The Besties - Wo Long and Destiny 2: Lightfall Are Very Different Games!

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

The boys gather to discuss an interesting Souls-like from the Ninja Gaiden team in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, and Justin attempts to reignite his passions for the world of Destiny with the latest expansion, Lightfall.Also discussed: Better Call Saul, Johnny Mnemonic, and a smidge of Fortnite for good measure.   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!

Oh, God, I'm just now getting over being, like, one of the sickest I've ever been. Oh, no, what'd you have? I don't know. It wasn't the Cove, but it was, like, flu or something. I don't know. I went down hard. I had, like, 103.5 temperature. And when are you, like, jumping in that, like, ice bath situation?

Like, at what point? At what point am I just, like, going outside and standing on the front porch, just like, here I am, world. Yeah. Chill me off. Chill me off, everybody. Was that an option? No.

No. You were just toughing it out. Yeah, I did go outside on the front porch to try to fix my fever. And once I pushed on the front door, I got to gotta say it was a real cold open oh no no we're not no no um let me let me think of an approach i can't i just can't end it like that can't happen very quick i i i get that you know, like, Sid is a doctor, and she knows a lot more than I do. I think it's kind of rude that she just ignores all of my text messages to her

on how to heal you. Yeah, through the power of what was it you said? I said put him outside in the cold, which is step one. We all know that that works. And I said, hose him down. Just grab the garden hose and just spray that boy down. I think it was your insistence on bike shorts

and a cut-off t-shirt. And a filament. I was wearing it at the time. She was like, why do I have to film it? That definitely has no connection to medicine. Why do I have to pour some sugar on me up so loud? And I was like, blah, blah,

blah, sawbones, I get it. Like, baby needs what baby needs. Give it to Poppy. Tell him to lift his feet up off the ground. I go and see half of him. Is it like getting gum out of your hair where you freeze it and then hit it with a hammer? Is that the idea? And then the

sickness goes away? Well, that's not sexy that's oh oh sorry sorry i mean that's not that's not healthy um oh healthy healthy oh sexy is healthy that's what i say hell yeah My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Froschek, and I know the best game of the week. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Besties. It's a video game club, and just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member. Look in your pocket. There's a card.

It's got your picture. It's that picture, the one you hoped no one would ever see. But that's what we use on your membership card here at the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. This week, we're talking about Woe Long, a new release from Team Ninja. Chris, play it. What can I expect when I insert the floppy disk for Woe Long?

Woe Long Fallen Dynasty is the spiritual follow-up to Nioh and Nioh 2, which themselves were kind of like, not knockoffs, but, you know, they were riding that FromSoftware wave, except this time around it is set in the Three Kingdoms era of China, and it's also kind of level-based, and also it's really good, in my opinion. Am I going to be the only one who talks about this? I can't believe Griffin isn't here when we're talking about a Sekiro-like game.

And that's it. Anyway, that's just, I don't know, it's boosh. We got a full mail for you coming up right after this. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Can I just congratulate you, Justin? I'm being a real good boy. Why's that? The first boss of Wolong is a challenge.

And you were not deterred by that challenge. You met that challenge head on. And you overcame it. Yeah, absolutely. I rose to the challenge of the first boss. And I made it all the way to the second boss. I said, this is not fun. I quit.

Oh, man. I have so much to talk about this game. I think we should sort not fun. I quit. Oh, man. I have so much to talk about this game. I think we should sort of set it up and get people to understand, and then we will talk about those two bosses, because... I think I can do this. I think I have this.

Okay. So imagine Sekiro, a game that I struggled with, right? You're going through the world. You have a sword or some weapon, and the heart of the game is the parry. The enemies are flying at you and there's little red dots that blink

and that's when you know to parry, and then you parry it and then that destabilizes them and you stab them, stab them, stab them. And you do that by going through an entire level. What's interesting about Wolong is it is kind of old school level based. I would not say that its art

direction is particularly as beautiful as sakuro it it feels um i don't know like it's built with with like level design blocks and the levels are not uh straight paths you have to kind of explore them because throughout the levels there are these flags and if you plant a flag that's one it's like a checkpoint and you can um you can upgrade your stuff spend your xp it's like a bonfire your bonfires right yeah uh but also as you find these these flag posts it um raises effectively the the power number that you have. It sets a higher and higher floor for the power. Let me define this even better.

Imagine if each level had its own level for you, own experience level. So instead of being level 20, you start every single level at level one. And as you raise these flags and fight enemies, you'll slowly move up the ranks in morale, which is what the system is called, until you're level 20,

and then you're strong enough to fight the boss. I think it's 15 is maybe the ceiling, but yes. Is the morale thing changing your stats, or is it just making the world harder? No, no, no. What's happening? Okay, the way to think about it is like destiny, right? If you're morale level six and you're fighting a guy that's morale level seven,

you will be at a disadvantage such that he will deal more damage to you, you will deal less damage to him. And this herein is why I nearly bounced off of the game because I was fighting that second boss one or two morale levels lower than he was because I hadn't found all the flags and the game sucked because I kept getting killed

in two hits and then I was like I wonder what would happen if I just found the rest of the flags and suddenly that boss was like a total fucking cakewalk right so in terms of the morale you can earn morale just by like beating enemies so you don't have to in theory find all the flags you you can make that number go up and up and up the only issue is when you die

it it goes back down right what the flags are doing is they're setting the baseline you know if you if you found 14 flags and you die, yeah, you're going to stay high. So even if you die, you will stay at 15. Right. So you could run around, charge up your morale a bit, roll up into that boss, and it's like you'll have an advantage, but if it doesn't go your way, you're back to square one. And also that boss that beat you, their morale is going to go up a little bit.

Yeah. And in an individual fight, you can shift morale. So there's these unblockable attacks with the blinking red light that I mentioned, right? And I believe if you parry those, you bump up morale and they bump down morale. Correct, yeah.

So like what it took me forever to realize with the very first fight was I was playing cautious. And once I realized that morale system, I immediately charged the boss every time I faced them. And literally just dove face first into their very first attack to force a parry and basically immediately lower their morale and and take the advantage on the fight yeah so that's the biggest difference between this game and like a souls game is in souls you are constantly dodging you know you're doing that dodge roll through attacks to not get hit and then after they attack you basically like find the opening to attack them and then you dodge roll out of it in this every single time they attack, you basically like find the opening to attack them and then you dodge roll out of it.

In this, every single time they attack, you should basically be parrying and those parries give you openings to attack, but they also increase your energy and then you could do special attacks and also everything comes from the parrying. So it is just a very, very aggressive form of combat that is actually pretty fun because the parries, unlike Dark Souls,

the parries are actually pretty easy to nail like the timing is pretty generous and it makes one huge choice that i think like every one of these games should do from now on in my for me it should be an this should be the easy mode option for for these games of the parrying you mean yes i mean it's just a completely different feel well well yes but but also Dodge and Parry are the same button. So if you are trying to Dodge, you will inadvertently learn to Parry. But isn't the Parry is by doing L1 at like the right moment, right? I think it's B. Yeah.

Well, that's the Dodge. Like you could Parry that way, but can't you deflect? No's that's the dot that's the dot like you could parry that way but can't you deflect no no that's just blocking and blocking is not very good second then i think you parry or deflect right i don't think so i think i think it's just dodge this might explain why you had a bad double tapping oh my god double tapping b uh dodges like you do a dodge roll if you hit it once you do a block or you hold it down you do a dodge roll. If you hit it once, you do a block, or you hold it down, you do a block. But Justin's right.

If you do that at the right moment, you will do a parry, basically. Well, no, Justin's talking about blocking. There's actually a block, like a traditional block move where you just hold a block. Well, regardless. We're going to need to get some clarity on this. The point is, and I think I've been proven,

I think you all listening at home can maybe start to see, there's definitely an enjoyable core here. I was really overwhelmed by this thing is it really dumps a lot of gameplay, menu, UI, cruft really like, really hard, really fast. Like, there's a lot of stuff on there. Like, you get access to spells. Wizardries. Wizardries or wizard sorceries or something.

It's hilarious. But, like, I still don't know what determines if I could do a spell or whether or not I should. Like, how many spells can I do sometimes they they would work sometimes they they wouldn't but that's just a small example it's there's just a lot dumped on you uh really really quickly and like as I was losing to that stupid monkey for a half hour I was thinking like I'm probably doing something like there's probably other things i could do to facilitate this but it has been so poorly like communicated at this point i have no

idea where i would even like do you think it was the flag thing like your morale wasn't high enough i mean i went through and i got the different flags i mean also wait it was the do you think the monkey was the first boss no the, the second boss. Oh, okay. I beat the first guy, and I got that. I also like, I feel like the scale of that fight was a lot harder to parse than it was for the first person who was like person-shaped. You know what I mean? But I understand that's how these things go. Yeah, pretty typical. It reminds me of-

I also thought it's a very, I really wish that something in the basic combat, because you can really, like, pound through a lot of the, like, base guy fights. Like, you don't have to be real smart about them. Like, you can just chop, chop, chop and and kill them pretty easily i wish you were forced to engage with some more of the mechanics uh by some of those like intermediary fights rather than saving all that for uh boss it does i think as you get a little bit further and i'm not much further than you i have beaten the like next couple bosses it does get some of the enemies get definitely more complicated and require you to be a little more strategic i would agree about the like amount of stuff they throw at you it basically reminded me of like the first time i ever played any souls game where i was

like what the fuck am i looking at yeah and then by the third or fourth one i was like oh i know this language i've learned this before and i think maybe for people who have played the neo games which were the same studio um basically using the same like structure of these games i think i'm sure a lot of that stuff probably carries through so you don't necessarily have that learning curve but i i would agree that like i don't think any of this is well conveyed the idea that you can beat the first boss by hitting two buttons that i don't think are ever even discussed anywhere in the menus by transforming into a giant like demon creature is just fucking stupid i'm sorry like i don't know how you beat it justin but like plant had to tell me that if you hit b and y at the same time once your meter is charged you you just instantly win the fight.

And I didn't even know about this until long after I'd gotten through it. Somebody else told me, and they're like, oh, you used your Divine Beast, right? And I was like, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I mean, that's 100% how I beat it. But I saw a tooltip pop up on the screen. This thing, by the way, loves to throw up tooltips when you're in a big boss fight. It's like, hey, I'm just going to leave this one here to try to help you a lot. This makes it more helpful, right?

This is not one of those cases where it's like, I don't understand the charm of this. I could totally see how people will get into it. It's just like there's the learning the learning curve and the not learning curve, but the, the amount of learning that needs to transpire. Yeah. It's just not there. The other thing I'll say is that I think is true about Sekiro and a lot of

those other things, those other souls games, but not has not been my experience of this. The in between boss areas are are in those games are really tough and the in every individual encounter feels like meaningful and so when you figure out how to get through them in a uh in a pleasant way or like in a way that feels comfortable for you there is a victory in that and like there's a satisfaction of that and it's fun to figure out like oh you know if i come up

on this guy from this angle um yeah it's a little more of a puzzle yeah exactly i i made it through like i didn't ever die maybe once or twice like in just the regular areas right like there i made it through those and sort of no problem at all and it wasn't until i got to the bosses where i started dying 20 or 30 times yeah and that amount of frustration it just came out of nowhere um and yeah and it was really left me left a bad taste in my mouth i i i think that all makes sense i want to take a moment to give the game its flowers because I love this game. Like I have really, really, really enjoyed it. And I think everything that you're saying is totally true.

I also think the point that you made fresh comparing it to like the first Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, where two things are happening, right? The player base is figuring out how to play it. And the developer is figuring out how the hell do I even communicate all this stuff? You know, like how do I paste this information? And I think what the – I agree with what you're saying, Justin, of like, hey, there's a weird disconnect between how easy the normal part, the general stages are and then how difficult the bosses are. I enjoyed that because it gave me a reprieve and kept me motivated to keep coming back and playing for the first few hours. I also think the tricky thing with these boss gates is it's not just boss challenge gating you or skill gating you like a lot of bosses are in FromSoftware games. It's testing your understanding of these core systems.

your understanding of of these core systems like fresh not knowing how the flags work that that is exactly what it wants to make sure you understand do i think you agree that's a failure no i i agree i i i agree but like again like that's demon souls has had that exact problem through its history i'm not i'm not apologizing for its inability to like have ui ui issues but i'm saying like oh i got it like you know it took me it took me less time to figure out how to get through these bosses than most from software sure i will also say and and this conversation has really thrown this into relief for me how much like i i think that the souls games are a huge beneficiary from players coming in with like a grasp of the language right like it's almost like an immersion program it's like oh you you know uh most of this stuff so we don't have to spend as

much time you know created guides and videos and everybody's watched all of them before they even play the game right like right Like, right, yeah. The other thing that Fresh pointed out for me that I think I agree with is the parry system feels closer to other action games that I like. And Fresh compared it to Platinum games, which I obviously love, with stuff like Nier. And I don't know if that's i don't know if that's true but i think it's a good guess because i i feel immensely talented when i play this game which is very weird because i could not make it through you know more than four or five hours of sekiro because of how difficult it was and how much i just did not click with that parry system

yeah i think this is definitely more generous and welcoming once you understand the systems at work. Like, it was remarkable. So once I realized the, like, flag thing and the morale thing, I beat that boss that I died 10 times on, 20 times on, that same monkey boss. And then I beat the next boss in two tries because i was already at max health whatever it was a giant boar thing and then i was cruising through the next area and so yeah it feels welcoming insofar as like once you understand those systems you can cruise way faster than you can in a souls game but i do think the core like flag idea is bad from a design standpoint and i'm going to explain why in a second i went through the next area this is the area after the boar which is like way bigger than anything you

had seen in the game before it's like a pretty enormous area and i'm going through and i'm like finding flags and i'm doing well and i eventually make it to the final boss who's like this wizard guy that summons whatever dead guys and it's a problem because I am like morale 17 and he's like morale 20 and I have no fucking idea where the one flag that I'm missing is somewhere in this enormous map. And I feel like the boss is right here. I just want to kill the boss. But although I technically could, it's such a pain in the ass to have to overcome that damage differential that I just wanted to go and find that final flag,

but I had no idea where it was. And it was just a really kind of frustrating, like it felt unnatural natural, like unnatural. The idea that like I had mastered this entire area and just because I didn't turn left instead of right in this one little spot, I was at a big disadvantage. And like, I mean, Souls has those secret areas too, but they're not required for beating bosses. Yeah. Oh, I mean, it's not required. I think the problem is there are two

types of games effectively with the way you play bosses right there is the blast through bosses on one or two tries which you were enjoying yeah and then there is the okay now you have to play it like a souls game and i it sounds to me like that shift for me i i had that i wouldn't even call it an issue i had i i ran into that same challenge and and it became like oh okay at the beginning of this fight i need to lower their morale three like i i need to before i really start kind of like spamming them i need to really make sure that i'm nailing these like opening parries yeah um because like that's the method to get them to down to my level or yeah i don't even know if i was missing maybe the flag is like after that boss fight i have no idea and i just like that's the end of that stage oh okay how do you know that you're how do you

know you're missing one like how do you track it's actually indicate in the top right of the screen it tells you how many flags you have and how many you're missing so it actually does tell you but uh and it tells you like the floor your floor for morale yeah look i i actually really enjoyed the game and and to be clear like from for like a game pass launch game which this is one of the better game pass launch games. I mean, it's on other platforms as well, but if you have Game Pass, you can just download it. And I was pretty impressed by the quality. It's not like a stunning game, but just like as a fun action, Souls-ish, Ninja Gaiden-ish kind of game,

I was pretty impressed. It has almost like an arcade action game-y look. It's a weird art style. It looks to me like a kind of late-gen 360 game is what it looks like to me. It looks like it reminds me of other Team Ninja games. Like, what was the one? What was the really wild one that they did?

Oh, Ninja Blade? Ninja Blade, maybe? I don't know. With the helicopter? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Ninja Blade, yeah maybe i don't know with the helicopter yeah yeah yeah ninja blade yeah i don't know it's my complaints are really like the dark souls thing is really uh really puts it in perspective so i i kind of feel after this conversation i'm saying like i don't understand german as well as i understand spanish yeah it well, yeah, because you went to school. Like, you learned Spanish.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, you spent the time to study Spanish. I just don't think I was at a point where... You also see why so many of these Souls games are aping so many of the, like, mechanics from the Souls franchise, right? Because it's like, it's already inbuilt. That vocabulary is already there. Yeah, and yeah and also they like clearly have refined it to such a point that everyone's like oh yeah

no this is the way to do it yes you should recharge your health vials every time you rest yes you should you know have this saving system like people understand not only understand it but it's incredibly satisfying to like make it to a bonfire and know, hey, I finally made it. And I have a checkpoint now. Yeah, I just, I think your points are all like very fair. And I think a lot of people are going to run to that same challenge.

I mean, I think that's why it's great for Game Pass. I just, I am, I guess I'm just very one refreshed that somebody made something in the FromSoft mold that took what feels like some pretty big design risks or just made choices. Yeah. And I think it, I did not realize how much it is what I would like from these sorts of games. And that it does feel more welcoming. It does feel more. Truly exploration focused. Where the FromSoft games.

Allow for exploration. But they do not reward it. And I guess motivate it. In the same way as this game does. To be clear. In no way am I saying this is better than Elden Ring. This is very linear though. I mean.

It changes a lot. Yeah yeah. The level that you like this is very linear though i mean well again i would say like the level it changes oh yeah yeah the level that you've seen is pretty linear i thought the same thing the level after that actually becomes much larger yes and so i mean maybe if there is that complaint that i can fairly level against it then it is that team ninja had to know how much the concepts of the Souls games are like inbuilt into players because they – so maybe they should have spent more time making it super clear when they were deviating from that like what that meant. Because they are relying on a lot of those tropes with like bonfires and the refillable health flasks and things like that. So maybe they should have just focused on making their delineations a bit clearer. I've been back and forth on this. Do you think that there is a way for them to have honestly have done that

and still made for an enjoyable beginning of the game? Or do you think it is like learning a language or even starting a really long book that like, hey, you're going to have to make this investment because what we're trying to introduce you to is complex. But once you get it, you're going to it's going to make sense because like I read reviews or previews of this game and it made zero sense to me until I just literally guys you you you crack you crack. I want to go back and play now. You know what I mean? Like you really helped to unlock it for me just in like 30 seconds. I would have,

if you're asking me if I would have preferred to see like a computer generated, rest, fresh, like pop up on my screen for a minute and explain the system to me, to what I experience. A hundred percent. Do you want that for every game?

Cause I think the answer is yes. It'd be good. Right? I mean, yeah, I do, but that's like, that's getting very personal.

That's going to be a Patreon bonus at some point. Yeah. I think that makes sense. It's cool. And it's Game Pass. And I would also, just to close the loop on it,

it's an interesting bridging between, I think, old school Team Ninja games, so like Ninja Gaiden, those great games, and the N games which i haven't really played but my understanding is like the neo games are much more soulsy than even this is very difficult and very difficult very difficult and so this kind of finds an interesting middle

ground that feels very true to the uh true to the studio yeah one one final thing before we wrap this section we've been talking about like the very early part of the game. If you are playing this or if you're interested in playing it, I would strongly recommend looking up YouTube videos on different builds people make because that magic system is even more obtuse than everything we've been talking about. And one, I think it'll make you excited to play the game

because seeing what people do in mid and late game is just awesome. But two, it'll give you an idea of kind of where to spend those points early on. Because otherwise, I think you're just guessing. And I don't know if you're the type of person who is only going to play a game once. Guessing is not ideal. If you're a person who's going to play, you know, new game plus and new game plus and everything then sure whatever you know have fun the first time around messing around um but yes the stealth dual world build on this game just looks awesome and i cannot wait to

figure it out um should we talk about other stuff uh let's do it so justin you have come before us without griffin who is out this week um as the sole person who has played destiny lightfall griffin played it as well we talked a little bit about it last week but um i know you also played it and i feel like you are less of a Destiny head than Griffin is absolutely so I'm curious what is your impression and I assume how long has it been since you played Destiny last before yeah I mean I think I've missed a couple of

expansions which queen I think was the last one I think I missed I feel like I maybe dipped into that one I had to into that one. I had to buy the one that came before this, whatever that was. You had to buy it? To get – I meant like I didn't own.

How's that? Okay. Got it. I'm going to go for this. So yeah, I would say like I'm an uber casual Destiny player. I definitely like can dip into Destiny. I've spent many, many, many, many, many hours hours playing destiny but a lot of it's like concentrated early on um and i did a pretty good job of like keeping up when a new thing would come i would you know hop back on for a month or so and then dip back out i've been very happy with that relationship

um in in recent months not even recent months, but past couple of years, whenever I would log in, it just seemed like so bogged down in what had come before that it became harder and harder to just sort of hop back in and play. And for me, and again again like you all have to understand like nothing i'm saying is coming from an educated perspective it is literally just like my experience with it so you know take that as it as for what it's worth um i think that there's some interesting stuff that they're doing in light fall in like the actual campaign the like stuff with like the grapple hook and the stasis and that, that kind of stuff is kind of neat. Um,

the story is nonsensical. I mean, it's like borderline. I mean, it just, to me, it's nonsensical. Well,

even hardcore destiny fans seem to think that it may, it not only is nonsensical, but doesn't like wrap anything up or explain anything. It just introduces more questions about who is the witness and what is the veil and i was watching all this i was watching everything very intently until it got to the point where they're like we always thought light and dark were good and bad and it's like okay i'm out and then they're like but what if it's not and then someone's like like the river of souls i'm'm like, okay, goodbye.

Thank you. Goodbye. Bye. I'm in the back. Just tell me when you need me to shoot somebody and I'm happy to do it. But the overwhelming thing I would say is that like, I really think they needed Destiny 3. I really, really, really, I just, it feels so plate spinny that is that that is what it feels like everything you do almost everything you do in that game it feels like you're opening a door

to a place where someone has like eight plates spinning that represent months of content that like you maybe still care about maybe you don't but like look it's still here this is all part of it and we've got this one new plate that we're spinning and it's purple and you can spend money on it and oh no no the quest that you did before like you can still go to those they're in this separate area of this different page and you just log into this and then you go over to this terminal and these specific yeah it feels all like duct tape together 100 i mean that that is the perfect metaphor it is these scraps of it that have just been like grafted onto other scraps um and it feels like really bogged down by the weight of it and i mean i feel like they've made really good um it's starting to feel like you brought too much luggage to the car and like through a lot of you know design work and playing

tetris and like really cramming it you managed to fit it all in and it's like i did it it's like okay but like we got to get stuff back out like yeah i need to get into there like you you made it it is just honestly like so inscrutable now a lot of that is my time away from it but i feel like the way destiny is designed that's a very valid position to be in right like that's kind of by design is that it's okay to check out for a while and then hop back in and they'll be guys i know joke had like they do these things in destiny when you log in where it's like there's a new thing happening right yeah and you get a little basically like pop up that's like check out this new thing when i logged in for the first time. It was like Christmas. It was like Christmas for maniacs.

It was like Christmas on a planet that had never heard of Santa Claus or trees or any of it. And it's like, hey, good news. The Gambit Runner has 13 new shards for you to like, what are you talking about? And some of it's like applies to expansions that like came out months ago and it's like god i don't care about any of this now the one thing i i probably don't even realize how much work went into making it as playable and

cohesive as it is i will will say they do like they take quests that you already have and highlight certain quests just that you should be doing right now. It's sort of like, hey, you should do these. This is what you should be spending time

on. Which is fine, except Destiny is a sort of game where you can load yourself up with these bounties and if you're playing a single player level you could be completing other quests so like there's definitely this element of min maxing where it's like okay i picked up a bunch of bounties there are so many people giving these things now and and some of the bounties are like randomly generated. It says like, this will just make something up. Cause that, you know, like you can pay money

and just like make up a bounty and do another one if you want to do as many of those as you want to. So I just have no idea which of those I should be doing. You're looking for, you want a reboot, which is basically what they did at the beginning of Destiny 2 and all the hardcore fans myself included to some extent got pretty pissed off because you lost everything that you had previously but it's also like nearly impossible to make this sort of game for as long as they've been making it destiny 2 is i don't know how old

at this point six years something like seven i don't know uh 10 at this point, six years, something like seven. I don't know. Uh, 10 maybe. Uh, it's nearly impossible to make this game for as long as they've been making it and have it feel like not crufty and not overwhelming and not too many systems at once. So it is, it is, uh, it came out.

2017. Seven years. Seven years. This is September. Okay. Um, I really feel like they need to do like Daniel Tiger's parents and just be like, that was fun, but now it's done. So they are working in theory.

They are working towards this. So this is Lightfall. There's an expansion that comes after Lightfall called The Shape or something. I think this is just going off the memory. The Shape. Oh, yeah. We're all very excited. I bet a lot of people in the world of Destiny are talking about The Shape. or something i think this is just going off the shape oh yeah we're all very excited i've been a

lot of people a lot of people in the world of destiny are talking about the shape i've been hearing a lot of buzz about that from the various characters and it is so much like everything in destiny the witness the traveler yeah the shape it's all very concrete and they're just at yeah it'd be funny if it builds up to the shape and the travelers they're like floating in space as a big ball and just like a big square shows up yeah and that's the shape that's the shape it's the square anyway they are so this is light fall there is one expansion left oh it's called the final shape i'm sorry the final shape well that that's important because that it's like a fucking trapezoid or something don't act like the shape's gonna come after that because it's not so the idea is that the final shape will

be the god i even shudder to say this out loud the end of the darkness and light storyline in destiny whatever the fuck that means so you know i guess after this you won't hear the travel about the traveler and the fucking pyramids and nothing else it'll just be like a reboot of the narrative i don't think they're going to fully reboot all the stuff where they get rid of all your items because people would once again freak out but i kind of want them to do that that's what i'm getting to is like if you were playing this you were doing it for fun and i hope that you had fun doing that stuff but to to make any of that okay when i was first playing destiny there would be a new exotic there would be a change right and there would be a new

exotic where it's like everybody's talking about this exotic and if you don't know destiny exotics are like super best of the best, like the best super things. Real game changers, like things you can build a build around. When I logged in, I had access to like years of exotics that I have no idea that I could just like trade in exotic points to just like get one. I don't know. I don't know if I should or not. I don't know how don't know if i should or not i didn't i don't know how i earned these these exotic weapons um it's it doesn't like they gotta scale it back a little bit for any of it to

feel like it means anything yeah yeah i don't i don't know what the solve is there i'm sure they're considering it but the solve might just be like do another game which i know they're like working on a non-destiny yeah i don't't know what it is, but it's bad. You know what's also going to be in a weird, the thing's got to be in a weird position right now with that Activision. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no. They're independent.

Well, they're not. They're Sony. Oh, I'm sorry. Right, they got bought by Sony. I forgot. Yeah. Okay, but do they maintain, so Activision has no rights to the correct

but the the destiny that's correct yeah it's just sony's yeah yes that's got to be like weird right like that's yeah it's it's a little weird also that you know sony is making such a fuss over the activision stuff meanwhile they're definitely that next game is definitely going to be a Sony exclusive from Bungie. Yeah, I have. Unquestionably. I just want to point out the Wikipedia, there's a Destiny 2 post-release content Wikipedia, and

the Curse of Osiris, like a big huge exclamation, the plot, all the review scores, everything, yada yada yada. War Mind, same thing. And then after that, it's just like, here's stuff that happened in 2018 like even even the wikipedia got bored like that's bad you know it's just tough to keep up with i mean look i think the core game and justin you can attest to this still pretty fucking fun like there are not many shooters that feel as good as destiny does and now it has a fucking grappling hook. So that's pretty cool.

Um, I just like, I think, I think there's a version of this game you could probably play and have a really good time with as a casual person that plays a couple hours a week. I mean, that's not a person that's going to be able to keep up with your buddy who can sink 30 hours because they stay up until 6.

Yeah. But that's just sort of the nature of it you know i don't know i this is again why i gravitate to gravitate to games like fortnite which have like no bag like it doesn't matter what level you are it doesn't matter if you played the last six seasons or not every three weeks something major changes about the game and that's what keeps it relevant right like part of the thing of putting 20 or 30 hours into a game is the belief that it has meaning right like in theory not what what is meaning anyway oh my god no but but you know what i mean like if you're putting 20 and 30

hours into it you want to believe that when you go and talk to your friends who also care about these things that like it means something that it means something, that it has some interest, or it has some interest to you. And I think the problem with something like Destiny is as it loses cultural relevance, compared to these other games, there are fewer people for you to, like, talk with who care. And, as the story loses

relevance, it also feels like a weird time investment. So, like, I do think if you're putting 20 to 30 hours into a game they need to be providing you something that gives that but you know i think if you're playing with a buddy and you're like right like neck and neck with that buddy there are very few co-op games that are as satisfying and super fucking fun as destiny yeah so i think it is offering that it is it what is it what the idea of like video games is like

an excuse for men to talk on the telephone yeah it's right you know new golf yes new golf right um so again i i don't want to this is not a rag on destiny thing because i still think those games are really fucking good i agree with justin 100 that it's it's just feels like very much you know the car with every piece of luggage strapped to it, trying to like stay on the road. And I imagine like comic, comic books have made a, a good model for this.

And one that I think the destiny could, could learn from narratively and mechanically. The narrative stuff is fine. I don't mind if a story is like kind of goofy and mindless because that's like, that's a lot of serialized storytelling, you know, soap operas,

comic books, like anybody who has to tell a story forever, it's going to be a little bit goofy, right? And there's going to be high points and low points. Part of that though, is like, especially in the world of comics is like,

okay, let's just start over. Like let's, let's, we, we have, we have written too many weird alleyways in here for anybody to realistically be able to come in and say oh i understand what's happening right i for sure yeah let's let's let's have a clean slate and destiny could do that narratively and it sounds like kind of what you're talking about yeah i think the shape is pushing towards that. The Thanos moment, basically.

It also has to be able to do that mechanically. Like, it's, you know what I mean? If you're going to do a game that's mechanically serialized, then you have to be able to press the restart button every once in a while for things to make any sort of sense or be meaningful in any sort of way. And to feel, like, modernized, like continually updated based on game design tenants and various other things.

I also just feel like this would be tough for the game creators. I feel for the people at Bungie who are having to make this because, yes, I'm sure plenty of people who work there were not there when this game came out. And having to carry on all these legacy decisions in perpetuity, I can imagine that gets very— I mean, that's every living game, though, right? For sure. Honestly, they probably deserve a medal for the fact that I basically understand what number I need to look at.

Yeah. I basically understand who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. I basically understand who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. Surprised the good guys are the ones that are so tall that you spend almost every conversation staring at their dicks or lack thereof. The dick region, I guess. I'm not exactly sure what's happening in there. And it's none of my damn business. But the point is there's just a bunch of giant people.

I don't know if there's giant people before, but they're rocking. That's great. And the fighting, the shooting is good. You got this little grapple thing. It's neat. I just, I'm spent. It is like, if I look one level below that surface, what I've just described to you, it is unfathomable. There are upgrades for each individual piece of armor that you choose and can put onto your armor pieces. Except I'm trading out armor every five minutes because it's that period of the campaign where you're just steadily getting upgraded garbage.

So I have no idea if it's worth doing those things or not and that's just like one example of one thing in there it there's like it's completely overwhelming if you haven't paid attention to it okay um i think we have some reader mail yeah you brought a special thing fresh oh yeah so this is a friend of mine who listens to the show, like a personal friend from college. Locke wrote in a very good question, which was, I'm getting older. I'm busy. I have a full-time business that takes up more than my share of work hours and a kid, but I still feel like video games make up some of my identity and interests. How can I play games anymore?

What can I even play? Every time I load up a game, I struggle with the time investment it's asking me and all that good content is behind hours of grind or being able to find a party or four friends to play which is realistically impossible um steam deck and indie games my dude yeah i mean that's i think that's my attitude about this stuff is like it's actually kind of a great time for people that have very little time to play games because there are so many really great like bite-sized titles and you know i certainly if it weren't for the job there's no way that any of us would be keeping up with this amount of games i think that's fair. 100%. So I think you just have to kind of pick your battles.

I think Game Pass is a good solve if you want to just like get a smattering of like a bunch of different leases or Steam has like a ton of great small indie games that you can like jump into. That game Bloody Hell that I mentioned,

which is free, is like a four to five hour game. And like I had a total blast with it. So I think you just have to kind of pick your battles and maybe you can't play like the dead space remake and the resident evil 4 remake and the metroid prime like yeah of those big narrative triple a games maybe you can only do one a year and that's fine like don't worry about it you don't need to be on the pulse of everything i also think time mindfulness is like crucial,

especially if you're a parent, but really for everybody. It's so easy to like burn time on things that maybe you're not bringing you a ton of joy, whether that is like scrolling endlessly through TikTok, which I do plenty or Reddit or spending a lot of time trying to decide what you're going to watch or what you're going to play. And I think being really mindful of your time and asking yourself

like, hey, is this bringing me joy? Or hey, you know, I'm going to play through this game, I'm going to give it a try. And I'm not going to debate it with myself between all the other things I can be doing. When I sit down with my free time, I'm going to do it right away. It's amazing how much time you can make or find in your day if you're thinking consciously about it. I've also shifted my perspective on gaming to a large extent where I am somebody who – this is getting too personal, but I'm somebody who has always felt the need to like be pushing themselves. Like even when they're ingesting media, like if something isn't a little bit like challenging or, you know, whatever, then I feel like I'm phoning it in, like I should always be trying to do something better or whatever and pushing myself outside

my boundaries or whatever. And I think I still feel that way with a lot of media. But more and more with games, I've accepted that I just am going to play things that I think are fun. And I'm actually not that worried about being super literate about everything, which was much more of a concern when I was writing about them day to day. But I don't feel the need to be comprehensive i find things that i like and work within my life like

deck building uh roguelites are are 100 like my probably the genre i spend the most time with uh followed closely by what are we calling vampire survivors you know those vampire survivors yeah twin stick shooter twin stick shooter yeah sure where it's like you know exactly how long it's gonna be yeah it's bite size it's it's good size for it you do it you know if you want to and you don't feel guilty about not you know playing every new thing or or you know trying to push yourself outside the stuff that just makes you happy and i would reiterate from a multiplayer standpoint there's no easier game than fortnite to set up it's like fortnite was gonna be the first thing i said fortnite's always ready for you it's ready to have fun with you there's so little buried entry to that game that um i i

really if you just want to hang out with your friends and not give a fuck what happens in the actual game even though the game is quite fun fun, Fortnite is very good for that. Facebook of video games. All of us old folks are taking it over. I know. It is. I love it. This is pretty good in here.

I see why you can't sleep. One more question. This one from Daniel. I'm a boomer and I've always used inverted vertical controls. My five-year-old is getting into games and i set her up in the same way am i setting her up for a future ridicule from her friends that's a good question for plant who uh has gone through the ringer to relearn his brain i am an inverted i grew up with the scent i played everything inverted over the last year i have finally kicked the habit so yay i know it was difficult but yes i i watched my son uh struggle with inverted controls

and realized we're going to be passing the controller back and forth a ton and this is an annoying thing why am i forcing this on uh him and i i have shaken the habit and let me tell you it kind of sucked for a couple months um playing games and and rewiring my brain but now that i've switched i'm really glad i did i can't believe i'm saying this is an embarrassment to old me it does feel way more natural playing traditional and not inverted. Like I, I, my reaction speeds and like shooters and stuff already feel better.

And I think it's because it's weird for one access to be inverted, but not another. Exactly. Yeah. Um, but yes, I, I do recommend if you can,

if you can stomach it, uh, making a switch or at least not pushing down this headache onto future generations. Was there a game in particular that you found like was a good way to get your feet wet? Yeah. I mean, the reality is just like avoiding first-person shooters for like a month or two while you're doing this. Avoiding first-person shooters for, like, a month or two while you're doing this. And using games where you have to control the camera, but mostly just because it's cinematic.

So, like, slower third-person games were good. And then I moved on to Splatoon. I found that to be kind of, like, a good test of, you know, reaction. Because you are aiming and it is a shooter but it's not like zipping the camera around yeah um you know you're mostly aiming at the floor and yeah as i moved from each of those steps it became easier and easier and easier and then fortnight after splatoon and then from there i finally started doing some fps and again like it really was just like two months of intentionally making the change. It wasn't like, oh, I put a lot of time into playing games and really practicing.

It wasn't any of that. It was just not letting myself do inverted. The only other thing is the first thing I do now is make sure if I'm playing an old save file or anything, I change it back. Sure, if I'm playing an old save file or anything, I change it back because I have found that just even briefly going back immediately confuses my brain for a day or two. Yeah. It's weird. So, yeah, it's a bummer because I took a lot of—

I really built my personal identity around playing Inverted Controls. Yeah, you were way fascinating at parties back then. It was great. Yeah, super cool. Cool. Do we have any honorable mentions? Anything anyone else is playing or watching? I finished Better Call Saul.

Oh, God. I haven't seen the final season. Of all the reactions that I thought you would have to that sentence. No, it's mostly because of all of the shows that I haven't seen the final final season of it is the most terrified that it will be spoiled for me okay because i absolutely think it's one of the best pieces of television ever made so okay i think well that's the end of my i guess it was good you liked it i'm not there's a russ love you but with that preamble there is not a force on heaven or earth that could make me say another syllable oh that's so nice series i appreciate it uh plant

anything yeah i i watched uh johnny mnemonic oh yeah remember that oh yeah so but did you play johnny mnemonic i did i did but i did something uh more absurd. I watched the black and white release of Johnny Mnemonic. Wow. Which, yes, is on Blu-ray and I guess got released like a year or two ago. And here's what I'll say. Johnny Mnemonic, still not a great movie, but enjoyable in the way that like cyberpunk or proto-cyberpunk, guess of that era is uh kianu is a delight in it there are just tons of like cool guest appearances and in black and white you really do get this cool like retro film noir that they're going for and a lot of the kind of cheesy special effects

don't look cheesy they just look look old fashioned and black and white. So if you want something weird and you love Keanu and you like 90s movies and you listen to our Super Mario Brother episode, you're like, hey, how do I chase that down? Johnny Mnemonic Black and White is a great pick for you. I think it's also available to stream on Apple Store. I think I think I always confuse that with virtuosity which i feel like came yes very different actually they were both the same year that'd be great year for cinema set in the interwebs oh my gosh cool i think we did it uh i wanted to thank the following people

for writing reviews of the besties on apple podcast we have k class robert squidward and dis bliss thank you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts thank you to everyone else who's talked about the show and i didn't you know i played fortnight or something i i guess that's my honorable mention um we really appreciate it we appreciate your support of the show couldn't do without you we wouldn't do without you quite quite literally be weird actually it'd be weird were you reading my notes while i wrote fortnight or something yeah i was i got distracted oh thank goodness because i was like wow i felt like i was controlling your brain there for a second you were in a way you were um cool you want to take it home juice what we talked about

really quick yeah just very quick we talked about wo Wolong, which is available on Game Pass and all modern consoles and PC, and we talked about Destiny, Lightfall, and then we talked about why you probably should uninvert your controls, Better Call Saul, Fortnite or something, and Johnny Mnemonic Black and White. That's going to do it for us.

Until next time, be sure to join us again then for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!