There’s Always a Lighthouse, a Pokémon, a City

Pokémon Legends Z-A is the latest entry in the pocket monster franchise, and the first in years to run quite well on Nintendo’s hardware. But what does the game offer beyond technical improvements? Plus, Keeper plops us in the … shoes? … of an ambulatory lighthouse.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What are you guys going for Halloween?

• 0:02Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, no. Genuinely, I have a, I have a big problem.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  What is it?

• 0:06Russ Frushtick?

  My big concern was that, and I think I talked about it on Rusty's, that my son would pull a curveball and not want to dress up as the thing he was asking to dress up as.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:17Russ Frushtick?

  Which happened last year.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  That's kid law, dude. Kids get message, kids get WhatsApps about, my kid didn't even have WhatsApps. He gets WhatsApp messages and she's like, well, uh, dang it, I gotta change, says.

• 0:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. So this happened last year and this was after we bought a Yoshi costume for him. And then we last minute dressed him up as Link from Legend of Zelda. This year, somehow I was able to mind trick him into wearing the Yoshi costume from last year, which still fits. So he's into that. The problem is I've spent all this mental energy and I have no fucking idea what I'm going to dress as.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, there's still time. Uh, what is Glenn Powell in this year?

• 0:55Chris Plante?

  I'm not allowed to. My son is a firm rule in the house. He says,

• 1:01Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 1:02Chris Plante?

  I am a ghost. Pasta, our dog, is a ghost. Mommy and daddy are not ghosts. They are

• 1:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:11Chris Plante?

  parents. And I say, that is fair. I'm happy with that.

• 1:15Russ Frushtick?

  I like that he sounds like Dracula, though.

• 1:18Chris Plante?

  Um, he, that's, you know, he, he, he has been watching a lot of very classic Universal monster movies. So he might be kind of picking up that, that cadence.

• 1:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's working.

• 1:28Chris Plante?

  How about you, Hoops?

• 1:30Speaker 00

  Hmm. Well, my kids are gonna be K-pop demon hunters.

• 1:34Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  And, uh,

• 1:35Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, wait, wait, was there an argument over, because there's only two of them. So then what about the third one?

• 1:42Speaker 00

  What? Oh, oh, sorry. Yes, I understand the question now. Sorry, it took me a second for my brain to catch up. There are only two of, by of them, you meant my children

• 1:51Russ Frushtick?

  Correct.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  that I brought into the world with my loins.

• 1:53Russ Frushtick?

  So there's a third unrepresented K-pop demon.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  That's my wife and I'm their manager, Bobby. Right? So this is,

• 2:00Russ Frushtick?

  I am disappointed.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  It's a great gig for me. I'm so stoked because Bobby, like the classic look for Bobby is just a kind of a robe with T-shirt and sweat, man. I'm like feeling it.

• 2:10Russ Frushtick?

  Good gig.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  I'm really excited about the role.

• 2:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's, you're living large.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  Sidney and I are also gonna do Mothman and Braxi.

• 2:16Russ Frushtick?

  Who's Braxi?

• 2:17Speaker 00

  Braxi is the, no, sorry. Uh, Braxi is the Braxton monster.

• 2:22Russ Frushtick?

  Oh.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  She is going to be the Flatwoods monster.

• 2:26Chris Plante?

  Does California have folklore monsters? I feel like the east coast has all these amazing folk monsters. And then I moved to California and it's like, you're the, you're the five freeway.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  My wife is going to be the Flatwoods monster, who is also known as Braxi.

• 2:43Russ Frushtick?

  Got it.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  Because they're from Braxton County.

• 2:45Russ Frushtick?

  And, and.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  There we go.

• 2:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  That's the clarification for you.

• 2:50Russ Frushtick?

  I don't know about Braxi.

• 2:52Speaker 00

  Braxi is for the Brax, is from Braxton County. Uh, uh, let's see, let's see. According to the Wiki, cause I wanted to give you just like facts, cause if I give you hearsay, then that's not really gonna tell you much.

• 3:04Chris Plante?

  Sure.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  From Flatwoods, West Virginia, got a big sort of pointed head with bit, too big yellow eyes, small little claw hands. Uh, there's a, a huge chair in Braxton County that looks like the Flatwoods monster you can sit in. I'm gonna give you guys that.

• 3:23Russ Frushtick?

  Is Braxi gonna be pissed if I sit in his chair?

• 3:25Speaker 00

  It's a, it's more of a throne.

• 3:27Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, so definitely pissed.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  So more pissed, yeah, cause there is some symbolic power. Hold on.

• 3:34Chris Plante?

  Oh no, I found a picture of it and it's not what I want my kids sitting. All the photos are like three kids having time as a dead eyed giant colossal monster leers over them.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 3:47Chris Plante?

  Wow, what an upsetting little critter. Giant critter.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  Braxi rules. So we're gonna be Braxi mothman.

• 3:53Chris Plante?

  Okay.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  It's gonna be good.

• 3:54Chris Plante?

  Include this picture in the newsletter, because geez.

• 3:58Russ Frushtick?

  Do the Braxi, Braxi sound.

• 4:00Speaker 00

  Braxi, the Flatwoods monster.

• 4:03Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, no, I mean, what, what does Braxi say?

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Oh, Braxi's, oh, okay, oh, the say, the famous saying?

• 4:09Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  Braxi's famous saying?

• 4:13Chris Plante?

  Uh huh.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  Well. Actually, guys, actually, guys, I'm not actually supposed to be talking about this. I forgot that we're, that this is not a West Virginia safe space and Braxi would prefer that we not talk outside of West Virginia.

• 4:27Russ Frushtick?

  That's very fair.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  Forget I said anything.

• 4:28Russ Frushtick?

  I'm sorry.

• 4:29Chris Plante?

  Respect that.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Here, Men in Black.

• 4:32Russ Frushtick?

  Meow, meow.

• 4:35Chris Plante?

  Not dead.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  Listener, if you're still listening to this, rewind it and listen to the Men in Black sound again. And then fast forward past this part.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  No, listen, if you're still lis, you have to skip ahead.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  One of those will work, I'm sorry.

• 5:10Speaker 00

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

• 5:13Chris Plante?

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

• 5:17Russ Frushtick?

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

• 5:21Speaker 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 of the club.

• 5:31Russ Frushtick?

  Here's what happened.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 5:33Russ Frushtick?

  Griffin caught so many Pokemon that his back broke, and now he can't move anymore.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Can't carry the show, can't carry all the Pokemon, so he's not with us to talk about a Pokemon game. He's, sorry, I actually locked him out of the studio, he's pounding on the door outside, please let me in.

• 5:47Chris Plante?

  The saddest thing about it too is he had all the Pokemon but one on his back and his hands just juggling all the Pokéballs. And then he just had to get that last one, he had to collect them all, despite the warning, you can't collect them all. And he reached for it, and let me tell you, the weird thing about it, it was, it was at the top of, of, of these stairs. About 300 stairs going up a mountain, and then he reached for it, and then all the balls just went down the stairs.

• 6:19Russ Frushtick?

  And it was Weedle, surprisingly, it was Weedle.

• 6:21Chris Plante?

  And it was Weedle.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  So guys, when you come up and you yank, you yank the microphone out of my hand like that. You gotta keep the show moving towards, like, because we do have to do the parts where we say the name of the...

• 6:35Russ Frushtick?

  No, you're right, you're right.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  Remember, right, Russ, Russ was like, he got up on stage like Kanye, he ripped it out of my hands, like, wait, wait, wait, hold on.

• 6:42Chris Plante?

  Hey, we're talking about the latest and the greatest, but this week, we're talking about Pokemon Z to A. And Kiper, what is Pokemon Z to A, Chris Plant? Well, thank you so much for asking, Pokemon Z to A, or Z A, or Zed Alpha, or whatever you want to call it, is the latest Pokemon entry, and it... Is a follow up to Pokemon Legends Arceus. But where that one was in the past, this one is in the pseudo future and we've got another great game for you. We have Keeper, the latest game from Double Fine. That's right. Tim Schafer is still making games. He's never gonna die. There, Lee Petty made this game, Chris Plant, come on.

• 7:22Chris Plante?

  Oh yeah, from the creator of Stacked, which was, I enjoyed in other games. Stacked, that was my adult porno game. Stacking was the one that was a game. Stacked was my penthouse interactive adventure. Man, you get Griffin off the end, he get punchy. Can I take the break? No, you can't because we just want to give you a moment to know that we are also available on Patreon. And if you want this comedic greatness, you can get it for $5 a month. Or you don't want ads, hey, there's a $10 tier and it's live right now, every episode ad free. Anyway, hey, Justin, take it away.

• 8:07Chris Plante?

  We'll be right back.

• 8:10Russ 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,

• 8:50Russ 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 dot 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.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  I want to say that there was more I could have done to stop Chris Plant earlier, but I get high off of Russ being mad at somebody other than me sometimes. I love the feeling of it. I just want to fan the flames. Okay, Pokemon Legends Zaa. The legendary Zaa. Let's, I'm going to ask questions as a Pokemon idiot. Okay. And pretend that that's me. Okay.

• 9:55Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Which I, which flavor of Pokemon is this?

• 9:59Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, good question.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Which kind of a Pokemon?

• 10:00Russ Frushtick?

  Sure. So there's the mainline turn-based Pokemon. This is not that. This is the new, I guess, action, more action-inspired Pokemon game, which first started off with Pokemon Legends Arceus, which was a, again, more action.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Was that the Western?

• 10:17Russ Frushtick?

  That was the one that was set in like ancient Japan-ish.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Okay, yes, we played that one, right?

• 10:23Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  And I didn't hate it. It didn't make me as sad as some of the other ones, right? It looks like a real video game notably where the other Pokemons look like a baby, kind of a.

• 10:31Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it has 3D graphics, so in that way.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it is the, okay, so I'm remembering this now. So it's kind of, kind of Pokemon, a little bit more of a modern vibe aesthetically.

• 10:44Russ Frushtick?

  Well, the, the Arceus was not, or Arceus was like ancient Japan.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Sorry, I guess I meant technically speaking, but yes.

• 10:51Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, uh, we'll get to it.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  3D.

• 10:54Russ Frushtick?

  Let me, let me dive in on the top level and handle the top level questions and then we'll get to it below.

• 11:02Russ Frushtick?

  Pokemon Legends Z A is set in the city that I think was first appeared in Pokemon X, whatever. It's a fucking French city that has appeared in a previous Pokemon game. And the entire game takes place in this city and the premise of the city is that humans and Pokemon live together in this city in harmony. They have these wild areas where the Pokemon generally chill out. And then they have like city areas and then you'll see like a bunch of Pokemon just walking around within the city. From a gameplay standpoint, this continues the stuff that they were doing in Legends Arceus, where all of your battles are taking place in real time. Your moves are on cooldown, so you'll do like a fire attack move and then you can't use that for five seconds.

• 11:44Russ Frushtick?

  So maybe you'll do a different move and you're fighting Pokemon at the same, like other Pokemon at the same time. So it feels much more, I guess, action-y than you would find in like the turn-based. I pick Confusion, they pick blah, blah, blah, and goes back and forth like that. So it's a pretty significant change and this is the first time, uh, this is, I guess, the first major mainline Pokemon game coming to Switch 2. It's also on Switch 1 for what it's worth, but, uh, that is, I think, a noteworthy moment.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  My impression of the, the Arceus was that it was like overall a much faster moving experience, right? Like it, it felt a lot snappier and more fluid, both in like running around and the combat and stuff. Is this like still that? Like does it still have the fast pace?

• 12:30Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, the movement, everything like that, if you played Arceus, uh, moving around the world, things like that are still very fast-paced. I know Plant played a little bit of it, um, and the...

• 12:41Chris Plante?

  It's very fast-paced once you get past the first three hours, which is, to be fair, the rule of all Pokemon games.

• 12:49Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I don't think-

• 12:50Chris Plante?

  Like this was Arceus 2 or Arceus or whatever.

• 12:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I don't think it's, uh, it's probably closer to two hours. It might've felt like three hours. I was genuinely timing it because I was curious when they actually let the wheels off. I was starting to catch Pokemon and do things within like an hour and a half, which not great, don't get me wrong.

• 13:08Chris Plante?

  TDP, TDC.

• 13:09Russ Frushtick?

  Not great, but it does kind of come with the territory of this franchise. Um, and but once I was, I felt like I had a lot of freedom. I could go literally anywhere in the city whenever I wanted to. Granted, there were Pokemon that was much higher level and I had no chance of catching them, but I did have the freedom to like go around and find locations and find items and all sorts of stuff much earlier than I think you do even in a normal Pokemon game, which tends to be very, uh, siloed off.

• 13:37Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:38Russ Frushtick?

  Which I think was the big difference. There is, I think, a big element to this that I know Griffin probably would have spoken to if he was on this episode. And that's the divide between the Legends series, which for lack of a better term, there are now two games in that series, and the like core, mainline, turn-based Pokémon games, the Pokémon Sword and Shield and the X and Y, et cetera, et cetera. Right now, it feels like the overall amount of content in the Legends series is much, much less than you would see in a turn-based Pokémon, like core Pokémon game.

• 14:20Russ Frushtick?

  Just in terms of areas that you're finding, sheer number of Pokémon,

• 14:26Russ Frushtick?

  like things that you're doing to like really mix it up. I was actually kind of blown away because, you know, I mentioned that the entire game takes place in the city. The city is like a very simple, like generously could look like a PS2 game, PS3 maybe. It's really simple.

• 14:44Chris Plante?

  I think that's honestly the part that hurts that that intro a bit because again, I did like Arceus. How do we, how do I say it?

• 14:53Russ Frushtick?

  I think it's Arceus, but who fucking cares? It's a made up Pokémon.

• 14:56Chris Plante?

  Even though that game looks worse, it has the advantage of being in the past and being in a really open space. So your mind can fill that in, the visual fidelity. In the beginning of this game, you're walking through streets and it's like, it's like that bit in The Simpsons where like, well, have you ever noticed in cartoons when they stop, they run out of money? They start using the same hallway over and over and over and over again. And it's like the the street decorations to convey this is city is lots of lit windows and trash cans.

• 15:27Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it's a Parisian city. You can tell that it's like inspired by Paris, but it is a lot of repetition of assets and things like that.

• 15:35Speaker 00

  In the same way that the miraculous mobile game is set in Paris, this too is set in Paris.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Is it, is this sort of like the horizons of, of, of Pokemon? Is this like the, are there people that prefer this style of game?

• 15:55Russ Frushtick?

  There, there are, and those people are me. You've met one.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 15:59Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I've played probably every mainline turn-based Pokemon game ever. And right around Sun and Moon, maybe the one after that, I started losing steam. My level of interest was like kind of flagging just because there's only so many fucking times you can play that game over and over again. Now, again, speaking for Griffin, he could play that game over and over again till the cows come home. And I'm sure he would tell us all about Pokemon breeding and how the DNA of this attack speed versus this Pokemon's attack speed is vastly different. And that is super engaging to him. I don't want to be dismissive of the people that, look, it's a much deeper game when you're playing the turn-based game. For me, to get me engaged in it, it needed to change dramatically.

• 16:41Chris Plante?

  What's the feeling of being in the world, right? I think this is a thing that a large chunk of Pokemon players, myself included, wanted really since the Nintendo 64, which was, oh, you have the ability to drop me into a 3D world. I want a Pokemon game where I get to walk around and see all the Pokemon out and about and like interact with them and have the fights happen in the real world. Get me out of these menus.

• 17:08Chris Plante?

  And it does that for the most part.

• 17:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, there's a little menu stuff, but largely, yeah, you're, you're summoning Pokemon without going into menus, you're switching between Pokemon, like all that stuff is happening really at real time, uh, which helps a lot.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  It's interesting though, when you talk about the, the environments, right? Like looking at the city environments, it's, it reminds you of, and this is maybe like too cynical of a, of a take on Pokemon, but

• 17:34Speaker 00

  part of that static nature of the franchise seems like so intentional because when they do evolve it beyond that, it's like they have to start comparing it to what else has been happening. Like if they stay in that rigid sort of like what Pokemon is quote unquote, then there's a lot of ways in which they don't have to evolve. Cause it's like, no, this is what Pokemon, this is like, it doesn't have, you don't have to compare it to modern games because this is a Pokemon game. So like, it's a deliberate thing, but when you start putting it in a 3D environment, then I, I think it's. Very natural to start comparing it to other 3D environments and saying like, this really can't compare.

• 18:09Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it does not look like a modern game. I think there are, so it has been in 3D for quite a while. This is not a new thing that it's a 3D game. It's worth knowing that the latest Pokemon games that have been in 3D, like the last several, have run like fiery dog shit, including Arceus did not run great, like it ran pretty poorly. The fact that this is able to run relatively steady on a Switch one and then at 60 FPS on a Switch two. I think it's possible that some of the design decisions that they made, in addition to what we were just talking about, was also, this is the only way we can get this fucking game running properly, because I don't think the engine is very good. So I think there is, they're making some decisions there as well.

• 18:51Chris Plante?

  I think that like fans of the game would agree with you Hoops generally on the, wow, they're not putting a ton of money into this. And it is kind of repeating the same thing over and over again, but there's a reason that people keep coming back to these things, which is the Pokemon are very cute and cool and interesting, or maybe the story is like, Frush, what about this one? Are you like, it works here versus?

• 19:17Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so this is the, this is the thing that I can't necessarily explain to someone like Justin, who I can try, but you're gonna have to put yourself in the shoes of someone that grew up with Pokemon, which I know you didn't, correct?

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Try to pretend to be like my brother.

• 19:34Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, try to pretend to be your brother.

• 19:38Russ Frushtick?

  So when you look at a Pokemon game, you're kind of taking it at face value, which is to say like, taking it just as a gameplay experience. You have no-

• 19:45Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, I'm super horny.

• 19:47Russ Frushtick?

  Super horny, oh yeah.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  Cause I'm aggressive.

• 19:49Russ Frushtick?

  Right, right, right.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  Sorry, go ahead. And I'm super horny and sorry, go ahead. I won't interrupt.

• 19:53Russ Frushtick?

  No, it's fine. So you're taking it at face value, looking at gameplay mechanics, things like that. When I see Teppig, there is a surge of enthusiasm that runs through my veins that has been in there since the dawn of time. So it is tapping into that nostalgia in a way that someone who didn't grow up with it would have no association with whatsoever. And that keeps happening over and over again, because as you're walking through the city, oh shit, there's fucking Haunter, or there's a giant version of Haunter, and that's really exciting. I'm gonna go catch it. So there is-

• 20:25Speaker 00

  I lie, Russ, I'm kind of, my feelings are a little bit hurting. You think just because I don't like Pokemon, I don't understand the idea of being a sucker. Like, I understand being a sucker. Just say, "I'm a sucker."

• 20:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, imagine being a sucker.

• 20:38Chris Plante?

  Hoops, hoops, hoops. You gotta go back to horny Griffin. I'll give you a copy of a stack.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  No, he's a sucker too. He's just not on the call. I can't bully him. I'll call him later and bully him if you want.

• 20:49Russ Frushtick?

  I agree that there is 100% a we are taking advantage of the nostalgia to sell toys or sell games or whatever it is. But it is checking the box for me in ways that like no Pokemon game of the last several years has done for me.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  So like, I guess, but like, why? I'm just curious why? Like, what is the?

• 21:09Russ Frushtick?

  I think the introduction of the new gameplay in a way, it like the fact that it's actiony and, and then you throw in the fact that like, I'm directly controlling all these Pokemon that I have an emotional connection with, works for me in ways that's not just.

• 21:24Chris Plante?

  Well, this time, which is like, RCS was a great proof of concept. This actually.

• 21:31Russ Frushtick?

  It's real. I mean, and, and.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  You liked RCS. Did you stick with RCS, Russ? Did you, did you put a lot of time into it?

• 21:36Russ Frushtick?

  No, but because it ran like shit. That was my big sticking point with it. It's also worth remembering. And we've said this before, but I will reiterate it. These games are made for kids. And when I play with my child, who's four, he's fucking loves it. He loves watching. He loves asking me to catch certain Pokemon. He loves asking me what types of Pokemon they are. And I do think for that sort of youngster, I would say from like four to 10, this is like fucking pure catnip. And the simplicity of the world that we see is like, oh, this is basic ass shit is actually, well, for them.

• 22:16Chris Plante?

  It's legible.

• 22:17Russ Frushtick?

  It's legible.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  No, it's a great point. It's a, you know what, Russ? It's a really good, it's, that's so good to remember. And it really should be the, the start and the beginning of these. Like the, the start and the, the end of these discussions is like, they are contextualizing an experience that kids should be able to continue to have just because they are getting older and time is evolving. Like they should be able to have like a, their own version of it without adults being like, "Time to add guns."

• 22:40Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Or, or even time to add like the complexity of like, oh, breeding and SP rates and whatever the fuck else that get added in the main line. The main line is so heavy with that stuff now. And this is really a, how do you raise the friendship of a Pokemon in this game? You take them to a cafe and you drink tea with them. That's how you do it.

• 22:59Chris Plante?

  Just so you know, hoops, next week, we will be playing, I want to make sure I get the title right, Digimon Story Time Stranger. So I figure you probably want to make like 50, 60 hours for that. If Griffin has not started playing this, actually, honestly, I will be crushed. I really want to know what he thinks about the Digimon game. Because somebody is coming just a little bit for that Pokemon lunch. They're ready to try it out.

• 23:25Russ Frushtick?

  Just to put a bow on this, I think for people that really liked RSCS, they'll probably walk away really happy here. I think for people that are lapsed Pokemon fans, they might find something interesting here. You should watch some gameplay and see if it would be compelling to you. Is this a game I'm going to spend 60 fucking hours on? No, absolutely not. Would I be playing more of it if my son weren't super invested in it? Probably not. I think it's interesting. I like the way this is going. I would love to see this scaled out into a more full-featured Pokemon game. But right now, it feels like they are moving in the right direction, but still not quite there yet. But still, I've been enjoying it.

• 24:07Chris Plante?

  I'll also say the simplicity of the design does help to make the action more legible, because there's a lot going on. Once you get several Pokemon cooking here, I'm watching in like gameplay footage.

• 24:16Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's easy to kind of understand, you know, types and the attacks you have available to you. There's really, the HUD is actually pretty clean, all things considered.

• 24:26Chris Plante?

  Hey, should we take a quick break and then come back and talk about a lighthouse that came to life?

• 24:35Russ Frushtick?

  A life house.

• 24:38Chris Plante?

  That's nice. 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 weird 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

• 25:20Chris Plante?

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• 25:59Chris 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.

• 26:16Speaker 00

  Keeper is the new game from Double Fine. It is directed by Lee Petty, who's done art on many, many Double Fine games, but he was the lead on stacking. Headlander? Headlander and Rad, which I did not play Rad, but I don't know why I didn't play Rad. It looks like it was a rogue-like, where like a post-apocalyptic rogue-like with kids in it. I didn't play Rad, so I don't know what the deal was with Rad. But it has been, I guess, six years since Rad, and this is the next game that like Lee Petty was the sort of like lead on, which I don't, I know we don't mention on a lot of games. I only kind of mention because I feel like Tim Schafer and Double Fine are sort of some of the very last like.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Um, studios that can still hang a name to a game. And I feel like Double Fine is kind of able to do that with Lee Petty, just because they've been able to, they have done it repeatedly.

• 27:12Russ Frushtick?

  So it's also interesting because this came up a little bit. If you watch Double Fine, the documentary, what was it called? The Double Fine Journey, whatever that was on YouTube. This came up because they ended up at one point pulling team members from this game into the Psychonauts development to make sure that it actually came out. So this game was massively delayed because of the scale of the Psychonauts project.

• 27:36Chris Plante?

  Also tied to the Double Fine documentary, the Double Fine documentarian, who then turns into a game designer midway through the documentary, worked on this game too, I believe.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  So it is a game where you are a lighthouse that is animated through some sort of magic that is not really explained to you. But you are clearly like sentient. There is a relationship. It is a, you are personifying this lighthouse in a sense, right? There are legs. There's, there's the light, which is sort of a face and an all purpose eye. There's not a ton of emotion that is being communicated by that light, but there is a lot through the physicality of this lighthouse, which is not really designed to be ambulating around the environment. So whenever you see the lighthouse moving, like whenever you're controlling

• 28:32Speaker 00

  it, it always feels like you're just on the edge of like toppling over. It's that, that kind of movement.

• 28:38Russ Frushtick?

  Like a toddler walking around.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And it's much more prominent, like early on. So it's not really about like control fidelity, but it isn't trying to like intentionally sort of like make it unpleasant. Control is just, uh, not a mechanically like super dense game. The main thing that you're doing as you sort of like make your way through the environment and you are led by, uh, I don't know. There's not really an overall sort of like thing that seems to be pulling you through. It's, it's a journey, but you're not really sure like sort of where you're headed. It's a very sort of like shaggy dog sort of thing.

• 29:16Chris Plante?

  It's a walking simulator in like the truest sense of the word, not as a negative. Like if we think of that as a genre, it is moving forward from point A to point B with just the lightest amount of puzzles. Between point A and point B.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  I would say, I mean, God, I hate using that term honestly, because I do feel like it is so dismissive. And I actually don't think is, for me, that's a much more narrative thing. But a walking simulator, I think there's a lot of story that's tied to that. And this is super not that. In fact, I would say that like any attempts to sort of like project narrative onto it, it is working pretty hard to.

• 29:57Chris Plante?

  It wants feelings, not stories.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. Like, and the way that you're, you interact with the world as the lighthouse is really like, uh, mainly shining a light, like you're projecting your light and you can intensify it and focus on something. But that is the main thing you're doing in the environment. Now, now you can like, you know, classic video game stuff, like you kill bad plants that have grown over things with your sunlight, you know, that kind of deal. But you also have this bird that flies around with you and hangs out on the lighthouse and will like help you with like switches and will follow your instructions to go like, do some mild interactions and do some like puzzle solving that way. So like there are, it is not just a like, uh, you know, floating through an amorphous environment, like pinging off, there's actual puzzles, you're flipping switches and you're doing levers.

• 30:45Chris Plante?

  When I say walking simulator, I mean, I wish there was a better term for this, but it's a showcase for something other than the gameplay. So most walking simulators, or whatever you want to call these, yeah, it's typically a showcase for narrative. Here, this is a showcase for art. It is like a beautiful picture book or art book, coffee table.

• 31:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, Absu is a better. Parallel, um, Sword of the Sea, um, that, that sort of thing. Um, I think Sword of the Sea is a lot more fluid than this, but like,

• 31:19Speaker 00

  that fluidity is part of what they want you to experience in the aesthetics. And this is very much about like, letting you make your way through a really outrageously generously gorgeous world.

• 31:33Chris Plante?

  And they do a few things to emphasize that. One is. Yet it's just changing from moment to moment. The sheer variety of things that you will see in this game is incredible. I cannot imagine how much time they spent just making these spaces.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  I never stop in games. I don't like I don't stop in games to look, but like I actually a couple of times like went back like, did I just, hold on, I gotta go look at that again because there's like background and foreground. Like you couldn't take it all in as design, like you have to slow down.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  Like vistas we're talking about? Vistas, but like the depth of things and it's not just that, it's like the density and also there, there are very few pinings to our world. In the aesthetics of this world, right? So it's not like you're seeing, it's not like there's trees, but they're pink. It's like you, you will walk through what appears to be a, a, you know, a hundred yard field of taffy that like will pull and stretch with you and like, the world is so unlike what you have seen. You can't just like parse it as you're going through. You really have to like stop and look.

• 32:44Chris Plante?

  What's the Lovecraft phrase, phrase? It's like non Euclidean architecture or something. It's, it looks like of a different.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Like a dreamscape.

• 32:53Chris Plante?

  Yes, but like they're very tangible.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  It's so alien and foreign. Like it reminds kind of like if you watch scavengers reign, like the way the biology of that show is like so foreign to ours. It was almost kind of hard to grok. This is like that, like you are, it is so much about the aesthetics of what you are seeing, like the beauty and the way it all interacts together.

• 33:16Chris Plante?

  They do two other things to emphasize. Again, this is a game about looking. One, the camera is more like a classic Resident Evil type of thing where it is positioning itself. So it's really controlled visuals of they want you to see the world in this way. They also in theory need to do it because the way you control your character, you're controlling the light on the lighthouse, which is the second part of if you want to make a game about looking, the idea of like spotlighting wherever you're looking, making a game about a lighthouse is the way that you do that. So you are quite literally focusing uh, the lighthouse, your character on the objects around you. And some of that is to solve puzzles. A lot of that is just to.

• 34:01Chris Plante?

  See the world.

• 34:03Russ Frushtick?

  Justin, you're several, you're a chunk in, a good chunk into it, correct?

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:08Russ Frushtick?

  So what you've described so far is like something that doesn't, that sounds like it doesn't necessarily evolve from a gameplay standpoint, obviously evolves from a visual standpoint. Is that the case? Or do they throw in curveballs as you're progressing through it?

• 34:23Speaker 00

  No, there's definitely curveballs. I, I just did a pretty, I mean, pretty chunky platforming.

• 34:30Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, wow.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  Like it, it, you, and I, I don't know how it evolves beyond that. Like it is definitely, it, it is one of those games where a closer to say like, the mechanics are pretty light, but once you get one, it moves, it dispenses with it, moves on and teaches you.

• 34:46Russ Frushtick?

  Sure, yeah.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Like it's, it's very fat, very fluid in that sense.

• 34:50Chris Plante?

  It, it, it evolves more too, but it to like, to go into any greater detail would be to spoil kind of the fun because the whole magic is the like, oh, this is the thing that is happening for these five to 15 minutes. But I will say like it, it evolves a good deal past what it starts as. It's, it's always the same. It's always about moving forward. It's all about being in these worlds, but the way that you do that changes.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  I will say also that this is for me, I think the thing that is most notable uh, about Keeper, and this is, you know, it's weird thinking about this as a Double Fine game because for me, Double Fine has always been so present throughout my entire like career in game journalism, but it really, it's been four years since the last release from Double Fine. It's been four years since Psychonauts 2. But I was thinking about, this is the first game from them that I can remember that is not in some way. Humorous, like it's not in some way, even if it's not a direct like um a joke

• 36:05Speaker 00

  or a joke filled game, there's like an irony or a cool or like a silly or like you're looking for the wink in almost everything. And I feel like a part of that is like the DNA of Tim Schafer bringing over from like LucasArts and you know, his, his comedy background there. Uh, I feel like that was a huge part of the Double Fine DNA and I'm not complaining about it, but it is really like, there is a strength of the convictions that this game has that it is not trying to be funny at all. And it's not trying to be cute or even winky. It's like, it's really earnestly expecting you to engage with it in a really direct way without trying to be cute about what it's doing or ironic about it, which I think is really, really, really laudable uh, for, for the studio.

• 36:50Chris Plante?

  That is such a great point. And also I'm realizing this is their Wally, or at least the first 30 minutes of Wally, where it's like we've been making these silly light fun things. And now here's this, we're, we're all getting older. We're all thinking about death. I mean, you could call it their Toy Story four, another thing that's not uh, really it's super funny.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  Whatever, man. Forky.

• 37:15Chris Plante?

  Toy Story for rock. I love that movie so much.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  No, it's a great movie, but you're right. But it's, but there, but like even that is a comedy, right?

• 37:23Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  This is saying, this is like, this really earnestly, it is not using, I think sometimes comedy, you know, games can lean on that. And it's like, well, you can't take anything we're doing too seriously because it's a, it's a joke game.

• 37:36Chris Plante?

  It's a goof.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  It's a goof. And this is really not that. It feels like,

• 37:42Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't want to overstate it, but like, I, I don't, I can't think of a lot of American made games that have gotten this close to like a Miyazaki sort of vibe, but that's, that's where it's sitting for me.

• 37:52Chris Plante?

  Or um, what's his name? Uh, the French other world. Oh my gosh. Borat? He's not French, Chris. Yeah, no, he's not French. Who, who made that game?

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Where did you think Borat is French? Is it because Sasha Baron Cohen? It sounds like a French guy. He does do French accents in a lot of movies, but no, he's not French. He's Borat.

• 38:14Chris Plante?

  That's gonna come to me. I'm.

• 38:17Speaker 00

  Great success. It doesn't even sound French.

• 38:19Russ Frushtick?

  This is very exciting. I spent so much time in Pokemon Legends world that I didn't get to play this game this week, but I actually really am jazzed about it in hearing about it now.

• 38:28Speaker 00

  I will say this, it is really a game that like, it doesn't play great on, uh, the, we have heard anecdotally and personally, it is not great on the handhelds, but I would really say like, don't, don't play it on a hand.

• 38:44Russ Frushtick?

  You want it on a big screen.

• 38:45Speaker 00

  Don't go, put it on the big, big screen, plug it in and then like, do the whole thing. Like dude, turn the lights down low, light a candle, you know, get some massage oil and just really enjoy it. You know what I mean? Get in there and, and, and, and.

• 38:59Russ Frushtick?

  Chris, your window for the French person has lost. It's gone.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  No, it's Eric Chahi.

• 39:04Russ Frushtick?

  Come back.

• 39:04Speaker 00

  Eric Chahi. Damn, that's good. But my point about how it being an American, the closest American has gotten like still stands in, because Eric Chahi is French.

• 39:14Chris Plante?

  Yeah, that's, I was making a comparison to a non, I was helping, I was building.

• 39:19Speaker 00

  Okay. Keeper is, uh, it's really, really, it's really good. And it's, and it is, if I, you know, you mentioned it and I'm all, all, because you were talking about people getting older or whatever, I will say,

• 39:32Speaker 00

  this is a level of craft with game design where like, and maybe I'm probably too quick to attribute that to Double Fine because of the documentaries in part because I've seen, you know, those so richly detail the amount of care and love and work that goes into every element of their games because they're documenting it, right? So I have more of a sense of it maybe with the studio, but I will say, there is a, there is a craft to making you feel things with game design that is not numbers based, that is not getting better damage, that is not getting a better weapon, that is not. Just progressing, right? It is that like, how do you make a game that rewards play?

• 40:16Speaker 00

  And just like feels good to experiment with. And like, that is what is here. Like, that is what this game has to offer. If you can slow down to engage with it, it is not a like addictive experience. It is a like, something you can really like enjoy and rewards, you know, that that enjoyment and rewards that with, with, I think, more depth and more understanding. And, and if you look for it, a lot more concrete story beneath the surface. If you want to go searching for it, there's also a lot in like achievement text and things like that where they're like fleshing out backstory and things like that, if you're interested.

• 40:52Russ Frushtick?

  I love that.

• 40:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's cool. Very cool.

• 40:55Russ Frushtick?

  Cool. We have some reader mail to go through if you guys are interested.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:59Russ Frushtick?

  This one comes from Lily J. I am a second year college student studying music composition and my professor was one of the people hired to write the music for the radio stations in the Outer Worlds 2, which is something Justin, you remember you talked about last week?

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:15Russ Frushtick?

  He told me about the process behind it and they basically set, had a set of composers hired by composer hired by the studio. And he was basically told, you have two weeks to make 80 songs, which they were cut down to like eight to 10 that actually made it in the game. Having talked to him, as well as the composer of Avowed, I have learned just how much of a quote clusterfuck, their words, it is to write music for a huge game like this. And it's something that is rarely talked about. Often composers have very little say into how their music is used and are directed very vaguely with extremely limited time to finish their work. I thought you might find this interesting, given the conversation about radio music in the last episode, specifically where Justin was wishing that they had more music. I guess they did make more music.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:58Russ Frushtick?

  Also, in case you're wondering, he did specifically did the music for the math people where all the songs are about math.

• 42:04Speaker 00

  I mean, those are all great.

• 42:05Russ Frushtick?

  Great songs.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  And they're great. It's like, and, and if I could clarify that complaint, it is not so much that I wanted more of it. It's that they're good enough that you notice them. And once you notice them, you notice them when they loop after 30 minutes. Because they are good, because they get in your head and you do stop and take notice. And it's not like Welcome to the Jungle where like, I can listen to Welcome to the Jungle 100 times and I'm not going to notice Welcome to the Jungle is on.

• 42:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 42:34Russ Frushtick?

  Good.

• 42:34Chris Plante?

  Very interesting.

• 42:35Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, very interesting. This letter comes from Chloee R. Hi besties, big fan of the show and post games, of course. I'm wondering if you could speak a bit about how you choose the games to feature in each episode. I know you are enjoying some Hades 2, my game of the year for sure, as well as some other big releases like, what was that, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? We'll talk about it. So I'm curious, what makes you pass on a particular game? Is it purely a time constraint issue? Or is there more strategy involved behind the scenes?

• 43:05Chris Plante?

  Okay. I want to go deep on the Hades 2 because we get a lot of comments and emails asking us why we have not spent a full additional episode on Hades 2.

• 43:16Russ Frushtick?

  So I have gone through several periods of loving Hades 2 since it hit 1.0 and I am currently in yet another one. The challenge that I have, and Justin, as the person who's spent more time playing Hades games than anyone else, the challenge that I have, I don't know how to speak about Hades 2 in an interesting way beyond, holy shit, this game is amazing. And we could talk about the gameplay mechanics a little bit, but like, I don't-

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, dude. It's, I mean, Hades 2 is kind of a specific example, but like, it has evolved a lot over time. I will say that it has evolved over years and speaking to it, like, there is an expectation that we are able to speak about games authoritatively. And even as somebody who has followed Hades 2 religiously, it's really hard for me to speak to the chronology of this is how it is different now from how it was at the beginning. So like, trying to speak to people, no matter where they got on or off, like, trying to be something that is useful to people without knowing how much of it they played or their awareness is really tough because it's such a long story.

• 44:22Chris Plante?

  The problem I have is I really enjoy Hades 2 whenever I'm playing it, right?

• 44:30Chris Plante?

  I enjoy Hades 1 more. I enjoy the combat more. I enjoy the story certainly more. That's a really bad, boring take that I don't want to go too much further into because it's like, man, I sure do love this nine out of 10, but it's not a 10 out of 10 that the other one was. And I feel like it's for me, it's really hard to talk about Hades 2 without talking about Hades 1. And if I just talk about it on its own, it's just kind of repeating a lot of things that I feel like I've said about these games a million times. It's a great game, but there's, there's weirdly little that I feel like a pressure to say about it.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  I will say this, and maybe we, I, I, I don't know, as somebody who has returned to it several times and

• 45:15Speaker 00

  I think that it is overburdened by systems and currencies in a way that betrays how long it was in development for.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  I think that if you try to get on at this point, there is so much cruft in there that is like just kind of very plainly giving reasons for you to make multiple runs at it. That is like, I don't feel like a lot of it feels super rewarding to me. And that is, and again, I don't know that that's that interesting because the other half of that conversation is I definitely, definitely, definitely played too much of this game before there was enough to really engage with because I was excited for it. And I don't feel like I'm a bad guy for that, but it is my experience. So I don't know.

• 46:02Russ Frushtick?

  I, I played about five hours in early access, give or take. And which is to say, not very much. I wouldn't say like a ton enough to like know what was going on in the game. And I think the game, if you started at 1.0, that is the best possible experience you could have had playing the game before 1.0 and then leaving it for a year and then coming back to it is not as good of an experience. Because all of the mechanics and currencies that Justin's talking about, I do think they do a pretty good job of like easing you into that stuff such that it is cogent. I also agree. You're right. Some of it just feels like, well, you gotta make another run to get this currency to get the thing to get the thing. Like that is fair.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  Right around the time that Hades went to 1.0, uh, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor went to 1.0. And something that was really smart that they did is I saw that it went to 1.0 and when I booted it up, there was a very clear delineation between your pre 1.0 save and starting a new save. They were like very much like 1.0, start a new game, you're gonna wanna do that. And here's why. We've like, we have made it so that like, you don't wanna worry about any of that other shit. Like, we've reset all that economy stuff, so it wouldn't make sense for you to like, get back into that save. Besides, you started playing this game a year and a half ago. You don't remember any of this shit, and it's all different anyway, so you should restart it.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  Hades did not, Hades 2 did not encourage that, and it would terrify me to do that, cuz I don't remember how boring this stuff is. I don't remember how much I have and have it done. I don't remember what I will and will not remember. I have no idea. I don't know if I wanna go do that again, but it really did not incentivize that.

• 47:38Russ Frushtick?

  I did, I do, whatever, it was only five hours, but I did start totally from scratch, and I don't regret it one bit, for what it's worth. But again, you played a lot more than I did.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  Fifty hours. I mean, I think I've-

• 47:47Russ Frushtick?

  To get-

• 47:48Speaker 00

  But I spent 200 in Hades 1, so I don't, I don't know.

• 47:50Chris Plante?

  Sure. Fresh, you mind if I, with back to the original question?

• 47:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, please.

• 47:54Chris Plante?

  What I would say here is, when you're listening to the show, and first, this is a great question, and I appreciate how it was worded very kindly. Um, when we don't talk about a game, it doesn't inherently mean we don't like it. At the end of the day, when we're making the show, a big part of the games we choose is, are we gonna have good conversations about them? Are these gonna be things that we think you're gonna enjoy listening to? And sometimes, there are good games that it's like, I don't know, I like, I'm gonna end up telling you that Pong is great, and then we're done, and we need to fill the next, you know, 55 minutes. And I think that is a bit of a challenge here. And I think also, we tend to favor things that are interesting and surprising, and-

• 48:38Speaker 00

  To us.

• 48:39Chris Plante?

  To us, yeah.

• 48:40Russ Frushtick?

  And like, the, the writer of this letter mentioned Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which is a game that all of us tried, and all of us found really not fun, and that's not-

• 48:52Speaker 00

  Not all of us? What are you talking about? And I noticed, and I noticed question writer, that you referred to it as KD, KCD2, so I'm assuming you've played quite a bit, because I don't have an acronym for it, and you do.

• 49:05Chris Plante?

  I liked it quite a bit. I'll probably talk about it more at the end of the year.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  What do you call, if you were writing me an email about it, would you call Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? Or would you type KD?

• 49:14Chris Plante?

  Oh, I caught Cuckta 2.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  Cock to two. Okay, got it. Perfect. I'm just saying, there is, there is also this question of like, there are games that are, uh, the point with that one specifically I wanted to make is that there are games that are very big that realistically, we have one episode per week. And if it takes a vast amount of time to really get the scope of a game, it could be tough to do an episode about it to get all of us like,

• 49:41Chris Plante?

  It has to really get its hooks in us.

• 49:44Russ Frushtick?

  There is one person on this podcast that is capable of doing a it gets good after 15 hours game and that person is Griffin. He's not here to defend himself, but he's the only person that I think will have any patience to play.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  Russ, you will take, you will, you like to get kicked around a little bit.

• 50:02Chris Plante?

  It depends on the genre. Like, come on, I'll do this. If you, if you call it yakuza, I'll be like, yeah, yeah. No, you don't understand. After 50 hours, it's pretty cool.

• 50:11Speaker 00

  Mine thinks clicking, if it's clicking or like numerical iteration, like I've, I've got, we've all got our, our weak spots.

• 50:17Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, so yeah, there's a lot of layers to it. Interesting conversation, time constraint issue. Did we get Coder Oi so we can like, kind of prepare a little bit? There's just a lot of levels.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Part of it is also like, once we see a conversation has really taken place outside of the show and it's like, man, a lot of people are talking about this. A lot of times by the time that has trickled down to us, it's like, well, okay, fine. But like, who gives a shit what we have to say at this point, you know, like,

• 50:42Russ Frushtick?

  I think the people listening give a shit. That hasn't.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  No, no, no. But like you, but the zeitgeist, I'm saying like, we can't, it's, if it doesn't line up with the zeitgeist, it's not always intentional. It's just like, you know, there's a big conversation about this happening, but like, we're not intentionally avoiding that conversation.

• 50:58Chris Plante?

  That's, it's also like, if we're like, you know, the conversation has happened for Hades and it's like, okay, and now we're going to come in and tell you like, oh yeah, we generally like it. We don't want to get any yums. Like, that's not going to be a great bow to the conversation.

• 51:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:13Chris Plante?

  What else we got?

• 51:14Russ Frushtick?

  Last question. This comes from Leo. I'm surprised that Justin King of FMV has not talked about Road to Empress yet.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  Okay, can we talk about this for a second?

• 51:22Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  Can I just like, I, yes, yes, I like, I really like FMV games. And yes, when Plant pointed this out to me, I did say like, yes, I'll go get it. The thing is, what you have to understand is, the FMV thing is, you still have to play them with your own human time and hands. And like, the people that are using FMV, a lot of them are not doing it for artistic reasons. It's because they, they don't want to pay for the full version of Blender. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't, I'm not saying that that's the deal with this one, but like, I can't keep up with every like, you know, Eastern Bach developer that gets his hand on a Handycam and wants to,

• 52:05Chris Plante?

  This one does look good, though. I will say.

• 52:08Speaker 00

  This one looks good, but it is like, it's a rough tag out there. It is a rough tag on Steam, the FMV tag. It's a rough tag, so.

• 52:16Chris Plante?

  I get it, man. When I was growing up, somebody like my, my aunt decided that my mom really liked pineapples. Apparently, my mom must have mentioned this offhand. My aunt proceeded to tell all my mom's friends, all of my other, you know, relatives, cousins, whoever. And then every holiday and every anything, we would just get little pineapple trinkets. Until I was like 10, when she cleared the house out of this, and I swear to God, like literally a month later, my aunt was like, Kathy, you love lighthouses, don't you? Well, I've got you a new lighthouse. And I let mom know that you love lighthouses.

• 52:52Speaker 00

  I've got a game that's absolutely gonna freak you, babe. It's called Keeper. Imagine, you're a lighthouse, but you're walking around.

• 52:59Chris Plante?

  Whole house just full of lighthouse junk, and then it gets tossed out. Anyway, I was just gonna say, I know what you mean. You become that person, and suddenly people are like, I just love you. You gotta see this FMV.

• 53:11Speaker 00

  It is also, it does get a little bit old. I've been doing Besties for, you know. What is it 13 years at this point? And it does get a little bit old to be like, hey, guys, look at this fucking piece of tritus I found. Does anybody else care? No? Okay, well, that's my 30 seconds. Like, you get the script, right?

• 53:26Chris Plante?

  They're trying to bond with you.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Here, wait, I can do one. Hold on, what's the name of this game? Road to Empress. Guys, I want to tell you real quick about Road to Empress. It's an FMV game that I've been checking out on Steam. And I know that a lot of times these get a rep for like, not being that great. But like, if you're into those, if you're into FMV games, I can see that the other two are glazing over. So let me just say that like, if you're into those and you like that kind of thing, then this is a really good one. But like, obviously, if you don't like these kinds of games, then you're not gonna like it. And you shouldn't waste your time. But thank you, like, check it out.

• 53:54Chris Plante?

  Who needs AI? You can bash these things out whenever you want.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've AI'd myself. I've made myself redundant with my uncynicism.

• 54:02Chris Plante?

  Should we talk about what else we've been playing? Sure. Okay, good, because I want to tell you all about a terrible title, but an interesting game. Onirism, which I just don't like the title. It is French. I don't even know how to guess to spell that. O-N-I-R-I-S-M. Okay. And if you have been missing kind of a Nintendo 64 platformer, or like a Ratchet and Clank, or a Jet Force Gemini, somewhere around that space, right? Something where you're like, oh, this is a rare game. You hop around, you shoot things, but all your characters are like, super soakers, or, you know, silly fun guns.

• 54:47Chris Plante?

  You're a little girl in a fantasy dreamland. A little bit of kind of like a little Nemo sort of aesthetic, too. It is so big and so dense. There is so much here. They've been updating this game in early access forever. So even the game is like, I think, 15 bucks. There's like a playground mode, there's an arcade mode where you can do a whole bunch of like, high score runs of just like, shooting enemies. There's a humongous story mode where you are going through all these different, again, Nintendo 64-esque levels, but they look like they were made in Unreal Engine 4 or whatever.

• 55:28Chris Plante?

  It is a delight and if you have a little kid that you are looking for that kind of classic easy onboarding point, it is great. But, and it's the biggest but on the planet. Please don't cut that.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  Actually, I have the biggest but.

• 55:47Chris Plante?

  Okay, there we go, baby. We got it.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  And I want to say dank, thank you to Dr. Gonzalez. He put it in for me and he did such an amazing job. I wanted to have the biggest but on the planet and now I have it. Thank you, Doc.

• 56:03Chris Plante?

  Oh my gosh, that cake. Um, this is, they, they, Steam needs to rethink what early access is. And Alec, are there any, any way to monitor what a 1.0 is? This is maybe the worst 1.0 I've ever played of a video game. You open the menu and the UI is disastrous. It took me a beat to figure out how to start the game by establishing what difficulty I was playing on and which mode I was playing on to then begin the game. You get into the game and like, some of the cutscenes don't work. It's really, really, really rough, which is brutal for a game that is meant for kids because

• 56:49Chris Plante?

  in its current state, I would be hesitant to hand it to my son because I think he would get frustrated the second something breaks. And what's so weird about it is there is all of this extra stuff and they didn't focus on the, the basics. And again, in that first like 15 minute loop. And it feels, I feel like we're seeing more and more of this with game development now that it's easier to make and you can buy assets and all this stuff. Like you get into the space of, oh, our hardcore fans are already past that 15 minute loop in early access and they just want more and they're giving us ideas. They want new vehicles, they want new weapons, they want new enemies.

• 57:32Chris Plante?

  And we're just going to like churn and churn and churn and make more and more and more. But not considering the fact that like, hey, people are gonna play this at like, for the first time now. And having all that stuff doesn't really matter if nobody gets past the first 30 minutes. That, again, and then here's the contradiction. I bought it. I was excited, instantly extremely frustrated, so ready to cancel it, played through an hour, and then I was like hooked. I was in. I like had been on boarded. I knew what all of its like annoying quirks were. And then I was having a great fun in a Nintendo 64 style

• 58:12Chris Plante?

  game that I have been craving. But woof, I just wish that more of these games, if they're gonna say it's a 1.0 launch, actually make it feel like a legit video game. Like, these menus feel worse than the games that this is taking inspiration from. And that's just like, totally not acceptable.

• 58:35Russ Frushtick?

  Well, I'm glad you got it to shine it deserved.

• 58:38Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 58:40Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I wanted to call out a standup routine special that is on YouTube. It's an hour long special by Robbie Hoffman, called I'm Nervous. It's on YouTube. She is a former Hasidic Jew who is now definitely not a Hasidic Jew, and does a very, very, it was just like, one of the better routines I've seen. If you watch the show Hacks, Robbie Hoffman plays with the receptionist in the most recent season of Hacks. So, that's where she's from, but tremendously good on YouTube. We can drop it in the newsletter if you want to watch it. Justin, anything?

• 59:19Chris Plante?

  Yeah, you know, I watched, I like to watch scary movies this time of year. One of my favorites is the VHS series, because I like horror anthologies, because they keep you from getting too narratively invested, and you don't have to get too bummed out by them. You can just kind of enjoy the fun of it.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  And I felt really interesting is like practices too. And I think that uh, uh, uh, like experiments, I guess you could say. And VHS Halloween has a lot of them that are really fun. Um, it's on Shudder. Uh, and this is the eighth VHS movie.

• 59:53Russ Frushtick?

  I don't actually know anything about this franchise.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Really? Uh, so it is a, it's kind of an offshoot of the found footage thing that Paranormal Activity ushered in. But it is like, it kind of takes that concept and like, meditates on it for like a, a series of anthology films. So like each one, there's usually like four to five short films. Um, this one has a wide variety. There's like four or five different stories. Some are a lot more like, uh, slasher, kind of like, uh, campy horror. Some are downright like silly. There's one called Fun Size about a monster that turns people into candy. That's truly ghoulish.

• 1:00:36Russ Frushtick?

  Is it like Tales from the Crypt style stuff?

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  Sort of, yeah. And there's a, there's a framing device in this one. It is the framing. There's always a framing device in the VHS movies that like tie all the stories together. In this one, it is testing a new diet soda called Diet Phantasma that has horrifying effects.

• 1:00:54Russ Frushtick?

  I love it.

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  On everyone that tries it. But these, these are always really fun. Um, if you like horror at all, I'd say are always really worth watching. And this is like a really fun one. There's several really good, uh, stories. I want to tell you about any of them because like if you want to watch it, you can. But like it's, it's, it's really, it's a really good one.

• 1:01:11Chris Plante?

  If you go back and watch these on Shudder, because there are a bunch of them. Yeah. They're a showcase for both like indie talent that doesn't make a lot of movies or makes really indie stuff and cannot usually get funding from big studios. Or young talent that eventually is going to become famous after making this stuff. Like it is a way for them, I think, to try out a bunch of filmmakers with horror shorts. Alex Ross Perry, who made Listen Up Philip and Her Smell and Queen of Earth in this year's Pavements.

• 1:01:44Russ Frushtick?

  And Christopher Robin.

• 1:01:46Chris Plante?

  Did he make Christopher Robin?

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Chris Plante?

  Really?

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, fun fact.

• 1:01:50Russ Frushtick?

  That's great.

• 1:01:51Chris Plante?

  Wow, um, that rules. Uh, but yeah, the great stuff. Great year for Alex Ross Perry. Two documentaries and a horror short? Damn.

• 1:02:02Speaker 00

  It's good. It's a really good VHS.

• 1:02:04Russ Frushtick?

  Cool. I think we did it. Uh, Griffin will probably be back next week. In the meantime, please head on over to the Patreon. We have a new episode of Resties that is live presently. We have a new Bracket Battles episode that's going up on Tuesday, uh, which is a fun one to record. Uh, I wanted to thank a few people over at the Patreon, patreon.com/thebesties. We have Tanner, we have Bader. How do you pronounce that? B A D R? Bader?

• 1:02:31Speaker 00

  Bader.

• 1:02:32Russ Frushtick?

  Bader H. We have Will H. And we have, God, why did I put this? Captain BJ.

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  Captain BJ. Welcome aboard.

• 1:02:41Russ Frushtick?

  Thank you for-

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  He used to be an admiral. That's the sad thing.

• 1:02:44Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:44Chris Plante?

  BJ Blaskowitz.

• 1:02:46Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Uh, thank you.

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  I think it's blowjob, Chris.

• 1:02:49Chris Plante?

  Oh, sorry. Blowjob Blaskowitz.

• 1:02:52Russ Frushtick?

  Thank you for the-

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  Jumpman is the original name of Mario and the original name of BJ Blaskowitz is blowjob Blaskowitz. If you don't know this, Jumpman, John 314.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  That's the Spartan right? He's John 314.

• 1:03:15Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, Justin, what are we doing next week?

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Uh, next week, we are going to be talking about, uh, we got it. We got kind of a catch-up episode. We got several games to talk about. Uh, so we will talk about a few different ones. Uh, uh, what's the name of the seance one that you sent? That looks good.

• 1:03:32Russ Frushtick?

  Lake Man, uh, Seance at Break Manor? I think that's what it's called. That sounds very good.

• 1:03:37Speaker 00

  And I'm gonna go ahead and play Road to Empress because I do like FMV games.

• 1:03:41Chris Plante?

  Yeah, there it is. There it is.

• 1:03:44Speaker 00

  Over and over again. And I'm gonna make you listen to it.

• 1:03:47Russ Frushtick?

  I love it.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  Kept you waiting, Empress.

• 1:03:53Speaker 00

  That's gonna do it for us for this week on Besties. 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?

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  Besties!