The Witcher, But With Vampires? Yes, Please!

The Blood of Dawnwalker proves the old adage, “The worse the name, the better the game.” The debut from Rebel Wolves, a studio composed in part of CD Projekt Red veterans, is a grim fantasy RPG set in the Carpathian mountains in the thick of the Black Plague. It looks and feel at first like the The Witcher series, though give it a few hours, and you’ll see this isn’t reheated leftover. It’s got vampires and time management and bears too powerful to be bitten by a bloodsucker! To talk about this gem, we’re joined by Fire Escape Cast’s Mary Kish!

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

• 0:00Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's bullshit that you can't bite the bears. I think it's bullshit. First of all, if they're gonna let vampires eat rats and deer and wolves for their blood.

• 0:10Russ Frushtick?

  You legit can eat a duck and it makes like a death quack as you're eating it.

• 0:17Griffin McElroy?

  Right up out of the water.

• 0:17Chris Plante?

  You eat a lot of ducks.

• 0:19Griffin McElroy?

  And I don't know if this is part of vampire lore that like woodland animals are super chill with you and you can walk up and just grab. Have you guys ever tried to grab a duck? It's fucking hard. They have instincts. But if you get up on a bear and you're gonna fight so many bears playing this game, you guys? And you try to, you try to get a good mouthful of that furry neck so you can get strong bear blood inside you? The game says no. I think that's bullshit.

• 0:45Chris Plante?

  Follow me on this journey. I'm gonna give you a little tour of Catholicism for you right here. Okay?

• 0:50Griffin McElroy?

  If there's a thing in Catholicism about you can't drink bear blood.

• 0:54Russ Frushtick?

  I'm kind of convinced. You're gonna sell me on Catholicism right now.

• 0:57Chris Plante?

  Are you ready? Because Catholicism features a lot in this game. Okay, so I'm trying to put it all together right now. Vampires can't touch like crosses, right? Because like it like burns their skin, right? So we can assume that other religious things, holy water, that also they can't touch that stuff, right? Right? Right?

• 1:17Griffin McElroy?

  Right, right.

• 1:18Chris Plante?

  And then I am named after Saint Christopher, who is the bearer of Christ. But Saint Christopher is no longer actually a recognized saint because they don't know if he was a real person.

• 1:33Griffin McElroy?

  Milkshake duck.

• 1:34Chris Plante?

  What if he was actually the bear of Christ? There was some confusion in history and this may be the truest representation of Saint Christopher in video games.

• 1:48Speaker 03

  That's too complicated.

• 1:49Chris Plante?

  I'm just saying like.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  What if the bear just eats a lot of garlic?

• 1:53Chris Plante?

  Oh, that makes a lot more sense. That makes a lot of sense.

• 1:58Griffin McElroy?

  That's possible. I just want the bear power.

• 2:00Chris Plante?

  I'm gonna have to go with Mary on this one, you know?

• 2:04Speaker 03

  What if, because bears have thumbs, they can grab you and throw you off. Ducks can't do that.

• 2:10Griffin McElroy?

  I, that's a good point. Yeah, I forgot about bears opposed.

• 2:13Russ Frushtick?

  Me too.

• 2:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, damn it.

• 2:17Chris Plante?

  It was so obvious because they're always playing game gear whenever you sneak up on them.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  No, it's the religious affiliation. You're right.

• 2:25Chris Plante?

  Yeah, okay, I'm back on it.

• 2:27Griffin McElroy?

  It's probably a circumference thing, like a duck has such a perfectly biteable neck, but a bear is so wide.

• 2:32Russ Frushtick?

  You can't get through the fluff. It's easy. The fluff.

• 2:35Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, okay, fine. There's reasons.

• 2:55Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:58Chris Plante?

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

• 3:01Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Will Fraschlik. I know the best game of the week and get in there, Mary.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  My name is Mary and I also know the best game of the week.

• 3:09Griffin McElroy?

  Welcome to the Besties where we talk about the latest and greatest of home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club. You, just by listening, have become a member of the club. So delighted to have Mary back joining us again this week as we discuss the new game from the new studio, which is called Rebel Wolves, made up of former CD Projekt Red devs.

• 3:29Russ Frushtick?

  The studio is called Rebel Wolves. Let's be clear, because that does sound like a badass game as well.

• 3:33Griffin McElroy?

  I'll be honest, Rebel Wolves is a way better name for a video game than The Blood of Dawn Walker. My least favorite thing about this joint is the name of the thing. It's got too many goddamn nouns in it. Um, so Rebel Wolves made up a former CD Projekt Red devs who worked on The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. And now they've made a game that is very much like Witcher 3, but with vampires and stuff called The Blood of Dawn Walker.

• 3:53Russ Frushtick?

  You are stealing all of Chris Plant's thunder here.

• 3:56Chris Plante?

  I'm happy for him too, you know, like this is easy peasy for me.

• 4:01Griffin McElroy?

  Sometimes I like the game a lot and I know it is tough for me to like hold back and not just like let it rip.

• 4:09Chris Plante?

  It is kind of like your, like your poker tell, like when the longer you go on the intro.

• 4:14Griffin McElroy?

  If I know the name of the developer of the game, I probably gave a shit about it because I actually enjoy that. Um, okay, well, sorry, I stomped all over your shit again, Chris, and I apologize and I'll make lots of space for you. But can we take a quick break?

• 4:27Russ Frushtick?

  Let's do it.

• 4:28Chris Plante?

  Oh, of course. I'm but a hubble duck. Just put your teeth around my neck and chomp.

• 4:32Griffin McElroy?

  So chompable.

• 4:34Russ Frushtick?

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• 5:15Russ Frushtick?

  This is the Alienware experience distilled into one iconic machine. Visit alienware.com/15 today.

• 5:26Russ Frushtick?

  Before we get into it, I want to do a formal recognition of Mary Kish, who is joining us, has joined previously, but I think it was a bonus bracket episode for Patreon members only.

• 5:38Griffin McElroy?

  And this is. Oh, I assumed wrongly that you had been on the core product before. I apologize.

• 5:44Russ Frushtick?

  This is the core product that Mary is joining us on. Please listen to the bracket episode that we did with Mary. It was so much fun. Uh, it came out a while ago, but, uh, welcome, Mary. Uh, she hails from the Fire Escape Podcast, which is a weekly excellent podcast for gaming people. And you also do Twitch streaming, is that right?

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I stream every Monday as well, so, uh, really glad to be back on. It was fun because the first time was the bracket in which I had to do almost no prep. And this was a.

• 6:14Russ Frushtick?

  So much more.

• 6:15Speaker 03

  Son of a bitch RPG that took a lot of time, so, um, uh, but a lot of, a lot of good time, so it was good to do.

• 6:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I honest, when I booted this bad boy up, I was filled with dread. Partially because it's so dark and Gothic. It's scary. Vampires come to your valley where you live and they, they do kill all of the like mean rulers who were already doing it.

• 6:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, things were not great in the, in the lead up.

• 6:43Griffin McElroy?

  They weren't, things weren't great in the valley, but then vampires take over and you're like, oh, great. But then the vampires are like, hey, every month you have to come to church and let us drink your blood. So it's like.

• 6:50Russ Frushtick?

  But only a little.

• 6:51Griffin McElroy?

  Only a little bit of the blood, but if you're like sick or whatever, we'll fucking kill you. Like, it's bad. It's not a great setup. So that, but I was more filled with dread that like I didn't like the Witcher that much. And uh-oh, am I gonna have to spend 40 hours with a dude who looks like a dark haired Witcher? Like if the Witcher went to Just for Men's and went to, went to Supercuts and got a quick die job. This would be Cohen, the protagonist of The Blood of Dawn Walker. Uh, but I, I was delighted that I actually really liked spending time with Cohen and the, the scary world of Vale Saint Gora.

• 7:28Chris Plante?

  Let's talk about the intro because it sets up what the game is and also is so damn clever. I love the way the game introduces itself. It is doing something similar and different than the Legend of Zelda, uh, modern intros where it's like, here's a whole little version of the game that you're about to get. And it's gonna teach you everything you need to know and then also completely wreck your shit. Uh, so Mary, do you, do you wanna take a shot, kind of explain what happens here?

• 8:00Speaker 03

  I mean, I can, I can give you my best. Now, this is the, there's so much and there's like a lot of, there's a lot of factions and there's a lot of names of things that I won't bring up, but I know that ultimately you're just a humble dude. Um, strong, but a regular dude.

• 8:14Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Who loves his family, but you're dealing with a lot of crap. Because there's plague stuff and now there's people trying to, uh, now, now vampiric races are trying to, uh, suck the blood of your family every month and your family's not doing well. So how far do you want me to go? There's a whole.

• 8:32Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, in defense, again, let me just say, in defense of the vampires, things were bad before too.

• 8:39Griffin McElroy?

  Things were wicked bad.

• 8:40Russ Frushtick?

  I'm just saying.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  I love this. It's like the old king was bad, but the new king, not so bad.

• 8:48Griffin McElroy?

  What, what Chris is getting at is that the prologue sets up the rest of the, sets up the rest of the game. So I think, and it's just the first hour. I think it's an interesting conversation. If you really want to come at this thing like fully devoid of spoilers, go like maybe skip ahead a bit. But I think we should talk about the prologue because I, I think it's gonna be tough to talk about the structure of the rest of the game without talking about how it sets it up.

• 9:09Russ Frushtick?

  I agree.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  I agree. The whole point of this game is that the small decisions that you make have ripple effects throughout the rest of the game. So while we're talking about the first hour, which if you're interested in playing this game, you're, you're gonna get through this very quickly and then spend 45 more hours in this game. So this is a very small fraction of it, but I think it's important to recognize the context that you will be given in your very first prologue, you'll be given a day and you will be given, I'm gonna say 12 things you could do, maybe, maybe 20. But you cannot fit them all in because everything takes two to three in-game hours, which it lets you know with a little ticker and it tells you, hey, this is gonna take two hours. If you want to help your daughter go fishing, oh, uh, your dad actually wants to teach you something, uh, with a swordplay.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  Oh, actually, your mom, she's sick and she needs you to go get medicine for her. Which ones are you going to do and why? Actually.

• 10:04Chris Plante?

  That witch is hot. The witch.

• 10:07Russ Frushtick?

  That throws a little, puts a little English on the ball.

• 10:11Chris Plante?

  Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. Like your sister and your mom. Also, there's a witch who is an older woman figure in your life who seems to have taught you everything you know.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 10:20Chris Plante?

  Are you going to spend time just chatting with her?

• 10:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I will be honest, I didn't understand the stakes so well because I did waste one of my eight in-game time chunks in this prologue period of helping a man find his lost pig. If I could go back, I would have done things a bit differently.

• 10:36Russ Frushtick?

  Did you eat the pig at the end?

• 10:39Griffin McElroy?

  No, uh, no, I didn't. I did slaughter the pig. It's a sad story. Anyway, yeah, it, it, it gives you not enough time to do all this stuff in the prologue. So we were talking before we started recording, like, so did you all have this character die? Uh, no? Uh-oh. How's the rest of the gameplay out if that character is not in your game anymore?

• 10:57Russ Frushtick?

  This is gonna, I, I think it's in the first hour and we could just, I think it's worth setting the stakes here. Okay. Based on, based on decisions you make in that span, how you're spending your time, you can, apparently, and I didn't know this until 10 minutes ago, your mom can either live or die coming out of the tutorial. And I, she died. And to be fair to me, I did spend the time learning Latin with the witch and maybe didn't pay super close attention to the recipe that I needed to make for my mom to make her, uh, stuff better.

• 11:33Griffin McElroy?

  This rush fresh shit game fact, pro tips. Pay attention to the witch's recipe.

• 11:37Russ Frushtick?

  So she died, but I thought like, okay, that's fine. Like this is a stake setting moment where you basically like, if ever there was a reason to hate these fucking vampires, they literally eat your mom in front of you. Let's go fucking get them. But apparently.

• 11:55Griffin McElroy?

  What? Yeah, that did not happen for me or Christopher. Uh, I did a good job with the witch's potion. Saved my mom.

• 12:02Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, wait, wait, but not literally.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  I didn't kill her. I watched her be eaten because I also didn't pay attention to the recipe. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I thought she'd just be a little loopy.

• 12:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's what I thought too.

• 12:17Griffin McElroy?

  So what, what is, it's teaching you so many things. It's teaching you, hey, there's a lot of stuff going on and there's time. Yeah. And if you want to accomplish anything, you should actually just pick one or two things. Cause if you spread it out, you'll just end up failing everything. It's also teaching you that you actually have to pay attention because you can't just spend time with your mom and doing all that stuff and then she lives. It literally asks you how to make a recipe that at one point you were told how to make.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  And you can't look at your documents when, when you are making the decision. Cause I tried.

• 12:47Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  I tried.

• 12:49Griffin McElroy?

  And then it almost felt like an old, it felt like an old Sierra, like DRM, like you gotta have the instruction booklet open. So you know the combination. And it also teaches you that a lot of stuff, you're just not going to win. In fact, a majority of the stuff here is going to fail because you didn't have time for it, which leads to one of the darkest, funniest moments I have experienced in a video game ever, which is, you know, at the end of this day, the vampires are coming to town and they're gonna have a price that they want of all this human blood. And I won't get into the specifics, but things go pretty bad and set the entire game in motion. And when this

• 13:33Griffin McElroy?

  happens, it is well done. The writing in the game, great. The cinematic, excellent. The animation, all excellent. You are feeling rough. And then tick, tick, tick, you have failed blank. You have failed blank. Like 20 pings go up to let you know that you suck shit at this video game. That's, oh man. It's so good. It's like so funny and also really hammered home. Like, oh wow. So, uh, guess that's, guess I'm never gonna find that pig. It does a great job and it, it sets up. So once you get out of the prologue, you have a month, you have 30 days, uh, to basically stop the reign of the lead vampire, whose

• 14:17Griffin McElroy?

  name is Brinces, which doesn't feel like a scary name to me.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  What's up, Brinces?

• 14:26Griffin McElroy?

  It's not as cool. It's not as cool as like Dracula or like whatever. I guess that's like, uh, too on the nose. Uh, but you have, you have chunks of time. What's really smart is that you're not spending the time just looking around. It's not actually moving real time. So you don't have to stress about that. You could run all over the map in a single, you know, in game time chunk. It is whenever you, uh, do certain activities or when you learn certain skills, there's a skill tree, uh, that you will find like manuals to unlock nodes on that skill tree. And then some of them, when you learn them, it takes a little bit of time also. Uh, but that's, that if the, it is the condensed nature of the game that I think is why I'm enjoying it as much as I am, because it feels

• 15:09Griffin McElroy?

  so focused. I know I'm not going to be able to do everything I want to do. I know I'm not. And I've realized that I've got about 10 days left on my playthrough. Like I'm getting, I'm getting down to the wire a bit and starting to sweat a little bit about some of the stuff that I have not prioritized. I'm having to make decisions like, okay, I'm not gonna go with this. From what I understand, there's like a fuck ton of endings depending on what you, what you do. Um, and as stressful as that sounds and is like, much as you, I've worried I was gonna be second guessing myself constantly. What the game does a really good job of is like connecting everything and signposting stuff. So you will be doing one quest and you will find like a lead for some other one or a, a lead for another quest

• 15:52Griffin McElroy?

  that maybe you were stuck on. Or maybe you will, uh, run into a situation where you're confronted by guards, but because you befriended this person, you know, or you saved this person from one of the blood dungeons, uh, you know, from earlier in your playthrough, you can get through. It all feels like, it all feels pretty meaningful.

• 16:10Russ Frushtick?

  And I think that's where it differs from things like The Witcher or really most open world games is because you have this end goal and it's very, very clear. You know how everything ladders up. So it adds a certain level of meaningfulness to every decision that you're making. There's not a situation where you're like, oh, I'm not entirely sure how I should be handling the situation, X, Y, and Z, because you know, oh, if I help this guy out, he might come and help me later in the final fight with Brinces, et cetera. Who, who knows? We don't know what it is. You can, you contrast that with Witcher, Witcher 3 especially. Part of the reason that most people, a lot of people don't get into Witcher 3 is the first five or 10 hours, you're dropped in a field and there's 50 side quests.

• 16:52Griffin McElroy?

  Too much, man. Yeah.

• 16:53Russ Frushtick?

  And some of them are fantastic and some of them are totally forgettable and you never think about it again. And, but there's nothing really laddering up until much later when you realize, oh, there's this big boss, whatever. And I think this game structures itself much, in a much smarter way to make it feel like every decision really does matter.

• 17:13Griffin McElroy?

  What, what's weird though is it is a more extreme version of the drop you in a field and there's a whole bunch of side quests, because that is the structure of the game. Like versus even a Witcher or most video games, this game is extremely open ended. It's basically just a huge collection of side quests, but because yes, because you have this very clear chain of command that you're trying to work through to build up the strength and create, get the allies to go take on the, the evil lord Brinces.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  Brances.

• 17:45Griffin McElroy?

  You, you do have a, a structure, but I, I did not appreciate until, I don't know, maybe 10 hours in, how much it was just letting me kinda do whatever I wanted. Um, and trusting me to, to create my own story.

• 17:59Russ Frushtick?

  And maybe to a detriment, because I will say, I think I've played this game a little bit wrong and I wasn't having as good a time as I should have been having. And here's what, here's basically what I was doing was I was kinda nibbling at the edges of the various side quests relating to the vampire captains and nothing was happening. All the side quests were like, run into this camp, fuck these guys up, destroy a bunch of shit. Yeah. And then you're done. And then I'm like, okay, but how many times do I have to do that? When, if, for you to have some like good pacing to the game, you really should just focus on one of them and do a bunch of them. And then that'll like result in story missions.

• 18:38Griffin McElroy?

  It has a mercenaries style. Um, God, how would you float organizational flow? It's an org chart for the vampires who, who ruled the valley. Uh, and you can see, you know, how you are weakening them, how you are pissing off Brinces's, you know, different generals. Those activities for me, I agree, are the weak, like weakest sort of activities in the game. They were shit that I did as I was running between other more interesting storylines that are honestly, I, I feel like gonna be more meaningful when I reach the end of the game, because it's like the, those are, that's how you make the allies. That's how you find the, you know, the tools, the weaknesses, the new like magic abilities, like the really cool stuff is not on the org chart necessarily.

• 19:22Griffin McElroy?

  Mary, I was gonna throw to you because I also want to hear about the vampires, which is amazingly, we have not talked about vampirism.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  Like my vampirism?

• 19:32Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, well, not your, the fact that this is a game where you spend half your time as a vampire.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, the day and night cycle.

• 19:39Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, yeah.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  The Witcher Twilight. Yeah, you are, you are a dude by day and you are a vampire by night. And I think something we haven't talked about that we should talk about is how much cooler it is to be at night and be a vampire, because every time it was a day, I was like, the first thing I'm gonna do is purchase skills that cost half of my day, because I don't like to be a man and I don't wanna be this guy.

• 20:05Griffin McElroy?

  Interesting.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  I immediately burned through half of my day every day using my skill. I would never purchase skills as a vampire. That's, that's precious.

• 20:15Griffin McElroy?

  That's fun time.

• 20:16Speaker 03

  That's, that's merry time. And I use that to, uh, you run so fast, you, you're, use claws instead of a sword, which looks way cooler. Um, you're biting people and sucking their, draining their blood, which increases your life. Um, your skill set and your skill tree, we do have to talk about, is pretty sick, both as a vampire and as a, as a person, but the vampire skills are so much more fun, I think.

• 20:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  They are, they are so sick and you get to like, throw bats at people and zip zap at people and you can, you can jump really, you, well, you're not jumping, you're kind of like floating to a white orb that you place in certain areas. I mean, way cooler to be a vampire. And I think that is truly actually what separates it from The Witcher is like, it's a similar concept of taking a lot of stories, but what really I think made this more fun was being a super fast, super aggressive vampire that at any point, if you go too far down your vampiric path, which I did, because you get way more powers if you're a bad vampire, your options when you talk to people will start to limit.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  And it will stop saying like, someone will say, help me, my daughter is in a tree. And you'll be like, okay. And your options are, I can help you, I can't help you, or drink her and give in to your thirst. And the more hungry you are, or the more you give into your vampiric tastes, your options will all be given to your thirst. And then you just eat her. And that's absolutely diabolical. I got really in, I, the role playing of becoming a vampire was very fun for me.

• 21:50Russ Frushtick?

  So that's cool, because I, I, uh, in the way I play these games, I didn't wanna necessarily re-gear based on whether it was day or night. So I was like, well, I could use the sword all the time. So I just focused on sword abilities and a little bit of witching and a little bit of vampire, but for the most part, just sword stuff. And so now I kind of smoke shit just using like sword abilities, which has, it does have a cool bit, like you can dash and throw sand at people, which is really funny when you throw sand.

• 22:20Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, that's sand, real cool.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  Pocket sand.

• 22:21Russ Frushtick?

  You can do sand. I threw sand at a ghost and it was like, ah, no.

• 22:26Griffin McElroy?

  It's very effective.

• 22:27Russ Frushtick?

  So you, you do have the option. I mean, it's basically three trees that you can go down witch, sword, or.

• 22:33Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. And the, the middle one, the sword one is like, you can use it either time of day. And then you have your vampire powers that use at night. And then you have witchcraft, which you do during the day and you can't do at night. And I actually really liked that tree, uh, mostly because like, I don't know, it, it added more sort of like status effect things. The combat in this game is very much focused on, uh, directional sort of, uh, blocking and, and parrying. Uh, whenever you are being attacked by an enemy, it will show you like a little shield appear, uh, on your lock on cursor icon on them. Uh, and then it will show you the arrow from which they are attacking and then it will like flash orange right before it hits. And if you can, you know, hit the block button and point it in the corresponding direction, right? When it flashes,

• 23:18Griffin McElroy?

  you'll get like a good parry, which will open them up for another directional sort of follow-up attack that does a lot more damage.

• 23:23Chris Plante?

  For the listeners who are always telling us to play more Kingdom Come Deliverance, yes, it is very much like Kingdom.

• 23:29Griffin McElroy?

  Well, yeah, except it feels a lot more, I don't know, it feels a lot simpler, a lot more actiony, right? It's not that tough to like, execute strings of, of.

• 23:39Russ Frushtick?

  It also feels good within the first hour and not 15 hours in when you've learned to be a fucking farmer for 15 hours or whatever it was.

• 23:47Griffin McElroy?

  It looks fucking amazing too. I got in a fight where I accidentally aggroed like a huge group of guards in like a church courtyard. And I was like dueling them while like walking backwards upstairs, like it looked and sounded so rad. And it's a pretty simple thing, right? Like, point your cursor, point your stick in the direction you're blocking and then attack in the, the right direct, like, and you have to kind of have, do that Batman Arkham Asylum thing where you're looking out for other enemies who are trying to get in there and you gotta block them. And there's unblockable attacks that you just have to dodge. Um, but it's fairly straightforward, the, the, the combat, uh, which makes things like the witchcraft abilities,

• 24:26Griffin McElroy?

  uh, so much more valuable because they allow you to get openings in this otherwise like pretty rigid rhythmic like block attack, block attack. Uh, if you are in a, a group of enemies that are, you know, giving you too hard a time or attacking too quickly, uh, for you to get any of your own attacks in, like, starting to get in there and throwing some pocket sand in their face or like setting one of them on fire, like becomes a necessary thing. And, and I think that, that again, like it's the focus of this game that makes it work so well, because in The Witcher, I would get a million pairs of pants and they would have such incremental things that I'd be like, I don't really care. But if I find a ring in this game and it's like, uh, this one will let your, uh, witchcraft abilities recharge 15% faster.

• 25:09Griffin McElroy?

  It's like, oh, I like that. I, I was just thinking, I wish my witchcraft abilities were recharging a little bit. I don't know. It feel, because they're so limited in scope, it makes the, the upgrades feel a lot more, uh, you know, worthwhile.

• 25:21Chris Plante?

  I, I think it is doing something similar to the GTA V, change your character in an open world game for different experiences, but better, because it's actually the same person. And the things that you are during the day versus the night are so different. And that, that has like a variety of effects of it. Changes like how you prioritize, how you spend that time. Like Mary said, like, I'm just gonna burn my learning time during the day because I like being a vampire. Uh, if you are a person who likes to do a lot of the talking and it's like trying to like talk your way out of a thing, you're gonna end up spending a lot of time as a human. But there's also just the way you get around the world, not just that you can move fast as a vampire.

• 26:04Chris Plante?

  When you go into a city, this game like, I don't know, I felt like was revelatory of the kind of role play of, oh, I actually feel like a vampire. Because when you go into a city during the day.

• 26:15Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 26:15Chris Plante?

  You are on the ground and you have, you're completely outnumbered. And if you were to start a fight, it would be disastrous and you're not gonna be able to steal shit from anybody, yada, yada, yada. It turns into night and you can climb the fucking cathedral. The first time you get there by just like teleporting up it and like looking out and gauging, once you're at the top of the cathedral, you can gauge and do this like learning thing where you learn more about all the different parts of the city. And you can zip down and you can start just like dive bombing into people and sucking their blood and then zipping back up. You can break into people's houses from their like second floor doors, because all the doors in the ground are locked, but the upstairs they leave open. And you can start finding.

• 26:57Griffin McElroy?

  Does play it fast and loose, plays it fast and loose with the invitation law of vampires, I will say, because there's like.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  I'm going right on him.

• 27:05Griffin McElroy?

  I've had scenes where people are like, I know the rules, you can't come in here. And Cohen's like, god damn it. And then I will just go into a town and be like, sorry, man, your kid, your back door was unlocked, so I just came in here. And that means all your stuff is mine, including your blood.

• 27:19Russ Frushtick?

  Unspoken invitation. It was implied.

• 27:21Griffin McElroy?

  I guess so. Leaving the door unlocked is a way of saying, come on in vampire.

• 27:25Russ Frushtick?

  I had an interesting problem. I don't know if it's a pro, I don't think it's a problem necessarily, but an interesting turn of events regarding the openness of the game, because we mentioned previously that there are side quests that lead to some of these captains missions. I ran into a captain just in the world and killed it without having done any of the side quests.

• 27:48Griffin McElroy?

  You're kidding me. That's crazy. I didn't even know you could do that.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  I heard you can, uh, kill the, or you can go after the main boss too, without having to do anything.

• 27:58Griffin McElroy?

  Sure. You don't have to wait 30 days if you don't want to.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  So it's interesting, you can do the bosses as well.

• 28:03Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it was very clear to me as I was doing this fight and then after the fight, that like I missed a lot of narrative stuff, which I'm sure like side quests, whatever it was, because all the cool side quests seem to tie into a lot of these people. So I was a little bit bummed, but also like kind of impressed that the, the game didn't break in that situation.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  It makes it harder for you. The, each of the bosses, they have different, uh, boss fights at the end, right? That are all quite interesting and distinct. And, um, not doing any of those side quests likely give you such little help that you're just gonna have to brute force your way through that boss.

• 28:40Russ Frushtick?

  Which is how that, but yeah, that was tough.

• 28:43Speaker 03

  You're fighting a lot. I found, and, and this is interesting, because this is a part of the RPG nature of it. I liked killing more than I liked talking. I liked being a vampire that would kill people and I increased my vampiric powers every chance I could. Even if it was morally bad, I was like, this is who I am. And so I was very committed to that role. I had very few friends in this game. I had almost no allies and I would just kill, um, to get my way through these boss fights. I, I think that was a fun role play experience, but I would actually caution players about doing that, because as Griffin was saying, I think it's more fun when you're interacting and doing these fun side quests. That's actually where this game is

• 29:26Speaker 03

  the most enjoyable to me. But because I was really in, into the role playing, I, I actually murdered my way to the, to the finish line on this one.

• 29:34Russ Frushtick?

  That's awesome.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 29:36Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, you finished, you finished the game?

• 29:37Speaker 03

  On day nine, day, nine days left.

• 29:40Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, nine days left. Okay.

• 29:41Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, that's a, Mary, you might have the.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  Day 21 in game. Uh, I had nine days left and I said, I've murdered everybody. So let's keep this murder train going.

• 29:52Russ Frushtick?

  I think that's the larger question that I had. In my experience in playing, after the tutorial, which I was like really stressing about how I was spending my time, I kind of forgot to like, think about it. And I'm wondering, like, in your experience, having finished it.

• 30:08Griffin McElroy?

  Did you feel any of that time pressure? Or was just like, you have nine days left, but you really don't have a lot else to do. So I'm just gonna end it.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  I felt it a lot, which is why I thought I really needed to burn through the boss tree. I was burning through, so each of the bosses, as you were saying, they have like different quests that you need to do and they don't, you're not really talking or dealing with it. You're just killing them.

• 30:30Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  And so I was, I was destroying their blood barrels. I was removing all of their systems. I was pissing them off. I was infamy there. You have a bar at the very bottom of like how infamous you are. I was all the way up.

• 30:41Griffin McElroy?

  I love that.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  They hated me. I was irritating. They couldn't get rid of me and I, I did that 90% of my time in this game. I was very committed to destroying all these people, like for my family. I think that made my end result, which I won't spoil anything, but it's like my result is a direct reflection of how I played this game, which was I was a murderous, ravenous, really angry vampire. And my result is a lot of bloodshed and a lot of sadness and anger.

• 31:12Griffin McElroy?

  And Twister, you tried Twister with your family at the end, right?

• 31:15Speaker 03

  I, yeah, there's no happy, if the prologue of this hour and how bad, remember how, uh, Plant, you were saying like, I got all these like things that I failed at the end of the prologue?

• 31:27Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  If that upset you, you're in for a rough ending of this game because the rough ending is like, hey, remember that person you met and they gave you a quest to like save them, but you didn't? 400 people died because you made that decision.

• 31:39Griffin McElroy?

  That's great. I love that.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  It's gonna be, it's a, it's a brutal world. They set you up in the, in the prologue to tell you, this is a dark environment. A lot of people are gonna die. You can't save them all. It's really up to you of if your goal is to kill Brensas and all of his people, to help the people that you find in your way, you know, amongst your journey, or to really focus on your family. You have multiple avenues here and like, even though I, I didn't love truly like my result, that was what I deserved because I went for a very blood thirsty journey. I think, I think players might be more satisfied if they go for more human based interaction.

• 32:20Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I mean, I actually, I would be really curious to compare notes because like I've been playing it basically the exact opposite way where I've been trying to like do everyone's side quests and like, if I find something that's interesting, uh, that is not necessarily related to killing Brensas and his guys, like, you know, going, going after that. And like, I don't know, I did a whole side quest that was like pretty huge that like explores some facets of Cohen's like hit family history that the prologue doesn't really get into that was like, hey, this is actually really fucking good writing and character development and stuff, but I, but I don't know if you get that, if you go like full blown fucking murder mode.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  I didn't see it at all. I don't know shit about my family history.

• 33:04Griffin McElroy?

  That's great. I really.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  I was too busy, like slashing and.

• 33:08Griffin McElroy?

  It was a buffet.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  I was, I was brutal and maybe through the end of that game, I was like, I'm an angry person. It was not a kind game to me.

• 33:17Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe you learn about yourself. I love a game that is bold enough to do that, to say like pretty straight to your face. Like you're not gonna have time to do all this stuff. You're gonna have to do another playthrough. And I honestly, I think I'm gonna finish it. I've been enjoying it so much and I do, I am curious like what the other sort of path looks like, cause it also sounds like a lot of fun.

• 33:37Chris Plante?

  Can I, I, one caveat for people who are going to hop into this game, just as some expectation setting and help you have a better time. And I know that this problem happened at Fresh Nick too, which is you.

• 33:50Griffin McElroy?

  Which is man, they're all over the place. They're so scary. You go into their hut.

• 33:54Speaker 03

  Butt hot. We've been discussing sometimes.

• 33:59Chris Plante?

  The game expects you to save scum a little bit in the beginning as you're learning how the hell it works. And there's a very, very immediate example of this where you will go into a fort and you'll go down into the, the prison and you'll meet someone and he'll, you'll have this opportunity of like, hey, can you break me out right now or later or never? And like my instinct is like, yeah, I'll break you out right now. That sounds good. And, uh, we'll try that and you'll, you'll just get your shit wrecked over and over and over again. If you do this early in the game, there's no way you have the skill to do this and the game will not tell you this. It'll just keep wrecking your shit over and over and over again, and it will not be.

• 34:41Griffin McElroy?

  There are some quests that like tell you, oh, you're not a high enough level. I wouldn't recommend it. This quest doesn't for whatever reason.

• 34:48Chris Plante?

  Yes. And then you will go back and you can, fortunately it saves like five or six saves backwards because it seems to be aware that this might happen. And you'll talk to them and you'll be like, you know what? I'll come back later. And the fucking character will be like, yeah, that's a really great idea. It'd be a terrible idea to go during the day. You should come back at night. So then you'll come back at night and you'll get your shit wrecked again. And what you will learn is that actually you need to go and do things and you need to be at a skill level to accomplish things. As Fresh said, there are things in the map or in the quest log that will tell you, hey, that's a little bit tough, but it's not always right. This is all just to say, if you're having trouble with anything, it probably isn't gonna

• 35:31Chris Plante?

  fully disappear despite what the time says, and you should go on and do other things and not be like me where you bash two, three hours just against one quest in a game that's otherwise great. And I will also add on top of that, much like The Witcher and like every CD Projekt Red game, this game fucking rocks. It is going to rock even more in six months.

• 35:57Griffin McElroy?

  Absolutely.

• 35:57Chris Plante?

  When it gets its final round of, like not final round of patches, but, but get some of this early stuff tweaked because there is a bit of stuff that is gonna get fixed.

• 36:08Griffin McElroy?

  I feel, I feel the same way, specifically like I've also had quests where it's just like, well, what the fuck am I supposed to like? This is not clear at all. It felt like, uh, I don't know, something was missing to indicate like you actually can't do this right now. It's nighttime. Sometimes it does. There's like a little sun icon or moon icon that'll show up on quest objectives, but sometimes like it's weirdly missing. That, that stuff is, that stuff is a little bit weird. I'm really excited though, about this being like the start of a, of like a new franchise. They've said that they're going to do like similar stuff, but at different time periods, maybe not necessarily stuck in the Carpathian Mountains and you know, the medieval times, which I'd be like really curious. And I, I also feel like is one of the reasons I really dug this a lot more than Witcher

• 36:51Griffin McElroy?

  three also is that I didn't feel like I was missing out on a ton of shit. By the time I finished the prologue, like I understood a lot about this region and its history and my family's place in it. And like, that made it a lot easier to invest myself in the story it was telling, cause I felt like I wasn't already operating at a disadvantage.

• 37:09Russ Frushtick?

  Mary's just over there asking for seconds.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  I, uh, I murdered my way through this game. There's no one left. I don't think I could play a sequel. There's no one alive in my playthrough, unfortunately.

• 37:22Griffin McElroy?

  On earth?

• 37:22Speaker 03

  I mean, I really wrecked the place. It's pretty wild what you can do. Again, I'm like trying not to get too deep into it, but it, when you're a vampire, you also can decide whether or not, uh, you are eating the blood of the places you're destroying, which makes you a stronger vampire. I did all of that. Every evil choice I did.

• 37:43Griffin McElroy?

  What? Oh, I do that. Yeah. No, that's free blood, man.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  That's free blood. Hey, hey, it's free blood.

• 37:50Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. It's already in the barrels. It's just waiting. You just gotta tap it.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Wait, I'm not gonna suck that blood? It's crazy. It's crazy. And so like I, I, I went down such a dark path. It got to a point where I was a little worried I had lost my own humanity in this game. I wasn't really caring about people and I was, I was, I was just a real violent person. I would have liked, I will just say, I would have loved to see a little bit more variety in the types of, of beasts that I had slain because I went on a very action oriented playthrough. I killed a lot of wolves and a lot of boars. And I was hoping for more like, didn't have to be like a tree end, like in Witcher, but I would have liked more fantastical beasts.

• 38:35Russ Frushtick?

  There are some like, there are ghosts occasionally and like zombie type guys.

• 38:39Griffin McElroy?

  Good enemy variety, but when you're just going from point A to point B, running a mile in this game on the way, you will kill 30 to 50 feral hogs. Like that, that's a guarantee.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  So many hogs.

• 38:51Griffin McElroy?

  They won't be hard. They'll just be little blood bags that you just cut and then you can get a little bit of stuff out of them. But I think we all know that that's not the premium shit.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  If you stick to the paths, you're gonna see less feral hogs. If you go the direct path, so if you put something on your marker and you go directly there, you're probably gonna run into some shit, especially if you go into.

• 39:11Chris Plante?

  You got some hogs. And bears, which brings us back.

• 39:16Griffin McElroy?

  Bears.

• 39:16Chris Plante?

  To the Catholicism, which I just wanna put a bow on this. There is so much in this game and it really has a ham sandwich over, uh, the fact that you are drinking blood and giving blood to vampires versus what you were doing as a Catholic. They clearly are working through something with this game. And as somebody who grew up Catholic, I really enjoyed every ounce of it.

• 39:38Russ Frushtick?

  Oh my God, the frescoes alone in this game are stunning.

• 39:41Griffin McElroy?

  So many frescoes.

• 39:42Russ Frushtick?

  Spent so much time on it. This game rules. I completely agree. Should we take a break and then dive into another somewhat large open world game?

• 39:52Griffin McElroy?

  I would love to.

• 39:53Russ Frushtick?

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

• 40:41Chris Plante?

  Can we talk about how Mary's GTA, she actually has been playing it for review a little bit early? That there are no characters in it.

• 40:48Griffin McElroy?

  Mary's the leaker. And we can say that now. Mary did all the leaks.

• 40:51Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Chris Plante?

  Oh shit.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  The people need to know.

• 40:53Russ Frushtick?

  Oh my god.

• 40:54Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 40:55Russ Frushtick?

  Heads up.

• 40:55Griffin McElroy?

  Mary is anonymous.

• 40:58Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, Mary killed everyone in GTA 6. Congratulations, Mary. Keeping that streak alive.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  You can also play as a vampire.

• 41:06Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so GTA 6, they had their big debut. It was first on Netflix and I think it's on YouTube probably, like fully accessible by everyone. It was about 26 minutes of footage.

• 41:16Griffin McElroy?

  GTA 6 Extended Look. An extended look, it's called. And it certainly was that. Can add it on Letterboxd.

• 41:23Russ Frushtick?

  Yes. I'm curious if you guys have any initial thoughts, given the fact that this is the first time we're seeing anything resembling like actual legit gameplay? And we're not going to dive into the leaks, obviously. So yeah, like official gameplay, I should say.

• 41:39Griffin McElroy?

  It looks ama- like it looks really good. Like visually, everything, the vibe, the writing, the characters. I love the like, I love the two leads. I really am very compelled by the idea of having a, like, two playable characters who are in a romantic relationship with each other. Like, that's just interest- that's an interesting thing. I think this look, this extended look does a good job of like, giving you a feel for what that's gonna actually be like and the sticky situations they find themselves in. The game looks enormous and beautiful, but like, I don't know, I want to see what the, I want to see more of the, I don't know.

• 42:16Russ Frushtick?

  Is there Ski Ball?

• 42:18Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Like, it's the, it's the wild, open world shit that I feel like was, was maybe a bit out of it.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  They teased scuba diving or underwater stuff for the first time. A lot of water stuff. I saw kayaks and, I mean, they want you playing in that water.

• 42:34Russ Frushtick?

  That was someone's life for six years, is making that kayak.

• 42:38Griffin McElroy?

  Just the kayak animation.

• 42:39Russ Frushtick?

  Oh my god, they spent so much time.

• 42:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I mean, I guess it does, it did allude to a lot of that stuff, but I, I don't know. It felt a, it felt like a very, very, very story and tone focused, like, thing. And that all seems, that all seems great, but I don't know. I wanted to know about the mechanics of it.

• 42:58Russ Frushtick?

  If you remove the visuals of it, like, in terms of like, yeah, they can do splashy story missions with a lot of like scripted moments and crazy shit going on, like that stuff we saw in, even going back to GTA 4. So they've been doing that for quite a while. I agree with you, Griffin. I think the thing that I am most interested in is like the city and the area as a platform for hijinks, more so.

• 43:24Griffin McElroy?

  As a playground, right? Yeah. And it's, I'm really looking forward to GTA 6. I think it's gonna be a fucking fun time, man. Don't get me wrong. They've been working on it for a billion years. They spent a trillion dollars on it. Like, I think it's gonna be, I think it's gonna be good, right? But like, for me, it is the, it is the sandbox playground stuff that I'm most interested in. I'm a little bit bummed that it sounds like GTA 6, like, online is not going to, unless I'm mistaken, it's not gonna be there.

• 43:49Speaker 03

  Not at launch.

• 43:50Chris Plante?

  It'll be there one day. Yeah. I'm sure it'll be there one day. I, that's the stuff I'm like, most interested in, because I played a lot more GTA 5 online than I did sort of single player stuff.

• 44:01Russ Frushtick?

  I actually didn't know that. You, did you come around? I, I thought it kind of launched kind of messy, but I didn't realize you put-

• 44:07Griffin McElroy?

  It did launch kind of messy, but then they added the, you know, all the different bank robberies and-

• 44:12Speaker 03

  The bank heists were fun.

• 44:13Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 44:14Griffin McElroy?

  The bank heists were fun as fuck. They were so good. They were the, the most fun I've ever had playing Grand Theft Auto stuff.

• 44:22Griffin McElroy?

  And it's gonna be, like, I know they're gonna do that stuff and I know it's gonna be different and it's gonna look better and all that jazz, but again, that wasn't, I, I don't want to sound too negative, because I do think it looked good and it did get me more excited for the game, but I also like, would have liked, I don't know, a voiceover to appear sometimes and be like, "As you can see, Lucia is going to the local arcade to, like, I don't know."

• 44:45Chris Plante?

  One mechanic makes the entire game for me. And so I know this game's gonna be my shit, and that is, you gotta fill up your gas. You gotta fill up your gas. You want to steal a car in a game Grand Theft Auto? It's gonna suck shit. It's gonna be really hard. I don't know if this is true or not, but it sounds like depending on the quality of the car, it will be tougher to steal. That rocks. The idea of speeding down a highway and being like narrowly escaping the cops and then running out of gas? And then having two steals come in the car? But they're just like, lock the doors and drive off with their bulletproof windows?

• 45:25Chris Plante?

  And suddenly I'm just stuck on the highway alone? That shit, that is what I want. And I think Grand Theft Auto has been kind of in this weird middle ground between the almost arcade actioning of Grand Theft Auto 3. And then Grand Theft Auto 4 came out and they like, were like, "It's gonna be super real."

• 45:43Russ Frushtick?

  It's very sad.

• 45:44Chris Plante?

  The driving's gonna feel like shit.

• 45:46Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, you were very sad on that game.

• 45:48Chris Plante?

  Yes. And then 5 was like, starting to figure out these systems, but this is the first Grand Theft Auto since Zelda, right? Like, even since the Breath of the Wild, I think. Could that be right?

• 46:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah. It's been 12 years.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, 12 years. It's been a tween.

• 46:09Chris Plante?

  Bonkers. And, and I think that this is a game that is recognizing that the system type of play is fun. It is what creates great story moments. It's the thing that's going to like, be entertaining for Twitch streamers and is going to get little like clip shorts. But also, it'll just be super fun, moment to moment, having weird shit happen because of the elaborate systems of the game. And that the elaborate systems are not just what you see. Like, did you know that the dog will walk around and take a piss? That the systems are actually influencing how you play? That, that sounds great, if they deliver on.

• 46:42Russ Frushtick?

  I also want to call out the attention to the fact that like, the two main characters, seemingly based on the footage, are like affable and-

• 46:49Griffin McElroy?

  Super like, I was just about to say this. I, I, one thing that worked, seems like it's gonna work for me a lot better, is like, I found the protagonist of GTA 5 so unlikable, so detestable. And the, part of that is like, the kind of vibe they're going for, the like, you know, Michael Mann,

• 47:08Griffin McElroy?

  style, sort of stylish thieves, but they're also like, I don't know, yucky in a lot of ways. I, it feels like these two seem like, oh, they seem cool. They actually seem like a great hang. It'll be a much more pleasant experience, I think, probably.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  They are cool. I agree. And they, they seem understandable. They haven't gotten too much into the shit that they're in, that they're trying to get out of. They allude to it, right? Like, "Ooh, do you think they can help us?" Like, they're obviously in, in deep and it's what's putting them in these situations. But you're also gonna have to morally ask yourself, there's a reason that they always put really bad people as protagonists in this game, and it's because you're a really bad person. You're killing a lot of people. You are murdering innocents.

• 47:48Griffin McElroy?

  Mary's real.

• 47:49Chris Plante?

  Coming, turning it around now, Mary.

• 47:52Speaker 03

  You telling me that you're gonna be like, "Man, I really think Lucia's doing her best." Like, you know, it's not her fault that that baby carriage got in the way during that heist. Like, I think you-

• 48:01Russ Frushtick?

  It had cans in it. It was fine.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  You're gonna have to like, really roleplay a little bit.

• 48:07Chris Plante?

  Mary, the baby carriage isn't in the game. You modded that in. That was your choice.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  It's my sandbox and I put babies everywhere in my playthrough.

• 48:17Griffin McElroy?

  It is, it is like, it feels weird to me, first of all, let me just address, like, it feels weird to me to be talking about a trailer on this, like, talking about, talking about a promotional piece of material for what is ostensibly going to be the biggest blockbuster game maybe ever released. Feels like we are, I don't know, I'm not doing a service to games journalism, if you will. I do think it's very interesting that like Rockstar has this way of doing shit. Rockstar has this way of like showing stuff off from their games and right around the same time that they had this huge debut that went up on Netflix, that Netflix was teasing for weeks, also-

• 48:57Speaker 03

  Because they paid for it.

• 48:58Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 48:59Griffin McElroy?

  Because they paid for it. Huge, huge swaths of the game started to get leaked by, by someone. It is almost enough to make me feel like bad for the multi, you know, million dollar company Rockstar, but it is, it, man, that does fuck. I will-

• 49:16Russ Frushtick?

  I'll tell you, I, I definitely feel bad for the guy who spent a fucking year stocking the shelves in that random convenience store and now it's released in 480p. Like, I feel bad for that guy.

• 49:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Russ Frushtick?

  But yeah, as a company, they'll be okay.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  That guy's gonna be fine.

• 49:33Griffin McElroy?

  I'm sure he'll be okay.

• 49:34Chris Plante?

  You know who I feel good for, though? I feel good for Russ Frushtick, because he is going to play Grand Theft Auto 6 and he is going to say, "I need some quests. I need some stuff to do." And he is going to hang out with Steven Root, one of the greatest actors.

• 49:49Russ Frushtick?

  I was so over the moon when I heard Steven Root's voice. Count me fucking in.

• 49:53Griffin McElroy?

  I didn't realize, I didn't realize Steven-

• 49:56Russ Frushtick?

  He's the like, old fixer guy.

• 49:58Speaker 03

  Krusty.

• 50:00Griffin McElroy?

  God, I love Steven Root.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  I think in that scene, you press F to smoke.

• 50:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  That's gonna be the new-

• 50:06Chris Plante?

  Steven Root of Office Space, Barry, Dodgeball, Widows Bay, you know, everybody.

• 50:11Griffin McElroy?

  Everything's so good in Widows Bay.

• 50:12Speaker 03

  He's great. They've gotten good acting from the main protagonists as well. They're, they're very well acted. That first scene in this, in this release where you're going to do some kind of drug deal. Every character is unbelievably realistic and feels, you feel the tension of going to a drug- I think you go to the door and they say, you say your name and they go, "We don't know him." And I went, "Oh." Like, you're in, you're in deep shit. And then they go, "Well, we're here. Do you want us to buy or not?" And then they let you in. It's cool. Like, that makes you, the writing is excellent. You can kind of feel where they're going with it, but you'll have to, we'll have to wait to see more.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  I get your tension, Griffin, of like, this and this is promo and we're talking about it, but when it comes to like a $2 billion game construction-

• 51:00Griffin McElroy?

  Ancient game that, yeah. A game that would be a sixth grader that is not available for purchase.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  Can you imagine all of the young twenties teens that are like, "Man, this GTA looks really good." And it's like, when this last game came out, you were 10.

• 51:20Speaker 03

  You didn't play the last one.

• 51:21Griffin McElroy?

  I know you couldn't buy that shit. You could not.

• 51:23Speaker 03

  This is monumental. This is generational. And so when you have that type of generational hype, I think you just can't help but react to the nuances of this trailer, the fact that like, people are crashing into walls, which alludes that maybe there's going to be dynamic, you know, breaking of spaces and, and play that you're going to be able to like shoot holes through things and then run through them. I, I think they're going to really up the ante when it comes to how you get to solve a problem. You're going to shoot your way through it. They're going to put you in that spot, but how you get out, I think is going to be very malleable and up to the player.

• 51:58Russ Frushtick?

  It also occurred to me, and this is not really for the main game, but for online, whenever that does get released, for sure, they're going to have one hell of a battle royale mode. Cause that platform for battle royale would be fucking incredible.

• 52:14Griffin McElroy?

  They had to have done that already, right?

• 52:16Russ Frushtick?

  For GTA online.

• 52:17Chris Plante?

  Seems like it. It is five days long because you're just trying to find the last person.

• 52:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, somewhere.

• 52:24Russ Frushtick?

  Well, I'm very excited. Uh, we'll see how it is. Obviously no one here knows whether the game is any good or not, but.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  Except for me, the leaker.

• 52:31Russ Frushtick?

  Their pedigree.

• 52:34Griffin McElroy?

  It's a little violent for, for Mary, you were saying. It's got a little too much killing.

• 52:38Speaker 03

  And I love to kill. It's a lot. It's a lot. Gird your loins.

• 52:42Russ Frushtick?

  Very clear in this episode, Mary.

• 52:46Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I was pretty head down on Blood of Dawn Walker. Um, I, I didn't, I didn't play a ton else. Uh, you know, we just finished this season of American Ninja Warrior and I'm happy to go in deep. If you guys want me to talk about my thoughts about they got rid of Mount Midoriyama and now they just do a full blown bracket style elimination race thing until there's one person left. And I don't know that that's a great idea, but at the same time, races have reinvigorated the sport. So, anyway.

• 53:20Russ Frushtick?

  I will say, oh, I'm going to be so careful on spoilers this time, talking about a game called Blueprints where you're in a mansion and you do things. Um, I have best described as reached the area in which it would be considered to be presumably the end game, the actual end.

• 53:37Griffin McElroy?

  I think you're there. I think you hit it, man. I think you're.

• 53:40Russ Frushtick?

  I know, but now Griffin agrees with me. So.

• 53:43Griffin McElroy?

  He sent me a screenshot and I was like, that, yeah, you're in the, you are in the end.

• 53:47Russ Frushtick?

  I will say, the last time we talked about Blueprints in the last episode, I was saying, I'm kind of in this point where I feel very, um, hemmed in and it feels very narrow and I don't necessarily know that I'm enjoying it as much because it feels like I don't have a lot of like ways to tackle the thing in front of me. And suddenly I now have like an enormous fucking thing sitting in front of me that I'm trying to tackle from like 16 different angles. And it's very overwhelming, but in a pretty remarkable way. So good, good on you, Blueprints. You did it again.

• 54:20Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 54:21Chris Plante?

  I will.

• 54:21Griffin McElroy?

  Let me know if you need any help, man. That's a, it's a tough puzzle. Let me know.

• 54:25Chris Plante?

  I'll tease out the resties that we have coming up. We will be talking about Star Wars Zero Company and y'all, it is hard for me to have too many great games to play. It's rough when the blood of Dawn Walker is so good. And then you're like, you know, and I'm not even like, I liked XCOM back in the day, like, uh, the, the earlier early ones, but I don't know if I need more of that right now. I'm kind of soft on, uh, Star Wars right now. No, no. It is so good. It's so absurdly good. And Hawaiian is good. We'll talk about all that on Resties, but, uh, but even if you're not going to listen to that

• 55:08Chris Plante?

  episode, check out this game. It is, it's so.

• 55:12Russ Frushtick?

  They did a very good job. Mary, do you have anything that you're watching or playing or reading or whatever?

• 55:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, stop me if you've already talked a lot about Blood Dungeon, but I'd like to.

• 55:26Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  Tell you that I'm really enjoying Blood Dungeon. You see, after eight hours of, of playing an RPG and I am tired and I want to like rest my brain before I go to bed. There ain't nothing better than a 40 minute auto shooter dungeon crawler session. And when you die, you go to sleep. And so I feel like I can really zone out to Blood Dungeon. This is from the devs that made Nidhogg. Um, you can see it. You can feel it. You can smell it. This, these devs like making silly, crazy, wild experiences where you're just like shooting lots of things in a dungeon. When you die, you die, your session is done.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  But every time you play, you're collecting bones, which helps you expand the levels that you could play or the characters that you can play. All the characters are very different and fun. Um, one of them has a lot of guns. One of them is, uh, naked and has a sword that surrounds him. One of them is really agile and is also naked.

• 56:25Griffin McElroy?

  Baby.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  One of them is a baby.

• 56:27Griffin McElroy?

  One of them's a baby.

• 56:27Speaker 03

  Uh, one of them is a spider. I mean, they have a lot of variants that makes it more fun. But the thing I really like about it is that you can compare your scores, uh, global and friend score leaderboards. And so I've been trying to beat all of my friends' scores and that has been a really enjoyable experience for me.

• 56:46Chris Plante?

  I'm not trying to like diagnose you, but what do you think it means that you played a game where you spend 40 to 50 hours going around killing everything and collecting their blood and then taking a break with a game called Blood Dungeon, where you go around for 40 to 50 minutes at a time, killing everything and taking their bones?

• 57:03Speaker 03

  It's calming.

• 57:04Griffin McElroy?

  All these blood dungeons, all these blood dungeons are wearing me out. I'm going to take a break with Blood Dungeon. Singular. Just the one Blood Dungeon.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  It's peaceful in its own way.

• 57:16Russ Frushtick?

  Hey, Mary.

• 57:16Griffin McElroy?

  And it has babies in it.

• 57:19Speaker 03

  You're the baby.

• 57:20Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, you're the baby.

• 57:21Speaker 03

  You are the baby.

• 57:22Russ Frushtick?

  You don't hurt babies.

• 57:23Chris Plante?

  Gotta love.

• 57:24Speaker 03

  I like to roleplay as a baby who kills everything.

• 57:27Russ Frushtick?

  Mary, have you beaten Flood yet?

• 57:30Speaker 03

  Um, yes, I have, uh, I think I've beaten almost all the levels. There's one that escapes me.

• 57:37Russ Frushtick?

  The fucking starfish one.

• 57:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:40Griffin McElroy?

  The one with the starfish.

• 57:41Russ Frushtick?

  I can't beat that level.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  There's some real brutal ones out there.

• 57:45Russ Frushtick?

  It's great. It's a great game.

• 57:46Speaker 03

  But I actually find Flood to be one of the more interesting ones. I love it. I, it's kind of when it's just like a square. I'm like, all right, whatever. But like, how fun is it when the water rises over time? Or, uh, what's the one where it's just a bunch of tiny little cave systems and you have to break all the blocks to get through it?

• 58:01Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Tombs, yeah.

• 58:03Speaker 03

  Tombs is sick. Like, that's so fun. And you're like, you gotta pick the right character for it. I, once I picked like the, there's like a real chunky, round character. He barely can squeeze through and I put, I picked him in Tombs and I was like, well, this is on me. I shouldn't have picked the largest character for Tombs. He can't, he can't squeeze through anything. I died in like two minutes.

• 58:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Great game.

• 58:24Speaker 03

  It's great. Everyone should be playing Blood Dungeon. When you're not playing the other blood games, play, play Blood Dungeon.

• 58:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Thank you so much for listening to this, uh, week, this episode of The Besties. Uh, Plant, you want to tell everybody what we talked about today?

• 58:38Chris Plante?

  I would love to. We talked about The Blood of Dawn Walker. I think I got that title right. We talked about American Ninja Warrior, Blueprints, Star Wars Zero Company and Blood Dungeon. We also talked about the, uh, GTA six, uh, short film. Uh, and as I mentioned, you can and should add it to your letterbox. It's an important part of your valuable collection.

• 59:02Russ Frushtick?

  I also want to mention, we have a new Bracket Battles episode that just went live. Uh, this one was not with Mary. Go back and listen to Mary's episode if you haven't yet, but this one was with Matt Apodaca and it was a lot of fun.

• 59:16Griffin McElroy?

  Oh God, such a good one.

• 59:17Russ Frushtick?

  Right here.

• 59:19Griffin McElroy?

  No, I mean, he does have a, his powers are pretty, pretty incredible.

• 59:24Chris Plante?

  Parappa the rapper knows how to sing.

• 59:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 59:27Chris Plante?

  You know, I, I think, I think Irrefutable has a far more diverse set of skills than.

• 59:32Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 59:32Chris Plante?

  Parappa.

• 59:34Griffin McElroy?

  Parappa, I mean, Parappa the rapper is a game about Parappa learning skills, but there's only like six songs in the original one. So he doesn't, he doesn't have a long, also one of the songs is about him trying not to piss his pants while he waits in line for a bathroom. So like, I don't know if we can call that a skill. Yeah.

• 59:48Speaker 04

  If that's a skill, then I've successfully mastered that one.

• 59:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 59:53Russ Frushtick?

  Good job.

• 59:53Chris Plante?

  I could use some work. That's why they call you MCPP?

• 59:57Speaker 04

  That's right. Yeah. You'll never catch me pissing my pants.

• 1:00:02Chris Plante?

  Now do it like Parappa.

• 1:00:03Griffin McElroy?

  Iconic, right?

• 1:00:04Chris Plante?

  You'll never catch me pissing my pants. Pissing, pissing, pissing my pants.

• 1:00:14Russ Frushtick?

  So yeah, that was a lot of fun. We had a good time with Matt. Uh, we thank him for joining us and, uh, I also want to thank everyone else for joining the Patreon and supporting us. Uh, some new backers. We have Eric H., we have Richard M., we have Cameron H. and we have Mateo. Thank you for being members over at patreon.com slash The Besties. Last thing I'm going to say, very important, we are just about a month away from the big live show happening in New York City, October 9th, Town Hall. The, uh, link is bit.ly slash besties on Broadway. Get in there, join us. We're going to have exclusive merch onsite. We're going to have, uh, Q and A's, fun live show actions, special guests, you name it. So it's going to be a whole kit and caboodle and we'd love to have.

• 1:00:59Griffin McElroy?

  A whole kit and caboodle. Come and join us. Mary, thank you so much for joining us. One more time, can you, uh, remind the folks listening at home where they can find your work?

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Thanks for having me. Uh, I go live every Monday on Twitch under my name, Mary Kish, um, spelled M E R R Y K I S H. And, uh, Fire Escape is where we also play games. I usually stream them first on Mondays and then talk about them on the podcast. So it's a nice system. If you want to see how I feel before the podcast, you can watch it live.

• 1:01:30Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, sick. Go do that, everybody. And then join us next week, uh, as we play a little game called Onimusha: Way of the Sword, uh, which I, I feel like that game came out already a long time ago. So that's confusing to me, but I've heard it's good and it looks pretty fun. So you should join us as we talk about it next week on The Besties and join us every week here at The Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?

• 1:02:24Griffin McElroy?

  Besties.