The Besties - Is Avowed Too Good for Our Brains to Comprehend?

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

The Besties discuss Avowed, the new game from Fallout 76 developer Obsidian. It is extremely our shit. Perhaps… too much so? What does that even mean? Listen to find out! 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!

I got one of you guys, this is like the only venue I have for talking about the truly, truly nerdy ways that I've been spending my time lately. Like, this is bad, man. I got, I got a bunch of cables and wires coming to me today that I don't remember what the hell I bought them for. It's a really bad combo. I do see about 600 or 700 Warhammer figurines scattered in the background there. So we're not talking about those. I don't, listen, I don't have a micro center in my town. So I'm kind of building a micro center in my closet. I don't know what wires.

It's gonna be, you're just gonna be subjected to it. I just want to warn you guys about that. Oh boy. It'll be fun though. You guys know what transistors are? Sort of, I know that game Dang it. I was hoping you guys I know like what a transistor is, but what are you gonna? I don't know what it's doing. No, I don't know. I'm I was hoping you guys know

Oh, you're like saying for answers So you when you say you don't have a micro center in your town You thought you could come to the podcast right and then you guys like micro center employees and get some information. You guys wear that glasses. I just told me with trans history. We are your geek squad is what you're saying. Yeah. If you guys wanted to know about how to please someone sexually, I would hope

you would come to me. You started the episode really kind of suggesting that you were the expert, right? Yeah, you did. This is comedy. This is some real comedy. It's a status game. It's a status game.

Yeah. Are you going to tell us what you're building? No? Well, I'm going to save it for the podcast once we start recording. Oh, right, right, right. Yes. Because we're not recording yet.

No, of course not. Don't be silly. Just shoot this stuff. Cable guy! My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Froschek and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club.

And just by listening, my friend, you have become a member. Welcome. Welcome to our illustrious ranks. Today we're going to be talking about- Griffin died. What? Griffin died.

Oh yes, Griffin is- He died. So yesterday on Club House we said he was stuck to the toilet. So I'm worried if the continuity is he is stuck to the toilet and then he died, then that means that we didn't go send someone to retrieve him from the toilet.

And I do believe that he can manage on his own. We do have people for that. No, we have people whose job is entirely to not let Griffin die on the toilet. So we, I... No, Griffin is not with us today, but we are going to be talking about Evowed. Chris Plant, what's Evowed?

Evowed is the latest open world RPG from Obsidian. You might know them from Fallout New Vegas or the Outer Worlds series more recently. People have compared this to their Elden Rings, but I think it's doing a lot of different things, which we'll talk about on the show. Needless to say, I, hey, scootin' right ahead. I really like this game,

and I'm really excited to talk about it. Spoilers, well, we'll unpack that and talk about so much more. Right, after this, I am gonna say something to you guys that is a result of the way we cover games and the way that we interact with games, I was certain that Evoud was Ashen.

Yeah. I mean, I was certain in my, when I was loading up this game, I was looking for those crazy spindly guys. I don't even know what Ashen is. What is Ashen? Oh man, it was like another single word open world action RPG that's like, it was a little bit more low-poly.

It came out in 2018! I know man, but it's just, okay. Which would have been thought we were playing a game from 2018? I wasn't bragging! You thought we were playing an old game? No, but then I booted this one up and I was, oh wowed. Fucked. A vout. Listen, this is great.

It's a great game. This is a great game. Good job, guys. Yeah, okay, so let's talk about what it actually is. It's not Ashen. It certainly is not Ashen. This is once a year, a big open world game comes along that hits that popcorn feel just so right.

Where you're like, you know what, I am going to explore a little bit more of the map to unveil some of that shadow of darkness that's happened out there. Fog of War, I guess that's the right term. I'm going to see what's over in that corner. And let me tell you, this map is humongous. It's actually like, I don't know, five or six open worlds that stand on their own and you travel between them? But it's not like Skyrim humongous. Well, it's not one world. But even if you pasted them all together, I don't know that it would be as big as this.

Who cares? I know, I know. I'm just saying we should set expectations. The other thing is it feels humongous because it is so dense. I agree with you. So the second you leave a castle or whatever, you immediately stumble across a small village. And when you leave that village,

you are suddenly in a strange, like, avatar-style forest. And when you leave that, you're suddenly inside a cave. You really cannot throw a rock in any direction avatar style forest. When you leave that, you're suddenly inside a cave. You really cannot throw a rock in any direction without hitting something interesting that is intentionally meant to be there. What's most impressive though is it doesn't feel like a whole bunch of monster closets like stuck together. It actually does feel like a dense living space. Yeah, so that's the big differentiator,

is I think when you first jump into this, it's very easy. And there are a lot of similarities with Bethesda, open world RPGs. Obsidian has made those games before, Fallout New Vegas being the first one. But the big difference here is the intentionality of basically this whole thing. Whereas in Skyrim, for example, a game that I really enjoy, you will encounter

probably 40 dungeons that are like more or less kind of the same vibe, and you don't have that same experience in this. This feels much more curated and focused in making sure that everything you're experiencing is like a handcrafted thing. Justin, can you can you tell us what type of fantasy this is? I guess just to set the the foundation. I would say it's like. I don't want to say reductive and saying like pop fantasy, but I will say that that's like it is less from what you encounter.

It is less sort of like obsessed with class and things like that. And more about these God like beings that are sort of like mortals that are touched by different gods, different deities that are some develop like powers. Some are kind of shunned. They're sort of demigods, I guess, but they're considered as a little bit more outsidery than that. Like, you know you know, they're treated as sort of freakish by people. There's like growths on their face sometimes.

I wanted to mention that specifically to Justin, because there, I can't think of a game that has ever specifically woven in the fact that you can make like a truly bizarre character in the character creator and then have other characters like reference that fact. Like it actually encourages you to make a character that looks very irregular. Yeah, they want that. Yeah, that is kind of like folded into the fiction

is that you're a little bit on the outside of that. And you've got like a, you could have like a mushroom face or a giant like tree face, like really out there. Yeah, you can go kind of however you want with it, which is, it's interesting. I wish you didn't necessarily have to make all those decisions like right when you start, because I feel like you don't like,

like when you start creating a character, then the amount of mushrooms I want on there is usually zero, you know what I mean? I don't necessarily understand the context of why I'm getting the mushrooms. But it's like the, when I say sort of like pop fantasy, it's, I tend to think of fantasy in like two broad classes of like world-based versus like character-based,

where an author is like wanting to tell you about a world that exists and a character is helping you go through that world. Or it's the story is following this character through the world and the only things that really matter in it are the ways in which it interacts with the world. Like a lot of like Romantic and is like this

where there is an outside world, but you're only interacting with it in as much as it's important to your central characters. And that feels closer to this, right? Is it like, is the world more normal in those situations? Or is it- It's just like, there's less, your enjoyment of the story is less about

how well you can keep all these different factions and stuff in your head. I see. And more about how well you can just like be in the world. It's a more humanist story than just like a world. And I find this to be a pretty humanist, like people aren't spending 30 minutes telling me about the different warring factions in some of their kingdom that I don't have any context for.

They're talking to me about me and the person that tried to kill me and why they think. Someone stole my potatoes. Yes, right. Do you have, you look like a man who could find a potato. Yes, what I, the little tweak I would make to that is if you are the sort of person who wants that, I guess, capital F fantasy or high fantasy or whatever,

it's there, but it's for the people who are going to read every note in the book. Yeah. And there is a lot of it. Now I've, I've found myself weirdly pulled into it in a way that I, I don't think of myself as with these sorts of games. Maybe that's because over the last few years, since I guess, like the last, what was it, uh, Skyrim, like I've gotten more into that sort of thing.

But I'm really intrigued by the top level story here, which is basically, it's about colonialism. It's basically Avatar. It's the closest comparison of you are this person who is sent in on behalf. Jake Sully, if you will. You're the Jake Sully. You've been sent in at the king or whoever's personal request, and it's your job to figure out in this strange new land how you're going to solve for all of the problems that are happening there. There is a virus that is spreading in some form that has some real COVID vibes. There are different warring factions. I just got it.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Your, your, your group, like your nation has partnered with like a extremist religious cult, uh, of soldiers. There's like, there's all the familiar pieces, but what I enjoy about the game is it does not bash you over the head with all of this,

at least not for the first 10 or so hours. It starts to become more and more a piece of it once you're like really settled. It's very smartly, it very smartly does, I mean, I alluded to this, but someone kills you and you come back to life and you are trying to find the person that killed you. And that is like, that's not the only thing that you're doing,

but it is the thing that your brain can be like, what was I doing again? Oh yeah, someone killed me, right. I gotta go find them. There is another quality that I want to compliment here and I'm gonna struggle to articulate it, so I'm hoping you guys can help me, but there's also, I feel like more moment to moment fun

or pleasure in combat scenarios where the outcome does not seem predetermined when I enter the encounter. Where like a lot of, um, Bethesda games, I feel like you go into the encounter and it's like, you either get flattened or you flatten them. And you flatten them by hiding in a bush and shooting arrows until they're all dead. Yes, exactly. Or you like rig something up or you do something stupid and foos-ru-dah the guys off the cliff, whatever. This actually had a lot more encounters

that I felt like if I died during them, I felt like, well, if I tried this a little bit differently, I think I could get there. Like there's a place of uncertainty in there that I feel like doesn't exist with a lot of these open world games where you can kind of min-max your way to just like blowing through the actual gameplay.

And the actual game part of this is still fun. Like, it's enjoyable and has a good balance of tension and power. That also happens on the story level in ways that I found really exciting where you have your stat sheet like you do in any of these games. And over a decade ago, I felt like you would play this sort of game and you would get into an encounter and it would be like, oh, well you have just enough perception or communication to like skip this, this event. And congratulations, your reward for being very good at that is you don't have to have this fight.

Where here you pick that, you also pick kind of like your archetype at the beginning. Like mine was some like basically library nerd. And you would get into these conversations and you'd be like, oh great. My little thing came up. That means I get to pick a special thing, I can pick my library thing. Your bonus, you get three points, three extra gold. Great, and he'll be like, six out of six perception plus library,

wow, this must be great. And I'll say that and I'll be like, well, actually, you're not from around here. And then like the ogre would be like, did you just contradict me? And then we'd start a fight. Yeah. Like you actually had to think through what you're doing

and not just spam this is quote best option. There's another funny thing that it does where like if you don't have the stats for a particular thing, you can see that there is a thing that you could say if you had the stats. And sometimes it's like intellect. So it's like, someone will tell you something and they'll be like, one out of four intellect, nothing,

and then below that it's like, sounds good to me. It's like, oh, man, if I was a little bit smarter, huh? And you can like convincingly threaten people if your might is high enough, but that's smart, because that is just folding for this kind of game, right, which isn't Dungeons and Dragons. You are basically consolidating a conversational style, like conversational stats and physical stats

into one thing, right? What they've done is they've removed intimidation and that sort of like social dynamic and just folded it into your combat stats, right? Yeah, it's basically happened since, uh, fallout basically. I mean, that's what this is kind of building off of is in new Vegas. Like if you had zero intelligence, all the only response you could have was like, uh, uh, like you just like have these one word things and they're

evolving it in really interesting ways where it's not just that stat thing, but it's also, as you mentioned, like that doesn't grant you an instant solve to every problem. It also makes the conversations, I think a lot more engaging. Yeah.

Because I'm paying attention to what I could have said, what I should be saying, like I think it really brings you in. You can really tell that their priority on narrative kind of trumps a lot of other things that you see in Bethesda style RPGs, where when you have a giant continent sized map and you have to fill it with content,

like the narrative kind of takes a backseat automatically. There will be individual quests that are interesting in a Skyrim game or an Elder Scrolls game, but the broad narrative, like you talk to a lot of guards that more or less just mumble the same thing, and by narrowing it down and focusing it, you're making sure that you're having a meaningful back and forth with anyone you can actually speak to. Can I ask you guys what your style was, like your game, like, wait, what kind of characters did you play? So I started as a wizard and I was like doing a wand and like an offhand book and doing spells

and things like that. I will admit, I was kind of disappointed. It felt like it was pretty underpowered, even though I was constantly like upgrading my gear. And then I got like a random gun off of some guy, like a unique gun that like did double the, even though I hadn't invested anything into guns, did double the damage of what I was doing.

And I just like respect into that, which didn't feel great. I'll be honest. I imagine maybe if I had gotten a special one, I would have felt the same way, but I eventually just migrated over into like more of a ranger ranged class. Hmm. That's interesting. I did wizard and stuck with it.

It went much better for me, but I do agree. It's a, it is a slower start with it because I think they, I don't know. I feel like there's, this is common in these sorts of games where there'll be a class where you start really weak, but you can become the most powerful character or you start really strong, but you're not going to be as powerful as say the wizard by the end of the game. With this, yeah it started weak but once I started getting all of the upgrades I got better wands, you get these grimoires, these spell books and you can unlock greater and greater spells that you can cast.

And by the time I am, I'm like probably halfway through this second big open world. My wand, whenever it hits, hits three people in a row. It like multiplies on damage. Each person it hits, it explodes and stuns anyone near it. And then my grimoire, I have like a level, like three levels above what I think I should actually have abilities where I rain ice on everything, freeze the entire battlefield, and then create a vortex that pulls everyone into the center, loads them up into one area, and then I can pound that like area with whatever like my, you have other characters who can do special moves.

Yeah, you have companions. So I, it started to like reveal itself. The other version of that, that I was playing before I switched to this style with the wizard was I had created a like build where I had a staff that walloped people. It was like, I could create a divine staff. It would wallop people and steal their essence. And then I had a like soul suck that would steal

their health. And I could basically switch between these and just plow through large, again, battlefields of enemies using this power. So I- Yeah, the spells are cool. I just, the stuff that I was using, whatever, cause I didn't have the right gear or something,

just like was not from a numerical standpoint. There's also a weird thing that I ran into. I also, I didn't intentionally go to the wizard. I was gonna go with a ranger, but then like you find, I found a grimoire as like an item. It's really, the grimoire thing is weird. Like you find a grimoire as an item and all of a sudden you have access to like,

very easy access to four different spells. And it's like so insanely useful that I just switched to wizard from that, but it's weird because if you have one of those spell books, your unlocks for quite a long time as wizard are like kind of not that impressive. It's kind of boring because it's like, you're not getting new abilities. You're just kind of like leveling up the ones

you already have because you've been carrying around this book. And then it gets weird, like the way it handles, there are some spells that you can kind of map to the control pad and that there are some that are can kind of map to the control pad, and then there are some that are attached to the grimoire, and then you have the ones that are on the wand itself. I wish that was a little bit better explained.

For some of that. My recommendation for people who are gonna be just hopping into this is respec regularly. It doesn't cost a whole lot of currency to respec. No, it's very cheap. And then also really play two classes at the same time. When you tap Y in the game, you switch your loadout effectively.

And really, I think the game wants you to have, almost certainly always have one wizard or spell cast or loadout, and then something else, whether that is like a rifleman or a melee person or whatever because even when you adjust your stat sheet that other class will still be as fresh discovered with like the rifleman still be very powerful and I think it wants you to experience all that type of play I would also say again with like the wizard specing like Hoops is talking about, unless you're really going to commit to wizard, I don't think you need to put all of your points into that one.

You can just put them wherever you want, knowing you can change it at a later time. I've respect like, I don't know, probably two or three times now, and it's been a big help and just allowed me to have more fun because I kind of chase whatever the coolest item I have is. That's really good to know. I wish the game would. Oh, yeah. You know, and this is I kind of want to touch on this for a second because we've been very glowing and like we really this game is exactly kind of up our alley.

I would say that I do not know for me if it hits like transcendent where it's like, even if this is not a thing that you would necessarily go for. I think it's a very good one of those. And like, there's a lot of iterative things in here that are just like fun, right? Like if you're a, if you are a wizard, you can cast an ice spell on water, make a little platform at any time that you want. That's fun. Like there's fun stuff, but there's things like

when you're walking around a new town, right? Your partners will say a lot of stuff really fast. Like they will tell you about everything as you're walking past it in an offhand way where they're just like, oh, that's a good place to get this. Hey, you know, this is the, and then they'll be fucking silent for 20 minutes. It's just like nothing. They have nothing to offer you.

So I would say like immersive qualities are not great. Um, but if that is not exactly what you're, you're, if you're not going for that, if that's not your, your vibe, then I think that it's, I just don't think it's necessarily something that you need to like... Everyone needs to play. There's a part of me that wishes that they may be focused more on narrative and less on, like, things like upgrading your gear and, like, finding materials to upgrade your gear

and enchantments and things like that because so the game the way the game handles enemy difficulty is really interesting. I've never seen this in a game before. Enemies are ranked based on the gear you have. So if you have a rank 2 wand, you can do normal damage to rank 2 enemies. But if you find a rank 3 guy, he's gonna fuck you up really bad and you're basically gonna do no damage to him. So to some extent it is kind of funneling you in very specific directions because you know, oh, I can't win this fight because I just don't have the proper gear. And you kind of know that before you even start the fight, which is both good and bad, but what it ends up doing is making you feel

a little railroaded because you're like, oh, I just need enough materials to get my wand up before I could even attempt this thing. So the railroading is the other thing that was really bothering. There was a quest that I got early on that was like, get a fine, one fine piece of armor and one fine weapon, like fine quality.

And to buy those was like, it doesn't matter if you're listening to this, but it's a lot. It's a lot. And it takes a long time. And it's not to get like a special magic one. This never happens in video games, but I legitimately had to like go out

and like look for money to buy these things. And you talk about the importance of switching between the two, I agree, but at the same time, it took so long just to get these two items to be a good wizard. You know what I mean? The idea that I would collect all the other stuff that I have the wherewithal to do another class. This is all super helpful because I didn't see or notice any of this and I'm realizing this is

expectation of play and that's like an issue for it. And by that I mean, there are two ways that you play open world game, right? You play an open world game and it gives you the main mission and you go and do the main missions and then there are side quests and maybe you do like a couple of them. Or you are the type of person who turns on the open world game. They give you a main mission and you go and do everything else before you even do the first mission. And I'm the latter. So when you the things that you're talking about of like, hey, Hey, I needed money for this. Or I didn't even know that there was a leveling system on the enemies.

I've never like gotten into a fight that I couldn't get out of. And I think that is because since I did all of this other optional stuff, since I was just spent the first, I don't know, again, 10 hours exploring, once I went into the pipeline of the mandatory stuff, I like zipped through it. It's- Okay, but like I'm not even, like I did the side stuff too. So like-

Yeah, I did everything. You weren't running into like bounty missions where you were fighting guys that were like clearly taking- I didn't know bounty missions existed until I went to the bounty person and then I turned all of them in. See, the bounty missions that I ran into, they were too hard.

They told me to do the bounty missions to get the money to buy the fine weapons, but the bounty missions were too hard for me to do to get the fine weapons. And there was really this time where I was like, I don't really know what to do because all the quests were ranked too hard for me. And I didn't realize what you just said about the ranking of it. I guess what we know what to do, because all the quests were ranked too hard for me, and I didn't realize what you just said

about the ranking of it. I guess what we're saying is, this stuff is not that important. I wouldn't get too hung up on it, but if you are a systems-focused person, like it seems that Russ and I are, I do think that you're gonna get, there's some stuff that could be communicated a lot better.

I think it's better. Yeah, I think it is important, too, in that the meal's not gonna taste the same to every person in the way I think some of the best games can, but I don't want it to be that rigid, but I was able to have that experience, which is great, I really loved it, but it's a bummer that the game was not so honed that you could have the experience I had to.

Yeah. Like when I go into, into, into, uh, Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, I think everyone's going to have a fucking fantastic experience, no matter which direction you go. Um, and this, I, I do agree. I think probably she messaged me the other night, you're like, is there such thing as a B

plus game and B plus A minus, it's that thing where it's like, it's so close to excellence, but there is something that you can just kind of feel in the game where it's not tears of the kingdom. It's not. And that's fine, like I don't need every game to be. I don't need every game, but Chris, man, you're hitting on something that's like,

I don't need every game, but Chris, man, you're hitting on something that's like, Russ asked me, is this game like really your shit in Slack? I was like, yeah, it's like a hundred percent is. And I really, it is, like it's a hundred percent like, this is the kind of thing that I like, but it's almost so much the kind of thing that I go for that I don't know if it'll be sticky. You know what I mean?

Like it's so, everything is so how I would want it to be. You know what I mean? Like it's, there's not like much surprise. Like it's all very consistently good. Familiar. What? It feels familiar to you. It feels very familiar.

But it's not in a, you know, not like in a way that they're, it's not derivative. It's just like, it's not in a... Not in a tiring way. It's not derivative. It's just like, it's not challenging me in any sort of way where I'm like engaging with it on a different level that would make it sort of... That's the kind of thing that gets games in my head. I was thinking a lot about Like a Dragon from last year. The Yakuza RPG, right?

And there are... That was probably my favorite game of last year, the Yakuza RPG, right? And there are, that was probably my favorite game of last year. There are so many things about that that are not what I would ever ask for in a video game. I would not ask for turn-based combat. I wouldn't ask for the Pokemon mini game. I wouldn't ask for just so many mini games that aren't very like fleshed out. I wouldn't ask for having to spend 10 hours of a story in it. And yet, you're right, it challenged me in a good way. It surprised me. It did things that I didn't know I actually like. I felt like I was learning about my taste when I played the game. And I agree, this is not to be fair, a criticism of this game. It is almost in a weird way a sort of compliment of it is

every if you asked me what is your dream open world RPG it would look a lot like a vowed it would look a lot like it's like I have melee combat and it's sick I even guns and they actually feel good you have all these wizard spells and they're like completely overpowered also the writing is excellent and it reminds me of Pentament. Great, make it." And then I'm playing and I'm like, yeah, this is like, this is exactly what I want. And yet, I'm waiting for it to do that thing that surprises me and is the thing that I would have never guessed. Uh, but yeah, that's,-hmm. Yeah, that's interesting.

Man, that's real damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of thing. Oh, for sure. It's not a fair. I would also say, it also seems to me that it's laudable, and something I wanna mark is that there's been a long time, like 10 years or so, where I feel like a game like Avowed would have really been weighed down

by some sort of microtransaction Garbage and I feel like they have done a real admirable job of making You feel like once you're in the world, you're just in it like you're not they're not trying to weasel more out of you They're not you know I mean, it's like you could see the hooks in a lesser game or a game that was released a few years back, you know, where you would be buying a lot of, I don't know, fucking. Well, it has its business model, right?

It's Game Pass. But that of the models, I mean, Game Pass has been a real mixed bag and seems to have struggled over the past couple of years. But the goal for Microsoft is, we just want you to spend as much time in the game as possible because you enjoy it and Yeah that again when you open the map in this game and you see How much there is after you go through the first world and then you see the larger world map

It is clear that they want you spending a shit ton of time. Let me also mention like Unquestionably one of the best Game Pass games that's ever been released. Like as a day one release. Oh, this is an unbelievable value. I mean, unbelievable. This is, when I'm saying that this game won't be sticky for me, why worry? What I mean is I don't think I'll be fixated enough

that I'll keep returning to it, even knowing that we are gonna play different stuff. I mean, like we're already looking down the barrel of new, you know, Yakuza games and stuff like that. Like, if I was just playing this, I would be thrilled. Like it is sumptuous, delicious, satisfying too. That's the other thing that I really like is you can have a satisfying small adventure

Like you can have a moment and you can have a quest and it's not a four-hour thing That's like just strut stringing you along like it's encapsulated. You can go through little arcs and then it's it's done I really good I want to hear one one experience in the game really quick and then we can go on to the next section and I won't Give any story details here. I'll just talk about what happened in the second world, maybe an hour in to this huge open space. I found what I think is the final mission of the second world and bashed up against

it and came across characters who are like, Hey, you don't know a whole lot about us. What are you even doing here? And there's like things I could learn by talking to them, but eventually there's not much and there came a choice of like, do you want to like, just pick a fight anyway? And I did. And I proceeded to go through this whole, what felt like a end game mission for this section, learned

so much story along the way and what was so unbelievably cool is the notes and stuff that I'm finding as I go through this mission, provide enough information that I am actually learning what I'm going to discover in the game later on. I get to the end of the sequence, and the final character's like, hey, yeah, sorry, you uncovered a lot of this. I think you should really go talk to this, this, and this character, because I think they're gonna be

really freaked out. And then, sure enough, I go back to those characters and like, that's crazy, I was just gonna talk to you about this, but like, thanks. And they had the writing there that, one, it's cool that you could do it, but two, that it actually didn't break the game. The game was ready for me to do it

and had not just planned for that sequence to respond to it, but all the other dialogue I was gonna encounter related that sequence to respond to it, but all the other dialogue I was gonna encounter related to it to respond to it. And I even found times where things I read in a book became information that I could use in conversations like that later. That level of storytelling detail is just so unbelievably cool.

There's also smart little things to plant, like the books that you're talking about, they are blue. Or at least by default, they are blue. And after you read them, they're not blue anymore. Oh yeah. There's a lot of blue books in this room. Allow me. Stand aside, everybody.

I'm gonna make all these blue books gray. Am I gonna read the text? I will not. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Oh, this is a good video game. Let's take a break. Can we do that?

Yeah, let's do it. And we'll talk more about Obsidian and what that means in 2025. Here's my question to you guys. Is Obsidian the new Bethesda? It's so weird because their origins, obviously were very entwined new Bethesda. It's so weird because their origins obviously were very entwined, but with Bethesda for years, like again, we've mentioned fall in

new Vegas, but honestly they were making Bethesda quote unquote, Bethesda style choice driven RPGs forever. Um, and so I, I mean, look, about is not going to sell elder scrolls or fallout numbers. There's no question. Well, beyond the game pass, like in terms of player count, it's not going to hit those numbers. But for me personally, like I find this game 10 times more interesting than starfield and star Starfield's obviously a much, quote, bigger game. But the focus curation thing is like,

that's my jam, I want it to matter. The comparisons between this and Starfield are just brutal to me. For a specific type of player, and I get that. Oh, God. But if you are the person who wants that density of story and ideas, if you're the person who wants that density of story and ideas, if you're the person who wants good combat, if you're the sort of person who wants a world that

is intentional, this is that. Where you're right, Starfield, that decision of like, well, there's just going to be a lot of space because it's big and the story is going to be a real pain in the ass to get into. And the story is going to be a real pain in the ass to get into and and there's just you know Instead of blue books around that you can grab there is just infinite clutter. Yeah, I don't even Know let's let's not even talk about starfield because we've already like ragged They even count let's talk about Skyrim, which is game. I think more or less. Yeah, I'll enjoy and is a very Lot beloved game.

There are elements in here that are like, oh God, I wish Skyrim did that. And one of them, Plant was sort of alluding to, when you're walking through a dungeon or a town or whatever it is, if you can pick something up, it has value. And if you can pick something up, you're not stealing from anyone.

You don't have to worry about like, oh no, the cops are gonna chase me because I stole a thing because it was colored red for some reason. And that simple thing of scoping and like, oh, this is a priority versus not is really just like hammering home the priorities of this game. And I don't know what having 10,000 cups that you can pick up in a Skyrim dungeon does for anyone. Like, I don't know who loves that.

But Skyrim was released 14 years ago. But that's like a more intensive effort, like graphic. Like that's not because it was an old game. That was, if anything, too ambitious. They've learned from it. But I'm saying the learning is, I don't know that there's a meaningful difference between, I guess here's what I'm interested in, right?

When you release Skyrim or Elder Scrolls VI, is it on a separate fork from this? Yeah. Or do you feel like Elder Scrolls VI has to be in conversation with a lot of these like quality of life things that Obsidian is so good at? Like, or is it its own thing? Like, is this a like a lineage or is this a separate branch?

I, what I would worry about with the next Elder Scrolls is that it misunderstands the value of Baldur's Gate 3 and the scope and the freedom of Baldur's Gate 3. Because I think the argument for you can pick up anything or some things are stealing is we're trying to create a realistic world. We're trying to give you so much freedom and freedom means doing a lot of things that are completely benign or sometimes get you in trouble. But what Baldur's Gate 3 understood is even with that, freedom is only valuable if the world responds to what you're doing.

It's not really actually exciting to just be able to do random shit that has no response from the world. Feedback is like the pleasure of video games, right? Well, Bethesda would argue that cop's chasing you because you stole a cup. Yeah, unfortunately, I think you're right. But that's where I'm curious what Elder Scrolls you cause you stole a cup. Yeah. Unfortunately, I think you're right, but I, that's where I'm, I'm curious what I'm curious what elder scrolls will do next.

Cause I think there are three paths or the, I think there's this, which is the, everything here is intentional and it's a bit more restrictive and freedom exists within these very tight boundaries that we set. Baldur's gate is, is, we have a lot of freedom in terms of how you actually engage with the world and you will know whatever you did, how it impacted the world by how the game responds to you. And then there's whatever Bethesda is

doing, which has bits and pieces of that, but also just has, and it's just big, and it's, it's, I guess, you can get lost in it, and I don't find that especially appealing, especially because if you're going to do that, then you're starting to compete against the no man's skies of the world that are just doing that thing in, I think, more interesting ways. I will say, I have, I find great joy in getting lost in these worlds. Like, I think, Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild are two games that you very easily can get lost in and you discover things as you're,

like, that moment of like, I went into this cave and crazy-ass shit happened, does occasionally happen in Bethesda games. Like, Skyrim has like few of those very curated experiences. The question is, do they cut back on the stuff that isn't that, that is just a little bit filler, and to make the whole experience feel better? I would like for that to happen, but I think the standard is such that they've set, that they kind of can't step backwards

and make a more focused thing. And you can't bring the quality of everything that you've made up because these worlds are only getting bigger and bigger. There's no way to match the density of this on a grander scale. Do you guys have any sense of, you know, it's interesting. We're having these conversations about Bethesda and

Obsidian without really acknowledging the elephant in the room is that they're the same company. Well, owned by the same company. Yeah. They're part of the same. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

Thank you, Russ. I don't think they're actually the same company going by different names with mustaches on them. That was not for you. That was for the audience that don't maybe remember that they're both owned by Microsoft. And they were bought at different times. They're bought at different times,

but they're owned by the same company. To what extent do you guys think that those boundaries are semi-permeable? When we talk about a they in terms of Obsidian or Bethesda, to what extent do you think those comparisons are even useful? You know what I mean? Or are we just shifting people as it becomes necessary?

It depends on the studios. I think there are studios that are owned by Microsoft that are very chatty with the other studios there. You look at, you know, ID, for example, probably working directly with machine games and having a back and forth on the tech and things like that. I think with Bethesda Game Studios in particular, it would not surprise me that at least before Starfield, they were like, leave us the fuck alone, we'll do it,

and it'll be great. And it's possible that that wall is coming down a little bit after the starfield reaction wasn't as glowing as everyone wanted, but I still think that like Microsoft or even Obsidian might be like, hey, you might want to try this. And they could still be like, no, we're doing our own thing, go fuck yourself. I also think there's a big technical problem on the Bethesda Game Studios side

that this game doesn't have because this game was made in Unreal. And Bethesda Game Studios games are made in an engine that is a dinosaur, a total hanging. That sounds sweet. The engine of Starfield and the engine of Skyrim has been, you know, since Morrowind basically. I'm just saying that if you could run like

Doom on a dinosaur, that would be pretty cool. That would be fucking sick. That would be cool, that'd be pretty sick. So I think there's like a lot, like the fact that I can walk into a city here and not have a load time, I mean, there are parts of the city that do have load times, but like most doors that you walk into

don't have a load time, is a sign that like, the Bethesda engine needs to kind of go. As we're thinking about this, like the future of this, like I guess I'm interested in where, what are the frontiers for this? Like where are the places that like, I think that we all kind of agreed talking about,

about like very, very great, but probably no, what do you feel like is the thing that you're wanting that you're not, that you're not getting right now? Like what's the frontier for you? As a player of these games? Yeah, that's a very good question. And I don't know that I can look to the future for Frontier because I'm not that good of a game designer,

but I've experienced the Frontier and it was Tears of the Kingdom. Tears of the Kingdom is a giant open world game that was like, okay, great, that sounds good. But what if you can directly interact with all the physical objects in this world to make fucking boats and hot air balloons and planes to do that to like solve your problems. And I'm not saying every game needs building or anything like that, but that's the level

of like, holy shit, my world has changed because this thing was introduced to the world. Now this is very interesting, because I want to stop you there. Mine is none of that and the opposite. And getting all of that out, and it's just about the people in the villages and making their interior lives like more affected by my actions. That's the frontier for me. The frontier for me is I walk into a village,

people know who I am, they've known a lot of the things I've done, my relationships with them actually matter. Outside of like a score, like there's a continuity there. That to me is what's like, that's really exciting. And I think yours is very valid too, obviously. It does raise this like, can both of those things

be served by the same, like, franchise? Or maybe is there an opportunity for Skyrim to be one of those and for this to be the other one? I don't know. To go back to what I said earlier of the magic of games is how they respond to your impact on the world. That's what brings all these together. Right. And either of those cases, the game is saying, Hey,

interact with the world in some interesting way. And what will make this feel like it is the future is we're going to respond back to you in ways you've never seen before. We're going to let you do it. And that's, yes, that's what I want to see from the next game from Bethesda is that there is some new way of engaging with the world.

And when it responds to me, I say, that's not something I've never seen before. I didn't think a game would do that. I remember when I, uh, one of the very earliest times I went to E3 and I think it was a Morrowind demo and you walk into a town in Morrowind and they're like, oh, it's the dragon slayer, whatever the fuck they said. And that- Dovahkiin. Yeah, whatever they called you.

And that at the time was like, oh wow, they're really reacting. And then over time we've learned that like, oh, it's just like a bunch of canned phrases that they do if you check the box on this quest that you already did. And I worry that like Bethesda has leaned on that as player response for so many years

where there's just like, oh, there's gonna be a bark that they give you that indicates they know you beat this quest. And it just needs to be more meaningful than that. Yeah, and I think, you know, another big bar for me is, I think immersion is know, another big bar for me is, I think immersion is shattered the first time I hear someone say something twice. Like if I hear one of my companions give me the same phrase,

that should never happen, like ever. I mean- Which is funny, cause you mentioned earlier the fact that your companions said a shitload of things and then nothing for 20 minutes. They had one bark about each thing and then they were silent. They didn't try-

Probably for the best, although they probably would have spaced them out, should have spaced them out a little more. I tell you though, there's, I mean, you talk about like the way these different like things tend to focus on Dragon Age had fantastic inter-character dialogue, where depending on who was with you,

they would talk to each other. And Baldur's Gate did that as well. Oh yeah, Baldur's Gate's another great example. Talk about like another frontier, a place where if you wanna give me a shorthand for developing characters, give me story when I have nothing else going on rather than slowing the story down. That's a great way of advancing things.

And that's like, like, giving those characters more of a relationship, I think, can help to fill a lot of gaps. Tales of Arise was the game that, like, really impressed me with this. I don't know if you all remember that, but as you went around the world, especially in the solo parts,

the party would start chatting with each other, or whenever you went to camp, you could have these group conversations. There was a little bit of this too in, again, Like a Dragon last year where you would find things around the world and you could initiate story as you walked around the world and all your characters would talk to each other. The first time I remember seeing it was in Left 4 Dead. Before you'd start a mission or even during a mission in Left 4 Dead, the characters would like, based on their whatever, their personalities, their backstories, would like directly address one another in interesting ways.

And it's, I agree, I love to see this. Did your favorite game, Dragon's Dogma, do this at all? I'm trying to remember. Dragon's Dogma 2, as in all things, did the most insane version of it. Yeah. to, as in all things, did the most insane version of it. Yeah. Where your characters would just talk about

how their previous owner used to prefer the company of men, and they'd tell you 20 times until you sent them back into the eternal void. So it's just like, it's very similar. All that is to say, I don't know when the fuck the next Elder Scrolls game is gonna come out. I will certainly play it. I'm sure I'll enjoy it. So long as it's not like Starfield, I'm sure I'll enjoy it. But it does beg the question of whether there is a kind of a turning point for Bethesda where they need to kind of wake up and realize they need to evolve this model beyond where it's gone.

We got any readermail for us? We have a little bit of readermail. We can go really quick. James W wrote in to say, "'Earthblade' has been canceled and it bums me out." Wow, yes, I am so massively disappointed, but Earthblade, the game that was on our most anticipated list and we've been talking about for a while,

the Mattie Thorson game along with a team of other people is officially fully dead it was a search action game that was using like Celeste artwork and It looked fucking sick and it's because of internal strife has been dashed I'm sure Maddie will work on other stuff that will be very very cool. But for the time being, I was so bummed to hear that. Uh, we also have a letter. This comes from Caleb been playing an older, I think it came out 10 years ago, shoot them up called zero ranger this week.

It's on port master, which is the handheld software. We've talked a little bit. Uh, so I put it on PC and on my RG35XS XP. Love it both, very fun, perfect amount of BS for that genre and the music is perfect. Plant, did you play Zero Ranger? Yeah, Zero Ranger rules. People should definitely check it out.

What's it on? It's on Steam. It's on Steam. It's a shmup, it's like 12 bucks or something, but it's doing some interesting things with repetition and playing through the same thing multiple times, kind of like Nier, but then being something different. And there's my mandatory Nier shout out for the week.

We'll end the Read Your Mail section with a question from Revy. I unironically want Justin's Romanticy Rex. Do you have any more Romanticy Rex for the people? I know we talked a little bit about it last week. I don't know why it would be ironic. I finished Onyx Storm quite good, quite a cliffhanger. If you are looking for a good place to start with,

I think that Iron Flame is the second one, and then the first one was Fourth Wing. Those are good books. Right now I'm currently reading Shadow in the Ember by Jennifer L. Armantrout, and it is the first of the Flesh and Fire series. I love the title. I had to look up the name, because I don't know the names of these books

as I'm reading them usually. But in this one, a woman named Seraphina was supposed to become the consort of the primal of death, which is sort of a death god, but he turned against her and rejected her and didn't want her as his consort. But then some other things happened, and maybe his mind has changed.

And maybe the handsome stranger that Seraphina has just met and fallen for might have more connections to the Primal of Death than she ever suspected. Whoa, someone's writing a blurb. There's four of those, I think. Yes, my wife's already on the third one, so I'm trying to catch up.

But yeah, there's my recommendation for you. Thank you, Justin. It's very well written. It's very well written. It's good stuff. Do we have any honorable mentions for anyone? Apart from what you were just mentioning? Yeah, I've been doing some dank stuff.

I decided, man, I don't know. Russ, good Russ broke my brain. Like he came on and told us about computers and video games. And I have just been, I can't stop messing around with raspberry pies. That's cool. I've always been kind of interested in like computing and stuff, but it's always been so intimidating

to get into. And I've been messing around with these little things, these little Raspberry Pis. You know what, I'm gonna give the very quick dummy version because I didn't know and I was too embarrassed to ask. So let me just say, I talked to you last week about the thing, the PiK that I got. And it has a kit that you build around this thing

called Raspberry Pi, which is just a little, it's a little computer. It's got all the inputs and outputs that a computer normally has. It's got power, it's got HDMI out, it's got memory, you can put an SD card in there and put whatever operating system that you want on there, right? Because it's a tiny computer, so you put a tiny operating system, there's lots of different operating systems you can put on there. So, the

RetroPie is one. That's an operating system that you can put on a pie that has all the emulators already built into it, it's constructed around that. This week I put a operating system called DACBoard on a Raspberry Pi. And so what this one is, is this is a pie that I have hooked up to a TV, an old TV I had lying around, mounted to a wall, an old TV I had lying around mounted to a wall. And the DAC board is synced with,

they've got a bunch of different layouts, but mine is synced with like my home calendar and the weather and family photos. And so during the day when you walk around, you see the DAC board and it's got our family's calendar, the stuff that's going on, photos, it's got a QR code that you can scan to get onto our wifi and some other stuff like that.

So I'm, but it's just a little computer, like the computer is just plugged in behind it. So I did that. I set up this thing this week called a pie hole. That's that thing's cool. You guys know what that is? I'm gonna tell you about that. That's another Raspberry Pi that I made that is a,

I plugged it into my router and Pi-hole is a little computer that you set up as a fake, I'm not gonna use the right terminology, but this is working. It's a fake DNS server that when the computer goes to look for ads and it's pinging the DNS server for ads, instead pings my pie hole and says, hey, you got any ads? And the pie hole's like,

shit man, I'm fresh out, sorry brother. Hey, do you have any personal information about Justin? Cause I would love to send this to everybody. The pie hole's like, let me look around. I don't know shit about him. Best of luck. Wow, so you're not getting personally identifiable like ads or Google searches or anything like that I'm off the gap. That's cool. Check get check it in the pie hole check the pile

Then I was trying to figure out how to watch Canadian TV and I got into some dark stuff I had to I got into if I got it got dark enough that I was like, whoa I should be to actually look at the D it's DNS and not- not- or sorry, VPN. I need to- yeah, I- it got bad in there. I was really just trying to watch Canadian Dragons did. I did not need people trying to get me to watch the new Captain America movie in AK. Oh my TV! Save it out yet, brother! Calm down!

Wow. Some nasty boys out there doing a lot of really nasty, nasty things. But it's fun. That's cool. I wanna give a quick shout out to a game called Alba, A-L-B-A, which came out many years ago. I had mentioned that I've been playing a Pokemon,

new Pokemon Snap with my son. And it got to a point where he has memorized every Pokemon that's in that game. It's like 250 some odd Pokemon. And we were like, maybe you should be learning more real animals. And Alba is a lovely little game where you're a small girl living on a tropical island with your grandparents who are like you're on vacation, and your objective is to just go around the island, taking pictures of animals and like picking up trash and all the animals are real. And when you take a picture of an animal, it like fills your book in and

gives you facts about them. And it makes like the animal sound like you would have in like a children's book with the animal buttons. Um, and it's f*****g sick. Like it's a great photography game and there are so few of those. Yeah. Um, and perfect for, you know, kids that are very little, whether they're controlling it or not, like they'll be like, Oh, there's a seagull or whatever it is.

And, uh, it's been great. I bought it right now. It's on sale. It's like three bucks on switch for what it's worth. It's a shame that we have so many great shooters and so few great photography games, but it's really the same metaphor. Yeah. I mean, it's worth. It's a shame that we have so many great shooters and so few great photography games, but it's really just the same metaphor. Yeah, I mean, it's the same idea. Snappers.

Headshot seagull. First person snapper. I recommend Kirby Manga Mania. There is a long running Kirby manga series that has been gradually brought over stateside, and I think there's actually a new edition, maybe like number eight coming out this seven or eight coming out this July, but you can read all the ones before that right now and let me tell you, you people on the ears can't hear

this, but look at this beautiful cover art. It is just presented in a beautiful fashion from this media. And if you are wondering how much story can Kirby have, let me tell you, Kirby can get into some real troubles. King Dedede can look like a real freak in this thing. Quite often, it is just absolutely bizarre and strange. I am showing the guys an image of Kirby Kirby roughly the size of a planet right now fighting a space station It's wild. It is great such a treat. My son loves it. But honestly like I love it

Because it's the best and I think that you all if you're listening to this show You're the sort of weirdo like me who will love reading something like that Cool We did it. I think we did I want to thank our lovely patrons over at patreon.com slash the besties. You're awesome. We love you Some new members I wanted to call out we have Ryan we have Isaiah we have Eric and we have dr. Eggo Thank you for being patrons of the Besties. Thank you to everyone else for supporting the show.

I mentioned we have a new Bracket episode. We have a new Besties episode coming at you, new Resties I should say, coming at you shortly. And what are we doing next week? Yakuza? Like a Dragon? Like a Dragon? Like a Dragon, Pirate Problems? Pirate Problems next week, the official name.

Do I have to stop playing Evowed? Probably. This one does run on Steam Deck, so I guess Evowed did too, but not as well. Oh, is that interesting at all? I ran the Steam version. It runs pretty good. I mean, yeah, you can play it It's playable. Yeah, but yeah, I'd imagine I haven't tried

Pirate Yakuza game, but I'd imagine based on how well the last one ran on Steam I imagine this one also runs well on Steam. Excellent well, I'm looking forward to it folks that's gonna do for us for this week until next time Be sure to join us again for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!