Revenge of the French RPG!

Do you guys think I could start saying Capishe and get away with it? Try it. Let's hear it.
Well, you got to say something. Oh, wait, no, I have to say something.

No, I'll say something, and then you just append Capish at the end. Yeah.
Hey, how do you,

how do you like your steak?

Well, you know, I got to go medium rare, Capische. I don't actually think that that's a good use of Capisch.
I don't think you would use Capish to me. I think it needs to be like

a second-level dialogue, right? It's like, it's like, hey,

would be a shame if something ever happened to your puppy i'm gonna go play into that voice

i'm gonna draw a line here i'm gonna say you can say capishe if you say it right but you can't do the voice the voice is no good

no no is that not you can't do like uh

hey i'm gonna go get a big ogie like that's not interesting

is really really is that not okay anymore yeah ogie yeah so get threaten me russ threaten me and put a capiche on it uh griffin you're gonna sweep is

you're gonna sweep with the fishes Capis? I'm going to say no, Russ. You can't do it.
Maybe practice and check in again next year.

But what you just said was the least intimidating thing I've ever heard. It said sweep with the fishes.
You said sweep with the fishes, which now it sounds like a baby mobster is threatening me.

Capisch?

Just throw it in once per episode. We'll get there.

My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best games of the week. Bonjour, this is Griffin McElroy.
I know the best game of the week. Mad!

Just je mafel Christophe.

Are you even video game?

Are you doing the French game? I thought I was the only one doing the French game. No,

I know. No, I'm doing some Claire Obscura.
I'm doing Claire Obscura. Sorry, sorry.
And I'm doing, well, we can't talk. Russ, what's your Russian game? My name is Russ Russell.

I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.
This week, we're going to be talking about Claire of

two games that really challenge one's ability to recall names of games. We're talking about Claire Obscura Expedition 33 and Revenge of the Savage Planet.

That sounds sounds good to me, man.

Yeah, dude. Yeah, but before we get into that, Chris Plant, anything in the headlines?

Yeah.

Hey, we got some news that we want to talk about real quick. So

Polygon got sold, and there's a whole bunch of stuff that happened.

A number of people lost their jobs. I'm no longer at Polygon.

And that is okay for me. I'm much worried about everybody else.

But there are still people there. It's still alive.

Our beloved Russ Frostik is there. You should still go and visit.
It does not need a protest of you not going to polygon.com. It is a wonderful spot still.

There's one thing that I do want to be like super clear on, though. Besties did start at Polygon a long, long time ago.
We straight up owned this thing.

We took this thing back. We said, no, no, no, no,

that pie is too tasty. The writing was on the windowsill.
The writing was on the wall.

Yeah, we knew. Five years ago.

And we got it back. So this thing

during the spot. A lot of people tried to buy.

Lady Spotify tried to lay down quite a few ducats to buy this show, but we said not

for sale. No, no, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no. No more seasons of this show for you.

And then a year later they said, we dodged a bullet on that one. Yeah.
And then we said, we'll buy this show back for you. And they said, that won't be necessary.

Have it.

Check the trunk of your car. We've loaded it up for you and strapped it in already.
Start driving.

Jet clamp it.

You don't need to worry about this thing. This thing, it's all ours.
It is, you are stuck with us. Yep, that's right.
So let's take a break and then we'll talk about video games.

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Okay, we're going to be talking about Claire Obscure, and I want to make sure.

Before we do, let me just say, when I was trying to remember, we were talking about games you can't remember the names of.

The way I remembered it as I was filling in the rundown was I typed into Google French JRPG. Yeah, that'll work.

I mean, French JRPG is, I mean, you're literally saying French Japanese role-playing game. Yeah.
So you can see how that is a confusing game.

Darker French near. It's near noir.
Oh, wow. That's pretty good, Juice.
I like you. You fucking stinker.
You're starring Daniel Ralke.

This one is...

It gets the old seal of approval from yours truly. I am very much enjoying Clear Obscure Expedition 33.
I'm excited to talk about it.

Here, let me lay it out for you, everybody. There is this, there's this world where when you get to a certain age, it's a number, you die.

Any number? Any number that, no, it's a number that's on a big rock. Painted there by the way.
Yeah, but like if you were to pick any number, just I'm going to pull one out from nowhere. 33.

Let's say, for example, 33. And that's his long time.
It's so funny that you picked that number because that is the exact number. And here's the deal, right? This sucks.
Everybody hates this.

And they hate the lady that does this this to them. And they're mad at her.
So they send people over to the island where they see the big rock.

Every once in a while, they send an expedition over there to basically ask her to cut it out because we

do not like it. Okay.
There's not that many people. Some people don't think the expeditions are a good idea anymore because they have not been successful to this point.

But everybody agrees, like, or at least a lot of people think that we should keep trying. And it's the psychology of this one.
And are they like debating her?

Or what is the methodology for getting her to cut it out? I mean, no one's really been particularly successful. So there may be debate.
There may be.

Do they just leave and they're sad?

They are killed on the way by the many, many monsters. Got it, got it.

Yeah, it is a really, it's a heavy setup for a game, I will say. The first hour and a half, two hours of this thing are a

rough ride thematically. I do think I really enjoy it.
It's fun, fun attically, just from a fun game, like reviewers till interactivity perspective, it's a little bit

for sure.

I do think that it is a really, really fascinating setup for a game because it does this cool thing that happens in like sort of apocalyptic fiction sometimes where

like humanity's relationship with death has changed to a degree where like sacrifice and duty and purpose become like sort of dérigur.

And so you have basically a team of hard asses who have been training their whole life to sacrifice their lives to try and stop this,

you know, unfair thing from happening every year.

And it really makes the characters pop, I feel like.

And then, of course, as soon as the expedition sets off and things go really fucking sideways, really fast, then they have to struggle with, like, okay, now was that all just kind of a bunch of talk, or are we actually going to try and push through this thing?

I think the writing and acting and everything have been. I've played about 15, 20 hours so far, and and it has been superb.

And would you describe, I mean, JRPG description notwithstanding, like, is it the turn-based, like, traditional Final Fantasy?

It has big Final Fantasy, big persona vibes, just in terms of like, uh,

how it, how it controls, how it feels, how combat flows, and exploitations. And big Mario RPG vibes.
Absolutely. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of emphasis placed on timing.

You can do the thing where like you come up on an enemy in the overworld and hit it to like get a jumpstart on the battle. And then there's constant sort of opportunities to

infodge or parry. Dodge or parry or do like

QTEs with your special attacks to like maximize how much damage that they do. There's smart ways to make that

more dynamic to like the aiming and stuff, things like that, that are a little bit more like fidelity, I think, in the more turn-based structure.

A complaint I've seen a lot about the game,

there's difficulty settings, but I mean on the standard difficulty, which is what I'm playing on, it is pretty hard.

It is not a, if you, uh, if you don't do a good enough job with these like QTE things or the dodging and parrying, like you're going to have a hard time making progress.

It's funny in 2025, I find that when I have a wipe in a game like this, which happened to me pretty early on, there is a little bit of like, oh, this doesn't seem right. Like, like, I've lost.

Guys,

we're not supposed to let this happen. This should have been focus tested out.
I've lost the game. I kind of like it.

Like, if you die, it starts you off like like five seconds before you got into the fight. So death is not like a super punishing thing,

but it does set a sort of stakes where when you are able to parry an enemy's attacks, it feels like sekiro good.

Like it feels you do a counter-attack, you earn this, you earn AP, which is kind of like the currency you spend to do your

special attacks in the game. It's a really important resource, and you get more of it by parrying.

Dodging is a little bit easier than parrying, but you don't necessarily get that extra resource or do like counter-attacks for doing it. So you kind of have options in battle.

And then each character that you play as has their own sort of like mechanic that you are managing

to

maximize their effectiveness in battle. Gustav is the first character you pick, and as he attacks, he builds up this charge that he can release in this one like super attack.

And then there's Lune, who can cast spells to earn these elemental

like points that she can spend to like influence her attacks. Every character has like their own thing going.
So there's like combat is fun.

And I think for me, if in a big RPG like this, like if the combat is enjoyable and you want to do it, that is a huge credit to, you know, the design of the game and, you know, probably means I'm going to stick with it a lot longer than I would normally.

It keeps layering on on top of that. So not only does each character play quite differently,

there is this painting system where you are like actually painting elements onto your enemies, and you can spend points both to paint onto them, but then you can consume them with other moves to deal extra damage.

So, you're basically like, oh, I'm layering on lightning and fire, and then I have a move that I know that is going to really be powerful when it pulls from that.

And also, that move is even more powerful if it is like charged up, and I can have another character feed into that charge. So, I'm basically creating like this massive explosion of damage.

It's all about sort of synergizing the character's different abilities to build up to one massive fucking hit. And it feels really, really good every time you do it.

I will say for people who hear the Sekiro comparison and that does not sound ideal, hey, welcome. You're a lot like me.
I was really struggling with this game. I got into it.

I like completely fell head over heels. At the start, the music is incredible.

The story is heavy, but as y'all said, the writing and performances are quite beautiful and subtle and delicate in a way that you don't see very often in any video games, not just this genre.

But then to go from that into, I'm going to beat the shit out of you and it's going to be timing based.

And it sounds like there might have even been, I don't know if there still are issues with that timing depending on the frame rate that you were at.

I've heard people saying like, make sure that you're locked at 60 because it can be off. I've heard people say like, don't use a Bluetooth controller because it's like

all of that. Yeah.

So I finally did, I made a few changes. I switched to story mode, which is still challenging.
Yeah. Right.
It's like

you can do that and still have a nice time. You're not like depriving yourself of the game, which is great.
The other tips are the dodge that Griffin mentioned is a great way of learning the parry.

Right. So like when you go into a fight and you aren't familiar with an enemy yet, just always start with the dodge to to learn how the tempo works.
And it's kind of Dark Soulsy.

Yeah, pretty forgiving. And then once you've learned it, you will just instinctively,

at least in my case, I was like, oh, damn, okay, I'm just ready to parry. Yeah, I'm not sure.
It also actually sounds like Lies of P, which is funny because they're both like aesthetically infinite.

They are the same era.

A lot of really good progression hooks, too.

Like you find these, they're called pictos, and they're just like little modifiers for your character that make it like, so if you do a parry, you earn an additional AP.

And then you kind of master those as you equip them so that you can keep their abilities like equipped even when you don't have that particular thing.

You earn attribute points, and there's different weapons you can upgrade, and there's

different skills that you can spend points on to learn. Like, there's a lot, a lot going on here, but it, I mean,

it, it's all works to, it's so cohesive in a way that, like, I don't know, man, I am enjoying this much more than the past few Final Fantasies, which I think is a fair comparison, given that that is sort of

a core inspiration for what they did here.

So this all sounds like incredibly my shit, which is rare because I don't generally like turn-based RPGs, but the ones that I do like are the action combat ones, and this certainly checks that box.

The question I have, which is the whole other half of the game, is

do you

find the writing narrative to be like

pulling you along? Can I say that ties into actually what I was was going to say, right? Because, like, normally I don't like a lot of,

I can get bummed out if there's too much talking and not enough

action. And even talking is fine if it's so long as it's not like the crystals need to.

So, this is the thing, right? It's the issue that I have with video games is that you're a video game.

And if you want to communicate a story like a movie, then you got to be at least as good as a bad movie. You know what I mean? Which a lot of games don't reach that standard.

Straight to Netflix quality. Yeah, yeah.
And, but this exceeds that. For me, I found all all the acting, writing, just the world being in the world, like very engrossing.

And like, by the time that you

are ready for this expedition, I think it absolutely does its job of making you feel like I actually am going to go put a stop to this. I think I'm actually going to go.
They set it up.

They set it up real nice for you.

The whole thing, I also think there's something really unique about a

French developer, Sandfall, first project, apparently like a

miraculous sort of like coming together of uh just kind of random people.

The the composer they found on SoundCloud, uh, the writer, I think, like auditioned to do voice acting for it, and then just ended up like being brought on as a writer.

It's sort of like this wild story of

one more thing, I also can write English, and they're like, amazing, you're on, you're on, but like all of them come together to make this game an Unreal Engine 5, and it looks and feels and sounds fucking fantastic.

And I feel like that is not, that is not particularly common.

And this whole thing is also, you know, dripping with like French culture and aesthetic, which is not something I'm particularly versed in at all.

French folklore, too, like things I do not, straight up do not know about because I have not played a game sort of inspired by this setting.

And that is very, very cool. It's also cool.
Like it just looks cool, man. Like, and it's like, that's rare because I feel like so many games try to be cool.

You know, they're trying to attain that or trying to get you engrossed.

It's sort of like you were talking about how the world has been

affected by the, this, like, everybody dies at this, this. The gammage.

And you see that the way that they have like accepted this. And it's interesting because I think seeing characters in that.

in that way and sort of like accepting that fate rather than a lot of like wailing and gnashing of teeth and being told how tragic this story is and being told how, like, how terrible this is.

By seeing their resignation, I think, as a player, it leaves room for you to be like, well, if they're not going to be angry, I'm going to be angry about it. This sucks.
Let's go fix it.

And by leaving you room, I think that it leaves you room to get invested rather than telling you why you should be invested.

It reminds me a lot of

Children of Men and Annihilation.

Yeah, Annihilation is the thing I kept coming back to yes and what what both of those do quite well is they put you in media res which is like you come into it and everybody else is way ahead of you and exactly like you said hoops like you're having to emotionally catch up which actually pulls you in you are like leaning in to be like why are they not feeling like i am why why am i not that you are filling in those emotional blanks I think the other thing that does well with the movie comparison to hoops is by being in meteorize you aren't getting the traditional exposition dump that so many video games have i a game i'm going to talk about in the

at the end of this is a hundred line which is awesome but you don't even get the ability to uh like save the game until two hours in because you have to meet every single character and get the entire you know premise of the story yeah what's brilliant about this setup is that you know they live in this last city which is basically paris uh that has been destroyed but the rest of of the world is kind of gone as far as they know.

And so, when these expeditions go out, they do not come back. So, as soon as you leave on the expedition,

the characters are learning things about the world as you are learning about them. So, this feeling of like, this world's so strange, there's so much going on here that I don't understand.

As soon as you set off on the expedition, now the characters are feeling that way too. And

it really pulls the whole thing together.

It is cool though, on that, like early on, you go to an area of the world that's just underwater.

yeah and you're not like but they nobody really mentions it you're just kind of like there's fish swimming through the air and no one says shit you're like okay cool yeah strange you have to it's like yeah you've seen so much crazy shit at this point that it's like ah whatever man like we just need to keep moving we need to go find our friends it's also funny like there's a lot of humor in in the game that uh that shockingly hits and a lot of it is like uh pretty absurdist you meet this giant character named ska skier eventually who is just this uh giant who wants you to save his rescue his precious stones from his shithead neighbor uh and he has like all of these incredible powers but he won't use them to help you out because he gets too tired like and that is also happening while you're trying to stop uh everyone on earth from dying when they turn 33 years old like it's it's really uh

it's a really great contrast um i'm an i'm i'm loving this game man i cannot i cannot put it down uh mostly because mechanically, I think the hooks are just so strong.

Let me know when you guys are. I'd like to say something

at the end of the conversation whenever you're done. I'm done with this.
I'm done. I want to hear it.

What's up, David Cage? It's me, Justin McIroy. Listen, man.
Listen.

The game has changed, brother. The bar's much higher.
The bar is much higher now, David. You can't just release a game.

You can't just release a game now, David, because we know some French people know how to talk. You know, I'm saying, brother, you got to get some localization assistance, buddy.
You got to.

You got to. It's not a French thing.
It's a David Cage thing. It's a David Cage issue.
The game is over. Just suit Azon V.

No, that's Muzzy. Not David Cage.
I keep telling her.

I got him mixed up. All right, let's take a break.
We're going to come back. We're going to

head on over to the Savage Planet and let it enact its revenge.

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So, uh,

Revenge of the Savage Planet is the sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet, which was,

I really, I completely forgot existed, and I really enjoyed it. We talked about it on the show, yeah, yeah.

It's a fun five years ago, it's like a fun double-A sort of uh Metroidvania, I feel like it slots into

crafting, yeah, yeah, light crafting and a lot, yes, yeah. Um, Revenge of the Savage Planet is a uh, I would say probably sillier, lighter, a little bit goofier,

but not completely reinvented take on a similar idea where you are blasted off to a really strange,

very

physically

tactile world, very colorful world.

You are supposed to set up a colony there, but you have

classic, you know, none of your tools and none of your equipment made it.

And you got to start rebuilding stuff with the 3d printer that you have and just sort of like scavenging this planet for uh resources but the the corporate overlords that sent you have kind of like abandoned you so your only assistants is an ai buddy named echo that you can kind of customize with like the voice or how often they speak etc so pretty quickly you're blasted off with like uh uh very little in the way of equipment and you start getting a scanner and then you start getting the ability to uh uh capture animals and send them back to your base to study them.

And you did skip over the one big, probably the biggest change between this and the first game was that it's a third-person game. Oh, yeah, that's true.

I kept looking for a way to fix that, but they meant to do it. Uh, it is a third person, it is a third-person game, it is a lot more about the like I think silliness of like running around this world.

It feels uh, I thought at least pretty good to run around, but it is a

big playground, like, and and and even when you go to the door of your habitat to leave, it says the prompt is go play outside. Like, it's, it's, they, they want this to be a big, fun world.

The story, well, and, and stuff such as it is, um,

well, we can talk about that a little bit later, but that's the general pitch. Russ, what did you say?

Yeah, I, yeah, I think for what it's, it sounds like you did not care for the switch to third person, whereas I thought it was actually a big improvement. No, I don't, I don't know.

I just prefer first person, you know, I, I, you know, I thought that it was like a I didn't know if it was an option, I guess, at the beginning. I got used to it.
And I think it makes more sense.

There's actually a joke at the beginning of the game. I put that in quotes, but where you fall out of your spaceship, whatever it is.

And like you land in they say a line about like change in perspective. You know, falls like this can result in a change in perspective and then the camera pulls back.

I think that they're really intending that people remember that five-year-old dusty double AI. That's how I did better.
Well, good, Russ. You host a video game podcast.
I'm glad to hear it.

Somehow I did. And

your retention for video game minutes off the charts.

That's true. What I would say is I think for me, I found the third person to be better because first it like

does a better job of putting you in the world itself. It would be a lot harder to do a lot of this platforming.

And there's also like, they added a bunch of stuff where you can like slide and then do like jumping slides and double jumps and things like that.

And it just makes the whole thing feel closer to what I think they were going for, which is like a Mario 64 kind of vibes of just like fucking around in a 3D environment.

Yeah.

I was going to play stacks against that, but it's actually pretty close. I mean, there's like giant mushrooms, you're running, or you're getting a good head and steam, throwing yourself around.

The jump feels fucking great.

There are aspects of this that I think feel great. There are aspects that I don't think feel great, but just like the mobility stuff, I think feels really, really good.

What do you think does not feel great?

Gunplay, shooting things. I mean, this gets a little easier as you get more upgrades.
It just didn't feel very impactful to me.

And also just the like, I mean, I would say my biggest complaint with it is the way it handles gating of like progression. It's oftentimes like, complete this fucking meaningless side quest.

Yeah, you're talking about the biggest bummer I had with this thing. Yes.
So the

voice, your echo, your assistant,

a lot of the ways in which you relate to it is like, and I mean, by a lot, I mean, like, a lot, a lot, is you go to a quest marker and then it will show you the thing that you cannot interact with.

And then it'll say, okay, well, you can't do this. And here's the next quest that you need to go get the thing that you need to come back here to do this thing.

And it means like it's, and it basically lays it out to you like that. I mean, it's like, it is aware of

the fact that it is giving you a fetch quest to do. Like it's very cognizant of that.

A quest that you can't do yet. Yes.
Which is honestly just a positioning issue.

Like if you framed it as just like, let's go here and get this upgrade, I would be fine with it, even if it took the same exact amount of time.

But because they're giving you a nested series of quests to get to the end.

It feels like nothing. And it feels like you're checking off a little bit.

And it gets confusing too, because it'll like start giving you like your quests indicator will change to like from the thing you're actually trying to do to like the nearest teleporter, and it'll just kind of like update that.

So it's kind of hard to track like what you're doing. But the just that sense of like, um,

it's a real old lady who swallowed a fly kind of thing where it's like, well, you need the grapple, but to get the grapple, you got to get the whip.

But to get it, get the whip, you got to capture this, this creature. And to capture this creature, you got to get this other thing from over there.

And it's like, by the end of it, you're like, I don't even remember what I was doing. Like, it's

for a game that seems to really want to emphasize play and exploration and stuff it the structurally it feels very guided it didn't feel like they knew how to fill out the length of the game once they like nailed the sandbox of like how it feels to move around the world they didn't necessarily know like how do we use this in a big way that isn't going to feel like chores and like it's not even like the main quests like some of the side quests that you eventually get which unlock valuable resources, and some of them are even required, are like Electrocute 5 whizbugs.

I don't know where the fuck a whizbug is.

And that's just a drag. So it's this weird dichotomy of like, it's really hard to make a third-person game feel great to move around in the world.
It's really rare to do that.

And so that part of it feels great. And then you pair it with, I think, just like they didn't necessarily know how to scale that up.
But, Justin, there's another thing you have not mentioned.

Shocking that we've gone this long without you. Shocking that we've gone this long.
Yeah. So

the way that the messages from your like

corporate overlords and former corporate overlords and even like commercials and stuff like that are like communicated to you is

through

FMV sort of cutscenes that are like highly, highly like,

how do you say kind of filtered to make them look like

it's right on the line between scenes?

They are they are actors. It's like live actors performing these scenes.
No, it's definitely I'm not making like a distinction. I'm saying they're trying to blend it into the world.

It's not this thing of like it's not completely

an aesthetic shift. They're they're trying to incorporate it in the world.
Um,

I mean, I really love FMV and games. I think it always like kind of ribs rips me in.

Uh, I have to say that for this, I just feel like all of the stuff that, man, I really don't want to, I don't mean this to sound mean.

I think it's going to sound mean, but the stuff that is humor in this game, or it just feels very Tim and Eric from like eight or nine years ago, like this, like leaning on absurdism

for like the jokes and like the grotesque rather than it being like actually humorous.

There is a your boss, uh, your former boss in this character is like in a fat suit where the joke is that they eat a lot of food and that's disgusting and bad and it's like so out of step with it's not like not pc it's just not funny man it's like these played old fat shaming

like it's not jokes it's just like it really is when i say tim and eric i don't mean like it's kind of aesthetically inspired like it it just feels like cast offs from you know we have glerp and it's the food stuff that makes old people go crazy and then you have old people squishing the glerp and they're like yeah i love glerp too It feels also like the performers, and maybe this is wrong, but are just like the developers in makeup or people the developers knew.

They're not like great performers or anything.

And I just feel like they really, I don't know. I was just really unimpressed.
And the stuff with like

some of the, I don't know, it's just, none of it's funny. I don't know.
I, I, yeah, it didn't land for me either. I was kind of blown away by like, they clearly spent a lot of production time.
Yeah.

Like they did like set deck and like costumes and which is, yeah, just a lot of commitment. And I guess, but, but we've talked about this before.

Like humor is really fucking hard to do in video games. It really anywhere.
It's hard.

But I agree. In this case,

the other parallel I would make is like kind of early Saints Row,

like that. that kind of like tone.
Early Saints Row, and it's also like

lifted straight. Like this is like this sort of like

uh mocking mega corporations is like i mean obviously

fair game fair game obviously absolutely but like it's hitchhiker's guide of the galaxy it's like um

you know so many other properties of like very worn territory it's very yeah it's very worn and this and this uh uh it just does not ring as like particularly funny just because it's been so like it's rick and morty it's has done this to death like it's it's really well covered at this point it's where it will actually be interesting because outer outer worlds 2 is coming out later this year and that also had like a similar tone but not quite as like again grotesque and goofy as this but it does lean on that like corporations do great well that and the first game you know first outer worlds came out i feel like a while ago and it wasn't quite as sort of played out at that point but yeah i i'm I'm also a bit nervous about that.

I had to run out of little tummy issue. Maybe you already talked about this.
It's so crazy to secretly do that and then at the end of the

day, like, I snuck out and perfectly changed it. Did you all say the thing about Google Stadia? No.
What? Oh, so that's the important part here, right?

This developer, they made the first game in this series as part of the Google Stadia deal. They basically, like,

got pulled in. Google Stadia gets blown up immediately, and they're like ejected out into the universe, and they make this thing.
So, I think this is a little bit of therapy, you know, happening here.

Like, draw the first process,

it did for sure, but I think

this game is like really in it. But I do agree that it is worn.
I also think, on top of all the fiction that you mentioned, just being on like blue sky

for an hour will mean that you see like a lot of these jokes. It's just kind of like it's a certain type of online humor that it's not bad.
It's just, well, it's ever. Well, I would say it's,

I'm not giving a judgment here. I'm saying it's ever-present.

And to then hop into a video game and get more of it is like,

I think my operating, and this is not my,

maybe my language, but not my idea, that humor is the truth delivered in a surprising way. And I I just don't feel like any of this is surprising.
And maybe there's a truth to it.

Corporations are evil for sure, but like it's not communicated in a surprising way. I think Outer Wilds is smarter about how it delivers

outer worlds is smarter too. I mean, to be fair, Outer World is smarter, but yes, I'm at Outer Wilds.
I know corporations, Outer Wilds. Yeah.

But yeah, I just think it's a little bit more. And I mean, again, like, I don't want to keep harping on it, but like, Fallout is, is very much this kind of, you know, it's like, I don't know.

I There are aspects of that it just it feels like it needed a rethink I could ignore the narrative stuff if if I thought every aspect of the gameplay was like really hitting on all cylinders, but I do think that like that kind of both aspects needed a bit of a rethink if you're just if you're gonna encourage people to get out there and explore and have fun then you gotta make a structure that encourages that.

I mean, you can't just say it. You gotta, you gotta actually like invest people in that.
And I just, there's so many

guide rails. You know, there's so many handrails in the thing.
You don't really get a chance to do it.

Elon, Elon Musk. Do you know why Elon Musk needs a driverless car?

Why is that, Chris? Because he doesn't know where he's going.

So that's the kind of, that's good shit, man.

That's actually really good shit. That's actually

thoughtful and poignant. That's a thing.

Surprising. Do we want to do some honorable mentions? Sure.

I say that. I don't really have anything.
Yeah, no,

can I talk about my thing? Yeah, yeah. Hundred line, the most.

Dude, shit. I kind of want to talk about that in a big way in a big way.
In a full epi. How about we do it? I would be very daddy to do a full epi.

Just so people know what it is so they can get into it. The people,

the

two of the creative leads on Dengon Rampa and Zero Escape

got together with a larger team and they made a new video game. It's called The Hundred Line.
It is, would you believe it?

Students have gotten caught inside of a high school at the end of the world and they need to figure out some mysteries. Also, tactic RPG.

It's sick. One word of warning, which I already said earlier.

You do have to like really barrel through the first hour or two. Quite literally,

there is not a pause menu. It does auto-save, as I found out, thank God, but you need to get through it.
Once you do, there's a whole game waiting for you on the other side, but

it is a rough.

It is really hard for me having this

massive original RPG that I have been completely consumed by, while also over there in the corner of the room is the new game from the Dangon Rompa and Zero Escape team.

Like, hey, we got a hundred endings.

You want to get lost in a flowchart, pal? Like,

It's really tough. I can't possibly play both of those at the same time, but man almighty, I am really, really excited to play.
It's 100-line Last Defense Academy is the thing.

Yeah, let's maybe do it like later in June, and then we can really dig through it. Yeah, I do have a request, though, for game developers that are listening to this.
Sure, sure.

We might have a couple.

Maybe you have an option to just be like, hey, do you want to gist this? Okay, cool. What's that look like? You want to gist the first hour? Just gist it.
If you want to gist it, you could gist it.

Just select the gist button, and we'll gist it for you. And then we'll get into the fun stuff.

Can you just tell me, Chris,

I'm sure I know just this for me. No, I know, I feel pretty confident in like, I know what the writing and vibe and all that jazz is going to be like.

Is the tactics side of the game also like enjoyable enough?

It's enjoyable in a give your hand something to do sort of way. Kind of like I enjoyed the tactics in 13 Sentinels.
It's very different. Okay.
But it's also just very easy.

The way that it works is you're on a big grid board. You know what? Let's just save this for the first time.
We'll save it. Save it.
No, no, no, guys. I'm on the edge of my

bag. No, no, no, wait.
Hold on. Tell me again.
If I get through all two hours of the boring stuff, it will let me play the easy tactics game, right? You promise?

You promise it'll let me play.

What if I told you you don't even get to the flowchart until hour 40? Let me diss it for you.

Okay. Let's dissed it.
God, I love a God. I love a visual novel flowchart.
God, I'm a sicko for that shit.

Video games.

I did. I'm still working on optimizing the retroid flip too.
It's the most time I think I've spent actually playing one of these retro handhelds that I've set up.

I got

Persona 4 Golden working on it, which is very exciting. But honestly, the thing I have been coming back to is

playing like Game Boy Color and NES and SNES games with the different

CRT shaders and filters turned on. I just played through all of Shadowgate Classic on the Game Boy Color

just because it looks fucking rad. How are you going to get that key from that skeleton? He's all the way over in the lake.
How do you get the key from the skeleton in the lake?

Well, do you have the sphere? You dummy? Oh, gotta get the fucking sky. Whoa!

That's unvolutionary.

I mean,

it's Shadowgate. I like coming back to Shadowgate because it's like, I feel like I know almost how to do that thing in my sleep.

Like, I've done it, and if you remember the steps, you can just go through it.

And I really enjoy the vibe of that game.

Also, now that the hockey season is over for everyone,

we've been getting caught up on some of our shows. And this season of The Amazing Race has really slapped.

It's been a good one. It's been a banner.
Did you see that story about Val Kilmer and

Will

who is it? McGrubber? Will Forte Forte? Will Forte at one point were like really into the idea of doing a season of that and it would have been the best. It would have been really very, very good.

I'm so disappointed.

Yeah, this one's great. The budget, I think, has that show got that show has always been kind of like a side piece to Survivor.

Like we will watch Survivor every time and then like Amazing Race, we'll give it a shot and maybe we'll stick with it and maybe we won't.

And that got especially weird during the COVID season because there was a season where like they had, after a few legs, Phil got everybody together, like, listen, everyone, we have to stop for a while.

And they stopped for a while and then they had to come back and start the race back up. And there were like a couple teams who didn't come back.

And it was really weird. And the budget and like plotting has been kind of strange since then.
But

Mr. Beast would have just bought a mall and then put them all in the mall and had them race around that.
Yeah, I think that that is a different scale than we're used to watching the show.

But really good casting this year and

beautiful, beautiful locales. It's just enjoyable.
It's a fun watch.

I've been watching season two of the rehearsal. Oh, yeah.

Which is. I've not watched the most recent episode, but the episode three, I think, is the most recent.
Yeah. It might be my favorite episode of the rehearsal I've ever witnessed.

I lost my fucking mind watching that episode.

I don't even know. I guess if you haven't watched this season, the premise is Nathan Fielder is trying to

address serious issues with the airline industry and pilots in particular to minimize the amount of crashes that happen.

And he thinks the core issue is communication within the cockpit and everything goes from there.

It is.

He spends the whole first episode saying, like, can I, a clown man,

possibly address this serious issue of how power dynamics between a pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit of a commercial airliner can lead to miscommunication and pilot error and plane crashes?

Can I possibly, possibly overcome my like persona of being a comedian jokester to address this actual real issue with the ambitious conceit of this entire show while also getting money from HBO because they are expecting a comedy show.

A comedy show, right? Like,

the first, man, the first episode starts with

about 15 minutes of simulations of actual plane crashes

and black box recordings of actors playing out black box recordings of actual plane crashes. It is a rough fucking ride.
I guess trigger warning. Yeah, for sure.

You could probably skip the first 15 minutes of that pilot. No pun intended episode of the season.

It'd be a crazy place for our pun, by the way. Don't think you need to clarify.

yeah uh but yeah man it is i i it it just it's clear because the first season of the rehearsal was also interrupted by covid yeah and uh they really had to do like a huge left turn in terms of what they were touching on and this is like clearly where his ambition was with something as pretty bizarre as this yeah and again

I thought episode two was very good.

Episode three of this season is like

really spectacular. I'm very excited.

Juice, just yeah man here's what i would recommend guys here's what i've been spending a lot of my time with this week uh if you get on to youtube you can watch uh the electronics 102 course from lake washington technical college fuck yeah it's instructed by a man named joe griniuk uh who the first part is 10 hours long and I'm at about hour four and a half right now and the thing has been gripping and if you want to learn the basics, fundamentals of electronics, this course is only 17 hours long, and the entirety of it is available to you on YouTube.

Just start watching this thing, and you're going to emerge from if your brain is wired a certain way.

I mean, you could just watch the whole thing and learn a lot about electronics. And that is my recommendation to you: you go watch the video titled Basic Electronics Part One on YouTube.

I visited Justin's house this past weekend and

saw your setup in your office.

How much does it look like Beekman's World?

I don't know if it's at Beekman's World level, but

there's a lot of tinkerers' toys.

A lot of tinker toys in there. I think I expressly forbade you from

a lot of clips and lenses.

I trust that none of them will be out of place when I return.

I'm adding this to the newsletter. This is Nerd's Lesson?

Yeah. Okay.

I mean, the video is basic electronics part one. The channel is nerd's lesson.

Now, listen, I'm only four and a half hours in, so it may get boring later. I don't know.
But the first four and a half hours, I'm to resistance right now.

Hey, listen. You didn't need to gist it, is what you're saying.
Listen, no gisting required. Yeah, do not gist that.

Let's just say this. People in my life have been hearing a lot about batteries.

Have they covered the water being bad part of it? Sorry, what? Have they covered water being bad for electronics? So interesting. Water, conductor or insulator? Both.

Wow. Makes you think.
I guess it depends on how much water is.

Pure H2O

is an insulator. So when they're treating water at a water treatment plant, they'll actually

measure the conductivity of the water to see how much junk is left in it because pure water not conductive so if you like in theory if you're in a hot tub and someone chucks an electrical appliance in there don't do that shouldn't do that now you will die but if but if there was nothing in the water if there was a new hot tub new hot tub but also you didn't have oils and everything because you can throw off the chemistry very easily but i don't my skin is growing yeah but it's water i didn't know this pure water it's an insulator fascinating Thanks, Joe.

Okay, I think we did it. Thank you to everyone over there at the Patreon and everyone else listening that isn't a Patreon member.
Maybe you will become one.

You could go over to patreon.com/slash the besties and join. You could also get a gift for people of a subscription if you want to get a gift for a friend or loved one that loves the besties.

Patreon.com slash the besties slash gift.

Some new members that I want to thank to the Patreon. We have DTX, we have Aaron, we have Ben, and we have Ram.

Thank you for being members of the Patreon.

We have a new Resties Resties coming to you on Tuesday.

We have that bracket episode, which went up a little early. That was a nice special early gift for y'all.

So lots of good stuff over there on the Patreon. All right.
And next week,

we are doing Doom the Dark Ages. Doom the Dark Ages.

Doom guy is going back in time. Going back in time, but he's passing the original Doom Guy to even before the first Doom Guy.
Think about that. Wow.
Whoa, whoa.

That'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?

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