Split Fiction is everything fans want (and more of what critics fear)

I'm worried because we were talking about like honorable mentions.

I'm worried that what I'm doing at this point, the way I'm filling my free time, I am worried that I will have lost the besties audience with it's too much.

Do you think it's too smart?

Do you think you're too smart now?

It's not too smart.

It's too

niche.

It's too small.

It's too annoying.

It's too pointless.

Because your brain is too big now for everyone else.

Is that it's not a brain is too big.

It's that the brain has winnowed itself down to just where it only can refine so you're okay so basically what you're saying is the equivalent would be if you really got into whittling but only whittling small piccolos

yes yes exactly yes and they were and they didn't make noise yeah they were like decorative artisanal piccolos right like just because just because

learning how to SSH into your Raspberry Pi so you can make a time-lapse camera for your wife's plants.

Just because

just because it has computer stuff in it doesn't mean that it is like cool to people who like video games.

That is a tough distinction.

I saw the comments on the newsletter for last week, and I have never seen more people engage with your fucking piccolos than they were

with

all the Linux.

I think what we've discovered is maybe kind of subconsciously, there's a rhythm in your voice that has been training our audience over the past decade to care care deeply about your bullshit i i think it's just i think what i'm going to do is i'm going to keep that audience but i'm going to i'm going to it'll be like a baiting kind of thing where like i'll throw them every every couple episodes i'll just kind of like casually throw out like

put a new destro on the uh the rig they took out took out ubuntu put on kubuntu messed around linux myth a little bit so the packages just weren't there it got to have that spotify snap installation The the listeners are sweating with joy right now.

They are just drenched.

Do you have to wedge yourself or is that something Sydney does?

I have a professional.

Yeah, my wife is a very busy woman.

She doesn't have time to come give me nuclear turbo wedgies every hour on the hour.

I have to wake up.

I pay a guy to wake me up at four in the morning because I can't get him in in my waking hours.

I have to have a man come by and wedgie me at night.

He scares my children.

I beg him not to, but then he wedgies me harder because he's a bully.

bunchu

the fact that people talk about fedoras so much you guys have gotta work on that though i listen a lot of it's good but you guys have gotta work on the fedora stuff

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

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

My name is Russell Freshkick.

I know the best game of the week.

No, there's only three of us.

Yeah, welcome to the Besties.

It's a video game club where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

It's a video game club.

And you're a member because you started listening.

That's kind of a trap we lay for you every week.

This week, we're going to be talking about split fiction, sort of kind of like the fourth.

I think of it as like the third or fourth in like a sort of pseudo-series

that has come from this studio.

This is the new one.

What is this one, Plant?

What's the setting this one apart?

Split Fiction is a co-op focused game that is a follow-up to It Takes To, which might be the most slow, rapid, growing mega hit of all time.

I don't even know how to describe its trajectory.

This time, you and a friend or family member are going to play as one character who loves fantasy and another character who loves sci-fi as they get trapped in the worlds of their own imagination and fend off evil AI.

Wait, do we know that AI?

Really?

I thought it was

corporations.

It's probably AI.

It's all AI.

Oh, damn.

What do you think corporations are at this point?

Gotcha.

So, Split Fiction is, I mentioned it as like a sort of pseudo, pseudo-series, I think, is, I don't know if you would count Brothers, although Brothers is definitely like exploring some of these co-op ideas, you know, even though it's a single-player game.

Yeah, they're all from the same developer.

You said four games from the same developer that all are either strictly, exclusively co-op, like you can't play with just yourself, or

they,

in the case of Brothers, could play, you could play as a single player.

It was a player game, but it had you controlling two characters at once.

Yeah, so that the single The it was brothers and then a way out was like a prison break kind of thing it takes two was the most recent and that was a game that like I thought it takes two was really interesting because I thought that was the divorce puppet that you turn into like little people

Yeah, and it really I feel like the it is one of those rare examples maybe not rare, but like where I feel like the a lot of the press and the critics kind of saw like the parts that weren't functioning.

And then it seemed like there was this audience that found the game of people playing together.

And like there not being a lot of games that like, uh, the people that I've encountered that really enjoyed It Takes Two have been couples that have like played it together and like had a really good experience with it as a result of that.

So this is another co-op game.

I played a split screen.

I don't know how what you guys did, but I thought we played.

We played online.

Okay, cool.

But it, but when you play online it's also a split screen you can also see the other person's screen which is helpful yeah yes um well they probably would have to balance it twice for different experiences if you didn't have that because you

and it's it's genuinely like plant was making the point what even though we're online like he could if i was looking at like something cool or whatever he could see that because i was looking at it yeah you could give each other advice on like oh you should hit that object you're also the some of the experiences that you're having i think are asynchronous enough that it's kind of neat to like see what the other person is doing.

It like builds the helps build some tension in some of the, some of the scenes.

And maybe some jealousy when one person has the boring job and the other person has the cool job.

Yeah.

No, no comment.

So

what should we talk about first?

Yeah, I want to talk about the story.

I want to, no, no, no.

I want to start with the narrative first.

Okay, go ahead.

Because the narrative is like pretty fucking funny,

just as a baseline premise.

So you have these two characters.

There's Mio and sorry, I'm blanking the other person's name, Zoe.

And they are both aspiring writers, but Mio seemingly doesn't give a fuck about writing and just wants to get a paycheck.

And Zoe really, really cares deeply about her fantasy stories.

And they go into this high-tech,

I guess, corporation that is like, we want your stories.

That's also literally called Raider.

Yeah.

The company's called Raider, Winkley.

And he says, I am Raider.

Like, he doesn't say, hi, my name's JD Raider.

He says, hi, I'm Raider.

And it's J period D, no period.

Okay, fine.

Steal a period from one of the authors while you're at it, JD.

So they go in there.

They want to paycheck for their great stories.

And it turns out what they're going to be doing is putting on VR suits and getting shoved into balls of light wherein they kind of go into a Tron situation where they are experiencing their stories.

in a virtual environment and they have to like survive them.

An animus from Assassin's Creed, I would say, is like,

rather than re-experiencing history, you're experiencing your stories because they're being extracted.

Yes.

Now, in a really baffling twist, they've told, not twist, set up, they've told these authors that they're bringing them there to publish them.

And then they put them into white super suits.

And it's like, none of the authors save one is like, this doesn't normally happen in publishing.

And they're like, no, it's part of the publishing.

Get in the bubbles.

And it's like,

just tell them you're going to let them walk around their worlds.

Yeah.

Like, just say it's, it's a VR thing where you can walk around your book worlds and the authors will go and do it.

You don't need all of this nonsense.

It makes that people look so stupid from the jump of the story.

Also, the fact that they're trying to make money in publishing is also pretty funny.

Our master plan.

Hopefully their master plan is not make money in published.

Okay, so that's the setup.

And very quickly, you,

I guess Mio gets shoved into Zoe's bubble.

And now they're together experiencing one another's stories and kind of bouncing between the two.

So you've got some levels in fantasy, you've got some levels in sci-fi, and then you've got some, quote, side quests that take place in some like,

for lack of a better term, just like direct references to other video games.

So if we were talking about the narrative first, I think there's a lot of really cool stuff happening gameplay-wise, but I did want to say, just from a narrative perspective,

I think this game is so poorly written.

None of the dialogue feels like anything human beings say.

And you shouldn't say that your main characters are authors who are filled with such creative ideas that people need to steal from them and then make them two of the most generic human beings I've ever seen in a video game.

These people are not authors.

They don't care about their stories.

They don't care about their worlds.

They don't, I don't know what they, like even their stories are the most, it's that Studio 60 problem of like, I'm, if you're going to do a show about funny people, it's got to be funny.

Yes.

So if you're going to do a show about authors who are so inspiring that people are going to steal their ideas, they got to be better than like cyber ninjas.

And

I am sorry to be like coming out on a hard note, but it is so frustrating to see the arrogance on display here that the studio thinks that they are able to write like dialogue that works and none of it.

I mean.

None of it works.

It is built entirely of cliches.

And I, and it feels like people who don't have a great grasp of the English language writing dialogue primarily in english and having to overly rely on cliches because it is uniformly terrible the analogue that i would say is if you've played like quantic dreams stuff

yeah that it's a very similar issue very similar i think it's people that like i don't doubt that joseph ferris is very confident in his writing style because obviously he makes games that are very narrative forward

but i think this is true of a lot of his stuff and arguably for me i didn't play a way out but i uh I loved brothers and it's kind of telling that that is a game without any dialogue whatsoever I mean yes yes the the the thing that's happening on a moment to moment level that makes it just difficult to latch on to the story is there is no real antagonist once you are in the game for the first few hours so you you arrive at raider raider is purportedly the antagonist right this corporate publishing overlord who's going to steal all of your ideas and then you hop into the bubbles of sci-fi or fantasy, and suddenly the antagonist would be the villain of that story.

So it would be, you know, like the sci-fi overlord or the fantasy evil queen or whatever.

But they don't really have any connection to the overarching story.

So they don't really have anything to do.

They're not real.

There's no stakes.

If you die in this world, nothing happens.

If you stop or don't stop this world, nothing happens.

The wants and needs of the villains in these worlds are irrelevant to the overall story for the first few hours.

And that is a really tough way, story-wise, to pull you through the game when you're like, wait, why am I here?

Who is this villain?

What do they want?

What will even happen to me if they don't get it?

There's no villain, no motives.

And it's also,

I think kind of the worst thing is it's like dull for such a sweaty premise that seems set up to like,

it feels like riffs apart kind of where they're setting up like this world could go anywhere what is riffs apart i don't know what that sorry ratchet and clank where they're jumping between like different realities right or like it seems like they're setting up a big like

why make the levels ideas and then have like a straight down the middle sci-fi game for three hours it's like it it that really feels like such a huge missed opportunity that they're not bringing in like when they're taught they show you other authors and this may be happening later in the game they show you other authors and they're like talking about their worlds And like, I kind of expected it would be like you're going into their stories to do something to warn them about something.

You maybe do.

I don't know.

Maybe you do at some point, but there's no other.

The worlds that I have seen have been like

there are a couple side things that are kind of like really cool and creative, but then there are some that are just like straight down the middle rips of game worlds that you've played before.

Well, intentionally to the point of like, like, there's a quote.

There's a line.

They quote, they quote the games.

Yeah, there's a line that's like, we have to take a leap of faith, and then you do the leap of faith from Assassin's Creed.

That's how direct.

And it's not a game about video games.

It's a game about books.

Yeah.

It's frustrating because I like so much of the stuff that is happening in this game and it feels like an arrogance of, well, the story is done and we don't have to like achieve something there that is new or unique or original.

The machine that the bad guys use in this game is called the machine.

Like just well, I mean, last game was the book of love.

You know,

yeah, I mean, it's like, I think an AI machine already stole all your good ideas, guys, and you're just like using nouns and adjectives.

I, okay, so why, why do these games work so well?

And why do I think this game is going to make a gajillion dollars and people are going to love it is the other half of it.

And I do wonder how much people, you know, these games have a great reputation for the writing.

Is that people really loving the writing, which it might be, or is it people associating the good vibes that they have, spending time with their

people they love,

maybe even goofing about the writing, telling their own story?

That seems more like it.

Yeah, I think that's what's happening.

I think people are talking over the writing.

Certainly, Plant and I, to some extent, were doing that, even though I had the subtitles on to make sure I didn't miss anything.

But, like, there is a back and forth that brings life to the co-op gameplay, which I did enjoy, that

kind of trumps the

very

kind of vanilla flat.

Yeah.

It's kind of that thing of like you get a bonus point because playing a video game with your friends is fun.

Like it was fun to do that with my friend Slice on the couch playing together.

Like I think you're bringing some of that like positivity.

Yes.

And if you break like writing down into like three parts, right?

There's the structure of the whole story.

There's the dialogue.

I don't really enjoy either of those.

But if if you think of the scenarios that they're actually creating, like, what are you doing?

What is the gameplay?

That stuff's clever as hell.

There is, I mean, the amount of raw ideas, nothing in this game is, you know, 10 out of 10, the most exciting new video game idea you've ever seen.

But as somebody who's been playing games their entire life, it's basically a tour,

a breakneck tour of video game mechanics.

There is something about, and I don't exactly know,

it's a very unique feeling that is, that is specific to this kind of game, but there is something about there being a fun gameplay thing that you are not doing or any gameplay thing that you are not doing that like lends to the verisimilitude of the world in the moment to me.

Like it feels like more believable because the fact that there's other fun stuff happening, it makes what I'm doing feel more real because it feels less like a video game and more like that's happening over there and this is happening here and holding both of those things in your mind is really not something that video games do very often of like yeah the closest you can get like you're playing an online game and oh like someone's giving you comms that like oh there's a guy around this corner that you don't actually see right but here you'll see Not only someone might be doing a call out, your buddy next to you or online, but you also see their screen so you can see what they're doing.

And sometimes I'll see like plant in the distance, like trying to hit a switch or missing a jump or something like that.

And so you're seeing it from like three different angles in a way and that is pretty cool and it does yeah lend more light to these environments they really enjoy

i really enjoyed being able to see you screw up a lot fresh sure because it was great to know that you are not the perfect gamer you're infinitely better than me let's get it it might just be that i'm more persistent Well,

let's talk about your persistent gamers.

Let's talk about my favorite moment of this video.

Sure.

So Fresh and I get in.

There's all these rapid fire.

You're learning everything.

You're learning how to jump.

You're learning how to walk on walls.

The pace of the first two hours of this game is fucking.

It's like an uncharted cutscene, but like for two hours.

Doing so much.

There's no stopping.

And then Fresh and I, we're hopping from like giant space semi-truck to giant space car.

We're flying through cities fifth element style.

And I

and I hop from one truck onto another, and I'm climbing through the you know the the future world and I turn to Fresh and I say okay lift that ladder and he says you did not say that you said what do you do now and I'm like well all I can do is latch onto this one ladder get the ladder and he said it can't go any further down and we bash our heads against this thing.

We're like, is the game broken?

We try everything.

We try to break the geometry.

We reset the checkpoint.

We come back.

And then what was what was the fix?

I just had to raise the ladder instead of lowering it.

You turned the handle the wrong way.

Do you know that part, Justin?

Do you know which part I'm talking about?

I know exactly what you're talking about.

Did you get stuck on that part?

No, no, no, no.

Instantly.

Slice and I are like, it's like, when you're really good friends, it's like you kind of just,

those sequences are, again, it is that asynchronous, like one person trying to platform while the other person is driving a truck.

It's really fun.

And it only works because they are like, it's weird because

it only works because they're depriving you of something right it only works because they're kind of depriving you of half of the experience but that's like a reductive way of looking at it because you are like sharing it with somebody else but it is it is neat like because you do actually feel like you're working together because you're doing different things like when both of you have swords then one of you could just be a better sword guy you know it's it's neat that you have to have different skill sets.

Yeah, there's a reliance on the other player that I think makes this all work.

I also think having some tension, healthy tension in a co-op game is good.

Like it's fun and funny when one person has the really cool feature and the other person is a pig that shits rainbows and is not having as much fun, me,

but is like...

I don't know.

There's like some bonding that happens when one person is getting to have more fun and then it switches, you know, 30 minutes later and suddenly you're the one getting to do all the cool stuff.

They also do a good job, I think, of making areas where

if you are having fun with the other person and you're approaching it in a good, in a good spirit, there were several areas that Slice and I ran into where like

we would just play around.

Like it was just fun to, they have props in the environment that are like interactive.

It's like a basketball hoop at one point.

Yeah, there's like a,

we were like, there was a water slide and we were like trying to go down the water slide and land in the, in the rings and you could like sit in a ring and just float around.

And like, there's no reason to do it, but it is like in

if you're like having sort of a hang with someone else, it's nice to have those moments where you don't feel like

there's zero stakes for screwing up.

It's so low pressure.

If you die, you're instantly back.

I mean, it's like not a big, a big deal most of the time when you're like not in like an active combat situation.

It's like you make a misstep, you're right back into it most of the time.

Did you find this game more challenging than It Takes Two or any of the other games that they've made?

You know, I didn't play It Takes Two.

I didn't find this

particularly

challenging.

I would say it was pretty.

I don't think we like fully wiped at any point where both of us were down.

Generally, it was like one of us would die.

But it never was like something where I felt like we were having to adjust our approach.

Sure.

to get past something.

It was not, it was, it was never like that, like, okay, we died.

Let's try this again a different way.

It was usually like adapt on the fly.

This feels very much designed for

one person is like pretty capable of video games and the other person is like tangentially familiar with video games but doesn't play them very often yes and that's great honestly like that makes for a really tough design challenge because obviously you can't make sequences super hard because it's just going to get frustrating they wisely have it so that if one person dies they can be revived by themselves very very quickly um they do a little like you can hammer the button to go faster which adds just like a little bit of skill and interest to like the

surviving.

It looks a little more challenging than it takes to on the surface for people who played it.

The game just moves faster, fresh you made the uncharted comparison, but it does so much to make sure that you don't screw up.

So there's you know intricate jumping sequences, but the reality is you can pretty much smash the jump button and it's going to magnetize you to the poles that you need to go toward.

Like big time magnet.

Yeah.

So I think it, it wants to look like a hard game.

There's some cool perspective stuff too that look like where one of you is playing a top-down game and the other one's playing a side-scroller and that's that's pretty neat.

Yeah.

They also have sequences that

the height of the absolute peak of what we played, which was the first, I would say, like three-ish, three and a half hours.

There's a moment where Mio is driving a motorcycle and Zoe has to activate a self-destruct thing on the motorcycle.

And Mio is not just driving a space motorcycle.

Mio is going through a Jerry Bruckheimer film.

It is almost explosive.

It's exaggerated.

It's fifth element.

It's great.

But while that's happening, Zoe has to activate an app on her phone that can activate this self-destruct mechanism.

And the app in the middle of this intense race.

Wait, can I?

I feel like this is a little bit like this is for me.

I thought the phone thing was like one of the best things that we did.

I feel like it's a little bit, that's fairly

spoilery.

I would say

if you're going to play it, that moment, and you'll notice it when it happens, is really like a spectacular highlight for me from a gameplay standpoint.

And from just like a storytelling standpoint, I wish that there were more moments like that.

What's difficult for me to kind of wrap my head around is if you've got two people that play games a lot, obviously Plant and I play a lot.

Justin plays a lot of games.

I can't speak for Slice, whether they exist or not, but it does feel like

if you take the multiplayer out of it and you were just doing the things in this game, it would be like maybe the most dull, flat, like third-person to a comical degree, where it feels like it feels like the video game that's in a CSI episode.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, but I, I, that, that feels to me like being like, well, you know, if you don't fry the potatoes, tastes like just blankets.

To Russ's point, though, I think for me me at least, I had a pleasant time while playing it with Slice.

I do not feel a compulsion to

make that happen again.

I feel zero compulsion to like see what happens with the rest of the story or like see what else happens like mechanically.

Where if I was, it was fun to do together, but I'm not anxious to return to it.

And like playing.

I mean, I can't play by myself, but like it has not even occurred to me to like, I got, I want to see what happens next.

It feels more like matter of fact, like, oh, this is really fun to play together, but I don't feel like, Slice, come on, we got to see what happens with the, this incredibly inane story.

And I just feel like a little bit of that would have gone so far.

But she's making this something that's easier to recommend.

Do you think it's even for us in that way?

I picture the type of person who's going to really enjoy this game is the person who plays maybe two or three games a year or maybe hasn't even played a game in five years and it's the family member that you bring into the game, right?

And

do you know like hotel TV that idea where it's like you haven't watched TV in like years, cable, and then you go like a hotel and you turn it on and you're like, oh shit, hotel TV.

I'm like locked in.

Yeah.

I feel like that's this is like hotel TV of games.

If you haven't played games in a few years, you pop this on and suddenly you're just surfing through all this shit and you're just so overwhelmed cognitively.

It must feel amazing for that sort of person.

It does feel, yeah, like a greatest hits almost of like where video games are at yeah and again if you aren't if your brain is not used to playing games very often it is already so

I don't know it's revving up your brain in all sorts of fun good ways and then I think for the person who does like video games being able to spend time with somebody who normally doesn't have interest in your hobby and suddenly they're like really jazzed and revved up about it That's going to release all sorts of good chemicals in your body.

So I get how these games have such a huge audience because i think if you have that perfect pair if you have your mio and your zoe

this this becomes something really really special or i just think it really relies on the audience basically is it though like are we making a

is there a point at which like if the narrative is too good or the story is too well written or like where it would make me happy but it would be an experience where we're like sitting in silence and kind of like sometimes my wife and I like to watch Love is Blind, but it's not because we think it's better written than

Severance.

It's just like,

you know, like that's what I, that's about what I'm up to right now.

I think what I'm, I think I'm putting too much pressure on it because I think what they're doing with the mechanics is so interesting that I wish they were trying to be

just a little bit more inventive on any other aspect of it.

I wish it was just like a little bit more fulfilling in any way other than this one specific thing they're doing.

and there was an element in it takes two

where

even though i didn't think the writing was very good i did i was desperate to figure out like if they were going to do the ending would they yeah how are they going to do the ending because it's like these two should get a divorce they are not in a good relationship they clearly don't like each other and there's really no coming back from this one and just that was kind of pulling us along apart from the fact that like plant and i both had to review it for polygon um and i just don't have that like pull that's pulling me forward.

I think that's the pickle.

The story doesn't have to be great.

You're spot on, hoops.

But the

inner conflict of we're making a game about AI or publishing or companies and how they steal ideas.

And we're going to have the main characters be people who really only have ideas from other stuff.

They themselves.

You're right.

100%.

They invite the dialogue of like

ideas and converse and ai and like what makes a the value of an original thought like it feel i when when when people ask me about writing video games writing uh reviews of video games back in the day the thing i would always tell people is like please read things that aren't video game reviews and play and read things other than video games and i this feels like a game made

like just in a world where only video games exist which is like if you're gonna do that that's cool astro bots that kind of but like

don't it make it about literature?

Why is it about literature?

Have the company just be a game company?

Yeah.

Here's why, plant.

Because then they're 100% ripping off Assassin's Creed.

This way they can kind of pretend that they're not ripping off Assassin's Creed.

I would say it's because then EA is their parent company and it's a little too obvious.

Yeah.

I don't know if EA owns them for what it's worth.

Right.

They're publisher things.

I don't know, man.

It just, I know that I'm probably asking too much, and maybe that's unfair.

And I know that people are going to like it because they like that last one.

And go, and I'm glad, go with God.

I just wish, I feel like if you're going to make a whole game, why not make all parts of the game good?

You know, that's me, though.

I just think they need to acknowledge that they have a weak writing situation.

And I don't know how to get that in their heads because their games continue to sell millions and millions and millions of copies.

So I think we just have to live live in the world where they continue to put out fun co-op games that are written pretty badly.

Well, I mean,

maybe we could send Quadic Dream over and just be like,

I know right now it seems like this will never win.

Take it from me, David Cage.

Eventually, the money stops.

We will make a great office environment for you.

It is very healthy and fun.

We should go to the B segment.

So the power of generative.

She just became Dracula.

David Cage became Dracula.

Oh, I knew it.

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Okay, we've done it.

That was Split Fiction.

Given the fact that it's a co-op game, I feel like there are a lot of games that are single-player games technically, but actually work great in co-op.

And I just experienced one recently with my child,

which was What the Golf.

My child has played like three games in total

and played with a heavy asterisk next to it.

What the Golf has been the hugest fucking hit.

Props the Chris plant for the recommendation.

He suggested it.

and the way we play what the golf is he has control over the a button which if you remember that game really just controls the power of the swing um and i have control over the left analog stick stick which controls the direction of the aiming and between the two of us

we can actually finish levels which is kind of shocking uh i think we beat the whole main game just playing like that uh and that's that's really exciting playing with a kid that's you know three and uh generally not able to do much else in terms of video games, but like that was a really fun experience with him.

It's the best.

It's also like Buck Wild.

That game is like and a tour of video game history

more more ambitious, I would say, than the one that we just talked about.

Yeah,

I have uh I've really gotten into with Cooper

games that are a little bit more sandboxy.

Um one that things that she has really been drawn to lately is stuff like like

Untitled Goose Game or

she really likes, she's just gotten into Goat Simulator a lot on the iPad she loves.

And the other one, what was the British one?

Thank goodness you're here.

Which is like, that's something where we can play together and I can kind of put it in her hands.

And she likes to like, she doesn't have that frustration of.

We don't have that push and pull of like losing and winning.

It's more like playing together.

And that's like a co-op experience that's fun to share because I can kind of nudge her, but control-wise, it's very accessible.

We actually have, we're going to dig into reader mail, and I might as well just start because my single-player co-op game is tied to it.

Harrison asked us, what's the best single-player game to play with someone?

Example, my wife and I played through The Witness together, and it was a perfect couch co-op experience.

You can both try and crack each puzzle section, and it actually helps keeping from getting frustrated because you have someone to keep it from getting dry, and in theory, succeed more with two people putting their heads together.

Looking for more games that we can enjoy together, even if it's just one person behind the controller.

Love you guys.

So,

for me, this is the narrative games come in big time here, and the deduction games.

We've talked about Curse of the Golden Idol, especially if you are able to get a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

I think that's great.

I think games like Kentucky Road Zero are good for this, where you're picking dialogue, but it doesn't really matter what dialogue you pick.

It's more of a feel.

I think that is excellent for this sort of situation.

Do y'all have any other narrative typey games?

Witnesses is funny because I tried to play that one with Sid because she's into puzzles.

And what we learned, and we probably knew it from long ago, but

first-person things where I'm controlling it and she's not are instantly nauseating.

I mean,

looking for 10 seconds and she is done.

Yeah, I think that game in particular i remember feeling motion sick because of the lack of a reticle or something so any first person thing though where she is not in control and she's watching me play yeah um it is tough so there's more static things uh cursical model with uh

uh return of the open den is really great for that um

uh I was going to shout out The Walking Dead, the first Telltale Walking Dead game I played in quote co-op with my wife.

We switched off.

We did that too.

Those games are extremely old, though, aren't they?

They're very old games.

Extremely old games.

They still work.

I still have a memory of there's a sequence where you realize that what you're eating is human meat.

It's like

my wife was playing at the time and she was like just too late to stop Clementine from eating the human meat and I've literally never let her forget it.

Sorry.

Good times.

I also just tossed 1000 Exorcists on the pile because why not?

If I'm going to be here, I'm going to shout it out.

I think it's exciting.

It is.

I just didn't mention it as a game that people can purchase and play, right?

I'm mentioning it as a game that you could play with somebody else.

I think it's, hey, hey, man, you can't even get me to play it.

It's pretty fucking overzealous to think you're going to get me and somebody else to play it.

You're getting greedy, plant.

I'm telling you, I'm going to wake up.

Oh, people haven't told everyone that I am the wedgie man.

So next morning, I'm going to wake you up at 4 a.m.

I'm going to put you up on a little

clothes hanger by the back of your briefs, and I'm going to say, baby, it's time to play through this game.

A lot of people wouldn't fly cross-country to give their friend a wedge every day.

You know what I mean?

A lot of people don't have the guts.

I'm cool, I can't.

I have, speaking of 1000X Resist, I have played a bunch of the Phoenix Wright games with my wife, and it's actually, it's good, but for, what are they called?

Graphic novel.

What is it?

Visual novel games, it can generate some like minor tension when there's like a reading pace difference,

and I think that can throw things off.

Did your connection to 1000 X Resist be the X in Phoenix, right?

How did you know?

And did you want to brag to me and Plant about how much faster you read than your Y?

Yeah, why do you think I was the one that was a faster reader?

You wouldn't have brought it up otherwise.

Listen,

you didn't even need a guide to learn how to read.

Okay, let's

go guide-free on learning how to read.

He has not mastered Q or X, but he is going to nail it.

They're coming.

They're coming.

He said he's never going to zwit until he masters those two letters.

People keep saying that this is a one, but it looks like an L to me, and there's no convincing me otherwise.

Hey, let's dig into some more mailbag really quick.

Please.

The big question from Nick.

I am so shocked to hear Justin install Linux for personal use.

As a server engineer, I applaud their excitement for wading into waters even I haven't bothered to yet, hoping for Steam OS on desktop soon.

Here are some recommendations for some quick helpers.

If anyone wishes to dive deeper into some of the basics, I highly recommend WizardZines by Julia Evans.

They cover topics that are tough to even begin to, quote, know what you don't know.

and help you get a handle on the OS and what to look up next.

I also recommend explainshell.com for whenever you need a quick explainer on a command that you found online.

Easy way to learn what a command will do.

It mimics the quote man, the manual pages found within the terminal, but in a more comfortable interface.

I see Hoops writing these down as I name them.

I love that we're turning everyone into Linux people.

It's great.

Do you know how long it would take me to realize that man is short for manual?

Thank God for Nick actually writing that in parenthesis because I definitely would not have and you can do the man page on man so you can man man when you find out all the stuff about manual.

um

yeah that's that's uh those are great resources i'm excited about uh i heard about an os this week called bazite oh yeah is uh i know that distribution that can run on a mini pc so i've been thinking about i've got a batasera mini pc that is running like all my emulation stuff and i was thinking about setting up a bazite like mini pc like a bazite pc basically to like turn it into like a gaming yeah like just use my gaming pc as like a living room type gaming setup and and you know use a uh uh something else for like my my day-to-day stuff it's just really there's a uh a con it's a confluence because i started messing around with like the raspberry pi stuff and then that sort of like opened the door to linux because raspberry pi computers are running a you know version of linux yeah um but those they all work together and i just find it very uh satisfying to to figure out how those those pieces interlock um

i love it it i feel like i didn't mention mention this last week when we were talking about Linux, but the thing that has been appealing to me is I've always been someone who like surface level knows how to kind of do stuff with computers, but mainly because I know how to Google it and figure it out.

And I feel like what's cool about with the Raspberry Pi stuff and Linux, because it's similar setups, because you are doing it all yourself.

You really understand.

I think I'm a lot less afraid to mess around with things because I know that I could just put the USB stick back on the thing and start fresh.

And since I put most of the things on there and I decided what they all do and I can interact with them, it's much more simple than a normal computer.

But like, I feel like I'm understanding these concepts in a way that feels like you're building an engine from scratch almost.

Yeah.

And I'm like understanding what's going on.

Like yesterday, I used my Windows computer to, through the terminal, connect to the...

camera that's doing the the time-lapse of Sid's plants upstairs.

And I did that and I had no idea that the computers, even if they were running like different operating systems, all that crap, you go to the terminal, they don't care.

They get out of talking to each other.

It's great.

It's also just wild to learn something almost entirely new once you're in your like late 30s or early 40s, because by that point in life, every day, what you learn is the equivalent of like, if you're redecorating the house, you're like, I don't know, changing a pillowcase.

It's like, oh, yeah, that's, that's a new, a new thought.

But this is how I feel with learning Japanese is.

Each day is like, oh, I'm just going to have to put a whole new expansion here because I just straight up didn't know any of this when I woke up this morning.

And I think it's really intimidating at first because you're bad at stuff in a way that you just have not been bad at stuff in a long time, like since you were like a baby.

But once you get past that, if you accept, if you give yourself the permission to just be bad at it, the goal is not to be the best at the thing.

Yeah, my, my, my learning.

advice and I've been you I do this with like the Python coding that I've been doing like the Linux stuff and and I did it with Japanese and too but I think it's a really helpful thing is I try to start learning in a few different ways rather than agonize about the best way to start learning something.

I'll start in like three different ways usually.

And because the base entry-level thing is always the most rewarding to me, right?

And as it gets more advanced and it gets a little more, a little harder, then I start to get a little bored and it gets a little frustrating.

Maybe I go away.

But if I start back again with a different learning type, and then do that introductory stuff again, I'm reinforcing those concepts.

And then maybe I do it a third time and see how different learning platforms teach these concepts in different ways.

And if you can understand them in two different ways or even three different ways, then as you progress through, your understanding is a lot more complete.

Like it's a holistic understanding.

And it, and I, for me, that goes a lot quicker, even though I'm like kind of doubling the amount of work.

The second time I'm going through this stuff, I'm like, okay, I know this.

I know this.

I know this.

I know this.

But it's reinforcing it in a different way.

And I think it's a really fun way to learn stuff.

But anyway.

Justin, have you considered like Tony Robbins style uh presentations because i think you've got it i think you've got yeah i mean who wouldn't want to uh

to live more like me i mean who wouldn't want to spend more time staring at a terminal you know what i mean who doesn't want to be reading more man pages man man

man man that's who hi i'm man man no need for the man just ask man

Do you know that you can type in just a command?

There's a lot of commands that you can type in that start with sudo, S-U-D-O.

And you know what pseudo means?

It means run this like I'm the boss of the whole thing, no matter what.

And you just type in sudo.

It's like, fuck it.

Run this like I'm the boss, no matter what.

And you can type in things in that computer where the computer's like, all right, bye.

Like, okay, I'm dead.

I'll forget everything I know.

Bye.

And it's like, oh, man, I shouldn't have told you to do that.

But you can.

So much of what I do when I'm like setting up a gaming handheld or something like that is typing in like these phrases.

One of them is pseudo.

I remember doing that.

And then being like, okay, it's going to say like, you're you're about to fucking delete everything.

Just hit okay.

It'll be cool.

I don't know what I'm doing.

It's so rewarding to be in

now at a point where like I feel more comfortable in the terminal.

Like I just want to get in there and do the stuff that I need to do and not fool around with like the

GUI stuff.

And that's like, that's very, that feels very good.

I feel like I understand the crap that you're talking about on like a much deeper level without actually knowing anything.

And you don't feel like you're going to like, you're, you're working without a net.

Like you're going to type.

Yeah.

I do feel like that.

Yeah.

So that's not scary to you.

It is, but this computer costs $200.

This is what I'm saying.

I bought the cheapest laptop they have.

And I just put a new operating systems on it.

You know what I mean?

That's smart.

Yeah.

And I'm covering.

Hold on, wait.

Justin ran away.

He ran so fast his chair spun like in a Looney Chance cartoon.

I'm covering my Linux desktop with all the most kick-ass hacker stickers I can find.

You've got a Raspberry Pi sticker.

Got a picture of a pirate.

Here's a picture of a pirate.

Look at this.

This is freaking lasers.

Unbelievable.

My other computer costs $35.

Unbelievable.

Oh, bless you.

Unbelievable.

Are the stickers more expensive than the laptop at this point?

No, they came with the

some of the many, many, many, many different components, $5 components I've gotten from China.

Oh, man.

Y'all, while we're sharing just nice things that we've learned, can I tell you the euphemism I picked up in Japanese a couple weeks ago?

Oh, sure.

When you want to say that somebody's fly is down,

it's Shakai no Mato.

I believe that's right.

Yeah, Shakai no Mato.

And it means

your window to society.

Jeez, that's great.

That's great.

God, Japanese green.

They're so poetic.

Figured it out.

We can jump into honorable mentions, I think.

Yeah.

I've been watching a new show, and I'm pretty excited to talk about it.

Here's the premise.

There's a guy who is having like kind of a tough time in life and decides that he wants to

kind of like unplug for like eight hours a day and not even worry about it.

So he joins a job where he like has no memory of that while he's at the job.

And then he leaves the job and then he can like live the rest of his life without knowing like what he was doing at the job.

And this show is called The Big Brain Brain theory and it's on Apple.

Big

brain.

Big brain theory.

Big brain theory.

Okay, so I don't think.

Okay.

So you're talking about the big brain theory hosted by Cal Penn in 2013.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, so where's this bit going?

Yeah, I mean, I'm interested.

Where's this bit going?

Yeah.

Where are we going with it?

Because it's different.

It doesn't actually have anything to do.

Where are we going, Russ?

I started watching Severance.

Oh, okay, good.

Okay.

And it took me three years.

I also, for what it's worth, spent the last week

watching the first season of The White Lotus.

Oh.

So I am on the fucking pulse of culture right now.

There's a lot of great TV that you are in for in store.

I've been rearing a small child and it left me in a bit of a black hole.

Doesn't that sound hard?

Oh, yeah.

Oh,

oh,

it left me in a culture black hole because we also have the homework of playing the games on this.

And I have that.

Oh, that sounds hard to play.

Oh, imagine, man, having to have a family and play games.

Not just saying it's hard to keep up with the culture.

Sure, yeah.

It sounds tough.

But Severance is a good show.

People should watch it.

I'd highly recommend it.

I hope it

finds an audience because it's kind of weird.

But it's got some good actors in it.

And

yeah, I think it's going to do well.

I feel like there was so much talk when the second season started but i feel like algorithms have made that so hard yeah to tell like what's actually buzzy and what's like

that's always been the problem though right remember when girls came out and it was the whole internet was talking about girls and then i think like 30 000 people watched girls when it came out that's that's because yeah that's a new york media focusing on this show that only new york media is watching uh i do think severance is a bigger deal i think it like has actually driven subscriptions to that thing.

Something that I really like about Severance that I wanted to mention is it's not afraid to be a genre show.

And I feel like a lot of shows that have a high concept like this or a sci-fi concept would want, like, would immediately want to dismiss that and talk about the heady concepts.

And they are not afraid of the mythology.

Like they're like, no, there's concrete mythology.

It's not abstract.

It's not lynchian.

Like these things are happening and here is like our reality and here's what it means.

It doesn't get lost in the metaphor either like i i had kind of avoided it because i was like okay i get it like you have a personality at work and you have a personality at home and now we're going to do the thing that all the horror movies have been doing recently where they bash you over the head with the like very obvious metaphor and this

it's that it's interested in that sort of but it's much more interested in the world that it's creating as if it were a real thing Yeah.

Yeah.

I love it.

I think it's a credit to your audience, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It balances the humor really well.

It's also the fact that I've been able to get as far as i have without it like being quote spoiled is kind of i mean i do intentionally avoid stuff that is evolved involved with the show but like it's been four years and yeah you know that's kind of exciting and cool that i could have that experience

and it is i think it's a it's a different way of like um

doing

this sort of television where it kind of puts the twist at the beginning if that makes sense.

Like the big idea, like the big, like, what does it all mean is in the first episode.

Like, you know what it all means.

That's what I was saying to Alex.

Like after watching the first episode, I was like, oh, that would be the last episode of the first season of a normal show.

Right.

Instead,

the last, how far have you made it?

I'm like halfway through season one.

The last episode of the first season, it, I did not breathe.

Yeah.

Amazing.

I can't wait to hear what you think about the rest of it.

What about you, Plant?

You've been doing anything interesting?

Oh, yeah.

I'm always up to like cool stuff, you know, like raising a

kid, playing games.

It's really hard.

I don't have time to watch things like Severance.

Actually, I watched Severance season one.

I have not started season two.

I want to recommend a movie called Bad Genius.

It is a 2017 Thai

heist thriller about smart high school kids.

And this is a movie I saw a long time ago.

I had

not really thought about it recently, but now I'm starting to see it pop up on like Netflix and

Canopy and lots of different places.

And I don't know if it's kind of finally having its moment.

I understand

a years-old Thai high school thriller.

Is this for everybody?

Yeah, it really is.

If you like stuff like Ocean's 11,

or you just like high school-centered stuff like Gossip Girl, here is your mix of those two things.

It is so compelling and so exciting.

And yeah, you do have to read subtitles, but if you can get past that hurdle, you're in for a real, real treat.

And I do believe it is on Canopy.

So you don't even have to pay for a streaming service so long as you have a library card, though.

I think it might be on Netflix too, which most people have.

So

with the school year now kind of approaching that big test taking time, I think this is a movie that especially younger folks would really enjoy cool I just wanted to real quickly recommend the substance even though it was a

older film I was trying to catch up on man I tell you

it came out in the last year right yeah I mean but it's like I was trying to catch up on some of the Oscar stuff and man I know this sounds how this makes me sound but This year, more than so many, I just could not get it together enough to watch some of these things, man.

They look so boring and sad.

Like, I just couldn't do it.

Brutalist.

what the brutalist it's called the brutalist like

i don't like those buildings there are substance was very cool and i i liken it to it reminded me of night bitch and i think and i feel like

this feels kind of embarrassing and vulnerable to to say but i hope that it it

hits the way it's meant to

There have been things that I have sort of understood about being a woman and being a woman like in America specifically that I've only sort of understood through my wife and like talking to her and intellectually understanding it.

And I think that it's really cool to see movie, like Ebert said that movies are like engines for empathy.

And I feel like both of these movies have really helped me to understand in a better way and like an emotional way.

what it is like to be a woman.

And in this case, the substance, like a woman who is older than many of her peers that is trying to like still make it and and still like uh what society expects of her the plot is similar to severance it kind of lays it out the ideas uh pretty early on it is about a substance where this uh fitness influencer who uh is played by demi moore uh it basically creates a second her it's a second body that she can utilize as long as she switches back and forth between the two once a week.

So she can have this career where she is this young, vital superstar and she goes back to herself, but she has to switch every week or a movie happens.

So, yeah, but it's great.

It's weird.

It is unsettling to watch.

It is a good example of a movie that was written by someone who English is not their first language, but they have made that a strength by not trying to make the dialogue dialogue literal uh it feels a little disorienting it adds a heightened reality to the whole thing yeah um and it and it is not trying to feel like literal dialogue not going for naturalism yeah and i think that like that that really that that helps a lot um and i think that it's very uh very cool uh there's also a lookbook for this movie that now is online that people can check out that is extremely cool to look through.

Hoops, I don't know if you had a chance to see this yet, but I'll send it to you.

I think you'll really dig it.

Cool.

I think we did it.

Griffin will be back next week.

I wanted to thank the following people for being patrons of the besties.

We have some new members.

We have Giora.

Sorry if I'm going to screw up the pronunciations.

I'll do my best.

Giora, Jared,

Kale or Chell.

I'm not sure which one, but I did research the pronunciation of your name.

And Alistair, which is an awesome name.

And I didn't didn't think anyone had that name since Alistair Cook.

So I'm glad that they're keeping it around.

Welcome.

We appreciate you and we appreciate everyone else at the Patreon.

We have a new bracket episode, which is about the best Easter eggs in video games.

That is live right now.

Here's a clip from it.

The thing that they've connected is that the year the X-Files is

the year the X-Files started, you push that in and you get abducted by aliens.

That's

this is, I gotta say, man, this is primo.

This is primo Easter egg because it has the

quality that I think we have been dancing around this whole time, but I think this one really highlights it.

A great Easter egg makes you kind of want to give the creator a wedgie.

Yeah, sure.

Like

this makes it's like, oh, you dorks.

God, you guys are such nerds.

Clearly bully you guys that made it.

You're making your murder game, but really you're just watching X-Files be a big dorks.

I think that that is primo, right?

That they're sneaking that kind of junk in there.

Yes, please.

That's the power of a snort, too, right?

I mean, that's really, we kind of

benefit us all the time, because when you snort, that's kind of a

little, yeah.

It's how a person who is congested laughs.

And that's inherently.

That's a good dork.

That's a good idea.

awesome good times

that was good that was fun uh what are we doing next week justin next week we're going to take a break from all this uh

work and all this gaming and all this action we're going to take a little break with wanderstop

and we're going to continue to do what we have to do we will still be working because we have to talk about a video game but the video game is kind of about like not not doing that but it's ironic but we're not taking a break like we never do no we never stop be Make sure to join us again for the besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games?

Besties.