In The Alters, Life Comes at You Fast

It does sound like you're in a haunted house.

It feels like

they want to be part of the show.

It added a whole real surreal Lynchian quality to the conversation, like a telltale heart, sort of like the ship is creaking beneath us, sort of vibe.

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.

There is no way

today is i think in the past it's softer this is the no dude this is the craziest it's been this has got worse

truly sounds like you are being like

on the titanic and you are working the holes 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 for we haven't count we haven't counted though so like we haven't even counted we're gonna have to count after so they have to sink in reverse 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 a lot of time.

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?

I've never really quite understood what that meant.

Exactly, Griffin.

And you never, ever, ever, ever, ever will.

Is that what she says in the song?

And you never will.

You never fucking will.

Keep digging, Grove.

Keep digging.

My name is Justin McElroy.

I know the best game of the week.

My name is Griffin McElroy.

I know the best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best persona shimegami Tensei spin-off of the week, but it's not the main game of the week, and I'm throwing to my boy Fresh Tick!

Oh!

My name is Russ Fresh.

I know best the game of the week.

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.

Nope.

And you are going to 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 going to be talking about a new video game this week.

It's called The Alters.

And Chris, playing, what's that?

The Altars 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.

That's basically it.

Yeah.

And we're going to talk more about it.

Not that there's that much more to say, but we'll talk more about it right after this.

Okay, I know we have to talk about the altars.

Very important.

But before we do that, I want to talk about the time I was in the shower.

Yeah.

Okay.

Good.

May I be excused from the story?

No, you need to be part of the story.

The year was 2021, I think, somewhere around there.

Something like that.

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.

Taking a shower.

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?

Yeah.

And it took three years to make it happen, but bless McKay on the team for executing it on it.

Towels are so hard to make.

I do not know how you make a towel.

I don't know.

And these things have been absolutely flying off the shelves.

Genuinely, they did sell out the first time they were in the store, and we have a restocking of it.

Looking extremely good, folks.

We couldn't even promote it the first time it sold out so quickly.

So if you want a hand towel that says you dried in Dark Souls font, I guess don't sue us.

You may be thinking that you can do it yourself, but it took Russ three years.

So, you have to get comfortable.

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 MacRoy merch store.

Yeah, and that you dried towel should narrow it down.

It's macroch.com.

All right.

Thank you.

So, The Alters is

not quite like any other video game I've ever played.

I'd say its 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 quite bear

explanation.

It doesn't really make sense.

But due to 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 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 skill set.

It's like if Gwyneth Paltrow could have pulled Gwyneth Paltrow through the sliding door into her own world on the other side of the door and never seen the movie, but that's what the alters is.

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.

Right.

And then somebody else is like, oh, you stepped in a rain puddle that day and now you're a marine biologist.

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.

You know how Weyman Wang is, he runs

a laundry

machine place in one reality.

In 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 a refiner or whatever.

And these, like, as you create these different identities and you research these different clones of yourself, you both have to like use them in a mechanical sense where you use their skill set 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, as like human beings that are adjusting to the very weird circumstance of being a clone.

Yeah, it's a little bit Sims and a little bit just like No Man's Sky resource gathering.

Yeah, I had not put together the everything, everywhere, all-at-once connection, but yeah, it's extremely, extremely there.

Yeah.

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.

Yeah.

You're on a crash ship, the only survivor of the crashed ship, and you find your like base, your headquarters intact.

You make it there that 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.

Fortunately, your base is a giant wheel wheel that can drive

away from the sun.

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

biological material to make food slime.

I'm fucked.

But then it turns out that's just kind of the tutorial.

And then there is more game after that.

Yes.

So the beginning is tough because it is a game about 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 of heavy narrative lifting, which is the.

Here's the magical trick that makes all this sci-fi goobledy-goop work.

Right.

It's a lot to ask of the player, which is why, if you do end up playing this game, I'd encourage you to get past that hour.

Because then once you do get into it, hoops, can you explain how the game works when the game game actually starts?

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

Jan,

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.

There's a refinery,

a greenhouse where plants are being grown.

And basically, I'm moving these cats around,

having them like figure out what tasks are important for them to do, 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 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.

So, there's a 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.

Yeah.

And the narrative

is constantly kind of evolving in what seems like a really sort of 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 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

sort of persona lock, I guess, but you...

if you progress the relationship enough with the alter, 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.

Like it feels like a traditional like squad-based RPG in that way, just because they're clones kind of doesn't matter because they all have pretty divergent storylines based on where the 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.

I think conceptually it kicks a lot of ass.

Yeah.

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 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 are certain like you have to take certain

shortcuts to tell a story with like an infinite web of

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 are several characters talking at once, and we're just not going to animate that.

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.

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 are exploring, not open world, 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 is like a more active mechanic that only you can do.

Your alters can't go out and like explore and find stuff.

That's just you.

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 automatic like mining stations.

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.

You can also usually find your ship.

If you look around, it's big.

It looks like a huge ass ring in this dirt.

I didn't find the running around outside stuff to be super compelling.

I mean, eventually, as Justin alluded to, you've like, there's some evil clouds that you need to fight, which adds some complexity to it.

But it feels fine, but like,

I actually found the like doing the stuff in the base far more compelling.

Like, the other stuff felt like added on.

Yeah, I think so, too.

I think that a lot of games just will give you the.

Just give you the sort of

headquarters science lab simulation side of things, a la fallout shelter shelter without or even like a la um this world this war of mine right yeah sure 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 um 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 yeah i didn't hate it i just it just didn't feel the super it's it does an interesting job of like making you feel like you're uh being like having to manage your time and your resources like i think it's a decent like 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 i can make it back or yeah i'm not sure i have enough energy to like climb back the way i came or something that could be interesting yeah i agree with that um 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 a 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 computer screens and things like that.

I thought that was, it felt very fluid.

It very much reminded me of Shadow

Shadow Complex.

Shadow Complex was Shadows and Scott card.

Yeah.

Oh, God.

There's some side screen.

There's an aspect we don't like to focus on.

Side share, I think, was the developer who had then go on to make Fortnite.

Yeah, 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.

Yeah.

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 an 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 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

another resource you are kind of managing.

Right.

Yes, exactly.

And there's like, there's a tension to that whenever you're talking to one of them where 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 give them an interesting heft 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 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 other times where you turn a corner and all the cragginess and you have found yourself in an Xbox 360 game.

Right.

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 triple-A.

It still wants to be able to have like its trailer and its any given image look like a AAA game.

And that's

almost like a to a detriment where I wish that it could have been a bit more simplistic in how it looks 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 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 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, 1000x resist or psych resist or whatever,

would it have like found its audience?

I don't, I don't know.

Like, I really don't know.

People say they want games that look like Worst, but I don't know if that's actually true.

Um,

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

speed at which I think they had to kind of of tell the story since it was as

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.

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

sciencey.

It's like, generate some sciencey dialogue for us, which is yeah, the one I saw was like, okay, you got it.

The

nanoweave of the yeah,

which they did cop up to.

They did.

It's, it, 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.

You also have to mark that.

Like Steam has a notification specifically for games that there is a solution to this.

It's called Lorem Ipsum.

This has been something that people have been using for a long time to use this field text.

I think from my read, the only reason you wouldn't use that is in case you're like, well, we might forget.

Just in case you forget.

That's why you do TKTK in capitalism.

Right.

Very visible.

Yeah, you can't miss that.

Luke Plunkett over at Aftermath wrote a story called I'm Getting Really Tired of Not Being Able to Trust That 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.

They do Frostpunk, all the Frostpunk.

They did Frostpunk.

They published Indica, you know?

It's just,

it is extremely frustrating.

And it's especially frustrating when the Steam

warning

doesn't help, right?

That 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.

Oh, dude, the fucking like, uh, what it void, void comp

tests.

It's the having to run the numbers on every single thing, every asset that you see at every word.

It's, it's, it sucks.

It's not.

Well, good news.

I know for sure that split fiction was not written by AI.

And

I missed a fucking zesty episode.

Let's do that one again, man.

I would love to continue being right about split fiction while the internet burns around us.

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

told this incredibly branching story and explored this really interesting sci-fi prompt.

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 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 managed resource managements, things like that.

And obviously that is like a massively, massively huge budget game.

So, but they're both doing doing similar things.

So it can be a little bit tricky.

Hey, let's take a break.

This week's episode of the Besties is brought to you in part by Rocket Money.

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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.

I don't love everybody.

I don't love everybody.

That's insane, dog.

I meant everyone who listens to the show.

I'm not even going to own that because what if some real creepazoids check it out one time?

You know what I mean?

Like, most of the folks who listen to our show seem amazing.

I'm not going to say every single one of them.

Right.

You know what I mean?

That's fair.

Bad apples ruining the bunch.

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?

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.

Yeah.

How about notoriously

just leave us alone?

I think it's just pick it.

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 be Death Stranding.

I'm working my way through it, but you can't.

It's inconvenient when the game that you fall in love with and decide to finish is a 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 going to see this through.

But some you can also like, you know, if you're saying it falls off towards the end, just watch it on YouTube.

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.

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 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.

Drop it down to easy.

Yeah, sure.

Why not?

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 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 I'll occasionally see a clip from some streamer playing a game and I'll be like, that looks fucking great.

The other methodology that I use is Steam DB, SteamDB.com, I guess.

Allows you to search by release date and cross-reference by user rating.

So I'll frequently 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.

I also get a lot from these guys.

That's, that's, that's the truth.

Yeah, the besties podcast.

Yeah.

Uh, this question comes from young Padawan.

Did any of you at any point in your youth ever go, uh, want to go into game development as a career, quote, when you grew up?

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

went to school for and got theater degrees.

But there was nothing off limits, right?

Like, we were like, we want to be actors, comedians.

They're like, yeah, go for it.

I was like, I'm going to be a youth pastor for a minute.

They're 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.

Right.

And so the idea that I would do it as a job

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, 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.

There's a lot of game development for, though, at that age for us seemed like it was happening in Japan like 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 can think of are like PC stuff that was like you know your Sierra's and things like that were definitely but I don't know I think about it a lot now like I think about what it would be like to possess that skill set and what that you know fucking grind would look like now uh with some you know envy sliding doors I could grab that neuron in my window.

You've had some discussions, right, Grefett?

You've had some.

I mean, I've fucked around with Unity and, you know,

Godot and all that shit.

I like to goof around with that stuff, but it is extraordinarily time-consuming.

And 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.

Oh, it seemed like a lot of math to me.

You know?

Yeah, they've ameliorated a lot of that now,

but it seemed like it was only math back then.

Yeah, it seemed really overwhelming.

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.

Yeah, that's a tough one.

That's a valid, it's a valid concern.

I do think that there's stuff happening out there to prevent.

Don't worry about the second one.

Yeah.

Hey, come close.

yeah don't worry about the second one

yeah we got it

listen listen

we got it we got it we got it just knock your water over

we got it also you leaned in close to the camera nobody could

see you yeah

as you tell me so many times on this show this is not a camera product man for you that was for you that was for me okay okay okay i have my game boy advanced 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.

Um, yeah, Griffin's running to show the closet, yeah.

Oh my god, it's overflowing with stuff, so just poured on

okay, I legitimately have so few, like

I maybe have eight physical video games

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 wanted to collect 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.

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 show, hold on.

I have one game in a box.

Let me grab.

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.

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 means 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 life.

You know what?

I didn't even notice until you said it.

You're kidding me.

A little bit.

Because you've been sort of phasing in and out of it for this entire recording.

Oh, he's back.

I'm looking at myself.

Oh, look, who's back?

Thank God he's here to save me.

What do we got?

So we got Glitter Mitten Grove here.

Boxed.

Unopened.

Games for Windows.

Glitter Mitten Grove.

What is that?

Well, this is Frog Fractions 2.

Oh, yeah.

So

this is one of the very few.

I think this was like a Kickstarter award.

It was your physical box copy of Glittermitt and Grove.

It says on the top, it does say Frog Fractions 2.

So it kind of blows the trick about it.

Doesn't it say Frog Fractions 2 on the top?

It does.

On the inside, behind the sleeve, it says Frog Fractions 2.

So it's like if you want to.

Yeah, you got

Lumi Air needed to.

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

people talk about like the store shutting down, which is a valid concern.

They do shut down.

I'm more concerned about like me losing things.

Sure.

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, uh, yeah, I think you will be able to find those games in other locations for at a lower price.

What do you got there, Chris?

What is this?

I don't know how to turn off my background,

it'll be real.

You want to know why it's a manila envelope, but it turns into the beauty and the beast callroom.

So,

guys, this is just a tale as old as time.

When I pull out this manila envelope, let's see what I find inside.

I find

this video game

The Diamond Trust of London.

For DS.

And I find

these potentially illegal diamonds that were sent via the mail with a copy of that game.

Because

as a truly disturbed and strange political statement in the style of Jason Rohr, he mixed up tiny fragments of diamonds that were real diamonds with blood diamonds and then sent them across state lines with every copy of that game.

What a word.

Without letting people know about it.

Yeah, truly one of the weirdest things.

And also these stamps.

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 in video game history.

Another one of these is, do you know that

Blackwater?

Do you remember Blackwater, the evil military contracting company?

Do you know that they made a Kinect game?

No.

Cool.

Yeah.

They made a Kinect game.

game and i have i have a copy of it also i have uh it's right next to lost via domas yeah dude when are we gonna do our lost via domus discussion

you know what like that should be that should be our next specialty episode people need to play that game you know like

learn learn 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 yeah you got to have the context Anybody else been playing anything they want to talk about?

You got some weird shit going on.

What's up?

Yeah, I want to talk about my thing really quick.

Griffin, have you heard about

Raido, the Mystery of the Soulless Army?

Do you know about that?

Yeah, not to an extent where I have tracked it on down, but

I've seen some stuff about it.

I think you're going to want to do that.

So

basically, it is a remaster of a PS2 game that is in the Devil Summoner series and a spin-off of the Megami Tensei series.

What you really should know is it feels like a spin-off of Persona if you are only familiar with Persona.

You're going to see a lot of characters that have appeared in Persona games in this game.

The big difference about this game is it is an 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.

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 beast, 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.

Or, 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 is like, I mean, that's peak SP shit.

Yeah.

He's like, cool, because I'm horny for money too.

Let's do it, brother.

And then they like hop in.

What if you say you're not horny for money?

I'll get mad at that one.

I went with, I've played enough of these games to know what the monsters usually want to hear.

The first two monsters have butts.

There's like big, there's a lot of butts.

Well, yeah, 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.

Is it an old-timey car?

Yes, it looked like a sort of Model T situation.

Okay, yeah, go ahead.

Not like a fun living car like a Morgana from Persona 5, but just

a car, man.

It does look stunning.

Yeah, yeah.

As a remaster, it's really neat in that they spoosed 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 kind of like a spin-off of a larger series that Atlas makes.

Like it has less resources and 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.

When you say characters, you mean like the demons, right?

Not like Chia fucking.

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.

Who's that little white ghost-looking guy with the clown?

Jack Frosty.

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.

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.

I will have more to say about it, I imagine, next week, but I picked up Deltarune

as chapters 3 and 4 both dropped, I think, day and date with the Switch 2.

Although I'm actually playing it on my ROG, LIX, because I can't get the Switch 2 out of Henry's hands.

So in order to play this other game.

He's the only one in America.

You knew there had to be somebody.

I've been playing Deltarune and I played the first chapter of Deltarune when it first came out and felt kind of 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.

And And it's in the same universe.

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 going to happen.

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.

Um, but I'm giving it another shot because now it is being sold as Deltarune and there's four of the seven chapters out now.

And if you buy this package, you get all of them.

Yeah, it will include all of them.

It's not like a, you know,

it's sort of a, I guess, Walking Dead season, whatever those old Telltale games like that package.

Yeah.

But that said, now that I kind of know what to expect and I am not

like waiting for it to turn into this other game and I am sort of like, I know that the structure is episodic, it is working for me much much better and so I

am like partway through two now and so I haven't even started the new shit so I don't think anybody would want a full discussion of it but I'm hoping to be able to do that next week yeah I'm excited it's good it's it's good it's it is a it is a good game that I am 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 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 Squid Game.

His name is Squid Game.

The shape on their face.

And they like gave me.

Well, what do you remember the shape?

Because there's Squid Game.

X, I want to say.

X is Dr.

Squid Game.

Okay.

And he's in charge.

He's the boss.

So Dr.

Squid Game gave me a card and was like, here's this card, but didn't say anything because 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.

Yeah.

And I did that and then they gave me another card.

Yeah.

But that I having no context for what Squid Game as a, I mean, I know I mean you should count your stars so fucking lucky dude that you did not end up in a squid game.

You would not

have fared well.

No.

You don't think I'd do well in a squid game?

You know, dude, you're definitely.

Oh, you know what?

Actually, I say that because it seems easy.

Crafty.

Because it is his nature.

But I feel like he could actually do a pretty good job.

He's good at games, you could do the one where they have to punch a cookie out.

If you're like looking for people to take down because they're an obvious threat, I don't need to finish the rest of it.

Yeah,

you're saying I'm a goat, is what you're saying.

The third and final season of Squid Game just went up on Squid Games, went up on Netflix.

I can't do it.

I tried to watch the second one.

It's fucking brutal.

I'm not a headphones.

I can't.

I can't.

People didn't like the second season.

So does it rally?

I'm four out of the six episodes in, and I I don't know, man.

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

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

series of games.

And season three jumps right back the fuck into it.

There was a new shape they introduced.

Yes, but like naturally, it's a battle royale.

So like all those characters are going to die, and it is not fun yeah tv a watching 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 episodes kind of out of obligation because it is not i gotta know who wins the game doesn't feel amazing yeah i'm feeling pretty smart over here about not watching

this

um i wanted to say ever since we had good rust on the program um i've been playing around more with uh like the the retro game handhelds and this is the retro game space and emulation in general that mess around more with.

And I just want to say the YouTube space that covers that area has become a real light for me lately.

It's been such a pleasant, it's a 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 joy 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.

It seems like they lost a lot of the cynicism that I've become so accustomed with, uh, with gaming coverage and stuff recently.

Um, there's one called Tech Dweeb that is a guy who's basically created a character that lives in his mom's basement and reviews handheld gaming stuff, and it is so endearing and uh tender-hearted and sweet.

Obviously, got to recommend Retro Game Core

with Good Russ.

A huge, super reliable cat for all like retro emulation stuff, kind of a genius in the space.

I wanted to also mention James' channel.

Have you Griffira watched his stuff?

Almost certainly.

Yeah, so he does a lot of like teardowns of old consoles, but also just like cheap rip-off 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 rip-offs 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 of those channels,

it makes me happy to watch them.

So yeah, you should watch those.

Wow.

James' channel is really just called James Channel.

That's a good fucking name, man.

It's a good name, man.

That's good.

It's no Tech Dewey.

Tech Dweeb, all of his videos are, you never see his face.

You only see his tragic orange and black sweatshirt that he wears.

And he did, I have to say, a really fantastic face reveal video where

it was good russ in an orange and black shirt

yeah that's right

it's been me the entire time i've been tech dweeb it's great it's really good uh i as i mentioned earlier i'm still playing death stranding 2

it continues to be like my the ultimate my shit 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 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.

Yeah, there are definitely similarities.

But man.

First of all, Death Straining 2 is a much longer game than I think I was expecting it to be.

It just kind of keeps

music to my ears.

It's twice as long as the original stuff before it came out.

Did you dodge that?

What?

You didn't get bombarded by the Kojima, like, this is twice as long as the original.

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 side of the island.

And I was like, okay, yeah, now things are going to start wrapping up.

And we're going to big boss.

And then someone came on and was like, congratulations, you've connected 50% of the islands.

I was like, okay,

we're hanging in.

I may not.

Fucking fun, though.

I like playing it a little bit.

You need to be into it.

You need to be into it.

You know what I did last night?

What?

And in your honor, and I named it the Rush Frushik honorary connection of ziplines.

And

it's like spanning the eastern and central eastern side of Australia.

So fantastic.

I'm still at a point in the game where I don't know if just like more of the player base has caught up now because we played it a bit with the pre-release codes.

But now when I play,

it's the fucking highway.

It's just like, and now when I play, there's 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 smooth and easy going.

It's a bit more like a theme park now that people have started contributing to it.

I feel 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 signed on last night and I'm trying to build ziplines.

I'm like, yeah, I'll do that right after I hit some sweet jumps off of these weird anti-gravity ramps.

There is so much little hidden shit in this game.

So many surprises.

Resist as best you can the 500 weird things in Death Strand and YouTube videos because it is such a treat when you come across something that makes no sense in the game.

It feels like it was there just for you.

Yeah, it's been fantastic.

I'm continuing through it, but it's going to be a little while probably before I wrap the credits,

but highly recommend it.

Great.

Fantastic.

Fantastic show.

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 the besties.

We really appreciate your support.

Hey, if you don't,

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.

Why would you even put that idea like out?

Put that ether out.

That was the first thing that I thought of.

You can be a free member.

So you just be a free member and you'll see some posts and things like that.

It's a bunch of shit, though.

It's a bunch of garbage, right, Russ?

So

there's some good stuff that the free people get as well.

So that's a good way to kind of dip your toe in.

But obviously, we also appreciate anyone that wants to throw us some bucks and you get a new bracket episode, one of which is live right now about the games

that should be rebooted.

And in fact, here's a clip from that episode.

You want to modify the billion to Mafia 3?

You can do that.

You can do anything.

Anything you can do.

You can do it.

It's in there already.

Use the code.

Mafia 3 has a city.

There's no Bayou city.

Yeah, man.

He has a complaint there isn't a bay.

I really do want Russ Freshstick's Bayou Billy's Bayou World.

If only Russ made it.

Russ has to write it.

I want Russ in the meetings.

He's 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.

That isn't Bayou.

Bayou.

That's a city.

He's like walking up and down, like, bayou this up

needs more bayou give that guy more chest hair that's not even close to bayou come on bayou

fresh is gonna come back with a cajun accent

so good

you all are what the bayou call laisy encompétant you know what that means

or maybe it's like

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 hey, you'll want to check it out.

Thanks for your support.

What are we doing next week?

Next week, I think Griffin's talking about Deltarune.

Yeah, and someone will probably talk about other games, too.

I don't think I'm going to get up there and deliver a book report.

Yeah, I think it's going to be a bit of like a grab bag episode next week.

There's so much cool stuff out right now.

Damn, I'm going to

talk some more about how you do it.

I need to get you to play that, Griffin.

I just want to talk about it.

I got a free

dance card.

It's pretty fucking full.

Talk more about Lord of the Rings, the two towers on PlayStation 2.

Oh, you want to do that?

We all have really important shit to get to, I think, is the moral of the story.

We're going to play Peak.

I can't wait to play Peak.

We'll see what we got.

It's going to do it for this week on the Besties.

Be sure to join us again next time for the Besties.

Because should the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

Besties