speaking of BBC comedy, I have been watching Taskmaster, uh, series 19, I think. It's the one with Jason Mantzoukas on it. And it's fucking, it's a strong one. Uh, I've have fallen off that show, just mostly because I was watching other stuff. But I really was curious about how, uh, his particular energy and brand of comedy would adapt to the Taskmaster format. And I have not been disappointed. The whole cast is very strong. It is, it is a unhinged season. And Rachel and I have been really enjoying watching that at night. I also-

• 56:14Russ Frushtick?

  Let me just say, apparently he's the first American that's flown to the UK to do Taskmaster.

• 56:22Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, that's interesting. I guess, I mean, May Martin's Canadian, huh?

• 56:26Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 56:27Griffin McElroy?

  I've also been playing Pokemon TCG Pocket again, the trading card game, collectible trading card game. They added some stuff since launch and one of those things was, um, trading, you can trade cards, but they've made it as obtuse and shitty as possible to keep people from getting the cards that they want without, uh, buying into the Pokemon TCG Pocket ecosystem. And someone has made a companion app called Poké Trade, where you can find people who have the cards that you want and set up the trades with them through a third-party platform. And in using that, uh, I have completed all but I think one of the sets that are available now. I just like collecting the cards. I like opening the packs. It feels good, man.

• 57:11Chris Plante?

  Nice.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  I would like to recommend Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers on PlayStation 2. I played a good bit while we were on tour. And if you want to hit some of those scary ghosts with your sword and protect Elijah Wood, it is a great time.

• 57:28Russ Frushtick?

  Are there ghosts in Two Towers?

• 57:31Speaker 02

  And you can't be Frodo, and you can be Legolas, and Aragorn or Gimli, and not Frodo. Again, just to be clear, you could just be those three guys. And there's the scary wraiths.

• 57:43Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, the ring wraiths. Sure. I guess that works. I was thinking of the ghosts in the third movie.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  There's also, there's like clips from the movie, so a lot of times you can't even tell if you're watching a movie or playing a game. It's kind of a seamless blend.

• 57:55Griffin McElroy?

  Wow. He says that you can fucking completely, absolutely tell. I can absolutely tell. Justin showed me a picture stretched out, stretched ass Gimli. That looks so fucking profane.

• 58:09Speaker 02

  There's no way I would confuse. I got it. I had it on with widescreen hacks. It's great. It made Gimli too wide, dude. Oh, no. He looked fucked up.

• 58:17Russ Frushtick?

  Didn't think it was possible.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Right, that's gonna do it. What are we doing next week?

• 58:20Russ Frushtick?

  A little game called The Alters.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  Hey, alright.

• 58:25Russ Frushtick?

  Hey.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Makes sense.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  That sounds fun.

• 58:29Russ Frushtick?

  I wanted to thank our patrons over at The Besties, Patreon.com/TheBesties. Thank you, everyone, for being patrons. We have a new Resties episode that's up. We have a new Bracket episode. It's gonna be slightly delayed a couple of days. I apologize. We apologize. Scheduling conflicts abound, but it's gonna come out still that same week. So keep an eye out for that in the first week of July. And thank you all. We really, really appreciate you.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Be sure to join us again next time for The Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?