The Besties - BOY! Do We Have Thoughts About God of War: Ragnarok

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

How do you follow up a certified club banger like 2018's God of War? Join us as we discuss Sony Santa Monica's daunting sequel and its unsurprising breakout star. (Spoiler: It's Richard Schiff.) Also discussed: Signalis, Dave the Diver, Marvel Snap, Binding of Isaac Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I feel like we need to set some ground rules, specifically when it comes to bread. I have been waiting for this conversation for a long time. I'm glad we're finally saying it out loud. Bread rules. We're saying the quiet part out loud. Bread rules. Do you want to start?

I'm going to start. Do you want to establish the parameters? Yeah, sure. I'm just going to say the most important bread rule there is, and then everything is sort of secondary to that. There's only one bread rule to remember. Yeah, go ahead. Freeze that fucking bread, y' fucking bread y'all freeze it are you freezing your bread if you're not freezing your bread you're you are making a big mistake yeah freeze that bread and

tell them what and tell them why because i know yeah i know too but i want to hear you know sure totally the second you get home your bread is is instantly deteriorating and becoming gross now you can eat a slice when you get home that's fine one plain slice nothing on it nothing on it completely dry but everything else that you've brought home all the bread stuff needs to go directly in the freezer you can put it in a ziploc bag that's fine but the second it goes in the freezer it retains what makes bread special and delightful and if you were leaving it out let's say you like do the like half twist tie and you like fold the plastic bag over no y'all you're ruining your bread you're ruining your bread i need a special

cooler to get my cryo loaf from from the the giant eagle to my freezer yeah i need there to be zero time i need there to be zero time where their bread is exposed to the kind of temperatures that my body likes because my body's not bread and my bread is not my body i keep my bread in the fridge no justin no that's a half measure what it's not even a half measure it might be worse than leaving it out on the table in a sandwich no no justin here here the the liquid inside your bread did you know your bread has liquid in it oh my god it's so wet the it's so wet the liquid inside your bread you're leaving it in the fridge it's drying out it's going goodbye like you're waving goodbye to all that liquid by putting it in the freezer you're leaving it in the fridge it's drying out it's going goodbye like you're waving goodbye to all that liquid by putting it in the freezer you're sealing the liquid in it's not going

anywhere nowhere to go nowhere to go it's parking it's it's taking a little vacation inside the bread and it's not going anywhere you know we've been talking about uh the freezer for so long you know what i think we got in our hands? What's that, Juice? A cold opener. Hmm. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Frostick, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties. It is a video game club that is also a podcast.

And just by listening, you have become a member. We talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. Let me tell you, folks, this one especially, if you hold this one up and Pac-Man next to it, you will realize we have come a very long way. Unrecognizable. Unrecognizable. There is eating in this, so...

God of War. Ragnarok is the game. And Chris Plant, what is it? Wow, I... According to the Criter the criterion collection the best movie dirty discuss it right after this god of war ragnarok yep um is uh it's the new it's the second God of War game in a sense. And it's also the,

I don't know, seventh? I think it's like the seventh. If you count the Vita, there were three main. They were good. You gotta count the Vita ones. And then the Vita ones,

I think there were two Vita ones. And then there was God of War Ascension. So that's six. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of God of Wars. And there might've been another one in there that I'm just forgetting. Yeah, probably.

You really only need to know about the, I know of God of War. And there might have been another one in there that I'm just forgetting. Yeah, probably. You really only need to know about the, I know that God of War fans get angry when you say this, but you really only need to have played the 2018 one to play this one, I think. Yes. Yeah. Especially in this year. The number of naked women he rips in half in this one

is basically nil. To use as door jams is zero. Yeah, to use as weights for puzzles. That's a real thing that happened in god of war looking up um so i i loved god of war one i thought that not only when you say that you mean 20 2018 thank you i loved god of war can i just call it one sure from now on you you all know god of war one i loved i thought it was not only like really smart really pretty gameplay mechanics Can I just call it one? Sure. From now on, you all know. From now on, God of War 1, I loved. I thought it was not only really smart, really pretty,

gameplay mechanics, a really enjoyable, pleasant experience. I thought the idea of one of the big characters in a medium being in conversation with his own legacy was fascinating and like such an interesting hallmark of how video games have grown and matured um and i i mainly wanted to like establish that context for like how um how pumped i was for god of war ragnarok because i i thought the first one was just so so smart yeah i think from a like third person action game point of view it it set such an incredibly incredibly high bar for the entire genre that i mean the only game that like comes close to competing with it for just from a gameplay standpoint is um last of us 2 in my opinion and it is just like just so it was so different from everything else that had come before it in terms of feel in terms of like

just how polished it was the structure of the game was like really unique um and i think uh they took a lot of that foundation and used it in this game rather than reinventing the wheel this is not like a total like start from scratch kind of sequel no it is is frankly the the uh the polar opposite and i for me i think that's the most sort of surprising success of god of war ragnarok is how it does not really miss a beat from from picking up where the 2018 game left off do you mean narratively or overall i think i think narratively and mechanically like in god of war 2018 it was all about angry Kratos learning to stop being such a shithead and be a daddy and be a daddy and it's all about sort of the the the realizations that go hand in hand with that and it is great that this game does not make you kind of you know how in Metroid at the start of

every Metroid game or especially every metroid prime game there's like a sequence where samus like falls off something yeah or something like a big plasma beam plasma beam blasts her suit and she loses all of her power-ups which is like the the conceit for why she has to go and get the fucking space space uh the spazacer again um i am i i was wondering like how they would handle that uh if at all with ragnarok and they basically don't yeah they mostly do there's a couple things that you lose that were little things like your shield and but i mean you lose your shield for like 15 minutes they're in the middle of something called fimble winter whichinter, which is a permanent winter. Pre-apocalypse. Yeah, pre-apocalypse.

And it is, they mentioned that it's like draining their magic. Different people say it's like, oh, it's draining my magic, which I think is like maybe why you're not as good at killing stuff.

Yeah. You were really good at killing stuff at the end of 2018. You're really good. All that to say, to not have to retread the, whoa, shut up, boy, those waters again,

and instead sort of start at a place of mutual respect. This is a guy who's already admitting that he loves his son, and he respects his son, and he hasn't lost that vulnerability. And that's dope. He also starts the game with the Blades of Chaos, which makes it i would say about twice as spicy starting out as 2018 god of war did starting out you know it's

funny because i actually think i prefer the axe still although the the blades of chaos do get very good as you upgrade them but i think early on i was still using the axe more yeah the the mechanically like the game starts you out with a lot more options in combat. And a lot of it boils down to you have your axe, which freezes shit. And then you have your blades of chaos, which sets shit on fire. And so it's like using those two things in tandem, which is like more or less like what you were doing at the end of the 2018 God of War. And then it just kind of layers stuff on top of it from there.

They do some interesting stuff with elements, like your blades will set people on fire and the ax is frozen, and so if you use the ax on someone on fire, it does more damage so like incentivizing and vice versa you kind of have to be fluid as you switch between I have some issues with

pacing but not sort of mechanically like I think the game is pretty fun to like get in there and start cutting you know bandits in half or whatever like from minute one that's that's good for me i like that a lot yeah i think well i guess in the second half of this episode after the break we'll get a little bit more into not huge spoilers but at least more

narrative stuff but i do agree with you i think when the game is leaning into this stuff that it does really well which is the like game feel exploration freedom of movement freedom of like what you're going to do next i think it is cruising equally if not better than the last game i do think there are as griffin alluded to some elements in the game that i think they're trying to do something that they're just not necessarily as good at, which is very slow paced narrative beats. I'm not saying they can't have like a moving story, but I think there is a lot of like two people slowly walking through a forest sequences that just really don't need to be in there realistically yeah i i think also it's an uh a symptom of like the first game story was very clean yes and very like simple like your wife slash mom died sorry wait kratos's wife yes atreus's mom died and you have to carry her ashes to the tallest mountain

like that's and and that's it and everything that happens i mean you do collect like gems like the infinity gauntlet at one point to be fair but you do lots of different things but you know what your end goal is whereas here it is a little more vague and so far as like you know ragnarok's coming but you don't really know what you're gonna do to do it like about that i i can we talk about mechanical stuff before the break and narratively yeah just to keep that division for people that want it completely uh because there's one guy in the narrative section you know we're going to talk about yes baby you're in mechanically at all um i like the flow uh where partners are like more useful in this one like um your companions have

their own upgrade trees and you have a little bit more fidelity with the skills that they're using in any one moment, the way you upgrade them. And you can flick between different elements that they use and things like that. Which again, it's been however long since, you know,

four years since I played the last one. So I don't remember everything that is new about that, but that all feels good. I wish there were some little, there were some little there were some little things i wish they could let go of like uh the chests are like every i mean literally you can't go 30 seconds without seeing a chest and smashing it and they're almost always like some money and it's like well thanks this is good but like just go ahead and give me more

money later like i really don't make me keep stopping to get these chests yeah in a game that's so sort of like serious and and and you know more realistic take there's just chest fucking there are a lot and let's say this the god of the god of war kratos sucks shit at opening chests yeah i swear to god every time he does it it's like the first time he's done because either the chest is too small that makes him angry and he just sort of punches it open very effective open but that's but okay that's like saying that it's okay how the kool-aid man enters a room it's not for him we have door for him i guess he would never fit through a door what door would

allow the kool-aid man to fit through that? Okay, fine. It's not a great comparison because the chest has hinges. It has a mechanic for opening the chest. You don't have to punch through the top of it. What if it's locked? What if someone else wants to put something in that chest for safekeeping later? This is nothing. I really liked one thing they did mechanically is they gave you like upgrades based on how

often you would use certain skills. Yeah. So you would like level up the skills and they would get better and then the sort of final form of them is that you can insert a, what are they? Enchantment, whatever the fuck.

Amulet, gem, token, whatever. That changes it in some way. Yeah, so. It like makesment, whatever the fuck. Amulet, gem, token, whatever. That changes it in some way. That like makes it, go ahead. I was gonna say, just as an example. So if one attack that you have, pretty basic attack, is you hold down R1 and you do this giant fucking axe heavy attack. And if you do that a certain number of times,

like 30 times, you basically reach a tier where you can then select an enchantment between a few of them, and Justin, if you want to talk to him. Like builds up their status, or does more damage, or does more stun, stuff like that. And it just lets you customize your character in ways that previously

you just unlocked the skill and you never thought about it again. And here you can kind of lean into it. It reminds me that... Well, it incentivizes you to mix it up a little bit, at least long enough to see if something is going to work for you yeah it reminded me of like how ratchet and clank uh the more you use like a given weapon it like evolves in some way it does kind of it does kind of uh this is a me problem probably but i i do hate that once i completely level up a skill from using it so much and get all the cool enchantments and everything yeah I am then disincentivized from using it because it's no longer becoming more right yeah until you get everything I shouldn't use it yeah yeah I mean

you are not gonna unlock I'm almost certain there are many more ways that you can spend experience in this game that like I don't think you could max everything out i have so much fucking experience i think i yeah but you have like your the skills you level up with those then you're like leveling up the uh like relics and attacks you're real yeah you're leveling up relics you're leveling up axe handles you're spending experience on everything yeah i mean theoretically you could do anything but i don't think most players are going gonna do that i do think it's an upgrade for i hated the rpg shit in the 2018 god of war yeah biggest sort of complaint uh because you didn't like the fact that it was like a two percent oh you get a two percent increase in your stamina

or whatever it was and it was just like well i found a blue fucking right bracer and that makes this yeah it everything feels it's still not perfect i don't think that the carrots are particularly juicy but i do think that it is less obtrusive this time around and for me that is a a pretty big upgrade the equipment wise it really encourages like play styles like like customizable like you do with that i got two sets of armor that were both of a similar level yeah one would build up poison anytime i beat up somebody with my bare hands or use parry on them and then all the other gear in the set was built around like capitalizing on poison damage and i had that for a while and then i ran into some armor that is like focused on increasing the speed with which you get like special attacks

recharge you're called runic attacks but like increasing that and that is how i like to play yeah and that was cool because it's like oh good this is like supporting the way i want to play and it is is much less about min-maxing, I think, you know, than like finding something that is a good fit for you. Yeah, one of the things, you know, we kind of alluded to it in the last game, you really didn't have builds

until the very end of the game. Once you started getting like legendary armor and stuff like that, that armor had perks attached to it. But everything else before that really just had like very basic stats it was like oh more defense or whatever was and that stuff i felt like was only necessary if you were tackling like the you know valkyrie side quest like they're really really really difficult end game stuff yeah or if you were playing on a higher difficulty but honestly i like it was satisfying to work towards that stuff because it really did give you a pretty big advantage yeah

sure and here like every set every piece of armor in the game not only has a perk attached to it but can be fully leveled to maximum level such that if you find armor like the second piece of armor you find in the game could carry you to the end of the game if that matches your play style, if you like that play style. So, you know, there's armor that like when you dash at the last second, it slows down time briefly.

That was a big popular perk in the last game. So that armor, you can just fully upgrade to legendary if you really like it and it'll, and it'll increase in stats, but you'll never lose those perks. So I thought that was a huge improvement of the last game. The other big improvement, Griffin, you were talking about carrots, and this is one carrot that I really like chasing.

There's an amulet now, and I'm sorry about the terminology. I know it's going to get very complicated, but the amulet basically is the, it has these empty slots in them and you can fill these slots with various whatever fucking runes whatever they call them it is the barest amount of artistic abstraction i've ever seen on a gameplay mechanic it's the here it's the am it's the amulet um you put gems in it right and you just do whatever different stuff so don't don't overwhelm

yourself with your homeland or something yeah but what the end result is is you get even more control of your character because when you're slotting these things in these are additional perks that you can slot in and some of those perks it's like oh if you use three alfheim whatever the fuck runes they'll unlock a perk that increases damage after a dodge and you can pair that with like the slowdown you get after a dodge and really start leaning into perks there's also there's also individual runes that require a certain stat so for example i got a rune that increases my dodge distance and the only way to use that was to have a cooldown stat of 60 or higher and i had basically been ignoring cooldown unlike justin who likes using the

cooldown abilities i always forget they're there so i essentially never spec for a cooldown so what i had to go do was like look through all my gear and decide oh i could maybe get a little cool down from here and here and here just to unlock this very helpful longer dodge skill and further like power up my build so it gave me just a lot of control i'm not saying all this stuff is like super clearly conveyed it took me probably a good six or seven hours to like fully wrap my head around it but once i did it just felt like i you know i could build my kratos to be very different from like someone else's which is great i i feel like uh structurally let's talk about that before we move move into the break um i feel like my my big problem with this game is very little in the

moment to moment and much more about like the way it all sort of flows together and i think for me the the thing that was really hurting me with this one is pacing i mean we've talked around it a little bit some of those segments are a little dull um but it also is this like you feel the levels or at least for me like i really felt the levels it's much less open through a lot of the game than the previous god of war and once you like got into a quote unquote like level yeah like you're very much there kind of grinding it out and and there it is just the pace between that the pace of you know rushing into a very mechanical gameplay dungeon and going through that and then being spit back out it just felt chunky like it just felt like it wasn't pulling me along to the last thing a lot of times

i was like okay that's enough for right now yeah the just to be more specific the game is basically structured into two chunks there are pretty linear i would say very linear in fact like story missions if you will that happen at certain beats of the game and then the game will basically open up into these large areas that'll have like six or seven or even ten like little side quests and mini dungeons to explore and little objectives and stuff like that and the open stuff the side quest stuff is like i think the game's absolute shining moment when when they really take the reins off and let you explore and fuck around and like complete mini tasks and stuff like that i am having a total blast and there are a bunch of those areas i think you know each of

the realms you go to has at least one of them but then you'll go to these story missions which have you know obviously a focus on cut scenes, but also as Justin says, you know what? They reminded me of like Call of Duty missions. They were so railroaded to the point of like, you're just in a lot of ways walking in a straight line because you have no other option. And a lot of the like things that are there for you to do

are very much like, the one that was killing me was the reflection panels. Yeah. For the elves. Just like puzzle mechanics. Puzzle mechanics. Right. There is a there's a switch behind this gate and there is and right above this gate there is a purple plate that if you throw your axe it will reflect off of the purple thing to hit the switch. And there's so many times when you wander in the room and the game's like so what do you think

i need to throw my axe at the blue purple plate can i just walk through nope you gotta do the thing it's like okay fine like i'll do i'll do your your dumb dumb a lot of that stuff felt like it really detracted from the the narrative successes of it because it really felt so chunky yeah it's it's i mean i don't want to paint too broad a brush here because i haven't finished the game yet but i just do not find really any of the puzzly stuff or at least 90 of it to be fun quite honestly like almost all of the puzzles rely on oh did you look at this thing from this precise angle or oh did you check every nook and cranny for where these like three runes could be hidden or oh did you i mean it's like a modern day version of like pushing pushing a box on a Switch.

Like you compare that to like the puzzle solving in a game like Breath of the Wild and I realize they're different games, but I feel like modern day game design really requires some level of like ingenuity on the part of the player and not just, oh, I have this key and this lock and they go together. And it just feels so rigid in that way.

And the narrative character, you're always, almost always a very little exception with someone else, with a companion, be it Mimir, the head on your, on your belt or whoever. And a lot of times it's Mimir and someone else who's like helping you because Mimir is not very great with you know assisting in battle the fact that he's just a head um and the way these characters are so like they're they're they're very well written and naturally written and I could feel the writers like how do we get this head who's supposed to be the smartest guy in the world what's a cool way of him saying try throwing your axe at the purple plate brother like just try doing that like try doing this dumb gameplay mechanic for no reason because this is not

these are not lived in environments these are not play these are god of war levels that these people have made to live in um and uh that that that was rough yeah that was rough so so i do have some a pro tip for people that are playing at home. For me, my instinct was, oh, I want to see the story. So I'm going to lightly touch the side stuff, but mostly just focus on story stuff. And you can do that. It makes it very clear what's a main story objective versus a side story objective. Fight that urge to just do story stuff because if you're doing side stuff, it will make the story stuff

more palatable just because it won't feel like a total dirge march to the end where you're like on these linear paths make sure you're mixing it in with the side stuff and then when you feel like oh i'm gonna watch some cut scenes and like do a linear puzzle heavy mission you can go do a sorry thing but it's and the the side stuff is well well entwined with it it's very it's very often like so what do you want to do we could go do this thing i'd love help with or we can head back like it makes it they want you to know that like it's very much in your hand yeah yeah um should we move on i i i have not i'm like six hours in i think and so the story stuff i've run into that i haven't loved i would say has not

diminished from the fact that i just like playing it i it is it seems like a base thing to say about a game that is supposed to be like the probably the high touch like uh masterpiece blockbuster of the year, but it was fucking fun to chop, you know. No doubt. Yeah, it is. It is fucking fun. I think it makes a great first impression. It just slogs from time to time. Should we go to break

and then talk a little bit about the story? Not spoil-y stuff, but you know. No, but like lighter. Lighter. You know, some spoil-y stuff. Okay. Lighter. Some spoilies. Okay. I'm just going to say it. Just say it.

Let's all say it. Richard Schiff as Odin. Yeah, I mean. It's maybe the best. No hyperbole here. Maybe the best video game voice acting performance embodiment of a character. This man is fucking VGA already. Give this man his VGA. This game has a lot going for it there's a lot of great reasons to play this game i would

recommend anybody play it because richard schiff's turn as odin is the best shit i've ever seen in a from the moment he walks onto the screen and then every following moment he's on the screen, it is fucking exhilarating. Imagine one of our most charismatic and fun to watch character actors on the planet like Richard Schiff. And for people that aren't aware, Richard Schiff, best known as Toby on the West Wing, but obviously he's been in many other things. But if you've seen the West Wing, he is Toby. I know we have a lot of fun with jokes here on the show, but to send jokes out of the room, Richard Schiff is, he is an older gentleman

who I very much doubt plays a lot of video games, and he is bringing the full force of Richard Schiff to Zeus. He doesn't play a lot. He's big on Apex, but that's pretty much it. He's huge on Apex, but I don't know. Russ, can you describe Richard Schiff for people? Like, give us the, like, what vibe is Richard Schiff bringing to you? Richard Schiff is like the lowest of the low-key

with a layer beneath him of, like, pure boiling rage, but it's presented in such a low-key, like, chill manner that it's, like, unsettling and avuncular. And he's great. I actually a little bit like Hades that James Woods is Hades in Hercules.

I mean, less singing, but yeah, much less singing and, and more avuncular, but it's like his charisma and manner are such that like every time he's on screen, he's like,

I start feeling like i don't know kratos is kind of a dipshit like yeah he plays the arguably the antagonist of god of war rock he is odin the king shithead of all the shithead gods and he is famously like uh an extremely manipulative person and considering that he is up against the literal god of war to be like the scariest person in the room uh is is is an incredibly like uh it's just an amazing accomplishment i i think that uh okay so Richard Schiff has gotten his credit. I struggled a lot with the narrative aspects of this. Without getting into spoiler territory, I felt like, except for the latest spoilers,

I felt like the first one was such a clean story. And I am now, God, I don't know, probably, Russ, you and i are probably in a similar yeah i think maybe a little bit further than you are um so it's maybe like i mean for me maybe 15 hours in with is that what you would estimate like yeah probably around there yeah let me check the count about 15 hours in and i think i'm seeing the picture of the story that they're wanting to do and it is not well that they're wanting to do and it is not well telegraphed or rendered or sort of like put together in such a way that it starts resonating like for the very early parts of this game for for much of them i kind of felt like what am i doing like why why am i doing any of this like i don't understand why any of this is happening. Yeah, just to like boil it down a little further.

So that, you know, Fimbulwinter is going on. There's this prophecy that Ragnarok's basically gonna blow the shit out of everything. Bad news bears. And in the lead up to this, the idea is like, oh, we need to, you know, the Kratos side is like worried about Odin and whatever. And then obviously Odin is worried about uh odin and and uh whatever and then obviously odin is worried about himself and and uh all the acer gods heimdall and stuff they're worried about themselves so there is this

like one side versus the other thing that is building up and i think part of the problem is because this game series specifically the reboot of god of war was imagined maybe not originally but certainly developed in the end as two games instead of three games they have so much ground to cover in the early parts of this game where like the first game had i want to say like seven characters in total like really was very sparse in terms of character yeah sure this game has like no joke like 20 talking characters that you are introduced to in the first six or seven hours all very good i will say they're they're the performances are great like i remember the names which i don't normally do sure i mean they are like established

like lady sif and and thor and stuff they're pretty established character names but i would also say like because you need to introduce both sides of this war to set up the eventual war it's just like a lot of ground you need to cover and and the way they do that is you'll be traveling to different realms and you'll like oh this realm has this problem and this person is representing you know you'll meet like frayer or whoever it is and he'll you, explain why things are so problematic in wherever this realm is. I'm trying to avoid spoilers. So it just requires a lot of like setup that I'm sure will pay off. I'm sure they are building to like this side versus this side, eventually having that moment of clashing.

But you compare that to the sparsity of the first game and it's just like a lot to chew through it's like eating a very like thick steak and you're trying to digest the whole thing and it's just like a lot whereas you compare that to like the side missions in the game which obviously are very different but generally the side missions are just like you and a companion and you're talking about what you're trying to accomplish, but you get a very full, satisfying arc over the course of an hour or two at most, and they just feel very concise and interesting,

and it's just a lot more work to do the preamble in this. The story stuff feels like Jrpg levels of like setup i think the writing and performances are much better generally but the just the amount of stuff that they have to introduce is just way too much it gets and it also moves very far from the zoomed in human story of god of war one like it's so much more expansive. It feels jarring. I think they do later on, I'm like a little bit further than you,

they do bring in more human elements to each like to the various different characters in this, but because it's so many characters, it can lose it. If Kratos has an arc, it's never gonna be as compelling as the last one, right? Because that's like perfect setup, like perfect character to deal with. He's basically

Batman at this point. Like he's kind of locked in place, right? But to have him confront that in the last game, that's the story that you tell. I think if there is a central story that I have been taking away from Kratos' perspective, it is in God of War 1,

he was forced to choose between being a father and being a monster and that's the that's the two the that he had been a monster and he decided he was going to be a father yeah what this one sort of asks is okay but what if you have to be a monster to be a father like what what does that look like and i and i it's compelling but but it's it's taken so long and i'm not even sure that's the story they're trying to tell but like that is my best guess after probably 15 hours i think it's also very much tied to the idea of like the first game he learned to deeply care about this kid his son yeah and this is like what are you willing like are you willing to let someone you deeply care about go in order for something else you know to happen it also it also does something

very interesting which is and i think you have to play 2018 in order to really play this because and it's a great game so like it's a great game yeah where it all comes full circle is that in the 2018 god of war he killed a lot of other people's a great game. Where it all comes full circle is that in the 2018 God of War, he killed a lot of other people's kids. Like he killed a lot of other gods' kids throughout the story of God of War 2018 while he was sort of exploring his own parental relationship. And in this one, like every single one of those chickens comes home to roost. And that is, I think, a lot of the propellant for the the

story that they are it feels much more sweeping it feels much more like the kind of growth you would see in like a massive fantasy novel or something where like there are different characters and they're interviewing different ways it's not the intense um sort of personal story the last one i would also add that like it created a sort of growing moment from the last game kind of extends to these other side characters now like a lot of the side missions revolve around like people making like apology tours for the horrible shit they did previously mamir's well like the very first side mission you get in Svartalheim, wherever it is, is basically about like Mimir and all the horrible shit that he did while he was advising Odin. And so there, you know, I think they kind of extend that theme to the other characters in the game. Thor, who's voiced by Ryan Hur hurst who is in uh sons of

anarchy and a bunch of other stuff i think it's excellent yeah he does a really good job uh really really makes that role like really terrifying and like at the same time sad and uh it's it's compared to balder who was kind of like the uh antagonist in the last game who would just show up and you'd be like oh shit i i think that he is a lot more uh i don't know uh not relatable necessary but uh empathetic uh of a character and that is yeah tragic certainly you get that you get that impression that he's in the same way that Unnecessary, but empathetic of a character. Yeah, tragic, certainly. You get that impression that he's, in the same way that Odin is manipulating us, also manipulating all the Aesir gods as well.

Yeah. Can I tell you a narrative thing that kind of freaks me out? This is kind of side, whatever, but sometimes Mimir freaks me out. Just him being a head? Just him being a head, because I think about, like, they do this, like, sort of subtle, subtle, like, body horror stuff with Mimir,

because he's around so much that they get into, like, these conversations that are, like, weird sidebar, like, he'll yawn, and Kratos is like, why are you yawning? Like, how could you be yawning? And he's like, yeah, it's funny, brother. I don't have lungs anymore, but sometimes I feel tired.

It's like fucking hell. Sometimes, a lot of times Kratos gets killed, right? And he's wearing Mimir on his back. They're like, Mimir is immortal and Kratos gets killed. So Kratos falls over on his back and Mimir's like get up and it's like how is eternity going pretty bad I'm squished

under this dude forever and ever I it's frustrating when the pacing slips up because I'm I really like all of the characters and performances and the stuff that they have going on between them is really is really good stuff it's just good video game

storytelling it's just oh boy there's just a few sequences where i was looking at the clock like man how fucking long have i been yeah during story stuff you mean uh i i mean those those sort of very uh like you're locked in like story linear dungeon things i think you get my sense is that it gets better the pacing does get better as you go it it has felt like that to me there's a moment it's like it's you're probably very close to a griffin seven ish hours in where you return to an area you were in the first game but it's different this time everything after that that area in particular is spectacular but everything after that has felt a lot more better paced i should say um it's still not perfect i still you know the story stuff and the slow walking

stuff still does drag. But I also, if I could highlight one other thing that's got to go, the treasure chest is too much. I can't stand climbing in games like this. There's not, because it's not a challenge or a game. Like I'm so tired of push the stick at the cracks to watch the bald man climb around on rocks. Just let me just push.

And the bald man is so much slower than his little son. When I see a shimmy ledge, I want to weep. You all know that's not fun. Don't make me do that, please. I think it's just there for narrative like, oh, we can slow them down so we can deliver lines while this area loads in or something it's not low i mean like these aren't loading because it's vertical like you're going up and you're still in the thing it just takes forever yeah but you the camera is like it is kind of loading in some areas i mean i guess yeah but still the it then get fat pipes like i don't know i'm waiting anymore i i don't maybe climb uh is that it

uh i feel i feel like it's really tough i don't i and maybe russ is in the same point i've gone so far in this and i still don't know i know i don't adore it but i am enjoying it and i think my expectations were unrealistically high for it but the more i play play it, I just, I keep finding stuff that really works. Yeah. And then it'll stop working for a while. It really, it feels a little bit designed by committee because there are some segments where I'm like,

this whips ass, I'm loving this. And then it's just like, sorry, bud, no more fun for you. Yeah. I think that it's tough to make a followup to a game like God of War.

And I think that there are a lot of things that are really clever and really just well-executed in that sort of pursuit. And then there are also a handful of things that are just like missed opportunities, missteps to have like a true club banger in the way that the 2018 God of war was uh that said i'm definitely gonna keep playing it and digging into it it is one of the better games also at the same

time that i've played this year it's just it's shortcomings i think great extra because of because of that it's also weird because like this this format of like a 40 i don't know how long it is but let's say 40 hour game like super high production value huge team single player only is such an endangered species these days like what did we get like three of them this year if that four maybe and so i want the most out of these experiences because i know they are not only rare now but we'll get increasingly rare in the future just because like it's fucking expensive to make these games and and you can't put a game like this on game pass necessarily because like you know i guess they have to

fucking justify the expense and and stuff like that although you know starfield will be on game pass so what do i know um we do have a couple of reader mail questions I wanted to get to. Let's do them. They are God of War-centric. So this question comes from Sean. My OG PlayStation 4 has been in rough shape, barely able to play any new games.

Is God of War Ragnarok worth making the leap to PlayStation 5? Is this game a tipping point in the PlayStation 5 catalog? That's so... That question will continue to be impossible to answer as long as there is you know as long as there are pc games that are that look and run incredible on computers that don't even have to be top of the line hyper expensive anymore like i don't there's a lot of great ps5 games this is also the first time i've booted up my ps5 since well i guess i played the last of us

uh part one yeah re re re remake it's hard to make the value judgment especially when like ps5s you can't really buy them like i uh still right like not without a little bit of luck and and and for yeah they're still kind of hard to find i i without a little bit of luck and and for yeah they're still kind of hard to find i i talked a little bit about this on resties because we did like the first like hour of the impressions of the game and i would say um i i think the big question is how much do you care about playing this game at 60 frames a second i personally think it makes a huge difference to play this game at 60 frames a second. Yeah. But I don't think visuals outside of the 60 frames a second scream PlayStation 5 to me. They scream like, man, this game is running really great and it looks very, very pretty, but it doesn't look like next generation levels of pretty.

It looks pretty close to how the last game looked, but running at 60 frames a second. This is out on PS4 too, right right this is also out on ps4 i'm sure we're not gonna get it's here's what i would say my friend my friend on the internet sean and sean until you start seeing games that are just made for the ps5 i think you're fine just using your ps4 like i well yeah i mean in sean's defense like i played the 2018 god of war on an og playstation 4 like not a playstation 4 pro and it was pretty framey and rough like not great it couldn't even nail a steady 30 frames a second so i am sensitive to sean's hesitance here yeah i would say you could either wait for this game to come out on PC, which I'm sure it will,

or wait until there's more of a PlayStation 5 catalog. But if you're trying to like if you're looking for a game that's going to like show fucking wild PlayStation 5 visuals, I don't think this game is it. I think the two games that are it are Ratchet and Clank and

the Demon's Souls remake. Demon's souls demon souls are both like holy shit this is next generation especially ration clank those are really the only two games like including xbox those are the only two games i've played the last couple years that like feel truly truly next gen i'm just saying the design of playstation 5 games are is going to continue to be hampered as long as they have to also function on... Yeah, I don't know about design, but certainly, like, graphics. We just talked about the walls, man. Oh, yeah, no.

We just talked about them. You're right. That's fair. That is fair. Like, I don't want to do walls anymore. Yeah, no more walls. Don't want to do the walls. Don't make me slide through cracks.

We'll spread the word. How is everybody else getting through these cracks? Okay? We have one... What if you have, like, you're carrying a bag of flour, you know, and you can't get through the cracks? There's a reason he're carrying a bag of flour, you know,

you can't get through the crack. There's a reason he doesn't carry bags of flour everywhere. And it's because of the PlayStation 4. Where's my flour? Dragging it down. One more quick question. This comes from Fart Supreme. Great.

Do you think, what are you laughing at Fart Supreme? Do you think God of War's turn to Norse mythology is helped or hurt by other popular Viking slash Norse media around marvel's thor assassin's creed valhalla uh and then there's a question of where do we think the story is going next that will heavily be dependent on how this game ends which i don't know so we'll just answer the first question do you think it's helped or hurt by the popularity of norse mythology

i think it's helped i mean i the fact that like I ran it, you run into like, I'll give you an example. Heimdall is the, is a Idris Elba from the Thor movies and Heimdall is in this. And like, you just know, like I, I went in,

like I completely remembered who this character is because I know their deal. So seeing their take on it, I mean, Odin is working so well in part because it's in contrast to the other performances of of that that character yeah um heimdall's fucking great in this game such a piece of shit yeah the performances in this game are fucking great yeah there's this whole element of like the acer gods are these like just detached pricks uh and man almighty heimdall really really steps into that and owns it not to touch back on it but it's like i think part of the one of the things that

really works for me is that kratos is like i really would like to stop killing gods i just want to be a dad and i don't want to kill gods anymore. And then Ragnarok's like, what if we gave you the most intensely killable gods possible? Like, not only could you, like, Richard Schiff and all his greatness seems like, Kratos could probably flatten that dude in about ten seconds, right? He's like so killed. And everyone else, they've just got the worst case of dickface and you're like, they're begging to be absolutely slaughtered. You can feel the restraint that it's taking, not just murder them wholesale. Yeah, agreed. So that's it for God of War. I would say it is definitely worth playing if you played the last one.

If you haven't played the last one, you should play the last one. Yeah, I would not. There is no reality in which you should play this game before playing 20 correct um i'd agree with that you guys play anything else uh i've been playing signalis oh yeah after discussing it it's interesting i'm i'm about done with it uh not super long it's like six or seven hours right it's it's not terribly long from what i am supposing based on i just hit a very very very kojima-esque false flag ending which is uh which is to me a lot of the charm of the game is just that it is just dripping with with like style with like that uh with with a very sort of gosh gosh, I don't have a great way of describing it. It's very anime-inspired,

very sort of like Neon Genesis, Evangelion, very Kojima. What was the, like, cyberpunk game that Kojima did before Metal Gear Solid? It wasn't S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It was something like that, though. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Something Knots? Maybe. something like that, though. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Something Knots?

Maybe. No, no, no. It's like a Sega CD game, right? Yeah, something like that. It is so stylish. It is... Poisty. Not that?

That's not what I'm thinking of. I don't think so. The survival horror, like, moments... Snatcher? Snatcher, maybe, is what I'm thinking. The survival horror, kind of, like, Resident Evil-inspired stuff is fine. It doesn't, you know, survival horror games are all about the sort of, like, restriction of resources and the feeling of stress that comes along with that and it is so easy to just like

juke around the yeah uh you know zombie stand-ins in this game that it almost makes you realize why they the controls were so shitty in the original resident evil yeah you can also only hold six items at a time which is nothing and i have just stopped picking up healing items yeah because i haven't used one in a long time uh but it is i mean it's a it's a sick game like there's a lot of cool shit that this game does and the vibe is uh undeniable uh so i'm liking not not loving it but i i think that if you like that genre it it is breezy enough. I also have no fucking idea what's going on in the story. And I'm almost at the end of it.

In a good way or a bad way? I mean, I guess it's open to interpretation, the story is. I want to know what's going on. Because it's very clear that the game is trying to tell a very like rich sort of sci-fi story it felt like dead spacey where there was like a mythos even dead space like had i think a bit more of an explicit like through line yeah and then this game has i think i understand what's going on but it's like i really wish that the cut scenes were a little bit more i don't know straight straightforward uh and not you know a robot face flashing red with german and kanji just like flashing over what i see every time i close my eyes at night yeah um we gotta wrap up so let me very quickly

say that uh i've been playing a lot of Binding of Isaac it's an extremely good game everyone's right do you mean everyone's right or do you mean I was right yeah okay Russ was right I just did a challenge called Waka Waka you done that one? oh yeah the Pac-Man one oh my god

I've been doing it for 7 hours it's all I've done I finally just beat it did you play co-op at all with Griffin? Griffin and I did make a co-op run. I don't think it helped necessarily, but it was enjoyed. I may have given Justin some pretty bad. We were set up to finish that challenge in co-op,

and then we came across one of those rooms that randomizes your whole loadout. Oh, no. And we were like, ooh, what if we just did that, and maybe it got rid of some of the shitty restrictions that this challenge forces on you. Only it didn't do that, and doesn't get rid of all the good shit yeah we we had saved up to so funny griff real quick anything else uh just a bunch of marvel snap but they don't need to hear anymore about that i've finished i've i've gotten through pool one and so it's it's nice now that i

can watch like more deck building videos and get a little bit more strategic with my shit but also i have entered the realm of real players who have pooled two decks and i'm getting put in the toilet it is really bad uh now but it's still a great great fucking game uh i've been playing day of the diver uh which i'm going to talk more about during Resties on Tuesday but it is a diving roguelike mixed with a sushi restaurant management game whoa what's it called? it's called Dave the Diver it's fucking sick oh my god my computer

started downloading it the description so what's next week? yeah well real quick I want to thank the following people for writing reviews for the Besties on Apple Podcasts Dave Provost, uh, shaky McBones, Sage,

Camilla, and BD. Thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple podcasts. Uh, thank you to everyone else who are reviews for the besties on Apple podcasts next week. I don't know, guys,

should we do Sonic frontiers? I'm very curious about it. Sonic frontiers is coming out. We could also do a goat simulator three, which is also coming out. So maybe we'll do a twofer. That's a joke game. I want a real game for a real gamer, like Sonic Frontier. Okay, well, one or both

of those games will appear next week. Yeah. Pokemon's also out next week, but I don't think we're going to have it. Yeah, we will not have it in time, so we'll do it the following week. Alright, that is going to do it for us for this week of the Besties. Be sure to join us again

next week for the Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games? Besties!