Is Outer Worlds 2 the Second Coming of Fallout New Vegas?

The studio that created Fallout: New Vegas has had a busy year, delivering Avowed, the early access of Grounded 2, and now Outer Worlds 2. This latest release comes the closest to the team’s legacy in the Fallout universe. But can it achieve those high highs without the beloved trappings of post-apocalyptic America? And would you believe it has strong feelings about capitalism?

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Here's what I'm saying. This is my problem with all games like this.

• 0:04Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  The moment I get a spaceship.

• 0:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  I'm not gonna do anything anybody wants me to.

• 0:14Griffin McElroy?

  Ever again.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Forever.

• 0:15Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  The moment I get a spaceship, why am I concerning myself with these petty terrestrial concerns?

• 0:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:25Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, there's a little thing called gas money.

• 0:27Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:28Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 0:28Russ Frushtick?

  How are you gonna fucking power your spaceship?

• 0:30Griffin McElroy?

  Are you, did you find a secret fucking?

• 0:32Speaker 00

  Only fans, only fans.

• 0:35Griffin McElroy?

  Did you find a secret menu option in the game that makes you put gas in the, in the hub ship?

• 0:40Russ Frushtick?

  I'm playing on realism, realism mode.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  You gotta harvest anodyne tablets from the ground in the process of.

• 0:47Russ Frushtick?

  So tired when I walk around the planets, I get so tired.

• 0:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:52Russ Frushtick?

  I just needed a fucking nap.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  I'm just saying if I get a spaceship and somebody's like, we need it. We heard there's a border dispute out and go fuck yourself.

• 1:00Griffin McElroy?

  No way.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Like, are you kidding me? I'm on Mars. I don't even remember you. Like, I'm gone. I'm in space. I'm Captain Harlock. You know what I mean? I'm gone.

• 1:09Griffin McElroy?

  Starfield was a bad game by traditional standards, but it did kinda nail that one part of space exploration, which is you get your ship. And then you just kinda fuck around.

• 1:18Russ Frushtick?

  And honestly, better.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  What happened to Justin? I haven't seen him in a while. It's like, actually, he got a spaceship and he started going to these crazy planets so far out. There's nothing on them except power ups. And he would like fly to these planets and I think he prayed or something. And then when he came back, he could float, dude. That's what I'm doing with a spaceship. I'm gonna find those planets.

• 1:38Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe we were too hard on Starfield.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, when you say it in that specific, and it only takes 20 seconds to say, it's pretty good.

• 1:45Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:47Griffin McElroy?

  Nah, we weren't.

• 1:47Russ Frushtick?

  No, that game fucking sucks.

• 2:07Speaker 00

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

• 2:09Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:12Russ Frushtick?

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

• 2:15Speaker 00

  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, my friend, have become a member. This week, we are talking about Outer Worlds 2. Normally, this is when Chris Plant would describe the game. He's not here, so Russ Fruschek, it falls to you. What is Outer Worlds 2?

• 2:31Russ Frushtick?

  I don't know what Outer Worlds 2 is, but I know what the Outer Worlds 2 is. It's the sequel to the Outer Worlds.

• 2:37Griffin McElroy?

  Are you for serious?

• 2:38Speaker 00

  I'll be right back with the pain in the ass, Russ Fruschek, and the one I'm still talking to, Griffin, right after this.

• 2:46Russ 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,

• 3:27Russ 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.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Outer Worlds to me has always been really interesting because I feel like it's one that I really liked and I think a lot of people really liked, but it didn't, for whatever reason, at least for me, seem to have as much of the staying power. I know the music kicked around for quite some time, but I felt like the foothold, the song, there's a couple of songs from it that became very like, big on YouTube and TikTok and stuff. But like, I don't know, it seemed like just sort of an obsessive fandom or something.

• 4:35Griffin McElroy?

  If I'm, if I'm remembering the timeline kind of correctly, didn't Outer Worlds come out sort of shortly after Fallout 76 was either out or announced? And I remember a lot of the response to that game was in conversation with like, the stuff that, you know, Bethesda's not really doing so much these days. And so there was a, I don't know, it was, it became a point of comparison, like an inflection point about that. And it does feel like Outer Worlds 2 is free from a lot of that baggage and benefits from it.

• 5:10Russ Frushtick?

  I think there was also an element of, there was an expectation, and this is on them, because it was marketed this way, of this being like, New Vegas 2, effectively. Like, the first game was New Vegas 2. And, and given the fact that they were building this new game

• 5:27Russ Frushtick?

  in a genre that they hadn't really fully explored in quite a while, it kind of felt like that promise wasn't totally met, even though there were elements of that in the first game, it felt a little more narrow than something you would see in Outer Worlds.

• 5:43Griffin McElroy?

  Can I set up, can I try and set up what Outer Worlds is? Because I think that there's probably folks who either don't know or do get it confused with Outer Wilds, which is a different game. But Outer Worlds is from Obsidian, the creators of Fallout New Vegas, and it is a, it is a first person sort of action RPG exploration game, in the vein of, in the vein of Fallout. You have a character with a set of skills that you invest points in every time you level up, giving you access to perks that change like your character. There's a bunch of different weapons, a bunch of different factions for you to work with, a bunch, bunch of stuff to explore. That's the basic setup of, of the game.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Yes, and I would say that tonally, and I don't know, this is maybe a bit more controversial, but you guys tell me. I've always felt like when Bethesda took over Fallout, it lost a lot of the humor and the cheek that was part of that series to begin with, and it's still in the DNA, but it's not as like, I think when you're making a game as big as Fallout, I don't think they also wanted to make it as sort of like satirical.

• 6:47Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I mean Fallout 2 got fucking downright wacky at times.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, so for me, I have felt like Outer Worlds is like, in some ways, a more fitting sequel to Fallout, because it's got a perspective, and it is about consumerism in a way that Fallout games used to be, but are now, it's just sort of like, I don't know, it's laughing at its own jokes a lot. I feel like Outer Worlds is like, there is a perspective, it is like, a relentless capitalist satire that is very focused on this one specific, this one specific thing.

• 7:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I think even Outer Worlds 2 does it better than Outer Worlds 1. I found the tone of Outer Worlds 1 a little bit grating, because it was such a cartoonish, like, corporate hellscape, and that is definitely still the case here, but the way that they have kind of consolidated some of the factions, right? In the first game, there were a bunch of different corporations vying for control of this one, you know, multi-planetary system, and in this game, you're, the game starts off with a bang, and then there's like 10 years that you sleep through essentially, and when you come back, Antis, what is it?

• 7:59Russ Frushtick?

  Antis Choice.

• 8:00Griffin McElroy?

  Antis Choice, which is made up of a corporate merger of Spacers Choice and Antis something, now like, rules the galaxy, and is like, making an incursion into this authoritarian of factions, like, solar system that you are now in the middle of their, their great war, and also there's this like, religion based on math that's like kicking around in there too. It's like, everyone is, everyone's sort of intention is extremely clearly laid out, right from the jump, but it's not only played for laughs, like, it's not only, uh, silly.

• 8:39Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  What did you guys think of this game, the Outer Worlds 2?

• 8:46Russ Frushtick?

  Sounds like you're setting us up.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  I am, because I feel like a lot of this is shoe leather to establish it's kind of like Fallout.

• 8:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  Totally. Thank you.

• 8:56Griffin McElroy?

  I liked it. I like it. I'm still playing it. I like it more than I liked Outer Worlds 1.

• 9:04Griffin McElroy?

  Outer Worlds 1 was a fine game that I feel like constantly pigeonholed me and my character into certain choices, or locked me out of certain things because of how I was or was not built, leading to an ending that is like pretty widely panned, I feel like, for that game.

• 9:23Griffin McElroy?

  Where it's like so clear, like you do the talking the bad guy out of it ending, or you do the shoot the bad guy ending. Here, it's like, I don't know, it feels like they have done a much better job of making the world so much more interactive, regardless of which way you've decided to build your character. It feels like there's a million ways to go about stuff. And that singular improvement has made the game like a lot more enjoyable for me.

• 9:45Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's where the richest differences lie for me between this game and like recent Bethesda Game Studios open world RPGs is because Bethesda's games have gotten so huge. I think from a scale standpoint, they feel like they can't offer those six solutions to a given side quest.

• 10:07Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 10:08Russ Frushtick?

  And here, because, you know, the areas aren't, it's not one giant open streaming map.

• 10:15Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 10:16Russ Frushtick?

  They can do much more focused stories, and with more focused stories, they're able to have a lot more variance in the solutions for a given thing. I also think the writing is just a lot stronger, so that helps a lot.

• 10:28Speaker 00

  I'm really, I think to me, the thing that stands out the most while I'm playing this, and it is the thing that I am, I like, I really appreciate, but I'm probably struggling with it more than I should, is that it feels less directed than a lot of games like this would be. And I mean that in the sense of like, I'll give you an example. There is a, I'm not gonna use any specifics here, but there is a calamitous event where a ship that you're on is about to be brought down on a populated area. And the person that you're with says, you gotta do something. And you're like, yes, absolutely, I'll do something. And then the only thing that's indicated on your HUD is an escape. Right? There is a computer in the room that you can use, but the only thing that's on the hood is one place.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  And I just kind of assumed like, well, I guess I figure it out outside of here, but whatever. And then I got out the door and she was like, you just let it crash. And I was like, yeah, I guess there was. You did say I should do something on there. Now that I think about it. So I reloaded my save. I looked around and yeah, I'll be damned. There's a computer there you can use to fix it, but, but the game wasn't like flashing it. It wasn't like, hey, this is pretty early on, so it's not a knock on the game. I hadn't sort of realized this was the level of like, of load of, I wasn't playing with blanks, basically.

• 11:42Griffin McElroy?

  But that's cool. I do like that it does that. I do. I actually really like that moment a lot because it does establish this feeling of like, there's, you could be doing something. There is some, if you run into a building and there's a big armored dude in there and he's like, you wandered into the wrong building. Now I'm gonna fuck you up. That's usually an indicator that like, you could have found like a vent that you snuck in or you could have.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  It's better at hiding that though. It's better. A lot of these like Deus Ex where it can be like, there's a gray on the left-hand side that you can pull off with your strength. And then on the back, there's a computer that you can hack over the door. And on the left, there's a, a window you can sneak into, you know, it's not like it masks it better than that.

• 12:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it feels more organic in the level design. I, I agree. There's a lot of situations where it'll be like a theoretically an enemy base. And obviously you can present like a fake ID to get in, but within that enemy base, there's just so much other side content that you can find if you just take the time to do it.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  They also, they also make skills so important in conversation and not just skills like your talking skill, but like how aware you are of, I mean, almost every skill seems to play into dialogue a lot of the time. So it made me want to increase my skills just so I would know what I was talking about in conversations, which is not something I'd usually think.

• 12:59Griffin McElroy?

  And there's also attached to every skill, some sort of mechanical benefit. So like your speech skill doesn't just unlock certain conversation options. It like increases the damage you deal to human beings. So like that's, I, I, I think the RPG systems in this game are. Second to none. I think that I have problems with this game. This is not one of them. This is a huge fucking issue for RPGs, especially this style of RPG. And the number of times trying to find that balance between like you're giving people enough stuff that they're doing that it feels like their own unique adventure. While also not locking them out of stuff like every time I see a computer that's like hack it. I'm like, I have zero hack points.

• 13:42Griffin McElroy?

  It's simply not the way I've gone. That doesn't bother me though, because there's also like two or three other things in this room that I can like fuck with and, and feel like I have interacted with. That stuff is like so on point in this game.

• 13:54Russ Frushtick?

  I think, I think you were talking about like a peerless RPG system. I think the biggest differentiator, and we've talked about this a lot in other games is. Do you like when you level up, does that feel like an exciting moment?

• 14:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 14:08Russ Frushtick?

  Do the perks that you're spending or the points that you're spending, whatever it is, feel like things that would be immediately useful to your gameplay? And in this case, there are like, I didn't count, I want to say 75 perks in this game that you can see the full list right at the start of the game. And work your way up to earning those perks by spending skill points in variety of different.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Which is a cool way of doing it, by the way, where the, the perks are an offshoot of the way you spent your points. So you're not like, it, it reduces the chance that you're going to like spec in a, in a weird way.

• 14:38Russ Frushtick?

  Right. It's a, it's building off of something that New Vegas did where once you hit like. Level 10 in exploration, it unlocked a bunch of perks that ordinarily you wouldn't be able to get if you didn't have level 10. But here it's revealing all that stuff to you. So it, you know, oh, this is something I want to work on. All that stuff I think is done again fantastically well, uh, in ways that I think this should be held up as a representation of like how to make.

• 15:04Griffin McElroy?

  This idea.

• 15:05Russ Frushtick?

  Feel desirable.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Another cool thing that they did that I feel like, uh, a lot of games these days don't have the guts to that are in this genre is make ammo matter. Where like I was pretty frequently like running out of bullets in a way that like grounded me to the, it, it kept me in the scenario. It kept me talking to my compatriots. It kept me like. Really looking at gear because every gear that you get can be turned into scrap metal, which you can turn into bullets. And a lot of times like I needed bullets because my thing was like a pistol. So I'm shooting out like every battle is like 50 bullets. So I'm like turning through a lot of ammo, but that keeps you like locked into the system. It keeps you like in the in the world. It keeps you balancing these things.

• 15:46Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think it does as good a job with like itemization. And I know we're getting like into the nitty gritty, but this is like a huge open world RPG. So it is kind of important. Like there are sort of bog standard versions of different guns. And some of those guns are like better than others, right? Like a heavy revolver is just going to do more damage than a light revolver. And they have mod slots that you can equip the guns with that you can either find in the world or craft. There's like a whole crafting build you can kind of go down in the game. But it's not like a ton of options. And then you're also finding sort of unique pieces of gear of like armor and helmets and weapons that have a mod that's like you can't get otherwise that slotted into them. So I felt like, well, I should really only be using those because they

• 16:31Griffin McElroy?

  have like the coolest shit. And then you go a long time without getting stuff. I put a bunch of points in guns and sneak attack. And so like I saw my numbers go through the roof, but it wasn't because of the weapons I was using. Like when I would find a new weapon, it was a little bit less exciting than like, oh, I just got this perk that does like doubles my sneak attack damage if they're looking at a corpse of someone that I killed already.

• 16:53Speaker 00

  I will say I spent too much time. I think you spend way too much time in this game, like trying to get your cursor on an item that is like a very small object, but like kind of slowly looking around a room and slowly picking up the items that are lying around. I think that it is not fun to try to get your cursor on the exact little bottle that you want to pick up and then pick it up and then look and see if you want to drink it or break it down. Like it's a little fiddly.

• 17:16Russ Frushtick?

  It is funny though, because everything that you can pick up has utility. It's not like Starfield. We're like, you can pick up this microscope if you want to.

• 17:24Griffin McElroy?

  Sure, go for it. Let me. This is the way that they handle food in the game, right? Think about Bioshock where it's like you have your healing syringes, but like you find a bag of potato chips, you eat that right away and it heals you or whatever. In this game, when you pick up food, Goes into your food inventory and then under your health bar, you'll see a little knife and fork. You have a, a healing inhaler that you use as like your only method of healing and you can customize the inhaler. There's like a medicine skill associated with it, but if you have food in your inventory, it shows you that symbol of the, of the knife and fork. And then when you press the inhaler button, if you're not in combat, you automatically will eat the food you have in your inventory to heal you to full before you go for any of your meds. And they use that, you, one button, there's one button for that.

• 18:05Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Griffin McElroy?

  Like that shit's real smart and real, real streamlined and real, real good. Uh, so it's, it's a bit of a mixed bag.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Did you all listen to the, uh, I wanted to hear if you guys listen to the radio much?

• 18:16Griffin McElroy?

  Fuck yeah, dude.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  Did you listen to the radio much?

• 18:18Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 18:19Russ Frushtick?

  A, a little bit. Yeah.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  It's really, I, I found it to be really interesting because they have a bunch of these like, it's super in world. All of it is like, you know, it's ads for anti's choice. It's like, you meet a sort of like faction that's obsessed with numbers and they have a radio station and all their songs are about math.

• 18:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  I wish it is that, I'm right on the, on the line with it because I love this sort of shit, right? I love it. I love in world radio stations. Like I loved like when Lazlo had a station on GTA, whatever. There's just, it's like, you have to have it on and it's not background really. It's like, you're listening to these songs and there's not a ton of them. There's like a good amount, but like you're playing this game for many, many hours. Like there's not enough radio that it's not like looping and it starts to get a little bit like, okay, guys, I need something.

• 19:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  That I can tune out.

• 19:14Griffin McElroy?

  I, I mean, you don't.

• 19:15Russ Frushtick?

  You don't have to have it on.

• 19:17Griffin McElroy?

  No, yeah. I mean, I definitely used it on the first planet. And then when I got off the first planet, I was like, I kinda.

• 19:21Russ Frushtick?

  And they'll like tell you like, oh, you got a new signal if there's like a quest attached to it or something.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  Yes, this is what I'm saying. I love, this was, I wanted to, I wanted to say like, I eventually did turn it off, but like when you're listening to it initially, it's like, it's really great. I, I, I, it's, it's a fantastic thing.

• 19:36Griffin McElroy?

  I, I have to say the thing that is, um, oh, I, we should mention before I get into sort of like my main gripe. I think the gunplay. Feels fucking good like and that's that is not something that this genre is known for. I I felt differently when I started because you start out with like weak shitty weapons. But as I have like found different uh weapons with like different unique perks and gone down a certain build and focus points into guns and unlock some gun perks like it feels pretty good to get in a gunfight. It is not like Fallout where once you are spotted and you lose your sneak attack bonus. It's like, oh, fuck, like now I have to shoot these like clumsy guns. Like, I think they've actually done a pretty, pretty good job with the the combat side.

• 20:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, there's they also, I think in this game added like slide, like combat slides and things like that. So like the mobility stuff, you have a double jump at one point. So like.

• 20:30Griffin McElroy?

  You have a slow motion gadget. It looks like you disagree a bit, Juice.

• 20:35Russ Frushtick?

  Hmm.

• 20:35Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, okay.

• 20:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, no, I I thought it was, I thought they did a really, really good job.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  They do a good job. The guns feel powerful. It also feels like your companions are helpful. They have like special abilities that you can fire off that are nice. Um, there's not a ton of like, they seem to stick to themselves pretty much like there's not a ton of like, can other than like firing off that ability like you're not.

• 20:55Griffin McElroy?

  Telling them where to go.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Uh, changing their gear up as much. Do you do like some basic leveling of them? But you're not like giving them all their equipment.

• 21:01Russ Frushtick?

  Which as far as I'm concerned is a boon.

• 21:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I do not want to have to deal with that. I was your great. My my issue is, uh, this is something that they have not fixed from this genre of games. And I think that there is just a sort of like, there are just some structural issues under the hood with quests and how how all of that is handled. It is so rad that you are in this world, this like set of planets where you can do whatever and you feel like there is a custom path that you are kind of blazing through it. But a lot of times I have been in a a a region where I have am talking to people

• 21:44Griffin McElroy?

  and they are talking to me as if I am like in the middle of a quest that they're supposed to be on that I did not start, like I missed the first kind of part of. And now like I'm kind of jumping into the middle. There's a bit where one of the characters, the main like uh buddy of yours when you start the game, uh, I think got hung up on a quest or something and he always had a little speech bubble over his head. Like he had something to say to me and yet he.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  I have that with uh

• 22:12Griffin McElroy?

  He didn't and

• 22:13Speaker 00

  Another companion where she always

• 22:14Griffin McElroy?

  And that stuff is uh, that stuff is so soul crushing. I feel like when you are investing as much time into this game as it asks for to feel like um, I've put maybe 25 hours into it. I've played quite a bit at this point and I feel like for the last few hours I have been like on a planet where I'm just sort of running around and every quest I'm is like out of order and I'm pretty

• 22:39Speaker 00

  This is a hundred percent my experience. I'm really glad to hear you saying this, Griffin, because I thought it was in my head, but I'm, the fact that you're echoing it.

• 22:46Griffin McElroy?

  It's not constant. It's just like, there are parts of the game and the part that I am in now just feels like fucking spaghetti. Like it feels like nothing. It is, and I've had parts of the game that are cogent where you show up and they say, here's the situation on this planet. Go out here. Maybe you can find some help here. Maybe you can find some help there. And it's like, okay, cool. Those are quest lines that I get on. And then I've had entire hours long sections of the game where it just feels like jazz until eventually my main quest updates and it's like, oh, okay. So now I guess I go there.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  There is also the, the quests, because it is a bit more open ended. There are quests that are sort of mutually exclusive that you don't necessarily, it doesn't make clear that are, that like if you do them, you're going to rule out a whole other, and maybe if you're like, um, you know, if you're thinking about it and like trying to logic it out, you know, maybe you're thinking like, well, if I do this, then that might rule out this other quest. But like, when you're just playing a fucking video game, you're not like, you know, you're just doing the mission.

• 23:43Griffin McElroy?

  That happened a few

• 23:44Speaker 00

  There'll be a lot of times where it's, it wouldn't be clear what to do if my, like me knowing what I wanted to do narratively, it wasn't clear mechanically how I should be advancing that goal because everything's sort of like

• 23:58Russ Frushtick?

  That would happen a few times in like Fallout where you'd like complete a quest for a companion or whatever. And then suddenly there'd be like 16 pop ups of like, you failed this quest, you failed this quest.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 24:07Griffin McElroy?

  And this game, this game also does a thing a lot, which is I will talk to someone and they'll be like, we need you to help with this. Uh, we're trying to negotiate with this labor union. Uh, can you, can you go and, and help us? Out and it's like, sure, but then it doesn't give you a quest for like, sometimes you will be asked to do something and you will not get a quest for it. And it's like,

• 24:27Russ Frushtick?

  Or it'll just be like something you heard and then you have to kind of like sleuth it out.

• 24:30Griffin McElroy?

  Or sometimes it's nothing.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  But sometimes it wasn't even that. Sometimes it wouldn't be that. The doctor gave me medicine for a guy and then didn't tell me the guys I had met the guy earlier. That's the only reason I knew where the guy was, but like, there were also a couple of times where like, and maybe this is, I don't know if this is like a, a positive or a negative, I guess, but,

• 24:50Speaker 00

  there was an area that there frequently be areas that look intimidating. They look like video game levels and you're exploring and you're like, okay, I can get into here. So I'm going to go mess around and then you'll start finding mechanics of quests, like a switch that flips a thing and you're like, okay, I guess I'm flipping switches and then I'll go do this other thing and you'll go through a whole thing and you're like, I'm fighting a guy. Who's this guy? I don't know. And then you do, you go find someone who's like, I've got a serious situation. I need you to rectify. Oh, the factory? Yeah, man, I fucking did all that. This is done.

• 25:21Griffin McElroy?

  Facility, found who I think is probably the final NPC for like one of the quest lines in the game. The whole time I'm going through the facility is like, this will be great evidence for fucking what? I don't know, because I just found this place and I was like, this place looks cool. And I went inside and it's, I, I didn't get a guy who showed up like, not yet, not yet. You're not, I'm going to have some shit for you to do here later. Don't come in here. It's not ready yet.

• 25:43Russ Frushtick?

  I guess the question I would have is, is how, how much of this stuff is fixable? You guys are for, I think I've played 10 hours. So you guys are further along than I am.

• 25:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Russ Frushtick?

  How much of this is like, you know, with patches over the course of a month or two or whatever?

• 25:57Speaker 00

  I found that, that I feel like it is a friction between the amount of freedom they want to give you. And the amount of like direction that some players might want, because there's. A lot of the times, if you think about it logically, you can usually come up with it. But more often than not, it would like, you'd get to, you know, you'd go for 20 minutes down a road and then you'd hit a skill check that you can't pass. And it's like, well, I guess I could fail this skill check and get a really shitty ending to this, this, this mission, but I've done all this shit. I'll just come back when I've improved my speech skill and I'll have a more satisfying ending to that mission.

• 26:35Griffin McElroy?

  I did that exact, I did that exact thing in that facility where my speech skill was 1.2 low to fulfill like a series of checks with like the final boss of the thing. And I was like, okay, so I left and I did other shit. And then I come back and the result was like, he was, instead of starting a fight with me, he's like, okay, you can have the thing in my office. And it's like, dude, I stole that thing from your office three and a half hours ago. I did all of that for nothing. It is, but that's the trade off, right? That's the illusion. You can't have the system that they have here without having that moment happen to you some of the time. That stuff doesn't bother me as much as like, something's going to break. Like something's going to break. Am I, do I really want to keep playing this game and investing in this character who like, maybe I'm not going to be able to do the rest of his shit.

• 27:20Griffin McElroy?

  I have characters who I roll with, who I have maxed out all of their stuff and like, pretty much finished their quest lines and I'm not particularly like interested in them. And then I have my road dogs who like, for whatever reason, like won't start a conversation with me like, hey, can you go here so I can meet my old buddy and I can get some new skills?

• 27:36Speaker 00

  That stuff seems fixable.

• 27:38Griffin McElroy?

  It does seem fixable. It's just like, in the state of the game, it's like that level of structural stuff in a game that you spend so much time playing is such a turn off and I, it's a bummer.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  If you're gonna do this stuff about not using a firm hand to guide people, like to use the example I, I used earlier, right? If I don't know that that's not a bug. If I don't know, like, if you're going to give me that level of freedom, your shit has to work perfectly. Because if I hit a bug where I'm like, well, that's not, that was not me missing something, that was you, then I don't trust anymore. Like, I don't have that trust anymore. Then I want you to put all the markers down because I don't have the faith that this is all working as intended. I don't know if this is, how it's, I don't know if this is intentionally obfuscated, or if it is a bug. And a lot of times in this game, like, I-

• 28:27Griffin McElroy?

  Just fail safes, even if they are immersion breaking of like, you show up to a facility, get like a fucking phone call or whatever from someone like, hey, good, you found this facility. Can you look for this stuff for me? Instead of just like, I went, uh-oh, am I, I don't think I'm supposed to be here yet, uh-oh. That guy knows my name. I don't know his, fuck.

• 28:47Russ Frushtick?

  I think, I think this to me feels like a very strong foundation for something that could certainly be cleaned up over time. I agree, there's always gonna be issues, especially with a game that's this open.

• 28:59Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 29:00Russ Frushtick?

  But-

• 29:01Speaker 00

  I'm trying to be real, because this is my shit, and I'm gonna keep playing it. I love this kinda shit. But it is also the kinda shit that I am most permissive of flaws, because it is, it is, I don't-

• 29:11Griffin McElroy?

  This is the most I have enjoyed one of these games since, probably since Fallout 4, probably.

• 29:16Russ Frushtick?

  It really does say something.

• 29:17Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, yeah, I, I think they've nailed it. I think that there is an experienced hand, uh, who have made some like, really, really clever choices to like sidestep a lot of the issues that this genre has faced in the past. And they've done it in a package that looks good, sounds good, feels really good to play, feels like the things you're doing are meaningful. Um, and yeah, you're probably right, like, they probably will patch it out or release, you know, their Spacer's Choice, uh, Premium Edition or whatever at some point.

• 29:42Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it's worth knowing also, like, when this episode, this Besties episode comes out, the game still won't be out for another like, four day, five days.

• 29:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 29:50Russ Frushtick?

  So, that's not an excuse, like, obviously, but I also know that-

• 29:53Griffin McElroy?

  You have to couch it a little bit, because our experience may be different.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  It is not mostly buggy, though. In my experience, I will say, it, it was not buggy. It was, it was a, it seemed like a deliberate amount of freedom.

• 30:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  It, it, you know, my, I just, I watched, uh, the, the Danny Boyle, Steve Jobs movie that Aaron Sorkin wrote on the plane home, because I was listening to Black Check, and they have this argument that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have this discussion between number of ports in the system, where Steve Jobs wants two, because he wants a closed system that they completely control, Wozniak wants eight, because he wants the users to be completely in control, and it's the- How those two like that, it reminded me of this game where it's that thing of like wanting to have a completely polished, smooth.

• 30:37Russ Frushtick?

  Like an uncharted versus.

• 30:39Chris Plante?

  Yeah, of course.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  Right. Versus like, what's the other end? It's like stalker, right? Like, or Daisy or something like that.

• 30:46Russ Frushtick?

  War Fortress.

• 30:47Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. Right. So it's, it's always that balance. It just feels a little bit on the edge of like, it feels like that it was more about, it's impressive that you can keep the immersion and get to the end of it and it still like holds together. And it seems like that was more important to them than having something that's consistently sort of like pleasant to engage with.

• 31:10Chris Plante?

  I would say. I'll, I'll probably stick with it.

• 31:12Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Chris Plante?

  I, I'm genuinely like pretty, pretty sucked in.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  The writing's great to do. I don't know if we talked about that, but like the interactions between people and the, the, the moments and like even datapads and stuff like that are all.

• 31:26Russ Frushtick?

  I would also add that like, this is the third game they've released this year that has been pretty fucking good. They put out Avowed, they put out Grounded 2 and this.

• 31:36Chris Plante?

  That's wild.

• 31:36Russ Frushtick?

  No one, uh, no one is doing that these days.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, yeah. Microsoft, don't let, Obsidian, don't let Microsoft know how well, how well you're doing. Whatever, whatever locks you change, just leave them changed.

• 31:52Chris Plante?

  Uh, should we take a break?

• 31:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yep.

• 31:55Chris Plante?

  I used to recommend a VPN to like anybody who is traveling because you'll be, I don't know, in Paris or Tokyo. Look at you, big shot. And you'll want to watch your shows and you won't be able to. You'll need a VPN. But now I recommend a VPN for everybody, whether it is your security or whether it is you live in a state where maybe you can't have access to pretty basic websites without weirded security checks and all sorts of other headaches. Proton VPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security. It keeps what you do online private and lets you access the internet like it should work. Open, secure and on your terms.

• 32:39Chris Plante?

  Unlike most VPNs, Proton is backed by strong European privacy laws and years of expertise, creating a safer, faster, and more open internet for everyone. So whether you want to watch content from anywhere, get around blocked sites, or just keep your activity private on public wifi, Proton VPN has you covered. It is easy to get started. Right now, Proton VPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two-year plan when you go to protonvpn.com/besties.

• 33:14Chris Plante?

  That is P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-N dot com slash besties for 70% off your two-year plan. That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 33:31Russ Frushtick?

  Justin, you have a new device.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  Hmm. Thank you for not saying toy like my.

• 33:39Russ Frushtick?

  You have a new doodad that you like.

• 33:41Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, gosh. I think that's the color I got, too. That shit looks so good, dude.

• 33:45Speaker 00

  That's the rainbow one. So I'm watching, as you can see here, I'm watching a video down on this screen of the AYN Thor, and up here, I'm playing the latest Rich Arts video games.

• 33:54Griffin McElroy?

  Can you set up for the folks not seeing?

• 33:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, so this is a, this is a device made by a company called AYN. They made, most notably, the Odin 2 and the Odin 2 Portal and the Odin 2 Mini, but those are their last few devices. They're very well regarded. This is the Thor, which is a dual-screen console, and there have been other like dual-screen PCs, but this is the first dual-screen Android console.

• 34:25Griffin McElroy?

  It's like a DS form factor, basically.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  So, yeah, a clamshell form factor. You've got a widescreen at the top, right? And then at the bottom, you've got close to like a 4x3 kind of square guy here. So you have two different form factors. When you load a, the two screens are independent, so you can get a game going on the top screen, or an app, or whatever. It's whichever is focused is what the controls will do. So if you tap on the bottom screen, and then you use the controls, you're controlling this. If you tap on this screen, use the controls.

• 34:56Griffin McElroy?

  And I'm assuming their emulators, like Melon DS and Drastic, and like the major sort of DS3, DS emulators are able to like use both simultaneously?

• 35:07Speaker 00

  Yes, you can set it to use both simultaneously. You can also choose for certain apps that they will always launch in the top or in the bottom or whatever. And there is also they've another kind of clever solution that they've done here is there's this button here at the bottom of the screens. And this brings up sort of a a home. It is just for this specific dual screen setup. So there is a button where you can switch from dual screen, bottom screen, top screen. There's also an audio slider where you can choose which screen is doing how much volume, right? So if you have like a game on this level and a video on this one, you can like choose. And then you can also do the brightness independently on on the screens. So it's all pretty well like.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  I mean, all pretty well optimized for that. It feels pretty good to play the buttons. The only thing that I will say, I don't know if you guys can see this very well, but look at these shoulders.

• 36:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, they're rounded out just a bit.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  So the this is like, we've got big chunky triggers on the twos. And then we've got some these guys on the ones and they're kind of like behind this. It's not super comfortable. When the screen is like this, it's not super comfortable to hit these. And I will also say that if you're someone that wants to play a lot of D-pad stuff. This is not the most comfortable.

• 36:21Griffin McElroy?

  D-pad's in the bottom left, so you gotta like curve.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  D-pad's on the bottom left. It's kind of a reach down here. It's not super. They have traded. I think it's always a question of like ergonomics versus pocket. I think that's that's what you're up against. And this they've made a little bit of a concession here, right? You got some dumps for the ergonomics here. Round it in the back a little bit, but like it's surprisingly like pretty chunky.

• 36:47Griffin McElroy?

  I saw it's about the size of a 2DS XL, if you remember that.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  Here, I have a DS. Let me grab one.

• 36:52Griffin McElroy?

  I have one of these bad boys ordered and because it is coming from mainland China, it it does take a minute to get your hands on on one of these.

• 37:02Russ Frushtick?

  There's some fraught relationships, so maybe that's part of it.

• 37:05Griffin McElroy?

  I've heard a little bit about that. Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, speak on that.

• 37:09Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  See what I have handy here. Uh, this is a 3DS. So to compare this for you guys, I would say, I mean,

• 37:20Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, that's an original.

• 37:20Griffin McElroy?

  Well, that's an original 3DS.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  So it's original 3DS.

• 37:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, so probably about 10% bigger than.

• 37:26Griffin McElroy?

  It's about XL size. So either the 3DS or the 2DS.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  So this is a 2DS.

• 37:30Griffin McElroy?

  Well, yeah, that's the crazy, uh, single panel.

• 37:34Russ Frushtick?

  I, I think here's, here's where I'm, here's where I'm at with these things is I definitely know.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  It's about, it's also about the same size as this guy. The, our, the, we were talking about the 477M, the new ampernet guy. It's about, it's about that size.

• 37:50Griffin McElroy?

  They've gotten all this in one pack.

• 37:52Russ Frushtick?

  Here's what I'm gonna say. I, at this point, I don't know how to fit this much tinkering in my life.

• 38:01Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 38:02Russ Frushtick?

  And when you're talking about two screens in particular, I'd imagine, and tell me if this is incorrect, even more tinkering required to like really get things working nicely.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Now, it, it is, uh, I will say this, it is surprise, no, broadly speaking, no.

• 38:18Russ Frushtick?

  Like if you load up a DS ROM in whatever, an emulator for DS games, it works, like it recognizes the second screen and just works?

• 38:27Speaker 00

  No, because you, the part of it is like figuring out how you want to do it, right? Some, some games work better with like certain screens oriented different ways. Like you have to fiddle with it. Um, and it is not, there is like more, there is more tinkering. You're a hundred percent right. And, and I honestly, this is probably the most damning thing, but Russ, good Russ said it, and I, I think I agree with it. It still doesn't replace the 3DS. Like it's, it's, it's not, it's not a replacement for the 3DS. It's, it's a very cool way of experiencing those things. And I will say, it's a pretty good use case to have like a walkthrough or something on one screen and like a game on the other, or like something like that, or like a, a, if you have music or something you're zoning out to, all that stuff works really well.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  It feels good. The trigger, the thumbsticks are really deep inset. I don't know if you can tell, but like, to avoid the clamshell design, they're, they're sunk pretty deep in there, which is not my favorite.

• 39:23Russ Frushtick?

  But it's a, that's, you kind of have to if you're gonna do the clamshell.

• 39:26Speaker 00

  Kind of have to, right? But like, I think they executed on this really, really well. I, I think that, um, there's different form factor. I was, I hate getting into like the, the, um,

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Pricing and all the different like the the the klugey things, but there the base of this is like 250 and that that's for like the base model with eight gigabytes of memory and or and then 16

• 39:53Speaker 00

  is with a terabyte of storage for 429. So there's definitely a range. There's a range.

• 39:59Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I'm I'm still in this mode of just like I kinda like I have my what is it flip to and I it works well and I set it up and I took like whatever a few hours to set that up and it works. And so I'm in this like dormant period where I just kinda just want things to work and I don't want to take a lot of time. But again, like it'll happen like a year or two from now where I'll be like, okay, I'm ready and I'm going to commit a bunch of time to it. But for right now, I think I'm

• 40:25Griffin McElroy?

  I think there's a lot of people probably doing that and I think that makes sense.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  I think that this is a really it's a really good one of those. And I think the dual screen thing is, I will say it's like, so I agree with you, Russ, in the sense that like, it doesn't open up a whole lot of like new doors. But I think that for me, I'm always thinking from like a preservation standpoint, too. And like, there's a lot of experiences, especially on like the Wii U and the 3DS that are kind of like locked to those consoles. Yeah. So there is a there is a respect at which you're right. But there's this other regard in which there's a lot of libraries that are kind of like that I are not as easy to explore. And like, these devices are kind of moving forward, trying

• 41:10Speaker 00

  to help keep that preserved. Like, so that that part to me is like, if you're someone who just wants to play old games and like, just wants it to work, I think that you can usually like lag behind about a year and it's crazy how well these things will work. I mean, people will do it all for you. It'll be so easy. But if you're somebody who likes to screw around new things, it's an exciting, it's an exciting area of screwing around.

• 41:32Griffin McElroy?

  That catalog is so strong. DS and 3DS games are so there's so fucking many good ones and there hasn't been a great way to really do that yet.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  But like, it's not coincidence that I have my 3DS like in reach like this way. I have my Vita within reach. Like, there's still like, I have my Wii U. I don't have a Wii U. Just kidding. Why would I have a Wii U?

• 41:54Russ Frushtick?

  We we have some reader mail.

• 41:56Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:57Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, we have a letter from Andrew. In talking about Steam Next Fest, I have only been able to play one game despite downloading close to 14. It's called Desktop Defender.

• 42:07Russ Frushtick?

  It's basically like a little window. This is me talking. It's basically like a little window that just shows up in the corner of your desktop and it is like part Vampire Survivors, part progression game, idle game. But because it's so minimal, it kind of just sits in the corner of your screen and you like do a little some doodle things on the corner and then you just go back to working whatever you were doing. You get a gun to shoot incoming things. You get more XP, you get more upgrades, etc. We're all familiar with the format. I think the interesting thing here is specifically that it is just this like such a minimal like side game, almost like Clippy showing up and you can have like a little moment and then you just go back to whatever you were doing, which seems kind of cool. It's called Desktop Defender.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  Is this?

• 42:47Griffin McElroy?

  It's not Desktop Tower Defense.

• 42:49Russ Frushtick?

  Desktop. No. It's called Desktop Defender. It's on Steam.

• 42:52Speaker 00

  I have not thought about Desktop Tower Defense in so long. I'm freaking out.

• 42:55Russ Frushtick?

  That's a-

• 42:56Speaker 00

  You're playing it. You're already playing it. Desktop Tower Defense. God, I haven't thought about that game in 100 years.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  March 2007.

• 43:05Russ Frushtick?

  This other recommendation comes from Caleb. Regarding Steam Next Fest, I got the recommendation in the post games Patreon for Tears of Metal. Having played it, it's a blast. I'm not usually one for hack and slash Dynasty Warrior stuff, but this one is a greatly simplified version that feels good combined with Slay the Spire type rogue like path options. I had a blast and thought it could be a good Diamond in the Rough.

• 43:28Griffin McElroy?

  This does look cool.

• 43:30Russ Frushtick?

  Kyle has a quick shout out to me. I took Russ's recent advice-

• 43:35Speaker 00

  Just read your own goddamn emails, Russ. Fuck. Why do we have to hear it?

• 43:39Russ Frushtick?

  I took Russ's advice and downloaded Luigi's Mansion to play with my four-year-old and it went great. She's never really gotten to a game before because she's never clicked with using a control or navigate a 3D space, but this game seems perfect for the level of approach of approachability. So she's finally get it, getting it. If you guys have any other pre-K friendly game recs, they're always welcome.

• 43:59Griffin McElroy?

  Luigi's Mansion just hit the, or it is hitting the Nintendo Switch Online like GameCube classics.

• 44:07Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, this was, I think, in context of Luigi's Mansion 3, which has co-op.

• 44:11Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, right. Yeah, right.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  Cooper got really into 2OT. She really liked that one a lot.

• 44:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  It's a, it's a pretty good one for youngsters. I think they'd have a lot of fun with that.

• 44:20Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I mean, Donkey Kong Bonanza, but we've talked quite a bit about that. Solar Smash is an iPad game where you blow up planets with different things. Kids love that shit. Kids love blowing up whole planets. It's a big one.

• 44:35Russ Frushtick?

  We have one more letter. Schmorgel sent a bunch of recommendations from Steam Next Fest, but I want to call out one of them. "Séance of Blake Manor is a first-person puzzle game, sort of like Blueprints and Return to Oberdin. You're gathering clues, finding evidence, interviewing people, all the good stuff. Time passes when you look at objects, so there is a real sense of tension in your moment-to-moment decisions."

• 44:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I think Plant dropped the trailer for this in the Besties channel a bit ago, and it does look real good.

• 45:07Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 45:08Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, it just seems like it has like Blueprints, but even spookier. Spooky Blueprints.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  Whoa. Check, please.

• 45:17Russ Frushtick?

  Someday I'll play Blueprints. It still has not been updated for colorblind mode.

• 45:20Griffin McElroy?

  That's bonkers, man.

• 45:25Russ Frushtick?

  Anything else you wanted to talk about for honorable mentions?

• 45:29Speaker 00

  I'm still playing, uh, did we talk about Cloverpit?

• 45:32Russ Frushtick?

  We did. We have talked about Cloverpit, yes.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm still playing Cloverpit. Merge Maestro, nothing.

• 45:39Russ Frushtick?

  I wanted to call out a show called Extraordinary, which is on Hulu. British people. It's got British people in it. Tonally, I think it's probably pretty close to something like What We Do in Shadows. It's not like a mockumentary format, but otherwise.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  What we do in the shadows.

• 45:57Griffin McElroy?

  That's good, dude. Razed his ass. Young stinker.

• 46:02Russ Frushtick?

  The premise of the show is basically, it's like our world, but every single person on the planet has a power of some sort, and some of those are weird. Like, you can, this person can rewind time 12 seconds, and this person can fly, and this person can blah, blah, blah. But the main protagonist of the show is 25 and has not received her power yet, so she's like in this state of arrested development. But it's very funny and really well-written, and there's two seasons of that. And so if you're looking for something in the tone of What We Do in the Shadows, there you go.

• 46:39Griffin McElroy?

  I want to call out the Undertale 10th Anniversary album of remixes that came out, I think last week or the week before, that Toby Fox got a bunch of different people together and did remixes, songs from Undertale to celebrate the 10th anniversary, and some of them are such fucking club bangers. There's a version of Death by Glamour on there that absolutely fucking treads. So we've been listening to quite a bit of that.

• 47:06Russ Frushtick?

  Is it stuff that Toby remixed, or is it like fans?

• 47:09Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I don't know. I don't know.

• 47:12Russ Frushtick?

  I guess, I ask mostly because like, where's Toby finding the fucking time to do all this?

• 47:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know. But yeah, I've pretty much only been playing Outer Worlds 2. It kind of demands a lot of your, your time.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  Um, all right. Well, next week, what are we going to be doing next week?

• 47:30Russ Frushtick?

  Next week, we are going to be playing Keeper. I think Justin's going to be diving into Keeper, which is the new Double Fine game. And Griffin and I will be playing Pokemon Legends ZA, which is the new Pokemon game.

• 47:43Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 47:44Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I might dip a little toe into Keeper 2, because I am, I do like their games and...

• 47:48Speaker 00

  Keeper 2, you already got it? Shit, dude. Damn!

• 47:52Russ Frushtick?

  But before we wrap up the show, I do want to thank the members over at the Patreon. That's patreon.com/thethebesties. Um, you, we want to thank new members John, Ben, Brennan B, and Curtis G. Thank you for being members of the Patreon. We have Resties coming up on Tuesday. We have a new Bracket Battles episode coming up, uh, real soon. For members of the Patreon, you can actually vote on which, uh, bracket battle we're going to do next. So keep an eye out for that for subscribed members. And, uh, we love you a lot.

• 48:25Griffin McElroy?

  Yep.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  Beautiful. All right. Thanks, y'all. Appreciate you.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  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?