Pod Insights The Besties In The Alters, Life Comes at You Fast About this episode The Alters is one of the year’s most interesting games, blending experimental sci-fi narrative with a clever management simulation. The Besties talk about how the game’s mechanics clock together, why the story deserved more space, and what makes the developers’ use of AI so irritating. Plus, Plante played an awesome Persona/SMT spin-off
Transcript 10,493 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Griffin McElroy? Really does sound like you're in a haunted house. It feels like they want to be part of the show.
0:08 Speaker 01 It added that whole real surreal Lynchian quality to the conversation, like a Telltale Heart, sort of like the ship is creaking beneath us sort of vibe.
0:18 Russ Frushtick? Just keep in mind, Rachel, according to Rachel, none of this stuff is audible, at least in my audio file. So if we reference it, she had to like physically add it back into the audio file.
0:28 Griffin McElroy? There is no way it today is. I think in the past it's softer.
0:32 Speaker 01 This is the, no dude, this is the craziest it's been.
0:35 Griffin McElroy? It got worse. It got much worse.
0:36 Chris Plante? It truly sounds like you are being like on the Titanic and you are working the hull.
0:42 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I, and this is not, we're not saying that, you know how sometimes we start saying things in a funny cold open way. That's like, well, this must be the cold open. This isn't that. I mean, it probably will be because it's so real and raw, but like this is it.
0:54 Griffin McElroy? We haven't counted, we haven't counted those.
0:56 Speaker 01 We haven't even counted. We're gonna have to count after. So they have to sink a diverse.
1:00 Griffin McElroy? But how do you sink something that already happened? You know what I mean? Like you're on some tenant shit right now and I'm having trouble following you.
1:06 Speaker 01 Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?
1:08 Griffin McElroy? I don't, I've never really quite understood what that meant.
1:11 Speaker 01 Exactly, Griffin. And you never, ever, ever, ever, ever will.
1:16 Griffin McElroy? Is that what she says in the song?
1:19 Speaker 01 And you never will.
1:20 Griffin McElroy? You never fucking will.
1:21 Speaker 01 Keep digging, Griff. Keep digging.
1:41 Speaker 01 My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.
1:43 Griffin McElroy? My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week.
1:47 Chris Plante? My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best Persona Shimagami Tensei spinoff of the week, but it's not the main game of the week and I'm throwing to my boy Prustick.
1:57 Russ Frushtick? My name is Russ Freshak. I know the best game of the week.
2:00 Speaker 01 A lot of syllables all around for everybody today. Hey, welcome to Besties. It's a video game clubhouse. You've walked inside, you've gotten a punch to enjoy, you've slipped off your shoes, you've put them back on because it's not that kind of party, baby.
2:14 Russ Frushtick? Nope.
2:14 Speaker 01 And you're gonna enjoy some great video game content. Now, how did you join the club? Well, you're listening. That's it. That's how you joined. We're gonna be talking about a new video game this week. It's called The Alters. And Chris, play it. What's that?
2:27 Chris Plante? The Alters is a management game in which you manage clones of yourself. That's right. You are in outer space. You are trying to solve a sci-fi mystery while also reflecting on all of the little choices you could have made that made for a different life. And you're doing that with the help of the plot of multiplicity.
2:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's basically it. Yeah. And we're gonna talk more about it. Not that there's that much more to say, but we'll talk more about it right after this.
2:55 Russ Frushtick? This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Lisa. You know, we are starting to get into the cooler months of the year. And you know what I love in the cool months of the year? An incredibly cozy mattress that you can just cozy up into. You got the blankets and everything. And I will speak from experience, but maybe not my experience, because Lisa sent me one of their mattresses. But it was timed as such where actually my son, who was becoming a toddler and needed like an actual bed, needed a mattress. So we had him use the Lisa mattress. And every time that I get into that bed to read him a story at night,
3:36 Russ Frushtick? I am incredibly jealous of his mattress because holy cow, that thing is incredibly comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory foam mattress by New York Times Wirecutter and is featured by West Elm as their go-to mattress partner. You can go to lisa.com for 25% off select mattresses, plus get an extra $50 off with promo code BESTIES exclusive to our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code BESTIES for 25% off select mattresses, plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code BESTIES.
4:16 Russ Frushtick? Okay, I know we have to talk about the alters, very important, but before we do that, I want to talk about the time I was in the shower.
4:22 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
4:23 Speaker 01 Good. I, may I be excused from the story?
4:27 Russ Frushtick? No, you need to be part of the story. The year was 2021, I think, somewhere around there.
4:33 Griffin McElroy? Something like that.
4:34 Russ Frushtick? And I was taking a shower and you know, sometimes, you know what, there's even a subreddit dedicated to this, the idea of a shower thought and a shower thought-
4:42 Griffin McElroy? Ross taking a shower.
4:43 Russ Frushtick? Dedicated to me taking a shower. The idea of a shower thought came into my head and it was, what if you had a hand towel and it said, "You dried" in Dark Souls font?
4:53 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
4:54 Russ Frushtick? And it took three years to make it happen, but bless McKay on the team for-
4:59 Griffin McElroy? Thank you.
4:59 Russ Frushtick? For executing it on it.
5:01 Griffin McElroy? Towels are so hard to, I do not know how you make a towel.
5:04 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, I don't know.
5:05 Speaker 01 And these things have been absolutely flying off the shelves.
5:08 Russ Frushtick? Genuinely, they did sell out the first time they were in the store and we have a restocking of it.
5:12 Speaker 01 They're extremely good, folks.
5:14 Russ Frushtick? We couldn't even promote it the first time it sold out so quickly. So if you want a hand towel that said, "You dried" in Dark Souls font, I guess don't sue us.
5:23 Speaker 01 And you may be thinking that you can do it yourself, but it took Russ three years.
5:27 Griffin McElroy? You have that kind of time.
5:29 Russ Frushtick? Now, I was really the creative director on this project. I had nothing to do with the execution, but I'm glad that it exists and that you could just Google Dark Souls, I don't know, Dark Souls. It's in the merch store, the McRoy merch store.
5:43 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
5:43 Russ Frushtick? You dried towel. Should narrow it down.
5:47 Griffin McElroy? It's macroymerch.com.
5:48 Speaker 01 All right, thank you. So The Alters is not quite like any other video game I've ever played. It roll, it's, I'd say it's mechanics and narrative kind of unroll together, but as Chris alluded to, you are on a space station that's populated and crewed by clones sort of of yourself. You can think of these clones due to a bunch of sci-fi nonsense that really doesn't, it doesn't-
6:15 Griffin McElroy? Doesn't quite work.
6:16 Speaker 01 Explanation, it doesn't really make sense, but do some sci-fi nonsense. There are branching points in your life where if you had made a different decision- The science of this world, this quantum computer and this thing called the womb, will let you switch that moment in time. So you made a different decision. Maybe you stood up to your dad when he was being mean to your mom, or maybe you stayed in school instead of dropping out. And that creates a new branching timeline for yourself. This, uh, this scientific magic in the game lets you create a clone that made a different choice at that point and is thereby has a different life experience and for our gameplay purposes, a different skillset.
6:51 Griffin McElroy? It's like if Gwyneth Paltrow could have pulled Gwyneth Paltrow through this light in door. Right. Into her own world on the other side of the door.
6:58 Speaker 01 Yes.
6:59 Griffin McElroy? Never seen the movie, but that's what the alters is like.
7:01 Chris Plante? And also if when Gwyneth Paltrow did that, she was like, oh, you bought a computer that day and now you're really good at hacking.
7:08 Griffin McElroy? Right.
7:08 Chris Plante? And then somebody else is like, oh, you stepped in rain puddle that day and now you're a marine biologist.
7:14 Griffin McElroy? And also the Gwyneth Paltrow that you pulled through the door would be like, fuck you. I hate you, other Gwyneth Paltrow. And I'll be like, here, eat some spaghetti. It's my mom's recipe.
7:21 Speaker 01 It's, you know how Wayman Wang is, he runs a laundry
7:29 Speaker 01 machine place in one reality and another reality, he's a soldier. This is like that, except there's like eight different realities or 10 or 12 or 15 or however many, where he's made different branching choices that have made him have different careers, like doctor or miner or refiner or whatever. And these like, as you create these different identities, uh, and you research these different clones of yourself, you both have to like, use them in a mechanical sense where you use their skillset to help you crew this spaceship that will hopefully help you, you know, do your science mission. But you also have to deal with them as people, as characters. This is like human beings that are adjusting to the very weird circumstance of being a clone.
8:12 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, it's a little bit Sims and a little bit just like No Man's Sky resource gathering.
8:16 Chris Plante? Yeah, I had not put together the everything, everywhere, all at once connection, but yeah, it's extremely, extremely there.
8:24 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
8:24 Chris Plante? Um, yeah. So the actual gameplay of it, it has a rough start. Let's talk about that because I do think the game gets much, much, much, much, much better.
8:33 Griffin McElroy? Yeah. You're on a crashed ship, the only survivor of the crashed ship, and you find your like base, your headquarters intact. You make it there, you're the only one alive, but the sun is going to come and destroy the surface of the planet and kill you in 10 days.
8:49 Chris Plante? Fortunately, your base is a giant wheel.
8:52 Griffin McElroy? Right.
8:52 Chris Plante? That can drive.
8:53 Griffin McElroy? Awesome.
8:54 Chris Plante? Away from the sun.
8:55 Griffin McElroy? Right. I did not recognize that at first. I thought, damn, man, like, I've almost blown through all my 10 days and all I've done is get enough, uh, uh, biological material to make food slime. Um, I'm fucked. But then it turns out that's just kind of the tutorial and then there is more game after that.
9:13 Chris Plante? Yes. So the beginning is tough because it is a game about, uh, accumulation and hoops. We were talking before we even recorded this about the idea of like incremental games and where the more you invest in it, the more it plays itself. So at the beginning, you have to do all the manual work. So you are just cleaning up the base, getting food, setting up rooms. You're having to go out and mine different resources. You're having to set up these beacons that create power supplies between your base and the mining stations that are elsewhere in the world. Exploring the world itself is a little bit confusing. It's just a lot to intake. And then on top of that, you're laying in a lot
9:52 Chris Plante? of heavy narrative lifting, which is the, the, here's the magical trick that makes all this sci-fi goobly goop work.
10:03 Griffin McElroy? Right.
10:04 Chris Plante? It's a lot to ask of the player, which is why if you do end up playing this game, I encourage you to get past that hour because then, once you do get into it, hoops, can you explain how the game works when, when the game game actually starts?
10:17 Griffin McElroy? Okay. So at this point, I'm in the sort of second act of the game. I've moved the ship a couple of times and I think that structurally, it seems like you come across a big obstacle that keeps you from moving forward and then you have to solve that and then you'll move on to the next sort of like big section. Currently I have four clones of.
10:39 Speaker 01 Yon, the lead character, I have a miner, a refiner, a scientist and a technician. And the four of them are, I have a lot of different jobs. There's different types of mining stations that I have on the planet that mine different types of resources. There is an infirmary on the ship that can be staffed by a doctor. There's a lab that needs to be staffed for research. There's a kitchen that needs to be staffed for cooking. Uh, there's refinery, a greenhouse where plants are being grown. And basically I'm moving these cats around, uh, having them like figure out what tasks are important for them to do.
11:22 Speaker 01 And you're kind of always under the gun of the sun is inching towards you and you need to move before you get fried. So it's like balancing the quality of life of your clones with the how quickly you need to get the thing, the, you know, the thing underway. So idle or incremental is not quite, it's not quite accurate because like it is more of a resource management game. Because you will die if you are not fast enough.
11:48 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, you're crewing like a team. It's almost like FTL in that way rather than like, you can't just leave it alone and have it do its thing. It requires like a lot of hands on time.
11:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, and the narrative is, is, is constantly kind of evolving in what seems like a really sort of, uh, organic way. Where just you see a couple of your alters like arguing with each other in the kitchen. And you'll get like a little pop up on your HUD and you'll go in and see what they're talking about. And sometimes it's mechanical, sometimes it's one of the alters thinks that you should, uh, curb your resources. And the other one thinks that you should let everybody sleep more because it would be better. And you have to make that decision and maybe you're going to piss one of those alters off and make the other one happy. So you have to like moderate their mood. And there's sort of this idea is if you, and this is, uh, sort of persona like I guess, but you, if you progress the relationship enough with the alter,
12:42 Speaker 01 you eventually learn like a lesson from them. And that lesson is mechanical in the sense that like upgrades your character in some meaningful way. So you like learn the thing that you're supposed to learn from them.
12:54 Russ Frushtick? Like it feels like a traditional like squad based RPG in that way, just because their clones kind of doesn't matter because they all have pretty divergent storylines based on where those split in their memory happened. And so you just treat them as characters and oh, this one's good at this and this one's good at this, which I think conceptually is like incredibly unique, like
13:16 Griffin McElroy? I think conceptually it kicks a lot of ass.
13:18 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
13:18 Griffin McElroy? I am impressed at that they were able to kind of like achieve what they achieved with this like branching pathway of your life clone idea. But I do feel like the idea is maybe a little bit more ambitious than they could pos- than they could like tell in a story. I feel like there's a lot of, like, you'll be watching a cutscene that will suddenly jump to like a slideshow with like a little bit of dialogue over it. And I get that there there are certain like, you have to take certain shortcuts to tell a story with like an infinite web of of
13:56 Speaker 01 It's disjointed though. It feels it feels budget driven rather than like there's some narrative reason for this to be a cinematic right now. It seemed like there were several characters talking at once and we're just not going to animate that.
14:07 Griffin McElroy? Yeah. And outside of like the little scenes that you get with them that they do not come across as particularly vibrant, you know, characters.
14:15 Speaker 01 Yeah. I will also say, and I should have mentioned this earlier, there is like another big aspect of this that is like, there is a open world sort of that you're exploring, not open world, it's, it's very structured, but it's like you can theoretically go wherever in this individual area, but where you are finding resources, sort of marking them, collecting them, building resource collection things and exploring and there's some sort of like Not similar to enemies. There's some like sort of pseudo enemies that you can find and deal with that you can collect resources from. So this is like a more active mechanic that only you can do. Your, your alters can't go out and like explore and find stuff. That's just you.
15:01 Griffin McElroy? Um, the map is very unappealing at first, I will say, but you are able to add fast travel points to it when you create big structures out in the world like automatic, automatic, uh, automatic, like mining stations. Uh, if you build one of those out in the world, then you can fast travel to it anytime you leave the ship, but it has to be powered. So what ends up happening is you build like actual power grids across this island. And so like navigating this pretty confusing, twisty, turny map is made a little bit more manageable by the fact that like you can actually, you can look out the ship and look at your power grid and see like, okay, it stops there. Like that is the area that I have not really fully explored yet.
15:44 Speaker 01 You can also usually find your ship. If you look around, it's big. It looks like a huge ass ring in this dirt.
15:51 Russ Frushtick? I didn't find the running around outside stuff to be super compelling. I mean, eventually, as Justin alluded to, you like, there's some evil clouds that you need to fight, uh, which adds some complexity to it, but it feels fine. But like, I, I actually found the like doing the stuff in the base far more compelling. Like the other stuff felt like added on.
16:11 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, I, I think so too. I think that a lot of games just will give you the, just give you the sort of, uh, headquarters, science lab simulation side of things. I'll have Fallout Shelter without.
16:22 Russ Frushtick? Or even like Allah, um, this world, this war of mine.
16:26 Griffin McElroy? Right. Yeah, sure.
16:27 Russ Frushtick? The same studio, which I mean, Justin, you were saying, there's not a lot of games like this. Like that's a kind of a direct one-to-one. It feels like they brought over a lot of the design base building stuff into this, but added on top of it.
16:40 Griffin McElroy? I didn't hate the exploration stuff. Once I was able to like build a grappling, like a climbing hook. And like, once you get some of the tools that-
16:49 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, I didn't hate it. I just, it just didn't feel the super compelling.
16:52 Speaker 01 It does an interesting job of like making you feel like you're being like having to manage your time and your resources. Like, I think it's a decent, like, you always feel a little bit of that pressure of like, God, I'm really far out here and I'm not sure I can make it back. Or, I'm not sure I have enough energy to like climb back the way I came or something. That could be interesting.
17:11 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, I agree with that. I just like the fact that you can in the, when you're back at the base, it is like quasi 3D. It's like a 2.5D. And it just adds like a little bit of depth, like literal depth, where you can go in and out of the background of the environments that you're in and interact with like computer screens and things like that. I thought that was, it felt very fluid.
17:32 Griffin McElroy? It very much reminded me of Shadow.
17:36 Chris Plante? Oh, Shadow Complex?
17:37 Griffin McElroy? Shadow Complex was that Orson Scott Card?
17:40 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
17:40 Griffin McElroy? Oh, God.
17:41 Russ Frushtick? The aspect we don't like to focus on.
17:44 Chris Plante? Dave Chappelle, I think, was the developer who had then gone to make Fortnite.
17:48 Speaker 01 There's some really fun, it does some really fun stuff with the story. I had got, I had a, at one point, the point that I would just reach the guys decide that they could pick up their spirits by starting a band. That's a lot of fun. The characters are, the dialogue's interesting because the characters are, like, they're all you, in a sense, but obviously they've had very different life experiences. And there's not like a assumed, how can I say this? There's not like, when you're the protagonist in a game like this, there's an assumed rightness, like, because you are the moral lens through which the rest of the game is told, right? Like, your character is sort of your entryway into this, right? They're your avatar of the
18:33 Speaker 01 world. And it's weird because the other ones, there's this assumption that they're kind of right too, in the same way. But you have to keep reminding yourself that they are not your character, right? That they are a-
18:45 Griffin McElroy? Another resource you are kind of managing.
18:47 Speaker 01 Right. Yes, exactly. And there's like, there's a tension to that. Whenever you're talking to one of them, we're like- They are, there's a couple of times where they bump up against their own unreality. And that is like, can make a lot of the conversations really interesting, I think. And like, gives them an interesting heft.
19:05 Chris Plante? Yeah, I want to talk about the scope and like, the challenge of making a game like this. And even playing a game like this, which you mentioned some things that look really nice. Like the, the shadow complex style look inside. But then randomly, we will be thrown into these 2D sliding comic cutscenes. Or sometimes the world looks like absolutely beautiful and scenic. And then the other times where you turn a corner and all the craggy-ness and you have found yourself in an Xbox 360 game.
19:36 Speaker 01 Right.
19:36 Chris Plante? And I just think making a game like this is such a challenge. Because, I mean, in playing it, it's frustrating almost to play a game like this. Because I can sense where it's making decisions to create a sustainable version of itself, I guess. To not become a like AAA version of this game. And at the same time, it still clearly wants to look AAA. It still wants to be able to have like its trailer and its any given image look like a AAA game. And I almost like it to a detriment where I wish that it could have been a bit more simplistic in how it looks.
20:20 Chris Plante? And in the world that you are in, and really, really just focused on the story. And all the stuff that you're talking about hoops, because I, I enjoy that. And you can feel this thing where that is clearly where their interest is. That is clearly where their investment is. And yet there is some pressure for it to look and feel bigger than they necessarily have like the time or the resources for. And I don't, I don't know the answer, because they probably know much better than I do of if they had made this game look like a game I loved last year. Um, 1000x resist or strike resist or whatever. Would it have like found its audience? I don't, I don't know. Like, I really don't know.
21:02 Chris Plante? People say they want games that look like worse, but I don't know if that's actually true.
21:08 Griffin McElroy? Yeah. For me, the visuals weren't like the part where the short, the shortcomings were sort of more visible as much as it was like the, the, the speed at which I think they had to kind of tell, tell the story since it was as, you know, open, open-ended as it was. Talking about sort of like the budgetary concerns also does bring up the fact that they were sort of caught using AI-generated, I think like background text and translation.
21:41 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, some of the, in the game when it released, I think it has been patched out, but in the game when it released, there were like literal AI prompts and some of the like sciency. It's like, generate some sciency dialogue for us, which is.
21:56 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, the one I saw was like, okay, you got it. The nano weave of the, yeah. Which they, they did cop up to.
22:05 Russ Frushtick? They did. It's, it does give me pause because it tells me like, I don't know, you know, they said it was a tiny, tiny percentage of the overall. I don't know for sure how much was generated. So it does give me.
22:18 Griffin McElroy? You also have to mark that, like Steam has a notification specifically for games that.
22:23 Speaker 01 Here's a solution to this. It's called Lorm Ipsom. This has been something that people have been using for a long time to use as fill text. I think from my read, the only reason you wouldn't use that is in case you're like, well, we might forget.
22:39 Russ Frushtick? That's why you do TK, TK in capitals. It's very visible.
22:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, you can't miss that.
22:44 Chris Plante? I, Luke Plunkett over at Aftermath wrote a story called, I'm getting really tired of not being able to trust that a video game doesn't have AI crap in it. And I think that is a lot of the vibe right now with this, where it's like, it's coming into a game like this that is made by a developer and publisher that has made like some really great stuff. I think like tends to make stuff that is like human and existential.
23:06 Griffin McElroy? They used Frostpunk, all the Frostpunk.
23:08 Chris Plante? They did Frostpunk, they published Indica, you know? It's just, it's a, it is extremely frustrating and it's especially frustrating when the Steam. Warning doesn't help, right? Like, people are supposed to be able to use that. It just sucks. It's also just leading to a lot of like, I feel like I see this now in other games, where if people don't like the writing, it's this assumption of like, well, I'm sure it's AI crap.
23:33 Griffin McElroy? Oh dude, the fucking like, uh, what, Voit, Voit Comp, uh, uh,
23:39 Chris Plante? Yes.
23:40 Griffin McElroy? It's the, having to run the numbers on every single thing, that every asset that you see and every word, it's, it's, it sucks. It's not.
23:47 Russ Frushtick? Well, good news, I know for sure that Split Fiction was not written by AI.
23:53 Chris Plante? Man, I missed a fucking zesty episode.
23:57 Speaker 01 Let's do, let's do that one again, man. I would love to continue being right about Split Fiction while the internet burns around us.
24:04 Griffin McElroy? I, I really, I, this, this game is kind of heartbreaking for me because I really think it's a cool idea. And I really think they did some cool stuff with how they, uh, told this like incredibly branching story and explored this really interesting sci-fi prompt.
24:19 Griffin McElroy? But there, I don't know, there's a lot of parts of it that just felt like not quite fully fleshed out enough. And I think maybe to fully flesh out the ideas in such a like ambitious prompt would be, you know, maybe fiscally impossible or whatever, but.
24:34 Russ Frushtick? I think it also is harsh for us as well because we're coming off of Death Stranding, which does some similar things in terms of like automation and like manager, resource management, things like that. And obviously that is like a massively, massively huge budget game. So, but they're both doing some more things, so it's, it can be a little bit tricky. Hey, let's take a break.
24:57 Chris Plante? I used to recommend a VPN to like anybody who was 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.
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26:11 Chris Plante? when you go to protonvpn.com/besties. 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.
26:33 Russ Frushtick? Second half of the show, we have a handful of questions. This comes from our Patreon people. Thank you for being members. We're going to read some of your questions because we love you. We love everybody, but Patreon members, we like you a lot.
26:46 Griffin McElroy? I don't love every, I don't love everybody. That's insane, dog.
26:50 Russ Frushtick? I meant everyone who listens to the show.
26:52 Griffin McElroy? I'm not even going to own that because what if some real creepazoids check it out one time? Because they're, you know what I mean? Like I, most of the folks who listen to our show seem amazing. I'm not going to say every single one of them.
27:03 Russ Frushtick? Right.
27:03 Griffin McElroy? You know what I mean?
27:04 Russ Frushtick? No, that's fair.
27:04 Chris Plante? Bad apples ruining the bunch.
27:06 Russ Frushtick? That's fair. This first letter comes from Tokyo. As people who notoriously don't finish games, what is a good way to stick with the games I love, but fall off towards the end?
27:15 Griffin McElroy? I don't know why you would say we notoriously don't finish games and then ask us how to do the thing we notoriously don't.
27:20 Chris Plante? Yeah. How about notoriously, just leave us alone?
27:24 Russ Frushtick? I think it's just pick, for me, it's just pick your battles. Because yeah, I mean, you're right. We don't necessarily have time to finish a lot of games. So I pick a few. I'm going to beat Death Stranding. I'm working my way through it, but you can't.
27:37 Griffin McElroy? It's inconvenient when the game that you fall in love with and decide to finish is a...
27:45 Griffin McElroy? 120 hour long Japanese role playing game like there is a there's a certain extent to which I do the same thing make those choices of like okay I'm gonna see this through.
27:54 Russ Frushtick? But you can also like if you know if you're saying it falls off towards the end, just watch it on YouTube.
28:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I really I I think that there's a real value to that. You get the gist of it. That's great. You know what I mean? Especially if it's the narrative you care about. You don't need to click attack a thousand times. Just go see, you know, which dragon has sex with which dragon or whatever.
28:15 Griffin McElroy? I also reach a point in games. I'm usually kind of a completionist when it comes to like RPGs and stuff, but I will. If I hit a point where I'm like, I'm feeling like the the spark is gone a little bit, I will just bum rush the ending as quickly as I possibly can. And usually like it turns out okay.
28:34 Russ Frushtick? Drop it down to easy.
28:35 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, sure. Why not?
28:38 Russ Frushtick? Okay, this next question comes from Nicholas. With how terrible Steam and the rest of the stores are for searching, how do you discover worthwhile games that aren't huge, talked out releases? I'll give you two methods that I use. One of them isn't as useful, but it's useful for me. It has been at least. I found a lot of stuff through my Instagram ads. This is not an ad for Instagram like fuck Instagram, but I have seen just like.
29:04 Griffin McElroy? My tick my answer is my TikTok algo will show me clips from streamers that I do not follow, but like knows that I like games and shit. And so it will I'll occasionally see a clip from some streamer playing a game and I'll be like, that looks fucking great.
29:20 Russ Frushtick? The other methodology that I use is SteamDB, SteamDB.com, I guess. Allows you to search by release date and cross reference by like user rating. So I'll frequently like scrub that and maybe it's only like 800 people playing it, but they all fucking love it. And I'll usually just like look into that and see if it's worth doing.
29:41 Griffin McElroy? I also get a lot from these guys.
29:45 Griffin McElroy? That's, that's, that's the truth.
29:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, the besties podcasts.
29:48 Chris Plante? Yeah.
29:49 Russ Frushtick? Uh, this question comes from Young Padawan. Did any of you at any point in your youth ever go, uh, wanna go into game development as a career? Quote, when you grew up?
30:00 Griffin McElroy? I feel like growing up, our parents were super supportive of any career path. Too supportive, some might say, which is why two of the three of us, um, went to school for, uh, and got theater degrees. But there was nothing off limits, right? But like, we were like, we wanna be actors, comedians. They're like, yeah, go for it. I was like, I'm gonna be a youth pastor for a minute. They were like, yeah, dude, shoot your shot. The thought of being a game developer never crossed my mind. I don't think even for a second, because I had literally zero exposure to how a game. I don't think I knew what a game, how games got made.
30:40 Speaker 01 Right.
30:41 Griffin McElroy? And so the idea that I would do it as a job, uh, simply didn't register to me, which is wild. So far as I used to make my own little games in Q Basic, like text adventure, multiple choice, uh, choose your own adventure games in Q Basic. And like fucked around with RPG Maker so hard. And I literally, those neurons in my brain never connected of like, you could go to school and learn how to do this and go somewhere.
31:07 Speaker 01 A lot of game development for, though at that age for us seemed like it was happening in Japan. Like I, I, there was very little of that that seemed like an American thing that was happening. The only thing, like the only notable examples I could think of are like PC stuff that was like, you know, your Sierras and things like that were definitely. But I don't know.
31:26 Griffin McElroy? I think about it a lot now. Like I think about what it would be like to possess that skillset and what that, you know, fucking grind would look like now. With some, you know, envy, sliding doors, I could grab that neuron in my womb.
31:40 Speaker 01 You've had some discussions, right, Griffin? You've had some.
31:42 Griffin McElroy? I mean, I've fucked around with Unity and, you know, you know, Godot and all that shit. I like to goof around with that stuff, but it is, it is extraordinarily time consuming and I, I simply do not have any time. So it's like a hobby or interest that I will plug into for like a couple of weeks and then I'm currently way off of it, so.
32:00 Chris Plante? Always seemed like a lot of math to me, you know?
32:03 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, they've ameliorated a lot of that now, uh, but it seemed like it was only math back then.
32:08 Chris Plante? Yeah, it seemed really overwhelming.
32:11 Russ Frushtick? We have one last question. This comes from Patrick. What do your physical game collections currently look like? The idea of quote, more clutter in my life is not appealing, but the idea of digital only games that could disappear down the corporate memory hole also has me concerned.
32:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's a tough one.
32:29 Griffin McElroy? That's a valid, it's a valid concern. I do think that there's stuff happening out there to prevent like-
32:36 Speaker 01 Don't worry about the second one.
32:37 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
32:38 Speaker 01 Shh, hey, come close.
32:39 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
32:40 Speaker 01 Don't worry about the second one.
32:43 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
32:44 Speaker 01 We got it.
32:46 Speaker 01 Listen, listen. We got, we got it.
32:50 Griffin McElroy? Did you just knock your water over?
32:53 Speaker 01 We got it.
32:53 Chris Plante? Also, you leaned in close to the camera. Nobody could see you.
32:57 Griffin McElroy? Yeah. As you tell me so many times on this show, this is not a camera product, man.
33:03 Speaker 01 That was for you.
33:04 Griffin McElroy? That was for me.
33:05 Chris Plante? Okay, okay, okay.
33:05 Griffin McElroy? I have my Game Boy Advance collection right here on my, on my sort of bookshelf that I have next to my desk. And then literally everything else is a big stack in the closet.
33:16 Russ Frushtick? Yeah. Griffin's running to show the closet.
33:19 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
33:19 Russ Frushtick? Oh, my God, it's overflowing with stuff.
33:22 Griffin McElroy? So-
33:23 Russ Frushtick? It just poured on top of him.
33:24 Speaker 01 Okay, I legitimately have so, like, I maybe have eight physical video games.
33:32 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
33:33 Speaker 01 At this point in my life, I think I've, I used to collect, I made a run where I was trying to collect all of the FMV games physically. I went and collected all of like the FMV, all the Sega CD, Saturn, PC, all the FMV games. And then I had a depressive episode and I was like, this is fucking stupid. Why am I wasting my time with this? But then I got rid of a lot of that. But actually, weirdly for that, do not agree, do not disagree with that was still a good choice because I donated it to a retro game club in my area for kids. So that was great.
34:07 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
34:07 Speaker 01 And that kind of got the ball going for me where I was like, well, if I don't want those things, I don't think I want the other physical games either. So I really started divesting a lot. The ones that I kept are the ones where the physical object- Has some value to me like I have let me shit hold on I have one game in a box
34:26 Griffin McElroy? I want to see it and now Chris you won't be able to show us anything because you have green screened out your background into the beauty and the beast ballroom I think which I've it's funny you've done it a few times now and I don't think any of us have ever asked you why and I don't know if that mean if that's a good thing or a bad thing that we have never inquired why you have the beauty and the beast background in your
34:46 Chris Plante? You know what I didn't even notice until you said it and
34:49 Griffin McElroy? You're kidding me because you've been sort of phasing in and out of it for this entire recording oh he's back
34:54 Chris Plante? Looking at myself oh look he's back thank God he's here to save me
34:58 Griffin McElroy? What we got so we got glitter mitten Grove here
35:01 Speaker 01 I boxed unopened games for windows glitter mitten Grove
35:06 Griffin McElroy? What is that
35:07 Speaker 01 Well this is frog fractions too
35:10 Griffin McElroy? Oh yeah
35:11 Speaker 01 So this is one this is one of the very few uh I think I get this is like a Kickstarter award was your physical box copy of glitter mitten Grove so stuff like
35:21 Russ Frushtick? It says on the top it does say frog fractions too so it kind of blows the the truth about it Doesn't it say frog fractions too on the top
35:27 Griffin McElroy? It does
35:28 Speaker 01 On the inside behind the sleeve it says frog fractions too on the so it's like if you wanna
35:34 Russ Frushtick? Yeah you gotta know
35:35 Griffin McElroy? Lumiere needed something
35:36 Russ Frushtick? I'm more or less in the same boat as Justin I have very very few a lot of that is just like living in an apartment I don't have the space for it but also I don't like physical media because I people people talk about like the store shutting down which is a valid concern they do shut down
35:50 Griffin McElroy? Yep
35:51 Russ Frushtick? I'm more concerned about like me losing things
35:53 Griffin McElroy? Sure
35:54 Russ Frushtick? I just like lose the hey that's like a store shutting down is when I lose things so yeah I'm not worried you know if a if Steam I don't know I don't want to say if Steam shuts down because we're really fucked then but if like a store shuts down because it's been 30 years yeah I think you will be able to find those games in other locations for a lower price
36:17 Griffin McElroy? What do you got there Chris
36:20 Chris Plante? What is this? I don't know how to turn off my background. You gotta figure it out. You wanna know why it's on?
36:25 Griffin McElroy? Envelope, but it turns into the Beauty and the Beast ballroom.
36:28 Chris Plante? Okay, so when I pull out this-
36:29 Griffin McElroy? Guys, this is just the tale as old as time.
36:31 Chris Plante? When I pull out this manila envelope, let's see what I find inside. I find this video game.
36:39 Griffin McElroy? It's a Jason Ror game.
36:40 Chris Plante? The Diamond Trust of London.
36:42 Griffin McElroy? For DS.
36:43 Chris Plante? And I find, um, these potentially illegal diamonds that were sent via the mail with a copy of that game. Because, uh, as a truly disturbed, uh, and strange political statement in the style of Jason Ror, he mixed up tiny fragments of diamonds that were real diamonds with blood diamonds, and then sent them across state lines with, uh, every copy of that game.
37:09 Griffin McElroy? What a, what a mess.
37:11 Chris Plante? Without letting people know about it. Yeah, truly, one of the weirdest things, and also these stamps. Um, yeah, I am of the same thing. I collect a lot of what I would call horrors, like, things that I worry will be lost, um, in video game history. Uh, another one of these is, do you know that, um, Blackwater? Do you remember Blackwater, the evil, um, military contracting company? Do you know that they made a Kinect game?
37:37 Griffin McElroy? No.
37:37 Chris Plante? Yeah, they made a Kinect game, and I have, I have a copy of it. Also, I have, uh, it's right next to Lost Viadomas.
37:44 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, dude, when are we gonna do our Lost Viadomas discussion?
37:47 Chris Plante? We might, honestly, you know what, like, that should be, that should be our next special episode. People need to play that game, you know, like-
37:54 Griffin McElroy? Learn, learn the secrets.
37:55 Chris Plante? Because you don't understand the full story until you've, you know, played that game. I think that's why a lot of people didn't connect with the ending.
38:01 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, you gotta have the context. Anybody else been playing anything they wanna talk about? You got some weird shit going on, what's up?
38:07 Chris Plante? Yeah, I, I, I wanna talk about my thing really quick. Griffin, have you heard about Rido, Rido, The Mystery of the Soulless Army? Do you know about this?
38:16 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, um, not to an extent where I have tracked it on down, but, um, I've seen, I've seen some stuff about it.
38:23 Chris Plante? I think you're gonna wanna do that. So, basically, it is a remaster of a-
38:29 Chris Plante? PS2 game that is in the Devil Summoner series and a spinoff of the Megami Tensei series. What you really should know is it feels like a spinoff of Persona. If you are only familiar with Persona, you're gonna see a lot of characters that have appeared in Persona games in this game. The big difference about this game is it is a action RPG, like real-time action. And you play as a detective slash devil summoner who is going around Japan in 1931. So I believe that is the Taisho period is what they call it in the game.
39:12 Chris Plante? But you are solving these little mysteries by going around its opening, open world, meeting different people and kicking demons asses. The cool thing about it is just like in any Persona or Megami Tensei game, you collect monsters and you can do it in the middle of a fight. So you'll be like brawling against beasts and then you'll pull out your little magic wands and you'll say like, get in this wand. And then the monster will be like, oh shit, no, are like, are you horny for money? And then you get like a series of questions. You're like, yeah, I am horny for money. And the monster's like-
39:46 Griffin McElroy? I mean, that's peak S and T shit.
39:48 Chris Plante? Yeah, he's like, cool, because I'm horny for money too. Let's do it, brother. And then they like hop in your thing.
39:53 Russ Frushtick? What if you say you're not horny for money?
39:55 Chris Plante? I didn't choose that one.
39:56 Griffin McElroy? They'll get mad at you. They'll hit you.
39:56 Chris Plante? I went with, I've played enough of these games to know what the monsters usually wanna hear. The first two monsters have butts. There's like big, there's a lot of butts in this game.
40:06 Griffin McElroy? Well, yeah, that's, that's normal. That's normal too. I just watched a trailer for this game while you were talking about it and in the trailer, the main character gets in a sword fight with a car. So I'll definitely be checking this one out as soon as is humanly possible.
40:21 Russ Frushtick? Is it an old timey car?
40:23 Griffin McElroy? Um, yes, it looked like a sort of Model T situation.
40:26 Russ Frushtick? Okay, yeah.
40:27 Griffin McElroy? Not like a fun living car like Morgana from Persona 5, but just a car, like a, just a car, man.
40:33 Russ Frushtick? It does look stunning.
40:35 Chris Plante? Yeah, it's as a remaster, it's really neat in that they they spruce up the visuals, but from what I can tell, they cleaned up the fighting mechanics quite a bit. Everything I've read about this game originally is a big ahead of its time, doesn't actually feel good to play, has a lot of quality of life issues, and playing this version of it, you would not sense that. It feels like, I don't know, like it kind of like a spin off of a larger series that Atlas makes. Like it has less resources than Persona, but it still is like quite entertaining. And it's just cool to have characters that you are familiar with in Persona following you around in the real world.
41:17 Griffin McElroy? When you say characters, you mean like the demons, right? Not like Chiye fucking.
41:21 Chris Plante? No, the demons, yeah. So it's like, oh, you know, like the little fairy or the demon with the butt or the demon with the other butt.
41:28 Russ Frushtick? Who's that little white ghost looking guy with the clown hat?
41:31 Griffin McElroy? Jack Frost, they, I mean, they are consistent across the Devil Summoner and Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. Like those are just the Atlas, the Atlas Zoo Crew.
41:43 Chris Plante? Um, it's great. I recommend checking it. It's also on, it was a good excuse to use my Switch 2, which has been nice.
41:50 Griffin McElroy? Um, I will have more to say about it, I imagine, next week, but I picked up Deltaroon. Uh, as chapters three and four, uh, both dropped, I think, day and date with the Switch 2. Uh, although I'm actually playing it on my Rog ally X because I can't get the Switch 2 out of Henry's hands. Uh, so in order to play this other game.
42:13 Speaker 01 He's the only one in America. You knew there had to be somebody.
42:16 Griffin McElroy? Uh, he, I, I've been playing Delta Rune and I played the first chapter of Delta Rune when it first came out and felt kinda weird about it. It is an episodic sort of structure that I think I was like wanting or expecting to be like kind of a sequel to Undertale. Because it is created by Toby Fox and looks a lot like Undertale.
42:39 Russ Frushtick? And it's in the same universe, right?
42:41 Griffin McElroy? It's sort of in the same universe, but like, I feel like if you get hung up on that, as I was waiting essentially the whole time while playing it, like trying to put together the pieces of like, what's actually, how does it, yeah, right? And, and I did, I was sort of lukewarm on it and the fact that it wasn't fully out yet because it's episodic was like, well, I may not, I didn't really check out the second chapter when it came out. But I'm giving it another shot because now it is being sold as Delta Rune and there's four of the seven chapters out now. And
43:14 Russ Frushtick? And if you buy this package, you get all of them.
43:16 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, it will include all of them. It's not like, uh, you know, uh, it's, it's sort of a, I guess Walking Dead season, whatever those old Telltale games like that package. But that said, now that I kinda know what to expect and I'm not want like waiting for it to turn into this other game. And I'm sort of like, I know that the structure is episodic. It is working for me much, much better. And so I, I am like partway through two now and so I haven't even started the new shit. So I don't think anybody would wanna a full discussion of it, but I'm hoping to be able to do that next week.
43:51 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, I'm excited.
43:52 Griffin McElroy? It's, it's, it's good. It is, it is a, a good game that I am, uh, I'm really looking forward to playing more of. I've also watched Squid Game. I don't know if you guys have been watching season three of Squid Game?
44:03 Russ Frushtick? I haven't seen any, any of Squid Game, which is especially funny because when I was at Summer Game Fest, there was a character dressed as Squid Game person, I guess.
44:12 Griffin McElroy? Squid Game. His name is Squid Game.
44:14 Russ Frushtick? The shape on their face and they like gave
44:18 Griffin McElroy? Well, what, do you remember the shape? Because there's Squid Game.
44:20 Russ Frushtick? An X, I wanna say.
44:21 Griffin McElroy? X is, X is Doctor Squid Game.
44:24 Russ Frushtick? Okay.
44:24 Griffin McElroy? And he's in charge. He's the boss.
44:26 Russ Frushtick? So Doctor Squid Game gave me a card and was like, here's this card, but didn't say anything because they, it was mute. And then put the card on the ground and then gave me another card. And I guess I was supposed to throw the card at the other card to make the other card flip.
44:39 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
44:40 Russ Frushtick? And I did that and then they gave me another card.
44:43 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
44:44 Russ Frushtick? But that I having no context for what Squid Game as I mean, I know.
44:48 Griffin McElroy? I mean, you should count your stars. So fucking lucky dude that you did not end up in a squid game. You would not.
44:54 Speaker 01 You would not have fare well.
44:55 Russ Frushtick? No. Really? You don't think I'd do well in a squid game?
44:58 Griffin McElroy? You know, dude, you.
44:59 Russ Frushtick? I'm crafty.
45:00 Speaker 01 Oh, you know what? Actually, I say that because it's it seems easy.
45:04 Russ Frushtick? I'm crafty.
45:05 Speaker 01 Uh, because it is his nature, but I feel like he could actually get it. Do a pretty good job. He's good at games.
45:10 Griffin McElroy? You could do the one where they have to punch a cookie out.
45:12 Speaker 01 If you're like looking for people to take down because they're an obvious threat. I don't need to finish the rest.
45:17 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
45:19 Russ Frushtick? You're saying as a goat is what you're saying.
45:21 Griffin McElroy? The the the third and final season of Squid Game, uh, just went up on Squid Games went up on Netflix.
45:26 Speaker 01 I can't do it. I tried to watch the second one.
45:28 Griffin McElroy? It's fucking brutal, man.
45:29 Speaker 01 I'm not in a headspace. I can't. I can't.
45:31 Russ Frushtick? People didn't like the second season, so it does it rally?
45:35 Griffin McElroy? Uh, I'm four out of the six episodes in and I don't know, man. It's it's genuinely just so fucking brutal. It's just so brutal. I think they've done a pretty decent job of like creating some uh, great characters this time around. Like there's a lot of people you're rooting for and the end of season two is kind of a cliffhanger halfway through like a a series of games. And season three jumps right back the fuck into it and.
46:01 Russ Frushtick? It was a new shape they introduced.
46:03 Griffin McElroy? Yes, but like naturally it's a battle royale. So like all those characters are gonna die and it is not fun.
46:10 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
46:11 Griffin McElroy? TV a watchin'. So, um, I don't know. I feel like knowing it's the end of it. I I feel like I'm gonna watch these final couple of episodes kind of out of obligation because it is not.
46:21 Russ Frushtick? You gotta know who wins the game.
46:23 Griffin McElroy? Doesn't feel amazing.
46:24 Speaker 01 I'm feeling pretty smart over here about not watching that.
46:27 Griffin McElroy? Not watching Squid Game?
46:28 Speaker 01 Um, I wanted to say ever since we had good rest on the program. Um, I've been playing around more with uh, like the the retro game handhelds, this retro game space and emulation in general. Uh, been messing around more with and I had just want to say the YouTube space that covers that area is has become a real light for me lately. Um, it's been such a pleasant. It's a.
46:55 Speaker 01 Community that is, it's not sort of caught up with like the business aspects or the current aspects or trends or whatever. It's really about like the joy of experiencing the thing like the, how much joy the, the device of the game is really like bringing you. There's an earnestness to all these that I think make them a lot of fun to engage with. Uh, it seems like they lost a lot of the cynicism that I've become some accustomed with, uh, with gaming coverage and stuff recently. Um, there's one called Techdweeb that is a guy who's basically created a, a character that lives in his mom's basement and reviews handheld gaming, uh, stuff. And it is so endearing and,
47:39 Speaker 01 uh, tender-hearted and, uh, sweet. Uh, I obviously gotta recommend Retro Game Core.
47:47 Griffin McElroy? Gotcha.
47:47 Speaker 01 With good Russ, uh, a huge, uh, super reliable cat for all like retro emulation stuff. Kind of a genius in that, in the space. Um, the, uh, I wanted to also mention James Channel. Have you, have you ever watched his stuff?
48:04 Griffin McElroy? Almost certainly.
48:06 Speaker 01 Yeah. So he does, uh, a lot of like teardowns of old consoles, but also just like cheap ripoff consoles. He'll buy crap off Timu or Alibaba and just like tear it apart and see what's, but there's like a respectfulness to it. Like he'll rehab old, broken like NES console ripoffs and like make them work again. You get to see the guts of like a virtual boy and stuff like that. It's really fascinating, enthusiastic stuff. So, but that whole like space, whenever I see new videos pop up in any, any of those channels, um, it's, it makes me happy to watch them. So, yeah, you should watch those.
48:46 Chris Plante? Wow. James Channel is really just called James Channel.
48:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:50 Griffin McElroy? Fucking name, man.
48:51 Speaker 01 It's a good name, man. It's good. It's no TechDweeb. TechDweeb, all of his videos are, you never see his face. You only see this, his like tragic orange and black sweatshirt that he wears. And he did, I have to say, a really fantastic face reveal video where it was, it was Good Russ in an orange and black shirt. And he said, "Yeah, that's right." It's been to me the entire time. I've been TechDweeb. It's great.
49:19 Russ Frushtick? It's really good. I, as I mentioned earlier, I'm still playing Death Stranding 2. It continues to be like my, the ultimate my shit.
49:29 Speaker 01 It's, I've really struggled and we didn't talk about it, but this is so, like, this feels like, these two are so close to each other in terms of like, you know what I'm in the mood for? Kind of like sci-fi, body horror, existential, talking to different versions of yourself. Weird things with babies growing up too fast. Just like, I have not known which of these games to pick up. I kind of do it randomly. Just like whichever controller I get first.
49:58 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, there are definitely similarities, but man. First of all, Death Stranding 2 is a much longer game than I think I was expecting it to be. It just kind of keeps.
50:07 Speaker 01 Music to my ears.
50:09 Chris Plante? It's twice as long as the original stuff before it came out. Did you dodge that?
50:15 Russ Frushtick? What?
50:16 Chris Plante? You didn't, you didn't get bombarded by the Kojima, like this is twice as long as the original.
50:21 Russ Frushtick? I did not see that news. I was mostly blind on all of that news and now I'm sensing it. I am fine with it because I am genuinely enjoying the game, but I definitely was at a point where I was like, I made it to the end of the like, side of the island. And I was like, okay, yeah, now things are gonna like start wrapping up and we're gonna, big boss, blah, blah, blah. And then someone came on and was like, "Congratulations, you've connected 50% of the island." I was like, "Okay, we're hanging in."
50:50 Speaker 01 I may not.
50:50 Russ Frushtick? Fucking fun though. I.
50:51 Speaker 01 I like playing it a lot.
50:53 Russ Frushtick? Be into it. You need to.
50:54 Speaker 01 Fresh, you know what I did last night?
50:56 Russ Frushtick? What?
50:56 Speaker 01 In, in your honor, and I named it, the, the Rush Fresh Chick Honorary Connection of zip lines. And it is now spanning the eastern and central eastern side of Australia.
51:09 Russ Frushtick? So fantastic.
51:10 Griffin McElroy? It's, I'm still at a point in the game where I, I don't know if just like more of the player base has caught up now because we played it a bit with the, the pre-release codes. But now when I play. It's the fucking highway is just like, and now when I play this, just like a very helpful interstate highway. That I can just kind of hop on and scoot and it does make the game a lot more um smooth and easygoing.
51:36 Chris Plante? It's a bit more like a theme park now that people have started contributing to it. Where I felt like when I played the first one, there came a point where I was like, oh wow, this is so nice. People built roads. This is like really encouraging. And now I sign on last night and I'm trying to build zip lines. I'm like, yeah, I'll do that right after I hit some sweet jumps off of these weird anti-gravity ramps. Um, there is so much little hidden shit in this game. So many surprises. Resist as best you can the 500 weird things in uh Death Stranding YouTube videos, because it is such a treat when you come across something that makes no sense in the game and it feels like it was there just for you.
52:17 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, it's been fantastic. Uh, I'm continuing through it, but it's gonna be a little while probably before I wrap the credits. Uh, but highly recommend it.
52:27 Griffin McElroy? Great. Fantastic. Fantastic show.
52:31 Russ Frushtick? I wanted to thank some people over at the Patreon. We have some new members at the Patreon. We have Mark, we have Sharif, we have Patrick, and we have TJ. Thank you for being members over at the Patreon. You can go to patreon.com slash thebesties. We really appreciate your support. Hey, if you don't, uh, if you're not a member and because you can't spare the money or whatever reason, you don't trust us, I get it. You can be a free member.
52:58 Griffin McElroy? Why would you even put that idea like out?
53:01 Chris Plante? Put that in the ether, man.
53:02 Russ Frushtick? That was the first thing that I thought of. Uh, you can be a free member. So you just be a free member and you, and you'll see uh some posts and things like that, but.
53:11 Griffin McElroy? It's a bunch of shit though. It's a bunch of garbage, right Russ? Just so much of nothing, man.
53:15 Russ Frushtick? There's some good stuff that the free people get as well. Uh, so that's a good way to kind of dip your toe in and uh, but obviously we, we also appreciate anyone that wants to throw some bucks and you get a new bracket episode, uh, one of which is live right now about the games uh that should be rebooted. And in fact, here's a clip from that episode.
53:36 Griffin McElroy? You wanna mod Bayou Billy into Mafia 3? You can do that.
53:39 Chris Plante? You can do it.
53:39 Griffin McElroy? Anything's possible.
53:40 Chris Plante? It's in there already. Use the code.
53:42 Russ Frushtick? Mafia 3 has a city. It's, there's no Bayou City.
53:49 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, man. He has a good point.
53:51 Speaker 01 Guys, I, I, I really do want Russ Frushtick Bayou Billy's Bayou World.
53:57 Griffin McElroy? If only Russ made it. Russ has to write it.
53:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, I want to personally make it. I want Russ in the meetings like, that's not part of the bayou. That's not the kind of trees that we have in the bayou. That's not bayou.
54:06 Griffin McElroy? That isn't bayou. That's city.
54:08 Speaker 01 He's like walking up and down like, bayou this up.
54:12 Russ Frushtick? Need more bayou.
54:13 Speaker 01 Give that guy more chest hair. That's not even close to bayou. Come on, bayou.
54:18 Griffin McElroy? Russ is gonna come back with a Cajun accent. It's gonna be so good.
54:22 Speaker 01 You all are what the bayou call lazy incompetence. You know what that means?
54:33 Speaker 01 Or maybe it's like, huh?
54:36 Griffin McElroy? I will say this one has the wildest twist of any. This one turns on a dime in a way that none of the bracket episodes have in a way that I could not have anticipated in a million, million years. So you'll want to check it out.
54:48 Speaker 01 Thanks for your support. What we do next week?
54:51 Russ Frushtick? Next week, I think Griffin's talking about Delta Rune.
54:53 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, and someone will probably talk about other games too. I don't think I'm gonna get up there and deliver a book report.
54:58 Chris Plante? Yeah, I think it's gonna be a bit of like a grab bag episode next week.
55:01 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
55:01 Chris Plante? Uh, there's so much cool stuff out right now. Tim, I really want to talk some more about how you do. I need to get you to play that, Griffin.
55:09 Griffin McElroy? I gotta, I gotta, my dance card is pretty fucking full, man.
55:12 Speaker 01 I can talk more about Lord of the Rings, Two Towers on PlayStation 2.
55:14 Chris Plante? Oh, you want to do that?
55:16 Griffin McElroy? We all, we all have really important shit to get to. I think it's the moral of the story.
55:20 Speaker 01 I think we're gonna play Peak 2.
55:22 Chris Plante? I can't wait to play Peak.
55:24 Russ Frushtick? We'll see what we got.
55:25 Speaker 01 It's gonna be, it's gonna do it for this week on the 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?
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