The Besties - System Shock Remake and a Bunch of Gaming News!

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

This week, what’s old is new again in System Shock Remake — and what’s new is ALSO new, by which we mean a bunch of stuff got announced during the recent slate of summertime gaming press conferences. Let’s talk about all of it!Also discussed: My House, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo 4, Jury Duty 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!

We've been super duper busy doing the SpongeBob musical. And our kids have probably been on screens a little bit more than we like them to be. Sure. And it was negatively affecting our five-year-old Cooper's ability to function. So we're like, listen, you got to get off the pad today. No pad, no fun, no screens today. I mean, 50 years from now, they might realize that too many screens is the way to go. Maybe. But she was losing her absolute mind. I mean, 50 years from now, they might realize that like too many screens is the way to go.

Maybe, but she was losing her absolute mind. And she was talking about how angry she was and how she would do anything to get the screen. And we started talking about addiction, right? Because Sydney works with people with addiction. And we're explaining how if you want something really bad, sometimes it can be in control of you. And it can make you do bad things because you want that thing so badly. And she was still screaming at us and trying to push me out of the way. And Sydney said,

look at what wanting the screen is making you feel. Would you do anything to get your phone? And she said, yeah. And she said, you would even hit mommy to get your phone? And Cooper looked at her with a tear in her eye and she said, no. even hit mommy to get your phone? And Cooper looked at her with like a tear in her eye.

And she said, no, I wouldn't hit you. And I said, you know, if you, how about that? And she was kind of quiet. I said, Cooper, think about it. If I said to you, if you punch me in the face, I'll get your phone. And not the syllable. I'll get your phone and not the syllable the syllable phone had not left my mouth before she punched me directly in the face I mean yeah that was not finished it was like I'll go get your phone done out like and she did not hesitate there wasn't even a motion it was just like oh absolutely pop yeah you should have referred back to mama because papa can take a punch mama clearly that's

the line that's yeah it sucks how henry thinks it's really funny to i don't know whale on my privates with a big bat or something. That's the funniest shit in the world. He would not do that to mom at all. He is gonna, I will say this though, Griff, he is gonna love Saints Row. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we got him on, I mean, we start him on two.

Yeah, sure. Because it's like the most family friendly of the bunch. And that's where they really refined it. So you wanna start there. Yeah, like he's not ready for the big. And that's where they really refined it. So you want to start there. Yeah, like he's not ready for the big pixelated ding-a-lings of three or four. No, sure. Or a gat out of hell.

But two, there's some family friendly stuff. They say the S word sometimes, but so does the Goonies, you know? Thank you. Thank you. So, sorry. Is it weird that mosey's playing leisure suit larry

as his own character but mc crunchin i don't think that's weird is that in the mmo i didn't realize no it's not in a computer he's doing a larp he's doing a larp i dress him up every morning

and i've actually shaved parts of his head to create the receding hairline. I thought this was like what parents did. There's no wrong way to raise a kid. Yeah, that sounds right. No, wait. I'm wrong. That was how to eat a Reese's. There's so many wrong ways to raise a kid.

There's like one good right way and no one is quite sure which one it is. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of 30 years ago. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Russ Rushing, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

It's a video game club. And, friend, just by listening, you have joined our illustrious ranks. We're so happy to have you. We're going to talk about a hot new old game. Kind of a theme. You know, if 2023 has a theme. Hot new old games. Hot new old games.

It is system shock. But we're also talking about things that are new and the future the future of gaming thank you russ and with the uh our the microsoft xbox games showcase um what's system shock system shock i mean everybody listening to this knows what system shock is by now right it is an immersive sim, first-person shooter, and the original one came out back in the days of Doom, and now it's finally remade so that you could actually play it. Because let me tell you, friends, I bet most people listening to this have not tried to play the original System Shock, and that's for the better, because it fucking sucks to try to play, and this is at least doable. But first we're going to talk about Xbox.

So should we just do that right after the break? Yeah. You guys who follow the industry perhaps a little bit closer than I do these days, now that I'm not day in know day in day out on my grind where did uh where did xbox and microsoft uh xbox specifically find themselves like what was their position going into this as you know it's it's sort of like when e3 would normally have been or be and or used to be depending on your faith in in e3 ever returning but uh so so a lot of companies are doing their their press conferences their their big you know summer showcases

playstation just had one uh a lot of live games uh perhaps a bit more muted response to that because they didn't have a lot of the big single player stuff that sony's known for but uh microsoft has had a rocky road as of late so where did they find themselves going into this what do you guys feel like they had to show or prove in this in the or what you think was top of mind i mean they had to show games right like they haven't had games for years yeah people were excited about uh especially coming off of redfall which obviously was like a big disappointment for everyone on the planet. As you know, and they're like major franchise of Halo Infinite, basically being like DOA and like being in this weird situation where like

they seem to, you know, they're putting stuff out. Game Pass is reasonably successful, but they haven't had like a big splashy title. And obviously that title this year is going to be Starfield for them. So it was about showing like the huge you know we're gonna own the holiday season kind of game and also hey we've

also got this other stuff in the works that actually looks pretty impressive i was i was really quite surprised at how strong this lineup was that they showed i'm i'm so far out of the scene now that i really was not paying attention to any of the sort of summer games stuff uh and so i got caught up yesterday and and this morning and man alive i can't remember the last microsoft press conference that i got that uh excited about there was there was so much good shit in there a lot of it felt extremely targeted to me there was two basically two and a half fucking persona things up in there all right guys i see you and you see me and it feels good to be seen uh yeah uh you want to talk about what those persona things yeah so one is the persona 3 remake in unreal engine that uh was sort of leaked i want to say like a month or two ago there was

some like gameplay footage that came out that was so clearly like oh this is not some this is not a fan project this is this is this is an official thing that they are making um and it looks great uh there's persona 5 tactics i think is what it's called. It's called Persona 5 Tactica. It's a wild name. Yeah, Persona 5. Oh, my friend, that's not the wild name. The wild name is the new JRPG series coming from the creators of Persona 3, 4, and 5,

which is called, hold on, I can get this. Metaphor? Yeah. Refantasio? Metaphor Refantasio. Just the name is bonkers. It was great watching Phil Spencer. Like, you could see him stealing himself.

Like, just all of his willpower into saying it properly. It looks. It may be my most exciting thing from the show. It looks like fantasy Persona. Like, it just looks like looks like persona but with like this new new world uh like there's they are hinting at like social link stuff essentially and uh i mean all the the ui and stuff has that that like persona style um so yeah i mean big big one for persona fans uh which is very exciting because it's kind of a reversal.

I feel like people used to think that, like, you know, PlayStation is... The PlayStation press conferences is where you got your fix for that shit. Do you think Microsoft is trying to become a thing in Japan again? Or do you think it's, like, games made in Japan, especially with Japanese aesthetic, are just so popular internationally that even if they're not popular in Japan, they still want all these games. It's hard to say, man, because that has been a weird...

I have never quite understood why the Xbox has failed so spectacularly and so consistently in Japan. I used to write for Joystick the weekly hardware sales roundup in Japan because I think they would publish those numbers in Famitsu or something like that. And it was wild where it would be like Nintendo DS sold 21 million units this week. The Xbox 360, they sold 41. And here's a list of names of everyone who bought them.

Again, I'm far enough out of the industry now that I don't feel. Yeah. Alongside those three, they also showed a new Yakuza, which is, I think the mainline one and it's taking place in Hawaii. And also. Well, it's not the mainline one. It's not the mainline one anymore, right? It's not the mainline one. It's, it's the, so it's like a dragon now. It is like a dragon infinite wealth, which is very, also very exciting for me.

The sequel to like, a wait what was the first rpg called i think it was called yakuza like a dragon yeah that's the main line now yeah like like a dragon has replaced the yakuza brown branding so all yakuza games are now called like a dragon right now there's like a dragon is the translate is is the english trans is a more direct translation of the name of the franchise in Japan, correct? Right, correct. Oh, I didn't know that. Yes, and also the other Like a Dragon that's coming out that is like the old school Yakuza games is not mainline despite it being the one that stars the character from the old Yakuza games.

Yeah, so that's Like a dragon gaiden the man who erased his name fucking great that's a good name it's a very good name actually this the the trailer for the new like a dragon game which is like people fucking love that game and for good reason because it's fantastic the trailer that they showed is just the ichiban the hero of of uh the first yakuza like a dragon washes up on a beach in uh hawaii and he's fully nude and you see his butt and you almost see his penis that's it that's basically the awesome it's a really really really wild way to introduce the game but yeah the other the other one also there i'll just say is kunitsugami path of the goddess which looked awesome so good i think it's a new capcom game it is yeah yeah

it's a new one it looked like a like a co-op like uh action game um but yeah i don't yeah i'm into all of it much else from it uh let you tell you what as a way of um uh uh directing this a little bit how about most pleasant surprise for for you guys what was like oh that looks nice uh i mean i was surprised to even see fable because i kind of thought it just wasn't gonna ever happen oh my god guys that trailer and and that's a spectacular trailer they did a really great job guys i love richard ayawade so much yeah it felt like narrow casting, like, cause I love the fable franchise. Three was a disappointment, but the first two are like among my favorites. They were huge when like I was the managing editor at joystick during that time and reviews editor joysticks. So it's like very fond memories for me of like playing that series and discussing it with the team there.

And I was not convinced that there was a version of it that would feel right. But that trailer, I mean, they threaded that needle, however narrow it was, they threaded it because I ended that extremely excited about it. And they actually made a trailer that's funny. That's the huge thing for Fable. Like, it's actually funny.

Yeah. I was shocked that it was like genuinely yeah a funny b totally very consistent with the fable franchise and c like actually looked good like graphically looked quite good and yeah i just wasn't really like we're probably the i mean it's a great trailer i feel like we're probably pretty far away from this bad boy still, huh? I think it is probably still far. I think it's at least a year, if not more. It's almost certainly next year.

It's being made by the team that makes the Forza Horizon games, and it's been in development for like five years. So I think it's sooner than later. There was four years between Fable 1 and Fable 2. There was two years between Fable 1 and Fable 2. There was two years between Fable 2 and Fable 3. So the fourth one, that's like four years, then two years. So Fable 4 should be out one year after that, right? Because it's decreasing by half the wait time.

So Fable 4 is out 2011, probably. No, it's been, sorry by my reckoning, 13 years since the mainline Fable game. I think that's the exact same amount of time it took for a new avatar to come out. Hey, there you go. The early 2010s are back, baby. Right? Yeah, it's cool. I mean, my

game, well, I want to say South of Midnight, which looks awesome. That's so cool, too. But the devs, they make really great things. They just have not clicked with me in the past. And that's like We Happy Few in contrast. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that dev.

But the game, I had a chance to actually play 33 Immortals, the 33-player co-op game that looks like like a dungeon crawler like a gauntlet and it was sick it was so fun um i can you explain what that is because the premise is bonkers yeah i mean think of like gauntlet like you know kind of top down 2d uh dungeon crawl with a whole bunch of friends and there's swarms of enemies and you can play with up to 33 people in my demo we played with six and you would crawl around like the main dungeon but then there are little boss fight dungeons inside of it so you would like try to find these dungeons within the dungeons go in and mine it for like bosses and treasure and they're like it's a very small thing but it's super cool each character has like a magic ability that you hold down a button to slowly plant these three circles on the screen

and once you've been able to like create those circles without getting hit and then three characters including yourself stand on those circles and trigger them, you launch a magic power. So you're kind of creating like a little like, I don't know, like a little sigil. And then you like perform it with up to like three people to like, increase your health or fire off thousands of bullets. And I don't know, it seems like they're trying to figure out ways to both have the, oh, okay, this is a 33-person game, but then also have kind of different opportunities that call for different sizes of people. My guess is that they want, like, the 33 to, like, split across the map and take care of as much as possible before, like, I think, like, an in-game event triggers.

Anyway, it looks awesome. I was personally excited. triggers anyway it looks awesome um i was personally excited i've had i've never quite been able to really love sea of thieves as much as some people including my brother does but man when you let me get on a monkey island there i don't think i'm gonna leave that i think i'm just gonna hang out there all the time that's very that's very exciting to me is this gonna genuinely bring you back to see a thieves i love well we played occasionally on stream and russ i love nothing i love nothing else but more than biz dev so i love when two corporations can get together you know and make it work you know

it makes you really happy because they're both pirates yeah it makes sense yeah now they've done after this though what else is there to... Like, what other pirate-based media is there for them to... Didn't the VeggieTales have, like, a pirate thing? Yeah, man, probably, probably, yeah. That's not where my mind went. Well, they also... The second phase of the game is they actually shut down most of it

and just become Napster. Oh, cool, yeah. You see? I like that. You like that? Yeah, no, that's a... What was that space piracy animation movie from the 90s titan a man titan ae there you go i don't think that was it uh justin do you think like

this is kind of the way that we get all the old dad games that would not get funded otherwise it's like well we could make a little bit of a game inside of a thing that we we know you're not playing but we really want you to play yeah sneak it in that's your i mean robocop in fortnite is the ultimate version of that yeah um everybody knew fortnite all of fortnite is the ultimate version of that was lies of p at this yeah no you should talk about it anyway i didn't see it no Where was Lies of P? Lies of P was at GDC's, I think. Or that too, yeah. I saw it at Xbox's

GDC. It's all I care about, guys. It's the greatest fucking thing. I could not believe it. Could not believe it when it was actually out there. Like, couldn't believe it, right? This is a Pinocchio... It's a Pinocchio soul slide

wait wait wait is that what the p stands for yeah dude wait i didn't know that guys that's what lies of p is pinocchio yeah i thought i did not know i i was amazed by this game because it's it's just fucking bloodborne right yeah griffin it's bloodborne except it's pinocchio did they not have the right incredible son is back they didn't have the rights to pinocchio i think he's in the public domain i just think they people would have even a little embarrassed, right? If it was called Lies of Pinocchio. I mean, think about it. But that is what I'm calling the game from now on. It is, like, this is the description from YouTube.

Lies of P is an action RPG based on the classic tale of Pinocchio. Play as Pinocchio and solve the mysteries and disaster that happened in the city of crap. That's fucking great. I want to show past me that description and say okay now what's the game look like and then in a million billion trillion years i would never ever ever get it right you um the pinocchio's lying is one of the most important experiences that you'll have at the same time this will leave pinocchio to become a true human being this game is all i could think about i'm so freaking excited about lies of p a pinocchio action from the twisted mind of me apparently because i don't know who else would

make it guys it looks fucking insane it even like the base character which i guess is pinocchio it's pinocchio like well you don't have to say the base character. What you can say, Griff, instead is Pinocchio. Okay, but Pinocchio just kind of looks like the Bloodborne guy. Like, the guy that you see in the Bloodborne, like, can you make your own Pinocchio? Or is it, like, locked to that guy? Can you make your own Pinocchio? I hope so. Also, if we want to talk about this, y'all, we need to talk about Clockwork Revolution. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was what I wanted, too. also if we want to talk about this y'all we need to talk about clockwork revolution yeah yeah yeah though clock yeah yeah it doesn't have pinocchio in it it has bioshock infinite in it it has it is yeah it looks a lot like bioshock and i have so much like bioshock

i don't know if i've seen a big budget game ever look so much like the trailer for another game that came out 10 years ago another what was the other one no there's there have been a few of these that are kind of right like no aesthetically like not um well the ken levine game that's coming out i don't know when oh judas no judas like no no no i know i know what you're talking about it's a french revolution thing yeah but this one is like... Steel Saber or something like that? Yeah. Sounds like a game.

This is like... I don't know. This is like if you're like, I've got an idea for a game. You're an electrician and you go down electric pipes to a kingdom and fight boombas. It feels like you're taking a thing

and just slightly tweaking it it's still rising yeah the one i was thinking of oh yeah i forgot about that one that's a lot like liza p though one of my favorite games um uh yeah you know what that reminds me of um liza p the pinocchio which reminds me of the great story of pinocchio which it is loosely based on can i um can i get everybody's check everybody's temperature on avowed the new uh i don't know what to think about that game that's a game from obsidian which is a bummer that city makes exciting uh kind of fallouty i mean uh literally fallout at one point uh like large rpgs with a lot of player choice and this game based on the trailer the trailer didn't give us like large rpgs with a lot of player choice and this game

based on the trailer the trailer didn't give us a lot but they did show a lot of gameplay really just looked like oblivion or like an elder scrolls game i'm sure there's more to it than that but i don't know what i i think i i'm hoping that obsidian is now just the writing focused version of bethesda so they're like we know that elder scrolls and starfields those are going to take 10 years to make because of all the technical like wizardry we love the writing we did pentament game of the year that was just for us and that was just for us and me and then about like i i think it's going to be like a lot more narrative heavy not as much you know like oh it's the biggest world, open world of magical.

Like the New Vegas of Elder Scrolls. I think it's going to be smaller than New Elder Scrolls, and I think it's going to be technically not astounding. The visuals in it look fine, but I think it's probably going to have really great writing because that's what they do well. They do good writing. This is true.

But should we segue then into the big game of the show, which was Starfield? Oh, it's good writing? You want to talk about that? They showed like, it was like a 45 minute, 50 minute presentation. I didn't watch that. I'm going to play Starfield.

I don't need to see any of Starfield. Starfield. I am am gonna play this game and i think i'm probably going to enjoy it uh but i i don't know i'm a little bit worried quite honestly straight up it was this was like their big gameplay dump and there's a lot of stuff that looks really cool the shooting does not look cool like yeah that's never been the good part of right a game like this but there was so much of it in this video and it um that's not what i'm excited about like i want to fly around and go on space missions and explore planets and stuff like that but then when you like pull out a pistol and it's like shoot that fucking space freak watch that bar go down watch that bar go down you can get a silencer so you can splatter the space freaks fucking brains it's like uh okay todd let's talk

todd over here let's have a sidebar um yeah i mean it's i i it's gonna be good i'm sure it's gonna be good i'm sure it's gonna be good i'm sure it's gonna be a good game i the two things that gave me a little bit of pause apart from the combat which i agree with you um just like the dialogue that was shown was like so like you're it was just like so straight ahead and like kind of flat to the point where it kind of reinforced the idea that a lot of the writing and like huge Bethesda game studios games tends to be like very straight ahead and flat. Cause they have to fill, you know,

600 hours worth of stuff. Right. And it actually made me think that it might be better if they just didn't voice over any of it. I think my imagination could do a better job than maybe the like listen to russ i'm sorry i was just like if you're gonna show like the best possible like voiceover character driven moments of this game and that's what they showed during this trailer i just wasn't super blown away by it i was blown away by like the visuals

and exploration and stuff like that i was jazzed and like making my own ship. I was jazzed. The only other thing that gave me pause was the, they talked about planet exploration and they basically said that if you go on the same planet as I go on, I'm going to have different experiences than you because the planets are essentially randomly generated using our. Oh yeah,

for sure. And every weapon in Destiny is gonna have a unique story that you'll want to tell your friends about. Well, the problem is we've experienced the randomization from Bethesda Game Studios with Skyrim because Skyrim has a, I forget the technology, there's like a name for it. Radiant.

The Radiant engine. And the Radiant engine basically, as they build it was like we have infinite quests that you could run on you could run on forever you could play this game because we'll always be throwing you these quests and the quests were always like go to this cave and find this object and come back or go to this cave and kill this guy and come back and my concern when you talk about randomization is the while it's true that you're not doing the same thing as other people the things that you are doing tend to be a little bit dry and samey and um certainly you know no man's sky which is the other game that is very very similar to this

also runs into similar issues but they also have the luxury of like, they've been building this game over time. And it's also a, you know, much smaller team. So they tend to like dive in like unexpected directions. Whereas this, I don't know. I'm,

I'm hesitant to think that like landing on a random planet is going to be a great experience after the sixth time. Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk about the real story with uh this starfield demo and it's the picture that i've just shown to you guys in the slack chat and it's tim lamb lead producer on the game wearing a golf visor indoors indoors in his fancy video wearing like the blockbuster manager uniform of long sleeve button down uh blue oxford and some khakis and he's got the golf visor now now the golf visor is pretty wild

already we could all agree yeah that's it you're indoors tim and you're not golfing uh but then if you look if you enhance the image you'll see that the logo on the golf visor has been greeked out with black electrical tape he's gotta wear the visor he has to wear the visor is that unless that is keeping the top of your head on please remove the visor for the video justin i don't make i want to make you feel bad, but it's actually a prescription Pfizer, so he really has to wear it. It's a prescription Pfizer! Of course! It blocks out harmful blue light from his computer monitor above him. Yes.

Tim, I don't know you personally, but next time, folks, listen. Tim's the lead producer. He can't always remember if he's wearing a golf Pfizer or not. You all have to help him out. If you see him wearing it in the video just tell him please briefly take how many people on their first day of bethesda working at bethesda game studios uh well they like turn to the hr person they're like so the the visor guy what's the story there it's got a constant visor on there. It's prescription or no? Overall.

Hey, wait, wait. Star Wars Outlaws. Oh, thank you. That was more featured in the Ubisoft press conference, which I don't know if we want to get into that. Oh, I didn't see gameplay. I just watched the cinematic trailer. Did they show gameplay in Ubisoft? Yeah.

Yes. I didn't see it. Yeah, there's a gameplay walkthrough about 10 minutes. It looks very cool. Does it look like the division which is what that studio has made previously it looks a bit more like watchdogs yeah like it looks like watchdogs now they're like we should have that be star wars and far cry we could have that be avatar yeah kind of a kind of a like strange uncharted is like it looks uncharted or like

maybe with a bit more of a stealthy edge but that that seems to be the vibe but it's basically it's like ground-based you're not like doing like just cause shit i don't think you're doing just cause shit the just cause shit is is the avatar game The Avatar game is like very Far Cry, like capture bases, blow up stuff. Yeah. I thought that the Avatar game didn't look very good, but that may have just been- Did you watch the gameplay or just the trailer? Because weirdly the trailer-

Well, start by asking if you watched the movies. Oh yeah, maybe that's some important context. I haven't watched the movies, but only because I think they look corny as hell. So you, a person who can't even be bothered to take an incredible trip into James Cameron's Wonderland. Hey, I like the ride. I like that Flight of Passage.

How do you even have the context for it? You would like the movies. How do you even have the context for it? Well, no, no, no, because Flight of Passage is just an erotic sort of awakening that you go on, just having a, just a panting dragon sort of soaring between your legs. Like that's its own thing for anybody else.

So you don't even know what hair fucking is. You don't even understand what that means. Well, no, but you understand that I'm like an adult man and I can understand sort of context clues. When you say that the aliens have sex with their hair, I don't really think I need to see it.

Oh, don't worry. They cut it out of the movie. You can't see it anymore. All I can think about whenever an Avatar game is discussed is when I sat in front of Jim Cameron and watched him describe the final 20 minutes

of the first Avatar movie in real time before it ever aired. It was like nothing I've ever seen he was invited on the ubisoft stage and then proceeded to describe what happened in the final 20 minutes of avatar like in excruciating detail remember that you lost everyone in the room i've never seen anything like it um did you guys have any friends of persia also oh that looks good that looks great that was an interesting i think that's the way to do it right if you're going to bring that franchise back to it's a 2d it's like a 2d sort of action platform looks like metroid dread it

looks like metroid dread it looks fucking great what was the grumpy but oh oh oh and there was i mean as long as we're just talking about some of this stuff there was the new uh final fantasy 7 oh yeah was it rebirth is that right yeah that's an interesting one right because i i've been really curious about like what's gonna be in there because the first game was just like midgar okay that is like a iconic like thing from video games and so i can understand the scope of it but then once you get out of midgar it's like what what what all are we gonna include like what all how do you decide where this chapter stops um which obviously we don't know i very much appreciated at the end of that it said uh coming in 2024 on two discs and that shouldn't have worked on me because I definitely will download it. But there is like some like ratty 90s kid in my heart is like, yeah, it is two discs.

Yes. Multi-disc. Let's go. Now I know it's good. You'll actually need two PS5s to fit it all. So that makes sense. So that means I'll need four part-time jobs. Yes.

Any other big stuff? I mean, Summer Game Fest, I think also, or is that what it's called it did happen i think bless you jeff keely i actually have a genuine respect for his work ethic and what he does with the game awards and what he's trying to do with game fest but i think he is running into the hardest wall there is which is all these other companies would much rather announce their big shit there themselves and well i mean the final fantasy thing was that's true he did have that was like the one breakout game i i think it was a great show the fucking funniest thing i've maybe ever seen well no that's not true james cameron explaining the ending of avatars in retrospect one of the funniest things also lies but they did a trailer

for some crisis core ios game thing uh and then he comes out of it he's on stage chef q is like speaking of final fantasy and the audience like loses their mind yeah just like in the middle of the show and then he's like and he literally says no hold on with door dash you can get food delivered to him and enter into his sweepstakes to win a collector's edition of final fantasy 16 he said it in such a like self-aware contrite way that made me fall in love with jeff keely oh 100 he knows people talk can talk as much shit about keely as they want but they shouldn't because that's a tough fucking job and i don't think anyone else could do it to have somebody to have somebody on stage at a games press conference that is the replacement for e3 and be

like speaking of final fantasy and the crowd is like yeah and he's like door dash and then the immediate reaction isn't like fuck you jeff Jeff Keighley. That's incredible. That is a superpower. Well, and also he ended that with, we got him, which is to say he definitely wrote or at least approved that script. So he knew that there was going to be a beat there

where people were going to react. So he was fucking with everyone 100%. And then he comes in at the end with a new trailer for Final Fantasy. It's huge. I mean, well, that's the only way the gag works, right? You have to close with that. I get a big kick whenever Keeley's hosting something.

Whenever a big exclusive is done, whenever he gets to announcing it, right? There always seems to be this visible unclenching that it didn't get fucking leaked somewhere. Like, here it is. Okay, I did it. Yes. Yeah, he does a good job. I think it's going to only grow and grow flinching that it didn't get fucking leaked somewhere like and here it is okay i did it yes yeah yeah he does a good job i i think it's gonna only grow and grow because the thing that people

don't see is the like press event that is also trying to replace e3 summer game play days or something like that and that has grown a ton since last year into this year and every publicist i spoke to was like this is a million times easier and cheaper yeah and easier and cheaper is a tough thing to argue with for those sorts of companies so i i agree xbox sony they'll always have their big events but i think the uh there are plenty of other publishers that are like yeah this is nice and i don't have to spend a gajillion dollars right be on the la convention center show floor it's still not and and this is tough because like we all have our own associations with like e3 both good and bad um and and so it doesn't it's not quite the same as it once was back but i also think that this version of things

is on par with if not kind of better than the sort of uh shambling undead husk of e3 that you know we saw the last few e3s oh yeah 100 this is definitely better i mean it'll get weird when like the bigger titles become fewer and fewer every year. And I think that's going to happen already has started happening. But I definitely think, yeah, compared to the like no announcements, no games coming out. Yeah, this is definitely better. Yeah. I also don't know about the fewer and fewer just because somebody like EA and Ubisoft better catch up to like Capcom and ScreenX soon. Realizing, hey, you could also

just make a bunch of mid-sized titles. That's true. ScreenX releases so much shit. Shit in a good way. Yeah. And in a bad way. Should we talk about some of the other games?

Yeah, let's do it. Okay. Okay, so about some of the other games that we yeah let's do it okay okay so we're gonna talk briefly about system shock the remake of system shock just came out like a week ago plant was talking about the original which came out in like 1995 somewhere around there um in a lot of ways this is like the birth of a genre and that genre being the immersive sim genre more recent installments dishonored prey fucking deus ex stuff like that um to some extent zelda tears of the kingdom i always thought the name of that genre made it sound more boring than it was that's true but effectively it translates to like you're in this world and you can use the tools of the world at your disposal

to sort of become a kick-ass badass person is i guess the best way i can describe it this game uh plan is right it is easier to play this game than the original but it's not an easy game to play and this coming from someone who adores this genre. I'm like a huge fan of this genre. And I was kind of blown away by how, I guess, unchanged the core of this game is from where it was previously. It has changed. And they certainly updated the visuals and certain gameplay elements. But it is still like 80% that original game. And I found it to be,

as I know another number of other people on the podcast did pretty tough to get into. Yeah, I really, I struggled with, and I, again, I really like immersive Sims.

There is just, you know, part of it is world design. If you're going to let people wander around a world, you got to be good at directing them towards kind of where you want them to head. I spent a lot of time here just kind of wandering around without much of a sense of where I was going or or what i uh should be should be doing it was very sort of like uh ambling to me yeah well it's also the the world design itself is boxes like you compare this to even system shock 2 which was a very influential game as well system shock 2 they like went ahead and designed effectively what a space station would look like this to me felt like what

would a bunch of storage boxes look like if you glued them together it's very like cuboid and uh just a bunch of hallways and within that you are using these mechanics of like hacking various objects and avoiding cameras and stuff like that but it is hard to sort of bond to levels that look very much like a bunch of boxes. The hacking is so good, though. I never played System Shock. I know about its legacy, but I've never sought it out. Partially because it looks so bad. It looks so old and shitty.

Yeah. And so I was also sort of shocked at how unfriendly a game it is. Hostile. Hostile is another way of putting it. It just drops you in this space station where just like around every corner is half a corpse. And that's the genre, by the way. It's not an immersive sim. It's half a corpse around every corner.

This game makes fucking the new prey look like a, where Mario is missing or something. And most of the enemies that I ran into fell into two categories. One,

turn me inside out with bullets. Or the much more common, stand there and dutifully let me bonk you in the head. Just wait for the sweet embrace of death,

which like, yeah, your situation sucks, man. Like, I get it. Yeah. Are you a mutant zombie? Space zombie. He's a space zombie. There's dudes with guns who are just like, oh, well, you're bonking me.

Nothing I can do about that. Well, hope I die soon. You got a wrench. You got a pipe. What am I supposed to do about that? But the hacking minigame is basically Descent, and it made me realize that I just want a new Descent game. I just want a free-floating tunnel shooter like Descent,

because the hacking minigame is you just jack into a mainframe, and then you're just a flying ship that just sort of flies around and blasts, I don't know, viruses? It's not clear, and it doesn't need to be clear. Maybe you're the virus. That's entirely possible. There is also Pipe Dream, it should be noted.

They haven't abandoned Pipe Dream. Yeah, that's really bad. The Pipe Dream minigame is bad and sucks. I thought it was an interesting choice graphically. When you zoom out, it looks fairly modern. But when you get close to any of the textures, they look like really, really blown out bitmaps. And I think that rule. Yeah yeah it's a really interesting choice it's like it's kind of combining the um you know games that have like

the switch you know what i mean like um i think maniac mansion escape from the island some of those had the like button where you could switch between the the new and old graphics it's kind of like a hybrid of the two it's kind of a cool idea yeah plant and i just recently played bolt warhammer bolt gun and it had this very similar look of like this weird middle era between n64 and like ps1 kind of thing it's cool i was into it if we i think it's important to maybe contextualize this with some of the other um because we have had so many of these others uh um sort of like updates remakes this year this feels a little bit more like a museum piece right like i think that it makes the base game more playable but it's not capturing what it would have felt like to play that back in the day.

Like I think Dead Space did so brilliantly. I feel like it's good work. It's valuable work, right? Being able to play these things with a minimal amount of friction, I think it's very cool and good for preservation efforts and just history in general. But it is a lot more faithful than a lot of these others which is cool like i think there's a place for that too sure we've had we had dead space and resident evil 4 remakes this year which are both exemplary

just fantastic uh remakes that look incredible feel incredible and maintain the like vibe of the originals but those games aren't 30 years old and so i think like uh to remake a game that is of the doom era and not lose what kind of made it stand out in the in the first place is is kind of impressive i i i this is a rare game that i didn't love and i'm probably not going to go back to playing, but I'm so stoked for the people who are like System Shock fans. Cause I do actually think this is the best version of what, what a System Shock remake could be in that it is incredibly faithful to the original, has a really unique like art style that really leans into the sort of cyberpunk-y uh vibe of of the game and is i mean

god almighty go look at the if you have not seen the original system shock or heard the original system shock watch some gameplay footage comparison uh because i i think it's they've they've had a pretty deft hand and how they have uh brought that into the modern era i i have i have one other game that I want to talk about. It's a little bigger than what else we're playing. Did any of you try My House? Yeah, but it was locked.

It was... Oh my god, damn it. I've never heard of it. I'm going to talk about My House. Justin, this game is especially for you. My House, or myhouse.wad, or myhouse.wad, is a mod for Doom 2. And I think every person should play it.

I think if you're listening to the show, you should try it. I think you should go buy Doom 2 on Steam, or if you already have a copy, you can do this. You can go to YouTube and search how to install My House on Doom 2 on Steam, or if you already have a copy, you can do this. You can go to YouTube and search how to install My House on Doom 2. It takes like literally a minute and a half. It's super easy to get this running. It is the batshit thing of the year. It is pitched by the person who created it as a mod that him and his childhood friend were working on back in like 1999 before his childhood friend passed away and it is just a recreation of his friend's house except with some doom enemies in it and there is so much more going on in this game if you are

younger than us and you watch like twitch you probably have already seen the game and that is a shame because i would hate for it to be ruined and spoiled for you i think it is much better to experience it playing it rather than watching it um but it's something it's something else um it's still amazing fresh corrected me me on Resties on that Boltgun episode where I was like, eh, Doom, not super fun for me anymore. It turns out you can use that basic skeleton to make something that is more interesting than the vast majority of stuff that I've played this year. And this has been a really good year for video games. So yeah, I would love if y'all tried it at some point in the next few months because i think it will it'll definitely be in my end of the year conversation

yeah it's great interesting uh russ are you still playing zelda i'm still playing zelda i don't know how interesting it is for people to listen to me still playing are you here's here's the conversation i'm interested in having with people about Zelda. How close are you to the end of your time with Zelda, do you think? Okay, so without giving any spoilers, I'm pretty sure I'm basically at the, like, I could end the game right now if I wanted to moment of the game. More or less, like, defeat the main bad guy.

Like, I'm at that point. You'll never fucking guess who the main bad guy is in this one no idea who it is i i think it might be pora but who knows so but uh but when i beat the sign guy it's it's the oh yes i love that guy uh when i beat breath of wild i remember thinking man i should have like have, like, before I, like, beat it, just, like, gone around and found, like, as many shrines as I could instead of just, like, rushing to the end. And so I'm doing that this time, and I'm still not looking anything up. So I'm at, like, probably 100-ish shrines found. I fully lit up the depths. I'm trying to find, various armor so cool pieces i bet you i bet it feels pretty good to not have to be scared anymore russ it's nice it's nice um i'm i'm trying to find the

k all the caves because i don't know why i'm doing this but the bubble man wants to turn a magic horse and so i've I've been trying to find caves. And I spent like 45 minutes yesterday. I was tracking a bubble frog on my sensor. I knew he was right through this wall. And I didn't know where it was. So I was just like circling the same fucking mountain for 45 minutes. And loving every minute of it.

It was so rewarding. So you changed your UI too. Oh yeah. I mostly use the normal ui now it's just this game in particular has so much verticality to it that you really need to know where you are on the map at any given time um so yeah it's fine i think the normal ui is much better than it was in breath of the wild which was like way clumsier and busier so yeah but it's it's a fucking delight i i can't get enough i'm trying to keep playing it my kid turned on my wi-fi and updated my game and broke my dupes

you could have wait wait did the dupes go away the dupes go the dupes go away there's no way to do it but it's a gigantic pain in the ass you just can't keep doing it yeah so didn't you when when plant told you about this didn't you make 30 000 diamonds and just like i mean i have some i you know you never think don't it always seem you know what i mean like you don't think like what if the dupe goes away tomorrow sure i just thought like i could make some more diamonds and now i don't really enjoy it very much because i don't have unlimited amounts of zonite and i do not i'm not interested in farming in in this game that has so much other more interesting stuff to do so i probably will stop playing it i did like three of the dungeons and

i get it okay the temples are they call them temples in this one they do call them i would encourage you to just you're to just finish it i'm gonna try to i'm gonna try to finish it too in the next two weeks because i want to do a spoiler episode why would that it really bothers me right why would why why why why break justin's dupes no okay the when i talk about the dupes i'm not necessarily talking about things to make the game easier. When you're up against a hard enemy, it's still hard. You can get stuff to help, but the thing that I'm talking about is I want to mess around with the building and stuff like that. And the idea that it's harder and more annoying to do now is such a joy killer.

What do you care if people are the only thing you should care about if you're nintendo is people putting up wild tiktoks of you know the crazy creations they made their game what do you care how i'm getting my zone night it's none of your business i i i largely agree i wish there was a building mode in this so that we could do like all the fun stuff you want without worrying about like using your precious resources you can call duping hold on one second hold on if you're not just like not thinking about it just doing auto build to like build a random thing i understand you're blowing through zone i very quickly but you get like so many of those fucking parts that you just drop on the ground and if you use auto build with those parts you're not spending any zonite you do i i as somebody who doesn't spend any of the material and an rpg

because i i just get anxious i hear you having a mode like that would make it better for me and also i get why they had to get rid of the duping because that was praying like my anxiety was triggered by it where i was spending i spent so much time doing that that i i kind of bounced myself off the game because i i wasn't actually having fun so i get why they take it out because they're they're trying to stop i'm having so much fucking fun that is my idea of fun it's just jumping off a low staircase 500 times that's that's my yeah welcome thank you process was jumping off a low staircase 500 times. That's my line. Yeah, welcome. Thank you. Was that the Duke process,

was jumping off a low staircase? Yeah. What? Yeah, and landing on a big pile of diamonds. Yeah, that was our fucking dream. That feels good every time. I've been playing more Diablo. Anybody else stuck with that?

Oh, yeah. I've been playing that with my wife. We've been playing it together. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, I've played a little bit with other folks. I've mostly been doing it solo. I finished the campaign. I thought the story was great.

Yeah, the story's good. I like Lorath. Yeah, all the characters are fantastic. They do a smart sort of like Mass Effect style. As you go through this world and go through the chapters like you're building a like a a unit like you're building a team of uh fearsome demon fighters uh and i i think they the writing is like shockingly very very good um i am i've just unlocked world tier three which is like the next difficulty setting where you can get, you know, different legendaries

and, you know, make different kinds of builds possible. And I mean, it is very well tuned. Like I am finding myself getting like steadily more powerful and then I'll find a legendary that like gives me some huge spike in in let me let me ask you this Griffin so the the battle pass season has not started yet I think it starts right in 22nd and my understanding of that is basically that you at the beginning of each season basically start from scratch with a new character right and complete quests and whatever it is of that season

and you unlock cosmetics stuff like that right how long how it is of that season and you unlock cosmetics stuff like that right how long how many seasons of that like i certainly expect you to do the first one right i'm imagining you're interested in doing the first one how many seasons do you think you would keep doing that i don't know i don't know because i also don't know like how wild the seasons get i jumped in on a cut i made a couple seasonal characters in diablo 3 yeah the idea it was a a learning curve to like have this idea of an impermanent character in a game like diablo that is all about the the the climb right um but there would be stuff like i started playing diablo 3 in a season where there was some new legendary or whatever they the word for it was

uh that made like Whirlwind Barbarian just like a blast like you could just you could just spin to win through the entire game and just hold down the Whirlwind button and just put enemies into the meat grinder and it was really really satisfying but then the next season you know well now there's a cool build for Necromancer that you got to try that. That stuff I find very compelling. At the same time, like, I don't I don't I don't know how much I'm going to want to keep, you know, restarting my my climb. It depends on the pets. If there's like a cute little puppy that follows me around. Well, I mean, for me, it's like I really want to play the other classes. I dabbled in all of the classes before I settled on Barbarian, and I'm having a great time with Barbarian. But like any time I run by like a sorcerer with like a wild like machine gun snowball build, I'm like, fuck, that looks cool.

Next season, I'm going to dip in like that'll be my that'll be, you know, when I come back back next season i'll have this new way to play the game with with this yeah no that's i think that's a smart way to do it versus like just maxing out a bunch of different classes at launch i can i could see this game being one that is kind of always on the the periphery right like i could see myself having this on the steam deck if you know i'm on tour or something like that just like kicking it in the hotel like i you know i'll dip in a diablo and play a little bit um yeah it's not a big pain to set up it took me yeah it's weird it's weird how the the get it's like such an easy thing to do it's weird that it's not i understand biz dev what have you no one has more passion for uh justin loves so much biz devs so much. Biz dev relationships. But it is weird.

I wish you all could just do it. Let's do it. Let's do it because I'm going to do it. If you want to play Diablo on your Steam Deck, literally you just go to desktop mode, you download Battle.net on your desktop mode, and then you go to Steam and you click add a non-steam game and you add the battle.net launcher to steam and that's fucking it and then it just works it works great um so

yeah i i i think it's great i think it's a a fantastic game i think the way that they for what an action rpg like this is supposed to be I think this is like a pretty phenomenal version of it. And I'm really enjoying my time with it. Chris Piant? I finally went back and finished Jury Duty. Oh, I'm dying for it. Oh, how good is it? I just served.

So it's like really top of mind that I want to watch it. Fudge. Have you not watched it? No, I haven't watched it yet. Oh, gross. I know. I'm very good. It's's very good i'll be honest i bounced off of the first couple episodes there's like some neurodivergent humor stuff

that's like real like sheldon big bang waka waka that yeah i did not vibe with um but it like very much finds its rhythm even beyond that it's great from the beginning. That was the one flag. I think what is fascinating to me about Jury Duty is I don't think what this show is occurred to them until midway through producing this show. This is my... This show really does evolve. Especially its kindness?

Yeah, right. I know for a fact that's true really does evolve. Especially its kindness? Yes. Yeah, right. I know for a fact that's true because certain characters were written in apparently totally different ways and they just were not getting the responses

that they want. It's a central character who pivots the entire show. Yeah. You gotta watch it. It's a hell of a thing. Yeah, yeah. Really, you just have to watch it.

It's high up on my list. The final episode on how they made the show is the best. I guess the one question I would have is, and I think I've asked this before, but there's no way to watch it without commercials, right? No, I'm sorry. No, you can.

That was why I was holding off Rush. If you have Prime and then you go and watch it, it's just a Prime show. It's only a TV show if you're watching it without Prime. Got it, okay. This episode was brought to you by freebie. Is that really a deal breaker for you? It actually is.

It is. Because whenever I'm watching like Hulu with ads, it's always the same six ads over and over and over again. It drives me absolutely bonkers. That's a... I guess maybe I'm broken because, you know, when we watch fucking Married at First Sight on the lifetime app we see the same three advertisements over and over and over again including one for progressive auto

insurance sure if you guys have seen this ad but it's a dad talking to his kid he's like sorry kiddo we can't afford to go on vacation this year and then the child deflates like oh like air going out of a balloon did he have coverage for that that? A flop of Diablo side quests. Just a flop of boy skin on the ground. And then someone from Progressive is like, don't worry, because now you can afford your vacation. And then he reinflates,

but too big. Oh, no. That's a fucked up commercial. And I've seen it about 80 times. Yeah. Because it's the Lifetime Network and they don't, nobody's watching it except me and my wife.

Yeah, no, I can't. I can't do that. Russ, do you think if you had to run around Hulu for 45 minutes lost and then watch your show, do you think you would have more patience for it then? Oh, that was a Zelda reference. Got it.

It took me a second. Yeah, no. I just think it's funny how your patience, I've always enjoyed your patience is very conditional. It is. It's very selective. As is yours. I think you're right.

There's too many other things to stream. Too many things to stream. That's why you have us, the besties. We're filtering it out so you only get the best digital media and biz dev news. Speaking of, Justin, what else are you enjoying right now? Nothing perfect nothing i'm

direct no i'm just oh yeah you're enjoying spongebob yeah we're is it sold out can people buy tickets can they buy tickets of course they can it's what is this friday it lot it premieres tonight it goes for this weekend and the two weekends following, if you're anywhere in the area, you should come see it. It's going to be a hoot. SpongeBobWV.com is the URL. Look at that. A plug in honorable mentions. I love it.

That's literally all I've been doing until midnight every single night. And then my life's a shell. So please come see the guy who originated that role, followed it up with a performance of assassins. So I was wondering, wondering like is that your plan do you think you're gonna do a little Steven Sondheim Assassins um Ethan Slater

joined an off Broadway production of Assassins and I'll be fucked if I am gonna sully my brand off Broadway okay okay uh the only really great theater happens off-Broadway, but yes, please. I'm gonna fucking tell me

more about your jukebox musical love. You've never heard of something called Cats, have you? Oh my gosh. Okay, I wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. We have Blackstar Bushin, Anol Boy, and Mr. Mistoffelees.

And Mick Sizz sizzle thank you thank you to y'all and the cats for writing reviews gimbal shanks the railway uh chris plant what games did we talk about uh this week we talked about really fast all the xbox events we talked about system shock we talked about all the Xbox events. We talked about System Shock. We talked about My House,.WAD, Zelda, Diablo, Jury Duty. You can go see Spongebob if you live near

Justin. And we also talked about Cats and Starlight Express. Even if you don't, you can get here. Love it. Next week we are going to be taking the week off and after that we are going to be coming back with final fantasy 16 it's a big game we want to make sure we give it the time it deserves and uh so that's the way we're gonna do it so next week no besties and then after that

final fantasy 16 uh that's gonna do it for us until next time uh be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!