The Besties - The Halo Remake Is a Metaphor for the Xbox Mess

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

In the back half of this week’s episode, we chat about Halo: Campaign Evolved, a video game that has the misfortune of representing everything infuriating about the modern Xbox strategy. Fortunately, other games exist. To soothe the soul, we start with an inspired murder mystery, a surprisingly deep Spelunky-like, and the 1.0 of Palworld. 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 know that Power World has gotten sort of a bad rap, which has been pretty much characterized as Pokemon with guns. I have major, major issues with this. One, because I think it's inaccurate. Two, Pokemon's got guns, guys. Doesn't it? And Pokemon's doesn't have a ton of guns. But if you watch an anime, Jesse and James are packing heat a lot of the time.

But it's like, it's like Rayguns. They're not shooting like 40 caliber sniper rifles. I mean, there's an episode where, goes to the safari zone and the guy who runs the safari zone holds a revolver up to ash's forehead like to execute him gangland style and that one has been banned they you can't see that episode on the wb or other sort of similar platforms but may i turn your attention uh-huh to those two silver barrels sticking out of the back of my friend blastoys what do you guys think those are they're guns yeah but they shoot water they're water guns literally you don't know that they only shoot water we've never

seen him shoot projectiles of other form. Well, if you jam something in there and you have him just charge it up and blast, I think he could kill a guy. Blastroes could kill a guy with those guns. It doesn't matter. We're splitting hairs. Yeah. I'm sorry, this is kind of like a Kronenbergian question, but is it a gun if it's growing

out of your body? Yes. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, that answers it. Have you seen extensensens? Existens. Yeah, yeah.

No, that's a good point. That is a good point. But Jude Law, he makes a gun out of like a chicken, out of chicken, a chicken mess. And then he shoots teeth, I think. Yeah. He kills a guy. No, that checks out. Hmm.

So what you're saying is maybe Pokemon's freakier than Power World. That Power World doesn't have the guts. Yeah. Quite literally to make body guns. To make body guns. You have to hand them the guns in Power World. Yeah. Officer Ginny's leg is a shotgun.

And nobody's talking about this stuff, guys, except for us on the besties, the world's greatest gaming podcast. My name is Griffin back where I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Planton. I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Freshick. 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 is a game of the year club. And just by listening to you, my friend, have been inducted into our ranks as a member. You're starting at member status. There's higher ranks. But you got to really earn your way up there.

This week we're going to be talking about a few games. We are going to be talking about Powell World, which launched in its 1.0 form earlier this month on July 10th. We're going to be talking about Galley House. We're going to talk about Spirits Abyss. We're going to be talking a little bit about the Halo campaign evolved. Just a just I guess you could call it a grab bag. I guess I don't be dismissed.

It's a grab bag. Yeah. A timely grab bag, I would say. Very timely. Chris, I'm not going to have you say what all those games work because there's four of them, and that seems kind of silly. We will eventually get around to all of them. But do you video game is an interactive piece of software with beeps and boobs. That's cool.

That's basically all there is to it. And we're going to get further into it after this short break. Griffin. Yeah. It's been a while since Power World first came out. When it came out initially, I remember playing it and being like, neat idea. Sure. Definitely legally dubious to some extent.

but definitely also a big mess, like as a product. Yeah, so pretty messy. It launched two years ago in early access. I think we all played it back then when it first came out. And it's funny because they've definitely updated it a lot and they've refined a lot of stuff. And I'm excited to talk about all that stuff.

But like kind of the core principle of this is an open world survival craft game in the vein of an arc survival evolve. or a, you know, a base builder, a rust or something along those lines. But also there's just Pokemon. There is Pokemon. And I am very quick to defend this game and sort of criticize Nintendo for their way overly litigious kind of protective nature of their IP. But some of them designs, I mean, that guy looks a lot like, I think we can all agree. Let's call a Lucario a Lucario, just say like some of these dudes.

I mean, to be fair. once you have a thousand of a thing, it's really hard to come up with an original penguin, for example. For sure, for sure. I think this game was dismissed back when it came out because it did have a lot of big ideas,

super duper, duper ambitious. And while they were able to kind of fulfill the brief on a lot of those ideas, it really just felt like a bunch of ideas and not so much a video game that you would sit down and invest a bunch of time into playing. And I have to, I was not looking forward to this one.

I have games that I'm like stoke for the one point out to come out. Fields of Mystery next month. We got, shrouded coming out a little bit later this year. Like games I really have loved playing, mostly this like open world survival craft sort of genre, that I'm like looking forward to. This was not one of them,

but they have done a really terrific job of making it a game. Like making all of these systems hang together in a way that feels more sort of cohesive than I would have guessed they'd be capable of kind of achieving. Did you start from scratch? I did, yeah. So I didn't play a ton back when it came out in 2024. And I haven't touched it since if I first played it. I've kept my eye on it a little bit.

They've done some, they've done a lot of like crossover like events and updates. There's like a whole Terraria sort of update. That's in the game where they've added like the moon lord boss fight and like a bunch of other like Terraria weapons and armor and stuff like that. They've done that for a few other games. But mostly, like, the things that they have added have been, like, you know, new content, new islands, new monsters and gear and shit like that. But also just, like, a lot of refinement of its systems.

Yeah. And I think that it has benefited so much from that because it really, it handles all the things that I expect an open world survival craft game to kind of get right at this point. Like, you put a chest down inside of your bag. Base building, a huge element of this. You put shit in any chest anywhere within like the radius of your base and you can access that gear anywhere when you're like crafting. There's a quick stack button. You look at a chest.

You just press B on controller and it just instantly dumps everything you have it. And then you have pals who are, you can just make their job transporting gear and organizing your stuff. This is the big kind of novelty of the game, right? It plays like a like a third person action game. You know, you forge melee weapons and ranged weapons and fight pals. And you also fight other humans, which is kind of probably still the wildest part about the game to me is like ordering my monster companion to kill a person is still quite strange. But the big thing is how they use the pals and the base building side of things. Because as you sort of level up your base and you, you know, discover more like formulas for different, you know, pieces.

of equipment that you put in your basin. Now you can craft more stuff where you can refine resources to do these things. Pals not only have like combat abilities but they also have like base abilities as well. Like things they will do around camp like logging.

If there's trees in the radius of the base, they'll go and they'll automatically go and smash those, get the wood, and then either transport it. Or another pal that you might have on hand who just transports loose items into the chest that you have designated. This is where the wood goes.

This is where this goes. All that stuff works so well. Correct me if I'm wrong here. It sounds like what you're saying is all of the annoying aspects of survival games for me, all of the busy work. You have a bunch of cute, not Pokemon. Yeah. We're going to take care of it for you on your behalf. And it does it, gang, it does it really well.

Yeah. There's like a thing you build that looks like a podium, like at a church or something like that that you interact with. And then you can designate like, okay, you go and you only work at the. this one spot. You only live at the ranch. I have a ranch inside my base and if you assign certain pals there, like the sheep one or the chicken one, then they will drop wool or eggs there. You can just say that's where you live. But you can also say like, okay, you have mining and logging and, you know, gardening. I only want you doing logging. So you can like check mark like exactly. You can, you can really refine it to a degree where now I roll back to my base. I collect the stuff that they've,

they've done. I have one guy just doing full time crafting of like, one guy doing like full-time crafting of like ammo and food. I just run through. I grab that stuff and I'm back out on the road catching new monsters and discovery new stuff. Kind of buried the lead here. There's a religion in Powell World. Oh, no. It's not a pulpit, I guess, from a literal.

I mean, I said that. So we said church. I didn't know if maybe like the church. Do the pals have a god? No, they could. There's obviously godland. I'm the god. Yeah, I'm the god of power.

The combat and stuff is like, it's okay. It's not like my favorite part of the game, but like there is definitely incentive to keep catching like new pals and use type matchups sort of wisely. The game kind of hangs around these eight major boss fights that happen to these eight towers where you collect these eight key spheres, which is the analog to badges or what have you. And the boss fights are hard as hell and serve as these kind of like checkpoints of like. checkpoints of like we got to make sure your gear's good enough and that you have been catching new pals and and you know leveling them up breeding them to get like certain skills on them or attributes like there's there's i don't know me a lot of this stuff was in the game at launch a lot of this stuff was sort of proof of concept like and this idea is in the game and it kind of works only now like

it's so cohesive it all comes together so so well you were only playing single part correct I've only been playing single player, but there's also like dedicated servers and support for that. I don't know if I would, I don't know if I would spring for that. Because like while the base management stuff is cool, especially the way you kind of staff it out with the pals. I haven't found it to be like so aesthetically satisfying. I really, really like it in shrouded because I feel like I can make something that looks so rad. Yeah, there's a ton of like different building types and parts and things like that. Yeah, it really puts way more emphasis in that side of things. That game doesn't have necessarily

quite the staffing thing. You are like finding people who go and live and can like be different vendors and stuff for you. But like that's power world's kind of specialty. And it's also, it hasn't been so difficult that I have felt like, God, this would be nice if I had more more people around. But I mean, you can play it like that. There's a whole PVP arena if you want to do like fights against other players and their pals and see how they're kind of like kidded out. It's great. It's really, really fun. I've been really stuck into it in a way that I just was not expecting. I was playing it out. Yeah. I was playing it obligatorily because I was like, you know, it's a, it's, you know, that has almost a million concurrent players on Steam like this. Yeah, it's obscene how big the audience is. We should talk about it and

was was very pleasantly surprised. Yeah. Looks great too. Looks really, really good. I've been playing it on Rog Ally X and even on there it looks, it looks fantastic. Yeah. Okay. So Spirits Abyss came out in the year 2020. How did you even find this? Do you just like a truffle pig? Well, okay. So, Steam's algorithm knows me pretty fucking well, as you could possibly imagine.

Sure, sure, sure. For whatever reason, this popped up in my algorithm. And I was like, well, this looks kind of neat. And then there's some mention of Sponkey in the description of the game. The game is, okay. So if you are not familiar with Sponkey, Sponkey was a roguelike platformer that came out years ago. We've talked about a ton on the show.

Very, very hard, notably very, very hard. Not welcoming to new players. Incredibly easy to control, but a big part of the game is learning how the game works, and a lot of that has to do with dying a lot. Spirit's Abyss, to me, feels like a much more

approachable version of Spelunky. It also uses pixel art, graphics, 2D, platforming. At a glance, from a gameplay standpoint, it seems very similar to Sponky, but there are some core differences that I think make it a much more approachable experience. For one thing, you're starting character, and there are different characters in this game in a way that there are not in Sponkey. There are different characters that have

different powers, like the way their standard attack is. So in Sponky, you just get a whip. Everyone has a whip. Here, you might start with a guy with, like, a laser rifle, or there's a guy with, like, a samurai sword, or whatever. So pretty meaningfully different. Incredibly meaningfully different. And those inputs allow you to, I think, learn the game in a much more safe way. Like, if you're just starting out, use the guy with the assault rifle because you can stay at range and, like, take some shots at this weird looking grim reaper thing and figure out, oh, is this something going to wake up and attack me or whatever else? Do you feel like that detracts anything from the game? Because I know the thing that Spalunky does so well is that it explicitly, I feel like

doesn't do this stuff. So you have to learn the systems. You have to learn the sandbox. You don't have like a lot of ways of kind of putting English on the ball based on like some decision that you make before you even, you know, go down. Yeah, I think, I think Spolunky is at its core a much more refined, probably better designed game. Yeah. But I also think it is incredibly hostile to players that are like, I'll check this out. Oh, don't get me wrong. I hate that shit. I'm glad that this game does it differently. But I know that it is one of the, you know, it's why Spalunkey has earned its place in the stars as like, This is like chess.

This is like this is a game with rules and you've got to learn them and there's really no other way around. Yeah. I mean, this game has rules too and interesting enemies that are very, very dangerous if you don't know what they are. And you will die instantly several times. But I do think because of that class element, it allows you to get a little bit further in the run and see more without wiping. Yeah. There are other like basic things like when you finish a screen, when you finish like an area and the areas play out very similarly to splurril. you get to pick a perk, and this is a passive perk that'll give you, let's say, like, toxic bombs

or like the ability to hover using a balloon or whatever else, kind of like the perks that were in Downwell, if you remember those. So this, again, allows you to customize your character in a way that doesn't require you to be like, oh, did I get the right shop so I can like start crafting a build, but really you know nothing that's going on. So you're just able to do a lot more like just YOLO runs where you're just trying things and seeing how you go. And I've felt like I've been seeing much more of the game, again, earlier on. This game also has like a ton of different modes, most of which I haven't unlocked, but just side modes where maybe it's focused on like just gathering money or maybe you're,

you know, there's more like time constraints, things like that. And then character unlocks that you're chasing that, again, have different starting equipment, different perks, things like that. It just feels like it's surfacing a lot more, whereas Spalunky has that magic trick of like, okay, I'm in this weird ice cave and whoa, what is that? Oh, it's a UFO. Incredible. There are still some of those moments, but I think a lot more of this feels just like

surfaced in a way that you can kind of chase it more, which again, feels more approachable to me. Which seems to be in line with the creator of the game in their entire like design philosophy. because the creator, I don't know if it's pronounced case, it's C-A-Y-S-Ware, makes a lot of games, like is very productive. Has games coming out, it seems like, every year to every two years, and is doing, I don't know, like, riffs on other popular games. So has a, like, Survivor-like, has a, I think an auto-battelor that they call a bro-tating,

like has this Spalunky like it seems like is like learning from all you know they seem like almost intellectual exercises of how can I do a riff on this very popular game what can I gain from it and the games are all like under 10 bucks so they are not meant to be super polished it seems like they're kind of things that you're supposed to pick up and then you know in a year or two you're going to pick up the next one, where Spalunky is kind of a, you play it for 10 years, maybe you get Spalunky too.

I mean, I will say, I haven't played the other ones. I've just played Spirr's Abyss, and I was actually pretty impressed by the level of polish in this game. I don't think it's like Spelunky level of polish. It reminded me the level of polish that was in like Spalunky Classic.

That was the original, like, free to play one, which has like a shitload of depth to it. It's just like, yeah, granted, they didn't necessarily spend four or five years making this game. But there have been continued to be updates and new, not DLC, but just like new modes and things like that added over the years. And as of right now, if you're listening to this on Friday, this game is currently on sale for five bucks, which at that price point, total steal, not a minute question.

So if you like Spunky, but want something different, highly recommend it. Cool. I dig it. I'm so excited to talk about the incident. Galley House. Oh man. The incident at Galley House. Okay.

So if you are ready for another deduction game, like what is your deduction game this year? You like that? Obriddin stuff. Have I got the game for you? It is called the Incident at Galley House.

And it is actually a remake of a game that came out last year. Really? Very strange. So this game, the incident at Galley house, it is a murder mystery kind of ghost story style game where a series of murders happened over the course of

24 hours at Galley House in the 1930s. And then you are somewhere closer to the present and you are using a basically like a seance machine in which you enter codes that will trigger these memories of what happened that fateful day at Galley House. So you'll put in something like DR 010611. That's one of my favorites. It's one of the best ones. And what you'll find out is that means dining room with guests number one, six, and 11. Or number at first scene and there's also a strict timeline that you have to follow along.

So you have to say where it is, what time it was and who was there. That's basically the breakdown. But these codes seem very abstract, very quickly become pretty logical. and reasonable to follow. And your goal, at least early on, is to figure out who are these people? Why are they at this house that was supposedly abandoned? What leads to presumably all of them dying? That is very cool.

And the way it's displayed, it's very beautiful. It looks kind of like a classic point-and-click adventure game, even though you're not doing that sort of thing. You're just getting these stories. You have these ghastly figures with numbers on them to represent each character because, again, it's your job to figure out who they are. You can have these little notepads or you can jot down like, oh, I think this person might be Annie. And I think that they might be sisters of Evelyn and the full deduction suite. What is strange about this game and its creation is it was made, this one, was made by the people who did the root trees are dead, which was one of our favorite.

other recent game. But it is a remake of the game type help which I believe the creator's name is William Rousse.

And it is more or less the same game but it is a command line text adventure style game. So where that game is about being inside of a computer

and reading all of this text and the numbers and text very raw. This is definitely trying to recreate the murder mystery vibe of you can see, you know, the old-fashioned manner. You can see the machine that you're typing this code into. You can hear the voices of these characters. And hearing them is important because they each have kind of a sound. There's a reason that they have this kind of vague shape to them that every little detail is a clue about who these people are. So this game is, it is.

friendlier by a lot than the previous version. There is no like one is better than the other though. They're just different. And that is, again, what is so strange about these two versions of effectively the same game that exists so close to one another. That's the basics. Griffin, how did this game hit you? I honestly, I started it and dropped it pretty quick because I didn't. really get it.

I think the setup to this game is so Obradin coded that like you're literally figuring out how to go back and watch these events that transpired that led to the gnarly death of everyone in the house apparently, right? Yes. That's so

very Oberidenny. But it is the like figuring out what these codes are and figuring out where, when, and who was at each of these scenes and then you get to watch them and you get like a breakdown of all the dialogue in it.

You'll also get a little notification that'll tell you the number of like clues left in that scene that you haven't really figured out yet. Like maybe somebody mentions the name of a room that you haven't punched into your machine that you haven't added to your list of rooms

that you can kind of like look at scenes in or you know maybe somebody confirms a familial relationship with someone now you know their last name. In that regard, it plays a lot more like her story than it does an Obriden or a chance of Sonar or anything along those lines. Like it is about paying attention to the things that are being said and the things that are being

implied and then like trying some shit out back on the like search machine side of things. And then if you get a hit, now you got a new scene. It's got new clues. It's got new stuff for you to pay attention to and stuff for you to search and try and figure out how it like fits into the rest of the story. I came back to it after we said we were going to talk about it on this episode. And I'm glad I did it because like there is a flow state you get into this game. Honestly, not that far in. Like once you get it and you start knowing what to pay attention to and you start to figure out like, okay, in this scene, this person said they were leaving this room

with this person. I can guess where they were going to go. What if I'm the next scene, I guess that this scene happened in the place they mentioned and it has those two characters in it. And then you get a hit on that and then it just keeps kind of like unfurling from that. It's really cool. It's really, really satisfying. I don't actually love the look of the of the game to me. It's a, I don't know, maybe a personal thing. I feel like it kind of looks a lot like an iOS sort of like dating sim style sort of design, like very static and I don't know. It's also like the stuff you're doing on the computer is not so like interesting kind of mechanically or visually. It's just like compelling because you are trying to piece together this enormous, very, very, very

elaborate puzzle. Yes. I've enjoyed it a lot. I grew to really like the look. I was skeptical when I saw it in like on the Steam page. Throw in the music, throw in the sound effects. And I found it very cozy. And the acting is very good.

Yeah. But the game that I kept thinking about, is TR-49, which came out at the very beginning of this year from Inkel. And it helped weirdly to have that game center me for this one. TR-49 is very similar at a high level of you have this World War II era computer that has been eating books. And I won't spoil exactly what that means. but you very similarly are plugging in these codes to figure out what happens when I mix this location in the computer with this number and what piece of the story can I find that then makes it easier to find more. And that game is the very abstract, very dense version of this.

I found that game quite off-putting. I ended up enjoying it a lot, but the look is harsh. The story is harsh. The figuring out the codes feels a bit like playing with a slot machine. In this game, by comparison, felt very, very welcoming and cozy. And the reality is I want both of these games to exist. Because you're right. Like, it does, this galley house is certainly the more soothing, cozy.

If it's a rainy night and you can play this game, you're going to have a great time. It would be a great one to play. with a roommate or a partner and just to be taking notes together fresh you all are going to love this after eventually once you when you beat blueprints once you get past this

but TR49 then on the other hand is the like oh you have fully gone sicko the deduction games have have found their most like grind you into a pulp version of themselves

I think it's just really cool that the deduction genre is blown up and expanded this much. That there are now teams who are specializing in this who are working with one another to evolve each other's games. That is pretty damn rad. I mean, I think a lot of it is to do with the fact that previously, before these really got popular, the best way to do narrative in indie games was just like text-based. visual novel stuff. And now suddenly they've figured out a way to, for lack of a better term, gamify the projection of a story.

Right. And like really engage you in it in a really interesting way. I'm also just very excited to see what this developer, the one who actually made this version of it that did the root trees are dead does next. Because whether you like the visuals or not, this is a noticeable upgrade from the root trees. and it feels like this is... I think it's visually an upgrade.

I definitely enjoyed the experience of like going through a vast fake internet more than like going through the scenes and the dialogue that's happening. Like that to me, that felt listening to a song and hearing clues in the music. Like that shit was intoxicating. Yes.

Root Tree's might still be my preferred one of these two but I haven't finished this just yet. So the mystery might still land. But yes, to imagine what they're going to do next, they just seem to be getting more and more polished. And they had the storytelling stuff from the drop. So yeah, exciting stuff. That's the incident at Galley House.

Let's take a short break and talk a little bit about this new old Halo thing. Okay, so there is a new... There's a new Halo game, sort of. It's called Halo Campaign Evolved, and it comes at a very strange time for a lot of different reasons. On its surface, just so you're aware, it is a remake of the original campaign of Halo Combat Evolve. So this is the very first Halo game. It is a remake of just the campaign. There's no multiplayer in this.

There's co-op, but there's no, like, PVP multiplayer in this. It's just the campaign. it adds a bunch of features online co-op, which the original didn't have, as well as updating some of the gameplay, adding some of the guns that showed up in later iterations of Halo, adding things like being able to hijack a banshee, things like that. I say it's a weird time for a few different reasons, one of which, obviously Microsoft just went through yet another pretty gutting round of layoffs, closing a number of studios, sending another a number of of studios fully independent, like Double Fine, for example. And it feels like Microsoft is like kind of grasping at straws to figure out what their next step is, especially with a franchise like this, which is Halo has been having a really tough time really since Halo Infinite, which came out in 2021.

And that game came out. And I think I will say I like that campaign. but as a iteration of like Halo's dip into the live service marketplace, it was a total disaster. So this one comes at a weird time. Something interesting about this game that you might not know is that it is made an Unreal engine. Yeah, which is a big, big change. Previously, Halo games were always made in their own kind of bespokey engine.

This is the first one that's ever been made in Unreal. and is kind of a sign of like what they're trying to do, which is stabilize the Halo games to a point where they can be developed quasi easily moving forward without having to rely on all these bespoke tools. That's my interpretation. That's a really tough thing for us to kind of like get a cross here is like, Halo to this point, I think has been its engine.

Like it is the stuff that is great about Halo and the reason that it was the killer app on Xbox and why it's always been like pretty good to play is the engine is that is where they ironed out the when you throw a grenade at a wart hog and flip it like when you uh melee an enemy and they go rag going across it like that stuff feels first class like top of the line best best feeling shit ever and to redo that from the ground up i think is a huge undertaking yeah and i think it's mostly successful I think this game feel like going back and playing these old campaign levels and the new ones, which we can talk about in a bit, like it still feels like pretty good to headshot a grant with the pistol and, you know, he screams out something that's very silly and fun. Like for the most part, it feels good.

It's not 100%. I don't know that I, do you know like if there was there a moment where you're like, oh, that doesn't feel like original Halo to you? Um, it's little stuff. It's a little stuff. I talked to you about it. Russ and I played some co-op together and like there's little stuff like the feedback, right? Like the feel of busting a jackal's like energy shield with a, you know, a charged up plasma pistol shot. Like there's a certain ways in which like just it from a really impossible to describe kind of tactile level. Like it doesn't hit like 100, 100 percent. Right. But it's so close. And. And it's like, I mean, it does look, I mean, it's Unreal Engine, so it looks pretty good. Yeah, the other thing to consider about the old engine, even though you're right, like a lot of the reason they were able to, like, fine-tune all that gunplay feel stuff is because they were used to that engine. That engine was also kind of the demise of the Halo games because it was so cumbersome to add new content and to just like make changes in the system for the same reason that, like, Destiny had similar problems where it had like a real bespoke engine. I find pretty much everything about this project profoundly depressing inside and outside of the game. And I think the engine is certainly a piece of it.

This whole we are going to standardize video games down to a single engine that has a similar look and a similar feel echoes the focus on Unreal Engine during the Xbox 360 era and was just also deeply depressing. Yeah. I don't think it's like, the things that I find so grim about this game happened too recent to have been part of the game's creation. But the fact that Id just had massive layouts that cut out the people who made Id Tech, one of the most interesting engines in the history of video games. And that does things in I think a much more spectacular and beautiful way than what, we see with Unreal Engine is just really fucking depressing. And now seeing like, okay, and now Halo's, that's unreal. What a bummer.

Having this be, hey, here's more Halo for you, dorks after all the layoffs and the new CEO of Xbox doing shit like, should we call it Xbox all caps, feels so pandering. And again, that's not what this, that's not what this was greenlit to be. It wasn't meant to be that. But it is this weird confluence of everything that is so deeply depressing about this brand and about how its IPs right now feel like they are being used as a don't look this direction. We know you're mad about the layoffs. We know you're mad about the BDS boycotts. We know you're mad about us acquiring all these studios.

We know you're mad about the AI. We know you're mad about all these things. But we have a new halo. We got cheap. We're going to make some more fallout. It just, it very unfortunately for the people who made this game, because they did, and we should talk about the game, obviously put a lot of work into it. Sure. The idea of yet another HALA remake right now, I just, I found it profoundly depressing.

And then playing it in it being not especially inspired in terms of like what creatively they were allowed to do certainly didn't help. Yeah, I think that you look at the. design side of things. I mean, I agree with everything you just said, but also from a game design standpoint, like there are new levels in this that we're not in the original campaign. It's like a chunk of three missions. It probably takes like two and a half hours or so to complete. And in those new levels, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of new to it.

It feels very consistent. They're bad, dude. Like they're, they're, yeah, the, Russ and I played through almost all of them together yesterday. I played through, uh, the, the rest of them solo. And like, it's just a not, it's the thing, the moments from the original halo that are so, like, memorable, uh, I feel like are not even remotely reflected here. It is just a bunch of rooms of pretty similar almost, almost all the levels are on like covenant ships. And that doesn't. No one likes a bunch of.

No one likes those levels. Just a bunch of purple kind of spheres that you're going around and you're shooting, you know, 15 enemies before you can go on to the next room. It's, and then it sort of ends with a big space combat thing, which is not good. It's not fun. And it's so like, I think I don't want to be like a total naysayer. Because, again, like they recreated one of the most, one of the best and most beloved kind of like. like game feels that, you know, has ever sort of graced, you know, a major gaming platform, right? That's impressive.

It's impressive the work that they've done. And there are times where it looks like really, really great. But if you're, man, if you're buying this to play some classic co-op stuff with like your buds, like that shit's in the game and it works really well. If you're buying this to get the new, like, mini campaign that's in there, it's not, it's a nothing burger. It is not good at all. Yeah, yeah, it's in a weird position, and it's also kind of depressing for me because I thought that what Halo Infinite did, especially with the campaign, was really innovative and really stood out because it was suddenly a first-person shooter that had really cool mobility stuff, open world structure that we hadn't seen a lot of. It was crackdown. They made a halo crackdown.

That was a great pitch. And maybe they'll go back to that sort of format after this game. made in the Unreal engine because maybe the engine will allow them to make that game a little bit quicker, I don't know. But to go back to this, which just feels kind of like a dinosaur, like for people that love that old school gameplay, fine. But for me, it feels very rusty. Even that, it just, it so epitomizes what is wrong right now, which is for decades, we've

understood that the first game in a series, the Assassin's Creed One effect, right? right, that you need to make that game, learn how to make the new thing that you're making, and then go make more. And rather than do that, and you've done all the hard work, you did all the investment, the answer seems to be, let's go back to what is safe. And again, it's not this game's fault because it was greenlit. Like, there's a world where this is just a game. And it is a standalone thing of like, oh, great.

another version of Halo, fine. With such a bummer and where I just feel like so bummed experiencing this game is it feels like a foreshadowing of what the company wants to do next. They are telling us explicitly, we just want to make more of the big IPs, we want to make you the things that you want. And yet we, I know that we love the Resident Evil games on this show. that isn't doing it right right like they they really take swings

with their remakes they are different experiences they're making new games they're making new franchises at Capcom they're doing all of these things that is not what is happening here and I I try not to get like heated I never get heated on this show like they just fired fucking everybody who could

have done this right like that's yeah but don't yeah but don't you think okay let me ask you I agree Capcom I think is doing this much better than Microsoft is right now but don't you think this is a representation of like AAA gaming is in such a precarious spot right now. So Microsoft is basically what is the safest possible thing we can do? I'm not saying that's interesting or creatively good,

but like what is the safest thing we could do right now? I think that's 100% what they're doing. And I think it is moronic because doing the safest thing you can do is you might as well just keep digging the grave faster. That is not how you create the next thing. trying to make the next Roblox right now is not how you make the quote next Roblox. And it seems like there are two visions are we will do what kind of worked decades ago. And we will do a knockoff version of what works now and hope that it's what people still want in six years.

I just, I don't know. Like Game Pass didn't work, but it was a swing. this stuff is like it truly feels like a slow motion car wreck of anybody would look at this and say these are not the path forward and unfortunately for this game it happens to represent

all of it it's just it's a it's a playable metaphor I it reminds me of the 30 rock joke uh where uh Bonnie is talking about their business ideas to save NBC or save NBC. And one of them was make it 1997 again through science or magic.

It's depressing, man. And I tell you, the real rug pull of it is like, I thought the Microsoft Press conference during all the Summer Games Fest stuff looked pretty great. Like, it seemed like they, they just got to put some goddamn games out that are very good. And how many of those studios that they talked about aren't there? They don't exist anymore, right? Or independent or whatever. They sold them off.

It's to not bail on a studio at the first side of like unprofitability or to not saddle them with games and, you know, business models that are in Congress with their, like, what makes a good game. Like, all of this stuff is, all of this stuff is snobby game journal bullshit that like a drum that everybody has been banging for a long time. but Christ alive, guys. It's, I hate to make this somewhat innocuous remake of, of a classic first person shooter campaign, kind of the focal point of this, but like, I agree with you wholeheartedly, Chris.

Like, it's a bleak, bad fucking time, uh, specifically for, for Microsoft, but also for AAA gaming as a whole. And it's hard not to look at this and be like, then this is what's, this is what's going to be left after the,

bombs fall I will have I will say that I am personally happy that we do this show where we talk about a bunch of games that aren't necessarily

reliant on Oh there's so much good shit happening like game shit happening that is outside of that like if anything it's proof that

that's the thing that has been left behind that back 30 seconds button like 20 times and man you got a whole different episode going for you sure do

we have some Reader Mail. This one comes from Kate. I put down blueprints after the first time I got to the final room, I guess, room 46. At the time, I assumed I had mostly finished it. I now realized listening to Russ that I basically missed everything. If I wanted to go back, do you recommend starting over picking up where you left off using a guide? I feel like an idiot for stopping so early and I wanted to see what I missed. I think starting over is probably fine because there is, it's not like an Oberden where it's just the like, well, now I know how it works so I can blaze through it. Like there is the whole drafting element and, you know, I think if it's been a while, you'll have to remember a lot of the stuff about how all the different things work. But if you just stopped when you got to room 46, like, not to be an asshole, but like there is a lot of meat left on the bone there. I mean, Kate basically says that. They're like, the best meat.

The best meat that game has to offer, I think. does come after the first search. Yeah, in a way, the getting to 46 feels like, oh, it's a straight puzzle game in a lot of ways and just like managing resources. And then everything after that feels closer to like, yeah, deduction. You got a study.

Like, you really have to get into the DNA. Russ sent me a very late text, a screenshot of him solving a puzzle that was the defining moment of blueprints for me. It was a moment that I was, I think I was like, staying with Juice and Sid and he heard me just cackling when this happened. I've been dancing around it trying to find out if you had done it yet.

You sent this picture at like 11 o'clock at night. I have not done it yet. What? No, I haven't got it. You send me a picture of a thing that you've done the thing that I'm talking about. You're maybe thinking of a different thing. Maybe a different thing. Yeah, yeah.

Anyway. I love video games. Yeah, I love blueprints. Go back and, yeah, I think start over and, you know, play it because I think. I do think if you know what you're doing, you can get through that part of the game relatively quickly. Yeah, I think that's right. This comes from Dr. Dake. One thing I've been thinking about lately is the idea that every game studio is a monolithic thing that produces good or bad games.

But aren't game studios effectively just massive ships of Theseus at this point? The bioware that made Dragon Age Vailguard is completely different studio from the one that put out Coteur, yet we treat them as a sanctified team that has 20 years of experience building exceptional games. And we're confused why they put out something like ValGuard and talk about how BioWare is fallen. Especially given the constant layoffs, it feels odd to me to treat a studio by name as anything other than just a studio name of a company rather than a cohesive team that hops from project to project. What do you all think? I think there are examples of this where the studio name still means something. Sure. It doesn't necessarily mean the studio is successful.

I'll give you an example. Double fine. still means what Double Fine meant 20 years ago, however long they've been around. I think their games have a very consistent voice and a very consistent priority when they're being designed, where you can see that DNA throughout.

But I agree with you. There are a lot of studios that have lost that over the years in turnover or not having strong leadership or whatever it is. Yeah, it's tough. I am bad at this, and I was in the industry for a long time of actually putting human names on projects,

like going that one layer deeper from like, oh, this is a bungee game versus like, this is a game from the original creators of Halo. Like, that's one where that, so many people have left that studio. And maybe there's a terrible example since bungee's in such bad shape. By the way, playing Halo campaign involved. Also, another side bummer really made me sad about Destiny and Destiny too. Um, there's, when there's a name attached true thing, I feel like you see it more often in like RPGs, uh, specifically like CRPs and like narrative focused RPGs. You get more of like, and here's the name of the person who's doing it. That stuff I think tells you a whole lot more just because, yeah, you could have a studio that is completely new staff from the last game that they released, uh, because of the brutality of that part of the industry. Uh, and it's going to feel different. Yeah. I'll give you an example of a studio that,

represents how all this has changed, which is vicarious visions. The studios located up in northern New York. And vicarious visions, when you heard that, you could think of one of two things, that it was a kind of Activision tie-in game. It was probably going to be maybe cool. It could be trash, but it could be like a Game Boy Advance adaptation of Tony Hawk's pro skater. They were people who were figuring out interesting ways to translate IPs into hardware that otherwise shouldn't be able to do it. Vicarious Vision was also perpetually tinkering

with weird controllers like a guitar hero mobile controller, right? Yeah. They had a personality, and they had a personality because at that time, and because these games, I mean, they're shipping five or six games a year, there was guaranteed work. So you could go and have a career at a place like vicarious visions. Today, vicarious visions is not even called vicarious visions. It's called Blizzard Albany. And that is what has happened to so many studios. They just become support studios for whatever the one or two big projects are that are coming out that year.

And it has become hard for any studio on top of the ship of Theseus problem, which is the layouts, which are just so abundant. And on top of that, so few projects are being made at these studios that seven studios are needed to create the new Assassin's Creed. How could any of those studios possibly have a personality? That said, to what Griffin said about like individual people, you now will see things like, oh, a large chunk of people who worked on the burnout series are now working on a Star Wars podroids. racing game. Like that shit gets me excited. That lets me know like, oh, okay, people who are passionate enough about this thing that they're not allowed to do anymore are now allowed to do it. That's going to be good stuff, I bet. Exactly. And that's now how we've tracked these things. There is a team of people who used to work at vicarious visions who are now working on a very vicarious

visions-esque game that is coming out. Like we're seeing that again, but it's almost like you have to trust the kind of thing that you would see in a movie trailer where it's like, from the people who brought you blank rather than from this studio. Yeah. Yeah. Last letter comes from Drew. In honor of the live show, by the way, we're doing a live show. You can get tickets.

Besties.com fan has a big link for it. And out of the live show, I'll share a Besties adjacent live show experience. I was at a Taz live show at San Diego Comic-Con, and we were all getting into our seats, and I spotted someone cosplaying Russ's character from the Awful Squad series. Amazing. Okay, so in my memory, my character was striped shirt and no pants. No pants, yeah. And a frying pan. Apparently, they did have a frying pan.

I've got questions. I don't know. Yeah, I feel like whatever venue we performed at must have had a dress code of some sort. I mean, they were like boxer shorts, but that's not better. Maybe the person took their pants off after they got inside. If there's a photo of this, please drop it in the comments. I'm going to say don't send me a photo of you. I want to see, I've never been cosplayed before.

Send it just to Russ. This was also put some respect on the name of Drew Davenport, who did sit in this email. Thank you, Drew. Thank you, Drew. But yeah, who knows what sort of magic and wonder awaits you at the best. You left out the conclusion of this story, which is like, hey, you're cosplaying as Russ. And the person was like, I am not the real Russ Frustick. I am only dressed as the character Russ Frustick, which I, I, I am only dressed as the character

Rushdick, which I admire that the cost per was concerned that I think the Cosper thought that's how you dressed all the time. Right. I mean, I do. That's true. This is very true.

This is very true. Hey, what else have you all been playing? Okay. I've been playing a game called Blueprints. It's his exploration game that takes place now. As Griffin said, I am like incredibly deep in it. We are like, I've said this a number of weeks,

but like exceedingly more and more true. running out of threads to pull. I think there were like two threads left to pull. I will, I promise, Griffin, both you and friend of the show, Jason Schreier, will be the first person I reach out to when I'm asking for help. We're still not quite there yet, but we're very, very close to running out of, like, what do I do next kind of thoughts? It's a good video game.

People should play it. I think it's on sale now. Last I saw, I got an email saying it was on sale. So check it out if you haven't played it yet. yeah I'm dying to know what the next game from this fella is

from the HaguBomb is because Jesus Christ wild fucking project I played a game called a game about chopping trees it's a short little

sort of progressive game where you go you chop trees and then you sell them and you get a stronger axe it's basically a game about digging a hole

but instead of you're digging a hole you're chopping trees Do you like, did you find the chopping trees more satisfying than thing at the hole? No, but I did still like it. Yeah. But it was like three hours. Yeah.

It was just sort of a satisfying little progression for a few hours. I like that. I mean, I also played a lot of EverQuest Legends. That is now down. The beta is over and it launches next week. It makes Tuesday on the 28th. And I would love us to talk about it on this show. I would love for you guys to play EverQuest.

I literally have never played EverQuest in my life. Awesome. Awesome. You're going to not like it. Yeah. If that's the case. But man. It's so cool. I'm fucking stoked. I had to pull myself away from it because I was spending too much time with it knowing that like they're going to wipe the servers after the beta's done. So you think you're going to start from scratch?

You have to. But you personally are so invested that you would start from scratch. Yeah. Because the big thing is like the, you're making a fusion of three different classes and it truly is such a fun, dynamic. thing where no characters feel the same so you will play i mainly played the beta just to see like okay i have this kind of madcap idea what if i like took these classes that all have like these special a oe melee attacks they don't go so great together but if you get all those going off at the same time i bet that feel pretty fucking good how can i make that work it's like a i don't know

like working through the puzzle of that and and all the build crafting is just it's it's it's really it's really great having it open and like farming some MPC who comes back every seven minutes while I'm working on something else. Like, I don't know, dude. It's really meeting me where I'm at right now. Yeah, I'm not going to play it. But I'm glad that it's making you happy. It is.

It's making me very happy. Play it. I've been watching a movie. I just screen this last night. It's called Tomorrow. It's from 1970. Follow me here. Ready?

aliens have been monitoring Earth for over 3,000 years, trying to figure out what big idea or things will come up with. And let me tell you the aliens, they are bored. Like nuclear power, whatever, everything's a weapon. We don't need any of this. And worse, the aliens, they are so smart that they've succumbed to generative AI and their lives are losing all meaning

because the music is made by the machines, don't know how to find love and joy anymore. Fortunately, a band with Olivia Newton-John as its lead singer has discovered the power of pop music. They know how to get a good groove going. So, these aliens need to go find this mod pop band in groovy England with an Australian lead singer doing a British accent. And let me tell you, they discover so much kooky stuff along the way. Turns out these kids know how to have sex with their professors at a school that is having sit-ins and sit-outs. Yeah, baby, yeah.

You watch this movie. It's swinging. It's groovy, baby. It's two get two W-T-O. How, what is the name of the name? I think you're just spelled tomorrow, but you said, it's just spelled tomorrow. Tomorrow, like it's too much. It's tomorrow.

Oh, so there's two O's before it. O's, two O's. I think it is nearly impossible to find right now, but it will be coming out in a wider release in September on Blu-ray. But if you can find it, there's a gorgeous restoration by Def Crocodile and the BFI who dug this out of their archive. It is, it's sick. Incredibly fucking weird.

Really weird. That's it for the show this week. Chris, what games and movies and stuff do we tell? talk about. Oh man, what didn't we talked about? We talked about Power World 1.0. We talked about Spirits Abyss. The incident at Galley House, a little bit of TR 49 in there, a Halo campaign evolved. And then we also talked about blueprints, a game about chopping trees, EverQuest Legends, and the film Tomorrow. That's a lot of stuff, but if you're still hankering for more. You can go to

Patreon.com slash the besties, where you will get access to all of our monthly bonus bracket battle episodes and also episodes of the resties where Russ and Chris talk about the games that we did not have time to discuss here on

the core program. Do you want to thank some backers? I would love to. We have Auburn W. We have Felix T. We have dagger pants. And we have Anthony. Thank you for being new backers to the besties. And thank you to everyone else who backs the show. You make the show literally possible.

It would shut down and be a quiet wasteland without your support. So thank you. It would be so sad. We got a live show coming up in October if you want to come see us. We're going to be at the town hall in New York City on October 9th. You can go to bit. That. L.Y.

slash besties on Broadway. Get your tickets now. Join us as we talk about games and have a lot of fun with you. Love it. I love it. Next week, very excited to play Splatoon Raiders, new sort of looters, shooter, solo slash co-op

rogue-likey thing. Seems like a totally different kind of game than Spiltoon was. Yes, one that I would be interested in play. Yes. And so we're going to talk about that and probably some other stuff too next week on the Besties.

So join us then and every week here on The Besties because shouldn't the World's Best Friends play the World's Best Games? Besties!