The Besties - Do you have to finish a game to love it? [The Resties]

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Do you have to finish a game to fully appreciate it? This week, The Resties discuss the huge time investment of our favorite hobby, and decide how much of a game is enough. In the back half, Plante and Frushtick use a fancy new mod for the original Doom to discuss ray tracing. Learn why the "big thing" in video game graphics still may be years from matter to most players. 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!

hey fresh yes does mario fart are we starting the show differently no does mario fart i want to before well normally you before you normally you just say your name and then i say my name and then you welcome everyone and then you might pose a ridiculous question you think i have time for that when we have a question to answer clearly not we have a hi my name is christopher thomas plant your name is russ freshick welcome to the resties where the best of the rest discuss the rest of the best or the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest either works today i'm asking you my longtime, probably the closest I have to a brother, does Mario fart? Yes. I don't think he does.

I thought about this a lot today. Well, you've never, I've never seen him fart, so that's fair. You've never seen him fart, and there's no proof that he has a butthole. But you've never seen his butt. True. Like, clean butt. So, here's why I thought about this a lot. Okay.

Every Mario toy, there's no evidence to suggest that he has like that he has human anatomy but like that's every every toy you but i know it's a butthole represented i mean my point i think he i think he lives in a toy-like world where they do not poot, they do not fart, none of these things exist. Well, we know that's false because he has a quasi-brother who farts all the time. Oh. Hmm. I'm sure that there's some people listening, probably Griffin, if Griffin is listening, who think this is puerile. But I'm not doing this for the goose or the laughs i think

these are important questions in terms of like really getting to know characters you know we've known this guy i i mean i've known mario my whole life he was born basically the exact same time i was october 1985 and i would think that he could be comfortable around me. Wait, he was born earlier than that. When did Donkey Kong come out? Well, you know, the real one. Not like the test one. Super Mario. Yes, thank you.

And his brothers. His various brothers. Look, I agree with you that there's no canonical evidence of him farting, although we could probably tap into the super mario super show and get numerous examples but in the case of video games there's not really a specific moment where we see or watch him fart but given the fact that wario farts a good deal and oh you've you've had a revelation that's it wario has been, so it's like Liquid Snake and Solid Snake, right?

They had to make one Mario that doesn't fart at all. The perfect Mario. But in return, they were left with Wario, who is left with all of the farts. So is Luigi, like, solid solidus i don't know you're assuming i know a lot more about katima mythology than i do i don't even want to bring up while luigi in this scenario who fucking knows at that point hey i i feel good about this i feel good enough that we can move on knowing that mario does in fact not oh he's revolver also like there's no question he's definitely revolver you keep saying things like i'm gonna know what you're talking

about yeah no don't worry the people know the people know sure mario does not fart wario farts on behalf of mario kind of like a picture of dorian gray style sure sure oh and that's why wario gets more and more grotesque because every time mario needs to fart it like builds up inside of that makes a lot of sense anyway hey everybody welcome to the resties today we're talking about two things well kind of three things first we're going to talk about should you finish a video game it's a question that kind of got raised on the most recent episode of the besties in regards to elden ring a game that goes on forever and i'm the only one on the besties who has not finished it though update i have beaten radon yay yeah we can talk about that

later and uh and then after that after the break we're to talk about a new version of get this doom they did it again doom is back this time they added ray tracing or a a very clever uh modder added ray tracing to the original doom what does that mean well i will save that for the back half because explaining ray tracing we we can't do that in the intro. We've already gone long enough. That all sounds great. Great. Then I will see you right after this break. Fresh, do I have to finish

Elden Ring to be a real gamer? No, of course not. I was thinking of being facetious and saying yeah because otherwise you won't be late etc etc but no you realistically i mean a there's no such thing as real gamer and b you uh you know i've known you a long time and i know how you just don't finish games like maybe one or two a year is that fair to say uh like bigger games bigger games yeah i i think that's fair i i i i finish indie games that are like yeah yeah the shorter

three to four hour five hour games yeah i do finish i think if it's like five hours and i start it i'm almost certainly going to finish it Eight hours is kind of where it gets into like the, hmm, we'll see. And then once you get past that, it's like, who knows? I mean, I know, probably not is the answer. Well, the weird thing is it gets kind of illogical because it could be like a game that's 12 hours and I won't,

but then a game could be like 110 hours like Assassin's Creed Odyssey. And sure, why not? And did you finish that? Yeah, I did. Oh, you actually finished it? Not only did i finish assassin's creed odyssey i beat all of the dlc wow yeah and i do not like the dlc doesn't make any sense wow yeah um yeah i i mentioned this to plan as a possible topic because as he mentioned it came up in the most recent besties and it's interesting certainly as like you know i think we need to divide this into two conversations there's the like

just a gamer playing games having fun enjoying it digesting the media um part of it and then there's the like reviewer part of it because if you're if you're reviewing a game unless you're reviewing like fucking fortnite there's no way to like quote beat it you really have to beat it uh i mean i don't i don't think so i don't for narrative games 100 yes so like 13 sentinels you can couldn't review that game without beating it or uh near automata or you know anything that has like a strong narrative bent to it right if it's crackdown 3 yeah you could probably get away with not beating the whole thing yeah or like forza horizon yes right precisely like i feel like there's a lot of games in that category where it's like

but yes i i agree it would be strange to review last of us part two yeah without having stayed to the very last nasty bit but we're not talking about reviewers in this case we're talking about just like you and me and normal folks normal people playing video games and whether uh there's this feeling of whether guilt or you feel like you missed out or missing something by not having beaten the game um I will speak for myself because I have pretty strong feelings about this. I personally feel, especially if it's a game that I like, I feel an obligation to finish it

because I feel like in the back of my head, and I know myself, in the back of my head, I will remember, oh, I still haven't beaten that yet. I really should. If it's a game I don't like, forget about it. For example, I just recently booted up cyberpunk 2077 a game that i didn't particularly

care for but it recently got patched and added a bunch of next-gen features like oh i'm gonna try this and and it's still not fun to me i mean i'm sure there are other people that like it but for me it's still not fun and i had no compunction about being like nope goodbye forever yeah but for a game that i really enjoy um i really do want to beat it and that can be really hard if things are really busy and there's a lot of stuff coming out where i have to keep a mental log of games that i want to beat so kirby for example is on my list right now i don't have any work reason to beat it besties we talked about it already on besties i'm sure it'll come up in game of the year besties at the end of the year but that's a game that like i'm still picking away at and will remember if i don't finish it because i've been enjoying myself so much

um but yeah no new games are always coming up i think well you also were a completionist i was i was much more driven by trophies and stuff like that in in years hence i would say like that has mostly left me yeah uh there are some examples where if i get like 90 of the trophies in some game that i enjoyed and the last few are just like fun things to chase down i will do it but i do not like play shitty games to like get a platinum trophy or anything like that um so yeah but so i i wouldn't say it's necessarily me unless it's a game like i really enjoy you know elden ring is an example of a game that like even if i'm not paying attention to trophies or steam achievements or whatever it is i'm gonna try to be really thorough because I love exploring the world and finding everything I can find and all that stuff.

Yeah. I mean, I think I'm weirdly similar to you. I think I have two ways I finish a game or feel the need to finish it. One is it's a great exercise bike game. Sure. And that's the Assassin's Creed Odyssey thing. That is Rage 2, a game I didn't like that much. Did you beat Rage 2?

Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, just because – well, it's not that long, and it was an easy, easy exercise bike game. Like, I beat it in, like, a week or something. Death Stranding is another one of those games. Yeah. But Death Stranding is kind of the perfect example and that it was a great exercise bike game and here's the other one i loved it and if i if i like deeply connect with the game and these are the near automatas the death strandings the 13 sentinels i will beat that game there's like no way once I've started, I'm going to see the end of it.

The issue for me is I don't love mini games. I like mini games. I think mini games are great, but that kind of, oh, I am in love with this. I need to know where it's going. That I only feel like happens a couple times a year. And those probably are the games that i finish i'm

trying to think if there's anything recently that i felt that strongly about and then didn't finish and then there are yeah i mean i can give you two examples yes example a uh breath the wild and example b elden ring so actually neither those are good examples though because l breath the wild we've talked about this i was the biggest holdout on Besties in terms of- Sure, I remember. And then you turned around on it. And then I turned around on it, but I still, now it's like other stuff is happening, you know. But you're right.

That's close. I mean, it was a year. You turned around on it a year ago. It's been a year. Was it a year? I think it was the first Resties episode was you- Okay. Us like going back and forth about it.

So yeah, like half of you. The other one, Elden Ring. I do, I know that you don't believe it. I do think I will beat Elden Ring. I think I'm just going to have to really take my time with it. I mean, you should. That's the way to play the game, honestly. The thing that's turned that around for me is one, the Steam Deck makes it just easy.

Like, you know, I can play it wherever I want and it's i can play it before bed it's very chill i don't have all the pressure sitting in front you know the computer that i sit in front of all day but the other thing and this was the big surprise because i i stepped away from it for probably two weeks it's actually pretty easy to go back to i was really worried that oh once I step away from this game, I'm done. Like, I'm not going to know where I was. I'm not going to know how to play it, any of that stuff. And that is false. And maybe that's just because I'm super overpowered with my character.

But it doesn't really matter. The fact is, I was able to hop back in, and it was like no time had passed at all. And I feel like I'm right back to being addicted to it. Yeah. It's funny. I took a break because I was playing tunic and I wanted to finish tunic and I went back to it. And because there are,

I'm not saying they're identical games, but you know, you roll into Nick, there's bonfires. Like it's similar enough that I definitely kept using the tunic inputs in Elden Ring and it took me like a good half hour to like remap my brain for that. But otherwise, yes, I completely agree. Jumping back into it was not hard. It's also like I don't want you to do this, but if you wanted to where you're at right now, I mean, it's funny.

It's funny. I was going to say like you could probably sprint to the end. You're probably in sprinting to the end 20 hours away from the ending you think which is yeah extremely funny to me and that's that's like a dead sprint right towards the finish well I mean that's great

it's just an enormous fucking game it's wild so I'm I'm I'm sure with it I'm glad that I kind of made it to this point because I did feel a lot of pressure between besties and work to like get caught up. And now, you know, I've watched lore videos.

I've had everything spoiled for me. I don't care. Yeah. I'm on the other end and I can just enjoy it for what it is. That said, I think Elden Ring is unique in that it's maybe the best game ever made. Yeah. So like the pressure to finish that is very

different than other games i i have a few other you know bits and bobs down here we talked about endless games so like fortnite i think that's just changed the perspective for most folks of like do i need to beat games because you know in our day reading a game was like the point right you put in quarters into an arcade machine or you i mean you did an older you you didn't come the game sure i played an arcade but it was not the yeah it was not the heyday of our no well i mean what i guess what i'm saying is games designed for the Sega Genesis were built off the arcade aesthetic. Yeah, sure. So it was levels.

It was getting to the end, seeing the credits, right? Yeah. And that was the whole point. And we've gradually moved further and further away from that to the point now where I don't think people who are just starting getting into gaming in the last five years necessarily even associate seeing the end of a game or beating a game with being the point of playing a game yeah i think it depends on the game like i i think you know you mentioned last of us 2 again strong narrative game it's hard to feel like you had that experience without kind of knowing that full story because so much of it is dedicated to the narrative but a game like animal crossing or even even a game like kirby realistically speaking you could play a lot of kirby not beat it and still i think get precisely what they wanted you to get out of

that um because you know it has like amazing levels and it's fun it's like a romp you're not there's not like a riveting story bringing you through it um so yeah i think it just depends on the game did you see the bonkers rumor that michael pactor who's like a very well-known video game analyst put out there about grand theft auto 6 i did not so the rumor that i I guess he put onto a podcast was that Grand Theft Auto 6 has been in development since like 2014 or 2015. Sure. That it's multiple cities and that it is going to be like 500 hours long. I mean, the fact that it's multiple cities is not crazy because San Andreas had multiple cities.

Right, right, right. So they've done it. The question is, is it multiple cities in like it's very large different neighborhoods? Because you could also say that with Grand Theft Auto 5, right? That like Los Angeles and the northern tip of the island are different cities entirely. Oh, sure. Like there's a lot of ways that you could bend this. I mean, and the 500 hour thing is like something we would get if we went into a demo it's like you've there's 500 hours of gameplay

but only if you collect every seashell on every beach yes like yes or shit or yeah it's some like weird estimate because you include gta online and yada yada yada yada yeah the i mean yeah but i see why an analyst would be pushing something like that because it does seem like the natural progression of things right because if elden ring is this big and grand theft auto has to always be the biggest open world game then like what does elden you know what what does grand theft Auto become if Elden Ring is this big and if Fortnite is this popular and other you know always like online games are this popular what does the biggest single player experience become and and I I think like that's a natural place for your head to go that yeah I mean I I think if I had to guess on GTA 6, it's probably, you know, we've seen Rockstar in two games now, Red Dead 2 and GTA 5, kind of shoehorn and back their way into an online system, which felt like kind of playing second banana to the main single player.

main single player and granted over time that has paid off huge because they made a ton of money on gta online but i think gta 6 will just like be fully integrated such that you can be doing the single player thing and there's multiplayer elements still happening around you while you're playing the single player campaign so that they're not cloistered and if you keep that in mind sure easily you can get to the 500-hour mark because they don't have to program every cutscene with voiceover and all sorts of stuff. It's just like, oh, here's a generated mission of stealing a car, and that's two hours or whatever.

So, yeah, that would be my guess. I agree that I think you will be able to beat, quote, beat GTA 6 from a campaign standpoint, but I think it will be able to beat, quote, beat GTA 6 from a campaign standpoint, but I think it will be a lot more multiplayer. Yeah. One more thing before we kind of wrap this section, and this is, do you prefer short games at this point? Yeah, 150%.

Yeah, so if somebody came to you and they're like, hey, I'm going to give you horizon zero dawn forbidden West three. Sure. And it can be the, just the 10 best hours of this. Yes. You would, you much prefer in a minute.

I, well, I do that. I make that decision all the time because I frequently am, you know, approached by members of the polygon team uh mike maharty our reviews editor very kind and talented gentleman will frequently come to me and be like hey are you interested in reviewing this game and my immediate calculation is how long do

i think this game is because i need to know what sort of thing i'm doing now there have been times when i have fallen on the grenade of what i know is a long game. Examples that spring to mind, Fire Emblem Three Houses and also Death Stranding, which is a game I reviewed and knew it was going to be long and it was long and it was a total sprint to get that done. In those scenarios, yeah, I almost always strive to only review games that are short, just shorter, I should say, like eight hours in that realm, because I won't hate myself by the end of it. And it doesn't like spoil the game for me, whereas for a 40 hour game that you have to jam into a week that can frequently make the game feel like work. So, yeah, no no i love short games i recently tweeted people were tweeting like reasons to get canceled for your video game opinions i recently tweeted that i thought that near automata should have been five hours long and people were not super happy about that but what i would say is i don't mean like the first five hours and then the game should have

ended i mean like there's a version of your automata that is like pretty heavily edited with only the best chunks in it that is five hours long and it leaves a way more of an impact on me than the i don't know how long the game was 30 hour game i mean that i'm the world's biggest fan i know you are i know and even i would say i think you can cut probably like five hours yeah if you're including like side quest everything from the first playthrough you can cut almost all of the second playthrough and then just keep everything else as is yeah like i i think it's that it's that second playthrough that's just yeah not good that's a that guy's a bag guy. Who is that? 2B?

2B? The boy? Yeah, you switch sides. Yeah, he sucks. It's mostly the same game. He's not fun. Yeah, I like it. I like the hacking.

It's great. But it's... Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, I'm the same way. I much prefer short games. I kind of like... way i i much prefer short games i i kind of like the i i would like it if i could have really great triple a short games with the very occasional elden ring or um or you know ongoing games like fortnight sure what I find frustrating is when games by publishers aren't willing to invest the amount of creativity

and time and money into a game, and then we get the Ubisoft dilemma, where it's, hey, we want this game to be as big as Elden Ring or GTA, but that's really all we care about is just the scope um nothing else is really justifying the scope other than we we we've decided in a room somewhere that that makes good business yeah and that i i don't like and i know that that's coming from a huge place of privilege that, you know, a lot of people, you know, getting a game is tough. You know, it's expensive and you want to make it go as far as possible.

And that, I think, was especially true 10 years ago when I was like early in my career in the game is press. I don't think that holds as much weight these days with things like Game Pass and now PlayStation Plus, where you actually have a ton of options. example even those people will know will sense that ubisoft is pulling a little bit of chicanery insofar as like here's the template we know the template we're going to build on the template and add a little bit here and there and there but broadly speaking like this is the same core experience and like it has a lot of padding to it um Whereas, I mean, Elden Ring, Elden Ring from a, the fact that that game was made and is as big and as good as it is, like right out of the gate,

is a fucking miracle. Like I am on a daily basis totally stunned that that happened. Yeah, I've seen a few people mention that Elden Ring probably was a little more busted than any of us noticed, and that we're like, see it get fixed in real time, but the game is just so

overall good. I don't think that's true. I mean, it was, there were bugs. There were bugs. No, the point's not the bugs, it's like they're adding story stuff for you to be able to complete quests, or there are like entire cut scenes that are in cinematic trailers that just aren't in the game yet. Yeah.

Well, not forget about yet. Like that's that's stuff that from software does like they frequently release trailers that just don't get used in the game. It's bizarre. I'm just like compare this release Elden ring's release to cyberpunk and you can see the night and day difference that we're talking about cyberpunk was supposed to be the biggest thing in the world launched total disaster and so when i said granted it was not elden ring was not perfect at launch there were pc like little hiccups here and there and you're right like some of the quests weren't 100 done but from a just general feat

perspective it is awe-inspiring what they pulled off oh yeah yeah yeah when i say that it it launched like busted or missing things it's not not even close to the same thing as even a bethesda game in this case i mean like there is so much in this game that they can leave out large chunks of the story they can leave out cut scenes that maybe will get added at a later date they can leave out quests that get added at a later date and you most people would never know right you know even if you're doing that quest you don't know that there's no last step because you have no idea where anyone fucking is yeah and like the the barring the most hardcore people you're not reading up on like sites like ours not even site like sites like ours youtube channels are trying to break down the minutiae of what changes in each patch update right yeah like there's an audience for that but it's a

fraction of a fraction of a percent of the people who are playing this game. Yeah. Anyway. Anyway. The answer is you don't need to finish games because they might not even be finished themselves. So you're never going to see everything. And that's that. We're going to take a break.

I'm going to drink some water. And when we come back, we're going to talk about Doom and ray tracing. Your Rust Frustics favorite feature in video games at this very moment. See you soon. Okay, so Chris Plant reached out to me and mentioned the fact that there was a ray traced mod for the original Doom, which came out in the 90s. And so you can play the original doom with ray tracing and all that did was my brain was flooded with the many many emotions that i have regarding ray tracing predominantly the like biggest thought that i have when i think about

ray tracing is that it's fucking bullshit and it's not worth all this fucking hullabaloo it is the equivalent of the 3d glasses that everyone was like this is going to change the world every tv needs 3d glasses no i'm sorry now ray tracing does some cool things we'll talk about that in a second but is it worth the 30 frames per second hit that you frequently get when you turn ray tracing on uh no it is not and we'll just jump right in yes i well first should i explain what ray tracing is you can try let me try first and then you can correct me because you definitely know more than me and i'm going to try to do it okay my understanding of ray tracing is um the traditional way for games to be made, let's say in the last 10 years,

was that there would be a lighting artist that would go and place lights in a world, so like a light bulb in a game level, for example, and certain aspects of the game engine would allow that light to naturally flood through the environment, but what it wouldn't do is the light would not bounce off surfaces and then light up other areas within that same

environment so the end result was you'd have this light that had like a very stark contrast between light and dark and everything outside of the light space would just be like effectively very dark and it made it feel not as realistic what ray tracing does is allows light to realistically bounce off surfaces such that if a light bulb was bouncing off the floor it would light up a corner of the room that ordinarily wouldn't get lit but because there's that reflective light, it is getting lit. How was that? I think that's close. Okay. Here's the thing, and this goes to why ray tracing is a mess, is I read about this a fair amount,

and I still am not sure that I'm saying it right. So both of us could be wrong here. And, dear listener, if you want, either go to our Twitter feed, because I'm sure somebody is letting us know we're wrong there, or the subreddit. I'm sure somewhere somebody is giving us hyper detail explanation, but I'll take a shot at it. In the past, it was rasterization, which would be like a fixed point of lighting, right? Yes. So it's what light looked like hitting imagine a person and then

imagine light hitting that person and imagine that that is just the that no matter where everything moves around that is the fixed way that light is going to hit that object once you enter that room right okay like a light bulb hitting a person like a light bulb but that it's like permanent so so ray tracing right yeah is that there are many different points of light many many many many points of light hitting that that would you say a thousand points of light i think it could be like billion i think it could be like a lot more than that um so it would be that when you see the like ray traced light hitting it you would see reflections from all over the the environment it could be light that yes is bouncing off a wall it could be um uh from like multiple light points

and that like that lighting could evolve with with the world right that it that is not effectively cooked into the world so if a tire rolls through the room it's going to change the lighting scenario right right and then path tracing which is a i believe a form of ray tracing which i think is the thing that you're getting at and again i could be wrong here but i believe that is when you take ray tracing multiple forms of light and then you factor in all of the way that light engages within the environment so that could be the scattering of light it could be the reflection of light it could be uh how light passes through and refracts on surfaces so think about like your human body right uh if you put if you're in like a dark room

and you put a flashlight behind your finger you know how you can actually see light come through the skin and the and to a little bit less the muscle and then you just can't see it come through the bone at all right well my bones it does very bird-like um but like that would be an example of like how light is engaging with those materials of your body so path tracing is like the the top end i believe the doom thing that we're talking about is path tracing it is the most realistic form of it and that's why we are seeing path tracing being done with things like quake right now in june because doing that i mean years ago people would just say that like that's straight up impossible you could not do render that in real time now you can do it with a very very very very old

rudimentary game and you need quite literally the best GPU on the market today. Yeah, Quake 2, which has ray tracing, there's a free version of Quake 2 on Steam that has ray tracing, came out in 1997. If you play it now, I have a pretty decent gaming laptop. I have no problem running Elden Ring or whatever recent releases. It gives me 45 frames a second for a game that came out in 1997. Which is wild because you can run Elden Ring at, I'm sure.

Yeah, 60 screaming, like Forza Horizon, you name it. Like every other Halo, not a problem. But because this ray tracing is such a taxing thing um i can only run it at 45 now it's worth noting that like both with doom ray traced and with quake 2 ray traced it is very obvious i can see it immediately the difference between uh ray tracing being on and ray tracing being off and i think a lot of that has to do with just like the simplicity of the games if you and the lighting or the original lighting was like the most basic lighting imaginable it was like you walk into a square and if it's a light square everything would be just like lit from everywhere like it would not be very realistic because that's

the technology they had back then you throw in realistic lighting into that and it's like pretty game changing and remarkable um but as we've said that only works for really old looking games because a you can't run a newer looking game with like all those bells and whistles going because it'll melt your computer through the floor and b honestly newer looking games and this is like the other point i want to make newer looking games already had pretty damn good lighting representation that i can't really gun to my head cannot tell the difference in a lot of cases between ray traced and not so the way the i think that's all correct i think you're right on all that they're especially modern games there are just tons of tricks that designers have learned to fake realistic lighting, right? Yes.

And now those tricks cost way less on your processing to actually perform. Yes. When you play something like Metro, the most recent Metro game, which has a number of ray tracing options on it, not like everything in the world, but you can do a lot of ray tracing light in this game. The difference is not immediately obvious in every part of the game. It just isn't like there will be parts of the game where it looks nearly identical. looks nearly identical it i do think it's much more noticeable in very dark areas or areas with like puddles or dark areas with puddles where you're going to see the way that light bounces uh and reflects and it's going to it'll affect the environment in a more noticeable way we're just a very bright area so there's what what's funny though is so i was watching i didn't play metro but i did watch i think it was a Digital Foundry video, like talking about the ray tracing features.

And it's interesting because there are scenes in the original Metro that were extremely dark and creepy or like dramatic. So there's a scene, I think, on a train where, you know, someone's hugging their family, whatever it is. And the original, in the original version is lit in such a way that you know almost has a noir style to it because it's so contrasty but because of ray tracing which allows light to bounce off surfaces the entire train car is suddenly like very lit to the point where there's really no dark shadows and that like kind of changes the composition entirely yeah well that's the problem is you is you're losing control of the lighting, right? And like the developer is losing control.

That's very cool to have very natural lighting. But then you, it's natural lighting. You know, it's the difference between like being outside and having a film set where you're just creating a frame with very specific lights. All this is imprecise. When we're talking about this, I understand that there are going to be exceptions to practically everything we're saying, but I think people generally get it. But the film example you make is very

good, because I think, obviously, like, especially with cutscenes, I think there's an easy analog to make between film like movies and like video game cutscenes. And in movies, they have lights, like literal lights. I mean, granted, light is also realistically bouncing off surfaces,

so maybe that's a fair point in contrast, but it is a very controlled environment where they're using lights in a movie set. I don't know. Again, if there wasn't as big of a processor hit as there is with ray tracing, I would be like, hey, this is cool. Like, bring it on. But because it is so expensive to run these games well, it would need to be way more stark of a difference than it is.

And it's just not there. Yeah, I think all that's fair. I think going back to the movies the movies i think that the comparison would be the early period of uh cgi computer animation backgrounds sure this is matt painting where at the time cg looked way worse yeah than matt painting and matt painting looked incredible and then eventually you got to a point where it's like, well, I guess they kind of look the same, but like CG cost a fortune. So why would you do it? And eventually we've gotten to the point now where it's the exact opposite, right?

Where you would look at a matte painting and immediately it would look wrong to you because so much time and effort and expertise has gone into CG and the ceiling is just that much higher. And I think that is the future of ray tracing, that the ceiling on it is way, way, way, way, way, way, way higher. But it's going to be, I don't know, a decade before we have enough experience with designing with it in mind, taking advantage of it. with designing with it in mind, taking advantage of it. And I think the other thing that we will probably see is like a mix of both, right? Like you are not confined to one type of lighting. Sure. And that's honestly how games are made right now since you, again, quite literally can't use all path tracing to light your entire game world

right now without reaching the core of the earth with your scolding hot gaming PC. So, yeah. The reason I brought Doom, because we didn't talk about that, is I think

these old games are good examples of what's cool about the potential of race tracing. Yeah, I agree with that. So Doom has a number of rooms where there are no windows, right? There's no doors. There's no lights. So you have to use a flashlight to just be able to see in this version of it. Which was not in the original Doom. You did not have a flashlight to just be able to see in which was for which was not in the original you

did not have a flashlight or or you could actually just fire off your gun and that would light the path and as you fire off a missile or rocket you see you know the room light up wherever the rocket goes and then go into darkness behind it and in front of it. That is cool. I think the best AAA application of this is Control, where that, you know, that design, that Brutalism design is full of, you know, glass. And there's tons of reflection where you can see yourself and other characters reflect on that glass.

Yeah, I've seen Control with ray tracing on and I just, I can't tell i'm sorry i mean i can if you like freeze frame it and zoom in on a fucking like the iris of someone great like my reflections in that iris but in any like normal gameplay scenario give me basic reflections and the frame rate and i'm much happier i was watching a digital foundry who after this if you've listened to this whole thing and you have questions digital foundry on youtube they will be your guide through through ray tracing they have a great video up on doom that went up just in this past week but they did a video on biomutant or something else on april

fools yeah i believe it was that game and they zoomed in on the eye of the character to find that like what was the pre-baked reflection and i believe it was the like demo level of the unreal engine so it's always reflecting the like that the first demo level that you would see when when working with that tool that's great that's great i love it and like why not like no one is going to zoom in on that eye that is a perfectly reasonable shortcut i i do want to say one thing just to close this out um if you do want to like experience ray tracing for yourself and you don't want to like have a totally insanely beefy machine doom is extremely

cool i'd highly recommend it you do need the original doom which i believe is on sale on steam yeah you can get it for like i think five bucks yeah very cheap um you just need the like wad file for doom so you need that but but very easy to run it takes two seconds to install uh just search doom ray tracing mod the other game that i think is an extremely cool representation of ray tracing but is definitely kind of a hog in terms of your processing power minecraft looks incredible it looks wild looks incredible in ray tracing like night and day different from the original minecraft um and again i think it is simple games very blocky games that actually benefit most

because I don't know, there's not as much. Well, you can also just worry that right now, like if you go on YouTube, you don't even need to play. Yeah, because you'll that Minecraft is so recognizable and iconic. Yeah, if you look at the ray tracing version that'll give you a really clear idea and i think minecraft is kind of a perfect test for for all of this because it's about how light engages with materials yes so you have shiny surfaces you have dull surfaces you have gloss you have glass um all of these different surfaces next to each other and radiating different colors of light uh it looks really cool it can also look totally hideous because again none of the light is controlled so if you put red and blue and green and yellow and orange lights all around each other in a big reflective area it just looks like kind of garbage it is not a pretty look um that's because

if you did that in your house it would also look like garbage that's true um that's the last bit of home decoration advice from us at the resties love it do you have anything else before we wrap this section uh i don't think so cool uh then we should probably talk about our recommendations of the week. I have one. Tell me. Um, okay. So I was poking around game pass and I noticed that there was a sequel to a game. I kept meaning to play, but never got around to playing called man.

The sequel, the original game was called far lone sails oh yeah and i never played it but it always seemed really cool to me um and the sequel just came out i want to get the name right so the sequel which is on game pass if you if you are subscribed to game pass it's called far changing tides but the original was called lone sails i haven't played the sequel yet but i did start just playing lone sails it is basically limbo uh the side scrolling puzzle platformer very good very well known um meets master blaster because you're a tiny little person and you've got this enormous uh i guess it's like a it kind of looks like what the Jawas ride around in, those sandcrawler things. And you're bringing it from left to right across this like enormous landscape.

And you constantly have to find fuel to get it to move. And so finding the fuel and like getting it back to your ship is part of the puzzle platforming, but there's also like, Oh, my engine started going on fire and I need to like grab the hose to like put the fire out and stuff like that. Um, it's, it's really cool. It does amazing things with scale where the camera will pull like way back to

the point where you are just like a tiny dot in comparison to like the enormous world around you, which I love. I love games that do that. Um, I've been really digging really digging it uh the original is not on game pass unfortunately but you can buy it on steam and various other platforms i think it's 15 bucks but the sequel is on game pass again i have not played the sequel uh but based on my initial experience which i'm planning on playing more uh i'm i'm loving uh loan sales far long far loan sales is the original uh name so yeah check that out that sounds great i it's really good that's one of those games that i just feel like i i've wanted to play forever and just never

did yeah that's how i felt too and i was like i just played cyber I just booted up cyber to try that next gen patch. I was like, man, this made me a little bit sad and I just needed something. And my understanding is it's like a pretty short game and I needed something as a palate cleanser and yeah, worked out. I love it.

Um, my recommendation, I know I often just recommend things that I am watching at the art house theater near my house, but I'm doing it again. I'm recommending only yesterday, which is a studio, uh, Ghibli film. Have you seen this one? I don't think so.

When did it come out? It's not Miyazaki. It is directed by Asao Takahata. Okay. Um, and it came out in 1991. Hmm. And it is unbelievably good. It's unbelievable. I want you to watch just like give 10 minutes to it. I mean, it's very easy to convince me to watch a Studio Ghibli thing.

Yeah, and they're all on HBO Max. So easy for you. Oh, terrific. But the art direction of this film is unreal um and i would say it's hard to imagine something like this getting made today but that's actually not true because jubilee would go on to make another film that was kind of like this it's very very um incomplete almost it's a phrase for it where there will be backgrounds that just fade out into white. So almost like the canvas isn't fully finished. Yeah.

And that's kind of whenever we're looking to the character's memories. So it's beautiful. It is set in the early 80s. And it's about a young, I guess, she's not supposed to be young at this point in her life. But she's in her late 20s. She's living in, I think, Tokyo. She's not married. She hates her job.

And she decides to go back to the country. And in doing that, we also just learn a lot about her childhood and through these flashbacks. And it's about how hard it is growing up, both when you're a teenager and also when you're an adult. And it is growing up both when you're a teenager and also when you're an adult and it is beautiful it it's it is not full of magical realism it is not you know spirited away it's nothing like that it is just a very human personal story and it is it is it's tied with um

the wind rises for my favorite movie from the studio but they're very different when rises i mean just epic it is very good wind rises also a tough hang it's a yes yeah wind rises i feel like i can watch every few years only yesterday i feel like i can watch pretty regularly it's just like a good have it on in the background movie it's also very sad because of course it is because it was made by the studio and you're recommending it and i'm recommending it so then you also yes you know it said also there's a new ish uh english dub and i know because i totally get when people prefer that and uh daisy ridley is the main character and dev patel is one of the other main characters yeah it's great yeah it's a great cast.

So you really can't go wrong. And I think that's it. Oh, one other thing. We don't have questions today. We didn't do reader mail because earlier this week, I reached out on the Besties subreddit asking for, you know, what do people want to hear this upcoming month or two months or three months because it will be slower than the past you know rush of games for the past uh i don't know quarter

we got a ton of excellent replies and a lot of great feedback um and we're just kind of working our way through that so i wanted to let everybody know that we saw it. A bunch of good stuff there. One question, I wish I had it in front of me, was could we make an episode listing our favorite short games, like games that you could complete. Oh, that's a great recommendation. Which is a great idea.

And hopefully we'll get to do that in the next few weeks or months. Elden Ring for one. Oh my gosh. We could start right there. We could just play the beginning just the tutorial yes um but that's it uh thank you all for listening anything anything left that you want to say to the world fresh fuck ray tracing thank you thank you for that well this has been another episode of the resties because shouldn't Well, this has been another episode of the Resties, because shouldn't the best... Why didn't you write it down? You got the order right, and then you shouldn't have written it down.

I was scrolling. It's always up at the top of our thing. Oh, yeah. You should put it at the bottom. Okay. And that's it for the Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. Resties. Wow, we did it on same!

Yay, on same. On same!