The Besties - In The Alters, Life Comes at You Fast

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

The Alters is one of the year’s most interesting games, blending experimental sci-fi narrative with a clever management simulation. The Besties talk about how the game’s mechanics clock together, why the story deserved more space, and what makes the developers’ use of AI so irritating. Plus, Plante played an awesome Persona/SMT spin-off 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!

It really does sound like you're in a haunted house. It feels like they're, they're, they want to be part of the show. It added a whole real surreal lynching quality to the conversation, like a telltale heart sort of like the ship is creaking beneath us sort of vibe. Just keep in mind, Rachel, according to Rachel, none of this stuff is audible, at least in my audio file. So if we reference it, she had to like physically add it back into the audio file.

There is no way it today is. I think in the past it's softer. This is the, no dude, this is the craziest it's been. It got worse, it got much worse. It truly sounds like you are being like on the Titanic and you are working the halls. Yeah. And I, and this is not, we're not saying that,

you know how sometimes we start saying things in a funny cold open way that's like, well, this must be the cold open, this isn't that. I mean, it probably will be because it's so real and raw, but like, this is it for this. We haven't counted those. We haven't even counted. We're gonna have to count after,

so they have to sink into verse. But how do you sink something that already happened? Do you know what I mean? Like you're on some Tenet shit right now, and I'm having trouble following you. Griffin, have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon? I don't, I've never really quite understood what that meant.

Exactly, Griffin, and you never, ever, ever, ever, ever will. Is that what she says in the song? And you never will. You never fucking will. Keep digging, bro. Keep digging. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best Persona Shin Megami Tensei spin-off

of the week, but it's not the main game of the week and I'm throwing to my boy, Fresh Dick! My name is Russ Fresh Dick. I know the best game of the week. A lot of syllables all around for everybody today. Hey, welcome to Besties. It's a video game clubhouse. You've walked inside, you've gotten a punch to enjoy,

you've slipped off your shoes, you've put them back on because it's not that kind of party, baby. Nope. And you're gonna enjoy some great video game content. Now, how did you join the club? Well, you're listening, that's it, that's how you joined. We're gonna be talking about a new video game this week. It's called The Alters.

And Chris Plant, what's that? The Alters is a management game in which you manage clones of yourself. That's right. You are in outer space. You are trying to solve a sci-fi mystery while also reflecting on all of the little choices you could have made that made for a different life. And you're doing that with the help of the plot of multiplicity. That's it. Yeah, that's basically it.

Yeah, and we're gonna talk more about it. Not that there's that much more to say, but we'll talk more about it right after this. Okay, I know we have to talk about the altars. Very important. But before we do that, I wanna talk about the time I was in the shower. Yeah. Okay.

Good. May I be excused from the story? No, you need to be part of the shower. Yeah. Okay. Good. May I be excused from the story? No, you need to be part of the story. The year was 2021, I think, somewhere around there. Something like that. And I was taking a shower. And you know, sometimes, you know what? There's even a subreddit dedicated to this,

the idea of a shower thought. And a shower thought- I had Ross taking a shower. Dedicated to me taking a shower. The idea of a shower thought came into my head and it was, what if you had a hand towel and it said, you dried in Dark Souls font. Yeah.

And it took three years to make it happen, but bless McKay on the team for executing it on it. Towels are so hard to make. I do not know how you make a towel. Yeah, I don't know. And these things have been absolutely flying off the shelves. Genuinely, they did sell out the first time they were in the store, and we have a restocking of it.

They're extremely good, folks. We couldn't even promote it the first time. It sold out so quickly. So if you want a hand towel that says, you dried in Dark Souls font, I guess don't sue us, Namco. And you may be thinking that you can do it yourself, but it took us three years. So get comfortable.

Now, I was really the creative director on this project. I had nothing to do with the execution, but I'm glad that it exists and that you could just Google Dark Souls, I don't know, Dark Souls. It's in the merch store, the Macroid merch store. Yeah, and that link is- You dried towel should narrow it down.

It's Macroidmerch. Yeah, and that link is. You dried towels should narrow it down. It's macroidmerch.com. All right, thank you. So the Alters is not quite like any other video game I've ever played. I'd say it's mechanics and narrative kind of unroll together, but as Chris alluded to, you are on a space station that's populated and crewed by clones sort of of yourself.

You can think of these clones due to a bunch of sci-fi nonsense that really doesn't, it doesn't quite their explanation. It doesn't really make sense, but do some sci-fi nonsense. They're branching points in your life where if you had made a different decision, the science of this world, this quantum computer and this thing called the womb will let you switch that moment in time. So you made a different decision. Maybe you stood up to your dad when he was being me and your mom, and maybe you stayed in school instead of dropping out. And that creates a new branching timeline for yourself. This, uh, the scientific magic in the game lets you create a clone that made a different

choice at that point and is thereby has a different life Experience and for our gameplay purposes a different skill set It's like if Gwyneth Paltrow could have pulled Gwyneth Paltrow through this lighting door Right into her own world on the other side of the door. Yes, never seen the movie But that's what the altars is and also if when Gwyneth Paltrow did that she was like Oh, you bought a computer that day, and now you're really good at hacking. And then somebody else is like,

oh, you stepped in a rain puddle that day, and now you're a marine biologist. And also the Gwyneth Paltrow that you pulled through the door would be like, fuck you, I hate you other Gwyneth Paltrow, and he'll be like, here, eat some spaghetti, it's my mom's recipe. You know how Wayman Wang is,

he runs a laundry machine place in one reality and another reality he's a soldier. This is like that, except there's like eight different realities or 10 or 12 or 15 or however many, where he's made different branching choices that have made him have different careers, like doctor or miner or refiner or whatever. And these like, as you create these different identities

and you research these different clones of yourself, you both have to like use them in a mechanical sense where they use their skillset to help you crew this spaceship that will hopefully help you, you know, do your science mission. But you also have to deal with them as people, as characters. It's like human beings that are adjusting to the very weird circumstance of being a clone.

Yeah, it's a little bit Sims and a little bit just like No Man's Sky resource gathering. Yeah, I had not put together the everything everywhere all at once connection, but yeah, it's extremely, extremely there. Yeah. Yeah, so the actual gameplay of it, it has a rough start. Let's talk about that, because I do think the game

gets much, much, much, much, much better. Yeah, you're on a crashed ship, the only survivor of the crashed ship, and you find your base, your headquarters intact. You make it there, you're the only one alive, but the sun is going to come and destroy the surface of the planet and kill you in 10 days.

Fortunately, your base is a giant wheel that can drive away from the sun. Right, I did not recognize that at first. I thought, damn man, I've almost blown through all my 10 days and all I've done is get enough biological material to make food slime. I'm fucked, but then it turns out that's just kind of the tutorial,

and then there is more game after that. Yes, so the beginning is tough because it is a game about accumulation. And Hoops, we were talking before we even recorded this about the idea of like incremental games. And the more you invest in it, the more it plays itself. So at the beginning, you have to do all the manual work. So you are just cleaning up the base, getting food, setting up rooms, you're having to go out and mine different resources, you're having to set up these beacons that create power supplies

between your base and the mining stations that are elsewhere in the world. Exploring the world itself is a little bit confusing. It's just a lot to intake. And then on top of that, you're laying in a lot of heavy narrative lifting, which is the, the here's the magical trick that makes all this sci fi goobledy goop work. Right. It's a lot to ask of the player, which is why if you do end up playing this game, I encourage you to get past that hour because then once you do get into it, who can you explain how the game works when when the game game actually starts? Okay. So at this point, I'm in the sort of second act of the game, I've moved the ship a couple of times. And I think that structurally, it seems like you come across a big obstacle.

That keeps you from moving forward and then you have to solve that. And then you'll move on to the next sort of like big section. Currently I have four clones of. Yon the lead character. I have a minor, a refiner, a scientist, and a technician. And the four of them are, I have a lot of different jobs. There's different types of mining stations that I have on the planet that mine different types of resources.

There is an infirmary on the ship that can be staffed by a doctor. There's a lab that needs to be staffed for research. There's a kitchen that needs to be staffed for cooking. There's refinery, a greenhouse where plants are being grown. And basically I'm moving these cats around, having them figure out what tasks are important for them to do. And you're kind of always under the gun of the sun

is inching towards you and you need to move before you get fried. So it's like balancing the quality of life of your clones with the how quickly you need to get the thing, the thing underway. So idle or incremental is not quite, it's not quite accurate because like, it is more of a resource management game

because you will die if you are not fast enough. So there's always a growing like a team. It's almost like FTL in that way rather than like you can't just leave it alone and have it do its thing. It requires like a lot of hands on time. Yeah. And the narrative is is is constantly kind of evolving in what seems like a really sort of organic way where just you see a couple of your alters like arguing with each other in the kitchen and you'll get like a little pop up on your HUD and you'll go in and see what they're talking about. And sometimes it's mechanical.

Sometimes it's one of the alters thinks that you should curb your resources and the other one thinks that you should let everybody sleep more because it would be better. And you have to make that decision. And maybe you're gonna piss one of those alters off and make the other one happy.

So you have to like moderate their mood. And there's sort of this idea is if you, and this is sort of Persona Lock, I guess, but if you progress the relationship enough with the alter, you eventually learn like a lesson from them. And that lesson is mechanical in the sense that like upgrades your character in some meaningful way. So you like learn the thing that you're supposed to learn

from them. Like it feels like a traditional like squad based RPG in that way, just because they're clones kind of doesn't matter. Cause they all have pretty divergent storylines based on where those split in their memory happened. And so you just treat them as characters and oh, this one's good at this,

and this one's good at this. Which I think conceptually is like incredibly unique. I think conceptually it kicks a lot of ass. I am impressed that they were able to kind of like achieve what they achieved with this like branching pathway of your life clone idea. But I do feel like the idea is maybe a little bit more ambitious than they could tell in a story. I feel like there's a lot of,

like you'll be watching a cut scene that will suddenly jump to like a slideshow with like a little bit of dialogue over it and I get that there are certain like, you have to take certain shortcuts to tell a story with like an infinite web of potential guys. It feels budget driven rather than like, there's some narrative reason for this to be a cinematic right now.

It seemed like there were several characters talking at once and we're just not gonna animate that. Yeah, and outside of the little scenes that you get with them that they do not come across as particularly vibrant characters. Yeah, I will also say, and I should have mentioned this earlier, there is another big aspect of this

that is like, there is a open world sort of that you are exploring, not open world, it's very structured, but it's like, um, there is a open world sort of that you are exploring, not open world. It's, it's very structured, but it's like, you can theoretically go wherever in this individual area, but, uh, where you are finding resources, sort of marking them, collecting them, building resource collection things, um, and exploring. And there's some sort of like, not similar to enemies. There's some like sort of pseudo enemies that similar to enemies, there's some like, sort of pseudo enemies that you can find and deal with

that you can collect resources from. So this is like a more active mechanic that only you can do. Your alters can't go out and like explore and find stuff. That's just you. The map is very unappealing at first, I will say, but you are able to add fast travel points to it when you create big structures out in the world, like automatic, automatic, automatic, like mining stations.

If you build one of those out in the world, then you can fast travel to it anytime you leave the ship, but it has to be powered. So what ends up happening is you build like actual power grids across this island. And so like navigating this pretty confusing twisty turny map is made a little bit more manageable by the fact that like you can actually,

you can look out the ship and look at your power grid and see like, okay, it stops there. Like that is the area that I have not really fully explored yet. You can also usually find your ship, if you look around, it's big, it looks like a huge ass ring in the dirt. I didn't find the running around outside stuff to be super compelling.

I mean, eventually, as Justin alluded to, you like, there's some evil clouds that you need to fight, which adds some complexity to it, but it feels fine, but like, I actually found the like, doing the stuff in the base far more compelling. Like the other stuff felt like added on.

Yeah, I think so too. I think that a lot of games just will give you the, just give you the sort of headquarters science lab simulation side of things, a la Fallout Shelter without necessarily. Or even like a la This War of Mine. Right, yeah sure. The same, which, I mean, Justin, you were saying there's not a lot of games like this.

Like, that's a kind of a direct one-to-one. It feels like they brought over a lot of the design base building stuff into this, but added on top of it. I didn't hate the exploration stuff once I was able to like build a grappling, like a climbing hook. And once you get some of the tools that- Yeah, I didn't hate it.

It just didn't feel super compelling. It does an interesting job of making you feel like you're having to manage your time and your resources. I think it's a decent, you always feel a little bit of that pressure of, God, I'm really far out here, and I'm not sure I can make it back, or I'm not sure I can make it back or,

I'm not sure I have enough energy to like climb back the way I came or something that could be interesting. Yeah, I agree with that. I just like the fact that you can in the, when you're back at the base, it is like quasi 3D. It's like a 2.5 D and it just adds like a little bit of depth, like literal depth where you can go in and out of the background of the environments that you're in

and interact with like computer screens and things like that. I thought that was, it felt very fluid. It very much reminded me of Shadow. Oh, Shadow Complex? Shadow Complex was the Orson Scott card. Yeah, ew, God. Sight scrolling.

The aspect we don't like to focus on. Maybe like Cher, I think, was the developer who had then gone to make Fortnite. Yeah, there's some really fun, it does some really fun stuff with the story. I had a, at one point, the point that I would just reach, the guys decide that they could pick up their spirits by starting a band.

That's a lot of fun. The characters are, the dialogue's interesting because the characters are, like they're all you, in a sense, but obviously they've had very different life experiences. And there's not like a assumed, how can I say this? There's not like an, when you're the protagonist in a game like this, there's an assumed rightness,

like because you are the moral lens through which the rest of the game is told, right? Like, your character is sort of your entryway into this, right, because they're your avatar in the world. And it's weird because the other ones, there's this assumption that they're kind of right, too, in the same way, but you have to keep reminding yourself that they are not your character, right?

That they are a... Another resource you are kind of managing. Right, yes, exactly. And there's like, there's a tension to that. that they're not your character, right? That they are a... Another resource you are kind of managing? Right, yes, exactly. And there's like, there's a tension to that whenever you're talking to one of them where like, they are, there's a couple of times where they bump up against their own unreality,

and that is like, can make a lot of the conversations really interesting, I think, and like gives them an interesting heft. Yeah, I wanna talk about the scope and like the challenge of making a game like this and even playing a game like this, which you mentioned some things that look really nice, like the the shadow complex style look inside, but then randomly we will be thrown into these 2D sliding comic cut scenes. Or sometimes the world looks like absolutely beautiful and scenic. And the other times where you turn a corner in all the craggyness and you have found yourself

in an Xbox 360 game. Right. And I just think making a game like this is such a challenge because I mean, in playing it, it's frustrating almost to play a game like this because I mean in playing it it's frustrating almost to play a game like this because I can sense where it's making decisions to create a sustainable version of itself I guess to not become a like triple-a version of this game and at the same time it still clearly wants to look triple-a it still wants people to have like. It still wants to be able to have like its trailer

and its any given image look like a AAA game. And I almost like a to a detriment where I wish that it could have been a bit more simplistic in how it looks and in the world that you are in and really, really just focused on the story and all the stuff that you're talking about hoops because I I enjoy that you can feel this thing. Where that is clearly where their interest is that is clearly where their investment is and yet there is some pressure for it to. Look and feel bigger then they necessarily have like the time or the resources for and I don don't know the answer because they probably know much better than I do of

if they had made this game look like a game I loved last year, 1000X Resist or Strike Resist or whatever, would it have like found its audience? I don't know. Like I really don't know. People say they want games that look like Mortis, but I don't know if that's actually true. For me, the visuals weren't like the part where the shortcomings were sort of more visible as much as it was like the speed at which I think they had to kind of tell the story since it was as,

you know, open-ended as it was. Talking about sort of like the budgetary concerns also does bring up the fact that they were sort of caught using AI-generated, I think like background text and translation. Yeah, some of the, in the game when it released, I think it has been patched out, but in the game when it released, I think it has been patched out, but in the game when it released,

there were like literal AI prompts in some of the like, sciency. It's like generate some sciency dialogue for us, which is bad. Yeah, the one I saw was like, okay, you got it. The Nano Weave of the, yeah. Which they did cop up to. They did.

It does give me pause, because it tells me like, I don't know, they said it was a tiny, tiny percentage of the overall. I don't know for sure how much was generated. So it does give me some hesitation. You also have to mark that, like Steam has a notification specifically for games that have a notification.

Here's a solution to this. It's called Lormipsum. This has been something that people have been using for a long time to use as fill text. I think for my read, the only reason you wouldn't use that is in case you're like, well, we might forget. Just in case you forget. That's why you do TKTK in capital letters.

It's very visible. Yeah, you can't miss that. I, Luke Plunkett over at Aftermath wrote a story called I'm Getting Really Tired of Not Being Able to Trust That a Video Game Doesn't Have AI Crap in It. And I think that is a lot of the vibe right now with this where it's like, it's coming into a game like this that is made by a developer and publisher

that has made like some really great stuff. I think like tends to make stuff that is like human and existential. They should do Frostpunk, all thepunk stuff. They do frostpunk, they publish indica, you know. It's just, it's a, it is extremely frustrating and it's especially frustrating when the steam warning doesn't help, right? Like people are supposed to be able to use that. It just sucks. It's also just leading to a lot of like, I feel like I see this now in other games where people don't like the writing.

It's this assumption of like, well, I'm sure it's AI crap. Oh dude, the fucking like, what is it? Voight-Kampff tests. It's the having to run the numbers on every single thing, that every asset that you see at every word, it sucks, it's not every word, it sucks. It's not. Well, good news.

I know for sure that split fiction was not written by AI. All right. Man, I missed a fucking zesty episode. I was not here for the split fiction. Let's do that one again, man. I would love to continue being right about split fiction while the internet burns around us. I really, this game is kind of heartbreaking for me because I really think it's a cool idea

and I really think they did some cool stuff with how they told this like incredibly branching story and explored this really interesting sci-fi prompt. But there, I don't know, there's a lot of parts of it that just felt like not quite fully fleshed out enough. And I think maybe to fully flesh out the ideas in such an ambitious prompt would be, maybe fiscally impossible or whatever.

I think it also is harsh for us as well because we're coming off of Death Stranding, which does some similar things in terms of like automation and like resource management, things like that. And obviously that is like a massively, massively huge budget game. So, but they're both doing some more things. So it's, it can be a little bit tricky.

Hey, let's take a break. Second half of the show, we have a handful of questions. This comes from our Patreon people. Thank you for being members. Uh, we're going to read some of your questions because we love you. We love everybody, but Patreon members would like you for being members. We're gonna read some of your questions because we love you. We love everybody, but Patreon members would like you a lot.

I don't love everybody. I don't love everybody. That's insane, dog. I meant everyone who listens to the show. I'm not even gonna own that because what if some real creepozoids check it out one time? Oh no. You know what I mean?

Most of the folks who listen to our shows seem amazing. I'm not gonna say every single one of them. Right. You know what I mean? There's of the folks who listen to our show seem amazing. I'm not gonna say every single one of them. Right. You know what I mean? There's always a few bad apples ruining the bunch. That's fair. This first letter comes from Tokyo. As people who notoriously don't finish games,

what is a good way to stick with the games I love but fall off towards the end? I don't know why you would say we notoriously don't finish games and then ask us how to do the thing we notoriously don't. Yeah, how about notoriously just leave us alone? I think it's just pick it up. For me, it's just pick your battles.

Cause yeah, I mean, you're right. We don't necessarily have time to finish a lot of games. So I pick a few, I'm gonna be Death Stranding. I'm working my way through it, but you can't. It's inconvenient when the game that you fall in love with and decide to finish is a 120 hour long Japanese game. You can't do everything. It's inconvenient when the game that you fall in love with and decide to finish is a 120 hour long Japanese role playing game.

Like there is a certain extent to which I do the same thing, make those choices of like, okay, I'm gonna see this through. But sometimes. You can also like, if you're saying it falls off towards the end, just watch it on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. I really, I think that there's a real value to that.

You get the gist of it. That's great. You know what I mean? Especially if it's the narrative you care about, you don't need to click attack a thousand times. Just go see, you know, which dragon has sex with which dragon or whatever. I also reach a point in games.

I'm usually kind of a completionist when it comes to like RPGs and stuff. But I will, if I hit a point where I'm like, I'm feeling like the spark is gone a little bit, I will just bum rush the ending as quickly as I possibly can. Sure, yeah. And usually like, it turns out okay.

Drop it down to easy. Yeah. Sure. Why not? Okay, this next question comes from Nicholas. With how terrible Steam and the rest of the stores are for searching, how do you discover worthwhile games that aren't huge, talked out releases? I'll give you two methods that I use. One of them isn't as useful, but it's useful for me.

It has been, at least. I found a lot of stuff through my Instagram ads. This is not an ad for Instagram, like fuck Instagram, but I have seen just like- My answer is my TikTok algo will show me clips from streamers that I do not follow, but like knows that I like games and shit. And so it will all occasionally see a clip

from some streamer playing a game. And I'll be like, that looks fucking great. The other methodology that I use is SteamDB, steamedb.com I guess, allows you to search by release date and cross-reference by like user rating. So I'll frequently like scrub that and maybe it's only like 800 people playing it, but they all fucking love it.

And I'll usually just like look into that and see if it's worth doing. I also get a lot from these guys. That's the truth. Yeah, the besties podcasts. Yeah. This question comes from Young Padawan. Did any of you at any point in your youth

ever go, wanna go into game development as a career quote, when you grew up? I feel like growing up, our parents were super supportive of any career path. Too supportive, some might say, which is why two of the three of us went to school for, and got theater degrees. But there was nothing off limits, right?

But like, we were like, we wanna be actors, comedians. They're like, yeah, go for it. I was like, I'm gonna be a youth pastor for a minute. They were like, we wanna be actors, comedians. They're like, yeah, go for it. I was like, I'm gonna be a youth pastor for a minute. They were like, yeah, dude, shoot your shot. The thought of being a game developer never crossed my mind. I don't think even for a second because I had literally zero exposure to a game. I don't think I knew how games got made.

Right. And so the idea that I would do it as a job simply didn't register to me, which is wild so far as I used to make my own little games in QBasic, like Text Adventure, Multiple Choice, Choose Your Own Adventure Games in QBasic, and like fucked around with RPG Maker so hard. And I literally, those neurons in my brain

never connected of like, you could go to school and learn how to do this and go somewhere good. A lot of game development for, though at that age for us seemed like it was happening in Japan. Like I, there was very little of that that seemed like an American thing that was happening. The only thing, like the only notable examples I could think of are like PC stuff that was like,

you know, your Sierras and things like that were definitely, but I don't know. I think about it a lot now. I think about what it would be like to possess that skill set and what that fucking grind would look like now with some envy, sliding doors. I could grab that neuron in my womb. You've had some discussions, right, Griffin?

I mean, I've fucked around with Unity and, you know, Godot and all that shit. I like to goof around with that stuff, but it is extraordinarily time consuming, and I simply do not have any time. So it's like a hobby or interest that I will plug into for like a couple weeks, and then I'm currently way off of it, so.

Always seemed like a lot of math to me, you know? Yeah, they've ameliorated a lot of that now, but it seemed like it was only math back then. Yeah, it seemed really overwhelming. We have one last question. This comes from Patrick. What do your physical game collections currently look like?

The idea of quote, more clutter in my life is not appealing, but the idea of digital only games that could disappear down the corporate memory hole also has me concerned. Yeah, that's a tough one. That's a valid concern. I do think that there's stuff happening out there to prevent like. Don't worry about the second one.

Yeah. Hey, come close. Yeah. Don't worry about the second one. Yeah. We got it. We got it. Hey, come close. Yeah. Don't worry about the second one. We got it. We got it. We got it.

We got it. We got it. Just listen, listen. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. Did you just knock your water over?

We got it. Also, you leaned in close to the camera, nobody could see you. We got it. Yeah, this is not a... You guys can see me. As you tell me so many times on this show, this is not a camera product, man.

That was for you. That was for me. Okay, okay, okay. I have my Game Boy Advance collection right here on my sort of bookshelf that I have next to my desk. And then literally everything else is a big stack in the closet. Yeah, Griffin's running to show the closet.

Yeah. Oh my God, it's overflowing with stuff. So, I would, okay. I legitimately have so, like, I maybe have eight physical video games. Yeah. At this point in my life, I think I've, I used to collect, I made a run where I was trying

to collect all of the FMV games physically. I wanted to collect all of like the FMV, all the Sega CD, Saturn, PC, all the FMV games. And then I had a depressive episode and I was like, this is fucking stupid, why am I wasting my time with this? But then I got rid of a lot of that. But actually weirdly for that, do not disagree with that was still a good choice

because I donated it to a retro game club in my area for kids. So that was great. And that kind of got the ball going for me where I was like, well, if I don't want those things, I don't think I want the other physical games either. So I really started divesting a lot. The ones that I kept are the ones where

the physical object has some value to me. Like I have, let me shut, hold on. I have one game in a box. Let me grab, it's perfect I have to get up. And now Chris, you won't be able to show us anything because you have green screened out your background into the Beauty and the Beast ballroom, I think. Which I've never, it's funny, you've done it a few times now

and I don't think any of us have ever asked you why. And I don't know if that means, if that's a good thing or a bad thing that we've never inquired why you have the Beauty and the Beast background. You know what, I didn't even notice until you said it. You're kidding me. Because you've been sort of phasing in and out of it

for this entire recording. Oh, he's back. I'm looking at myself. Oh, look, he's back. Thank God he's here to save me. What we got? So we got Glittermint and Grove here. All right, boxed, unopened, games for we got Glittermint and Grove here. All right, boxed, unopened, Games for Windows,

Glittermint and Grove. What is that? Well, this is Frog Fractions 2. Oh, yeah. So this is one of the very few, I think, this is like a Kickstarter award, was your physical box copy of Glittermint and Grove. So stuff like this.

It says on the top, it does say Frog Fractions 2. So it kind of blows the truth about it. Doesn't it say Frog Fractions 2 on the top? It does. On the inside, behind the sleeve, it says Frog Fractions 2. So it's like, if you wanna. Yeah, you gotta know.

Lumiere needed something. I'm more or less in the same boat as Justin. I have very, very few. A lot of that is just like living in an apartment. I don't have the space for it, but also I don't like physical media because people talk about like the store shutting down, which is a valid concern.

They do shut down. I'm more concerned about like me losing things. I just like lose the, hey, that's like a store shutting down is when I lose things. So yeah, I'm not worried, you know, if a, if Steam, I don't know, I don't want to say if Steam shuts down because we're really fucked then. But if like a store shuts down because it's been 30 years, yeah, I think you will be able to find those games in other locations.

Yeah. For a lower price. What do you got there, Chris? What is this? I don't know how to turn off my background. You got to have every single... You want to know why it's on the envelope, but it turns into the beat. What do you got there Chris? What is this? I don't know how to turn off my background. You want to know why it's on?

It's a manila envelope but it turns into the beauty in the beast ballroom every time you rip it up. Guys this is just a tale as old as time. When I pull out this manila envelope, let's see what I find inside. I find this video game. It's a Jason Rohr game. The Diamond Trust of London. For DS. And I find these potentially illegal diamonds that were sent via the mail with a copy of that game.

Because as a truly disturbed and strange political statement in the style of Jason Rohr, he mixed up tiny fragments of diamonds that were real diamonds with blood diamonds and then sent them across state lines with every copy of that game. What a man. Without letting people know about it. Yeah, truly one of the weirdest things and also these stamps. Yeah, I am of the same thing. I collect a lot of what I would call horrors, like things that I worry will be lost in video game history. Another one of these is, do you know that Blackwater, do you remember Blackwater,

the evil military contracting company? Do you know that they made a Kinect game? Cool. Yeah, they made a Kinect game and I have a copy of it. Also, it's right next to Lost Via Domus. Yeah, dude, when are we gonna do our Lost Via Domus discussion? We were gonna, honestly, you know what?

That should be our next specialty episode. People need to play that game, you know? Give it in at the domus. Learn the secrets. Because you don't understand the full story until you've played that game. I think that's why a lot of people didn't connect with the ending. Yeah, you gotta have the context.

Anybody else been playing anything they wanna talk about? You got some weird shit going on, what's up? Yeah, I wanna talk about my thing really quick. Griffin, have you heard about Raidou, the mystery of the soulless army? Do you know about this? Yeah, not to an extent where I have tracked it on down, but I've seen some stuff about it.

I think you're gonna wanna do that. So basically it is a remaster of a PS2 game that is in the Devil Summoner series and a spinoff of the Megami Tensei series. What you really should know is it feels like a spinoff of Person it feels like a spin off of Persona. If you are only familiar with Persona, you're going to see a lot of characters that have appeared in Persona games in this game. The big difference about this game is it is a

action RPG like real time action. And you play as a detective slash devil summoner who is going around Japan in 1931. So I believe that is the Taisho period is what they call it in the game. But you are solving these little mysteries by going around its opening open world meeting different people and kicking demons asses. The cool thing about it is just like in any persona or Megami Tensei game, you collect monsters and you can do it in the middle of a fight. So you'll be like brawling against beast and then you'll pull out your little magic wands and you'll say like, get in this wand. And then the monster will be like, Oh shit, no.

Are like, are you horny for money? And then you get like a series of questions. You no. Are like, are you horny for money? And then you get like a series of questions. You're like, yeah, I am horny for money. And the monster is like- I mean, that's peak SMP shit. Yeah. He's like, cool, because I'm horny for money too. Let's do it, brother.

And then they like hop in your thing. What if you say you're not horny for money? I'll get mad at you. It'll hit you. I went with, I've played enough of these games to know what the monsters usually want to hear. The first two monsters have butts. There's like big there's a lot of lots of well Yeah, that's that's normal. That's normal, too

I just watched a trailer for this game while you were talking about it and in the trailer the main character Gets in a sword fight with a car So I'll definitely be checking this one out as soon as is Humanly possible. Is it an old timey car? Um, yes. It looked like a sort of Model T situation. Okay, yeah. Not like a fun living car like a Morgana from Persona 5, but just a car, like just a car,

man. It does look stunning. Yeah, it's as a remaster. It's really neat in that they spruced up the visuals but from what I can tell they cleaned up the fighting mechanics quite a bit. Everything I've read about this game originally is a big ahead of its time doesn't actually feel good to play has a lot of quality of life issues and playing this version of it you would not sense that it It feels like, I don't know, kind of like a spin-off of a larger series that Atlus makes.

Like it has less resources than Persona, but it still is quite entertaining. And it's just cool to have characters that you are familiar with in Persona following you around in the real world. When you say characters, you mean like the demons, right? Not like Chie fucking- No, the demons, yeah. So it's like, oh, you you mean like the demons, right? Not like Chie fucking blows up. No, the demons, yeah.

So it's like, oh, you know, like the little fairy or the demon with the butt or the demon with the other butt. Who's that little white ghost looking guy with the clown hat? Jack Frost. I mean, they are consistent across the Devil Summoner and Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. Like those are just the Atlas, the Atlas Zoo crew. It's great. I recommend checking it. like those are just the Atlas Zoo crew.

It's great. I recommend checking it. It's also on, it was a good excuse to use my Switch 2, which has been nice. I will have more to say about it, I imagine next week, but I picked up Deltarune as chapters three and four, both dropped, I think, day and date with the Switch 2, although I'm actually playing it on my ROG Ali-X because I can't get the Switch 2 out of Henry's hands.

So in order to play this other game, he's the only one in America, you knew there had to be somebody. I've been playing Deltarune, and I played the first chapter of Deltarune when it first came out, and felt kind of weird about it. It is an episodic sort of structure

that I think I was wanting or expecting to be kind of a sequel to Undertale, because it is created by Toby Fox and looks a lot like Undertale. And it's in the same universe, right? It's sort of in the same universe, but I feel like if you get hung up on that as I was, waiting essentially the whole time while playing it,

like trying to put together the pieces of like, what's actually gonna show up. When it's flowy, gonna show up. Yeah, right? And I was sort of lukewarm on it, and the fact that it wasn't fully out yet because it's episodic was like, well, I may not, I didn't really check out the second chapter

when it came out, but I'm giving it another shot because now it is being sold as Deltarune and there's four of the seven chapters out now. And if you buy this package, you get all of them. Yeah, it will include all of them. It's not like a, you know, it's sort of a, I guess, Walking Dead season, whatever those old Telltale games like that package.

But that said, now that I kind of know what to expect and I am not waiting for it to turn into this other game, and I'm sort of like, I know that the structure is episodic, it is working for me much, much better. And so I am partway through two now and so I haven't even started the new shit. So I don't think anybody would want a full discussion of it, but I'm hoping to be able to do that next week.

Yeah, I'm excited. It's good. It is a good game that I'm really looking forward to playing more of. I've also watched Squig Game. I don't know if you guys have been watching the season three of Squig Game. I haven't know if you guys have been watching season three of Squid Game.

I haven't seen any of Squid Game, which is especially funny, because when I was at Summer Game Fest, there was a character dressed as Squid Game person, I guess. His name is Squid Game. The shape on their face. And they like gave me-

Well, what, do you remember the shape? Because there's Squid Game- An X, I wanna say. X is Dr. Squid Game. Okay. And he's in charge, he's the boss. So Dr. Squid Game gave me a card and was like, here's this card,

but didn't say anything because it was mute. And then put the card on the ground and then gave me another card. And I guess I was supposed to throw the card at the other card to make the other card flip. Yeah. And I did that and then they gave me another card. Yeah.

But that, having no context for what Squid Game as, I mean, I know it's like people die. I mean, you should count your stars so fucking lucky, dude, that you did not end up in a Squid Game. You would not, you would not. You would not have fared well. No. Really? You don't think I'd do well in a Squid Game?

You, no, dude, you definitely. I'm crafty. Oh, you know what, actually, now I say that cause, you definitely. I'm crafty. Oh, you know what, actually, now I say that, because it seems easy. I'm crafty. Because it is his nature, but I feel like he could actually do a pretty good job. He's good at games. You could do the one where they have to punch a cookie out.

If you're looking for people to take down because they're an obvious threat, I don't need to finish the rest of it. You get it. You're saying I'm a goat, is what you're saying. The third and final season of Squid Game just went up on, Squid Games went up on Netflix. I can't do it.

I tried to watch the second one. It's fucking brutal, man. I'm not in a head space. It's truly. I can't, I can't. People didn't like the second season, so does it rally? I'm four out of the six episodes in,

and I don't know, man. It's genuinely just so fucking brutal. It's just so brutal. I think they've done a pretty decent job of creating some great characters this time around. Like there's a lot of people you're rooting for and the end of season two is kind of a cliffhanger halfway through a series of games.

Season three jumps right back the fuck into it and- There was a new shape they introduced. Yes, but like naturally it's a battle royale so like all those characters are gonna die and it is not fun TV a watching. So I don't know, I feel like knowing it's the end of it, I feel like I'm gonna watch these final couple episodes kind of out of obligation because it is not...

You gotta know who wins the game. Doesn't feel amazing. I'm gonna watch these final couple episodes kind of out of obligation because it is not. You gotta know who wins the game. Doesn't feel amazing. I'm feeling pretty smart over here about not watching that. Not watching this quick game. I wanted to say, ever since we had Good Wrestling the program, I've been playing around more with the retro game handhelds, this retro game space and emulation in general, that mess around more with.

And I just wanna say the YouTube space that covers that area has become a real light for me lately. It's been such a pleasant, it's a community that is, it's not sort of caught up with like the business aspects or the current aspects or trends or whatever. It's really about like the joy of experiencing the thing, like how much joy the device of the game is really like bringing you.

There's an earnestness to all these that I think make them a lot of fun to engage with. It seems like they lost a lot of the cynicism that I've become some accustomed with, with gaming coverage and stuff recently. There's one called tech dweeb that is a guy who's basically created a character that lives in his mom's basement and reviews handheld gaming stuff. And it is so endearing and tender hearted and sweet. Obviously gotta recommend Retro Game Core with good Russ.

A huge, super reliable cat for all like retro emulation stuff. Kind of a genius in the space. I wanted to also mention James Channel. Have you ever watched his stuff? Almost certainly. Yeah, so he does a lot of tear downs of old consoles, but also just cheap ripoff consoles. He'll buy crap off Teemu or Alibaba

and just tear it apart and see what's, but there's a respectfulness to it. He'll rehab old, like NES console ripoffs and like make them work again. You get to see the guts of like a virtual boy and stuff like that. It's really fascinating, enthusiastic stuff. So, but that whole like space,

whenever I see new videos pop up in any of those channels, it makes me happy to watch them. So yeah, you should watch those. Wow, James Channel is really just called James Channel. That's a good fucking name, man. It's a good name, man. It's a great name. It's no tech to it.

Tech to me, all of his videos are, you never see his face, you only see his like, tragic orange and black sweatshirt that he wears. And he did, I have to say, a really fantastic face reveal video where it was good Russ in an orange and black shirt. Yeah, that's right. It's been me the entire time.

I've been tech dweeb. It's great. It's really good. As I mentioned earlier, I'm still playing Death Stranding 2. It continues to be like the ultimate my shit. I've really struggled and we didn't talk about it, but this is so, like, this feels like, these two are so close to each other in terms of like,

you know what I'm in the mood for? Kind of like sci-fi, body horror, existential, talking to different versions of yourself, weird things with babies growing up too fast. Just like, I have not known which of these games to pick up. I kind of do it randomly, just like whichever controller I get first. Yeah, there are definitely similarities, but man. First of all, Death Stranding 2 is a much longer game

than I think I was expecting it to be. It just kind of keeps... Music to my ears! It's twice as long as the original stuff before it came out. Did you dodge that? What? You didn't get bombarded by the Kojima like, this is twice as long as the original.

I did not see that news. I was mostly blind on all of that news and now I'm sensing it. I am fine with it because I am genuinely enjoying the game, but I definitely was at a point where I was like I made it to the end of the like side of the island. I was like, okay, yeah, now things are going to like start wrapping up and we're gonna big boss move and then someone came on was like congratulations you've connected 50% of the island I was like oh okay we're hanging in I may not fucking fun though I like playing it into it you know what I did last night what in your honor and I named it the the rush fresh chick honorary Honorary Connection of Zip Lines. Oh, bless you. And it is now spanning the eastern and central eastern side of Australia.

So fantastic. I'm still at a point in the game where I don't know if more of the player base has caught up now because we played it a bit with the pre-release codes. But now when I play, it's the fucking highway. And now when I play, there's just a very helpful interstate highway that I can just kinda hop on and scoot. And it does make the game a lot more smooth and easy going. It's a bit more like a theme park now that people

have started contributing to it. Where I felt like when I played the first one, there came a point where I was like, oh wow, this is so nice. People built roads. This is like really encouraging. And now I sign on last night and I'm trying to build ziplines. I'm like, yeah, I'll do that right after I hit some sweet jumps off of these weird anti-gravity ramps. There is so much little hidden shit in this game. So many surprises resist as best you can the 500 weird things in Death Stranding YouTube videos, because it is such a treat when you come across something that makes no sense in the game. Yeah, they're just for you.

Yeah, it's been fantastic. I'm continuing through it, but it's going to be a little while probably before I wrap the credits. But highly recommend it. Great. Fantastic. Fantastic show. I wanted to thank some people over at the Patreon. We have some new members at the Patreon. We have Mark.

We have Sharif. We have Patrick. And we have TJ. Thank you for being members over at the Patreon. You can go to patreon.com slash the besties. We really appreciate your support. Hey, if you don't, if you're not a member and because you can't spare the money or whatever reason, you don't trust us, I get it.

You can be a free member. Why would you even put that idea like out, out? Put that the ether, man. That was the first thing that I thought of. You can be a free member. Why would you even put that idea like out? Put that in the ether, man. That was the first thing that I thought of. You can be a free member. So you just be a free member and you'll see some posts and things like that. But-

It's a bunch of shit though. It's a bunch of garbage, right Russ? Just a bunch of nothing, man. There's some good stuff that the free people get as well. So that's a good way to kind of dip your toe in. But obviously we also appreciate anyone that wants to throw us some bucks and you get a new bracket episode,

one of which is live right now about the games that should be rebooted. And in fact, here's a clip from that episode. You want to mod Bayou Billy into Mafia III? You can do that. You can do it. Anything is possible. You can do it.

It's in there already. Use the code. Mafia 3 has a city. It's the Bayou city. Yeah, man. He has a good point. There is an Bayou city. Guys, I really do want Russ Fresh Dicks Bayou Billy's Bayou world.

If only Russ made it. Russ has to write it and purposely make it. I want Russ in the meetings like, that's not part of the bayou. That's not the kind of trees that we have in the bayou. That's not bayou. That isn't bayou. That's city. He's like walking up and down like, bayou this up. Need more bayou.

Give that guy more chest hair. That's not even close to bayou. Come on, bayou. But she's going to come back with a Cajun accent. It's going to be so good. You all are what the bayou call lazy incompetent. You know what that means? Oh. All right, man.

Or maybe it's like, huh. I will say this one has the wildest twist of any, this one turns on a dime in a way that none of the bracket episodes have in a way that I could not have anticipated in a million million years. This is true. So, hey, I of any, this one turns on a dime in a way that none of the bracket episodes have in a way that I could not have anticipated in a million million years.

So you'll wanna check it out. Thanks for your support. What are we doing next week? Next week, I think Griffin's talking about Deltarune. Yeah, and someone will probably talk about other games too. I don't think I'm gonna get up there and deliver a book report. Yeah, I think it's gonna be a bit of like

a grab bag episode next week. There's so much cool stuff out right now. Damn, I really wanna talk some more about how you do it. I need to get you to play that, Griffin. I just wanna tell you. I gotta talk about my show. My dance card is pretty fucking full, man. I can talk more about Lord of the Rings Two Towers on PlayStation 2.

Oh, you wanna do that? That sounds nice. We all have really important shit to get to, I think, is the moral of the story. I know we're gonna play Peek 2. Just made my way through Oki. I can't wait to play Peek. We'll see what we got. It's gonna be, it's gonna do it for this week.

On the Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for the Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!