007 First Light Is Like a Great James Bond TV Series

007 First Light is the new game from IO Interactive, the developers of the beloved stealth series Hitman. So you’d be forgiven for assuming this entry in the Bond canon would emphasize sleuthy spycraft. Instead, IOI created something akin to a season of James Bond television, spotlighting its strong story above everything else. Was that the right choice? It depends on which Besty you ask!

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

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  Guys, you know, uh, I have a burgeoning voice acting career.

• 0:05Chris Plante?

  Yeah, sure.

• 0:06Russ Frushtick?

  Thus far, I only have one credit. It was a cat meowing in Mugenics.

• 0:10Chris Plante?

  Right.

• 0:11Russ Frushtick?

  Full disclosure.

• 0:12Chris Plante?

  Remember, yeah.

• 0:13Griffin McElroy?

  And I'm still pretty torn up about that, just the ethics.

• 0:16Russ Frushtick?

  I know.

• 0:16Griffin McElroy?

  Me and some of the guys have been, you know, the guys I'm talking about.

• 0:20Russ Frushtick?

  I know the guys you're talking about.

• 0:21Griffin McElroy?

  We've been kicking that around and it does, it does not sit right with us.

• 0:25Russ Frushtick?

  I get it. 100%. So I wanted to be fully clear and say that I also tried out for Bond in this game.

• 0:33Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 0:34Chris Plante?

  Huh.

• 0:35Griffin McElroy?

  So you know, you can't list an audition as a credit.

• 0:39Russ Frushtick?

  I know, which is a shame, which is a shame.

• 0:42Griffin McElroy?

  You should, you should be able to. I think you should be able to, because this is hard work doing, uh, you know, doing sides, we call them.

• 0:48Russ Frushtick?

  You're right.

• 0:49Griffin McElroy?

  In the business.

• 0:50Russ Frushtick?

  Um.

• 0:50Griffin McElroy?

  Um, but that's exciting. Do you want to give me some of the best, like, stuff that you've got?

• 0:55Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, look, they decided to go another way, so I don't even know if this is, this is good, but this is what I brought to it.

• 1:02Griffin McElroy?

  All right.

• 1:03Chris Plante?

  I'm happy to tell you if it's good.

• 1:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, Chris is, Chris is like pretty knowledgeable about movies and stuff, so like, he'll be able to tell you if you do a good job or not.

• 1:11Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 1:13Russ Frushtick?

  I gotta get it to the, give me a second.

• 1:14Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:19Russ Frushtick?

  It's me, James?

• 1:20Griffin McElroy?

  The face you're making.

• 1:21Russ Frushtick?

  It's me, James. Look.

• 1:24Griffin McElroy?

  I knew from the face you were making that it wasn't gonna be.

• 1:27Russ Frushtick?

  What?

• 1:27Griffin McElroy?

  Perfect.

• 1:28Russ Frushtick?

  It's a choice. Uh, sorry, let me drop back into it. It's gonna take a second. It's me, James. I need a drink and I'm not sure what to get.

• 1:37Russ Frushtick?

  What do I'm, uh, yeah. Do you have like a, like a soda pop or?

• 1:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:44Russ Frushtick?

  It's like, um.

• 1:45Chris Plante?

  Now, I'm, I'm really glad that it kind of pivoted there, because at first I was like, mm, might be offensive.

• 1:52Russ Frushtick?

  Why?

• 1:53Chris Plante?

  But now I see that you're kind of doing, um, kind of young James Bond.

• 1:57Griffin McElroy?

  Like a leave it to Beaver type James Bond.

• 2:01Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 2:02Russ Frushtick?

  Look, I'm just having a good time here at the party, is all I'm saying.

• 2:06Griffin McElroy?

  All right. Maybe it's Bond, deep, deep cover Bond. And this is like, he has to be like this to get in with Lenny Kravitz.

• 2:13Russ Frushtick?

  This is, I'm in training right now, guys.

• 2:16Chris Plante?

  I see why, I see why we're confused. When you showed up to the audition, you were wearing a child sailor outfit.

• 2:25Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 2:26Chris Plante?

  Which I think kind of like.

• 2:28Russ Frushtick?

  They told me he was in the Navy.

• 2:30Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 2:30Russ Frushtick?

  I'm still in The Voice. I can't even get out of The Voice. I'm so method. They told me he was in the Navy. And so I was like, what better? I'm gonna go full white dress. But the problem was, I could only find the shorts that like go up to my thighs.

• 2:43Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, and you were, yeah, you had a Shirley Temple that you were sipping.

• 2:46Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, through a long straw. It was so.

• 2:49Chris Plante?

  I know, I know the, the sides for this, because I, I, you know, had been working with Patti Gibbs and the Bond and 007 First Light to prepare him for this audition. I remember there was a conversation with M, where Bond is kind of being reprimanded when they're like, you know, you, you've, you've blown up this thing. You betrayed our trust. What do you have to say for this, James? And then how did you respond for that?

• 3:17Russ Frushtick?

  Oopsie.

• 3:20Chris Plante?

  Okay, yeah, I can see why.

• 3:21Russ Frushtick?

  They didn't like it. They, in the, in the room, they said they didn't like it, which quite frankly, feels a little insulting, because I spent a lot of time on it. But like, I went there.

• 3:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I can think of one. I can think of one way that you could have gotten in there, into the, into the production of 007 First Light, with an audition like that. It's a, it's a, it's a big ask, but can you be Lenny Kravitz?

• 4:09Griffin McElroy?

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

• 4:12Chris Plante?

  My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week.

• 4:16Russ Frushtick?

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

• 4:20Griffin McElroy?

  Welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It is a game of the year club, and just by listening, you have become a member of said club. This week, we are discussing IO Interactive's 007 First Light. The creators of the Hitman games, Hitman World of Assassination, have taken on the first licensed James Bond game in, I believe, 14 years? Does that sound right?

• 4:43Chris Plante?

  You nailed it.

• 4:43Griffin McElroy?

  Since Legends, I want to say? I'm sorry, Chris, I'm kind of doing your job.

• 4:47Chris Plante?

  You got it all. I think the only thing that I have to add is this game is very strange because it began development in 2021 before James Bond got just gobbled all up by Amazon MGM. So this is a game that is kind of a miracle of two worlds.

• 5:03Griffin McElroy?

  Grandfather in.

• 5:04Chris Plante?

  You got everything.

• 5:05Russ Frushtick?

  Approved by the Broccolis.

• 5:07Griffin McElroy?

  Approved. It gets the stamp from Broccoli Bob, and we're going to talk a lot about what this game does, how it's different from Hitman, and how wild it is to be playing a 007 James Bond game in 2026 here just after this short break.

• 5:23Russ 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, I am incredibly jealous of his mattress because, holy cow, that thing is incredible.

• 6:09Russ Frushtick?

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• 6:44Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think my post GoldenEye 64 Bond game playing is so spotty, I feel like. And maybe that's just because that there haven't been a ton of them. But I remember playing Everything or Nothing because that one had a fucking rip in theme song. How come the theme songs to these James Bond games are sometimes much, much better than the movie theme songs? You guys notice that?

• 7:09Russ Frushtick?

  This game has a great theme song.

• 7:10Griffin McElroy?

  This one's got one from Lana Del Rey, who I do not usually fuck with, but this track fucking slaps.

• 7:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, rocked it.

• 7:18Griffin McElroy?

  But yeah, it's been a while, huh, guys?

• 7:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I can't really honestly remember the last Bond game I played. And so it is coming into this in a weird place, especially since it's coming from the developer of Hitman, which you sort of mentioned. And I played a ton of Hitman.

• 7:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 7:35Russ Frushtick?

  And when I heard that they were-

• 7:35Griffin McElroy?

  Hitman's great.

• 7:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, and Hitman's great. The last-

• 7:38Griffin McElroy?

  I-

• 7:38Russ Frushtick?

  The trailer is fantastic. So when I heard they were working on this, I was like, interesting, because a lot of Bond does not mesh with what Hitman is doing. And I'm sure we're going to talk about it, but-

• 7:47Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's interesting you say that. Let's like, let's talk about Hitman for just a second before we get into what this game is, because I think it is, I don't know. I remember talking about Hitman a lot, a while, like a couple of years ago on an episode. And I was like, damn, how sick would it be if I O Interactive did a James Bond game? And the rest of you were like, they are. It's been announced for a while now. Because it, there is, I think, a lot, Hitman is a game about subterfuge and-

• 8:16Russ Frushtick?

  Big crowds.

• 8:16Griffin McElroy?

  Concealment, big crowds and- Big fancy ritzy set pieces like I actually think there's quite a bit. Thematically that Hitman shares.

• 8:26Russ Frushtick?

  But I would say James Bond does not dress up as a chef and cook the and cut the Fugu fish wrong.

• 8:31Griffin McElroy?

  Like that's. James Bond doesn't do a lot of poisoning in general. Yeah, I would say that's not usually his style. The Hitman games, the more recent ones, and I guess the older ones too, are very immersive semi. Very, here's a big scenario and there's a million moving parts and you can engage with them in whatever way you want to discover. Any number of potential outcomes, potential murders, different methods that you can sort of do here.

• 8:59Griffin McElroy?

  And I think it's almost like a Tony Hawk level, like a Hitman 3 level where it's like you drop in and you're like, oh shit, there's a million things to figure out here and do. And I don't know, it just really felt like that would be a good sort of Bond formula. But I think IO Interactive has taken this in a somewhat sort of unexpected kind of fusion. Direction, taking some of that stuff and kind of weaving in more traditional actiony stuff as well.

• 9:26Chris Plante?

  I think this game is kind of a miracle in that any one thing you could say about it could go terribly wrong, which is. It's IO Interactive, but they're getting rid of the like big open world spaces where you can be extremely creative, making something pretty damn linear. It is a largely a narrative game with a story that is moving constantly. You are spending a lot, a lot of time getting story here. Blending cutscene and gameplay. I mean, nonstop and we'll talk about how they use montage in it. I think it's really interesting and also making it Young Bond, which. Can often be a joke when you're like, oh, here's young Indiana Jones. Here is the thing before the thing. We're not even giving you exactly what you really want.

• 10:10Chris Plante?

  What has blown me away by it is this is a great TV series or TV season of James Bond. That's what 007 First Light.

• 10:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Chris Plante?

  It is paced like one where each chapter, it feels like a very long meaty episode or almost a movie on its own. And once you know that, I think the game really, really opens itself up to you. If you go in expecting that instead of a Hitman game because.

• 10:41Chris Plante?

  If you go in expecting a hitman game, you're gonna get something really-

• 10:43Griffin McElroy?

  And I did.

• 10:44Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Griffin McElroy?

  I did, right? Like, I did. Cause I felt like that stuff felt so Bondy to me already. And so I went in and the first kind of like, big mission that you get to, and we're not gonna talk about like, big spoilers, but there, there's a lot of huge set pieces with lots of people moving around like you would see in like a Hitman game, and you can wander around and eavesdrop on conversations-

• 11:05Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, you could say it's a hotel. It's the first-

• 11:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's like a big fancy hotel chess tournament thing that you're going around. So there's some of the immersive simmy stuff in terms of like, you'll walk around, you'll see a little speech bubble thing, and you can find a nearby spot to kinda eavesdrop, and you'll learn like, "Oh, actually, uh, we lost our key here." And you can go to that room and do that. Or you eavesdrop on somebody on the phone, like, "I can't find my photographer for this shoot. His name is this." And then you walk up like, "Hi, my name's this. James this."

• 11:34Russ Frushtick?

  I don't think he says James.

• 11:35Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe he doesn't say James this. But that stuff is all, one, I would say a lot more kind of limited in scope than what Hitman does. It's a lot less improvisational, and most sort of importantly, it all bottlenecks, like, it all funnels towards the same thing. It all funnels towards the same kind of like climactic end of the chapter. I think structurally, it shares quite a bit in common with Uncharted games, where there's like, each chapter's a set piece, each set piece, you're gonna get some story and some traversal, a lot of climbing around ledges. "Please, Christ, game developers, please stop making me climb on painted ledges." And then there's like a big shootout or chase or something that

• 12:18Griffin McElroy?

  happens at the end of it. But Hitman, Hitman it ain't.

• 12:22Chris Plante?

  Here is the wild trick of pulls, though, with this first mission. Is, yes, it looks like a Hitman stage, big hotel full of tons of people. There is an active chess tournament happening.

• 12:35Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 12:36Chris Plante?

  Agent 47 is the person that you are pursuing, for all intents and purposes.

• 12:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's funny.

• 12:42Chris Plante?

  You are tracking a person who is improvising throughout it. They keep changing their costume. Everybody is talking about all these things that are disappearing. Bodies are showing up in closets and storage rooms, which is, one, just very, very, very clever, but, two, explains why you have to be more linear, because you are following them. You are not trying to like- Do do all of that sort of espionage. You are trying to track a target from beginning to end. And I mean, I just think that entire first mission is kind of incredible because it sets out everything the game is. You start out with stealth, where you're going through

• 13:26Chris Plante?

  this this space. You get into a fight in the basement and you learn the combat. You exit this and you are suddenly driving away from the hotel and there's an entire driving sequence. From there, you get into gunplay. All of this is in publicly available preview trailers.

• 13:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, pretty early in the game.

• 13:46Chris Plante?

  You get into gunplay and then you get this action set piece where you are stopping, well, you're trying to stop a giant plane from taking off. And that it really is beat for beat. Here is everything that we have to show for you. And on top of that, you meet your romantic interest. You get your 007 kill moment again in the trailer and you you get a big emotional payoff. All all in the span of about an hour is so elegant. Just yeah, so, so, so elegant.

• 14:17Griffin McElroy?

  And then it's back to Q Lab for a come for a come down for about 30 minutes of following Money Penny through the through the halls.

• 14:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it spends a lot of time on the narrative outside of the missions itself. Like you mentioned, Q Lab, it spends a lot of time with like straight dialogue sequences where you're just talking to other people.

• 14:34Griffin McElroy?

  That's some of the most successful stuff that this game does for like, it's a cool take on Bond. Like their take on Q and M and this kind of like, what if there was a modern era where the double O, like the double O program is reopened. And now we get a bunch of like sexy 20s of things, becoming new spies. Like all that stuff really, really works, even though I think it the game does suffer from some pacing issues because of that.

• 15:01Russ Frushtick?

  I think it alleviates as the game goes on. I think early on in the first few missions, you have this thing where you go on the mission. I'm going back to M and she's going to yell at me and then I'm going to go down to Q and he's going to show me cool shit and then and it feels very rote. And then as it goes on, missions start bleeding into one another in a much more fluid way that I think helps a lot. That being said, the largely, even though I like the the narrative beats that they're hitting, I didn't find the like dialogue.

• 15:31Russ Frushtick?

  The performances, I think, are largely great. We'll talk about one that I don't think is very great, but the performances are largely great. I don't think the dialogue is like that special.

• 15:39Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, man, I liked it.

• 15:40Chris Plante?

  Really?

• 15:40Russ Frushtick?

  I thought it was fine.

• 15:43Russ Frushtick?

  A part of it is like, I don't find most Bond dialogue to be that special.

• 15:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Russ Frushtick?

  So it just didn't necessarily hit for me and it's a lot of slow walking through environments, talking to people. So it really needed to be very compelling. And for me, it just didn't quite land.

• 16:00Griffin McElroy?

  I, yeah. Cause you look like you've had one, something to say for.

• 16:03Chris Plante?

  Oh, I mean, I was gonna just ask Crush to expand on that, that pacing thing in the beginning, because the thing, the mission I just described, I kinda made it sound like it happens right away. It does not happen right away at all. There is a whole lot of Bond becoming Bond before that.

• 16:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, you've got a kickoff mission where it's like Bond crashes in an enemy, under enemy territory and has to do like a mini mission.

• 16:29Griffin McElroy?

  And is not a spy.

• 16:30Russ Frushtick?

  And he's not a spy. He's just a random soldier gun. And then from there, you go into spy training and there's like a good hour, maybe hour and change of you doing spy missions, which is structured like a tutorial, but the way they do that is by doing some like very cool jump cuts where it's like, we're gonna teach you gunplay and then you do like a little mini tutorial on gunplay. We're gonna teach you driving and then it instantly jumps to that, which is just like really well cut.

• 16:59Griffin McElroy?

  It's the best gaming. It's the best training montage in games. I was, I was, this section of the game, this first like hour, which is like very baby Bond, like learning, learning the ropes over the course of six months and like making friends in the, like, I've seen a lot of people talk about that being a somewhat insuffer, like intolerable, slow, see, I was crazy about that shit. I was so on board. And it helps that Patrick Gibson, we're gonna talk a lot about his performance, but like, he, he is instantly very, very charming, very gravitational.

• 17:29Chris Plante?

  On a technical level, I just don't know if I've seen anything quite like what's going on here, which during this sequence, it is doing montage where it is throwing you between...

• 17:40Chris Plante?

  Cinematics and gameplay, often for like a second or two at a time.

• 17:45Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 17:46Chris Plante?

  Where you are, you know, a cinematic is happening and they're like, I bet you couldn't shoot that. And suddenly you're just already aiming down the barrel and you shoot it.

• 17:54Griffin McElroy?

  And then it's really snappy.

• 17:55Chris Plante?

  Load into the next thing to the fact it just, it looks like a movie that everyone now and then you pop in.

• 18:02Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 18:02Chris Plante?

  Play. It's so cool. And that that's kind of the whole game. Like it, it, it's weird. I remember with the God of War, um, that the first of the remakes where it's doing the one shot. And the whole thing is like, we never want to break flow. And weirdly, I think this game does a better job of not breaking flow, even though it has all the cuts that you would find in a cinematic movie because it is seamless. It's not having the loads, not having you walk around a path like you're doing God of War to cover a load.

• 18:33Griffin McElroy?

  I think that's true selectively. I think when the game is snappy and, and, uh, trying to kind of keep you on, on tenterhooks. I think that IO Interactive is very good at doing that. I think the writing and, uh, the performances, like it all has a lot of momentum when they want it to. And then there are sections of this game that feel like it just feel like padding, like straight up. I just did a sequence where I was going to meet this guy to talk about, uh, the pirate king Baphomet. I was talking to his right hand man and is, he was talking to you and Greenway, your trainer, uh, who I want to give a special shout out to Lenny James. Holy shit.

• 19:14Chris Plante?

  Yeah, he doesn't.

• 19:15Griffin McElroy?

  Plays your like tutor Greenway with whom you have like kind of a contentious relationship. So good. But he's like, you two come with me on this boat. And then Greenway is like, I'll take the boat. You climb around all these shipwrecks. So he doesn't get away on the other, literally just like.

• 19:29Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 19:30Griffin McElroy?

  Very talented actor, Lenny James saying like, now you go do a level and I'm. I'm gonna take this boat and we'll get there at the same time. It is not a fast boat.

• 19:39Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I would also say like, I don't find the like gunplay sequences for the most part. There's been like one or two that I thought were okay. But when you're just doing like, here's fucking 60 guys and you're doing cover based gunplay, it just doesn't, it doesn't fit with Bond. It's not their skill set as a studio. And I just like, it feels like something that just didn't need to be there.

• 20:01Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 20:01Chris Plante?

  What is weird about the gunplay in just the, the shape of the game, and I don't know if this is intentional or not, but it plays out like the history of James Bond fiction. In that the very first mission where you are still a soldier and you're coming for more is playing with like who Ian Fleming was, before even being an author in his early books. The pacing of the first kind of set pieces, the training in that very first mission is very Connery James Bond at first. Um, which is like, much more about, hey, we are filming in a beautiful location. And this guy is being very dashing and cool and a bit of a pugilist.

• 20:42Chris Plante?

  And then as the game gets bigger and bigger and flasher and flasher, suddenly you're getting to like full on Pierce Brosnan, James Bond, where it's like, wait, what?

• 20:51Griffin McElroy?

  Surfing on the shattering ice flows.

• 20:53Chris Plante?

  Yeah, like it truly, truly bonkers. And I think that works in terms of like how video games in general are paced. But I do agree that at, the further it goes, the less it seems like Bond would be doing certain things.

• 21:07Russ Frushtick?

  It feels, starts to feel like a COD level, which just doesn't necessarily jive with COD and it doesn't jive with like, things again, that the studio is good at.

• 21:15Griffin McElroy?

  This is, this is my kind of like feeling about, about this game. Uh, I think it makes a really strong first impression because I think it sells you instantly on this Bond. Patrick Gibson does such a goddamn good job as James Bond. That is an impossible role to have a take on. And I think he does it with an amount of subtlety and craft that is so impressive. Where he is a young Bond who is cocky, but not like an asshole, not like ever too far. He's very self-assured, but he's not like a, he's not a huge dick to everyone.

• 21:50Russ Frushtick?

  He reminded me of Kingsman, the way they did that with.

• 21:54Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, the, yeah, I forget that.

• 21:56Chris Plante?

  But not, but not so cheeky.

• 21:58Griffin McElroy?

  Not raunchy. Yeah.

• 21:59Russ Frushtick?

  Not raunchy, but like he has an edge to him in a way that I think later Bond.

• 22:03Griffin McElroy?

  Eggbert, I think, or something like that. Yeah, I think that's a good comparison point. He's very, he's just, he is super duper likeable. And he is charming in this way that the game like constantly is building the sort of story around where Greenway, who is like leading the double O program and is like his instructor who thinks he's just like a, you know, hot shot piece of shit. Like there's a reason he kind of feels that way, but you are so rooting for Bond to like break these rules and, you know, know that he is in the right, like all that, the, the bond is great. The set pieces are amazing. I really felt like I was in a Bond universe that I was like able to get excited about.

• 22:43Griffin McElroy?

  But then the gameplay side of things, just I, I did not just fully did not enjoy basically any of it. The driving is pretty good, but the, the stealth moments I found like really limiting. There's a thing where you have gear. You have like a Q tech that you can take into each mission. You can only take like two or three pieces of Q tech, which is weird to me. This is a, you know, a, a laser that is attached to my watch band. Like why does that, why do I have loadout for that?

• 23:15Russ Frushtick?

  Video game conventions.

• 23:16Griffin McElroy?

  It is super video game convention because then you go into the mission and you're like, oh, there's a locked door. If I had the laser watch, I could just blast that open. But that is like the main kind of lateral thinking stuff that the game sort of allows you to do, and it ain't that lateral.

• 23:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 23:31Griffin McElroy?

  When you see someone like somewhere, when you need them to not be there anymore, it's like, well, I'll use the dart that makes them sick. So they'll move or like, oh, there's some guards by that radio. I'm going to hack it from far away and that'll make them move.

• 23:45Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Or even, even in the like intel gathering sequences, I found when they were quote open up, like several different options. It was either overhear someone talking or sneak around this corner and kick the door open while no one's looking. Or hacking it like, it was like three or four options.

• 24:03Griffin McElroy?

  That stuff's fine, but then like the traversal. Exploring the big shipwreck and the, uh, the fighting feels kind of Batman, like that. I like the Batman.

• 24:14Russ Frushtick?

  I, I, I'm sorry. I like the melee.

• 24:15Griffin McElroy?

  I like the Batman too, dude. Like he's so cool and I love the way he beats up the Joker. But it felt like that, but like also maybe half of what that game kind of did, like it shows you yellow counter signals and red means you gotta get sidestep out of the way. And then that's like it. That's, that's kinda it.

• 24:31Chris Plante?

  I, I, I think all that is totally fair. I'm offering the, uh, not big into Hitman games and always wish I was.

• 24:39Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 24:40Chris Plante?

  Really enjoyed this. And what I found it was doing was making me want to finally go and actually commit to playing the Hitman games because it was like, oh yeah, baby's first Hitman. I definitely hit the point of like, for what you mentioned, there are smoke grenades. And man, it just works for everything. You can throw a smoke grenade. Nobody knows where you are. You can sneak through the entire game and also it doesn't seem to set off any like alarms. People are just like, wow, there's a lot of smoke in here.

• 25:08Griffin McElroy?

  Some of the worst guards maybe in video games ever where you can stand next to a fucking guy and lift up your watch, fucking blast him. And then he, he alone is like, whoa, what happened?

• 25:23Chris Plante?

  It's tasty. And then as for the combat, we, um, I just played Lego Batman. And this is, I do think an improvement on the Batman formula in that it's not so snappy. Or whether this is Batman or Assassin's Creed where you really are just kind of like hitting the buttons whenever prompted.

• 25:46Griffin McElroy?

  It feels very canned, those games do. It feels really fluid.

• 25:50Chris Plante?

  This, yeah, you can grab onto people and you can run them into walls. And the, the environmental combat stuff in this game rocks. Is it imprecise? Yes. Does it need work? Yes. Am I more anticipating this sequel than the actual game that I'm playing? At times, sure. Is it hilarious when I can grab someone by the head and run them directly through a glass case in a museum?

• 26:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 26:18Chris Plante?

  Of course, of course it is.

• 26:19Russ Frushtick?

  I was in a fistfight and there happened to be a few mugs on the ground, like on the table next to me, and I just started whipping mugs. And that shit feels really fucking good.

• 26:28Griffin McElroy?

  That's great, yeah.

• 26:29Russ Frushtick?

  And visually, I think it captures what the Indiana Jones game was trying to do as well, which is like, it's clumsy, it's messy, it doesn't have the cleanness to it.

• 26:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Russ Frushtick?

  But like, it does look like how James Bond fights frequently in movies, where he's like, not the best fighter, he's just sort of making the best of it. So, I know, I think, I thought that stuff was good, largely.

• 26:51Griffin McElroy?

  As a side effect of that stuff, I feel like it made, if I fucked up a stealth sequence, whereas in a Hitman game, I'd be like, nope, restart, restart.

• 27:00Russ Frushtick?

  Reload, yeah, yeah.

• 27:00Griffin McElroy?

  Like, there's no, there's, in this game, it's like, okay, well, I just have to, that just means I have to fight one, two, three, four, five, six dudes.

• 27:06Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 27:06Griffin McElroy?

  And I think that's doable. Dying in this game's pretty funny every time, because James just kind of, he just sort of ragdolls.

• 27:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 27:14Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, and then for like, half a second, you see him just kind of like flop to the ground, or like, on top of the table he was standing near, and then like, it cuts to black with like, a splash of like, red blood in the water, just says, Bond is dead. Press this to restart.

• 27:29Russ Frushtick?

  You just got punched in the face, like.

• 27:30Griffin McElroy?

  You did not want me to stay on that ragdoll Patrick Gibson laying on the ground for very long. But like, yeah, the stealth stuff's not very good, but then when you get into the fights, it's, instead of it being a instant fail state, it's like, oh, okay, well, I'll just, now I'll just do this. So, I mean, that is, I guess, a side effect of that.

• 27:49Chris Plante?

  It benefits so much from being in like, the Bond universe, where you can explain away so much, because yeah, you beat the living snot out of six huge bodyguards, you destroy an entire library you are in, and then you like, adjust your tie and leave the room, and people are like, oh, was it a bit rowdy in there? And you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, don't worry about it, don't worry about it.

• 28:11Russ Frushtick?

  I want to end this segment specifically talking about one performance.

• 28:15Chris Plante?

  Yes.

• 28:15Russ Frushtick?

  That I think we need to highlight. And it's time for Lenny Kravitz to look inward and know what he's good at.

• 28:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Russ Frushtick?

  And know what he's not good at.

• 28:23Griffin McElroy?

  I want to say this. I was mesmerized. Every moment that Lenny Kravitz was on screen, I was absolutely mesmerized. Um, I mean that truly, unironically.

• 28:33Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 28:33Griffin McElroy?

  I think there is a long storied tradition of stunt casting in Bond films.

• 28:40Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 28:40Griffin McElroy?

  This feels perfect to me. Sure. When I saw the first, like, you know, image of Lenny Kravitz's character in the world, I was like, yup.

• 28:47Russ Frushtick?

  He's a pirate king for what it's worth.

• 28:49Griffin McElroy?

  He's the pirate king, Bhavma.

• 28:50Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 28:50Griffin McElroy?

  Um, and can we, I might pull a clip of his first line of dialogue.

• 28:56Russ Frushtick?

  I think it's worth doing that.

• 28:57Griffin McElroy?

  If we can cut it into the show, cause it's, to set it up, Bhavma is this pirate king of this kind of like black market city in a ship graveyard. And he has just showed up and there's a man about to be executed for stealing and Lenny Kravitz's character, Bhavma, walks up and listens to him and then approaches a microphone in front of a crowd of thousands of people and says.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  He tells me there's a child, a girl. He fears for her life. She needs medication, the expensive kind. That is where his contributions went. Our protection is for the care of everyone in our great city of steel and sand, is it not?

• 29:44Griffin McElroy?

  He says there is a child. He says there is a child. It's like.

• 29:50Russ Frushtick?

  Here's what it sounds like. It sounds like he's making tea while on a Zoom call and and just scooched on over to the mic for a second. And it was like, I got it. That was the level of preparation.

• 30:02Griffin McElroy?

  Let the sand run red with their blood. Like, it's so, I could not take my eyes off of him. I was sold a false bill of goods on this game where I was told that Lenny Kravitz would be the primary antagonist. He ain't in it that much. He's in like a couple missions. I was PO'd when this dude sailed off and this, I was like, what the fuck, man? I want, I need, I want more of this because when the game would slow down, when you would be following, uh, you know, Greenway for, uh, 20 minutes through a ship graveyard, uh, and it'd be kind of boring. And then Lenny Kravitz would show up and like throw heaters like that. Uh, it made it all smooth. It made it all so much better. Uh, it's really, I've never seen anything quite like it before.

• 30:47Chris Plante?

  I cannot believe that they use this to pitch the game a year ago when they showed me the demo or whatever, at that miserable press event. Truly bizarre.

• 31:00Russ Frushtick?

  The studio has always been kind of obsessed with celebrity in general. Like they scooch in random, like Eminem and an assassination mission and Hitman for no reason. Like they've done a number of these.

• 31:13Griffin McElroy?

  I'm looking up celebrity targets.

• 31:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 31:15Griffin McElroy?

  Gary Busey was one of them.

• 31:17Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 31:18Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, Sean Bean, one of them.

• 31:21Chris Plante?

  Nice James Bond tie in right there.

• 31:23Russ Frushtick?

  They're funny, but I would say like, I don't know, man.

• 31:28Chris Plante?

  Yes.

• 31:29Russ Frushtick?

  He's not, he's not acting at all. Like not at all.

• 31:32Chris Plante?

  No, but that's what is so strange about that. They use this for the PR for the game.

• 31:38Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 31:38Chris Plante?

  I guess it's like, it's a very old school way of we want, uh, USA Today to cover our game, I guess. Versus we want people to see just how good the game is. Like,

• 31:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Chris Plante?

  They actually nailed the story. They actually found incredibly a great James Bond, which I was immensely skeptical of. Uh,

• 32:03Russ Frushtick?

  They can also stunt cast an actor.

• 32:06Griffin McElroy?

  Like, that is true. That's fair.

• 32:08Russ Frushtick?

  You can pay an actor to go into a studio for six hours and record all the lines you want.

• 32:13Griffin McElroy?

  It would not take six hours to record all the dialogue that Lenny Kravitz has.

• 32:16Russ Frushtick?

  30 minutes, you're gonna pay.

• 32:17Griffin McElroy?

  30 to 45 minutes and then you're in and you're out and you're cashing the check. I think the secondary cast of this game is insane. It's so good. Uh, Kira Lester, who voices Money Penny, uh, like that relationship between Money Penny and James Bond has to be like a lot of. Different things and like they their chemistry is insane. Uh, Priyanga Burford, who's uh, M, the voice of M, like incredibly good, like everyone that Q does a great job. Like

• 32:46Chris Plante?

  You also start the game in a throuple, but not a throuple, but kind of a throuple. And that whole group is

• 32:53Griffin McElroy?

  It's great.

• 32:54Chris Plante?

  It's so good.

• 32:55Griffin McElroy?

  This is what I'm saying.

• 32:56Chris Plante?

  Really good.

• 32:57Griffin McElroy?

  It's really, I, I, I'm so torn about this game because I, I started playing it and then I instantly like recommended it to the juice of Travis and dad who are big Bond fans. And I was like, it's this version of Bond that rules. It's like a cool version of Bond that I would want to spend a lot more time with and like see different sort of uh, different, different versions of, and then I played, and then I had to like play more of the, the missions and it was so just okay. That I don't, I don't know. I feel like

• 33:23Russ Frushtick?

  It just feels safe. It feels very

• 33:25Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know. Safe is not the word I'd use because it's hard. Like doing all the things that Bond does in movies and having different gameplay systems for all that stuff. Like that's hard. I get it. I understand that it's hard. It, it just feels like there were a lot of, we're going to do some of the stuff that Hitman does. We're going to do some of the stuff that Uncharted does. We're going to do some of the stuff that Arkham Asylum does like, and I, I, I don't know. The sort of result of that on a mechanical level is, is not, uh, not, not really super enjoyable for me. Uh, but everything around it, the trappings of the writing and the story and the acting and the visuals and the music and everything is like so tight, so on point. I don't know.

• 34:03Chris Plante?

  Also for a first game in a series, this is pretty great in terms of everything that you're just saying, Griffin, right? Like, which is most games, it's so rare that we see a first game in a series at this point. And it usually is the second game.

• 34:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 34:20Chris Plante?

  Where they find their footing.

• 34:21Russ Frushtick?

  I think part of the challenge is to me, and maybe this is unfair, it doesn't feel like the first game because so much of this uses the skeleton of what they built for Hitman.

• 34:31Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 34:31Russ Frushtick?

  That's why it doesn't feel like the first game in a series. It feels like a spinoff almost to what they were doing in Hitman. And because of that, I, it's really hard. If I deleted everything that was in my brain from playing the previous Hitman game. I think I would be much more impressed by what they're doing here.

• 34:45Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it'd be me.

• 34:46Russ Frushtick?

  But when, right.

• 34:47Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, right.

• 34:48Russ Frushtick?

  But when I'm playing and all I'm seeing is like, oh, here's this roped off door I can't access for no fucking reason.

• 34:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, you can't go in there because of the gear choice that you didn't make.

• 34:58Russ Frushtick?

  Or even just like, there's literally a velvet rope and Bond's like, sorry, guys, that's too much for me. It just feels like I hit a lot of invisible walls in ways that I never ever did in Hitman. Again, different game.

• 35:10Griffin McElroy?

  It's just a fully different, it just simply is not.

• 35:12Russ Frushtick?

  That's the challenge.

• 35:13Griffin McElroy?

  It is not that, and there are moments where it flirts with being, with kind of being that. And that, that is when the game sort of struggles, struggles the most for me.

• 35:20Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Griffin McElroy?

  This feels like a, I might watch the rest of it on YouTube situation. Because then I, I do that with games where I am enjoying the story of it a lot and have not enjoyed the playing of it so much. It feels like a, a prime candidate for that. Now, Chris mentioning that in the game, in that one mission, you're tracking the Hitman. Bond is like the one trying to catch the Hitman as he goes around and does all of his stuff. Instilled in me an idea that I think is a potential billion dollar thing. What if IO did a Splinter Cell Spies vs Merk style thing? Where one player was the Hitman trying to go around and do Hitman shit while the other player was, you know, was, was MI6. Trying to track them down.

• 36:05Griffin McElroy?

  And it was like an asymmetrical, like Assassin's Creed.

• 36:09Russ Frushtick?

  Spy versus spy, if you will.

• 36:11Griffin McElroy?

  Spy versus Merk, actually, is the more. You remember Spy versus Merk, the Splinter Cell one where like?

• 36:16Russ Frushtick?

  I remember, it's been a while.

• 36:18Griffin McElroy?

  It has been a while.

• 36:19Chris Plante?

  I would, I would, I would play this game. It's just, I'm just putting it out there that I would play it.

• 36:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. What's your, what's your final take? Do you think you're gonna stick with it, Chris? Like?

• 36:28Chris Plante?

  Absolutely.

• 36:29Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 36:30Chris Plante?

  Like, I am loving it. I, it got me to go back and watch Goldfinger. It got me to go back and watch a good chunk of Goldeneye. And especially now, like being in it.

• 36:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Chris Plante?

  I'm just even more impressed with it. I, I do not in any way think that Patrick Gibson is going to be the new James Bond. But like, holy moly, he definitely has earned a shot at it. Like as they're doing this casting, I think he should be like in the conversation. He's, he is that good at it. And also, especially with like the newer James Bond movies, as a story, purely as somebody who enjoyed James Bond films as a kid. This is better story wise than most.

• 37:15Griffin McElroy?

  I think so, yeah.

• 37:16Russ Frushtick?

  I totally agree with that.

• 37:17Griffin McElroy?

  It's telling a very kind of AI focused cautionary tale, which is.

• 37:23Russ Frushtick?

  Which they've done before. Even Bond has done, whether it was lasers or AI, like basically the same idea.

• 37:29Chris Plante?

  Tomorrow Never Dies, I think is that one.

• 37:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, which is fine. Yeah, no, I think.

• 37:33Griffin McElroy?

  I also want to make clear that like, for all my qualms with the game, it is not even in the same fucking ballpark as the other like James Bond Activision era, like early 2000s. Agent Under Fire, Night Fire, Rogue Agent, like that, that, those, those games were.

• 37:55Russ Frushtick?

  Goldeneye, I would throw Goldeneye in that mix.

• 37:58Griffin McElroy?

  The original?

• 37:58Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 37:59Griffin McElroy?

  Not the original. The original has a very special place in my heart, but like, it's a, it's a licensed James Bond game and they did so fucking good by the license. Like, I understand why this is the studio that made this game. I wish that different choices were made about the length of the, the game and the sort of stuff available to you while you were in the, in the gameplay segments. But like, they did very, very, very well, I think, by this, by this license. And I don't know what the, you know, fact that Amazon MGM sort of acquisition happened after they had secured the rights for this game. I don't know what kind of future it has, but.

• 38:34Chris Plante?

  They have to make another one. I mean, this thing sold.

• 38:37Russ Frushtick?

  They'll make another one.

• 38:38Chris Plante?

  Like absolute hotcakes.

• 38:39Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's done really well.

• 38:40Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:41Griffin McElroy?

  I also think that there's room for this game to expand, right? Like there's the, uh, uh, the simulation, like side, side missions that you can do that Jim Achan kind of administers to you. And I think there's like plans on expanding that as.

• 38:57Russ Frushtick?

  That's what I wanted to say is even though I'm like not as motivated to like play through the entire campaign, the thing that is kind of pushing me is because you fully unlock that mode. You can kind of dip a toe into that mode before you beat the game. You fully unlock that mode and that mode is at least closer in the open ended nature of it to a Hitman experience.

• 39:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 39:17Russ Frushtick?

  And I played a little bit of it.

• 39:18Chris Plante?

  Some of the videos I've seen from that mode are hilarious.

• 39:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they're pretty fun. So I, I think, yeah, I think it has a good future and, and probably a good future as a franchise as well.

• 39:27Chris Plante?

  Yep. Um, let's take a brief break. I want to hear all about what Sony's got planned for me and my dusty, haunted cobweb-filled PlayStation 5 console, uh, announced at the, the State of Play Summer Game Fest sort of kickoff event, um, right, right after this little break.

• 39:49Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of The Besties is sponsored by Alienware. You know, gaming today isn't one thing. It moves between cozy, chaotic, and everything in between. One minute you're exploring something slow and immersive, the next you're in a fast-paced match. And somewhere in there, you might be creating, streaming, or seeing where the session goes. That's why Alienware systems are built with the performance to handle it all. With Nvidia GeForce RTX, it delivers powerful graphics that bring every world to life while optimizing battery life. So whether you're playing, creating, or jumping between both, everything runs the way it should. No interruptions, no slowing down. You don't have to adjust the way you play. You just keep gaming your way, however that looks in the moment. Be more Alien at alienware.com/gameyourway.

• 40:37Chris Plante?

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• 42:13Griffin McElroy?

  I said that. We just played Seros and that game slapped ass. I'm sorry I talked shit about my Playstation 5.

• 42:18Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that was a good, uh, Seros was a good game, but you're right insofar as like, what are we down to? Like two big exclusives a year, more or less, something like that?

• 42:26Griffin McElroy?

  If that, yes.

• 42:28Russ Frushtick?

  If that. Um, but they did spend a lot of time during this state of play event talking about exclusives, games that will only be on PS5, especially now because they won't come to PC maybe ever. Um, and the biggest announcement came in the form of a brand new God of War game starring Kratos's dead wife from God of War 2018, the one that he like puts on the pyre to start that game. You are now playing as her in the afterlife of the gods. Her name is Lafe and you play as her as she like explores the afterlife of the gods.

• 43:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, and she's saying, she's saying, she has a wonderful voice.

• 43:08Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 43:09Griffin McElroy?

  She plays gentle sort of bossa nova, uh, songs about romance and, uh, this really is.

• 43:16Chris Plante?

  It's a good, it's a good jet.

• 43:18Griffin McElroy?

  I think that pronunciation, I think for, for, I think it's Leve, the artist?

• 43:22Chris Plante?

  I think that's right.

• 43:23Griffin McElroy?

  Is it like an Icelandic, uh, sort of, uh, name? I'm not sure.

• 43:26Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they were using Lafe in all the promo materials, but.

• 43:29Chris Plante?

  Well, no, no, I'll crush you. There's a musician.

• 43:31Russ Frushtick?

  I know, I know.

• 43:32Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I just want to make sure that you, it's for the kids.

• 43:35Russ Frushtick?

  Her name is Bjork. We got it wrong. It's fine. Don't worry.

• 43:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sorry. I get confused, uh, a lot. Their music is so very similar. Uh, yeah, this looks fun, man. This looks great. Trailer does a great job. Uh, this was like when I tuned into. The state of play thing. It was, I was very, very late, uh, cause I was doing something else, uh, and tuned in and saw this, uh, red haired woman sort of getting knocked around and doing magic stuff.

• 43:58Russ Frushtick?

  Deborah Ann Wool, if you're.

• 43:59Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, really?

• 44:00Russ Frushtick?

  That's who plays LaFaye is Deborah Ann Wool.

• 44:01Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, fuck, yeah, that's great. I didn't realize that.

• 44:03Russ Frushtick?

  Most recently seen in the Daredevil series.

• 44:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Uh, and I was, I first I was like, is this a Aloy situation? We go in back, we go, but then Kratos, you get that great moment of Kratos like reaches down to help her up.

• 44:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. You would have known if you had seen the beginning of the trailer, cause it starts with him putting her on the.

• 44:19Griffin McElroy?

  See, I didn't see that. I didn't see that. So I thought this was like the Sony press conference moment of like everyone's like,

• 44:24Russ Frushtick?

  Surprise.

• 44:25Griffin McElroy?

  Oh shit, it's a God of War thing. Um, that's funny.

• 44:28Russ Frushtick?

  It does look, uh, I would say like, it's still a third person action game. That's pretty clear, but it's also clear that they're making a lot of big changes. The most basic of which, looks like you have a jump, like an actual jump.

• 44:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 44:41Russ Frushtick?

  And she can like, is much more acrobatic and mobile, uh, than Kratos was. She's got magic that she can access and, and all sorts of stuff.

• 44:51Griffin McElroy?

  It also, she got a cube, a, a fun cube.

• 44:53Chris Plante?

  You got a cube.

• 44:54Russ Frushtick?

  Cube, uh, which is like her buddy. And then it also, because it's set in the, uh, afterlife of the gods, it's not specifically the Norse gods. So they're bringing in like Mesopotamian shit and Egyptian shit and all sorts of stuff like that. So that I think offers a lot of potential, just narratively and visually, uh, to keep things fresh.

• 45:14Chris Plante?

  Hey, wait, you, you mentioned this cube and you don't even mention who plays the cube? Put some respect on Jack Quaid's name.

• 45:22Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, Jack Quaid plays the cube.

• 45:24Chris Plante?

  Jack Quaid plays the cube.

• 45:25Griffin McElroy?

  Respect on Jack Quaid.

• 45:26Chris Plante?

  There are photos of Jack Quaid wearing a PVC pipe cube in the, uh, the motion capture space.

• 45:35Griffin McElroy?

  I gotta see this. I gotta see this. I've always wanted to see a cube, a cubic Quaid.

• 45:40Chris Plante?

  A cubic raid.

• 45:41Russ Frushtick?

  It's looking very good. They didn't offer a release date, so no telling. It's been about, I think, four years since Ragnarok came out. So based on the timing of like 2018 to 2022, which is Ragnarok. This could be soonish.

• 45:58Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 45:59Russ Frushtick?

  I would guess probably before the Naughty Dog game comes out.

• 46:03Chris Plante?

  Oh, yeah, I would guess my, my pure bullshit guess is that this is a fall 2027 Naughty Dog is like a 2028.

• 46:13Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 46:14Griffin McElroy?

  What, did that game show at all? The intergalactic?

• 46:17Chris Plante?

  No, it's been, it's been a little while.

• 46:19Russ Frushtick?

  Intergalactic, The Rogue Heretic, I want to say.

• 46:22Chris Plante?

  Something like that, yeah.

• 46:23Russ Frushtick?

  Still going.

• 46:25Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I, I was not sure about

• 46:30Chris Plante?

  what, like, what even this God of War is, just because it looks different from God of War. Like, the actual art design looks, looks different. And then Cube showed up and I started to get it. Then the combat gets going and is so much more chaotic. And then the key art drops, which looks like it should be painted on the side of a van. And that is when I, I was fully on board of, oh, they are, they are going for the death metal kind of fantasy art in a way that I, I really vibe with. Fresh, you, you put a list of games here that everybody should be excited for, like Wolverine and stuff.

• 47:09Chris Plante?

  What's weird is you don't have the most exciting game that was shown at State of Play, and that is strange. Is there a reason you forgot Ace Combat?

• 47:21Russ Frushtick?

  Sorry, you should say the full title, if you're gonna say it.

• 47:24Chris Plante?

  Is it Ace Combat, Wings of Thev?

• 47:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yep.

• 47:27Chris Plante?

  Thief? Thev or?

• 47:28Russ Frushtick?

  I don't know, you tell me.

• 47:32Griffin McElroy?

  It's not spelled thief like in the like in the, I don't know.

• 47:35Chris Plante?

  T H V E.

• 47:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Chris Plante?

  Which is a word. Thave? Here's the thing.

• 47:42Griffin McElroy?

  You're stoked for Ace Combat 8 Wigs of Thiv.

• 47:46Chris Plante?

  Ace Combat 7 rocks and Ace Combat 7 was the like proving, hey, Ace Combat actually could be somewhat closer to somewhat closer to a mainstream series. It has really fun anime style story. It has these like spectacular set pieces. It is welcoming, like you can control it and just enjoy it. Ace Combat 8 looks like the bet of when Demon Souls gets money for Dark Souls sort of thing.

• 48:19Chris Plante?

  The Armored Core, the most recent Armored Core, where they just like actually put the money into it and finally take a real swing at making it a like big popular series. It looks straight up like playable Top Gun. And I am extremely anticipating this one, that they gave it a October 2 release date tells me that they really do think this is like gonna be a thing. I don't know if you can make a flight combat game a big popular thing, but go and watch this trailer if you haven't already. It like, it looks sick. It legit just looks cool.

• 49:00Russ Frushtick?

  The last game sold 7 million copies, which is astounding.

• 49:04Chris Plante?

  Ah, astounding.

• 49:06Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. I still don't super care, but I'm glad that you're happy.

• 49:10Chris Plante?

  I appreciate it.

• 49:13Russ Frushtick?

  They showed off Wolverine gameplay. I'm not, still not entirely sure what that game is structurally speaking. It's coming out this year. It looks a lot like Uncharted. It isn't the like, I mean, I'm sure there's like more open NDD stuff, but it's not like, oh, really? It's like Uncharted.

• 49:32Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I realize I'm not, I would expect something closer to Uncharted from what you're going to get. Not expecting an open world game here, like don't expect Spider.

• 49:40Griffin McElroy?

  Good.

• 49:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I'm fine with that.

• 49:42Griffin McElroy?

  Wonderful.

• 49:44Russ Frushtick?

  But it looks cool and super violent and I'm sure the combat is a lot of fun. The game that I thought looked really good is called The Lost Wild. Which is a first person running from dinosaurs game. It's basically Dino Crisis, but like with modern tech. Looks fucking gorgeous and uh, yeah, looks really

• 50:05Griffin McElroy?

  Trying to watch the trailers in mute mode for this stuff, but and then Sony wants my birthdate. I'm gonna see if

• 50:12Russ Frushtick?

  They're worried that you might not be old enough to see dinosaurs.

• 50:15Griffin McElroy?

  I'm from, I was born January 1st, 1900.

• 50:18Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 50:18Chris Plante?

  I mean, this

• 50:19Griffin McElroy?

  These fucking dubbies, they believe me. Can you believe that?

• 50:23Chris Plante?

  It does feel like we are getting a PS3, early PS4, maybe Renaissance right now. The fact that we have a Until Dawn camp coming out.

• 50:33Griffin McElroy?

  Crazy. Love it. Love Until Dawn 2. So excited.

• 50:36Chris Plante?

  New Silent Hill, Onimusha. We have a Dino Crisis like game. We have a Tomb Raider. I mean, Raymond.

• 50:46Griffin McElroy?

  Really, you're right. This is of an era for sure.

• 50:48Chris Plante?

  And even the Wolverine game looks like, I mean, it looks like the most expensive IP Activision game ever made. I say this, let me be clear, as a compliment. I am ready for a like trashy, just let me tear through levels as Wolverine, kind of smash buttons game. But we are, we are back in, in, in the glory days of gaming right now.

• 51:13Griffin McElroy?

  Can we talk about Rayman Legends Retold? I, I adore Rayman Legends. Uh, I think I played it on the Wii U and it was like, it had that sort of tablet, uh, like asymmetrical co-op mode where like one player would use the tablet to like help the other player who's controlling Rayman through levels and stuff. Rachel and I played through that and I, I hold it very fondly in my heart. Uh, and they're doing like a full kind of 2.5D like, uh, re- remaster of it.

• 51:42Russ Frushtick?

  How do you feel about the art style?

• 51:43Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's cool.

• 51:44Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 51:44Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's a cool way of like, I don't know, Rayman's art style has never really I've never really been like crazy about it. Um, but it is neat to see it kind of like fully, fully realized in, in 3D.

• 51:56Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they threw the like lighting truck at it to be like, oh, we're, this is, this is not a flat cartoon thing. This is like a 3D thing. And that's sort of where I was torn like, you know, the, the original still looks fucking stunning.

• 52:10Griffin McElroy?

  Looks great. Yeah. Um, speaking of throwing trucks at things. I've learned about 30 seconds ago while I was looking at trailers for this that they announced a fucking stunt man game.

• 52:20Russ Frushtick?

  Oh yeah.

• 52:20Griffin McElroy?

  They announced a new stunt man game called stunt man Hollywood. I forget why, when did we, did we talk about stunt man a lot during a recent besties bracket episode for our patron? I remember really, really.

• 52:31Chris Plante?

  I feel like we talked about how we need to bring stunt man back. I could have sworn.

• 52:33Griffin McElroy?

  I think so too.

• 52:34Russ Frushtick?

  It was the, it was the one about, um, uh, theme parks. I think we talked about it.

• 52:40Griffin McElroy?

  Oh yeah. What game would be the best? Yeah. So.

• 52:42Russ Frushtick?

  Which felt like cheating if we're gonna do stunt man.

• 52:45Griffin McElroy?

  It did. Uh, it's made by Saber Interactive, who does a, uh, quite a few like, you know, licensed games, but also did, uh, mud, mud? Snow runner, mud runner, like that, like kind of truck sim type thing. And so I think it makes a lot of sense. And it also uses, I believe licensed, like film franchises, like Fast and the Furious, Back to the Future, Knight Rider, Miami Vice and Death Race. Like, yeah, that sounds like my dream game. That's amazing. That sounds really, really good, actually.

• 53:16Russ Frushtick?

  Could be really good. I, the only thing I remember about the original stunt man was that if you fucked up, you had to sit through like a 30 second.

• 53:22Griffin McElroy?

  A very long loading screen. Yeah, for sure. Hopefully with the power of the PlayStation 5 and Pro in my hands.

• 53:28Russ Frushtick?

  God bless it.

• 53:29Griffin McElroy?

  That I spent 1,700 American dollars on, I will not have to spend so long waiting. Uh, any other big, big ones?

• 53:37Russ Frushtick?

  I think that was, those were the big ones we more.

• 53:38Griffin McElroy?

  Guitaru Man is coming for free to PlayStation Plus Premium. If you've never played Guitaru Man, it's a great PlayStation 2 era rhythm game. Adore that soundtrack.

• 53:47Chris Plante?

  I wish I was good at fighting games because the Tocon Fighting Souls, Knights of Doom Marvel Fighting Game. Uh, looks great.

• 53:57Griffin McElroy?

  There's a couple of those a year that made me think like, maybe I should get into fighting games because this looks so sick. This looks so cool.

• 54:04Russ Frushtick?

  I don't like people punching each other. It's, I don't like it.

• 54:07Griffin McElroy?

  Sometimes I kick.

• 54:08Chris Plante?

  Are, are either of you gonna try the new marathon season? Is that a hopeless?

• 54:13Griffin McElroy?

  It's free, right?

• 54:14Russ Frushtick?

  It is free.

• 54:15Griffin McElroy?

  Are you still playing it, Chris?

• 54:17Chris Plante?

  Uh, not as much just because it's been so busy.

• 54:20Russ Frushtick?

  Okay. When you say not as much, just for a second, how, when was the last time you played?

• 54:24Chris Plante?

  Probably about like a week ago.

• 54:25Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, that's still, you're still active. I count that.

• 54:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 54:29Chris Plante?

  Um, but I'm, I'm excited. I mean, i- i- it's in the dark, you know, which is a silly selling point. I, I, I know, but you have a game that's already absolutely terrifying that people are going to stab you in the back and you put that in the dark. Get pretty, pretty intense.

• 54:46Griffin McElroy?

  Weird, weird slate, but I think, I think pretty beefy. I think there's definitely like a few things on here that, that I will be keeping my eye on. And I don't know that that's been true for a bit, uh, for as far as PlayStation 5 is concerned. Um, it is, it is a weird slate. When you kind of look at them kind of all together, it feels like, I don't know, it feels like there's, I guess God of War is about as heavy a hitter as, as Sony's got.

• 55:13Russ Frushtick?

  And Wolverine is like a big, that's gonna be a big deal.

• 55:16Griffin McElroy?

  I just feel like that game's been in the works for so long. I don't know.

• 55:20Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it's actually coming out now, so they hope it does well.

• 55:24Chris Plante?

  Yes, yes. For things that we are excited about. The, the things I am most excited about are the things coming from outside studios, right?

• 55:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 55:31Chris Plante?

  We didn't even mention Control Resonant, like.

• 55:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, or the, uh, Boncho, uh, Dave the Diver kind of, uh, prequel game starring Boncho the chef, uh, like. Yeah, there's, there's, there is some, some cool, some cool stuff coming. This is also sort of the kickoff to the Summer Game Fest sort of, uh, lineup. And by the time this episode comes out, I'm almost certain more stuff will have, uh, will have dropped because, well, the, the Keely show's Friday.

• 55:59Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's on Friday.

• 56:00Griffin McElroy?

  So we'll be talking about probably a lot of summer game stuff, uh, next, next week.

• 56:06Russ Frushtick?

  Chris Plant and I will both be there on site.

• 56:09Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, will you?

• 56:09Russ Frushtick?

  Live reporting, not really.

• 56:11Griffin McElroy?

  Live.

• 56:13Russ Frushtick?

  We will report back, uh, next, uh, besties and, and tell everyone the cool shit we saw.

• 56:18Griffin McElroy?

  Can't wait. Missy 3 still, to this day.

• 56:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Uh, should we jump into honorable mentions?

• 56:26Griffin McElroy?

  I feel like I've talked about everything that I, I didn't add anything sort of new to the rotation, I guess, this week. Uh, we finished that Battle of Fates Korean reality competition, fortune telling show. It goes to pretty insane places. Uh, been dipping into Diablo 4. I have a couple buddies who have been playing this season and playing that sort of multiplayer is something I've never really done. What is really funny is I was like, as I was looking into the social tab to like, find my friends to, uh, to, to link up with them, I realized I'm in a clan. And it is the Besties Clan and the members of the Besties Clan are Russ Frushtick, the founding member and myself, who is like a novice rank in the Besties Clan.

• 57:09Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 57:10Griffin McElroy?

  And nobody else.

• 57:11Russ Frushtick?

  You just haven't put in the legwork to move up the rank.

• 57:13Griffin McElroy?

  It's just the two of us.

• 57:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, so I mean.

• 57:16Griffin McElroy?

  So if you're a Besties play, if you're a Besties fan and a Diablo 4 player, let's get this thing going.

• 57:21Russ Frushtick?

  Is it open? Do I have to like accept people? Is that why no one's?

• 57:24Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know, dude.

• 57:24Russ Frushtick?

  I don't think anyone knew it existed.

• 57:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, we could probably just start a new Besties Clan, I'm assuming.

• 57:30Russ Frushtick?

  You can do it. I'm gonna give you permission.

• 57:30Griffin McElroy?

  There might be one that are already out there. I'm really, I cannot stress enough how much I've been really enjoying this Diablo season. I've really, it is just about the best balanced, I think, this, this game's ever been.

• 57:45Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 57:45Griffin McElroy?

  This franchise has ever been, where I feel like I'm constantly getting stuff that is like making me rethink my build. I'm like switching my skills up constantly as I find something that, oh, well, this gives me this benefit to this one skill that I'm not even using. That will like completely shift everything. It's not like I've got my whirlwind barbarian and I'm just gonna launch him through decrepit tunnels for 50 hours trying to get like this one drop. I've been enjoying that a lot and I finished the boys, but I did not like it. So I don't really wanna spend a ton of time on it.

• 58:16Russ Frushtick?

  Wow, yeah. Now he's a cube, so it all worked out.

• 58:19Griffin McElroy?

  Now he's a cube, yep. Got him out.

• 58:22Chris Plante?

  Have you all been following the reckless Ben drama?

• 58:26Griffin McElroy?

  The Lego, the Lego store, yeah, some of it. It is hard to follow unless you, you gotta put in the, the labor, the sweat equity to understand the situation.

• 58:36Chris Plante?

  I do have a solution for people who do not wanna watch the hours of videos that begin with, "I tracked down the thief who stole $200,000 of Lego," followed by, "I got arrested because of Legos," followed by, "My response to the police," which is recorded in Mexico.

• 58:53Griffin McElroy?

  Can you, can you one minute overview what this is? Cause I'm sure there's a lot of people who don't know.

• 59:00Chris Plante?

  The best I can do is there was an older man who had his Lego, Star Wars Lego's collection, the biggest Star Wars Lego collection in the world, apparently, at a bricks and mini figs store, which is like a reseller. And that store apparently closed. Again, I am not a legal expert here. And the dispute is over whether or not the new owner could then just take, basically take ownership of all these Lego Star Wars toys. And that person who was trying to sell those toys there would not get their money.

• 59:36Griffin McElroy?

  So There's also a suggestion that a lot of this stuff was maybe sold by the previous owners because it was on consignment. And then that money just vanished.

• 59:45Chris Plante?

  Yes, it is all extremely messy. But the point is this YouTuber wants to get Bricks and Mini-Fig, this company, to pay the original owner for all of these Legos that were on consignment. And he's going about it in one of the most legally reckless and legally inventive ways I've possible. On one hand, making very bold declarative claims that I would advise somebody to be careful not to make, like saying explicitly that someone stole something when then that is not, you know, like decided in a court of law. At the same time is, I don't know who they're working with, but must be working with a lawyer

• 1:00:31Chris Plante?

  because it's creating basically like legal traps for Bricks and Mini-Fig to fall into over and over and over again. Over the course of the first video, there are like five or six gamuts that this YouTuber plays against Bricks and Mini-Fig. Which brings me to, there is a legal explainer of the entire thing that is only like 30 or 40 minutes that breaks down each legal gamut that is played here and talks about like what about them is like, yeah, that was probably sound and one of them was like, eh, that was very high risk. But ultimately comes out pretty much, I'm hesitant to say in favor of the YouTuber doing this.

• 1:01:15Chris Plante?

  More, more that the legal expert comes out and says like, to actually hold people accountable with how bad the law has gotten, you kind of have to take these risks now. And like, it ends up being a really interesting breakdown of how the system has failed people and why you see more of these kind of like.

• 1:01:40Chris Plante?

  Uh, Batman.

• 1:01:41Russ Frushtick?

  Vigilante.

• 1:01:42Chris Plante?

  Vigilante type of people because on one hand it's not how the system is designed to work. But on the other hand, the system has kind of made it clear that this is how you get people's attention.

• 1:01:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Chris Plante?

  Um, it's all super, super interesting. The only note that I would have is if you do watch the, the main reckless bin episodes, it is like watching the like Tik Tok video that is like, I did blah, blah, blah, and then I did blah, and then I did blah, blah, blah, and then text spamming the screen for an hour and 45 minutes.

• 1:02:15Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:02:15Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Chris Plante?

  It is.

• 1:02:16Griffin McElroy?

  I watched the Tik Tok version of a lot of this and I was like, wow, that's interesting. And then I started to watch like some of the actual videos and I was like, I can't, I don't have the, I don't have the time or mental RAM to work on this.

• 1:02:29Chris Plante?

  Yes.

• 1:02:29Griffin McElroy?

  There's a mental RAM shortage.

• 1:02:30Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. I know. Prices are going way up.

• 1:02:33Griffin McElroy?

  Way, way up. Uh, what about you, Russ?

• 1:02:35Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I've been playing a game called Blue Prince, which is good. I'd strongly recommend it.

• 1:02:41Griffin McElroy?

  We get screenshot, we get pictures of, uh, of, of yours and Alex's notes.

• 1:02:46Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Griffin McElroy?

  And it's, it's truly like seeing you build the encyclopedia of knowledge about that game in real time is so good.

• 1:02:54Russ Frushtick?

  I'm very excited and continue to be excited about it. We are, uh, on the chase for sanctum keys. I'm going to keep it spoiler light here, but chasing down sanctum keys. We just found a birth certificate in a place.

• 1:03:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, dude.

• 1:03:08Russ Frushtick?

  Which is such a great discovery. We were very happy about that. And, um, yeah, we're, we're really in it. It is, uh, pretty remarkable and I'm screen capping books and actually reading books from video games, like in the video game, which I never ever read. Like here's a wall of text that you picked up on a note somewhere and I read all of them.

• 1:03:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:29Russ Frushtick?

  So it is just so remarkable. The entire world and universe that they built around this game is really through the roof stunning. So there's that.

• 1:03:39Griffin McElroy?

  I feel like I could, I feel like I could recite a new clue verbatim.

• 1:03:46Griffin McElroy?

  Like word, word, word for word.

• 1:03:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49Griffin McElroy?

  Because of how often you have to like, go back to that well.

• 1:03:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:53Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, and that just the, the sheer volume of stuff it reveals.

• 1:03:57Russ Frushtick?

  The other thing I wanted to call out is I've been playing Subnautica one with my son on Switch.

• 1:04:02Griffin McElroy?

  Yo, that's a good idea.

• 1:04:04Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, it is and it isn't.

• 1:04:06Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:04:07Russ Frushtick?

  How much do you remember of Subnautica one?

• 1:04:09Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I feel like quite a, quite a lot.

• 1:04:11Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so there's a lot of like, my son is four, turn, about to turn five. There's a lot of like, you're in a deep, dark hole and a giant fucking snake monster shows up and eats your face. There's a lot of that.

• 1:04:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:23Russ Frushtick?

  In Subnautica. And this was creating a problem because, uh, the other day he woke up from sleeping and said, "I had a dream that Malamar stung me."

• 1:04:33Griffin McElroy?

  And Malamar.

• 1:04:34Russ Frushtick?

  Pokemon. Is a Pokemon that looks like a giant squid. Clearly there might be some analog there.

• 1:04:39Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:04:39Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so what I did was, because I'm a great father, at least now I'm a great father, a few weeks ago, maybe not, is I found out that on the Switch version, Switch two version specifically, you can turn on console commands. And there is a console command that makes all of the enemies in the game basically passive, like will not attack you. So the game has now become, we're gonna go around collecting recipes, scanning creatures underwater, and doing the whole power curve, but we don't have to worry about a fucking Reaper jumping us in the face.

• 1:05:13Griffin McElroy?

  I do like, I, I like that version.

• 1:05:15Russ Frushtick?

  I know you do, but is it for a five-year-old?

• 1:05:17Griffin McElroy?

  No, I like the version of the game you've hacked together.

• 1:05:20Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah, totally.

• 1:05:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21Russ Frushtick?

  It's.

• 1:05:22Griffin McElroy?

  I like, I love exploring and making new flippers for myself and I don't like being jump scared by a shark.

• 1:05:28Russ Frushtick?

  100%.

• 1:05:29Griffin McElroy?

  Don't like it.

• 1:05:29Russ Frushtick?

  So it's a great game. Worth noting, if you, you need, if you're playing on console, I think it only works on the Switch two version. I don't know about the other console versions, but I know on Switch one, you can't do console commands, so you can't do that thing. Um, but obviously on PC, you're free to do whatever the fuck you want. But that would be my recommendation. It's been great. Uh, he loves undersea adventures and building his base underwater. So it's been really good.

• 1:05:55Griffin McElroy?

  That's gonna do it for us this week on The Besties. I want to thank everybody who's been supporting us over on Patreon. If you go to patreon.com/thebesties, you can support us and also get access to a ton of bonus episodes, episodes of The Resties, a bunch, a bunch of stuff.

• 1:06:12Russ Frushtick?

  I do want to call attention, we actually have a new Bracket Battles episode that just went up this week, featuring none other than Mr. Ron Funchess, jumping in. We actually have a clip from that.

• 1:06:24Speaker 04

  You guys are always gonna do something fun. You're gonna be playing baseball, go-karting, you're gonna be doing anything at a Fight Club. There's gonna be so many fun things.

• 1:06:35Russ Frushtick?

  Pervert photos.

• 1:06:36Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:06:40Griffin McElroy?

  Fighting a big octopus in the middle of the ocean, you could be doing anything.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  He's basically Kramer. He's like Kramer that can fight.

• 1:06:48Chris Plante?

  Kramer, but with like a heart of gold that's gonna solve your biggest emotional problems. He is better than therapy could ever be. And I say this as someone who loves going to my therapy. He will go through a series of side missions to like make your relationship with your father work in a way that it never had before, which...

• 1:07:07Speaker 04

  He's down, down for whatever.

• 1:07:08Griffin McElroy?

  One thing I would like to remind everyone here, though, is that this is not who would make the best friend, but rather who would make the best roommate. I bet that a hang with Ichiban Kasuga is top tier, obviously top tier.

• 1:07:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Griffin McElroy?

  But, and obviously we moved who would be gone the most down. I don't think, I think he's kind of in your face a lot. I think you don't get a ton of breathing room. I think there may be times where maybe you don't want to go wear adult diapers with other diaper enthusiasts and your friend Ichiban Kasuga. Maybe that's not what you, maybe you just want to have a chill night in.

• 1:07:41Russ Frushtick?

  That was very fun. We had so much fun with Ron. We love Ron. Ron is on tour right now. You can go to Ron's website, ronfunchess.com, probably some...

• 1:07:49Griffin McElroy?

  Get there, get there. Rachel and I went and saw him when he came to DC. It was really, it's a really fun show, really great. Do you want to thank some backers?

• 1:07:56Russ Frushtick?

  I do. Some recent backers, we have Michael W., we have Ryland M., we have Griffin K., and Danny with an I. Thank you for being backers of the besties. Thank you to everyone else for making it possible and making the show happen. You are our dream makers.

• 1:08:12Griffin McElroy?

  Next week, we are going to be talking about Summer Game Fest announcements, reactions, just a sort of big grab bag of the

• 1:08:21Chris Plante?

  Behind the scenes secrets.

• 1:08:24Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, I guess some behind the scenes secrets.

• 1:08:26Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I'm gonna be wearing a trench coat the whole week, so it's gonna be really cool.

• 1:08:29Chris Plante?

  Really creepy.

• 1:08:31Griffin McElroy?

  So there will probably be a lot to talk about. So join us again. Join us in gross. Join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?