The Besties - How we got from Batman to Suicide Squad [Resties]

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

When Rocksteady published its entire Batman trilogy within seven years, it became one of the most promising (and prolific) video game studios in the world. But now, seven years since its last major release, Rocksteady has lost its two founders and, seemingly, its creative identity. With its new game Suicide Squad weeks from release, we explain how this developer went from creating the best superhero games of its generation to producing a living game looter shooter. In the back half, Russ shares his thoughts on Cobalt Core. And we have a special survey for listeners at Besties.fan! 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!

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're talking about a whole bunch of stuff. We've got an indie video game that y'all have been just cheering to get on the show called cobalt core and uh in the front of the episode we're gonna be answering a question that i i've had which is how did rocksteady the video game developer go from the hit batman trilogy to suicide squad with the founders of the studio no longer even working at the studio.

In fact, they just this past week opened a new studio. How the hell did that happen? We're going to answer that question. But before we do that, we have some very pressing business to get to, to find out who is going to get some video game art in their, I guess, video game Christmas stocking that has not been cleaned up and is still just kind of hanging right over the mantle waiting to be distributed. Yeah.

To bring people up to speed, if you're not up to speed, Plant and I have an annual bet regarding predictions, and who gets more predictions right wins some sort of prize and this year the prize was video game art now if you listen to the last episode of the resties you would know that chris point got two correct uh and made arguments for why I got two correct. I think one of them in my heart, I was pretty confident about. The other one, I did my absolute best of trying to sell the point. And then I threw it to good old democracy to determine whether I had tied Chris Plant or whether I had lost.

And we left it up to you, the fans in the newsletter. So please, Chris Plant, what was the verdict? Okay, so right now the score is zero to two, but you have a shot to tie it. That's right. The first poll result. You predicted Yoshi will appear in the credits of the Mario movie. I said, I don't know much about that. I saw an egg at the end, but who's to say what was in that egg?

I am happy to report for you, the audience agreed with you. Yes. 75% of our audience believes Yoshi did appear in the credits in the movie. 2,790 people voted, which is a decisive amount of people, I think, for such a stupid question. I think you could become a state senator with that number of votes. I think you're right, actually. I think you just won Iowa. So congratulations. That brings you up to one to two. One to two, yes. And now the final poll.

You said Minoru counts as a... Is that how it's pronounced? Minoru? Well, you're the one learning Japanese, but I always thought it was Minoru. I think it is probably said vocally in the game at one point, but I don't remember. So I always say Minoru. Anyway, the robot character.

Sure. Counts as a playable character in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. And you made an effort at this. You really, really did. And that's why I am astonished to say that you did lose, but 27% of people were convinced by your effort. Thank you so much to the 27%. I really do appreciate your support. I think the top comment from Patrick on our issue, when Russ rides a horse, he thinks, wow, I am a horse now. Really sums up the flaw in your argument.

So I would like to thank Patrick. Well, no, I think to put it another way, was Epona a playable character in Ocarina of Time, which I acknowledge is a little bit of a silly argument to make. But then again, Epona is an animal. It is not a human being or a human-esque being.

Though I guess Minoru isn't either because Minoru is kind of a robot. Anyway. Yeah, yeah. I mean, congratulations to me. Thank you. Good work to you. It was a close one. I think last year it was like I lost by like a half a point.

I think so. So it's been tight both years that we've done it. Yeah. And you're already off to a better start this year. Actually, I'm not. You're not? I thought one of your bets was that a Steam OS would appear on a portable handheld console. That's right.

That happened, right? So the company named Aya Neo announced that they would be releasing the very first handheld that has Steam OS coming pre-installed into it. And they had to submit a correction to their press release. submit a correction to their press release and all of these sites including the verge had to update their stories because it's not technically steam os it is like an indie offshoot of steam os called iso something that i forget wow it is not technically steam os it's like built off of steam os so i you know I could probably fight it, but I'm not sure that it's a win. It was like ripped from my jaws as a potential win.

Wow, that is fantastic. Honestly, this just gets better. Well, we will think about how I'm going to get this prize. Maybe people have some ideas and they can let us know. But I want to get to the show and we can start talking about some Batman and Cobalt Corps. That sound good to you? Love it.

Okay, we're back. So, Frush, the new Suicide Squad game is finally coming out. And, you know, there's a lot of times where you're like, hey, the game is finally coming out. And, yeah, it's because a lot of times where you're like, hey, the game is finally coming out. And, yeah, it's because it got delayed like six months. Suicide Squad has been kind of in the ether for, it feels like forever. It didn't even start really at Rocksteady Studios.

It has just been this endless journey. So I guess in honor of it, a game that I am like I really hope is good. I'm being cautious, cautious though with my heart um i i wanted to look back and be like how did we get here how did we get from batman to suicide squad does that and i yeah that sounds great i do want to like take a minute and maybe this is part of it yeah to say that like i think the batman trilogy is like one of the best video game trilogies ever made. It features the maybe the best third person like action combat I've ever experienced. Really great, like narrative, really amazing voice acting. Pretty gorgeous to look at.

I yeah, I mean, I think it started to fall off a little bit towards the third game. But honestly, overall, I think taken as a whole, that series is is spectacular. And so I it's fair to say that I was tremendously excited for whatever they were going to do next. And I know a lot of people had a lot of theories but i don't think they were expecting where this game is going yeah um that original trilogy it took seven years to create and release that entire trilogy that is the same amount of time that it's taken to go from that trilogy to suicide squad wait wait wait wait development for arkham asylum get ready for this get ready for this this is a story of like how scope of triple a games has changed it is how the culture of video game

development has changed uh and i think like most of all as we go through this you're gonna see this the story of uh financial expectations of video games changing like wild um so i'm excited to start it off the year is 2004 and we're not even at rocksteady games we are at a place called argonaut games which have you heard of argonaut games have you played any argonaut games wasn't argon, the studio that Dylan Cuthbert worked at? I don't believe so, because Argonaut is responsible for IP churn. Oh, gosh. In the year of 2000 and 2004, they released 15 games. 15.

That include Harry Potter, Bionicle, Alien Resurrection. They are pumping this stuff out. Okay. And to my credit, Dylan Cuthbert started Argonaut Software in 1988 when he was 17 years old. Unrelated. Totally unrelated. Just like how Rocksteady and Rockstar are not the same thing. Yes, for sure.

So Rocksteady that year, 2004, is founded. thing yes for sure um so rocksteady that year 2004 is founded um and um this this year 100 people from argonaut are laid off um the company is basically going underwater and these two founders who are senior people at argonaut are like hey we're gonna open our own studio it's called rocksteady we've got some funding from this publisher called SCI, who has like, I think, like a quarter stake of it. And hey, people from Argonaut, you want to come over here? You know how to make games quick, right? Like, yes. And they come over and they make a little game called not Batman. They make Urban Chaos Riot Response. Oh, yeah, I played that game. Yes. Which I have to read the summary from Wikipedia for you because it really gets at how they were clearly built to make a Batman game, even if that was not their original intention. Mason, a member of the newly formed T-Zero Riot Control Squad, in an unnamed modern American

city that has been overtaken by the notorious Burners Gang. The gang members, armed with cleavers, Molotov bombs, and firearms, are attacking civilians, paramedics, firefighters, and police officers. And it is up to him to stop them. He must defeat them by whatever means necessary in order for to protect the city capturing gang leaders and rescuing injured civilians along the way you are just batman that is a first person game though so that's obviously like a big shift from their later stuff it's wild because you also do play as basically a cop, a firefighter, and a paramedic in the game.

Are you claiming that Batman is all three of those things? I would say on his best day, he aspires to be those things. And on his worst day, he's mostly just a shitty detective vigilante. So all of that comes out right. It doesn't really light the world on fire people like me are weirdos who collected it because it's such an oddity of a game yet sci that company that had

a quarter stake in them they merge with idos and at the exact same time this is now 2007 a year later idos gets the right to batman and rocksteady is over here like, hey, we know how to make a Batman type of game. Like, look at what we just put out in the world. I mean, sort of. Right? I guess so. So they're like, hey, you get it. You have a concept.

Let's begin production on it. And before the end of 2007, they're rolling. And by 2009, they have a game. They have Batman Arkham Asylum. end of 2007 they're rolling and by 2009 they have a game they have batman arkham asylum and that is how quick they go from making you know games like junk harry potter bionicle five years later they're shipping what i think is like a defining video game of its era that is fucking crazy that it was that quick i mean the scale of arkham asylum is actually pretty narrow especially considering how big the other two games got but it is so it feels so perfect

and refined that like the other games do not change the core of that loop that dramatically would you call it a metroidvania i think so right like it's it has those yeah there's not as there's not as much although there is backtracking it doesn't seem like the core of i guess i would sure yeah i mean i'm not that precious about genres so it's fine um yeah i mean i love it for for a lot of the similar reasons that i love metroidvanias and so far as like you're in this one big open area that is slowly opening itself up to you as you get more gear and things yes i i think i think that's right i also think metroidvanias now we almost take for granted how popular the genre is again these days yeah like then it you know we were desperate for whatever we could get so yeah there were very few back then yeah for sure it's that shadow complex i think comes out around this

time um not a whole lot else yeah it was pretty light there are people who see this game and they credit it with like part of batman's huge rise to success it's a little murky on whether it's the game or, you know, the immensely popular popular film trilogy. It is also. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think it was. Oh, we'll call it a little bit of both. But in terms of mainstream success, obviously, the movies, the Nolan movies did a lot. Yes.

So that comes out 2009. So that comes out 2009. Less than a year later, Warner Brothers, the owners of the Batman franchise, are like, hey, we make a move into the space there are a few others who did this and like disney interactive uh and that went bust but it is not as like popular it is now so we have warner brothers making and now we're just on the roll 2011 batman arkham city comes out uh they immediately begin work on arkham night there is for the record for those paying attention, two years between Batman Arkham Asylum and Batman Arkham City. Crazy. Yeah. Which, so about that.

At the time, did that feel fast or did that just feel normal to you? I think it felt a little fast, especially once we saw how much bigger the scope was in the second game. It felt a little fast. It wasn't like, how is this even possible? This game is going to be totally shit because it was rushed out the door so quickly. But it definitely seemed like a little bit fast. fast yeah i i think now obviously seven to eight years feels like a long time for a video game like what happened to a suicide squad but four years for this sort of thing is not yeah right for a sequel for i think four years these days for like especially for a sequel to like something that was very critically acclaimed that did really well four years is kind of the norm but for context for people back then this was like kind of common. We had Call of Duty shipping every year. We had Tony Hawk coming out regularly.

And if you had like a hot hand, you kept shipping. Obviously, you know, with Call of Duty, there were two studios. But again, even they were shipping at least once every two years. Yeah. Kind of alternating. So I mean, if you look at again, like I think because they nailed the core of it so strongly with, uh, Arkham Asylum and they had to change so little of that,

they were just doing like additive things that honestly probably came up in the testing of the first game and they weren't able to fit in. The biggest challenge was really just like, can we pull off a giant open city versus what was essentially just like one area that was very well developed in the first game um but the core mechanics were all like baked and barely touched for the second game seemingly yeah so it comes out it is immensely popular again like fresh said bringing this kind of metroidvania feel into a much larger setting, right as open world games are becoming kind of the default of popular game design.

A year later, it's 2012 now, and work has begun on Arkham Knight. And we find out that the writer of the first two stories, Paul Denny, says he won't be back for the third. At this point, it sounds like he was not invited back and Rocksteady was going to move on with its internal writers, which is not so unusual. Again, the studio is getting bigger. It makes sense that it would have its own full-time narrative staff, but it's a bit of a change. Another change, 2013, Warner Brothers releases another Batman game, but this time not from Rocksteady. So like we said, to kind of keep a game or a hot property in the market, publishers would often bring in a second or even third studio to ship like other annual games. So this is an annual.

This is really every two years at this point. But we're getting one from WB Montreal, and this is Batman Arkham Origins. Which, if I'll recall correctly, that game came out and technically was a total mess. Bugs out the wazoo, et cetera. But has since, I actually haven't played it, but I've heard that it has since made quite the resurgence,

and people really love it. I think it's, like, very similar to the Fallout New Vegas story of, like, technical problems at launch. But for those that stuck with it and, like, were able to get through the patches, like, if you played it today, sounds like you'd have a really good time. Yeah, it's pretty beloved amongst the hardcore fan community. And the fan community around these games is certainly hardcore and they also for what it's worth like that game pulls almost everything about the like combat and the exploration they added certainly new stuff i know there's new detective stuff in that game but the core of that again pulls from the arkham series pretty directly

yeah here's here's something i just did not remember at all until i was digging into this that it's a christmas game well one that it's a christmas game thank you um and two that it ends with a suicide squad like assembling hook i did not know that squad are going to get together this is 2013 wow and we are teasing that, right? So behind the scenes, somebody is beginning to get to work on a Suicide Squad game, but it's unclear who. Yeah. 2014, Arkham Knight, the new game from Rocksteady, is revealed. Release is scheduled for october later it's bumped to june uh of 2015

and then uh kind of full mid 2015 um and then 2015 it does come out it actually ships the end of the trilogy it is humongous you can drive the batmobile now And the Batmobile comes in two modes, a fast car and a terrifying tank. It is huge. It runs like absolute garbage on PC. I think this is not Rocksteady's fault. I believe that there was an issue with the porting house, but woof was it rough. But otherwise, people really, really enjoyed this game. You were on the side of like, this game is excellent, right?

I was on the side of this game is pretty good, but not as good as Arkham City. I thought it was a step back. I didn't really like the like tank Batmobile minigame stuff. It just felt a little bloated. It's funny you mentioned the technical problems, too, because just recently Warner a um batman trilogy port to the switch so you can play all three games on the switch apparently the arkham knight version on the switch runs like fiery dog shit there's a great video by uh digital foundry that shows it dropping to like 12 frames a second as you're driving through the city. And at some points we'll just like freeze for three seconds.

So it's good to know that that legacy lives on. I played it on like PS4 or something. It ran fine. Yeah. A fun thing about Batman Arkham Knight, as it's coming out, the game director, Septon Hill,

who is again, a co-founder at Rocksteady is asked, you know, is there going to be multiplayer? It's 2015. Everything has multiplayer, right? And his response was, this is a single-player game. There is no multiplayer. Right at the start, this was our vision.

It's going to take all of our effort for all of this time. We don't have the time to do multiplayer. And that's going to be really important when we talk about what's coming up next. Bookmark that. Book, yeah. Save. Hang a little lantern right there. And then, hey, knowing Rocksteady, it's on to the next thing.

And the next thing is a VR game. 2016, Batman Arkham VR. You thought you were going to talk about Suicide Squad? Hell no. They're not talk about Suicide Squad? Hell no. They're not working on Suicide Squad. They're working on a PSVR exclusive that received near universal middling reviews. And at the same time, keep the odds going, Warner Brothers Montreal, it turns out they were making a Suicide Squad game and it is canceled. Sad. Can't go worse from that. Turns out they were making a Suicide Squad game and it is canceled. So sad.

Can't get worse from that. I guess that's what they were teasing when they ended Origins. They were teasing the game they were working on. Yeah, 100 percent. So 2017 Suicide Squad. It's out in the market. Rocksteady is like, great. That's what we want to do.

OK, so that's that's a good question though do you think the creative team at rocksteady was like we definitely want to do suicide squad or do you think warner brothers came to them given the fact that warner brothers owns them and they were like you have to do this new frame you have to do suicide squad i'm so glad you asked because i don't have the answer, but I have something close. There was this persistent rumor, and it hasn't really died, that Rocksteady wanted to make a Superman game or that maybe even they were making a Superman game. Right. I've heard this. Right. And that is false.

Our pal Jason Schreier has reported this at Bloomberg from people close to the company that that was just never the case. Not only did the game not happen, it was not going to happen. They had begun work on a multiplayer game in an original franchise. Is that still alive? I mean, if it started in 2016, 2017, my guess is no, but can't say for sure it seems like they would have just if they were working on multiplayer maybe that's what suicide squad became uh possible that's very possible um because yeah in 2018 um things just kind of continue to go sour i think another issue for them is like just this question of what are they doing right they're not doing batman they're uh they're not doing vr clearly anymore um they don't have another studio that is doing the suicide squad game that is going

to be connected to this batman universe and also their you know work environment does not seem to be doing well. There's this letter that is shared with Rocksteady executives privately. And according to a report from The Guardian, over half of the studio's female employees raised serious concerns of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior. And two years later, that report actually gets published publicly. That's when this Guardian report comes out. And it's a total mess. There's a bunch of claims that like Rocksteady didn't respond well enough to this letter. One signatory said that there was only like a one hour seminar in response to it. Rock steady responded by posting an unsolicited letter from what it said was seven of the original signatories. But now in 2020, saying that things had improved and it just becomes this whole mess.

Yeah, it's really just miserable sadly a very familiar story at this yeah i think i think the more concerning thing about this is they can they say it's half the women who worked at rocksteady um and there were 10 signatories which would suggest that like 20 women worked at a 200 person studio which yeah also sadly uh sounds familiar yeah especially at that time yeah uh you know the ratio was even worse back then yes it's still not great so it's bad things continue to be bad there and they only get worse um by 2022 uh the studio actually does announce the game uh which is a hell of a pivot from like behind the scenes uh problems to this silly game that's going to ship um and uh they announced it uh in march uh it's delayed from 2022 to early 2023.

And around this time. And I want to say, like, when the game was announced, I remember seeing that trailer, and it was like a silly, whatever, Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn trailer. That's fine. I was pretty jazzed about it. I mean, nothing in that trailer was like, oh, I'm, like, blown away by this. But I knew Rocksteady's pedigree and i was you know i kind of like trusted them to do like really high quality stuff so if it was going to happen with suicide squad fine that's you know something different than batman that could be interesting um so i was kind of on board at this point yeah and then um then we kind of find out what the

game is and who even works at rock city anymore yeah um that year um the co-founders the same two who had left argonaut to found rock steady leave rock steady um and the release date for the game uh at the game awards gets uh announced that it's going to be may 2023 and i think it's around this time that we start to get an idea of what the game is by february 2023 i know for a fact we know what it is we find out the game is multiplayer and it has a battle pass and i feel like that's when the expectations of this game just start to plummet. Well, I think there was I think the really backbreaking moment, Bane, if you will, was the moment when they showed gameplay. There was a gameplay trailer that they released that showed like a good 15 minutes of like intercut gameplay that was riddled with.

minutes of like intercut gameplay that was riddled with it was like third person action and then like live uh you know gear score items that had like loot score attached to them and then you mentioned yeah the battle pass and none of it looked fun it all looked like really kind of schlocky. And you know what it reminded me of was that we've talked about a few times and I'd always I always blank on it. That EA mech game that like anthem. It looked like anthem. Yeah. No one wanted anthem when it came out. And this looked like more anthem, but with Suicide Squad characters. That was always the problem with this game.

And with the Avengers. When people would talk about these games long before they were even shown. You don't have to be a major game designer to understand the inherent challenge of just getting one superhero right. It's really tough. Just getting Spider-Man right has taken dozens of Spider-Man games across decades. right has taken you know dozens of spider-man games across decades and to do a game where you're going to let players play as multiple superheroes is tough obviously i think guardians of the galaxy by square probably did the best job of this and that was by kind of putting you as one person who has a you know a helper superheroes There's also another key difference there.

Guardians of the Galaxy was a narrative, single player only game and was not built around the idea of a living service game that would encourage people to play for like five to 10 years long. Like all of these games, Anthem, and in this case, Su that squad we're built around

the mentality of trying to capture the fortnight thing of we're going to make a game that never dies and not only is it hard to make multiple characters playable and super fun it's really fucking hard to make a game that people want to play for five or ten years in a row um so they were really doing a big challenge on this one yes and and again getting to the superhero part of it the answer seemed to be when the video came out we'll just make it destiny give them all guns um so you take all these likable characters and then they all from a distance look quite the same i think the final product is going to be a bit different than that um but again you really think so because the because that trailer came out and like the

game got delayed like a year yeah what can you really do in a year for a game that big so i think what they've done so far from what i've seen is it's much more about um movement and the characters display their uniqueness through how they move around the world sure um so do i think that's like as good as the character just being entirely different right um no i don't but i think at least it's not like you know um palette swaps like in the original mortal kombat where it's like well and here's the blue one and here's the green one here's the red one um uh so okay so that all that happens we're now in 2023 people have seen that this game is not what they were hoping for it is nothing close to what rocksteady. Had really built its identity around.

Which as the director. Of Batman Arkham Knight had said. We do single player. We're going to do that really well. Third person. Close up action. No it's not going to be that. So by April.

The reaction has been so rough. And Rocksteady announces. It's delaying the game again, this time to February 2nd, 2024. Um, and by December, they announced that there will be an offline mode that will come after launch. And it just, at this point, feels like it's full. Let's just make some concessions. Let's try to get this game into a place ideally before launch you know how often do we see this with with games now where the game launches and then two years later uh a place like ours publishes a story like hey the game's good

now yeah um it feels like they're trying to pull that off before the game's even out um but they do a preview event in december and it goes i mean just terrible ign completely slams it and ign is not like the outlet that i associate with like slamming games during no it was a pretty universal i think almost everyone that is like from a pretty big media organization played the game and and walked away pretty disappointed from it yeah um so here we are 2024 the game is nearly out um so the game was previewed we started this talking about your cautious optimism the game was previewed in december two months before the game was previewed. We started this talking about your cautious optimism. The game was previewed in December, two months before the game is actually out. Is what are your odds that this game somehow pulls a Hail Mary and and succeeds and comes out?

And it turns out to be a pretty good game. Pretty good game. I would put somewhere between like one to two percent okay you know like that's just me i don't know i've been proven wrong before that said i was skeptical of guardians of the galaxy before i played it that's true i ended up liking that quite a bit um i think that there's a very real chance that this is a to use the score methodology like a six out of ten a seven out of ten sure has some ideas in it that people who love it really love it and as somebody who really loves crackdown games even the most recent one i look at it and i

see a little bit of that crackdown yes in it and And I can see a world where I really get into it. And do you think it's going to have the like No Man's Sky slash, you know, a cyberpunk revival in that way? No, I would be stunned. Just because that's what the last year, you know, they've spent a lot of time trying to get the game right. year you know they they've spent a lot of time trying to get the game right and i have to imagine that if the game comes out and it does not do well right away that you know that's when you cut your losses but i mean it's a it is a big property so maybe it comes out and they advertise it during a whole bunch of you know like basketball games uh this, and it sells well, and then that can motivate them to spend even more money

on doing some post-launch updates. I don't know. I wouldn't fully count this game out. I try not to in general, but especially with this one, there's still a window, I think, to this game being a success. It's closing.

I am extremely curious, like genuinely I'm looking forward to playing it just because it's been such a long journey and like for it to come out, I could finally like see what it ended up as, but yeah, I'm not, I'm not holding out hope too much. Yes. And,

uh, and we kind of end where we started which is rocksteady's two founders just as they did with argonaut games have a new studio and they're hiring up some folks from rocksteady uh do we have a sense of what sort of project they're working on i it's a good question it's called a hundred star It's called 100 Star Games. Yeah, it obviously sounds quite similar to their strategy when forming Rocksteady. Here's one big difference. This time around,

they've said that they want to limit the studio to 100 people. Currently, they only have 25. So that would suggest that they don't want to do this again. Yeah, they want to focus on smaller projects. Yeah, and I mean, I think I do wonder for them if for better and worse, the die was cast from the beginning with the studio. They didn't have big money.

at the studio they didn't have big money you know they were coming from a argonaut which was in trouble and was you know in massive constant crunch they had that 25 percent stake owned by sci they get bought they emerge with eidos they get bought by warner brothers they never really have control and and for them that was probably okay when they you know were making the batman games but as the market shifted and i mean wow you can look at suicide squad and you see a game that sure looks like some meddling from a publisher that wants something huge i mean i don't know what happened behind the scenes maybe this is what they wanted to make, but it sure feels like a large publisher having strong opinions about where they want their investments. And by keeping it small, I am very curious what they can do. It sounds like there obviously were still cultural issues at Rocksteady, and I hope that they've done the work to improve that this time around.

But yeah, I'll be very curious to see what they do next. And I have no idea what it will be beyond that. I like to think that if they get 200 employees and then someone shows up, they have to shoot someone else out of a chute. Like they have to launch them from the office. Yeah, Looney Tunes style, where they're always safe right and they're and they're just like pointing at the sign like 100 stars sorry jeff is it always jeff keely trying to join he's like oh yeah i really thought this was my team to join and they're like oh sorry we just hired the 100th person yesterday sorry sorry put on your goggles

put on your helmet we're gonna fire you out of a cannon jeff right into the comfort of an imax screen um hey we did it we talked about i think we i think we answered the question you filled in so many blanks you did a great job on the research chris point as always i'm very impressed and that was very interesting and educational um and yeah i'm uh i guess we're gonna play this game soon yeah i'm gonna take a break um i want to come back and i want to hear all about cobalt core because people in um besties.fan comments have been cheering this game for a while and it looks i honestly it doesn't look like exactly my type

of game but it looks very your type of game and i love when you're excited about something yeah um so let's do it let's take a break and we'll be right back okay so yes as as chris plant mentioned cobalt core has been something that folks in the newsletter comments have been asking us to talk about for quite a while now chances are when they were asking they were probably asking justin to play it because he is the lord and master when it comes to these i guess tcg collectible card game type games like slay the spire and monster train stuff like that he's played almost all of them i've certainly dipped into a few of them uh i know chris plants tried a few but he is probably the most hardcore

of them i will say that i have not gotten into one of these games for probably i think the last one that i liked was um inscription which was like a mix of a whole bunch of different genres but obviously had this like card mechanic to it but i really haven't played one since even though justin keeps recommending others to me and it turns out i've been missing out because this game is scratching so many itches for me and i am really really enjoying it so how exactly does it work okay so the best way i can describe it is it is if you've played ftl which is like a great uh pixelated uh space sim exploration roguelite mixed with sway the spire which is obviously a card-based RPG roguelike. And if you kind of mash those two together, you get something pretty close to Cobalt Core. The way it works is before you start a run,

you basically pick your crew. Crew is made up of three aliens. This whole game is like design kind of cutesy pixel graphics, very similar to FTL actually. And each of the creatures that you have on your ship determines the deck, the sort of cards that you're going to be seeing as you're on this journey. So, for example, one of the creatures specializes in a deck that's built around dodging attacks. So you'll see a lot of cards that will give you more ability to dodge your ship dodge attacks so on and so forth another one maybe is focused on like dropping turrets in front of you so you'll uh you know drop an attack turret or a healing turret or something like that and so with the these three characters you're constantly trying to come up with synergies

that'll basically propel you to the end of these runs um yeah that's sort of like the the basics of it but obviously there's a lot of complexity as you go through missions you'll unlock new cards for these characters you'll get artifacts very similar to say slay the spire where for example an artifact would be like the first attack you make bypasses any shields so it'll pierce the shields of your enemy and kind of allow you to get a jump on that combat round. Talk me through the art. Oh, yeah. How is it?

Is it cute? Is it furry cute? Is it like, what is it? Yeah, it's cute. Is it furry cute? Is it like, what is it? Yeah, it's cute. I wouldn't necessarily say furry cute,

which kind of indicates to me like a little more kawaii, which this isn't necessarily that. This looks like 16-bit era pixelated. I mean, there are cute little animals and things, but it's not necessarily like cute, cute, I should say. It's kind of in between, which works. I mean, I'm into it. I think that probably the surprising thing for me is that there's like a pretty strong narrative

behind all of this. They do the thing that Hades does, which is they build the fact that it's constantly looping into the narrative itself. So as you're doing runs and you say uh come up against a specific enemy that you fought before the crew might make a comment like oh it's this guy again uh should we do what we did last time and so they have these kind of back and forths that kind of propel the story forward and then as you finish other runs you're unlocking

um the backstory of each of the characters. So if you win a run, you can pick of your three crew members what little backstory you want to unlock for that character. And then eventually you get the whole backstory for that character. And you can kind of keep going and it encourages you to try new people. I like that. Yeah, there's a lot of layers to it. I think from the gameplay side, I'm just really impressed because it has a much more tactical and tactile sense compared to a game like Slay the Spire, which I really like mechanically speaking, but it is still like playing cards. where you are earning currencies that actually allow you to physically move your ship or move like the turrets you're placing in space to, for example, dodge an attack or a position like your laser gun such that it's going to line up and perfectly attack the guy you're facing. And

positioning matters a lot. Like there's going to be like, there'll be like brittle spots on your enemy so if you damage that it'll take like double or triple damage so the positioning is like a hugely important aspect that kind of evolves the card game mechanics beyond you know what you normally see i'm gonna give this i'm gonna give this a try i there's something about card games no matter how much that it's not even really a card game that i just it's not aesthetically i don't know there's something about the feel of it that doesn't always click with me and once i finally get into them i get into it but it it it's really hard for me to convince myself to give them a try i think part of this maybe the reason that i'm into this one so much is that this game has some of the best controller controls that

I've seen in the genre in quite some time a lot of these which includes play the spire which I love and even like a monster train a lot of these card games don't feel great to play when you're using a controller sometimes that's because you're like scrolling through like 20 different cards

and it takes forever or the text is too small whatever I played this on steam deck and it felt like 20 different cards and it takes forever or the text is too small, whatever. I played this on Steam Deck and it felt like really, really good. And, you know, you're using the triggers to like shift your ship back and forth, the bumpers to move the turrets back and forth. It just like all felt very thought out, which I which I really enjoyed. I also want to let you know you made a cute little Japanese pun by accident. Oh, boy. I'm so excited.

He said it's kawaii, which means scary. What? And kawaii is cute. Oh. I know. I make this all the time, and I always get corrected. But I love that kawaii and kawaii are so close together in mean completely different thing um hey why not both it should be kawaii kawaii yeah i really like this

game i'm i'm really looking forward to hear i i made justin shut up and not talk about his feelings about it so we could do this episode first hopefully he is uh over it and is willing to talk about it uh in this forthcoming episode of the besties uh because i'm very curious but thank you to everyone that uh recommended this game because it is really really good it sure has the fragrance of a game that justin will bring up off and on for the next 12 months yeah and then we will be talking about it at the end of the year um it definitely if it catches people in the right zone i have a feeling we'll be talking about a lot more so for that reason alone i should definitely give it a try for sure um

yeah i'll do it uh cool i think that that kind of brings us towards the end we we have uh other stuff that you've been enjoying how has there what what are what are your honorable mentions um i finished letter kenny which i think i mentioned that i had started letter kenny uh sometime last year and kind of just absorbed it as like a really fantastic show. It's streaming on Hulu. I guess if you're in Canada, you can watch it on Crave, whatever that is.

What the hell? But there's 12 seasons. The seasons are short. They're only like six episodes a pop. And I just loved it. I thought it was so unique. And the writing was so spectacular and really charming and warm hearted.

And yeah, it had like a nice, really strong send off. I'm also a fan of Shorzy, which is their kind of spinoff hockey show. And yeah, no, it was great. So if you haven't watched it, you're looking for like a fun, lighthearted comfort show kind of in the vein of a King of the Hill. I think it's probably the closest analog. Really, really enjoyed it. Cool. I did not play against the storm, but I want to shout it out because it is the other game that our commenters have been championing a lot.

And I I'm going to try it. I promise. And now that I've said it out loud on the show, I have to. Because that's how these things work. How soon will I do it? I can't guarantee. But I will give it. Now, against the storm, the fact that it came out December 8th,

I think it probably makes it eligible, if we end up really loving it, eligible for game of the year for 2024 but it does look cool it's a it's like a spooky city builder a kawaii city builder oh good job um i i think it's definitely eligible um for next year i i mean we first should you know play it and see if we like it but uh steam seems to like it 93 percent on okay so i guess it's great i honestly i don't even care about that i care about the people who listen to our show and tell us it's good those are the only people who matter to me i don't i don't even look at steam reviews anymore i only look at the comments in our newsletter because

that's very smart people I know who have taste. Speaking of, if you want to be part of our newsletter, you can do that for free. You can go sign up at besties.fan. If you want to know what else we've been enjoying, well, let me just tell you right now. It's a three and a half hour French movie that I didn't talk about last time. And I'm not going to talk about it this time either. I'm just going to keep kicking the can. It's going to be like Matt Damon on a late night show.

You never know if he's actually going to show up. And actually, one last thing. So Frush and I have been talking and figuring out what are we going to do for besties and resties and talking with Justin Griffin about that too for the next year. This is the time where we put together this big calendar and we come up with our series that we want to do and we get it all mapped out. And, of course, we make room for adjustments and surprise games along the way. But this is the moment.

This year, we want to involve y'all. We have a much easier way of doing it now with the newsletter. So we are putting together a poll specifically for Resties to kick things off, to hear more about what you like best. What are the types of episodes that you love to hear? What would you like to hear more of that maybe we don't even do right now? And you'll be able to find that in the current newsletter issue that is live with this episode. So if you go to besties.fan right now,

assuming that you're listening to the episode around the time that it came out, you'll find it and you can give us some feedback and that will help us a ton to make sure that we are creating a show that y'all really enjoy. Yeah, we'll basically give you like a big list of formats of like different types of episodes or segments that we've done. And you just pick your three favorite of those. I mean, it's we appreciate if you have more than three favorites, but it's always good to know what like comes to the top of your list.

And it'll help us maybe do that more often. Yeah, and you can always leave your own ideas in the comments. We always appreciate that too. Yes, please do. It was the comments that saved us with some tips for how we improved our predictions this year.

Oh yeah, that was great. Always somebody there to help. Did we ever figure out who that was? I don't. We'll figure it out eventually. We'll figure it out. I'm really sorry to that person. Our patron saint.

They did such a huge, solid. I know. Our patron bestie. That's it. We did another episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy the show, share it with a friend. Leave a review.

Like and subscribe. Subscribe to besties.fan. Do all those things. And I am Christopher Thomas Plant. You are Rest Fresh Dick. And this has been another episode of the Resties, where the rest of the best

discuss the best of the rest. Resties!