The Besties - Game Pass got a killer Pikmin-like, plus the end of Immortality

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

We forgot to mention the announcement of Pikmin 4 on last week's Besties, maybe because we've been so content with Tinykin, which blends Nintendo's real-time strategy game with chunks of 3D Mario and a heaping cup of Dreamcast magic. After explaining why this colorful indie is worth a download (especially if you have Game Pass) we return to Immortality, this time without fear of spoilers. Plante finally gets to make use of all that time spent on the Criterion Channel. We also chat about Delicatessan and Disney Dreamlight Valley, the latter of which will get the full Besties treatment next week. [Ed. note: A small correction for the episode. True Lies is back on a streaming service! You can currently watch the James Cameron action-comedy on Hulu.] 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!

Hello everybody, we're back. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. My name is Russ Froschdick. Welcome to the Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. This week, we are talking about two games that I... Well, one of them I've been looking forward to talking about for i don't know a month and the other one kind of my surprise of the season really didn't expect it those games are immortality which we'll talk about in the second half because we're going to get into spoilers and tinykin which what is this game i believe it. It's like Pikmin-esque. Would you describe it that way, Fresh?

Of course, Pikmin-esque, yes. It's a delight. But before that, I mean, I don't know what we were going to talk about. Before we turned on our mics, we were talking about our children's poop. Yeah, I don't want to talk about that. That's gross. Okay. So we're going to talk about the time I spit up all over my floor, which happened like three hours ago.

the time i spit up all over my floor which happened like three hours ago i don't know how often this happens to you but sometimes i just overestimate how much i can swallow of water in my mouth and that happened today where i where i imbibed too much water and then my nose was a little bit stuffy and i just and and i didn't know what to do with it so i just spit it out oh that doesn't sound like you put too much in. That feels like... My nose was stuffy. Yeah, that you put in the right amount. And then you weren't ready to...

For some reason, you decided, rather than swallow, I'm going to store it in here. Kind of like a whale sifting, you know, for krill. Yeah, through the baleen. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And then, I guess, did you have like a hot dog in there? Were you doing like that? No, there was no food. it was just water just water you've not you've never gotten to that moment where it's like i have way too much water in my mouth i don't know how to swallow it

in like parts and then at the exact same time you just happen to get a sneeze well i didn't have a sneeze my nose was just stuffy and i was running out of oxygen wait wait wait wait wait wait, wait, wait, wait. So like basically you did not have the capacity to breathe through your nose this morning. That's part one. You wake up. You don't have the capacity to breathe through your nose. Right.

And then you're like, hmm, I now I'm down. I'm down one of the two core functions of breathing. I am going to just ballast myself with water and so much so that i i forget uh-oh can't breathe in those now i can't breathe in the mouth i need to erupt on the floor so i don't dry is it drowning i mean you know i guess the fear would be if you were to like start gasping and then the water would go in your lungs. That seems bad. Like a waterboarding situation. Yeah.

But in this situation. Where did it go? It went all over my floor in my office slash bedroom. Did it get in the computer? I was like, I stood up and I was like, what am I going to do with this? Can I swallow in time before I need to take a breath? No, I can't. It's too much water.

So I just opened my mouth and let it all tumble onto the floor like so much confetti. But it was just water. And it is like hardwood floor, so it's fine. I could just like wipe it up. It wasn't like carpet. Was anybody, did anybody see it? No. The entire apartment was empty.

Here's an honest question for you yeah what would have been worse your wife seeing it i think she's seeing me do something similar or your child seeing it and not knowing what like you can't it's not like he can understand yeah but he has he's still pretty young so i don't think he has a lot of frame of reference for like what's normal so like oh maybe he thinks daddy sometimes spits out a ton of water do you worry about that that you are giving him a lot of frame of references that are not in line with the rest of civilization i mean i'm he's getting steeled for a lifetime of having to spend it with me so he knows you know i'm not going

around and going away anytime soon so you better get used to all these eccentricities that's what i would say no i i think that's great i just like that you are a human water balloon and at any minute you might pop well only if there's water in there and with that i think we should take a break okay we are back and we're going to talk about tiny kin a new game from splash team splash team what else have they made i have no idea oh apparently they made a game called splasher in 2017 that's appropriate for splash team sure um i didn't play splasher at all honestly i don't even remember it so hey there it goes but tinykin is a pikmin like game yes and but but different in some pretty key ways and it is a cartoon aesthetic you're a little um buddy who has i don't know these little creatures that you can find inside of a giant

room like a giant well i guess not just one giant room but inside oh my god hold on let me do this yeah you're you're just flailing all over okay for people that don't know pickman pickman you're captain alamar you're a little alien guy and he collects these little beings like dozens of them and they follow him around and do his bidding basically tiny kin you are also a little alien guy in you know in this giant world and you find these little beings and they do your bidding but there are some key differences between the games which we will discuss that i actually think Tinykin does better and makes for a better, more fun game than Pikmin noted Nintendo franchise. Wow, that's huge. So for people that haven't played Pikmin,

there are moments of Pikmin that I find very, very enjoyable and there are moments that I absolutely despise. And the moments I find enjoyable are like, oh, you're lost in this world. Everything is giant. You're tiny you're you're finding like everyday things like a cell phone or like a cantaloupe but they're giant everyday cantaloupe and everyday cantaloupe but you're tiny and they're giant and you have to use your little critters to uh move them around all that stuff's great love it where pikmin loses me is i guess in an effort to add

complexity or whatever strategy a lot of pikmin requires basically dividing up your little friends into different squads so i can do oh i'm gonna have my red squad go over here and they're gonna pick up the cantaloupe i'm gonna have my blue squad go over here and they're going to pick up the cantaloupe. I'm going to have my blue squad go over here. They're going to pick up the cell phone and they're going to meet in the middle. And the time is running out for the day and there's enemies I need to fight. And there's just like a ton of multitasking in Pikmin that has always, always stressed me out. I like the core gameplay, but I think it is hampered somewhat by the multitasking. Tinykin totally fixes that problem how does it do that how yeah

i i would like to know how very good question tinykin is effectively a third person platformer that happens to have this crowd of guys that is following you around uh there's a lot of jumping there's even like kind of a skateboard mechanic but you've also got this big crowd of guys. With a big bar of soap. With a big bar of soap. You've got to get that hammer home. You're on a giant bar of soap. You're skateboarding on a big bar of soap.

But you've got this crowd of guys behind you. And as you explore more of these worlds, which as Plant alluded to, are basically just normal, you know, everyday house rooms. Like the first one is like a bedroom. Yeah, like a bedroom or a bathroom. A bedroom probably. Gardens, stuff like that. day house rooms but your first one is like a bedroom yeah like a bedroom or a bathroom probably garden stuff like that um but as you're exploring these environments you'll find more of the tiny guys and the tiny guys will then help you explore even more so the first few tiny guys you find i i'm not going to say colors because i'm sure i'll get them wrong but the first few that you find

are pretty basic insofar as they'll just like move stuff around for you you'll find another batch that when you throw them they like kind of explode and they can like break through barriers bomb boys bomb boys yes the third batch that's not the real name but they are my bomb boys i love them the third batch is like you uh they turn into a giant ladder like like they stack up like uh turtles all the way up what's that book john green sure yeah um so they stack up and then you kind of get to the top of that stack and then you can access higher areas that's what that book's about right you know that john green didn't invent the idea of turtles all the way down right all the way up no no i mean maybe that's the name of the book but no it was that yertle the turtle

book is that what invented it just keep rolling you were doing great with tiny tin anyway um so the idea is the more guys you find the more of the area you can access but you never have to worry about oh i gotta send my pink guys over here oh i gotta send my blue guys over here yeah because the game is automatically selecting the proper guy for the proper task. So if you need to throw a bomb boy, you just lock onto the thing that requires bombs and it'll automatically throw a bomb boy for you.

You don't have to worry about them getting lost. They will always follow you no matter where you go. You can go on a giant springboard, you can go on a rope and they will find your next location so there's no stress about oh no this guy is like drowning in a pond somewhere because i left him behind it just streamlines the whole experience and just leaves you with the magic and wonder that is i have a dozen guys following me around and they can you know do my

bidding yes i mean i i have never gotten to the Pikmin series. Yeah. It's too slow for me. I guess that's where I bounced off. I don't know. Do you think it's the stress of the multitasking? It's the stress of that. It's the fact that I just GameCube I kind of skipped.

That was like the Nintendo console that I bounced off of. And then because of that, I just, I don't know. I missed my entry. Yeah. And yeah, I just didn't vibe with it. that i bounced off of and then because of that i i just i don't know i missed my entry yeah um and yeah i just didn't vibe with it but the two things that i liked were yes i love being in a small version of the real world love it toy commander on dreamcast love it um and i love the idea of being like this like person who just is in charge of a gajillion little buddies who help you out. Right.

That's those are two cool ideas separate from how the game actually plays. What I was surprised about with this game is it took another genre that I'm kind of like skeptical of, which is like 3D platformers that are not called Mario. And there are like a Banjo Kazooie sure and like there i'll be clear there actually are a bunch of platformers out these days from indie studios that are doing some pretty interesting things but you know that's a that's a new development there is a long period of like matt scott platformers that were not good and this is a merger of what i like about pikmin conceptually with a platformer and that makes the platformer better and the platformer stuff makes the pikmin stuff better yeah so that first world that you're in that's like this bedroom what's cool as hell about it is you can see the entire room at any time the room is for you massive um and it's extremely

vertical so as you're going around doing all of this i think they're like little spiders that you will snap out of their webs or nest and it shoots a spider web like from i don't know the floor to the top shelf of a bookshelf and you can grind it on your little soap bar. And by the time you, I guess, unlock all the level, all these different paths, you know, you knock, maybe you knock a mug out of the way and that releases a book that then becomes a little path, you know, to get up to another ledge or there's all these different ways that you can kind of move things around in the room to make it easier to navigate and once you've done that you've turned this room into i mean it goes from being a room to being a level if that makes sense like it's it felt like a playground to me it felt like you were going

into discovery zone and you could now just like oh i'm gonna go along this rope or i'm gonna go up these springboards or whatever it is. And you're right. Like when you start out, you have way less mobility just because you have fewer guys to throw around and all these shortcuts aren't unlocked. But by the end of it, it just becomes like totally interconnected. Yeah.

It is one of the most impressive first levels or introductions to a game that I've seen in a very long time. Yeah. Because you go into it expecting i don't know just something different something smaller and to get put into this world that is both constrained but like everything in it is purposeful feels incredibly impressive that it is so big in scale and so vertical feels very impressive i think verticality is a thing that a lot of game designers forget about in 3d space and being able to go up and down easily it just rules and it feels good um the

game feels great being able to grind is awesome being able to throw these critters it feels great it has a good lock on mechanics for every time you throw something it locks on and then the real surprise these worlds are full of characters like full of characters and they all have stuff to say and many of them have missions like side quests to unlock uh so i mean i i don't know i put a lot of time into just that first stage because i kept talking to everybody and finding new things to do yeah and there's actually like an incentive beyond like whatever achievements stuff like that as you complete these tasks they'll give you these gold pieces and i think the gold pieces then increase the amount that you can use your glider like breath of the wild style so you get more stamina for your glider which in turn

helps you explore faster and more you know reach different places and then i mentioned like some of the later levels with the later critters really mix things up where you can use the critters for the verticality everything just feels very thought out and interconnected in that way where nothing is put there without like oh i'm gonna i know exactly how this is going to impact all the other mechanics in the game it's all very very thoughtful yeah and for people who are curious about it it's on game pass yeah which is great that said i don't know how you you played it i played this on steam deck and i believe it's also on switch i do think it's on switch this game rules as a portable game yeah it's very good as portable i i think a lot of

it has to do with there's no combat like it's just platforming and throwing the guys and i think that paired with the idea of like oh you could really i mean it auto saves a lot and you can put it down whenever you want it feels very good as portable i will say i have not played it on switch i played it on steam deck as well i have not played it on switch um i so i don't can't speak to performance i'm sure on like xbox or wherever it probably runs quite good but uh switch version i haven't looked up uh how that version so so investigate before you drop down but if you're just uh if you have to have game pass and want to check it out that way that was a very good way to do it yeah at fair minimum this is a game that's just worth a try like if you have game pass there is no reason not to try this game and and i would put like an hour into it to make sure that

you get to the fun yeah i mean i i don't think you even need that i think it shows its hand pretty quickly yeah um the one other thing i want to mention it does a very cool art design thing which is the levels themselves are all in 3d so 3d models of cups and bookcases and whatever the characters are all 2d but you're moving them through a 3d world i guess the equivalent would be like a paper mario or something like that um this allows for a couple things one like stylistically it looks pretty cool that these 2d characters are moving through 3d the other thing is that it allows for scalability for platforms like the switch for example if you had let's say 60 little modeled guys following you around on switch there are limits to what you can do i mean you look at pikmin like

pikmin has some limitations in terms of what it can pull off in terms of resolution and clearly you know clear graphics and stuff like that and i think this choice even though it works artistically also helps for performance so it's very very smart yeah i mean just everything about it is so clever so i don't know it's funny that it wasn't made by nintendo because it's polished and finessed with an inch of its life yeah i think i think it's very clear that the people who made it were inspired by nintendo and certainly pikmin um but i think they came at it in the same way that like you think about stardew stardew Valley was approached as like, I'm a fan of Harvest Moon and those sorts of games,

but I think we can do this in a different way that's more satisfying. And I think in both cases, they were successful. Yeah, I can't wait to play more of this game. I just love when we get something like this that is, you know, it's not like a big blockbuster thing, but it's not like a kind of artsy indie game, which we'll talk about in the second half. It's just a really great version of the thing it set out to be. Yeah. And yeah, I don't feel like we get a whole lot of those.

Yeah. Any other thoughts about it on your end no i would say you know we've had some questions over the months and years about people wanting to know like what's a good introductory game especially for 3d spaces i think this is a great one for what it's worth because you don't have to worry about combat you're really just like moving the guy around and jumping and and moving the camera around and i think it kind of eases you in and slowly, but surely I think you'll feel a lot more comfortable. So it's-

On that note, I'm playing more games with my son and I'm not forcing him to grow up as an inverted Y-axis person. Good thinking, well done. But that means when we are like swapping the controller back and forth, I need to play traditional. So I've been trying to wean myself off inverted. And this game has been great for that.

It's just a place to play a 3D space game without inverted on and to kind of get the feel for it and for it to be like, it feels very natural in this game. And then I tried a little bit of Splatoon that way and it was a disaster. It's like learning Japanese. If you stick with it after six or seven years, it'll feel natural. Yeah.

You still won't be there, but you'll at least feel a little closer. Yeah. Cool. Well, how about we take a break and then we will come back. We will talk about immortality. We're going to go full spoilers on this.

We're going to talk about everything that there is in this game. I'm going to talk about film because that's the type of person I am. But I will say this. There's a lot of people who have said, like, you should go on it not knowing anything. I fundamentally disagree. you should go in it not knowing anything i fundamentally disagree i i truly think this game is better with large parts of it spoiled i think uh it doesn't work very well um as a mystery that you uncover for yourself i mean it can but i know a lot of so much preamble for an

ad i've never experienced so much preamble for what do you mean we haven't gone to an airbrake yet you're just preambling i'm letting people know what's going to come because i don't want them to be caught off guard you could have just said we're going to talk about immortality and there's going to be spoilers and then at the afterwards you could have been like but then they would have been like oh spoilers i don't want to do it and i'm telling them like hey spoilers be damned i think you should listen to this part anyway okay okay and now we're gonna take a break okay we're back after a very long preamble and a fantastic ad and we're gonna talk about immortality the new new game it's new still came out a couple weeks ago yeah new game from sam barlow and his studio is it half mermaid i think that's what it's called i think that sounds right

um and i mean how much setup do you think we should do fresh because you've talked about it on another episode yeah so on besties we talked about it we tried to explain what it was what the minute to minute is uh is there like a like rapid dash version of a summary of what this game is yeah i mean i think the rapid version is there was an actress who made three films that never got released and we have been granted access to a ton of footage both of the films themselves and behind the scenes video footage that spans from the late 60s to the late 1990s and it is our job to go through all of this and piece together what it all means the way that you do that is by watching footage and you click on any object basically any object or face or whatever

and that will hyperlink you to another depiction of a similar object or person yes and that unlocks more footage which then reveals more information and then there's like a higher level sci-fi thing which we're going to get to in a second yeah Yeah, I think that's a good summary. And just to bring people up to speed, the last time that I spoke about it, I had just, and I'm going to put heavy quotes around it, beaten it insofar as the credits rolled. And I came away like having kind of thoughts about what happened, but in reading more about it,

I clearly only just kind of glanced off the surface of it and now that i've watched videos from very smart people and read articles by very smart people i think i have more of an understanding of what's going on and i guess we're going to talk about that too yes spoilery i think that's right so so here i i want to talk about the film stuff because i listened to your episode and it was great yeah um but you didn't go like super hardcore into the film history because i well i don't know what the references are i'm sure there's an italian christ story that is exactly referenced by that first movie. Well, okay. So there are three movies, right? Yes. And the first, I think mostly the first one is referencing, it's called Giallo.

I hope I pronounced that right. But it's an Italian thriller from this era. And the whole thing with Giallo is it blends horror, it blends mystery, it has sex, and it has like psychological thriller components, right? Yeah. And they could be grounded, but they could also be like very weird very occult and they had a few things that you would see in pretty much all of them they would have like really really bold scores so you see it you heard it they would have lots of blood and nudity mostly female um they would have really inventive camera work and editing and those things would kind of help cover up the fact that they also had pretty low budgets sure um they also tended to have a lot of a stranger in a strange

land stories so if you've played the game ta-da like the pretty pretty perfect summary um the term jello for people who are curious it technically i believe means just the color yellow in italian but it's a reference to the fact that mystery novels around that time had yellow covers oh that's um yeah so this this form pops up in the mid 60s through the 70s which is around the same time as when this movie that we're watching the first one is being created the other thing that i think is kind of important here because these movies are english movies they they i don't believe we're even supposed to think that they were made in italy um this is around the same time that in the u.s the hayes code is completely

disintegrating and do you you know what the hayes code is yeah that's the way i try to explain it for yeah real quick explain it yeah oh i mean i don I know if you know, I will take a stab. My understanding is the Hays Code. There was a bunch of rules of stuff you couldn't do on film. And for many years, you know, a basic one being you had to keep one foot on the floor when there was a man and a woman in a bed, I think is one of them. But it was also like violence. So you couldn't have like gangsters couldn't like kill people and then get away with it. They had to like show that they were punished for their crimes.

Yeah. And like a lot of morality rules. Yeah. Nunity. You couldn't even show a Tommy gun. I think there were like certain guns that you just couldn't show. And it was very aggressive, which is why if you go watch movies pre-code, you'll see these movies from like the 20s or 30s that are like way more shocking than like anything that's made up until like i don't know the mid 60s um but anyway by the mid 60s it's like people

are just effectively ignoring it and by the end of the 60s it's falling apart yeah collapses in 68 so suddenly there is this huge market for movies with gore and sex. And at the exact same time, Italy is like, hey, we have this entire genre that is full of this stuff. So it's like a perfect export scenario. You know, U.S. and U.K. viewers want it. And Italian filmmakers just have it, you know, by the boatload and they can start shipping it off. So I think I think. Sorry, let me know if i'm rambling because no no this is helpful i you know i think what people would want to know is

how does this sort of serve the story so there's like a meta story going on so immortality versus the secret story that's going on in immortality and all of that stuff is nested within these three genres well so i think that that's kind of the problem well that's it's not the problem i think it's a i think it's missed expectations of what people want from art and i'll you mind if i kind of work my way there go for it because yeah so the first thing i want to talk about is why it's interesting that Sam Barlow made a game and his team made a game that's with Jalo anyway. Because we talked about the Hays Code, and I think video games are kind of in the collapsing of the Hays Code era for us. era for us it seems it probably seems like a long time ago for a lot of our listeners but you and i were working together when brown versus entertainment which is the supreme court decision

about like video games art happened yeah and again for people who weren't teenagers or adults at the time before that it was like a legitimate question of like what will happen to video games? Like, can they be censored? Will certain types of video games be completely controlled by the government? That was, I mean, there was an ongoing debate. There was like a monumental decision. So for games, when that happens, people start kind of actually testing and pushing the boundaries. But games take a really long time to make.

You know, in film, the Hays Code disintegrates. You can have a new movie up in six months. And you can keep iterating that over and over again. But with games, you know, it can take years, especially for indie creators, right? So I think we're like kind of getting to this point where people are kind of seeing what they can do, what they can get away with, what people are comfortable of seeing what they can do what they can get away with what people are comfortable with what audience is like and i think this game both is cool because it's using

jello it's using this moment in cinema to talk about this moment in games and then the game itself is doing a lot of things that i think games are not supposed to do like new, like human nudity. Yeah. Um, which like how many games can you name that have. Yeah. Like actual film of the actual depictions of humans naked, let alone as excessively as this film does. So I think, I think that is interesting. Now, how much it benefits the story. That part. I, part I am mixed on. And that's because it has so many stories.

It has too many stories. most obvious story, which is you have this actress, Marissa Marceau, who essentially gets objectified and used through the course of, you know, directors and producers and throughout her entire career. And it kind of shows you this dark underbelly of Hollywood in the style of Mulholland Drive

and tons of other movies, but certainly realistic portrayals all because Hollywood is super gross in a lot of places. So that I think is probably the most surface story. And then beneath that story, there's, and we alluded to it in the episode, there's a secret underbelly to immortality or the secret scenes that pop up featuring these characters that are totally different characters from the characters that we see in most of the footage there's like a there are two characters primarily both uh kind of androgynous looking bleach blonde hair.

I think in the credits they're referred to as the one and the other one. Yes. So before we get to them, because I feel like once we talk about them, the whole thing is going to fall apart. Probably true. It's like the thread that you just shouldn't pull. Before we talk about them, let's talk about the, I guess, first the main story. Sure. Which is like, there is this woman, Marissa, like you said, who is at a random moment is overcome with the urge to create art effectively. And she pursues a career in film.

She does like a commercial first and then gets discovered by this director, Fisher, I think is his name. Ambrosio Fisher. That's where I jotted down. I think that's right. He's very clearly modeled after Hitchcock. And he is like a total creep. And he brings her in. Was Hitchcock a creep?

Oh, aren't for real? Oh, yeah. I didn't know. Oh, yeah. He's like super, super, super abusive. Oh, yeah. Really, really bad guy. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Not. Yeah. So he's he's a pretty big creep and she gets pulled into that. And then I mean, I don't know how much we want to get into the individual stories of all of this. But no, I think it's OK. So, again, we're going to spoil this.

this but no i i think it's okay so again we're gonna spoil this basically there are like three major moments that happen within each story that not the stories themselves but in the meta narrative that explain why each of those movies didn't come out yes well actually i can probably bash that really quick okay because i jotted this down so the first one is an erotic religious thriller it's like about a priest who's being seduced by a nun and uh then like we find out that the nun is actually just the devil and the nun is played by marissa yeah and the devil has just been testing the priest the whole time and the director during this whole time is like very into the idea of Marissa being like naive and innocent and putting her in these like very sexual positions. And while this is all happening, she develops a relationship with the director of photography and becomes like or at least behaves less naive.

And then, yeah, then he basically the director, I guess, out of rage over this. Do you know why? He decides not to release the film. He hoards the footage. Yeah, I don't remember offhand why that first film doesn't get released. Yes, that's the first one. The second one is now shortly after. Marissa and that director of photography are working together on their own movie.

And this is much more new Hollywood. So if Giallo is like in Italy, new Hollywood is the period from like mid-60s to the mid-80s. This felt like Taxi Driver. Yes, it's Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, a lot of men, white men, making like very bold artistic films, very extravagant, a lot of like thrillers to a lot of detective work really interesting stuff very dark themes a lot of very high contrast like uh you know the way

they're shot is tends to be like almost noir in the way that there's like very dark and light yeah it feels like almost like they use the haze code as a grocery list yeah we're like okay what can we do um and in this one uh she is uh marissa plays a woman who we think killed a famous artist and there's a detective investigating this and that detective has plenty of reason to believe it's her but he's like kind of falling for her and they develop a relationship and at the end we find out that he has the detective uh has the evidence to basically prove it was her and he destroys it yeah uh doing himself to be with this black widow character um and that one gets that film number comes out because while they're filming it uh marissa fires a gun into the detective character that we think is supposed to be loaded with blanks but is accidentally accidentally loaded

with a live round yes um and since somebody's killed on set they're like we we can't finish this movie the third movie is in the late 1990s so like they're almost 30 years later and it is a marissa plays two roles in it she is a famous pop icon and she's also that pipe pop icons body double what even what genre is this because it just felt like schlocky like oh it was direct to tv yeah and i think that's intentional. It's like shot, this one, all these are shot, or at least made to look like they're shot on different film stock. This one looks like it's shot on like bad DV cam, digital video cam back then.

And it looks, yes, like the most generic, you know, direct-to-video thriller that you would find at Blockbuster just to- Like on the TBS Superstation at 1 p.m. on a Saturday. Yes. And it clearly looks, everything about it seems like junk. And when we see the behind-the-scenes stuff, like everyone looks pretty checked out.

Like Marissa, the DP has, who, you know, had worked on that second film, he's back. He does not seem to want to make the movie. Everyone seems checked out and um and basically like marissa and john i think that's his name the dp disappear i think that's how it's perceived publicly but they disappear yeah well yeah i mean there's camera footage of at one point while they're filming throughout the filming uh marissa is having like nosebleeds and getting progressively more fucked up.

And then there's a scene where like randomly, seemingly out of nowhere, her head just starts bleeding on a bar while they're filming. And that's like the last shot we ever see of her, quote, alive. see of her quote alive um and that certainly is why that movie didn't get released which i guess is a good segue into the other part well before we do that i i want to do one more brief film history thing okay just because i i think it's relevant and then i after that i think we'll be exclusively in plot but i i think the this new hollywood stuff, that second film, is also interesting just, again, as like a comparison to the games industry. Because, again, here are a whole bunch of the new Hollywood movement. At the time, everybody loves it. You know, it's like all these great artists.

They're doing all these amazing things. But behind the scenes, like many of these dudes are creeps. Like real monsters. And many of the dudes are creeps, like, real monsters. And many of the studios are doing really scummy stuff. Like, I mean, they're just straight up stealing from independent creators. So, I mean, a very famous example is Marvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweet Back's Badass Song. It's this, I guess you could call black boys blaxploitation film that is released by cinemation industries it's also so much more than that too and then mgm comes along and creates

shaft and then from there even more studios get in on it right and it's like this thing of you know small people or small studios are creating things and they're just getting completely stolen and commercialized so So that's bad. And I think both of those things. Let me ask you, do you think that's a that period thing or is that like not just still happening today? I mean, it still happens, but I think this is where we're seeing it like run rampant. Sure. And unchecked.

And I think because, again, the industry, the film industry is both big enough to fund it and to like for people to make money off of it but it's not so big and so mature that people are keeping an eye on it got it and i think like that's kind of where games have been especially like in the past 10 years i think again i hope that we're kind of barreling out of that but you know obviously powerful men getting away with awful things is a thing that we, you know, reckon with with our coverage at Polygon constantly. Yeah. indie game publishers i think many of them that are now defunct to give indie game creators bad you know percentage cuts when they decided to you know quote fund them um i mean we still see that right like epic is still quote borrowing ideas from among us like there's just i just think i

know all this is like not related to the story but i think it's like all i think it's all a piece of it i think when you play something like this it's meant to i don't think it's like all i think it's all a piece of it i think when you play something like this it's meant to i don't think it's like an accident when uh somebody like barlow and the team make these choices i think they want you to draw those comparisons yeah yeah i mean i i think the video game industry connections even though i do i think they're accurate i don't think it's necessarily the inspiration i think at its core it really is just a a story of power dynamics oh no no again i'm not saying it's inspiration i think it's it's in conversation with it yeah i i think i think that they want you to be thinking about these things in relation to the story yeah i mean i wish there weren't so many examples of

power dynamics gone awry in culture today but like video games is like one of many unfortunately um okay so now we know the story of the three films more or less yeah the i think the behind the scenes story that's the real story of the game yeah i i agree i mean i you know there are there are parallels between oh i'm i understand you're talking about the the two mystery characters i thought you meant behind the scenes no no no no no i mean the scenes in between but i mean no no no i mean behind the scenes film of the filmmaking okay so like they yell cut and then people are talking yes i think like what happens with marissa and john carl all of those people that's like at least for me that was like the the real story

totally i totally agree with that and also i would say like that's where you see the strongest performances when they're not quote on and the like cameras are theoretically off and you see i think a much more naturalistic earnest portrayal because you know they're not beholden to the script or whatever the scene is they're now suddenly themselves and we see these personalities kind of emerge and uh you know some of them are particularly horrible or gross yeah do you do you feel like you could summarize i guess the three beats of of the behind the scenes stories the first movie marissa is basically presented as a very naive actress and the director is like constantly making cracks about how she doesn't know about sex or anything she's just kind of this naive person and i know she's trying to, as an actress, prove everyone wrong.

And while that's happening, she has this relationship with the DP, John, who eventually then hires her for the second movie. And they have this kind of long relationship, which is also abusive. And so that sort of continues through the second movie. And then the third movie. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, I'm sorry. I think the second movie, the story there is. So Marissa and John are together, but she has a co-star named Carl. Oh, yes.

And Marissa now is like very flirtatious with Carl. And it's like not sure if she's trying to get a rise out of John or what the deal is there. Yeah, there's some theories about people were trying to make the argument that she was also just trying to prove that, hey, she can be this sexual being in the way that like people kind of wrote her off in the first movie. Now she can like show that, oh, she can get this, you know, hunky actor star of the movie. That does not work out for her either because it seems that John and Carl are kind of having a relationship as well. So she kind of gets left aside once again. And then she shoots Carl. And then she shoots her co-star with a loaded gun that should have been, that should have had a blank in it.

Right. Which gets into like whether, you know, it was an accident or not, dives into the other stuff. it was an accident or not dives into the other stuff the third movie uh they come back um john and marissa are back after 30 years they don't look like they've aged for what it's worth that's going to be relevant in a second and um john is currently with another actress I'm blanking on her name, who plays the wife of this powerful woman in a powerful man in the third movie. And that kind of progression goes on to the point where we start seeing Marissa kind of burning the candle at both ends, eventually like physically failing insofar as she's getting nosebleeds and eventually like collapsing in a bloody heap on the side of a bar and john mysteriously vanishing yes so this this is kind of my my trouble with it as a story with with the game as a story is the first three movies really impressive especially the first two like they're just good stories like you can follow them they would have worked as i'm not great movies but they would have worked as like movies on their own and just writing that much and having it be solid is cool even if it is kind of pastiche of stuff that already existed. Yeah. That said, the emotional core of anything that you're going to watch is going to be the, quote, real people, right?

And for me, the real people here kind of fall through your fingers. Like, it starts out interesting of, like, what is up with Marissa? Like, who is she? You know, this relationship that, you know, she's developed with john and then the love triangle with her and carl but then by the third thing there she she and john are effectively like inhuman they're like almost comatose which which which will factor into the thing that we're gonna get to but you're right you're trying to attach to these characters and if the point of it by the third movie is to be like oh those characters

basically were nothing it does and there's no story and then they cut the legs out from yeah and then it ends with her she just well I mean that's this is when credits roll we see Marissa her being dead yeah and and

Amy I think is the yeah Amy Amy is the other character her pouring gasoline on her and burning the corpse yeah um and so so if we take that as like a story right like just that as a story makes no sense right um it just doesn't hold together and it's like it doesn't explain why they haven't aged in 30 years it doesn't explain like why she's randomly bleeding from the head people don't do that and even that i don't even care about all that i don't even care about the mysteries like let's strip out the mysteries just like the story of a person who is who is going through who is going through an experience this is a woman who wanted to become an actress and then she was exploited and then

she became this like she became kind of a character from her own movies and so you think it's a story until the end of the second movie where she accidentally quote shoots the guy and then we don't get a third act and then you don't really get i agree with that yes and i find that really frustrating which is probably a setup for now we should talk about like the third layer, which I find unquestionably the most unsatisfying. Well, it's weird. The performances in the third layer are killer.

Definitely the best performances in the entire game, I thought. Yes, and it's beautiful. It all looks great, but I think it undermines, for me, it undermines the whole game. Well, it definitely recolors the whole game. Yeah yeah in a way that i don't find appetizing personally so on this third layer there are two characters basically i guess yeah not basically they're just are and well you just technically there are more than that but well okay actually yes i know what

you mean okay but describe describe the two that but describe the two that matter. Okay, the two that matter. We have the one and the other one. That's how they're referred to in the credits. And they kind of look androgynous. They have very short hair, very platinum blonde hair. And these characters will show up if you're watching a normal scene, and then you rewind that scene at a certain time when like the controller vibrates, suddenly the normal actors that you're used to will be replaced by these other actors. And they'll be saying different things and doing different things, but they'll sometimes be commenting on what's happening in that scene. Other times when you do that, it'll just jump to like a soliloquy from one of those characters talking in like a blank room about like where they came from or where their priorities are or what's important to them or whatever. But you don't get a lot of context in terms of who they are. Things that I was able to grasp just by like watching some of those scenes, they are like

some sort of fantastical race, I guess, of people that have the ability to absorb other people and kind of take on their skin if you will or live inside of people um yeah whether that's literal or whether they're just like creativity as a concept i think it's actually literal based on just there's too much references to actual things going on in the game. But regardless, it's all very important because these characters are in a lot of ways defining what is happening in the rest of the game in the movies. The scene where Marissa accidentally shoots her co-star, which causes the second film to be canceled. There is a alternate scene where it's clear that the one who was one of the two people intentionally shot the other one who was inhabiting the other co-star. And it was all like part of that plan. So that is why that happened was because these two characters made this decision or this character made this decision to do this thing. Yeah.

And that's that's why I struggle with this. And I also want to credit Sam Gowing. I think that's how it's pronounced or going on YouTube. We will share the link. But he did a really great kind of summary of the story that was really helpful, especially after playing it. And I mean, honestly, the Immortality Wikipedia page has been really helpful. Yeah, I know Dual Shockers also wrote an explainer that was quite good. There have been some good ones.

And I think that people seem to be kind of torn between two ratings for the one and the other one. One is that they're effectively like the muse and self-doubt the one is like the very idea of a muse and that marissa is inhabited by or has been impacted by the idea of a muse and that the other one is the self-doubt that is always you know trying to prohibit the muse from creating art um the other reading is more supernatural which is like they're an ancient alien race that likes to experience human life by inhabiting humans i think it can be both kind of like i i think you're right that i don't i don't like this is just a metaphor i don't think there's a version of this story

where we ever really meet marissa i think marissa marissa as we see her in this thing is effectively inhabited by the one yeah they actually there's a scene where they make it clear that she was inhabited by the one when she was a little girl, even before she went on the first acting audition she ever went on. Yes. And so whether that's, you know, the muse as a, you know,

Greek mythology idea, like the acting bug bit, the acting bug, whatever it is, it is quite literal that like, she is no longer herself. Yeah. And that,

I just, I just don't like that as a choice as as as a form of story yeah but couldn't you argue that like who was herself before this hat like the idea that inspiration touched you and then you're a different person obviously is bullshit but like you know it's like a poetic portrayal of what what i don't like about it is we spend the vast majority by far the vast majority of our time playing this game with a character who we find out is effectively a husk sure and yes person that she is is not behaving naturally we find out in any way and that what that what the real character inside of her the the one, is thinking, we only find out much later.

And we only find out in extremely, like, vague and opaque ways. Like, you know, she speaks in puzzles and riddles. Sorry. Yeah, I mean, there's some vagueness here. Because I do think there are moments, especially early on in the first two movies, where it is Marissa. It's not, like, purely the one. where it is marissa it's not like purely the one but it feels like there are times where she like exerts the one i guess exerts more control more control over the situation and like so that and that balance is not clear so you don't know exactly who is controlling

and i don't think that's serving the story necessarily no and well and and again we as people are attracted to the stories of other people and like even if we watch something about gods we the stories are written in a way where those gods behave like humans right right they have like vulnerabilities or you or you have a character that is interacting with those gods as the audience surrogate right you can like understand this in that context of wow this is really weird compared to me who's normal in what yeah when i when i struggled with with this game is it felt like it was doing the opposite that it was like these are not people like these are these are just gods doing weird things that are like metaphors about art.

And then I think that's the other bummer just for me. And this is very much personal taste. I want to be clear. I think this game is like incredibly impressive. I love that this game exists. It might even be in my top 10 games of the year. At the same time, I think it's like extremely worth picking at. Yeah.

I personally just don't care about stories about art. I think it's like extremely worth picking at. Yeah. I, I personally just don't care about stories about art. I just find like I, I about like the creative process and how hard it is for artists and how we're controlled by our need to create, but repelled by, you know, you know,

relentless self doubt. Like I just, life is so hard it's so real life is so hard that the idea that that is the biggest problem in someone's life i just i haven't been able to think that way since i was like 13 and i i i'm sure that there are plenty of artists there who are still artists who are adults who are still able and free to have these feelings. And I'm happy for them. But I do not find it that universal. And I don't know.

That is when people talk about pretension. I think that's often what they mean. It's like this is just too much about itself. Which is weird because I like Nier Automata, which is a work of criticism about games. But Nier Automata isn't just about art. It's about people who make art. It's like, why are we creating this?

What does it mean to be gods? What does it mean to be, you know, in control of the virtual worlds? What is it like? How is it impacting us? It's asking so many questions that i think are more interesting than just like you know what we're born to create and sometimes or the self-aggrandizement of like i'm gonna make this sacrifice for the art yeah yeah like don't

which isn't necessarily applauded in this game but but it is presented as like an idea, an idea and also like a like a greater than humanity like creature that could possibly like make that choice. Whereas humanity is, you know, so stifled by other issues in their life. Yes. If I had to say what this game was about, like let's say it's about a muse or whatever inhabiting Marissa, it is that art feeds on us quite literally. It quite literally bleeds us dry and ultimately it destroys us. Yes. the sumptuousness of art of the process of creating it right and about like what we actually depict that these people are getting to experience the highs or the extremes of life you know violence and sex and uh i mean this like it's exploration of faith right but none of that is enjoyable

so what's weird to me is like that's not how that's not why like actual people create art people create art because they enjoy most of them shoot because they enjoy it it's pleasurable right so it's weird for me to be like okay this is everything that's awful about art and i'm not getting a sense of any of the good right i and and i think a lot of that is probably just Hollywood being like probably the most intensely, potentially negative form of art creation. But what's weird is this is Hollywood. These are independent creators. I mean, these are like really small sets that these people are working on. So like this should be passion projects. Like, I guess it needs to be fun. projects like i guess it needs to be fun i'm just saying like it's just weird to make them if the if the message of the thing is like art destroys us yeah it's just weird to me that it's like and well i guess then we just like if i was going off this game my takeaway would be we

shouldn't make art like well films it's funny it reminds me when I was in high school, it reminds me my brother went to film school, filmmaker, and he would make student films in high school. And he'd, you know, bring a bunch of his friends over. And for a while, he kept asking me for help. And I helped out on a couple shoots. And everyone was always stressed out and always miserable. and everyone was always stressed out and always miserable and like running around with their heads cut off trying to like get everything done and oh we're losing the light whatever it was and i'm not saying that's every film i'm sure there are amazing quality filmmaking experience but for me as a person watching from the outside it didn't seem appealing at all that creation process because it was so tied to so many outside forces that can make it a negative experience. Yes. Yeah. Maybe it's just that.

It's like this critique of filmmaking in general. Well, in addition to, you know, Hollywood being very gross, filmmaking is like constantly. And game making. mean and game making sure getting in the way of the actual enjoyment of art um i don't know you're right it is uniformly a negative portrayal of this thing and that is a rough way to spend 10 or so hours sifting through footage well yeah and i don't it's again not that i even mind it being a rough way it's just by deciding not to have any positives that that is that makes that informs the takeaway right so like it's you will have a cynical takeaway if if you know what you choose to say what you choose not to say will will inform the message yeah there's nothing not cynical in this

it is a very cynical portrayal. What, before we wrap up on it, the title of the game, immortality. Sure. What's your take on it? I think it's pretty clear. I think the title refers to the idea of people and,

and the, the, the one and the other one allude to this, the idea that they can live forever within the bodies of people that are acting and within the memories of people that are you know watching these movies and the game actually ends with a one shot of the one looking directly into the camera effectively at the player and being and saying i believe i'm a part of you. The idea being that like, because you were watching this now, they continue to live on through your memory of watching this experience.

So that is my read. I, I, I agree. I not that I like it, but I, I agree. Um,

uh, I, I think that's true. I also think it, I mean, this is the same thing that it's playing with the idea that i think like this engine for artists that well i will you know become dust eventually but my art will live past me you know and that like you're immortal through your art if you're a great artist

yeah but i also think that's funny and i wish the game had picked it this more because it's just not true. Like, the brutal truth of art is that you could make the biggest show in the world, and in less than 100 years, nobody will remember it. Yep. Literally nobody. I mean, there are entire movies from the 70s right now. There's a heist movie that I love called The Hot Rock. You basically can't find it anywhere. True Lies.

True Lies was made by James Cameron. And it's very difficult to watch it, right? Like, outside of Shakespeare, there's not much. And, I mean, a thing that, like, one of my more brutal professors at NYU would point out was, like, name something that you care about from 100 years ago. And then forget that. Name something that you love from even 20 years ago. Yeah. Of any medium.

And for a lot of people, for the average person, it's surprisingly hard. And the thing that you love that the next generation has never heard of before. Exactly. hard i'm sure and the thing that you love the next generation has never heard of before exactly so there is there is no immortality which is what's kind of like funny because this game contradicts that right the game works better in the idea that the footage was lost forever like that actually is better if it's like oh no this footage was forever. They did all of this and nobody ever saw it like that. I find that much more interesting versus like, oh, well, they actually kind of got their wish. I don't know.

That doesn't that doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't work. No, I agree. I think there are definitely core problems with it. Yeah, I love I love the creativity. I like the swing. But I'm not sure it's there for me. Well, and again, I know that I have been like very critical, but I want to be clear that I think there's a difference between being critical and being like negative.

Because the fact here is very few games are doing anything close to this not just on like a technical level but just getting you to think about things yep and like that is why i mean that's why i love movies i i went and saw assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford the other night and i was thinking about this a lot because that movie is good it's three hours long almost three hours long and it does this really annoying thing where it is kind of an art movie but every time there could be a moment of like peace where we can actually think about all of the stuff that we're seeing they cut to vo and the vo just kind of explains everything for you of like what it wants you to feel sure and it sucks It like really sucks.

Yeah. Because it doesn't give you time to actually think about yourself. And that's what I want when I go to a movie is art, really, really good art gets you to think about something beyond the art. Like you're not just thinking about the plot. You're not just thinking of like,

why is Marissa old versus young? And I think there's a habit sometimes where post lost especially where we think the biggest questions we have are about like the work itself and like does this make sense how does this fit into the canon when like throughout history the cool thing about art is we see it and it affects us and it makes us start thinking about us or our loved ones or the world we're in or like what just what we're feeling right and i i don't often get that from games and i'm not saying that as a bad thing for games games do a different thing entirely they help me feel a different thing but it was really cool to play this game and get that from a video game where it was making me ask a lot

of questions it just didn't it ultimately didn't do it in the way that i found compelling or yeah and i and i do think games do that but it's extremely rare uh you know we were just talking about the the ending of the last of us part recently. I actually think that ending is a really good example of something that pulls you out and makes you think of something beyond just the, here are the events of the game, of what happened. Like, oh, what would I do in this circumstance if it's my family member on the line?

Yeah. Neil Druckmann spoke about the ending of that game, and I will never forgive him for it because I think that ending is so interesting. makes me so angry that ending um and him talking about what it actually means and like whether or not joel is in the wrong or right just breaks it for me yeah i'm not interested yeah i mean i firmly believe in death of the author, death of the artist, and I'm not interested in what he thinks that that ending is. And I don't like if it's me, I wouldn't even comment on it because I think it's more interesting. You've you've put the pieces there and you've selected what to show and what not to show.

And that is the canon. That is what people walk away with, that the best art makes you feel something and makes you think about something. You shouldn't have the artist on your shoulder. I never read those placards next to the painting. I just want to look at the painting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I agree. I also think you need to say that because I am almost certain this will end up in my top 10. Just because it challenged me.

And I do, there's a lot I admire about it on a technical level. We didn't talk a lot about a lot of that because y'all did a really good job talking about it on the main besties episode. Which if somehow people did not listen to, you should go back and listen to that. Because I think it gets at a lot of what's really exciting about like just the act of playing this game is really really interesting and fun yeah um and rewarding on its own um which again a game can just be that that's that's also totally chill um anyway that that is that's all the stuff that i had on my brain okay we've gone long so we should wrap it up oh boy what. What else are you playing? Uh,

nothing really dark souls and stuff like that. Have you watched anything? Uh, I watched, uh, I referenced it on besties, but I watched, um, delicatessen,

which was quite good. 1991 film, French film, uh, set in a post post apocalypse where people eat each other. And it's a comedy. And it's a comedy. And it's made by the director of Amelie.

It was the director of Amelie. He made, I think right before it. Right. Yeah. What, what have I been enjoying? I mean,

we'll talk about it more soon, but just to whet everyone's appetite, Disney dream, light Valley. Oh boy. What a joy. It is dangerous. Dangerous.

Oh, you should just leave it there. Is it dangerous? It's dangerous. I mean, Animal Crossing plus the addictive talents of a mobile game developer like Gameloft, that is, and all of my Disney adult urges, it's a combination.

That's a good, I think a good tease for besties next week. I think so. So that's it. We did it. It was a long one. We appreciate you sticking with us. We spoke about Tinykin at the top. That's available on pretty much everything steam xbox playstation

switch we spoke about immortality in the second half that is available on pc it's eventually going to be available on mobile on android and ios via netflix but i don't think so yet it's on xbox it's not oh yeah i think it's xbox game pass too. Yep. Yeah. And you talked about Delicatessen, and I spoke about Disney Dreamlight Valley very briefly. And that's a wrap. We did it. It's another episode of the Resties. I am Christopher Thomas Plant.

You are Russ Frustick. And I am Russ Frustick. Sure. We're the Resties. Where the rest are the best. Discuss the best of the rest. Rusties!