The Besties - Control Resonant Rewards Your Patience

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Control Resonant is technically a sequel to 2019’s Control. But developer Remedy has (as they often do) opted to stretch the definition of sequel as far as possible, converting the third-person shooter series into an open-world action game. Shockingly, it works… once you get your sea-legs. Plus, we talk about how the release of Gears of War: E-DAY falls in the shadow of the brutal layoffs and changes at Xbox. 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!

So I mentioned last week that I went to the Nintendo store with my child. Yeah. While we were there, I got very stressed out because I wasn't sure if he was going to make a decision. And also because there were 350 people in there. If it's anything like the times I've been to the Nintendo World Store, it was half of Manhattan. Total fucking zoo. But while we were there, half of my eye is like scanning the rows looking for things that I would go back and buy. Maybe for him, but maybe for me.

But I definitely didn't want to buy a bunch of stuff while I was there with him because, you know, You don't you can't buy a bunch of Xenoblade Babe models. No. While you're there with your kids. Okay. So one of the things that was there was Zelda blind box bags. And largely there were like six bucks for like Zelda keychain things of like a master's or whatever it is. I am pretty vehemently against blind box stuff because of the obvious like stressful.

You don't get what you want. It's gambling. Et cetera, et cetera. Certainly don't want to introduce that to him. because he's going to look on the back of the package and be like, why didn't I get fucking Link? Yeah, yeah. But I was like, well, it's six bucks, and I like 90% of the things in here, except for one thing. So it's Winwaker Link, it's Winwaker Zelda, it's Winwaker Ganon, sword, shield, and then there's like a stack of bombs.

And I'm like, I would take anything but that stack of bombs. Yeah. And ordinarily blind boxes, oftentimes are in boxes, but these, were in like packages, right? Oh, you gave it a grab. You gave it a little touchy. Okay, so I start like going through and I'm, yeah, feeling to see, is it the bombs? I'm squeezing them.

And I'm like, well, you're doing your own hurt locker for dorks. And where is your kid at this point? No, no, he's gone. So I've come back. This is a solo niche. He's gone. He had to come back solo to fondle the Zelda bags. My dentist is conveniently two blocks away from the Nintendo store, so it

worked out nicely. So it's just me, and I'm feel the bags, pretty shamelessly. Like, I have, I have no compunction about doing this. Yeah.

Until a Nintendo employee walks over and is like, hey man, squeezing those bags, huh? He said squeezing those bags, huh? I swear to God,

he said, squeezing those bags, huh? And then did you just turn into, like, a little shrimp or a little bug and skitter away?

I should not have been more ashamed. And he's like, yeah, man, feel for what you got. And suddenly I felt worse. Yeah, of course. Getting permission from the Nintendo Store employee's got to feel worse. And I was like, oh, yeah, I mean, I want everything. I just don't want the bombs. And he's like, bombs are pretty cool, though.

And I was like, oh. Uh-oh. Did you tell some, hey, I've been in New York a bunch of times, and people tell you while you're there that if you hear some shit, you have to say some shit. I know. And even if it's a Nintendo store employee Saying I love I love bombs

Even I feel weird saying that now I've got Zoran on speed dial So I'm gonna do it Yeah all right So yeah I was an awful experience I did end up getting one Just like shot in the dark What was it?

And I got a Gannon So that's a win I'll take a Gannon Yeah Yeah Was it worth it? No As far as like psychic damage

100% Not worth it. Did they put a little Burger King crown on your head on the way out and tell you that you're a good boy? You're going to go to the dentist now? I was the new king of Hyrule. Yeah. My name is Griffin McRoy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Planton.

I know the best game of the week. My name is Rush Rush, I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties, a podcast where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club. And just by listening to this podcast, you become a member of the game of the year club called The Besties. This week, we're going to be discussing Remedy's latest, a game called Control Resonant,

which I will be the first to admit, I didn't know fucking anything about until booting that bad boy up. Chris, maybe you can illuminate people who are in similar shoes of what this game is. Control is a sequel. Control Resonant is a sequel to Control, even though it feels very little like that game, Because what I'm realizing, and we'll talk about it, is Remedy cannot make the same game twice, even though they make tons of sequels. This time, they needed to make an action game and an open world starring the brother slash bad guy from the previous game.

And that's the basic gist. That's all you need to know. We're going to kick down the doors of the oldest house and tell you all about it just after this short break. Can I, before we get started, can I just say, congratulations. to whoever is at business development at Remedy. Because I enjoy these games. But I've noticed a little strange thing, which is nobody foots the bill for these games like more than once.

We got Rockstar, we got Microsoft and Xbox. We've got Epic Games. Now we got Anapurna, who, man, talk about really figuring it out. They didn't even get the publisher credit on Steam on this thing, despite, I guess, for half of it or whatever. They are going vine to vine, truly. And really figuring it out as they go. Good for them.

Happy for it. God games. Max Payne, I think, was published by God game. Yeah, man, this is a, this is a wild one. I didn't, I did not love control. I know that I'm probably in the minority there. I love Remedy's games. I love how fucking weird they are.

But I rarely am like, we'll go to bat for them. Like, Alan Wake 2 is a bonkers game. that I'm glad I played because it did shit. That is just so fully out of pocket that I appreciated it at face value for that reason. But my only issue with most of their games is that they're not traditionally fun to play. They don't traditionally feel very good to play. Were you guys control fans? I liked control a lot, but the part that I liked of control the most was the story and the vibes and the visuals and the music and all that stuff.

I didn't think, I thought the gameplay of control was better than usual for remedy, which tends to be you're right. Stilted, somewhat stilted gameplay, but I thought it was better than usual. I think Control Resonant is even further in the direction of they are really figuring out how to make a very fun game while doing their weird ass shit. Right. What about you, Chris? I still can't believe they did it because they do not in the past get action and gameplay done well. And then to say, we got it, we heard you. We know what our weakness is.

And that's why we're going to do an open world action combat game. Maybe the most difficult type of game to do well if you want to focus on gameplay. I mean, I don't want to sell them short because I would say like, look, Max Payne 1 and 2, I think are pretty fucking fun. I think even Quantum Break, a game that I really did not like, I thought had pretty good action, pretty good combat. But Alan Wake is, that's never been the strong suit there. Oh, wait. Oh, yeah, with Alan Wake, right. Yeah.

I found it really kind of, I don't know, slow in control the original. But this is so different. So in this game you're playing is Dylan Faden, who is the brother of Jesse, the star and director of the Federal Bureau of Control from the first control. It's basically like an M.I.B organization. Sort of an M.I.B situation. It takes place in the oldest house, which is the secret government building that investigates altered world events, which is just, like weird shit that happens in the world and objects of power, which are just mundane objects that get these incredible powers.

It's a super phone. Superphone or a slide projector that the things it projects are portals to other worlds. Like it's, it's, that shit is back in full effect. Only this time, the weird shit has broken containment. The first game takes place completely within the oldest house and you are trying desperately to keep this weird shit and a, uh, this weird shit and a, uh, uh, a force called the hiss, which is like a, I don't know, a bad, guys, there's so many fucking proper nouns of this thing.

I could, I'm, I was fighting for my life. Okay, I can simplify it. The hiss is basically discordance or chaos or even like, um, static personified. So anything that turns you into a red monster. It turns you into a red monster. But it turns things. It's noise. It's noise.

Correct. That's why it's called the hiss. It's like noise. Yeah. But then there are hedrons, which are crazy. They look like very, very machine-like, very mirror illusion. You're talking about the resonances? The resonances.

And those are also up in the next. Anyway, all this shit. I'm just trying to, those are the opposite of the head. So that's structure and order to the extreme. But both things are bad for New York. Yes, we don't like it here. We get out into Manhattan. We love hot dogs.

We love taxis. We love egg steen. The New York Mets. Yeah. What we don't love. is when the city folds in on itself in a tesseract. It's not our favorite. So that is like the big thing in the game is you are Dylan, you wake up from this coma, basically,

and you are given an object of power that is basically a pipe, but it can shape shift into different weapons. You go out into Manhattan where shit has broken containment. Things have been patterned, is the word they use for it, which basically means like, you know, in Inception or Paprika, where the city folds on itself and now all of a sudden, like, you're walking up a wall. and now you're up on the ceiling and, oh, shit, that building sideways. That has happened and destroyed the city and the FBC is doing everything they can to keep it from spreading beyond Manhattan. So now it's an open world game in Manhattan. You're jumping between these different zones where all kinds of freaky shits happening.

Central Park has become a mold-infested wasteland. There's a part of the city that they were using as an evacuation zone, only, uh-oh, things went so bad. There's a sinkhole where the patterning went down into the ground and turned an apartment building into like an insane subterranean labyrinth. You are moving between a lot of places. And all of that is very good and very cool, in my opinion. Unfortunately, to get to that, you are going to have to get past the first hour of this game. Where you are underpowered, the combat does not work very well, and you are in a world that is designed for maximum movement abilities, which you'll get later, and you don't even know about if you have not been paying attention to the game.

Right. So it is bad. Like the first hour. Imagine if you played the new Spider-Man games only like for the first hour. It was like, okay, you got to, you do have to walk over here before you can start swinging webs between buildings. Once you get that shit, this game just gets better the more you play it. I'm nearing the end and I'm having a fucking great time with it. But like, I cannot recommend enough that you have.

have to when you play this game, go hunt down the chasms, I think they're called, which is where you get the traversal abilities. There's only a handful of them. The Jesse missions, and then you do those, and now all of a sudden you can walk on walls. Now all of a sudden you have this,

like, psychic grappling hook you can use to whip yourself around from point A to point B, and now the game is really actually very fun to get around. And reminds me a lot. I know this is a comparison we all made while talking about this game of like prototype, the Activision action game that came out around the same time as infamous.

I don't know that I'd go so far as to give it the infamous kind of comparison because infamous has like a million traversal mechanics and this game only has a handful. But it's fucking cool once you're able to warp around this like all folded up freaky city and do fights in three dimensions.

Like it's genuinely, it gets so neat. You just got to. really get to that shit fast because it's not great until then. So I want to talk about my general rule of thumb, especially with open world games. I started the very first time I ever did this and it was the best decision I ever made for my life was with Red Faction Gorilla. And it was, man, I really like feeling like a badass, but dying this game is the least fun thing imaginable. So with this game, I dialed it. Basically, I played on normal and until I hit like, the first combat sequence that gave me any sort of static, I was like, nope, dialed it down to

easy in the settings, and had the best possible time really from the jump, maybe 10 minutes in. I was like, this does not appeal to me to feel like I need a combat challenge. I want to experience this world and feel like a total badass. What is so cool about the difficulty in this game, and this is becoming more and more normal, I get it, but you can dial everything in this game to your liking. So I kept it on the normal difficulty and overall enjoyed it and was not struggling too much until you get to the bosses. And I am not a Dark Souls player. I enjoy the games.

They're not my like number one thing. He's bad. He's bad against. We get it. He's bad against. I'm bad. Especially, I'm bad at boss fights. And I bashed my head against a boss, you know, five or six hours into the game.

And then I was like, you know what? I'm just going to turn the power on to triple whatever I'm doing. And I zipped right through it. And I still got that experience. I had seen everything that that boss fight had to offer. Even with a patch that reduced the health or whatever of these things, it was a matter of attrition. Like, okay, I need to do the same thing right 20 times.

And that's not fun for me. What's fun is being in the open world. It's so funny to say like, I am having a great time with the combat. I'm at a point now where like I'm in a really, really, really, really super fucked up Manhattan version and having all of these fights in all these different dimensions. And as you do these boss fights, you acquire powers. And now all of a sudden things like stacking debuffs becomes important. Like you get mold powers that you can infest enemies with. And then you get fire powers.

And you can use that on enemy. that have infestations and it makes them explode and there's all kinds of like interactions between the different powers. That stuff is really, really cool. But all the enemies are too spongy. For me, it wasn't like a, I like hard boss fights. And the boss fights in this game are fucking dope. They are very, very, very cool. But they take way too long if you do not juice the shit.

But even just every combat encounter on the street, which respawn every time you beat one of these bosses, which is not, I think, a great decision. because the, I don't know, man, if I'm going from one place to another, I don't actually want to fight the same group of guys like over and over and over again. But it takes way too long. It's not a difficulty thing. It's just like it takes way too long and it doesn't feel great to chip away at the health bars of every enemy you come across. So like the assist mode is what it's called, this like ability to change all of these different settings. And they have presets. I did the field agent preset, which is like the first one up that they do that just like boost some stuff and it takes some stuff out and just makes, combat move a lot faster and make you feel a lot more like a superhero. So, like, I did that, and I would also thoroughly recommend doing that. That being said, I think we talked about prototype earlier. Prototype is known for being a game that is, like, incredibly grim, dark and, like,

hot topic-y in its tone. This game walks a really fun line because the main character is more or less that. Like, he is a very intense dude. he's a fucking baby man I was just talking to juice about this before like I don't know Jesse help I've got a magic sword that can turn into a huge hammer and I can smash it

Like as it went on Did Dylan grow on me? Well this character of like I don't I'm just I'm real sorry I'm a real sad He is hot topic He is not what hot topic sets out to be

He is the like cliche hot topic customer. And at first, it drove me bonkers. But I don't know. It kind of, it charmed me. It does a fair job in the back, like, third of the game to show you, like, his backstory and his and Jesse's backstory and like the shit that went down in their hometown, which is called normal, because this is a fucking remedy game. Ordinary? You're right. Sorry, not normal. And I think it does a good job of selling that. I think even before that, there was a moment about three hours into the game that I had where I was clearing out a, I was clearing out a street that was filled with horrible people and there was soldiers fighting against the horrible people. And in the midst of clearing that out,

I found a picnic blanket. And next to the picnic blanket were little cat dolls. And Dylan says, hey, this reminds me of a storybook I read. I wonder if I could set it up on this, on this picnic blanket and set up these cat dolls and then draw a picture of it. And do a little drawing. Yeah, he stops to do a drawing. Okay, so while this is happening, I'm walking around collecting it, I hear in the background, no, fucking no, my brother, why are you doing that to me? People are dying in the street from these monsters, and I'm building a little cat

stanching. It's the funniest fucking thing. It's really, really good. And they do play with, like, his character. Like, he'll meet a dog, this random fucking, a golden lab that shows up. And he, like, has these back and forths that are, I think, intentionally funny. So I think they have some fun with the character. But generally speaking, it's the side characters you meet that bring more levity and interesting things to the world.

Even when it's serious, it's silly to, because, like, you have kind of the voice in your ear being like, Dylan, I, and I get why people don't like you. I finally read your file. You did horrible things. And it's like, yeah, I'm real, I'm real sorry. I feel real bad. I feel real. And they're like, you killed 526 people. And he's like, yeah.

I'm like really struggling with it, but I'm just here to help. And that voice, it sounds like I'm joking. I can't even do the voice. You can't do a good Dylan voice. It's too, it's too, it's too sad. He's a very sad man. I, I've gotten, I've come to love Dill. Yeah.

And I've come to really get, I'm very invested in the story. I've been playing it. I was up super late last night because I've hit like a, I hit a really wild part of the game that's like doing some shit that, I don't know, the, the back half of the game really is the best shit that the game has to offer. And I would encourage you to kind of like stick with it.

But I, I, for me, a weird miss for, personally speaking for this game is that the writing is at times quite bad. Um, I think the acting overall is like, is great. Like Dylan is making

some very specific choices, but I think they are earned eventually. But there's some shit. The needle drops in this game are so ham-fisted. Even for like remedy, like who deals in needle drops quite frequently,

like you'll have a character play a song over your headset without asking you if that's cool or whatever and then be like, so do you like music? What the, what? Who's, they're also like

garden stage. levels. It's like there's one needle drop in it in particular where you could tell they wanted a run the jewel song and they did not get it. Couldn't clear it. And they got something else. And it's so strange

how much it wants to be a different song. So respectfully, I disagree about the music, specifically because I think it landed with me because of the tone of

the game and especially the main character being what it is, having any variance from that tone does help. And I would also say the music thing does sort of, and you've seen it, Griffin, a plan, I don't know if you've gotten there, but they do sort of. They do a cool thing with the music. They do a cool thing with the music that sort of pays off why it was happening earlier. That kind of justifies it. It's, it's, it's, the needle drops are not my issue. It is that at times the writing is just so, uh, it's not even like weird and inhuman. in the way that like people in Allen Wake to talk. It's like not even that Lynchian sort of Twin Peaks level kind of,

uh, just abstract weirdness. It just like sometimes it just really, really falls flat. Um, and it's not always like some of the, some of the characters are incredibly endearing. I love Olivia Pope,

who was the researcher in the, uh, in the first game who kind of becomes de facto acting director in this game and is just constantly at a panic. Uh, like that's, great. Did you do the mission where you had to find the guy's cat inside the incredibly fucked up? Oh, man, it's so funny and so good. Like, at times it works really, really well, but I, I feel like

that is a thing that these games always really do nail, but this game, I don't know, I've just struggled with it a bit. The things that have jumped out to me in terms of the writing are more that when you go back to like the main bases and things like that, they have a lot of really fun, like, random unnamed soldier dialogue between the soldiers talking about, like, the crazy shit that's going on. Or, like, the first time you use a fast travel door. That's so good, yeah. You come through the door for the very first time, and all the soldiers are standing around

like, holy shit. Yeah, it's just a door frame in the middle of nowhere. That's like a portal. So when you come through it, they're all like, whoa, don't do that. That's scary. I think in this case, more so than really any other game they've ever made, there is so much more dialogue in general. Whereas with Alan Wake, it's obviously

a very guided experience. There's sometimes side stuff, whatever, but largely, very guided experience so they can really fine tune every single thing. And this felt like just a much, much bigger project. I, yes. And there are goods and bads to come with that. I agree there's plenty of the

script that's stilted. But there's also a distance from the usual Sam Lake, oh, I love Stephen King and I love David Lynch, and that's going to be a majority of what you see here. I enjoy control. I enjoy On Wake, but at times it feels a little bit like a tour of somebody's personal interest in these things.

And this felt more fully realized as its own thing. There actually came a point, I don't know, maybe 10 hours in it where I was like, oh, wow, I am watching a story of a game that feels like its own. It doesn't feel like it's borrowing from anything. It doesn't feel like it's a continuation, even though it is. It felt like a very standalone experience, and I realized how little, how rarely I have that experience when I'm playing a video game where it feels up to stuff. Yeah. Can we, can, I would love to hear your guys' thoughts on the open world stuff because I'm

pretty outspoken of like traditionally not really enjoying that. And there have been a lot of games this year, especially over the last like couple of months, that are sort of dabbling in that shit or focusing on it completely like your Don Walker's and Onimusha. How do you guys feel about the open world and the kind of like array of activities and things sort of that you can spend your time?

So what I mentioned earlier about difficulty is not just the fact that I can get through tough combat sequences without really stressing too much. It's also when there's stuff that isn't necessarily landing for me or stuff that feels dull, I can either, A, ignore it because it doesn't matter if I'm underpowered, or B,

get through it incredibly quickly. So when there's a mission that's like, defend this tower from damage, I don't fucking care. So I'll either skip it or I'll get through it incredibly quickly. And it's fine. So the stuff that I've spent most of my time on are like actual side missions that have,

and they detail them in the menu. Like you know, oh, this is a side mission that's going to have actual story to it with interesting things going. on the I think the meta game stuff that they were trying to do in this game feels weird you like level up each of the neighborhoods based on the missions that you're doing and that in turn unlocks like new shop items and things like it's very bizarre it's so and the progression systems are like I think there's like three or four too many yeah and it's in it's inoffensive

for the most part like I actually really like figuring out like the powers I'm going to use and how they kind of interact. And then, you know, there's a talent tree. And it's like, well, okay, I know I like the powers that, like, summon turrets that help me. So I'll just spend my points in there. I'm not having to spend, like, a ton of time deliberating, which is good because, like, I don't, one, there's too much shit. Like, there's so many different statuses you can enter that I don't know what any of that shit meet. Like, you've got dominance. Okay, how did I do that? I could probably go way back down the tree and figure out what I did. So, like, the material stuff of, like, picking my powers or picking the weapons, right?

There's different weapons that you're, that you're aberrant is the name of the magic pipe that you have, can transform into. Like, that stuff's great. The rest of it, like, spending currencies I'm getting by finding them in chess or doing really boring, just like random activities out in the world. Like, I don't like that stuff. I haven't enjoyed really any of that. What type of builds did y'all do?

I went with the dual-knive. knife sort of fast critical hit-focused weapon, and then for my secondary did the big hammer, which is very good at dealing falter, which can break an enemy for an execution, which is very, very cool. Yeah, I was doing the, I guess, it feels like a katana or like just a big pipe, essentially,

and then secondary was the drill, which, again, like the falter, stagger thing is kind of the focus of the secondary. And then I was using the shield, which you rise up a big shield around you out of rocks, and then charge into guys to basically stun them. And that felt, I mean, the combat, I genuinely feels really good. They really did.

It's very, very cool. Yeah. Yeah, I combined those and was a human bulldozer that just was all falter. Like, pretty much the second I bash into something, I could do the special movie that just killed them. Yeah. I am shocked at how much I'm enjoying this game because it is the sequel to a game I didn't care for a lot in a genre that I think is usually pretty bad. And there's a lot of stuff about it that I just don't like to the point of like not interacting with it at all. Namely, just like really any activity in the open world that is not a scripted side quest or main mission or like big boss fight.

And yet, like, I'm going to see it through. It's probably like the first game that we've done in a while that I'm like, yeah, I'm actually really, really fucking hooked now. and I really want to see what happens at the end of this thing, even though there's a lot about this game that I think is pretty poorly executed. The stuff that is executed well is so fucking rad and so novel that, I don't know, I just, I can't put it down. I want to zip all the way back to that comparison to prototype and infamous, because that reveals what this game got right and what a game like Wolverine, which we talked about the other week, got wrong.

Because I think they're both kind of chasing something similar, this kind of old school action game, the type of stuff that you saw in the PS3 era, right? And what is so good about this game is you can make it your own. If there's something that you don't like, change the difficulty, you know, zip right past it, skip through the cutscenes, really, and be in a world, that the world itself is just immensely pleasurable. What we barely touched on it, because I think we're trying to. to spoil it. The things that you see in this world goes so much further than Inception, New York. It gets so strange. There's a lot more to the game than the open world map will reveal to you at the beginning of the game, and you're going to have to play through about half the game before you start to get to that shit. And you'll enjoy that first half. That's not all bad. It's fun. It's fun enough

to play, but then the shit I'm going to remember about this game starts about the, I'll say the name of it, not a spoiler, I don't think, but the sinkhole for me is where this game was like, oh, this fucking rules. Like this, a game is actually, that one point of the game takes it up like 10 notches and then it does not come back down. Like everything they throw at you from that point on gets just wilder and wilder and wilder and wilder. And it's so ambitious and I don't know, just really, really, really unique and cool. It is, I mean, if it sticks to landing, it is definitely in competitive. for me for at least top five for me. Yeah. I think so. I mean, of all the games, I guess I finished Don Walker, but like all these action games that have been coming out, uh, this sort of late

summer, early fall have been like pretty fun. But this, this is the one that like, I am most excited to, to keep playing and to see through. You can also, I did, we didn't mention it. You can make him look like a total goofball. Great. Oh yeah. You can customize his hair and shit. For a while, he started out as the looking a lot like the brother from Ozark yeah uh but then i gave him a like a center part and then he looked like he worked in IT i just gave him like a little short oxford shirt and tie uh it's i like i like dressing up it's good dillon uh let's take a break and then i want to hear a little bit from chris plant about uh the new gears if that is if we're all amenable to that yep Great, let's do it.

Plant, what's up with gears? What's up with gears? And also the broader kind of Xbox family of products. Yeah, yeah. So I wanted to check into this game for a few reasons. I'm not a huge gears fan, I should say, at front. So I've played through a thing. You're a pervert who loves chainsawing dudes.

I do, but that's what I like. You love dumb. You love dumb. And who can forget those classic characters. But, you know, you. I don't know if y'all have been following this, but shit has been not good at Microsoft and Xbox. They had yet another massive round of layoffs.

They're still going up the BDS movement and seem to not acknowledge it. There are any number of reasons that Microsoft is a bit of a disaster, and I would say maybe the biggest of them all, is that most people don't own an Xbox. The people who own a PlayStation far outweigh the number of people who have Xboxes now, and yet they seem to want to pull all of their games back to just that original hardware. So my thinking is, these games must... I really, can I just say, because I want to,

I want to, this ran together in my head, but there were 1,600 layoffs in July, followed by another 268 very, very recently in late September. So that's like, these are two separate layoff events. Well, well, the weird thing is, there might be more coming, because I think it's like part of a years-long plan. They are targeting a reduction of 3,200 total positions through 2027. So if you work at an Xbox developer, boy, howdy, that's got to be an uncomfortable position. And you would think making a game like Gears, and I'm going to talk about it, that you

would be relatively, I don't know, safe. Because the way that they're talking about this restructure is that they want to focus on the big franchises. You know, they bought all these studios, but like, why don't we have a new fallout? why don't we have a new elder scrolls like every year? Why are our biggest properties kind of like Call of Duty? Seems to be the message. So, Gears, sure, that's it.

And you have a new one coming out? Great, that team, that makes sense. And yet, that is not what's happening. The Halo team, Halo Studios, which was just named that in 2024, is now basically torn apart. And the series is basically part, like mostly handed over to Activision. And then this Gears game, and I'll finally talk about it, the story director or narrative director of the game got laid off as part of this a couple weeks before the game comes out. Which is strange because this game is extremely well made. That's what's not making sense to me.

It says Gears of War. You should say the name for people that aren't aware that it actually came out. The new game is called Gears of War E-Day. And it's, what if we did Gears? And it's actually when the big monster attack, when all the monsters came up from underground and they took over the city. And, uh, the inciting incident for the entire. Yes. Basically.

And it, it's doing weird things here because Gears is, I think, very much a in the shadow of 9-11 video game. Here is a game where you are doing, like you are living through the day that the city, gets destroyed and you're watching people die on the streets and you are trying to like kind of be like a I don't know like a first responder almost in the first few hours of this game not like as a medic you're still just shooting things and as far as a gears game goes they get the assignment it looks beautiful the story moves really fast and quickly it is kind of like almost like a reboot of the entire series in a way that feels closer to uh if Honestly, it feels like if you had given the series to Sony and been like, what if we just let insomniac or naughty dog make a gears game? It looks better than anything the Xbox has done. It moves better.

And the combat feels really good. So this is where I'm like, I'm just baffled, man. Like what is what is going on with the company? Yeah. So I think it's, in my opinion, it's pretty clear. Looking at how they reorganized Xbox in general, which is, shunting off the popular franchises into other studios. They basically wanted to gut the part of Xbox

that was really struggling all these years, which is the internal development cycle studios of Xbox. So Microsoft Game Studios, that equivalent, has been in charge of things like GamePaths, which is a financial disaster, in charge of things like Halo, which hasn't had a successful Halo installment in God knows how long.

So you have all these franchises, and there have been wins. Forza, you look at Forza Horizon, that's certainly been a win. And now Forza Horizon gets shunted off into its own studio with turn 10 and playground games fusing into one studio. And then Fallout, yeah, gets shunted off with Obsidian. Obsidian is now under Bethesda. So you have obsidian's development with, what was the tiny little kids game where they turned tiny? Griffin, you played it. Grounded.

Grounded. So you have all these franchises that have done. done okay or done well that are now being pushed aside into these other studios, which organizationally probably makes the most sense, because having this one central head making all these decisions clearly has not been working for them. It's been a total disaster. And so I am not happy that people are losing their jobs. It makes me really super bummed because clearly the higher ups were making very bad calls all along. And this is unfortunately those very bad, bad calls coming home to roost. There's an elephant in the room, and it's an elephant that is incredibly

omnipresent. It's an omnipresent elephant really, truly across the board in so many of the different kind of places that we talk about here on Besties, which is that Microsoft's investment in OpenAI has lost them. I think the report from last, this is like a year ago of $4.1 billion loss from their investments in Open AI. So like that's fucking cataclysmat. It's. That is such a large amount of money. And it really truly feels like, I mean, obviously they've made, they've bungled a lot of things in, in the Xbox division and their gaming division. And so there's lots of reasons why this is happening. But like, I don't know, man, when you're losing that much money, it feels like this is, this, this is the place where you've chosen to kind of try and make ends meet or try to get, get back on track.

It just, it doesn't make any fucking sense. But I think that is like, it doesn't make fucking sense to me that they, they lost too much money. okay, but it seems like there's other places that that could come out. But I think this is putting good money after bad here. Like I don't think this is a decision like, oh, we lost a lot of money and now we need to cut. I think this is we still think the ROI, the return on investment for AI is so high and profound in the long term that we need to get every dollar from every other area and pull it in. That it's games, the return just isn't high enough, which is the, the,

The dark and awful thing that the games industry is struggling against as tech just siphons more and more money is it's not about being a profitable company. It is about what is the maximum returns that you can get. And games is not seen as having those maximum returns. And it's infuriating. I just really quick want to go back to what Frush said, though, because I think all of that is true. But I also think it's worth underlying how much of these issues are really. quarantined to the highest levels. Because, yes, did Halo Studios not make, like, the dream Halo game?

Sure. It also was having to change what it, what the company thought Halo should be constantly. The orders for what these games should be were perpetually changing. So that's the weird thing is I, it's almost hard for us to know, oh, were these people not good at making Halo? or were they not good at making a new entire version of Halo every three or four years? You look at the Suicide Squad game that came out was a total disaster because they had to inject live service, whatever. All the stuff, right? Yeah, I mean, that's a tale as oldest, that's a tale as oldest time of gaming developers and publishers chasing the trends like destiny,

which ironically is now, you know, largely could put it. That's why the key thing is so weird to me to have even a single. half in it before the game comes out is, you know, I haven't finished it. Maybe people have different opinions, but it feels like they made a machine that actually knows how to make Gears games after all this time. Sure. They did the hard part. And then to like fuss with that in any way is just so strange. And it makes me think that, you have every reason to believe this based of what we're seeing. These really are yet again decisions that are being made. at such a high level that they are not accounting for

the games themselves or the people who are making them. And that, it's just... It's a huge, I realize this is a huge oversimplification. And I recognize that if you start talking about AI shit, there's an expectation that you have a degree in economics and computer sciences and what have you. But like, how many studios could $4.1 billion fund? Just to use that number from a year,

ago, I'm sure it's a much, much higher number now. I can't Google it in real time while doing this podcast and say anything remotely accurately. I feel like there are forces so far beyond the shit that we talked about 20 years ago when we talked about like, oh boy, they really need to tighten up the graphics on level five to quote the full sale commercial. And now it's like, well, due to this fucking sinkhole that is making everything. slightly shittier and take way, way, way longer, they are trying to, they're making really, really, really, really shitty

and short-term decisions that are going to ultimately, I think, hurt Xbox even more than they are already hurting. Look at Windows. As a software, as a piece of software, Windows is the perfect representation of what Microsoft is as an organization or has been. Who knows if they end up trimming this stuff?

But traditionally, and certainly, right now, Windows has fucking widgets and co-pilot and Cortana and shit popping out at you every two seconds and needs to be updated on security things every two seconds because there are so many different competing priorities within Microsoft to, that everyone needs their little sites of the pie. And this is what's happening with these game studios is all these competing priorities, whether it's AI or whether it's whatever, pull away from other competing priorities. I actually do think, even, it's, again, sucks that people got laid off over it. But I do think pushing these franchises into studios like Bethesda, into studios like the Call of Duty studio, like putting Halo there, for the future of the Halo franchise, that is a better move than what they were doing. Because at least you have studios that have built structures for the most part that know how to

make profitable things and know how to make fun successful things. So you are more likely to get a Halo game from this new Activision Studio than you ever were necessarily getting it from a studio that was constantly getting drip-fed direction from the higher-ups. I'm not saying it's going to work out, but... Flip it with Bethesda and Obsidian, because I do think it is funny. Like, Bethesda should be in, somehow in Obsidian, the studio that actually ships video games. Yeah, that's fair.

I think that would be pretty cool. But yeah, I know what you mean. I'm sure there are folks who are listening to this and like, plant, just talk about gears. Like, what is the game? And it's credit to the people who made this game. Again, it's beautiful. This is, I think, the best-looking Xbox game, there is architecture in this game that is playing with Art Deco mixed with like 1950s kind of atomic age design. that is fantastic.

And the chainsawing dudes, I'm sure is fine. And the chainsawing dudes is great. It's just so hard playing the game. I do have to know. Is there an origin story of like, wait, we have these chainsaws and we have these guns? What could we do? Wait a minute. Is that in the game?

Let's say that there is a grocery store slash big box store that is signposts for the first two hours of the game and you eventually get there. You're just waiting. You're just waiting. I wonder what they might sell in that store. That's great. And it's such a bummer to be playing this. And it's a bummer is an understatement.

That that just lives over it. Of holy moly, these people had to make this under such shit circumstances. And the coalition, the team that made it, they've been doing that for years. They've had changes of leadership. is like one of endless problems that they've done. And yeah, maybe we'll be able to talk about it more at some point, but it is, it is a weird feeling. There's also the thing where like the layoffs are obviously horrible and also the people who do not get laid off. Now all of a sudden are having to work that much harder being given that many more sort of responsibilities and like

it's a layoffs are such a, such a fucking drain. And obviously, bad for the human beings that are doing it, but just like across the board, it's such a bad sign. We've been doing this for long enough that I don't, I can't think of too many instances where these mass layoffs have happened and then the games that sort of come out after that are like, damn, you can really see the love, you can really see the love that went into this one. Yeah, man, it's just a shit time kind of across the board for the big, for the big dogs, it feels like, yeah.

So, hey, you guys have been playing anything else? We have any emails? Yeah, we have some emails, actually.

We can bring it up a little bit. We have a recommendation. This one comes from Devon. A random recommendation. I know a lot of you talked about Ui RPGs before and I wanted to put forward database detective

minor crimes division on your radar. The game is neat because it's a UIRP about solving incredibly minor crimes for an absurd police state, but it also teaches

you SQL database language, which is actually a really good technical skill to have. As a currently unemployed person, it's been a great resource to learn something I can add to my resume. It's like Math Blaster for adults.

That sounds fucking great. That does sound good. I love that. I like programming in games. I like, you guys, what was the quadrilateral cowboy? Oh, yeah. God damn, that was a fun game.

Yeah. Closest I can get is like Zelda building stuff in tiers of the game. kingdom, which I realize is not necessarily programming, but feels a little bit in kind of in the ballpark of it. Brooke wrote in to say, plant, I felt the same way about three houses as in the context of plant, not getting into Fire Emblem.

I tried twice, but I can't get into all the systems in time. If you still want to give Fire Emblem a shot, I can recommend Fire Emblem Awakening. This was the first Fire Emblem I played, and so far, it's the only one that I stuck with until the end. It's a lot more linear. You can turn off Permadeth. I think this is one of the first series, first in the series to offer that. And I really like the simplicity of unit cohesion.

It also has time babies, so there's that. Yeah, you have babies, and then they time travel to become adults instantly, so you can use them in fights. It's a very novel, novel video game concept. I love Awakening. Yeah, it's so fucking good. I think I like Fates better as, I don't know, as a story in the units, but I really, really appreciate how Awakening is just the one game.

Yeah. It's just the one game. one game and it does the thing and you get in and you get out. I should just put this on the AYN Thor. Oh yeah, dog. I can play this right now. You can play this right now if you want. So you have a game cartridge for it.

Absolutely. Yeah, I'll tape that one to the back of the AYN. Yeah. Good. Yeah, sure. Last question. This is a good one. Question for the besties. If you didn't have to keep up with the pace of the show and didn't have access to a

gaming PC, which platform would you make your default? Switch 2 with a bullet. Genuinely, it's just a question of like, I play games almost entirely on handheld. Usually, like, when my kids are doing something else, and I have, like, a few minutes, like, my gaming time is very, very rarely, like, I got a couple hours.

I'm going to strap down and put, like, I'm using the Rog AlliX, and if I'm not using the Rock AlliX, I'm using the Switch 2. Switch 2 is also, like, more affordable than the other ones, I think. and like pretty surprisingly beefy and more versatile and I would say if you don't have a gaming PC which is the case in this example the switch to is now getting like a shitload of PC games finally coming to switch because it can run it so it does sort of check that box as well I would

agree I remember before the Steam Deck came out whenever we would get emails asking which platforms we wanted code for almost always whenever it was an option we would pick switch just because the convenience of it and the portability. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Honorable mentions? So I'll talk about what we got coming up for Restes.

People want to listen to this in a little bit. We've been playing that normal golf game, y'all. Luke Muscat is the... You should say what it's actually called. Normal golf game? What is it actually? Is it just normal golf game? Yeah, it's called normal golf game?

Yeah. Normal golf game. You're right. Yeah, it's called normal golf game. So quick to cut me, Anthony! Well, people wouldn't know. If they didn't know that was a game, you would think that you were just talking about a normal golf game. That's fair. Luke Moskatt made or was partly responsible for Fruit Ninja in Jetpack Joy Ride. And normal golf game, I believe, is his like first truly independent project. He has been documenting this on YouTube. And this. This. game, at first you're going to look at it and think, oh, it's a Bennett Fadi style game. I think like getting over it, uh, where you're going to just get very frustrated and the humor and fun of the game is like just bashing your head over and over and over again against a wall.

That is not what this is. This is, as the title suggests, an actual normal golf game. As in it kind of plays like golf. And we will talk about what that means and why I think it is so special on Restes. Yeah, I'm excited. I just dipped into it and it's been a lot of fun. I will talk about a non-gaming thing. Survivor started again. This is Season 51. And I want to share to you what my favorite thing to do at the beginning of a Survivor season is.

I can't wait to hear this. I love nothing more than falling asleep during early episodes of a Survivor season. Interesting. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the total... It's overload. There's so many characters. There's so many new people.

Anytime there's ever a challenge and suddenly they're running and untying things and trying to build a puzzle, if it's 9.30 or later at night, I am asleep on the couch. And it is the most restful sleep of my life. There's nothing going to wake me. And then as the season progresses, I stay up and I'm like, more and gay. Oh, I remember that person or was that a dream I had? know. But it's still, this is not a knock on the show. I think the show is still great and very investing. And, uh, I'll have to wait and see before I'll still. Jeff is promising permanent.

Jeff has lost his goddamn mind and someone needs to step in and intervene. And it's the people who are working under him are doing him a great disservice by not taking him by the shoulder. And say things like open era is fucking nothing. You can't just say the new thing we're doing this year is that anything we've done in past years might show up this year. You mean like fucking always, like how it's always, always, always been? Permanent uncertainty is what he,

he said it like six or seven times before I fell asleep. You roll up and you're in exile island. Gotcha. Gotcha. You're in exile. Didn't think we'd hit you with exile, did you? I guess not, but I guess it's been a while. Griffin.

This is what marketing it, positioning the season to feel like a brand new thing. Well, there's certain things also of like, at one point in the pilot, in the first episode of this, season, everybody's gathered there, he's like, we're going to leave it up to you guys. We hear a lot that people don't like the firemaking challenge. If you don't watch Survivor, this is when they get down to the final four. The winner of the immunity challenge is going to

the final three. They pick someone to come to the final three and the other two people have to make fire making challenge to decide who's the third person that goes to the finale, to the jury, what have you. People don't like the firemaking challenge. So we'll leave it up to you guys. Right now, firemaking challenge is in. If there's a unanimous decision among the 24 of you or whatever that you don't want it then we'll get rid of it and like five people raise their hands like

yeah I'd like to get rid of it I'd like it to be a straight up vote and he's like see audience so shut the fuck up see Reddit suck my butt yeah stop coming up to me in the street at Costco and yelling at me because clearly I was right the whole time

and what do you guys think should we get rid of all advantages because Reddit said mean things it's like dude you got to unplug you got a sweet gig and the show is still very fun. You got to stop. You got to stop letting it get to you.

Yeah, he's written a few, too many comments there. I guess so. I'll talk about another reality program I've been enjoying, which is Physical 100 Mexico. This is one of the first international spinoffs of Physical 100, which is a Korean reality competition show where 100 people who are fit in all kinds of different ways, weightlifters, who are huge.

Jimnists who are not as huge. A lot of CrossFit people all come together and in a very high production value series of physical challenges, winnow themselves down until they pick a winner. It's a fucking killer show that is truly, truly one of the best produced reality competition shows ever. The set pieces are insane. The cinematography is like off the charts. There is currently on Netflix, Physical 100 Mexico and Physical 100 Italy. and just reading online,

it sounded like the Physical 100 Mexico was more enjoyable. Are they, like, regionally produced? So is it all, like, people speaking Spanish in the Mexico? Yes, yeah. So it's regionally produced in Mexico, but it is a, it is like a,

they credit the original show, like, at the end credits. And it feels exactly. Yeah, sure. Like, it feels exactly. It's like everyone loves Raymond being ported over. Yeah, and the challenges so far have been, like, identical to the challenges

in the first season of Physical 100. But it's just such a, kick-ass idea for a show because you get a hundred people in a room who are and the original show really helped me kind of come to terms with this body dorks like there's there it's it's really truly like when you reach that level of focus on athleticism it's you're a dork about it and people like saying like damn man great huge body yeah and being like i don't know like cool to each other about that especially in like the team-based challenges i don't know there is a unity that comes It's their trains, basically.

It's their trains. And it's just, again, like, just a fucking rad show to look at. Mystico is a luchador Mexican wrestler who's done some AEW stuff as well, shows up as one of the hundred. And watching, like, watching him in his mask, like, doing shit is, like, pretty rad also. It's just seeing all these people from all these different disciplines competing. It's just great. I think that's what I would be as a. Mexican wrestler if I wanted.

I don't think that's how it works. But like, because you can walk down the street and be fine. Like, I wouldn't be mobbed. That's, you would because you'd have the mask. No,

no, I would take the mask off to be incognito. Oh, okay. They do take that very serious. I know. But like, they're not wearing the mask

in their normal everyday lives. Yeah, that's true. Because people don't know. You're saying a lot of shit right now that I feel like you have not researched or. No, I think I don't actually.

Yeah. No, no, no. I think I have it. But yeah, I'm digging it. We're about halfway through the season, and it's pretty sick. I think that's it for this episode of the besties. Thank you so much for listening.

Chris, you want to talk about what we talked about this week? This week, we talked about Control Resonant, Gears of War Ede, normal golf game that is the title, Survivor, which is back, and Physical 100 Mexico. Rad. Cool. A rad lineup. Thank you for listening. And thanks to our patrons for supporting us over at patreon.com slash the besties. If you go there, you can support us very directly and also get access to episodes of the resties,

where Russ and Chris talk about games that we didn't have time for here on the core show. And also our monthly bracket battle episodes where we get a guest on to decide incredibly inane sort of tournament-style questions. Like which video game healing item probably tastes the best? That is coming at you first week of October, so pretty soon. Monday. It's coming at you Monday. Tuesday. We got special guest, Jordan Morris on Tuesday.

Patreon.com slash the besties is where you can go to become a member. Do you want to thank some of our backwards? I would love to. We have Bobby D. We have Joe K. We have Marcos O. And we have C-Bass. Incredible.

We love you all. We love you. Thank you. Hey, next week, next Friday, October 9th. We're going to be at the town hall in New York City, and we're going to be doing our very first live show. And I can't wait. I'm very excited for what we've got lined up.

It's going to be very fun. You can go to bit.ly slash besties on Broadway. There's still a few tickets available. We'd love to see you. Come out, watch the show. It's going to be a great time. Next week, Wizard Annie. It's Star Wars Galactic Race.

We are somehow both doing a live show and releasing a broadcast on that very same day. I don't know how we're doing it. I don't know how we're going to do it. But it's going to happen. And I'm looking forward to this one. So join us next week on the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties!