The Besties - The Witcher, But With Vampires? Yes, Please!

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

The Blood of Dawnwalker proves the old adage, “The worse the name, the better the game.” The debut from Rebel Wolves, a studio composed in part of CD Projekt Red veterans, is a grim fantasy RPG set in the Carpathian mountains in the thick of the Black Plague. It looks and feel at first like the The Witcher series, though give it a few hours, and you’ll see this isn’t reheated leftover. It’s got vampires and time management and bears too powerful to be bitten by a bloodsucker! To talk about this gem, we’re joined by Fire Escape Cast’s Mary Kish! 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 think it's bullshit that you can't bite the bears. I think it's bullshit. First of all, if they're going to let vampires eat rats and deer and wolves for their blood to feel or whatever. You legit can eat a duck, and it makes a, like, a death quack as you're eating right up out of the wall. You need a lot of ducks. And I don't know if this is part of vampire lore that, like, woodland animals are super chill with you, and you can walk up and just grab it. Have you guys ever tried to grab a duck? It's fucking hard.

They have instincts. But if you get up on a bear, and you're going to fight so many bears playing this game, you guys. And you try to get a good mouthful of that furry neck so you can get strong bear blood inside you? The game says, no. I think that's bullshit. Follow me on this journey. I'm going to give you a little tour of Catholicism for you right here. Okay.

If there's a thing in Catholicism about you can't drink bear blood. If it's covered, I'm kind of convinced. You're going to sell me on Catholicism right now. Are you ready? Because Catholicism, if you're going to be able to. There's a lot in this game. Okay. So, I'm trying to put it all together right now.

Vampires can't touch like crosses, right? Sure. Because it like burns their skin, right? So we can assume that other religious things, holy water, that also they can't touch that stuff. Right? Right. Right. And then I am named after St. Christopher, who is the bearer of Christ.

But St. Christopher is no longer actually a recognition. nice saint because they don't know if he was a real person. Milkshaked up. What if he was actually the bear of Christ? There was some confusion in history. And this may be the truest representation of St. Christopher in video.

That's too complicated. I'm just saying like if the bear just eats a lot of garlic. Oh, that makes a lot more sense. That makes a lot of sense. That's possible. I just want the bear power. I'm going to have to go with Barry on this one, you know. What if, because bears have thumbs, they can grab you and throw you off.

Ducks can't do that. That's a good point. Yeah, I forgot about bears opposed. Me too. Yeah. Damn it. It was so obvious because they're always playing game gear whenever you sneak up on them. No, it's the religious affiliation.

You're right. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm back on it. It's probably a circumference thing. Like a duck has such a perfectly biteable neck, but a bear is so wide. No, no, no. You can't get through the fluff. It's easy.

The fluff. Yeah, okay. Fine. There's reasons. My name is Griffin McRoy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is the most fresh. I know the best game of the week.

And get in there, Mary. My name is Mary, and I also know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club. You just by listening have become a member of the club. So delighted to have Mary back joining us again this week as we discuss the new game from the news studio, which is called Rebel Wolves, made up of former CD project. The studio is called Rebel Wolves. Let's be clear, because that does sound like a badass game as well.

I'll be honest, Rebel Wolves is a way better name for a video game than the Blood of Dawn Walker. My least favorite thing about this joint is the name of the thing. It's got too many goddamn nouns in it. So Rebel Wolves made up a former CD project Red Devs who worked on The Witcher 3 And now they've made a game that is very much like Witcher 3 But with vampires and stuff called The Blood of Dawn Walker You are stealing all of Chris Plants Thunder here

I'm happy for him too You know like this is easy peasy for me Sometimes I like the game a lot And I know it is tough for me to like Hold back and not just like let it rip It is kind of like your poker tell Like when the longer you go on the intro If I know the name of the developer of the game

I probably gave enough shit about it Because I actually enjoy that Okay well sorry I stomped all over your shit again Chris And I apologize and I'll make lots of space for you But can we take a quick break? Let's do it Oh of course I'm but a Hubble duck Just put your teeth around my neck and jump

So jumpable Before we get into it I want to do a formal recognition of Mary Kish Who is joining us Has joined previously but I think It was a bonus bracket episode for Patreon members only. Oh, I assumed wrongly that you had been on the core product before. I apologize.

This is the core product that Mary is joining us on. Please listen to the bracket episode that we did with Mary. It was so much fun. It came out a while ago. But welcome, Mary. She hails from the Fire Escape podcast, which is a weekly excellent podcast for gaming people. And you also do Twitch streaming. Is that right?

Yeah, I stream every Monday as well. So really glad to be back on. It was fun because the first time was the bracket in which I had to do almost no prep. And this was a son of a bitch RPG that took a lot of time. But a lot of good time. So it's good to do. Yeah, I honest, when I booted this bad boy up, I was filled with dread, partially because it's so dark and gothic. is scary. Vampires come to your valley where you live, and they do kill all of the, like,

mean rulers who were already doing it, but then they get in the lead up. They weren't, things weren't great in the valley, but then the vampires take over, and you're like, oh, great, but then the vampires are like, hey, every month, you have to come to church and let us drink your blood. So it's like, but only a little. Only a little bit of the blood, but if you're, like, sick or whatever, we'll fucking kill you. Like, it's bad. It's not a great setup. So that, but I was more filled with dread that, like, I didn't like the witcher that much. And, uh-oh, am I going to, to spend 40 hours with a dude who looks like a dark-haired witcher. Like if the witcher went to

just for men's and went to supercuts and got a quick die job, this would be Cohen, the protagonist of the blood of Don Walker. But I was delighted that I actually really liked spending time with Cohen and the scary world of Vale, St. Gora. Let's talk about the intro, because it sets up what the game is and also is so damn clever. I love the way the game introduces itself. It is doing something similar and different than the Legend of Zelda modern intros where it's like, here's a whole little version of the game

that you're about to get. And it's going to teach you everything you need to know. And then also completely wreck your shit. So, Mary, do you want to take a shot kind of explain to what happens here? I mean, I can give you my best. Now, this is the, there's so much, and there's like a lot of, there's a lot of factions, and there's a lot of names of things that I won't bring up.

But I know that ultimately, you're just a humble dude, strong, but a regular dude. Yeah. Who loves his family. But you're dealing with a lot of crap because there's plague stuff, and now there's people trying to, now vampiric races are trying to suck the blood of your family every month, and your family's not doing well. So how far do you want me to go? There's a whole...

I mean, in defense, again, let me just say, in defense of the vampires, things were bad before two. Things were wicked bad. They're all bad. I'm just saying. I love this. The old king was bad,

but the new king, not so bad. What Chris is getting at is that the prologue sets up the rest of the game. So I think, and it's just the first hour, I think it's an interesting conversation. If you really want to come at this thing, like fully devoid of spoil, spoilers, like, maybe skip ahead a bit.

But I think we should talk about the prolog because I think it's going to be tough to talk about the structure of the rest of the game without talking about how it sets it up. I agree. I agree. The whole point of this game is that the small decisions that you make have ripple effects throughout the rest of the game. So while we're talking about the first hour, which if you're interested in playing this game, you're going to get through this very quickly and then spend 45 more hours in

this game. So this is very small fraction of it. But I think it's important to recognize the context that you will be given. in your very first prologue, you will be given a day and you will be given, I'm going to say, 12 things you could do, maybe 20, but you cannot fit them all in because everything takes two to three in game hours, which it lets you know with a little ticker and it tells you, hey, this is going to take two hours if you want to help your daughter go fishing. Oh, your dad actually wants to teach you something with a sword play.

Oh, actually, your mom, she's sick and she needs you to go get back. medicine for her. Which ones are you going to do and why? Actually, that witch is hot. The witch. That throws a little, puts a little English on the ball. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. Like your sister and your mom. Also, there's a witch who is an older woman figure in your life, who seems to have taught you everything you know. Yes. Are you going to spend time just chatting with her? Yeah. I will be honest, I didn't understand the stakes so well because I did waste one of my eight in-game time chunks in this prologue period, helping a man find his lost pig.

If I could go back, I would have done things a bit differently. Did you eat the pig at the end? No, no, I didn't. I did slaughter the pig. It's a sad story. Anyway, yeah, it gives you not enough time to do all this stuff in the prologue. So we were talking before we started recording, like, so did you all have this character die?

No, uh-oh, how's the rest of the game play out if that character is not in your game anymore? This is going to, I think it's in the first hour and we could just, I think it's worth setting the stakes here. Okay. Based on decisions you make in that span, how you're spending your time, you can, apparently, and I didn't know this until 10 minutes ago, your mom can either live or die coming out of the tutorial. And I, she died. And to be fair to me, I did spend the time learning Latin with the witch and maybe didn't take super close attention to the recipe. that I needed to make for my mom to make her stuff better.

This rust, fresh shit, game fact, pro tips. Pay attention to the witch's recipe. So she died. But I thought like, okay, that's fine. Like, this is a steak setting moment where you basically, like, if ever there was a reason to hate these fucking vampires, they literally eat your mom in front of you. Let's go fucking get them.

But apparently, what? Yeah, that did not happen for. me or Christopher. I did a good job with the witches potion, save my mom. Wait, wait, wait, wait. But not literally. I didn't kill her. I watched her be eaten because I also didn't pay attention to the recipe.

I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I thought she'd just be a little loopy. Yeah, that's what I thought too. So what is, it's teaching you so many things. It's teaching you, hey, there's a lot of stuff going on and there's time. Yeah. And if you want to accomplish anything, you should actually just pick one. or two things because if you spread it out, you'll just end up failing everything. It's also

teaching you that you actually have to pay attention because you can't just spend time with your mom and doing all that stuff and then she lives. It literally asks you how to make a recipe that at one point you were told how to make. And you can't look at your documents when you are making the decision because I tried. Yeah, it's great. I tried. And then it almost felt like an old, it felt like an old Sierra like DRM like you got to have the instruction booklet open. So you know the combination. And it also teaches you. you that a lot of stuff you're just not going to

win. In fact, a majority of the stuff is going to fail because you didn't have time for it. Which leads to one of the darkest, funniest moments I have experienced in a video game ever, which is you know at the end of this day,

the vampires are coming to town and they're going to have a price that they want of all this human blood and I won't get into the specifics, but things go pretty bad and set the entire game in motion. And when this happens, it is well done. The writing in the game, great.

The cinematic, right. The animation, all excellent. You are feeling rough. And then, tick, tick, tick. You have failed blank. You have failed blank. Like 20 things go up to let you know that you suck shit at this video game. That's, oh man.

It's so good. It's like so funny and also really has. hammered home like, oh, wow. So I guess that's, I guess I'm never going to find that pig. It does a great job and it sets up. So once you get out of the prologue, you have a month. You have 30 days to basically stop the reign of the lead vampire whose name is Brinsus, which doesn't feel like a scary name to me. What's up on Brinzis? Got your family.

It's not as cool. It's not. as cool as like Dracula or like whatever I guess that's like a two on the nose but you have you have chunks of time what's really smart is that you are not spending the time just looking around it's not actually moving real time so you don't have to stress about that you could run all over the map in a single you know in game time chunk it is whenever you do certain activities or when you learn certain skills there's a skill tree that you'll find like manuals to unlock nodes on that skill tree and then some of them when you learn them it takes a little bit of time also but that's that if the it is the condensed nature of the game that I think is why I'm enjoying it as much as I am

because it feels so focused I know I'm not going to be able to do everything I want to do I know I'm not and I've realized that I've got about 10 days left on my playthrough like I'm getting I'm getting down to the wire a bit and starting to sweat a little bit about some of the stuff that I have not prioritized I'm having to make decisions like okay I'm not going to go with this From what I understand, there's like a fuck ton of endings depending on what you, what you do. And as stressful as that sounds and as like much as you, I've worried I was going to be second-guessing myself constantly, what the game does a really good job of is like connecting everything and signposting stuff. So you will be doing one quest and you will find like a lead for some other one or a lead for another quest that maybe you were stuck on. Or maybe you will run into a situation where you're confronted by guards,

but because you befriended this person, you know, or you save this person from one of the blood dungeons, you know, from earlier in your play through you can get through. It all feels like, it all feels pretty meaningful. And I think that's where it differs from things like The Witcher or really most open world games is because you have this end goal and it's very, very clear, you know how everything ladders up. So it adds a certain level of meaningfulness.

to every decision that you're making. There's not a situation we're like, oh, I'm not entirely sure how I should be handling the situation, X, Y, and Z. Because you know, oh, if I help this guy out, he might come and help me later in the final fight with Brances, et cetera.

Who knows? We don't know what it is. You contrast that with Witcher, Witcher 3, especially. Part of the reason that most people, a lot of people, don't get into Witcher 3 is the first five or 10 hours. You're dropped in a field,

and there's 50 side quests. There's tons. Yeah. And some of them are fantastic. And some of them are totally forgettable and you never think about it again. But there's nothing really laddering up until much later when you realize, oh, there's this big boss, whatever. And I think this game structures itself in a much smarter way to make it feel like every decision really does matter. What's weird, though, is it is a more extreme version of the drop you in a field and there's a whole bunch of side quest because that is the structure of the game.

Like versus even a witcher or most video games, this game is extremely open-ended. It's basically just a huge collection of side quest. But because, yes, because you have this very clear chain of command that you're trying to work through to build up the strength and get the allies to go take on the evil Lord Brinsis. You do have a structure, but I did not appreciate until, I don't know, maybe 10 hours then. how much it was just letting me kind of do whatever I wanted and trusting me to create my own story. And maybe to a detriment. Because I will say, I think I've played this game a little bit wrong,

and I wasn't having as good a time as I should have been having. And here's basically what I was doing was I was kind of nibbling at the edges of the various side quests relating to the vampire captains, and nothing was happening. All the side quests were like, run into this camp, fuck these guys up,

destroy a bunch of shit, and then you're done. And then I'm like, okay, but how many times I have to do that? When, if,

for you to have some, like, good pacing to the game, you really should just focus on one of them and do a bunch of them and then that'll, like, result in story missions.

It has a mercenaries style, God, how would you get, float, organizational, it's an org chart for the vampires who rule the valley. And you can see,

you know, how you are weakening them, how you are pissing off Brinsis's, you know, different generals. Those activities for me, I agree, are the weak, like, weakest sort of activities in the game. They were shit that I did as I was running between other more interesting storylines that are, honestly, I feel like going to be more meaningful when I reach the end of the game because it's like the, those are, that's how you make the allies. That's how you find the, you know, the tools, the weaknesses, the new, like, magic abilities,

like the really cool stuff is not on the org chart necessarily. Mary, I was going to throw to you because I also want to hear about the vampires, which is amazingly we have not talked about vampirism. Like my vampirism? Oh, well, the fact that this is a game where you spend half your time as a vampire. Yeah, the day and night cycle. Yeah. The Witcher Twilight.

Yeah. You are a dude by day and you are a vampire by now. night. And I think something we haven't talked about that we should talk about is how much cooler it is to be at night and be a vampire. Because every time it was a day, I was like, the first thing I'm going to do is purchase skills that cost half of my day. Because I don't like to be a man and I don't want to be this guy. I immediately burned through half of my day, every day, using my skills. I would never purchase skills as a vampire. That's, that's precious night. That's, that's Mary time. And I I use that to, you run so fast, you use claws instead of a sword, which looks way cooler. You're biting people and sucking their, draining their blood, which increases your life. Your skill set and your skill tree we do have to talk about is pretty sick. Both as a vampire and as a person, but the vampire skills are so much more fun, I think. Yeah.

They are so sick. And you get to like throw bats at people and zip zap at people. And you can jump really, well, you're not jumping. You're kind of like floating to a white orb that you place in certain areas. I mean, way cooler to be a vampire. And I think that is truly actually what separates it from The Witcher is like it's a similar concept of taking a lot of stories. But what really I think made this more fun was being a super fast, super aggressive vampire that at any point, if you go too far down your vampiric path, which I did, because you get way more powers if you're a bad vampire, your options when you talk to people will start to limit.

And it will stop saying like, someone will say, help me. My daughter is in a tree. And you'll be like, okay. And your options are, I can help you, I can't help you, or drink her. And give in to your thirst. And the more hunger you are or the more you give into your vampire taste, your options will all be given to your thirst. And then you just eat her. And that's absolutely diabolical.

I got really, the role-playing of becoming a vampire was very fun for me. So that's cool because I, in the way I play these games, like, didn't want to necessarily re-gear based on whether it was day or night. So I was like, well, I could use the sword all the time. So I just focused on sword abilities and a little bit of witching and a little bit of vampire, but for the most part, just sword stuff. And so now I kind of smoke shit just using like sword abilities, which has, it does have cool a bit. like you can dash and throw sand to people,

which is really funny when you throw sand. Yeah. No, that sounds real cool. Pocket sand. You can do sand. I threw sand at a ghost. And it was like, ah, no. It's very effective. So you do have the option.

I mean, it's basically three trees that you can go down which sword or. Yeah. And the middle one, the sword one is like you can use it either time of day. And then you have your vampire powers that use a night. And then you have witchcraft, which you do during the day. And you can't do at night. And I actually really like that. tree, mostly because, like, I don't know, it added more sort of, like, status effect things.

The combat in this game is very much focused on directional sort of blocking and parrying. Whenever you are being attacked by an enemy, it will show you, like, a little shield appear on your lock-on cursor icon on them, and then it will show you the arrow from which they are attacking, and then it will, like, flash orange right before it hits. And if you can, you know, hit the block button and point it in the corresponding direction, right? When it flashes, you'll get like a good parry, which will open them up for another directional sort of follow-up attack that does a lot more damage. For the listeners who are always telling us to play more kingdom-come deliverance, yes, it is very much like kingdom-combe. Well, yeah, except it feels a lot more, I don't know, it feels a lot simpler.

A lot more action-y, right? It's not that tough to, like, execute strings of varies. It also feels good within the first hour and not. 15 hours in when you've learned to be a fucking farmer for 15 hours or whatever it was. It looks fucking amazing too. I got in a fight where I accidentally agroed like a huge group of guards in like a church courtyard. And I was like dueling them while like walking backwards upstairs. Like it looked and sounded so rad.

And it's a pretty simple thing, right? Like point your cursor, point your stick in the direction you're blocking and then attack in the right. direct, like, and you have to kind of do that Batman Arkham Asylum thing where you're looking out for other enemies who are trying to get in there and you got to block them and there's unblockable attacks that you just have to dodge. But it's fairly straightforward, the combat, which makes things like the witchcraft abilities so much more valuable because they allow you to get openings in this otherwise, like pretty rigid, rhythmic like block attack, block attack. If you are in a group of enemies that are, you know, giving you two hard.

a time or attacking too quickly for you to get any of your own attacks in, like, starting to get in there and throwing some pocket sand in their face or, like, setting one of them on fire, like, becomes a necessary thing. And I think that, again, like, it's the focus of this game that makes it work so well, because in The Witcher, I would get a million pairs of pants, and they would have such incremental things that I'd be like, I don't really care. But if I find a ring in this game, and it's like, this one will let your witchcraft abilities recharge 15% faster, it's like, oh, I like, oh, I like that. I was just thinking, I wish my witchcraft abilities were recharging a little bit. I don't know. Because they're so limited in scope, it makes the upgrades feel a lot more, you know, worthwhile.

I think it is doing something similar to the GTA 5 change your character in an open world game for different experiences, but better because it's actually the same person. And the things that you are during the day versus the night are so different. And that, that has a lot. And that has a like a variety of effects of it. Changes like how you prioritize, how you spend that time. Like Mary said, like, I'm just going to burn my learning time during the day because I like being a vampire. If you are a person who likes to do a lot of the talking and like trying to like talk your way out of a thing, you're going to end up spending a lot of time as a human. But there's also just the way you get around the world, not just that you can move fast as a vampire,

when you go into a city, this game like, I don't know, I felt like was revelatory of the kind of role play of, oh, I actually feel like a vampire. Because when you go into a city during the day, you are on the ground and you are completely outnumbered and if you were to start a fight, it would be disastrous and you're not going to be able to steal shit from anybody, yada, yada, yada. It turns into night and you can climb the fucking cathedral the first time you get there by just like teleporting up it and like looking out and gauge you, once you're at the top of the cathedral, you can gauge and do this like learning thing where you look.

learn more about all the different parts of the city. And you can zip down and you can start just like dive bombing into people and sucking their blood and then zipping back up. You can break into people's houses from their like second floor doors because all the the doors in the ground are locked. But the upstairs they leave open. And you can start finding all these rules. Does play it fast and loose.

Plays it fast and loose with the invitation law of vampires, I will say. I've got scenes where it's like, I've had scenes where people are like, I know the rules you can't come in here. and Cohen's like, God damn it. And then I will just go into a town and be like, sorry, man, your back door was unlocked. So I just came in here. And that means all your stuff is mine, including your blood.

It was an unspoken indication. It was implied. I guess so. Leaving the door unlocked is a way of saying, come on in, vampires. I had an interesting problem. I don't know. It was a problem.

I don't think it's a problem necessarily, but an interesting turn of events regarding the openness of the game because we mentioned previously that there are side quests that lead to some of these captain's missions. I ran into a captain just in the world and killed it without having done any of the side quests. You're kidding me.

That's crazy. I didn't even know you could do that. I heard you can kill the, or you can go after the main boss too without having to do anything. Sure, you don't have to wait 30 days if you don't want to. So it's interesting you can do the bosses as well.

I mean, it was very clear to me as I was doing this fight and then after the fight that like I missed a lot of narrative stuff, which I'm sure like side quests, whatever it was, because all the cool side quests seemed to tie into a lot of these people. So I was a little bit bum, but also like kind of impressed that the game didn't break in that situation. It makes it harder for you that each of the bosses, they have different boss fights at the end, right, that are all quite interesting and distinct. And not doing any of those side quests likely give you such little help that you're just going to have to brute force your way through that boss. Which is how that bite, yeah,

that fight was tough. You're fighting a lot. I found, and this is interesting because this is a part the RPG nature of it, I liked killing more than I liked talking. I liked being a vampire that would kill people and I increased my vampiric powers every chance I could. Even if it was morally bad, I was like, this is who I am. And so I was very committed to that role. I had very few friends in this game. I had almost no allies. and I would just kill to get my way through these boss fights. I think that was a fun role play experience, but I would actually caution players about doing that

because as Griffin was saying, I think it's more fun when you're interacting and doing these fun side quests. That's actually where this game is the most enjoyable to me. But because I was really into the role-playing, I actually murdered my way to the finish line on this one. That's awesome. Thank you.

Oh, you finished the game? I finished the game. I finished on day nine, nine days left. Oh, nine days left. Okay. So day 21. That's a, sorry, the opposite. Mary, you might have the... Mary, you might have the... I finished on day 21 in game. I had nine days left. And I said, I've murdered everybody. So let's keep this train going. I think that's the larger question that I had in my experience in playing after the tutorial, which I was like really stressing about how I was spending my time, I kind of forgot to like think about it. And I'm wondering, like, in your experience, having finished it, did you feel any of that time pressure or was just like you have nine days left but you really don't have a lot else to do so I'm just going to end it. I felt it a lot which is why I thought I really needed to burn through the boss tree. I was burning through so each of the bosses as you were saying they have like different quests that you need to do and they don't you're not really talking or dealing with you're just killing them. Yeah.

And so I was I was destroying their blood barrels. I was removing all of their systems. I was pissing them off. I was infamy. You have a bar at the very bottom of how infamous you are. I was all the way up. I love that. They hated me.

I was irritating. They couldn't get rid of me. And I did that 90% of my time in this game. I was very committed to destroying all these people like for my family. I think that made my end result, which I won't spoil anything. But it's like my result is a direct reflection of how I played this game, which was I was a murderous. ravenous, really angry vampire, and my result is a lot of bloodshed and a lot of sadness and anger.

And Twister, you play Twister with your family at the end, right? Yeah. There's no happy. If the prologue of this hour and how bad, remember how plant you were saying, like, I got all these, like, things that I failed at the end of the prologue. Yeah. If that upset you, you're in for a rough ending of this game. Because the rough ending is like, hey, remember that person you met and they gave you a quest to

like save them, but you didn't. 400 people died because you made that decision. That's great. I love that. It's going to be, it's a brutal world. They set you up in the prologue to tell you this is a dark environment. A lot of people are going to die. You can't save them all.

It's really up to you of if your goal is to kill Brinsis and all of his people to help the people that you find in your way, you know, amongst your journey or to really focus on your family. You have multiple avenues here. And like even though I didn't love truly like my result, that was what I deserved because I went for a very bloodthirsty journey. I think players might be more satisfied if they go for more human-based interaction. Yeah. I mean, I actually, I would be really curious to compare notes because like I've been playing it basically the exact opposite way where I've been trying to like do everyone's side quest. And like, if I find something that's interesting that is not necessarily related to killing Brinsus and his guys, like, you know, going after that. And, like, I don't know, I did a whole side quest that was, like, pretty huge that, like, explores some facets of Cohen's, like, hit family history that the prolog doesn't really get into. That was like, hey, this is actually really fucking good writing and character development and stuff. But I, but I don't know if you get that if you go, like, full-blown fucking murder mode through the whole order. about my family history.

That's great. I was too busy, like slashing and sucking. It was a buffet. I was, I was brutal. And maybe through the end of that game, I was like, I'm an angry person.

It was not a kind game to me. Maybe you learn about yourself. I love a game that is bold enough to do that, to say like pretty straight to your face. Like, you're not going to have time to do all this stuff. You're going to have to do another play through. And I honestly,

I think I'm going to finish it. I've been enjoying it so much. And I do, I am curious, like what the other sort of path looks like, because it also sounds like a lot of fun. Can I, one caveat for people who are going to hop into this game, just as some expectation setting and help you have a better time. And I know that this problem happened to fresh it too, which is you, the game. Which is, man, they're all over the place.

They're so scary. You go into their hudge. But hot. We've been discussing. Sometimes they're hot. Yeah. The game expects you to save scum a little. bit in the beginning as you're learning how the hell it works. And there's a very, very immediate

example of this where you will go into a fort and you'll go down into the prison and you'll meet someone and you'll have this opportunity of like, hey, can you break me out right now or later or never? And like my instinct is like, yeah, I'll break you out right now. That sounds good. And we'll try that. And you'll just get your shit wrecked over and over and over again. And you'll, If you do this early in the game, there's no way you have the skill to do this. And the game will not tell you this. It'll just keep wrecking your shit over and over and over again. And it will not be.

There are some quests that like tell you, oh, you're not a high enough level. I wouldn't recommend it. This quest doesn't for whatever reason. Yes. And then you will go back and you can, fortunately, it saves like five or six, saves backwards because it seems to be aware that this might happen. And you'll talk to them and you'll like, you know what, I'll come back later. and the fucking character will be like, yeah, that's a really great idea.

It'd be a terrible idea to go during the day. You should come back at night. So then you'll come back at night and you'll get your shit wrecked again. And what you will learn is that actually you need to go and do things and you need to be at a skill level to accomplish things. As Frush said, there are things in the map or in the quest log that will tell you, hey, that's a little bit tough. But it's not always right. This is all just to say, if you're having trouble with anything, it probably, probably isn't going to fully disappear, despite what the time says, and you should go on

and do other things and not be like me where you bash two, three hours just against one quest in a game that's otherwise great. And I will also add on top of that, much like the Witcher in like every CD Project Red game, this game fucking rocks. It is going to rock even more in six months when it gets its final round of pad, like not final round of badge, but get some of this early stuff tweaked because there is a bit of stuff that is going to get fixed. I feel the same way,

specifically like, I've also had quests where it's just like, well, what the fuck am I supposed? Like, this is not clear at all. It felt like,

uh, I don't know, something was missing to indicate like, you actually can't do this right now. It's nighttime. Sometimes it does it. There's a little sun icon or a moon icon that'll show up on quest objectives.

But sometimes like it's weirdly missing. Um, that, stuff is that stuff is a little bit weird i'm really excited though about this being like the start of a of like a new franchise they've said that they're going to do like similar stuff but at different time periods maybe not necessarily stuck in the carpathian mountains and you know the medieval times which i'd be like really curious and i i also feel like is one of the reasons i really dug this a lot more than which or three also is that i didn't feel like i was missing out on a ton of shit by the time i finished

the prolog like i understood a lot about this region and its history and my family place in it and like that made it a lot easier to invest myself in the story it was telling because I felt like I wasn't already operating at a disband. And Mary's just over there asking for seconds. I murdered my way through this game. There's no one left. I don't think I could play a sequel. There's no one alive in my play through, unfortunately.

On earth? I mean, I really wrecked the place. It's pretty wild what you can do. Again, I'm like trying not to get too deep into it. But when you're a vampire, you also can decide whether or not you are eating the blood of the places you're destroying, which makes you a stronger vampire. I did all of that. Every evil choice I did. What?

Oh, I do that. Yeah, no, that's free blood. That's free blood. Hey, hey, it's free blood. Yeah, it's already in the barrels. It's just waiting. You just got to tap it. Wait, I'm not going to suck that blood.

It's crazy. It's crazy. And so, like, I went there on such a dark path. It got to a point where I was a little worried I had lost my own humanity in this game. I wasn't really caring about people. And I was I was, I was just a real violent person. I would have liked, I will say, I would have loved to see a little bit more variety in the types of beasts that I had slain. Because I went on a very action-oriented playthrough, I killed a lot of wolves and a lot of boars.

And I was hoping for more like, didn't have to be like a tree end like in Witcher but I would have liked more fantastical beasts. There are some like there are ghosts occasionally and like zombie type guys. I mean there's good enemy variety but when you're just going from point A to point B running a mile in this game on the way you will kill 30 to 50 feral hogs like that's a guarantee

so many hawks. They won't be hard. They'll just be little blood bags that you just cut and then you can get a little bit of stuff out of them but I think we all know that that's not the pre-motion. You know, if you stick to the paths, you're going to see less feral hogs. If you go the direct path, so if you put something on your marker and you go directly there, you're probably going to run into some shit. Especially if you go into. You have some hogs.

And bears, which brings us back to the Catholicism, which I just want to put a bow on this. There is so much in this game. And it really has a ham sandwich over the fact that you are drinking blood and giving blood to vampires. versus what you were doing as a Catholic. They clearly are working through something with this game. And as somebody grew up Catholic, I really enjoyed every ounce of it. Oh, my God. The frescoes alone in this game are stunning.

So many frescoes. Spent so much time on it. This game rules. I completely agree. Should we take a break and then dive into another somewhat large open world game? I would love to. Can we talk about how Mary's GTA? She actually has been playing it for review a little bit early.

There are no characters. Mary's the leaker. We can say that now. Mary did all the leaks. Yeah. Oh, shit. Mary get all the leaks. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Heads up. Mary is anonymous. Yeah, Mary killed everyone in GTA 6. Congratulations, Mary. Keeping that streak alive. You can also play as a vampire. Yeah. Okay, so GTA6, they had their big debut.

It was first on Netflix. And I think it's on YouTube probably, like fully accessible by everyone. It was about 26 minutes of footage. GTA 6 extended look An extended look And it certainly was that Can add it on letterboxed Yes

I'm curious if you guys have any initial thoughts Given the fact that this is the first time We're seeing anything resembling like actual legit Gameplay And we're not going to dive into the leaks Obviously so yeah Like official gameplay I should say It looks amazing like it looks really good

Like visually everything The vibe the writing the characters I love the like I love the two leads. I really am very compelled by the idea of having two playable characters who are in a romantic relationship with each other. Like, that's just interesting. That's an interesting thing. I think this extended look does a good job of like giving you a feel for what that's going to actually be like.

And the sticky situations they find themselves in, the game looks enormous and beautiful. But like, I don't know, I want to see what the, I want to see more of the, I don't know, is there ski ball? Yeah. Like it's the wild open world shit that I feel like was, was maybe a bit absent. They teased a lot of it. They teased scuba diving or underwater stuff for the first time.

A lot of water stuff. I saw kayaks and, I mean, they want you playing in that water. That was someone's life for six years is making that kayak. Just the kayak animation. Oh my God, they spent a much time. Yeah, I mean, I guess it does, it did allude to a lot of that stuff, but I, yeah. I don't know.

It felt. It felt like a very, very, very, very story and tone focused, like thing. And that all seems, that all seems great. But I don't know. I want to know the mechanics. If you remove the visuals of it, like, in terms of like, yeah, they can do splashy story missions with a lot of, like, scripted moments and crazy shit going on, like, that stuff we saw.

And you've been going back to GT4. So they've been doing that for quite a while. I agree with you, Griffin. I think the thing that I am most interested in is like the city and the area as a platform for hijinks more so. That's a playground, right? Yeah. And it's, I'm really looking forward to GTA 6. I think it's going to be a fucking fun time, man.

Don't get me wrong. They've been working on it for a billion years. They spent a trillion dollars on it. Like, I think it's going to be good, right? But like, for me, it is the sandbox playground stuff that I'm most interested in. I'm a little bit bum that it sounds like GTA. like online is not going to, unless I'm mistaken, it's not going to be there.

Not at launch. It'll be there one day. Yeah. I'm sure it'll be there one day. That's the stuff I'm like most interested in because I played a lot more GTA. Five online that I did sort of single player stuff. I actually didn't know that. Did you come around?

I thought it kind of launched kind of messy, but I didn't realize you put. It did launch kind of messy, but then they added the, you know, all the different bank robberies and the bank heists were fun. Yeah. The bank heists were fun. Fuck. They were so good. They were the most fun I've ever had playing Grand Theft Auto stuff. And it's going to be like, I know they're going to do that stuff. And I know it's going to be different. It's going to look better and all that jazz. But again, that wasn't, I don't want to sound too negative because I do think it looked good and it did get me more excited for the game. But I also like would have liked, I don't know, a voiceover to appear sometimes to be like, as you can see, Lucia is going to the local arcade to like, I don't know. One mechanic makes the entire game for me, and so I know this game's going to be my shit, and that is you gotta fill up your gas.

You got to fill up your gas. You want to steal a car in a game Grand Theft Auto? It's going to suck shit. It's going to be really hard. I don't know if this is true or not, but it sounds like depending on the quality of the car, it will be tougher to steal. That rocks. The idea of speeding down a highway and being like narrowly escaping the cops and then running out of gas and then having two skills couple of cars. They're just like lock the doors and drive off with their bulletproof windows and suddenly I'm just stuck on the highway alone.

That shit, that is what I want. And I think Grand Theft Auto has been kind of in this weird middle ground between the almost arcade actioning of Grand Theft Auto 3. And then Grand Theft Auto 4 came out and they were like, it's going to be super real. It's very sad. The driver is going to feel like shit. Yeah, you were very sad. Yeah, yeah. Yes.

And then Five was like starting to figure out these systems. But this is the first Grand Theft Auto since Zelda, right? Like even since the Breath of the Wild, I think. Could that be right? Yeah, yeah. It's been 12 years. Yeah, 12 years. It's been a tween.

Which is bonkers. And I think that this is a game that is recognizing that this system type of play is fun. It is what creates great story moments. It's the thing that's going to be entertaining for your Twitch streamers and is going to get little like clip shorts. But also it'll just be super fun moment to moment having weird shit happen because of the elaborate systems of the game. And that the elaborate systems are not just what you see. Like, did you know that the dog will walk around and take a piss? that the systems are actually influencing how you play,

that sounds great if they deliver off. I also want to call attention to the fact that, like, the two main characters seemingly, based on the footage, are, like, affable. And super, like, I was just about to say this. One thing that worked, it seems like it's going to work for me a lot better, is, like, I found the protagonists of GTA5 so unlikable, so detestable.

And part of that is, like, the kind of vibe they're going for the, like, you know, Michael Man, style sort of stylish thieves, but they're also like, I don't know, yucky in a lot of ways. It feels like these two seem like, oh, they seem cool. They actually seem like a great hang. It'll be a much more pleasant experience, I think, probably spending time. They are cool. Yeah, I agree.

And they seem understandable. They haven't gotten too much into the shit that they're in that they're trying to get out of. They allude to it, right? Like, ooh, do you think they can help us? Like, they're obviously in deep, and that's what's putting them in these situations. But you're also going to have to morally ask yourself, there's a reason that they always put really bad people as protagonists in this game. And it's because you're a really bad person.

You're killing a lot of people. You are murdering innocence. Mary's real. Come in and turning around now, Mary. You're telling me that you're going to be like, man, I really think Lucia's doing her best. Like, you know, it's not her fault that that baby carriage got in the way during that heist. Like, I think you...

It had hands in it. It was fine. You're going to have to, like, really wrong. role play. Mary, the baby carriage isn't in the game. You modded that in. That was your choice. It's my sandbox and I put babies everywhere in my play through.

It is like, it feels weird to me. First of all, let me just address. Like, it feels weird to me to be talking about a trailer on the show, like talking about, talking about a promotional piece of material for what is ostensibly going to be the biggest blockbuster game maybe ever released. It feels like we are, I don't know, I'm not doing a service to. to games journalism, if you will. I do think it's very interesting

that Rockstar has this way of doing shit. Rockstar has this way of like showing stuff off from their games and right around the same time that they had this huge debut that went up on Netflix, that Netflix was teasing for weeks. Also, huge. Yeah. Because they paid for it.

Huge, huge swaths of the game started to get leaked by someone. Crazy. It is almost enough to make me feel like bad for the multi, you know, million dollar company rock star. But it is, man, that does fuck. I will. I'll tell you, I definitely feel bad for the guy who spent a fucking year stocking the shelves in that random convenience store. And now it's released in 480P.

Like, I feel bad for that guy. Yeah. But yeah, as a company, they'll be okay. That guy's going to be fine. I'm sure it'll be okay. You know who I feel good for, though? I feel good for Russ Frustick because he is going to play Grand Thept Auto 6 and he is going to say, I need some quests, I need some stuff to do. And he is going to hang out with Stephen Root, one of the greatest actors.

I was so over the moon when I heard Stephen Root's voice. Count me fucking in. I didn't realize. He's the like old fixer guy. Krusty. Yeah, I love Stephen Root. I think in that scene you press F to smoke. Yeah.

That's going to be the. Stephen Root of Office Space, Barry, Dodgeball, Widows Bay. Everything. Everything's so good in Widows Bay. He's great. They've gotten good acting from the main protags as well. They're very well acted. That first scene in this release where you're going to do some kind of drug deal,

every character is unbelievably realistic and you feel the tension of going to a drug. I think you go to the door and they say, you say your name and they go, we don't know him. And I went, oh, you know, like, you're in deep shit. And then they go, well, we're here. Do you want us to buy or not? And then they let you in. It's cool.

Like that makes you, the writing is excellent. You can kind of feel where they're going with it, but you'll have to, we'll have to wait to see more. I get your tension, Griffin, of like, this and this is promo and we're talking about it. But when it comes to like a $2 billion game construction. Ancient game that, yeah, a game that would be a sixth grader that is not available. for purchase. Can you imagine all of the young 20s teens that are like, man, this GTA looks really good? And it's like, when this last game came out, you were 10.

You didn't play the last one. You weren't allowed. You could not. This is monument. This is generational. And so when you have that type of generational hype, I think you just can't help but react to the nuances of this trailer, the fact that like people are crashing into walls, which alludes that Maybe there's going to be dynamic, you know, breaking of spaces and play that you're going to be able to, like, shoot holes through things and then run through them. I think they're going to really up the ante when it comes to how you get to solve a problem. You're going to shoot your way through it. They're going to put you in that spot. But how you get out, I think, is going to be very malleable and up to the player.

It also occurred to me, and this is not really for the main game, but for online, whenever that does get released, for sure. sure they're going to have one hell of a battle royale mode because that platform for battle royale would be fucking incredible. They had to have done that already, right? For GTA online? It seems like it is five days long because you're just trying to find the last person. Yeah, somewhere. Well, I'm very excited. We'll see how it is.

Obviously, no one here knows whether the game is any good or not, but based on their pedigree. Except for Mary. It's a little violent for Mary, you were saying. It's got a little too much killing. And I love to kill. It's a lot. It's a lot. Gird your loins.

We've made that very clear in this episode, Mary. I was pretty head down on Blood of Dawn Walker. I didn't play a ton else. You know, we just finished this season of American Ninja Warrior, and I'm happy to go in deep if you guys want me to talk about my thoughts about they got rid of Mount Midoriama. and now they just do a full-blown bracket-style elimination race thing until there's one person left. And I don't know that that's a great idea, but at the same time, races have reinvigorated the sport.

So anyway, that's my honorable mentions. I will say, oh, I'm going to be so careful on spoilers this time, talking about a game called Blueprints where you're going to mention you do things. I have best described as reached the area in which it would be considered to be presumably the endgame, the actual end game. I think you're there. I think you hit it, man. You said it like eight times. I know, but now Griffin agrees with me.

So he sent me a screenshot and I was like, yeah, you're in the, you are in the end game. And I will say the last time we talked about Blueprints in the last episode, I was saying I'm kind of in this point where I feel very hemmed in and it feels very narrow. and I don't necessarily know that I'm enjoying it as much because it feels like I don't have a lot of ways to tackle the thing in front of me. And suddenly I now have like an enormous fucking thing sitting in front of me that I'm trying to tackle from like 16 different angles

and it's very overwhelming, but in a pretty remarkable way. So good on you, Blueprints. You did it again. Yeah. I will cheese out. That's a tough puzzle. Let me know.

I'll tease out the resties that we have coming up. We will be talking about Star Wars Zero Company. And y'all, it is hard for me to have too many great games to play. It's rough when the blood of Don Walker is so good. And then you're like, you know what, I'm not even like a, I like to XCOM back in the day, like the early, early ones, but I don't know if I need more of that right now. I'm kind of soft on Star Wars. right now. No, no. It is so good. It's so absurdly good. And Hawaii is good. We'll talk about

all that unrests, but even if you're not going to listen to that episode, check out this game. It is, it's so good. They did a very good job. Mary, do you have anything that you're watching or playing or reading or whatever? Yeah. Stop me if you've already talked a lot about Blood Dungeon, but I'd like to tell you that I'm really enjoying Blood Dungeon. You see, after eight hours of playing an RPG, and I am tired, and I want to, like, rest my brain before I go to bed, there ain't nothing better than a 40-minute auto-shooter dungeon crawler session. And when you die, you go to sleep.

And so I feel like I can really zone out to Blood Dungeon. This is from the devs that made Nidhog. You can see it. You can feel it. You can smell it. These devs like making silly, crazy, wild experiences where you're just like shooting lots of things in a dungeon. When you die, you die, your session is done. But every time you play, you're collecting bones, which helps you expand the levels that you can play or the characters that you can play.

All the characters are very different and fun. One of them has a lot of guns. one of them is naked and has a sword that surrounds him. One of them is really agile and is also naked. One of them is a baby. One of them is a baby. One of them is a spider. I mean, they have a lot of variance that makes it more fun.

But the thing I really like about it is that you can compare your scores, global and friend score leaderboards. And so I've been trying to beat all of my friends scores. And that has been a really enjoyable experience for me. I'm not trying to like diagnose you. But what do you think it means that you played a game where you spent 40 to 50 hours going around killing everything and collecting their blood and then taking a break with a game called Blood Dungeon where you go around for 40 to 50 minutes at a time, killing everything and taking their bones? It's calming. All these blood dungeons, all these blood dungeons are wearing me out. I'm going to take a break with Blood Dungeon, singular, just the one blood dungeon.

It's peaceful in its own way. Hey, Mary. It has babies in it. You are the baby. Yeah, you are the baby. You are the baby. You are the baby. You don't hurt babies.

Gotta love me. I like to role play as a baby who kills everything. Mary, have you beaten Flood yet? Yes, I have, I think I've beaten almost all the levels. There's one that escapes me. The fucking Starfish one. Yeah. I can't beat that level.

There's some real brutal ones out there. It's a great game. But I actually find Flood to be one of the more interesting ones. I love it. It's kind of when it's just like a square, I'm like, all right, whatever. But like, how fun is it when the water rises over time? Or what's the one where it's just a bunch of tiny little cave systems and you have to break all the blocks to get through it? Oh, yeah. Tumes, yeah.

Tumes is sick. Like, that's so fun. And you're like, you got to pick the right character for it. Once I picked, like, there's like a real chunky, round character. He barely can squeeze. And I picked him in tombs. And I was like, well, this is on me. I shouldn't have picked the largest character for, you.

tubes. He can't squeeze through anything. I died in like two minutes. Yeah. Great game. It's great. Everyone should be playing Blood Drengeon. When you're not playing the other blood games, play Blood Dungeon. Yeah. Thank you so much for listening to this week, this episode of the Besties. Plant, you want to tell everybody what we talked about today? I would love to. We talked about the blood of Don Walker. I think I got that title right. We talked about American Ninja Warrior, Blueprints Star Wars Zero Company and Blood Dungeon. We also talked about the GTA6 short film. And as I mentioned, you can and should add it to your letterbox.

It's an important part of your valuable collection. I also want to mention we have a new bracket battles episode that just went live. This one was not with Mary. Go back and listen to Mary's episode if you haven't yet. But this one was with Matt Apodaca. And it was a lot of fun. Oh, God, such a good one. You have a clip right here.

No, I mean, he does have a, his powers are pretty, pretty incredible. Pera, the rapper is, knows how to sing. Yeah. You know, I think, I think irrefutable has a far more diverse set of skills than. Yeah. Parapa. Parapa. I mean, Pirap of the rapper is a game about Parapa learning skills, but there's only like six songs in the original.

He doesn't, he doesn't have a long, also one of the songs is about him trying not to piss his pants while he waits in line for a bathroom. So like, I don't know if we can call that skill. Yeah. If that's a skill, then I've successfully mastered that one. Yeah. I could use some work. That's why they call you MCPP. That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll never catch me pissing my pants. Now do it like for a rap is iconic, right? You'll never catch me pissing my pants. Pissing, pissing my pants. So yeah, that was a lot of fun. We had a good time with Matt. We thank him for joining us.

And I also want to thank everyone else for joining the Patreon and supporting us. Some new backers. We have Eric H. We have Richard M. We have Cameron H. And we have Mateo. Thank you for being members over at patreon.com slash the besties. Last thing I'm going to say, very important.

We are just about a month away from the big live show happening in New York City, October 9th, town hall. The link is bit.ly slash. Besties on Broadway. Get in there. Join us. We're going to have exclusive merch on site. We're going to have Q&A's, fun live show, actions, special guests, you name it. So it's going to be a whole kit and caboodle. And we'd love to have a whole kit and caboodle. Come and join us. Mary, thank you so much for joining us. One more time, can you remind the folks listening at home where they can find your work? Yeah, thanks for having me. I go live every Monday on Twitch under my name, Mary Kish, spelled M-E-R-R-R-Y. KISH and Fire Escape is where we also play games.

I usually stream them first on Mondays and then talk about them on the podcast. So it's a nice system. If you want to see how I feel before the podcast, you can watch it live. Sick. Go do that, everybody. And then join us next week as we play a little game called Onimusha Way of the Sword, which I feel like that game came out already a long time ago. So that's confusing to me.

But I've heard it's good, and it looks pretty fun, so you should join us as we talk about it next week on the Besties and join us every week here at The Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties!