The Besties - Mina the Hollower Is GOTY Quality

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

Mina the Hollower is a delicious 7-layer dip of beloved video games. It looks and feels like a gothic Zelda, but its influences stretch far beyond Nintendo’s action-adventure series. The Besties are joined by Jason Schreier (from Bloomberg and Triple Click) to burrow through one layer after another to uncover its many secrets. In the back half, we talk about the big news of the week: Dragon Quest 12’s development reboot and the end of Destiny 2.   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!

Fresh you said that you wanted to tell me because you're going to try to shame me publicly on our podcast. Oh, no, no, no. I'm going to save it for later. Oh, great. Cool. Something for me to look forward to. We're going to save it for later.

That's going to be a nice little moment that we're going to have. But thank you for the reminder. I appreciate it. No, no, no, that's great. Is there any other ways that you could maybe publicly shame and disown me on our podcast? I mean, you have that thing. That I'm not feeling well, that thing. No, no.

You know, the other thing. You know. Which one's this? I have so many embarrassing things. I don't want to... Is it my skin tags? It seems... I mean, I'm not going to like fill in the blanks for people.

It's like this every week, Jason. It's like this every week. And it's like this will they want, they sort of energy. And the will and one is reference to the shame kink that they had like this weird symbiotic shame kink that they both have pitching and receiving it. And I have to be a part of it. And there is no HR person on the besties. Well, it was Justin, but now he's gone.

It was Justin. Justin was really the mediator for it. Justin was my rip cord where I could be like, come on, juice, let's rip it. And now I don't even have that anymore. And it's just like nonstop. Like, tell me about your weird butt. Tell me about your silly balls.

And it's like, guys, I'm freaking your coworker. I wouldn't say silly. Yeah, I've known these guys for many, many years. Okay, so you're familiar. Fantastic. Well, because Plant used to be in New York, and it was even more palpable. Well, now there's a distance between us. New York is the fifth best.

Well, the fourth now. My name is Griffin-McCrow. 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 Ross Frustick. I know the best game of the week. My name is Jason Shire, and I do not know the best game of the week because they're two pretty good ones. You certainly do. You think this is like the greatest game has come out since Sliced Game.

That's true. Yeah, you love this. You want to marry this game to get married to me. That's true. I would like to marry a mouse. I will confess that. Who would? That. Welcome to the besties where we talk with the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It is a Game of the Year Club just by listening. You have become a member. of the Game of the Year Club the Besties this week. I'm very excited. We are going to be talking

about Yacht Club games, the developers of Shovel Knights, new title Mina the Hollower, which has been very anticipated around these parts. I believe it was on both mine and Russ's sort of top games of 2026. And Chris, can you sort of set up what it is that Mina the Hollower is doing? Mina the Hollower. It looks a bit like Link's Awakening. It plays a bit like Link between worlds and Bloodbourne and puzzle platformers, you play as Mina, a mouse, who is a brilliant inventor responsible for Sparks. What are Sparks? Well, that's the great mystery that you're going to have to uncover as a hollower.

A member of the Hollower Guild means you have the special gift of burrowing, and I guess also being just really, really smart. You don't talk much because, as I mentioned, this is similar-ish to Zelda. Will Jason correct me that this is not actually a Zelda game before the end of this episode? you can fucking count on it. Sparks is the energy beer. Mina the Hollow are invented, energy beer,

and we're going to learn more about that after this short break. Before we dive into the game, I do want to formally introduce our special guest this week. We have none other than Jason Schreier, famous for his work over at the Triple Click podcast, his scoops for Bloomberg,

his fantastic books that he writes. He's written quite a number of them. most recently the Blizzard book whose name is escaping me help me Jason play nice play nice

thank you and feature of Blizzard Entertainment did you know that there is video footage of Griffin getting scooped by me

oh that's true no yeah I think in the press reset was it one of the press reset yeah gosh that was wild old old heads

remember when Polygon first launch he did a video documentary series a great video documentary series where Arthur was a tattoo Arthur gets a tattoo during it.

Yeah, and one of my things was like as the news, God, I was the deputy news editor under Brian Crescenti at the time. And I forget what the story was, but I was like trying to crack it. There's just a clip of me going, ah, fuck, Jason. And Chris Plant was extremely excited when I released a book called Press Reset and then like took over the Google results for Press Reset. It is a Merse. Snatch that SEO right up. I really appreciate it. This game is fan fucking task, man.

It's so good. I really, I adored Shovel Knight, and I find that the way this game kind of resonated with me is very similar to the way that Shovel Night did in where, like, shovel night was, what if we took this formula for like NES platformers, specifically ducktails, which was a market that no one had really cornered yet, but then like modernized it, polished off a lot of the rough edges, added in, you know, the decades of kind of game-dev, game design sort of techniques that had come across since Ducktails came out and just made this one fucking really incredible game. And they, they have done that again to a T with a game formula that has been iterated on by Nintendo a million times now, which is Zelda,

which is Link's Awakening. And I'm just so impressed. with this studio and their ability to kind of like, I don't know, take something that's already amazing and really turn it into something. I mean, it has been 12 years, so they certainly took their time. Well, in that time, they also, I know. Essentially, there were these shovel night DLCs that were essentially full games that they released for free to shoveled into. I know.

I'm giving no hard time. Can I just say, you know what's funny about that? Nintendo, I think one of the reasons they're the best, their number one top tier video game company is because of their chemistry and because they, like, have longevity and they keep people, they retain people, and those people. work together and just build up this trust and just kind of rapport with one another. And I think Yac Club did the same thing here. And actually, one of the problems with Mina's development, I wrote this big story about it a few months ago for Bloomberg, was that they wound up splitting the team into two.

And one team, like the founders and a couple other people worked on this shovel night 3D game while the other team worked on Mina. That did not work out. Cost them a couple of years. And then they merge everyone together and you can see the results because now they have that just kind of of like core team working together again. And this is a team of people who like all left way forward together way back in like 2000, I think it was 2012 or 2013. And they've all been working together. One of the reasons they all left way forward back in the day to start Yacht Club is because they got sick of like being moved around from place to place and they wanted to all keep working together. And they worked together on all the shovel night games and now on this. And I think it really

shows that these people just like know how to work well together and are all just like on top of their craft. It's awesome. There's so many cases of indie studios having like a hit that they were super duper passionate about and worked on for a long time. Their like big breakout first title and then their second game for whatever reason, whether it's like bloat or overambition or just like odds. Like the odds are going to get another hit. It's crazy. They just don't capture the lightning in a bottle. And it's interesting to hear that like Yacht Club almost kind of fell into that pitfall by by splitting up the party a little bit. Yeah, well, what happens is when you have a success, you just like instinctively, you want to grow from it. You want to be like, we can do multiple

things. We can be ambitious. We can like do, do we have all these crazy ideas. We want to pursue them all. And sometimes you just have to kind of stick together and do what's best. They also thought Mito was going to be a side project. Like, they thought it was going to be a one year, small scale thing. And the game just kept blowing up and just growing as it as it evolved over time, which I think also contributed to why it took so long. I want to talk a little bit about the Zelda stuff really quick because I want to give people an idea of like what the game is and I think Zelda is a great way into the game whether you think it is or isn't like it. The top level thing where I think we can all agree, this is very Zelda in nature and specifically link between worlds, is you

are dropped into this kind of central town and said you need to go out and fix these generators and they are in four different directions, really more than that directions. And by going out in Northwest or Southeast, you're going to discover dungeons, basically, Zelda-style dungeons. But the big difference, and this is where I think, Jason, you have a feeling of this is more like a puzzle platformer, is where a Zelda game, you'll go into a dungeon and get a new item, and it's all about using that item. The dungeon itself is the thing that changes. So the way that the floors work, because you can burrow and dig, or the way the enemy

dynamics work or the way that the flow of movement across the spaces works, that is what you are learning and adapting to per dungeon. Yeah, notably there's not the weapons. Right. There's no gear gating in this game. You can go to any dungeon and effectively any order technically because you could theoretically grind the needed currency to access any dungeon at the very beginning of the game.

There's no gear gating. What there is is the like Metroid Braini style, oh, I now see how I can use the things in my current equipment to manipulate the world in ways that are unexpected. Like, oh, I can actually get a long jump, even though they never gave me an item that allows me to long jump, technically if I combine this sub weapon with this trinket or whatever, suddenly I can get across bigger gaps. So the game is very creative in that sense, whereas if you look at most Zelda games except for link between worlds, they are pretty relatively rigid, or I guess, Breath of the Wild

and Here's the Kingdom. Like, that's where Zelda is going. but earlier Zelda games pretty rigid in terms of the order you had to play them in. There are a ton of upgrade. There's like a ton of shit to find and there's a whole sort of Souls-esque system of enemies drop bones

and then when you hit certain, you know, amounts you could upgrade these different stats and you're also spending those bones on these trinkets which are sort of like a hollow night style badges. Passive abilities, basically. Yeah, passive abilities that you can kind of like change your build and customize and there's different weapons that you,

you use? It's not like Link just has a sword. There's like five different weapons that you're kind of upgraded. So there's like a lot of different ways that are very kind of RPGE where you are feeling this constant progression. But none of it is like, but you have to get this thing before you can go and do, you know, this one section of that. Yeah, Jason, is that where you see the distinction? I wouldn't even call it a puzzle platform. I would call it just a platform, like an action platformer because there aren't really any puzzles. They're just kind of like new mechanics that you just learn how to deal with and get to know. And I think the Zelda comparisons, they make you think that each dungeon is going to give you some elaborate, just kind of winding

labyrinth with a bunch of keys and block puzzles you have to solve. And that's not what this game is. It's closer to shovel night than anything or like a traditional like Mario platformer in that, hey, now you're in the, I don't want to spoil future mechanics, but I'll talk about the first one that most people will do, which is the crypt. So you get to the crypt and it's this undead themed dungeon and biome and there's a whole area leading up to the dungeon and then you get to the dungeon and it's just gradually introducing to mechanics so it'll be like hey here's a statue and then there's a head and another screen that you have to carry to fill out the statue but as long as you're carrying the head you'll be chased by a ghost kind of animal well dog style and that ghost will try to kill you

unless you put down the head along the way so you have to kind of find the balance between when you're going to carry it and when you're not and so that to me feels more like a traditional platformer mechanic that is just mapped on this kind of Zelda, links awakening slash link between world perspective. And the action and the jumping feels like links awakening or links between world. But the rhythm of the game does not. The structure of the game does not. In the second area, for example, I mean, it's just like a lot of water themed stuff. So you have to learn how to deal with water mechanics.

But again, it's not puzzles. It's just kind of platforming execution and learning mechanic and then mastering that mechanic. Yeah, it's more exploration-based, I would say, than puzzle-based. There's very few, like, moments where you're really... And I, honestly, I was looking... I spent a lot of time early in Mina the Hollowar, like, looking for stuff I assumed was going to be there. And I think that that was the thing that kind of carried on,

which is really an issue with my own sort of expectations for, like, what the game was going to be. When really it has, you know, more in common with a, like, a Banjo-Kazui-style. Like, here's a big checklist. There's 40 fucking things hidden in this part of the world. and if you really look really closely and you really take your time and explore and dig at every little hole that you see,

like you will find all that stuff, you will get stronger and you need to get stronger because the game will also kick your ass up and down the street for a while until you start to get some of this stuff, which I also kind of appreciate it about that. That first dungeon to me didn't feel like a puzzle platformer,

or didn't feel like a platformer for that matter. It felt like blood-borne. Like when you first start playing and you have no kit whatsoever, and you're just trying to eke out a win, it really feels like Bloodborn. As the game progresses and you have more control over your build and things like that, it starts feeling like a link between worlds or those sorts of games,

like just more exploration, more character control. But early on, it's really punishing. I do want to mention this a good opportunity. The game in the settings has like a crap load of settings that you can change regarding game speed, regarding how much health you have, regarding how much bones, the enemies drop. Like if you're just... Regarding if you want the screen to spin the entire time while you play.

It's fully, fully GoldenEye 64 level, like, insane. You can make Mina be 16 times bigger than normal and move at... After I beat the game, I, like, went through and tried turning on, like, everything and then tried to play it, and it is unplayable. That is how bad it is the thing called barf mode that literally makes it unplayable. Yeah, it's just like going crazy. You can have Mina jump an infinite. a number of times until she's off the screen and you can just play the game where they're just

jumping off like above the screen. That's so funny. Yeah. But the power curve is I think elegant enough that like I don't know you spend so much time getting your ass kicked. I found this like mini dungeon really early on where you can go in and rescue someone but you have to like spend some of your healing vials to get into the dungeon in the first place and I just kept getting killed over and over and over again but I was like I bet I can do I bet I can do this and after enough tries and finding like a trinket or two that like helped me stay alive a little bit longer. Eeking that out was like so satisfying. So, so, so, so.

I think it does the Silk Song thing that you have to remind yourself while you're playing. If you hit a wall like that where you're dying, dying, dying, it's really fine to come back. In fact, you will just have so much of a better time if you come back in an hour when you've gotten another healing thing or whatever it is. It's fine. I will also say it is infinitely easier than Silk Song. Like if you hear that, don't let that. scare you off you you mentioned the combat fresh in the bloodborne comparison that's probably a good

chance to talk about the weapons what weapon did everybody here use because they're they're quite different yeah yeah yeah so i use the whip for most of it when you start the game it lets you pick from like three of the five different weapons uh and then you'll unlock the rest like as you as you play uh and the the whip just felt so uh having the range was really great because you can only take a couple of hits like blood-borne, you keep making the blood-borne comparison, I think the most apt sort of part of that is that you have these healing vials that you use in the vein of, you know, of Estes-flask or whatever. But like blood-borne, you can only recover health after you attack enemies. When you attack enemies, you collect what's called plasma, which determines how much the vials will heal you for. So if you just, like, play super conservatively and you don't get in there, then your healing vials aren't going to heal you for very much, and you're going to,

die just via entropy. The game really asks you to be aggressive and get in there, which is really smart because otherwise I think this kind of like top-down action platformer style combat wouldn't be that engaged. Like the combat in Link's Awakening is not exciting or like particularly challenging in any way, but this one mechanic is enough to make you think like, oh, shit, I just got hit. I better get in there and hit them right back or else I'm not going to be a little. the dodging as well. You can go underground in the middle of combat. It's certainly more,

there's more going on than links. Yeah, sure. Jason, what weapon did you use? The shield for most of it, don't sleep on the shield. The shield, because you can do this, okay, so the shield is very short range. So you think of it as like, oh, this isn't nearly as cool as the whip. This isn't nearly as helpful. But if you use it, you can get this kind of parry. And if you attack at the right time, you'll parry an enemy's attack, which is extremely useful and more powerful. than it seems. But I played around with all of them. I mean, I play the game twice. I'm like almost done with the second playthrough with an item shuffler on. So all the items are in different locations. Maybe I could talk about that a little bit later. But so I played around with all of them.

And I find the shield actually to be the coolest one, although I'm also partial to the daggers. Yeah, I use the daggers. That was my preferred. And I, well, so I would switch between daggers and whip, depending on the situation. But the daggers were nice for just like run of the mill, normal enemies and then if I was against the boss and I needed that safety of range I would switch the whip. I use the weapon that I never used in these games which is the hammer. I started with the way.

Found the hammer immediately hated it. Yeah, I hated it. I can't. I don't want to deal with having to go find a place to change it. And then I don't even know when I started to love having this hammer. The hammer, one, you can charge it up deal an extremely damaging blow

but also you can dodge while loading that charge. So you do kind of a dodge roll. Fully monster hunter style. Like really, really, yeah. But the other thing that you can do to really kind of like spice up your combat is the trinkets, you'll be able to collect more and more of them and they can have offensive and defensive capabilities.

So I got trinkets where I could burrow longer. I could create poison paths wherever I burrowed. And when I came out of a burrow, it exploded. wherever I blew up. So I would burrow around, create a poison path in front of me, pop up, knock people back, and then as they came to me, I would have the charge ready,

and I would deliver the hammer. Cool. And that you can come up with that, and it wants you to come up with, like, your own style of combat is wild. There's so much going on in terms of the depth of the combat in this little game. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a trinket with an Air Dash ability that is my favorite by far. There's also, man, there's like some hidden synergies with the trinket, including, I won't spoil anything here. But like if you equip end game, like if you get towards the end of the game and you have all of your trinket upgrades, so I think you can equip six of them max. And if you equip six specific trinkets, you unlock a whole new mode and it like changes the game.

Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. It's really. It's a totally different. Yeah. I 100% in it mostly because like one, it's amazing. And too, like, it's just really fun to go around and find all that stuff. And the game does a great job of kind of like communicating, okay, in this area, like, you're missing, you know, these three things.

And you kind of start to get an idea of what kind of stuff you have to look for. And, yeah, finding those synergies and putting together, like, the strategy really, really is a super rewarding kind of gameplay loop that I am not used to this type of game really offering. you're not used to games being this good is the problem yeah i guess so the game also we haven't talked at all about like sort of the aesthetic like the game looks fantastic and the music holy shit the music is spectacular oh my god knocking on the the design is i at first i thought like sort of game boy color because the game boy color had like that very limited like each sprite only had like three colors and it's pixel art and so they had to kind of work very minimalist but you still get like a lot

of detail with that stuff. What was it you, what was the Neo Geo color, definitely? Neo Geo colors. Or like a Wonder Swan maybe. Yeah. Yeah, it's like definitely more high deaf than a, than a Game Boy Color game, but just really gorgeous to look at and the music spectacular too. And the vibe is also just like

kind of, kind of creepy. I thought for, maybe because the first level is like a big graveyard level, I was like, oh, it really is like a blood-born kind of horror style type thing. But the game goes other places, but the whole time there's this whole air of like, something is terribly, terribly wrong here, and they do not shy away from that. The game's story goes some really fucking buck wild places and is very, very memorable, I think,

for that. Chris, I know you in particular had some pathing issues when exploring the map, the open nature of the map and some backtracking issues as well. I wanted to dig into that a little bit because I know you kind of struggled. Yeah, this for me is the one downside of the game. And I told this to Fresh before we even hopped on. This is that thing where you like it so much that when you come across the sandpaper on your toes, you're like, why is this here? But by being totally open, you can go in any direction.

And I think the structure that the game expects you to play us, and let me know if you all agree with this, is each dungeon actually is two dungeon. There's a midway point where you will fight a boss and it is allowing you to go back, spend some of your credits in the town, and then come back. That's what it's wanting you to do. I did not understand this until about halfway through the game. So what would happen is like I would get to the midway point. I would reach a dead end and I would think, oh, well, I don't know which way I'm going. I will head back. and then a problem that happens if you do not kind of figure out your pathing while you're in the thick of it is you start having to look at every damn wall trying to figure out what you missed an example of this and this is like not a spoiler and also if anything it'll help you is you come across a puzzle in a bayou where you turn these uh kind of like screws to raise and lower water and i did that i went through it i went and fought a boss i found a mirror mirrors are important

for various reasons that we may not spoil. And then I found a room that seemed to show that, oh, I could keep moving on, but I couldn't figure out how do I get through it. It was almost like it was throwing me into a new biome. Well, surely, I needed to figure that out to get to the generator that I needed to go solve. So I end up spending an hour. Do I go back into the other biome to find a way there? Do I need to figure out a way to play with the electricity that's zapping across the screen. Do I need a different utility? There are these special powers, which we'll talk about. Any of this, will any of this work? The answer is no. What I needed to do was actually go back to the screw puzzle, five screens back, turn a different screw, go a different

direction, and that kept me on the righteous path. And there's a few times in the game where this happens, where it seems like it's trying to tell you, go this way, and the reality, it's go back to a puzzle and discover that that puzzle has more. multiple ways for it to be solved that can keep you going forward. Okay. It's not often, but the problem is because the whole year is built on mysteries. Stop right there, because this is perfect timing for my story. Okay, okay, okay, okay.

We teased in the cold open, and here it comes. I spent the weekend, this past weekend, upstate, upstate New York. And while we were up there, it was a very rainy weekend. The weather was terrible this weekend, and we were looking for indoor activities to do. And what we found was how caverns, which from where we were staying is about a two-hour drive north of where we were staying and in heavy, heavy rain. So we're like, well, I guess this is something to do.

So we go to how caverns. You took your child on an impromptu two-hour rainy road trip. Followed by, wait. That's wild. Followed by taking a giant elevator down about 20 stories into the earth. to do a 90-minute cave tour, which involves, like, water and a boat that you get on to, like, go through the cave. It's very well paved.

It's safe. But he's four, so, like, keep that in mind. Okay, so that happens. So I'm in the cave. I'm coming up in the elevator. As this cave is going on, the way we've been conjoint him to get through it is, hey, there's a gift shop at the end. Of course, he's a four-year-old.

He loves gift shops, naturally. So he's incredibly amped about the gift shop. We're going up in the elevator. We go to the gift shop. The gift shop is like large and it's got tons of shit in it that four-year-olds would absolutely love. And now he's obsessing over what does he get from the gift shop. It's like a huge mental anguish situation. And I'm standing over him like, what do you think about this?

What do you think about this? And while this is going on, Chris Plant sends me literally 16 text messages about getting through the over open-ended nature of fucking Mina the Hollow. And at some point during these text messages, I'm trying to like politely convey to him that maybe now is not the time. And it starts light. It starts with, hey, I think you go down here.

And then I say, yeah, it might be over there, but I'm actually out and about right now, so I don't have time. That's enough for me. Hey, Russ, that would have been enough for me. Most people would see out and about and be like, I think maybe I'll,

Nope, Chris Plant plows through, and at one point he sends a few more, and he's talking about how frustrated it is about getting around. And I say, okay, have fun. You would think that would be the end. No, certainly not. Another screenshot of I'm stuck here. I just care about, you know, when you love someone, it's like you can't fully experience things without their involvement. I guess so. I need to see this through your eyes.

In Chris's defense, I had definitely a lot of moments, specifically when I was playing cleanup. Like I had gotten close to where the final boss was and I wanted 100% at, but some of the shit was just like, what Chris said is super true. You will find a solution to a puzzle and then you'll do it and then you will kind of forget about it. Not realizing that that solution is also the solution to like six other hidden little things. and there were many times where I was like, man, I wish this game was out. So I could like find a hint or something online. It is, it is fairly opaque. But I also, I don't know, I also kind of like that.

I am glad that I didn't have the option to do that because it forced me to kind of try to puzzle. Yeah, I mean, as you guys know, I'm obsessed with that. And I know it's not for everyone. And I would also add that like Chris's experience while valid, 100% valid, it's also not an experience that really anyone else would have because short of the internet shutting down forever, anyone that gets that frustrated would probably just look something up, which is fine. I don't think that's necessary. Like, I, you know, it's possible.

I think my rubric for this is like, is it possible to figure the game out without help online? I think the answer is yes. I think most of us were able to do it. But I do agree for people that hit that friction and don't have the patience to, like, throw themselves at it, you have the option. Just look it up. It's fine. That area is also my least favorite area for very much. What are areas? Yeah, very much is the worst. When you are trying to 100% the game, I can't, I didn't have that experience, Chris, that sounds frustrating, but I can't speak to the main campaign part of it because I don't find much frustration there. But when you are trying

100% in it, get everything, you can actually get this ability, this skull that will glow different colors. It glows, it'll have, on your UI, you'll see this little skull, and it'll glow blue when you're in a room next to a room with a secret in it, and it'll glow red when you're in a room with a secret in it, which is super helpful. And that helped me find everything in the game, except for with one exception where there was this one room to the west of Osex where, like, the skull glows red, but you actually need to activate something in a different screen in order to get the secret there. That was very irritating. That was not the only place you got stuck, Jason. Yeah, there were two. Okay, two places. That's true. You got stuck in one of the same places as I did, too.

Yeah. But I complained about that to the developers. Yeah, the kite was, that was, that was stupid. That was me to sell. I got a kite. Well, that was, well, no. Okay. What happened was I message Russ and I was like, hey, with this kite, do you need like a special, do you need a trinket to open it? And he was, or to get it? And he was like, no, you don't need a trinket. And so for some reason in my head, I was like, oh, that means I don't need a sidearm either. But not so, I didn't realize that Russ was being extremely. I did it with a drink. I think there's a few different ways to do the kite. Yeah. I say this is someone who sent Frush 16 messages. Never sent Frus a message asking for tip because he's the fucking riddle of the space.

He's always like, um, if you know A plus three, then the riddle is me. It's true. It's because I want people to have that moment of discovery. I think that's the best part of these games. That's why I do. I mean, for the most part, I found the game to be extremely fair and it felt like

everything was justified and like the answer to most of the secrets is burrow. Like if you burrow, you will find things like really look at the screen very carefully. Yeah, yeah. Or like, yeah, look for hidden cracks or look for symmetry, like if one side of a room can be blown up, maybe the other side can too, etc, etc.

It's all just common sense stuff for the most part. But yeah, that sounds frustrating, Chris. I'm sorry you had that experience and had some time. Yeah, 20 times to get it. That was the hard part. Russ, I'm sorry you had that. No kidding. I mean, going underground while playing Venus sounds pretty cool.

Like, did you want to burrow with your kid? Tempting. Fempting. Four hours of rain driving for 90 minutes of four-year-old cave diving. I do feel like you set yourself up for kind of a stressful. Well, the alternative was an entire day at home. Oh, don't get me wrong. No, you were not facing anything. Before we wrap, I do want to hear Jason, you said early on you're going to explain the

bonus weapon abilities. It works in a really interesting way in this game, how it incentivizes you to use these secondary weapons. Bonus. I was going to explain the randomizer. I don't think we've actually talked about the sidearm or the sidearms. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The trinkets. Well, I mean, some of them are, yeah, the side arms, they're two kind of subsets of things you can get.

The sidearms, which are basically like Castlevania weapons that you just equip in a separate screen and use a separate button to do use. And there are a bunch of cool ones. There's the classic Castlevania axe and a dagger. And then there's crazy ones, like a bike. And there's a fun little mini game that you can do in Ossaxx of the bike too. It's super cool. And like, yeah, the teleport, I think you mentioned where you like throw

this disc and then you teleport to it by pressing another button and then explode everything around you? Super cool. And then the trinkets we talked about earlier and some of those also give you special abilities in addition to everything else, like the Air Dash and whatnot. What I was talking about earlier is the item shuffler, which is after you beat the game, are you guys familiar with randomizers? Griffin. Griffin. All too well. Yeah. I've streamed a few Zelda games. Amazing. Yeah, those are so cool. And watching the speed runs of them is incredibly fun. And this game has a built-in one. So you don't even need a mod for it. After you beat the game, you can choose item shuffle on. And that just

like completely shuffles up every location of every item and upgrade in the game to a hilarious degree. So like normally the game opens with this ship crash and then the captain of the ship gives you some vials. And it's like, here, these will help you heal. And so to get through the early game, you need those to be able to heal. But in the item shuffler, he'll give you anything, depending on what the seed has you give it. So like I got, I think it was a weapon upgrade or something, maybe like a key. I don't remember exactly what it was, but he just gave me that. And I was like, shit, I have to go through like the first two hours of the game without healing until I find a vial somewhere. And it took me a while, which is extremely fun. Because once you've mastered the

game, it's really cool to go through. There's also new game plus. And there's also like, you can play the whole game in mirror mode where it's all flipped. You can play, there's a set of mods. So in addition to having 200-something mods, there are also these kind of collections of them. So, like, you can choose. There's one called Ura Mena, which is a reference to like an old classic Urra-Zelda type thing. And basically it just chooses like 40 mods or so that make the game tougher. And so that can be the tough mode. And you don't even have to go through all 200 on a granular level and pick them all yourself. You can just choose this category. The other one is, there's another one called Barf mode that I mentioned earlier. There's a shuffle mode.

The level of detail they put into these mods into everything of this game, I think if the best way to some of this game is just the word meticulous. Like everything in it is just so clever and well thought out and just so much attention to detail paid to even the tiniest little things, including the mods, which is very satisfying. I think the studio is also, and we've seen this with Shovel Night and then the DLCs after, very, very smart in the way they reuse the assets they've created in a clever ways that, like, in hand, like turns this into, I mean, I don't think they're stretching it, But it's, if you're getting 100% at least 30-hour game, right?

At least. Yeah. So that's pretty amazing. And then once you beat it, you have all this extra stuff where you're going through. It would not surprise me if they might have already announced this. I don't know. Where, hey, you can play through the game now as a new character or something like that. So I could see this game having a lot of life and in turn funding the development, easily funding the development of their next project, which obviously would be a big.

I think it's going to be huge. I think it's going to, I think it's a good. contender up there for me. I was so, so, so deeply into this game. I mean, it's number one. I'm at a critic right now. And Jason, you were in your reporting, you said that the number they were trying to hit is 200K units sold. Yeah, I don't even think that's accurate anymore. I'll do a new story on Friday, but that was a number that they kind of threw out before pricing it at $20. I think they'll need to sell more than $200,000. Oh, you think it was low past $200? Yeah, I think for them to be, so Yacht Club is entirely independent.

So this game was made entirely by their funding the studio themselves based on what they made from Shovel Night over the years. And Chauvel Night and all the other games they've worked. They've published other games and, like, work with codevs and stuff. None of them have really been hits other than shovel night. They definitely need this to be a hit. Otherwise, they'll have to downsize or find outside funding or something like that. And they have a runway.

I don't know when it ends. And they need this to sell X number by then. I think it'll be fine. I mean, like I said, this is number one, a metacritic right now. the 93, right, over Forza, Pokemon, Resident Evil, Mugenics. So, like, they'll be fine, I think. Unless people really don't want a Game Boy style game. But to your question, I mean, since it's only 20 bucks, I think they have to sell a lot more. I was talking to Sean Velasco, the head of the studio last week for a story that'll be up on Bloomberg this Friday. And he was like, look,

really, I want to sell a million copies. And I want to sell a million copies, like, within the next, like, soon-ish, like within a short time frame. I think that's very doable. bucks makes it such a no-brainer for people. Like if it was even, even 25, it would be like, oh, okay, I don't know, but $20 for like this quality of game and this amount of stuff. They're looking at Silk Song, they're looking at Hollow Night and realizing, oh, that's clearly. You'll see in this story that I did.

But I'll just kind of, I'll spoil it a little bit early for you guys. I'll give you guys the exclusive, which is basically the Oclub team met last month. And they were, they had picked a release date and they were like, okay, we're all set to go. finally we got to talk about the price and fucking crazy that that's when they were talking about that's great that is that is insane compared to the sort of like i mean we'll talk about the destiny stuff later on but just like the triple a world of like that's the first fucking thing yeah yeah yeah yeah that's the first thing well in triple a you don't need to talk about the price it's just how can we make a game that we can charge 90 dollars like that's the so they're like we got to talk about

the price and they had kind of assumed so on kick starter you could get a copy for 20 bucks and they assumed that would be the cheaper price. and then they would go for like maybe 30, maybe 35. But they looked at Silk Song, and they also all got together. So basically what happened was they got together for this meeting. And a lot of them expected to be like, all right, we're going to have to debate this, like 30, 35. But every single one of them thought on their own, this should be 20 bucks. And they all got in the room and there was no debate and no argument because every single person in there was like,

this needs to be $20. And they ultimately figured, which I think is true, that this will make more money at $20 than it would at $30. It's got it. The people that normally wait for the sale at 30 will not wait for the sale. Exactly. And it also feels so good, I think, from a consumer perspective to be like, I am giving such a little amount of money to support this independent studio that is like so dedicated to their

craft and like care so much and like is willing to just sell this for so cheap. It just feels like a good. And like to get that much value for your price, it to me it seems like it's a brilliant move, especially compared to like. And then you have. have Microsoft being like, hey, Outer Worlds 2 is going to be $80. Actually, about that. Never mind.

So it's like such a contrast. Yeah, I think it's a brilliant move. Yeah, can't recommend this one enough. I really, I think it's for just about everyone. It's pretty special game. Yeah. Yeah. Let's take a break.

There's some big news to talk about. And so we're going to get into that with Jason just after this break. I didn't know that today was Dragon Quest. Oh, yeah. It's Dragon Quest Day, baby. Being unplugged, again, I talk about this a lot. It's just a wonderful surprise. Your slime tattoo didn't tell you?

Giving shit about the games industry for one hour a week when I record the besties. It's just like, every day it's like opening up a special little present. Because I don't know that they're announcing Dragon Quest shit, and I love Dragon Quest. But the announcement today was that Dragon Quest 12 was rebooted and starting from scratch. Yeah, so what is the, obviously they announced Dragon Quest 12 with, like the most bare bones. Here's what the logo of it looks like. We don't have a subtitle.

Okay. Well, okay. I mean, the context of it, they had originally announced Dragon Quest 12 like five years ago. A long time. It was like 2021 or something. And today they announced,

hey, about that, we've rebooted it and restarted from scratch and now it has a new subtitle. And here's a little bit of footage. This game is forever away. Which I did not expect. I expected them to be like, hey, Dragon Quest 12.

It's almost done. It's coming out next year. I was totally. off guard, but I'm saying it have been rebooted. That's crazy. The fans, they just want more Dragon Quest. Keep it as Dragon Questy as possible. In the point, like, when they announced to the original version, that's five years ago,

people were like, oh, no, it's dark outside and there's fire. I don't want grim dark Dragon Quest. This is going to be too moody. And then they're like, got it, got it, got it. We're going to reboot it. You're going to get all that colors right back. And then all I see on Twitter or, what is it, blue sky this morning, is people being like, I don't know, that guy looks pretty tired.

I don't think I'm really into it. He does look tired. They use the Dragon Quest Tired Eyes preset, which really took me by surprise when they sort of revealed this guy. It's Dragon Quest 12 Beyond Dreams, which is... Well, that's why he's so tired. Because he's like Beyond Dreams until like...

Also, he has the broccoli hair. Oh, amazing. The cool fade on the sides. This is like the Gen Z Dragon Quest. The Gen Z Dragon Quest guy. I think it was, End Quest 6 was the one that was like had like a dream world. I don't know.

I've played all these fucking things. I can't keep them straight. So I'm wondering if it has something to do with that. But I don't think we have any kind of like plot details. They just showed off like, hey, there's a cool lady with a robot side chick and like a side chick. Side chick. A robot side chick and a motor. There's one of them you can get married.

So it makes sense that you would also be able to have a side chick. Also, again, he's Gen Z. So like they have all sorts of. ideas about polyameralist relationships. They also announced sort of with, again, just kind of a logo reveal, there's a new Dragon Quest Monsters game quote coming soon, and

Dragon Quest 11 is coming to Switch? Yeah, the notable... It's already on Switch. It's already on Switch. It's a definitive edition, Dragon Quest 11. Notably, they did not announce an upgrade path for the Switch 1 version. So if you already own it on Switch 1, there's a good shot that you're just

going to have to pony up another... Love Dragon Quest 11. I do not know that I'm going to want to buy it at Switch 2 price to play again. It's a pretty bold move by Square. I think they just did a sale on the original Switch 1 version like two days ago. And so if anyone bought it then, they might be kicking themselves. But what are you going to do? I mean, somebody's got to pay for this new Dragon Quest reboot, you know?

Yeah, that's the thing. It's not like it was – I played it all the way through on Switch. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. It works good. You can even, you can play it in the 2D mode. It's great. Right, yeah.

You don't need all the fiddette. You don't need the HDR shit. Or if you just play it in pixel art mode. I'm excited from where Dragon Quest, but I don't know, man. My JRP's have been really letting me down lately in the like anticipation department. Because it's like, when is persona 4 revival coming out? When's persona 6 going to fucking rear its head? Wait, there's another persona game, persona 4 coming out?

There's a persona for a remake coming. Oh, the remake. Yeah. And then six is... That they announced with, again, like, 15 seconds of gameplay footage. And, you know, I don't know what it is. I mean, I know that these games are enormous and take forever to make. But, like, I don't know why the drip feed is quite as...

You can't just show me 15 seconds of the guy running around the city and play... Tell me, boy, I'm... Like, that's good, but I want... I think I need a little bit more than that. Yeah, my question, and I actually emailed Square to ask them. This. My question is, when did they reboot it? Like, are we talking two years ago they rebooted it? Or, like, this week they rebooted it.

Because that's a big difference. Yeah, it could be like a Metroid Prime 4 situation. Exactly. I don't know why. This is, it's crazy to me that game companies are so hesitant to talk about that. That they are so hesitant to talk about the, I was always, I was really impressed when, like, ID tech, ID tech, came out and like sort of said, like, okay, Doom. I was at the QuakeCon where they, like, sort of revealed this is what Doom 4 is.

now after years of it being kind of like in development hell and here's all the shit that we didn't get right and check it out now you're gonna just chainsaw all these guys in half we fucked up trying to make it some other thing and now it's just and the response to that was insane like people were crazy about that and I think to this day like people hold that game and sort of doom in very high regard now knowing like the hell that it went through to get there and it seems like there's so many developers and publishers out there who think of that as like some great failing or that they have wasted your time or they have wasted the the shareholders sort of like time and investment when really it just means like hey we are actually working much harder

on this thing i mean they did waste a lot of time and money working on metro prime four before they rebooted it and in turn like and then they yeah that's obviously a bad example because then the one that came out was but even in good examples like that it's them admitting fault on like hey we spent four years on this thing and most of it's not going to get used. For a legacy thing, like Dragon Quest, like Doom, like Metroid, if that game had been good, like, I think it's more important to say like, hey, this thing is, we can't put something out that's not like good. That's not good enough.

That's not up to what people are expecting. And so we went back to the well. I mean, I don't know. There are so many situations. Essentially. Like that's what they said. They said, hey, it wasn't working out. We rebooted it.

This is more candid both in the Nintendo situation with the. Metroid and this way more candid than you traditionally see from Japanese studios. So things are changing. Also, for what it's worth, I think that with Japanese studios, it comes as a surprise because there isn't the same kind of reporting there. Like, if this happened in the West, it would probably get out. It would probably leak in some way. They'd have staff turnover and people would be talking to Jason on the phone.

So. Get some text messages. The other part of the news, how are you all doing? How are you all feeling about the destiny news? So, I think it was last week, like right after. we recorded that Bungy came out with their, I guess, weekly update and said, hey, so the patch that comes out on June 6th for Destiny 2 is the last update that we are releasing for Destiny 2. And then development up, you know, ongoing development on Destiny 2 is done.

Good night, sweet prince. Literally three paragraphs, right, in a, which is already kind of shocking. There's so many shocking things about this. one, like the comms from Destiny has had to be pretty thorough because the fan base, like, expects a lot and wants, wants to know everything that's kind of going on to announce in a fucking, like, PR blast that big. Like, so we're done. Bye.

Thanks for playing their game for 65,000 hours. Bye. Did you still play it, Griffin? So I don't know. I played Final Shape. And I played a couple of updates, like, after Final Shape. Oh, so you do still play. I mean, that's more recent.

I haven't played on final shape. Okay, no, yeah. So I played through all of Final Shape, which was fucking spectacular, which was really, really great. Really, like, I think there's a lot of people who think it should have stopped there. So, like, if you're going to stop it, like, stop it after this, like, extremely, like, exciting, cathartic, kind of polished way out of, like, this whole story. But because the, the structure of that game was based on,

seasons and, you know, what's coming next? They kind of kept going along with it even as the player base continued to kind of like slough off. I mean, that's the fatal flaw, right? As they announced this thing called the final shape, made everyone think it was the end, and then just kind of limped off with just like, hey, here's some more stuff, kind of. I mean, it was the end. Like, effectively it was the end in terms of, like, significant updates. Yeah, I mean, I was talking about this with someone to Bungee, actually.

I was like, it makes no sense. Like, why would you guys not? just tease Destiny 3 at the end of that. And they were like, yeah, I mean, this is a problem. The problem, I actually, I just made a YouTube video about this. I'm a YouTube, I'm a YouTuber now. So like and like and subscribe. I just made a YouTube video about this.

What's your channel called Mr. Beast? It's called Jason. Jason, yeah, it's called Mr. Beast and check it out. It's all sorts of pranks and games. It's the games. I'm going to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to everyone at Bungie. It's a fucking bungee. Yeah.

It's Jason hyfe. Jason dash Shriar. Check it out. Like and subscribe. No, so I think what happened, I mean, my understanding what happened is that like, first of all, they had this project called Payback that was like a Destiny thing. It was kind of a third person Destiny, Genshin Impacty thing that Luke Smith was working on. That got canceled around the time Final Shape came out. They really couldn't. Was that because of the Destiny mobile game that

No, it was because of other big, like, upending at Pungy. And I think that Destiny 3, like Sony just didn't have the appetite to spend that kind of money at a Destiny 3. Like that's, we're talking 300, 400, 500 million dollars before marketing for the next four or five years. I mean, the Paul McCartney is going to need like 10 million at the very least. But also you have to fund Marty O'Donnell's Congress campaign. So that's that really got endorsed my truck. Oh, Griffin. Oh, no, no, no. It's real bad.

He has a bunch of culture of him. You got to check out his ex-feed. Fuck, dude. Oh, man, this is the opposite of a present. This is like, no, guys, my detachment from the games industry is supposed to only be good. Finding out that fucking legendary game composer Marty O'Donnell is a fucking cheap. I don't know if you know this, and the games industry is mostly bad news these days. So, yeah, I mean, I think Sony just didn't have the appetite for that kind of money in a market that is like increasingly hard or getting harder and harder.

every year. Nobody's making that, like, significant profits off of spending budgets like that. The budgets are growing up and the timelines are growing up. And Sony has been burned a bunch of times with some of their investments and bad moves. Specifically by Bungee, I think. Well, you know what's really crazy? I talked about this in my video. So not only, so Bungee, put Bungee aside the amount they spent $3.6 billion buying Bungee plus all the burn rate that they've been going through. So Bungee, I don't know if you guys know this. In 2016, Destiny 2 was delayed a year. And as well, a result of that delay, the guy who was running bungee at the time was kind of asked to leave. Harold Ryan. Harold Ryan would go on to found a company called Probably Monsters that would start a

studio called Firewalk. And to run a game at Firewalk, they would bring on this guy Ryan Ellis, who was the original director of Destiny 2 before the delay and kind of reboot happened on D2. And Ryan Ellis would direct at Firewalk a game called Concord. So this is like full circle here. And again, again, Again, just... Getting them from all... Getting Sony from all sides. So, Sony has all these investments that have not quite panned out, and it's...

Where is it... What was the story? What was the story? This is, obviously, I think, pretty germane, but again, I'm pretty detached. What was the Sony losses? They, like, put up, like, almost a billion dollars in... Yeah, an impairment on Bungy. Yeah, I mean, that's...

That could be a number of things. And when it comes to accounting, I think that the games press doesn't really know how to how to handle that or what it actually... I mean when a company writes off investments into a game company, it could mean a lot of different things. Here's my question about the video games for you, Jason. What does this mean for Marathon? As somebody who loves going to Talsetti, does this mean, hey, we're actually going to focus what money we do have on this thing and try to make this work? And I do want to drop in a stat on Marathon before Jason jumps in.

The stat that I looked at, the second they announced the Destiny News that they'd not be doing any more updates, Destiny at the time had more daily active users than Marathon did. Daily or concurrent on Steam? Concurrent, but I was looking at the averages per day. But on Steam specifically, you're talking about. Steam specifically. So granted, they are on multiple platforms, but I was kind of extrapolating it out. It's not so surprising.

Yeah, a number going down versus number going up is also more important. I mean, they're both going down, but the difference is this game that came out three months ago is lower than the game that came out 12 years ago and, hasn't had an update in a year. So Bungy is definitely investing in Marathon. They have a big team on Marathon that is continuing. They've moved people off of Destiny onto the marathon team. I don't know if they can recover. Like, I don't know if they can get to the player base that that game needs to get to to be a success. But it's not like they're shutting down the game and shutting down the studio. What they're going to do is like...

Yeah, I mean, that's the question is like, when does Sony lose all patience in Bungy as a studio? I don't... that's true. Yeah, Destiny 2 is going to keep going just without any updates. Yeah, what they're going to do. So the current state of things is they have a big investment in marathon. They're going to keep that going for at least like the imminent future. They're going to have that right now people are pitching and prototyping new ideas there, including destiny stuff and other other stuff. But like could pitch it and wind up getting greenlit a new destiny thing, whatever that looks like. I cannot imagine it would be Destiny 3, but certainly possible. Destiny 3 is not an active development, but it could very well happen. Destiny, rogue, like, two years development. It's such a cool world. I understand why they would be hesitant to invest the amount of money required to pay Paul McCartney his nut to, like, make Destiny 3.

But I have thought, I've played thousands of hours of Destiny 2. It's one of my favorite games of all time. I think it's the tightest shooter ever made, like feeling like it's a great studio. Marathon's a great game, too. Great studio. There's so much talent. And there's so many, so many stories of that talent being squandered going on these wild goose chases after, oh, fuck, Overwatch is big. Quick, do Overwatch.

Oh, shit, Fortnite's big. We better do over, we better do Fortnite. Like, and betraying that incredible amount of, like, talent and competence. And Sony not really sticking by, or Activision or whoever was kind of like on top of things at the time. like bailing at the first sign of like, uh-oh, someone doesn't like this thing. I told you guys you should have done a Fortnite. Like there's so much mismanagement and it's so, it's heartbreaking to me as both a fan of what Bungy does. Like they have made some of my favorite games of all time and also of just a fan of Destiny 2 and Destiny in general and the world and the lore. It has been

truly devastating to see the videos coming out of the, like YouTube community, the creators, my name is Bife and, uh, you know, all the folks who like, I would go to like watch their raid guides and shit. Uh, the Bif one is in particular pretty sad because like he would do these 10 hour expletor pieces on the lore of the world and oh, I can't wait to find out what Civu or Rath is actually up. And like, in three paragraphs, they were like, that's, and that's it. It's fucking. It's so, it's, it's, there's nothing. It's purely, truly, truly, truly sad. Uh, and, uh, and, I'm still kind of reeling from from this news.

And I think it speaks to so many problems that the games industry has been facing for a decade. And it's just such a huge, terrible loss, I feel like. And it seems it, I have felt like Destiny 3, if they had announced it and made it, it would have been fucking huge. It would have been big because there's still such an appetite, both for this type of game and for this world. And it's, I just don't understand. I mean, it would have been 2032. before that game came out. Yeah, I mean...

Unless they started working on it, you know, seven years ago, right? Like, I don't know. But then you need hundreds of people working on that game. It just seems so impractical in this day and age. I don't know. I mean, the modern games industry is just so fucked. And, like, I think that especially Western game development, where the salaries have to be high to deal with our cost of living here in the U.S.,

and therefore the budgets are getting out of control, I mean, I just don't see how sustainable it is to have a team. team of 800 people, most of whom are in the suburbs of Seattle, working on a video game. It's just... Move to West Virginia. Open up Bungee in Huntington, West Virginia. Well, it's funny you say that because they're like a remote first studio. So people can be anywhere. It's just that they have their offices in Seattle. And also, like, who the fuck wants to work for a company where, like, you get less money if you're working

somewhere else. So that's a whole other can of worms too, right? Like, if you're paying Seattle salaries to some people, you have to pay them at everyone. So, yeah, it's tough, man. And on top of everything else, Spongey is going to be laying people off, which is something that we reported at Bloomberg. And I heard that last week, there was like an all-hands meeting. And basically, people were asking,

people have been asking for a long time about layoffs. People asked the head of the studio. Are there going to be layoffs? And she essentially dodged a question. He was like, we're not announcing a riff right now. Like, it's just, it's bleak over there. And sucks to work on that team. Yeah.

Yeah. Bummer. Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, bummer news. Do we want to do some our dimensions? Maybe we can find a point of light in the stuff we've been playing.

Energy-wise. I can start, because I finally played that Diablo DLC, Diablo 4, just a brief backstory, I thought Diablo 4 was okay, didn't really like the first DLC, the Vessel of Hatred, played it for like an hour

and was like, eh, this is more Diablo. And I finished the Lord of Hatred, the newest dynasty that came out a month or two ago, maybe last month, yesterday. And hey, it's fucking great. It's really, really fun and really good. It asks a lot, when you start playing Diablo 4 after not playing it for a long time, and you drop into one of those hub towns, and it's like, okay, man, do you want to do the pit or the tree of whispers or the artificer's tower?

Or do you want to do a nightmare dungeon? Or do you want to level your glyphs? or do you want to go to room crafting? It's like, oh, fuck, just stop, just stop, just chill, just stop. And there are so many different ways that they have kind of worked to provide a pathway for stuff you can do that's going to be fun and will get you constant sort of drip feed, like upgrades. I've been playing as the Paladin, which is one of the two new classes, Paladin and Warlock. And it is a returning class and being able to kind of create this tornado.

of hammers and then just running through a place like I'm a fucking bay blade and then constantly finding these different ways to like make that feel better and make that feel faster and stronger and then going up to the next difficulty tier and finding new shit and taking on these different challenges. I'll tell you the thing and I'm curious if it addresses this. I'll tell you the thing that made me bounce off Tiabo 4 was I felt like I built I did my build. I had my combo that was like a five to 10 second combo where I would.

do the same combo every time I ran into a room, clear the enemies out, pick the stuff up, go to the next room. Is there any sense that, like, that flow has changed at all in this expansion? Yeah, so there is, just from the core kind of, like, gameplay side of things, they added a system now where gear has sockets, right?

This is, like, classic Diablo shit, and you're slotting in gyms. Now you can also spend two of those sockets to have, like, an activator run and a power run. And the activator is, like, it will generate energy if you drink a potion or if you use this type of skill or if you do this and it'll generate this much energy and it will after a certain point activate the other run which is a skill from any class oh that's fun so like you i'm i'm a paladin and for a while i had a

piece of gear that i slotted one of these runes in and it like used a it used a necromancer skill that like was actually pretty synergistic with the shit that i was that i was doing um but even like beyond all of that i've i've played through the campaign it took me like five or six hours or so, and I've been, like, diving into some of the, the endgame stuff afterwards. And I've barely kind of, like, scratched the surface of, like, you know, finding the piece of gear that changes the way that your build works, like, entirely. I haven't found any of that shit. I've just kind of been picking away at sort of what I have missed out on. And I don't know, man, there's a lot there. And I don't know. It would take me a while to kind of, like,

figure out exactly what has changed, but I feel, um, compelling. to check that stuff out. I feel compelled to see what this thing is that people talk about, this gameplay loop that people obsess over or to see what I need to do to get to that next difficulty tier. Here's a checklist and here's a bunch of rewards. There's a really smart system called war plans now, which is just like in the main city after you finish the campaign you get

are what's called war plans, which is where you set a branching sort of path of activities and you build sort of a route through them. And so right now I'm picking like three different activities. But it'll be like do a nightmare dungeon, do a helltide, and do, you know, some other thing. And then you lock that in. And then as you do that shit, you are getting so much gear and you're getting points that upgrade those individual activities. So now, you know, I've leveled up whart, helltides.

And now, like, now different shit happens during helltide events. It doesn't happen for other people because I've leveled up through this thing. Just doing stuff I would normally be doing anyways. It's just a lot of really, really, really smart kind of systems that are in play now. Also, the story is fucking killer. They take some big swings. They do some major shit with some characters that have been in the franchise since Diablo. And I don't give a shit about Diablo lore, but even I was like, I had several modes during this campaign where I was like, holy shit.

I can't believe they did that. It's the strongest Diablo has been for me since like, I don't know. I think Russ and I got into Diablo 3 on story. for a while when it came out. And like I enjoyed, you know, going through and trying to find the rare gear and trying to find the thing I need to like make my barbarian build work. This is clicking for me on a level that is quite a bit deeper. I also, Henry had surgery yesterday and so I was in the hospital for a while and I've

just kind of been like staying up with him as he kind of recovers from that. And it's been pretty choice for just kind of zonking out and turning into a bayblade and tearing through a million zombies or whatever. So, yeah, I've had the code for this for a while and I didn't dip into it. because it's like, it's Diablo 4, who gives a shit. But me, as it turns out, is the answer to that. Jason, anything that you've been planning, it doesn't have to be a game.

It could be something, a book you're reading, for example. A one more thing, if you will. A one more thing. Can I talk about 007? Ooh. We are planning on doing it next week. But I won't be here next week. I know.

What's it come out? It comes out. Oh, it'll be. It's out. It's out. Tell me every, tell me all about, tell me what to expect from the, I'll just do a very quick version. Very top line, please.

We don't want to spoil. I literally haven't played it, so we don't want to spoil. No, I'm not going to spoil anything. How's Lenny? No, I mean, it's really cool. I really like it a lot. I'm into it more than, like, most triple. Like, I haven't been this into a AAA game in a minute because I find AAA to be so tedious

and repetitive that it's like, it's been hard to stick. And there's only six of the year, so. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, it's really cool. It's like a mashup of uncharted style cinematics and driving and shooting. and Hitman style kind of immersive sim stuff. It's not quite as sandboxy as Hitman for good reason.

It felt a little closer to Splinter Cell was my, like, a little bit. No, no, it feels very hitman. Like, it's like you'll overhear someone talking about how, like, there's a, the password is over in that room, or like you'll try to sneak into an event, and someone will mention that they left their press badge over there, and so you can go get it. It's very hitman in that way.

But you're not like cutting the Fugu fish. No, you are not cutting the Fugu fish. at least from what I've seen. It's not a hitman game if you don't. That's true. And you're not dressing up as a duck. It's more serious than it. But it's like,

Hitman, I've always appreciated Hitman, but never really gotten sucked into it. And I think that's because it lacks a real story and real characters. And that's what this has. And the performance of Bond is so delightful in an unexpected way.

And the writing is so good in a way that I really just was not anticipating that I've been really into it and really just hooked by the story and wanting to see what's going going to happen next. I'm also not a James Bond fan. I've never even seen one of the movies. Wait, you've never seen one of the movies? I've seen every Austin Power movie, if that helps. That's incredibly weird, Jason. If you add all those up, it equals one James Bond movie.

Exactly. No, I played Golden Iron Man 64, but I've never never never seen a movie. Well, you know what happens. Yeah, I mean, I have it. I know who our job is. Yeah, he can slap. Quick around the bin. Recommendation. I think Casino Royale, if you're going to watch one bond movie. Good to know. Maybe after I finish this, I'll, I'll check that out. And yeah, it's good. And yeah, it's good. One thing I'll say, though, not a spoiler, but Lenny Kravitz has been kind of like been part of the marketing campaign of this game. His performance is truly, as the kids would say, mid. It is like, it is horrible. You don't want to go his way.

It's, no, you do not. I think Zoe got the talent in that family. Yeah, Lenny Kravitz should not be in this game. But it's very gen X of them to be like, we got to get Lenny Kravitz in our James Bond game. But yeah, it's a cool game. I like it a lot more than I expected to like it. I am excited. I really just played like the first intro part, and I am excited to play more,

and we will indeed be talking about it more next week. Plant, do you have any honorable mention stuff? Yes, I saw Obsession, which is, it is taken over the movie theaters, the rare movie that does better on its second weekend than its first one. It is a new horror movie. The word of mouth has been pretty crazy for this. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot.

The basic premise is a young man is yearning for the affection of one of his friends. He makes a wish that she will love him more than anyone else on the planet, and he gets that wish. And where it goes from there is unbelievably gruesome in dark. It is a horror movie that earns its R. It is a horror movie that actually has scares that aren't just jump scares. It's just like really, really unsettling. And it's a horror movie that you hear that premise. And it is like kind of about social things.

It is definitely a movie about the like, quote, nice guy who, you know, just wants your love. But really it's, I didn't find it interesting at all in terms of what it has to say. I found it interesting in that it set up. up a really, really mean and nasty premise, and it is determined to see that through and where that could possibly go, which is many, many, many wrong directions. I've heard a lot of good stuff about, I think in the Navarette, the woman who plays the sort of affection who turns in a truly dazzling, terrifying performance. If there was a just world where horror or comedy or family movies could

get Oscar nominations. One, Rachel McAdams would have like five Oscars, but two, yes, this is a sort of performance that like deserves that, that caliber of attention. I also, if you're going to go see it, try to see it in a busy, crowded theater. There are so many moments in it that are going to get very big reactions and you don't get many chances to enjoy that anymore where you're in a theater with people who are genuinely shocked and aghast. And I would say most of that is like pretty fairly earned so yeah you should check it out no wonder you're sick you went to the theater

and just got all those jokes that is the wrist I'm twist I'm twist Russ what about you I reached room 46 wow oh man do we have another hour to talk about this

oh you finish the tutorial that's what fucking Jason said he's like congrats on the prequel or whatever the fuck the prologue the prologue right this is our last chance to be in suffering about blueprints for us you're the last person to play it. Please let us just kind of celebrate this moment. Live it up, guys.

That's a good fucking game. It's great. Important to note, the Switch 2 update with the accessibility features is indeed live finally. Great. It happened about halfway through my playthrough. It's so funny that you waited this long and then you had to play the version. Have you been like galaxy braining?

Have you been like, oh yeah, we've got. Do you feel like Goku taking off the ankle weights where it's like, now I can see what all the different things are? Yeah, we've got a truly unhinged notebook that started kind of normal and then just goes wild from there. We are sort of in this place of like definitely more threads to pull. Yeah. I am curious to know how long this game like keeps our attention because it's certainly there now. But at a certain point, if I feel like I hit a wall or we hit a wall and we feel like we have to start looking things up, that would kind of kill it for me.

So, I don't know, how many days did you guys do? Well, okay, the question is how many, like, do you have a bunch of goals still in your head that you want to? Yeah, I wouldn't say, I would say probably four, four-ish goals. And are you curious about how the story and lore just kind of unravels? To some extent, yeah, if only for this sake of opening safes, specifically. Have you found any fucking crazy keys? Yes, I found some crazy keys. Okay.

I mean, that for me was the big kind of breadcrumb trail that if you found one, the sanctum keys, I think is what they're called. Oh, yeah, no, I haven't, we haven't found any of those. But I'm familiar with the room. Yeah, when you're unlocking 46, you get to that room. Yeah, yeah, I've been to the room. So we were, I certainly figure that there were ways to access. By tracking those down, you will, you will, that is the kind of, I think, closest you get to a critical path in the in the game part. It goes lots of other places for sure, but by hunting those down, you will start to see the broader kind of, the broader.

There's like three different ending. I know this is not being insufferable as a bit, but like there's a few different kind of like benchmark ending points where you've like solved a bunch of different shit. And like 46 is one of them. And then there's a few like really, really satisfying ones that you can you can dig up if you. Yeah, we're obviously, you know, we're aware of the giant vault door and Blackbridge and all sorts of other things. So there is definitely stuff to pull. I think the number one goal right now is try to make a power hammer. So to access all the brick.

Nice. Put that shit in your- I know. That was our intention. We were going to store it once we made one. Well, now that you're done with the basement key, you don't need to keep that on code check. So we use that. We've used that twice.

So I think we're more or less done, but who knows? We'll see. Griffin and I were in a Discord pre-release, like solving everything with a bunch of other press people. It's been so much fun playing with someone else. And it's really cool. Really fun. If you want jokes to say, if you want little hints, I know, I know what a, well, I'm talking about little rust-sized, tiny, micro, fun-sized hints. Jason sent me like, the first three sentences were like, this would save you a bunch of time if, and I send him like gifts to like scroll the text.

That's how much I don't want. Did you ever go back and look at that? No, I haven't. All I said to you was, all I said to you was that the pump room just stays persistent so you don't have to worry about going back and changing it. That's all I said to you. God damn it, Jason. How could you?

I know, how dare I spoil that. But I don't know the degree to which Jason is informing me. If the alternative is you bail from the game, there are. Yeah, I would look stuff up or ask. Well, no, don't look stuff up. I would ask one of us. Ask Jason and I, because it's the last thing we have. So, I mean, I were, okay, so to give you kind of, Griffin and I both saw everything this game has to offer.

Like, we got deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. I think it's 100% worth it. But there's definitely some stuff that, like, I never would have been able to solve on my own. So you will get to a point where you probably need some hits. Animal Well was the same way. Like, once I knew we hit that wall. It's a little different than Animal Wall because Animal Well, it's very clear when you get to the bunnies that it's like, all right, this is the point of no return. I don't mind asking for ants anymore.

The eggs you can do on your own. With this, it's a little. less kind of distinct the layers are a little less distinct and I think some of the hardest stuff or some of the stuff that is most obtuse is throughout is sprinkled a little bit throughout but I will say

at least for me it was well worth getting to that final layer because the stuff you find at the end is so cool from a story perspective a design perspective just like a holy shit what is this game perspective I think it's worth it there's another sort of threshold which is like it would have been

helpful for someone to have told us like, and that's it. Yeah. And now you found the last thing because not a joke, Jason can attest to this, like, weeks spent, certainly, I don't know how pre-release we got the code, but like nights spent just like fucking banging our head against stuff. I remember one time I, like, hopped in the Discord like, guys, I found something. Holy shit. I blew the whole thing wide open. And what it turned out is that I had found like a glitch where I could interact with something through a wall that I wasn't supposed to be able to do. And they're like, oh, no, this is this other thing that you haven't even found yet.

But, like, there was a long, long, long, extended period that ended with us going like, okay, so I guess that's it. Yeah, that happened with Mist. I remember playing Mist when it first came out. And you just, like, it ends with, like, you looking at the book where they're, like, trapped in the book. And I was like, where do I go now? And you can walk around the entire fucking island and they never tell you. They never tell you. They never said, they never. Was there not a layer of internet crazy people, like, going even deeper? And he still won't tell me. Although I think it's very clear that we've seen all there is to see. But like, he still will never acknowledge whether. Was there not a layer of internet crazy people like going even deeper? than what you guys did? No, we actually, we found everything before the game came out. Oh, that's cool. Much like Animal Well,

we're like, we just, you did Animal Well, like, No, Animal Well, we didn't find everything. Animal Well, people found that, that audio log,

like after the, like, yeah, there was stuff after the rabbits. Well, the reviewers couldn't, we couldn't find it. There weren't enough. You needed 50 of those screens

to fill up a whole thing. Yeah, that's actually a big bottle of, but yeah, they found it in like 12 hours. Like this stuff it took us like a, Like a week of just like a green. With blueprints, I'm actually proud to say the reviewers, we found everything right before.

We actually, I mean, we also were working with QA testers who like had seen everything. And so they kind of guided a little, like nudged us a little bit. But still, we found everything. And then people in the real world found it like three days after it launch. And now it's clear that there's nothing else to find. But yeah, we, I don't know. I think it's kind of clear. But yeah, if you have questions about like, I see it.

We'll keep picking at it. and it's still really engaging. So, you know, it is up for Best Eats game of the year, 2026. It is an option. Love it. We punted it to this year, so we'll see. Maybe I'll play it again in the fall after my brain has... Do you think, I wish you could erase your brain, like, forget everything about it.

Selectively forget games. I would have eternal sunshine this and... I think 20 years down the road, that's about 10 to 20 years you start forgetting the numbers. It's going to take me way less than that, dude. Way, way, way, way less. We're old. Jason, where can people find your stuff? Obviously, there's the excellent triple click.

Triple click. People should come to Triple Click. I'm a YouTuber now. So people should come to, like, I don't know if I'm actually going to be a YouTube. Are you doing CounterStrike box openings on YouTube? I should. I should unbox Lego sets. Jason hates sort of the AAA state of the AAA industry, but fucking loves Looms.

It's true. I can't get enough. I'm going to unbox Lego sets, but it's only my daughter's Lego sets. So it's like Lego friends. Oh, bars. Here, I'm checking out at the Heart Lake Hospital today. Oh, man.

Henry and I built that Gannon Final Battle, Ocarina Times, Zelda Lego set this past weekend. That's a fucking cool one. I was not impressed by that. I like the daycare tree. The daycare rules. Which I see in your background,

but I do not like. I actually, I am very tempted by the Minas Tirith Lego set. Oh, my God. Yeah. $650. That's the, I would have to hide it.

Yeah. I don't think I could, I don't think Rachel could know. I don't think I could tell her. I spent $600 on a giant. No, there's no coming back from that. There is no. Jason,

thank you so much for joining us. This is a great week to have you on because there's a lot of stuff happening, a lot of, and a great thing. Yeah, lots of fun stuff to talk about. Yeah, people can find me triple click as or you should find me,

but also Bloomberg News. I mean, I'm sure you notify me there or just on my, you know, if you haven't seen my articles, you've seen YouTubers reading them out loud, so. God damn. That's like the coolest sort of fucking, UFC pre-fight flex.

You know me. They can't keep my name out of their mouths. So if you're a fan of the besties, did you know that there's a lot more waiting for you on Patreon? If you go to patreon.com slash the besties. It sounds like I'm talking to you, Jason. I'm actually pivoted now to talking to the...

If you wanted to join our Patreon, Jason, I would love to. I'll sign up right now. If I can afford it after buying Minas Tirith Lego set, number six of... We have monthly bracket battle episodes. We have episodes of the rest. that Chris and Russ talk about even more games.

As a matter of fact, so we have a Resties up already, and next week we have a very special bracket battles episode featuring the one and only Ron Funcice. Such a fun one, unhinged this episode. It was a really fun one, so stay tuned for that.

I do have a couple subscribers I wanted to shout out. We have Hank K, we have Thumpus, we have Nilo S, and we have Daniel R. Thank you for being members over at the Patreon. Patreon.com slash the besties. We love you all.

Yeah. Next week, 107 First Light. If I'm not mistaken. So join us again for the Bessie's next week as we dive into Bonn's latest caper. And join us, you know what, while you're at it, every week here on the Bessies, because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties!