Assassin's Creed Shadows Delivers on an 18-Year-Old Promise

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Assassin's Creed Shadows Delivers on an 18-Year-Old Promise"

The Besties podcast episode released on March 28, 2025, features hosts Justin McElroy, Russ Rushnick, and Christopher Thomas Plant delving deep into the latest installment of the Assassin's Creed franchise, Assassin's Creed Shadows. This episode offers a comprehensive analysis of the game, comparisons with other titles, insights from the recent Game Developers Conference (GDC), and interactions with listener mail.

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1. Introduction to Assassin's Creed Shadows

The episode kicks off with the hosts setting the stage for their discussion on Assassin's Creed Shadows. They highlight the long-standing enthusiasm surrounding the Assassin's Creed series, noting that Griffin McElroy—a self-proclaimed fan—hasn't enjoyed a single installment since 2014.

[00:40] Russ Rushnick: "Wowza."

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2. In-depth Discussion on Assassin's Creed Shadows

a. Character Analysis: Yasuke vs. Naoe

Assassin's Creed Shadows introduces two main characters: Yasuke, a heavily armored samurai with immense physical prowess, and Naoe, a nimble female ninja skilled in stealth and agility. The hosts explore the dynamics between these characters, emphasizing their contrasting playstyles and backgrounds.

[09:19] Russ Rushnick: "They're friends."

[09:24] Justin McElroy: "It's a split narrative here. We start with a different character, a large samurai gentleman, and then pivot to our main character, who isn't a big samurai guy."

b. Gameplay Mechanics: Mobility and Open World

The discussion moves to the game's mobility features, particularly the improved climbing mechanics and the introduction of a grappling hook. While acknowledging these enhancements, the hosts critique the open-world design's restrictive elements, such as impassable areas that disrupt the gaming flow.

[02:14] Justin McElroy: "It's Assassin's Creed Shadows."

[12:49] Justin McElroy: "It looks awesome."

c. Game Systems: Leveling, Upgrades, and Complexity

A significant portion of the conversation centers on the game's complex leveling and upgrade systems. The hosts express frustration with managing multiple systems simultaneously, which they feel detracts from the overall narrative and exploration experience.

[16:15] Christopher Thomas Plant: "The upgrade system is not great."

[27:24] Russ Rushnick: "I think these games are designed to be played in the way that like I just buy Madden every year."

d. Violence and Visuals

The portrayal of violence in Assassin's Creed Shadows is a focal point, with the hosts noting its graphic and visually striking nature. However, they also point out the repetitive nature of the violence and suggest the need for more varied animations to enhance engagement.

[19:54] Russ Rushnick: "I think they're going for a lone wolf and cub type."

[20:15] Christopher Thomas Plant: "There are scenarios where you go into a room and they have [...] three maids look up."

e. Comparison with Other Titles

Assassin's Creed Shadows is juxtaposed with other notable games such as Ghost of Tsushima, Sekiro, Rise of the Ronin, and Noita. The hosts discuss similarities and differences in gameplay mechanics, design philosophies, and narrative structures.

[30:25] Russ Rushnick: "Rise of the Ronin was similar."

[45:11] Justin McElroy: "Binding of Isaac gets infinitely more approachable and enjoyable when you have the item description mod."

f. Overall Assessment

Despite recognizing the game's ambitious scope and strong storytelling, the hosts conclude that Assassin's Creed Shadows falters due to its overcomplicated systems and lack of intuitive design. These issues, they argue, hinder the player's ability to fully immerse in and enjoy the game's rich narrative and expansive world.

[38:19] Justin McElroy: "You spend, if that time is valuable, you don't want to spend it fucking around with systems, you want to spend it playing."

[39:52] Russ Rushnick: "Yeah, cut this, cut this, cut this."

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3. Game Developers Conference (GDC) Recap

Shifting focus, the hosts share their experiences from the recent Game Developers Conference (GDC). They observe a palpable sense of anxiety and uncertainty within the gaming industry, attributing it to evolving technologies like AI and shifting market dynamics. The conversation highlights the changes in attendance, reduced participation from smaller studios, and the diminishing presence of scrappy indie developers compared to previous years.

[43:44] Christopher Thomas Plant: "There is a general sense of fear and malaise that I would say bounced off the walls."

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4. Reader Mail and Recommendations

Engaging with their audience, the hosts address listener mail, offering recommendations and sharing personal favorites:

• Book Recommendations:

  • Monk the Robot by Becky Chambers—highlighted for its relaxing and refreshing narratives.

• Soundtrack Suggestions:

  • Bastion—commended for its orchestration and folk sound.
  • Unpacking—praised as a great productivity soundtrack.

• Game Recommendations:

  • Noita—described as a blend of Spelunky and Binding of Isaac, with praise for its intricate systems but criticism for its steep learning curve.

• Honorable Mentions:

  • Consume Me—winner at the Independent Games Festival, celebrated for its engaging gameplay.

[53:09] Justin McElroy: "The Bastion soundtrack. Oh yeah, I do listen to a lot."

[54:33] Christopher Thomas Plant: "I am playing blueprints still under embargo, but I am talking about the demo."

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5. Conclusion and Future Topics

Wrapping up the episode, the hosts hint at upcoming discussions, including the anticipated announcement of the Switch 2 and potential coverage of other significant game releases. They also address minor technical issues from previous episodes and encourage listeners to engage with their Patreon and merchandise offerings.

[65:07] Justin McElroy: "It's like we're not as anxious to get off when there's not four people screaming at each other. That's it. It's just more pleasant to conduct just a better show with three people."

[66:16] Russ Rushnick: "Don't worry, we'll take care of y'all."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Russ Rushnick: "[00:40] Wowza."
• Justin McElroy: "[09:24] It's a split narrative here. We start with a different character, a large samurai gentleman, and then pivot to our main character, who isn't a big samurai guy."
• Christopher Thomas Plant: "[16:15] The upgrade system is not great."
• Russ Rushnick: "[27:24] I think these games are designed to be played in the way that like I just buy Madden every year."
• Justin McElroy: "[38:19] You spend, if that time is valuable, you don't want to spend it fucking around with systems, you want to spend it playing."
• Russ Rushnick: "[39:52] Yeah, cut this, cut this, cut this."
• Russ Rushnick: "[43:44] There is a general sense of fear and malaise that I would say bounced off the walls."
• Justin McElroy: "[53:09] The Bastion soundtrack. Oh yeah, I do listen to a lot."
• Justin McElroy: "[65:07] It's like we're not as anxious to get off when there's not four people screaming at each other. That's it. It's just more pleasant to conduct just a better show with three people."

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Final Thoughts

Assassin's Creed Shadows emerges as a bold yet flawed addition to the Assassin's Creed series. While it successfully delivers a compelling narrative and visually stunning environments, the intricate and convoluted game systems impede the overall enjoyment. The hosts advocate for more streamlined mechanics to enhance player immersion and accessibility. Additionally, the episode underscores the evolving landscape of the gaming industry, highlighting challenges faced by developers and the shifting dynamics observed at major conferences like GDC.

For listeners seeking an in-depth conversation on Assassin's Creed Shadows and insights into the current state of game development, this episode of The Besties offers valuable perspectives enriched with personal experiences and thoughtful critiques.

Transcript

[Justin McElroy]

So Griffin is not here, obviously, but we were talking about Assassin's Creed beforehand and without saying what Griffin thought, because, I mean, even though he's not on it, I'm not going to say what he thought of this game because if he wants to share that, he should be on the episode we started talking about. Well, Griffin, what was the last one's Assassin's Creed game you did enjoy? He's like, I didn't like the last one very much. Okay, what about before that? What about Odyssey? Did you like Odyssey? No. Did you like Origins? No, no, no, I didn't like Origins. Valhalla. Didn't like Valhalla. It's like, okay. Griffin, who claims to be a fan of this series, has not enjoyed one since 2014. That is what we figured out. For 11 consecutive years, Griffin has not enjoyed this franchise.

[Russ Rushnick]

Wowza.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Do you think he regrets getting that giant Assassin's Creed back tattoo of Ezio?

[Justin McElroy]

Probably. Well, it's just a big assassin's logo. And Griffin is still an assassin. That's important. Like, he still sides against the Templars.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You know what this tells you?

[Justin McElroy]

Conflict. What?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

This tells me that you've never put the black light on your brother because everybody who knows him well knows it looks like the Assassin's Creed logo. But when you pin him down and hold a black light above it, it reveals the faces of Ezio and Desmond the Deuteronomist.

[Justin McElroy]

I've been to both Sleep no More and Meow Wolf with my brother. I've seen him in every possible light. Trust me. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week.

[Russ Rushnick]

My name is Russ Rushnick. I know the best game of the week. Holy shit. I sound terrible.

[Justin McElroy]

Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest and home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club. Just by listening, my friend, you have joined our illustrious ranks. This week we are returning to the world of assassination. But not that world of assassination. A different world of assassination.

[Russ Rushnick]

There's so many worlds of assassination. It's the multiverse of assassination.

[Justin McElroy]

It's Assassin's Creed Shadows. Chris Plant. What's that?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Assassin's Creed is approaching 20 years of existence in the video game world. And that entire time, people have been begging for, asking, for craving a ninja Assassin's Creed. And they got it. After many other Assassin's Creed likes made ninja games. Does it surpass all of that? Was it worth the wait? You will find out right after this break.

[Justin McElroy]

Hi, my name is Justin McElroy and I'm a paid endorser. You know, we talk a lot about the numbers going up and the fun of that here on the Besties, but you could really put that to good use if you're somebody that loves working with numbers and spreadsheets. See that you get experience points, you get the gems, you get the coins. It's the same thing you'd be learning in at UNC Kenan Flagler Business School Master of Accounting program. If you're a sort of gamer that likes pouring over inventory and character stats, you got an analytical mind, maybe. And maybe you'd make an awesome accountant. You know, no matter the state of the job market, every industry needs accountants. You need to know where the money's going, right? You can't have a good business unless you got a money person who's like, we don't have enough, we gotta make more. And you know, accountants are always in demand. So it's a great opportunity to start a career. UNC Kenan Flagler offers a top ranked online Master of Accounting degree. And if you're thinking of switching industries, going for a new career, pick up a program with a proven ROI and a 98% job placement rate, you could be at Tar Heel in less than one year, folks. Learn more at Accounting Unc. Edu. Chris Plant I think the way you contextualize this is so perfect because I really think that's the story of Assassin's Creed shadows is for 20 years, there has been this huge lunch in front of Assassin's Creed that is like the ninja one. And everyone was asking for that. And then it feels like that lunch has been eaten many times over by many other people. And now Assassin's Creed has come to its beautiful table. Are there any crumbs left for Assassin's Creed Shadows?

[Russ Rushnick]

It's. Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's so interesting, this franchise in particular, and maybe it's just because it's me, but this franchise almost exactly times with the beginning of my career in covering video games and just thinking it over that span, it's very, very close.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, very close.

[Russ Rushnick]

I remember like one of my first E3 seeing that demo and being like, hol, holy fucking shit. Of that first Assassin's Creed and being like, this is unlike anything I've ever seen before. So it is interesting to see how it's evolved and how it hasn't evolved. But I do agree with you, like, it's a lot of pressure to put on this Franchise. Given the fact that, like, everyone and their mother has made an open world ninja game.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Let me do a little bit more of a historical run through and I'll try to make this fast. Oh, boy.

[Justin McElroy]

Heck yeah, dude. Why?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Why should this be a ninja game? And why did it take so long? The original series, as we all know it, starts out In, I think, 12th century Jerusalem.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yep.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And you are a ninja. Like, that's the thing about it.

[Russ Rushnick]

That's a fair point.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You're basically a ninja there. And that's why people are like, hey, they're gonna make this into a ninja game. Right. Because I don't know why, but you're a ninja in 12th century Jerusalem. You're doing recon plant.

[Justin McElroy]

I've never thought about this, but you have really touched on the big problem here, which is the whole foundational premise of Assassin's Creed is, you know, lots of places could have ninj.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Like, lots of different places could do different kinds of ninjas.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Like, that is fair. Yeah.

[Russ Rushnick]

People haven't just said, I want a ninja game. People have said, I want a feudal Japan Assassin's Creed game.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes. Right. Because what they're doing is they're playing the game and they're like, man, sure feels nice playing a ninja. I wonder what it would feel like to play in a ninja spot. You know, that would be an interesting idea.

[Justin McElroy]

That's just embarrassing, though, because if they were thinking they'd be wanting to play a ninja in a cyber future world, because that's more fun. That would be fun.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Ninja is better. But the Ubisoft and maybe they had that in their head all along. They're like, no, the appeal of the game is ninja non ninja spaces. So naturally, the next non ninja space would be Renaissance Italy, of course. Right. And then after that would be colonial America. Why not?

[Russ Rushnick]

I also wonder. I also wonder. Part of it is just like a marketing thing where they're like, what is the broad game buying world? Like, what would engage them?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

What history are they into right now? And the one thing that history dorks are into at all times is ancient aliens. So they make sure to throw that in there too.

[Russ Rushnick]

It's always ancient aliens and evil popes.

[Justin McElroy]

They're trying to fanticipate the audience and what they're gonna be into.

[Russ Rushnick]

Justin, you're off the podcast forever. I hate it. I hate it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Let me be clear. I enjoy all these games. I think all of us enjoyed most of these games until Assassin's Creed iii. And then a weird thing starts to happen.

[Russ Rushnick]

Oh, yeah. Three. Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

They start to make it into kind of an action game. And then by the time we get to, like, the most recent decade of Assassin's Creed games, again, games I like, they're just action RPG's. You are straight up, you are not a ninja in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. You are not a ninja if you get God powers and you can fight with a trident. It's just a rule.

[Russ Rushnick]

It's not just that. It's also just the idea of, like, can you stand in the center of a circle of guys and take them out? Like, consistently?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes. Without.

[Russ Rushnick]

You couldn't in the first one. And you started. Over time, you've, like, gotten more.

[Justin McElroy]

Which is. And I think that's kind of the story of the franchise for me is like, I feel like they did the. The hyper stealth, and then I think they wanted something that was more mass market, obviously, and they thought, okay, we're going to tamp down the stealth, heighten the action. And I think that it took a few games before the action was good enough to sort of, like, make that feel good again. But at this point, we've kind of lost that metaphor so much. Like, it's not. They're not ninja stealth games, really. They're like. Like you said, they stand in the middle of a circle and, like, take on the whole place. Or at the most, like, I would say it's a little bit more dishonored. Right. Where it's like, start quiet and then go loud at a certain point.

[Russ Rushnick]

I think that's a good summary and that. That is actually a really good segue to this game because it. It provides both of those experiences. It provides the stand in a circle and be a fucking powerhouse and be a super sneaky person that can now crawl on their belly, which I don't think we've ever been able to do before.

[Justin McElroy]

Like a reptile, is it? Maybe one of you guys could tell me. There is a split narrative here. And we start with, like, a different character, a large sort of samurai gentleman, and then we pivot to our sort of main character, who is not a big samurai guy. And I haven't returned to him. So I don't know if it's more of a framing device or what the deal is.

[Russ Rushnick]

No, he's in there. They become friends.

[Justin McElroy]

Oh, thank goodness. I was worried they might be enemies or something more romantic. I don't know.

[Russ Rushnick]

They're friends.

[Justin McElroy]

Wait, tell me. They become friends. That's not Germain.

[Russ Rushnick]

No. So the two lead characters, I actually don't have their names in Front of me.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yasuke and Naoe.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yasuke and Naoe. Naoe is like, a ninja woman, effectively, and Yasuke is like a samurai fighter, A black man who was formerly a slave that basically gets brought to Japan.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And then taken on as, like, a feudal guard, basically.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yeah, he's like a feudal guard. Right. And in addition to, like, their very differing backgrounds, they play incredibly different as well. So Naoe, again, predictably, very sneaky. Hide in the shadows, crawl through bushes, assassination, etc. And Yasuke. Yasuke, yeah, can, like, fucking powerhouse his way through a base with, like, giant slashing swords. And he's got heavy armor. He moves a bit slower, but you kind of have that option.

[Justin McElroy]

It's interesting, though, because they start with him, and they definitely, like, give you that feel at the very be. That's the first thing you experience, and it really pulls it all back for Naoe.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of the game is not super accessible to Yasuke. A lot of it is.

[Justin McElroy]

What do you mean? In terms of.

[Russ Rushnick]

Literally, he's not nearly as mobile. Like, the. The mobility of Assassin's Creed has always been the thing.

[Justin McElroy]

Okay. Yeah.

[Russ Rushnick]

And he's, like, kind of slower to move through the world. He's got heavy armor, and he's a bigger guy. And so it is an interesting contrast. You do get moments where, like, there's a dead. There are dedicated missions for each character, but there are also missions where, like, you can pick between the two. And it did feel like I was a little more limited and railroaded into playing a certain way when I was Yasuke, whereas with Naohe, I had a few more options.

[Justin McElroy]

What did you guys think of? I always think. I mean, if Assassin's Creed has to nail anything, I think getting around the world and making that feel fun and pleasurable has to be one of the big things. How do you guys feel about. How do you feel about as Naohe specifically? Cause we're talking about that mobility, getting around the world as her. How did that feel for you guys?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It's wild how far the game's come, you know, because you're right. The series has always been known about that. And you can climb anything. You climb the tallest tower. But you go back and play those games, and it is rigid, like, where you need to place yourself to climb and. Yeah, and the challenge that the series has had since then is we want it to look beautiful. We want it to be cinematic. We want you to be able to climb most things at the same time. We don't want the kind of Legend of Zelda thing where it looks like you're kind of just like wobbling along the side of everything. And I thought they did a good job of solving for it. One of the biggest fixes is a grappling hook. So when you are at an angle that would defy physics, whip out that grappling hook. And grappling hooks we just understand in our soul physics don't apply to. So you can flip it somehow underneath, like the hood of the roof and zip up at some weird strange angle. And it looks awesome.

[Justin McElroy]

It looks awesome. It's really good in combat scenarios. It makes it really easy where you don't have to be looking around for like, up. If you see L1, it's like, oh, that's my up button.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I'm going to Batman button.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, that's my Batman button. I'm going to Batman out of here. See you guys.

[Russ Rushnick]

I do think there were moments when I was playing this. It reminded me of Assassin's Creed 3 because I'm not sure that, like, large nature y spaces work super great for this format. There are just. There were moments where I was like, looking for like a high perch to do the, you know, the fucking eagle scan shit. And getting to that perch in the open world, like, they clearly had like a specific path in mind and trying to like, walk in that path. Like, if you think about the original Assassin's Creed games or two or whatever, when you're going through those cities, when you're going through Florence or whatever it is, you can kind of run in a straight line and there was an automation to like, normal buildings where you would just grab a lot of the windows and the bubba buh. So and so forth. And you just don't necessarily have that. There are, I wouldn't call them invisible walls because if you go at the right angle, it does work. But there are a lot of weirdly impassable areas in this map that does, I think, hurt some of the flow. And I think my favorite moments of this game are like, I'm in a temple. I'm clearing the temple. I'm using the grappling hook to like, climb up and get above guys and hiding in bushes, etc. Etc. The second I'm in the open world, it just feels kind of like filler to me. Like, it doesn't assist the experience in any way.

[Justin McElroy]

I really like the. The feeling of getting around bases and like, forts and stuff is very good. And that's part of the partially. It's the setting, right? It's like there's a uniformity to the height. There is like a lot of architecture that like gives you the sort of like good sticky, like climbing around sort of geometry. But yeah, in the open world it does feel a little strange. I think the moment to moment in the interiors also feels they do a good job of making the enemies pretty stupid in the sense of like. It's not stupid. Forgetful, right? Like they'll see you the first time. Be like, you're not supposed to be here, but if you hide, almost instantly you see a little silhouette of yourself and they're like. I think it's the game trying to say, like, listen, one or two. Like if you want to do the stealth thing, it is not keeping that from you. Like, it is very easy to take a beat, hide, kill a guy and like reset.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I would say they are senseless in the most literal sense, as in they cannot hear or see, taste anything you. It is incredible how many times I took pictures in the game where I was just directly underneath someone, but there was some shadow going on. The most dangerous time to be a soldier, a foot soldier in this game is when it is night and raining because you can just straight up walk up to somebody within an inch of their face and they're like, oh, I sure hope nobody stabs me in the neck right now. And you're like, that's too bad.

[Justin McElroy]

You have moments that are a little bit like. You know how the predator sometimes, like when an animal can only see movement, it's like, just stay still. He can't see you. That doesn't seem right. But he doesn't see me. You're right, he doesn't. I am very disappointed by the way that in this particular take on feudal Japan, I cannot assassinate people through the paper walls.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

No, you can.

[Justin McElroy]

I did not get that prompt. Maybe it's like an upgrade ability or something.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It's an upgrade. The upgrade system is not great. So I can see how. Yeah, the upgrade system is a bit of a mess. But you can explain it to me.

[Justin McElroy]

Chris, as both a public service and a service to me because I would love to understand it better.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I love to be humiliated.

[Russ Rushnick]

There's knowledge points.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay, so we have.

[Justin McElroy]

Listen, I think, let me say this. Normally, besties, I feel like we do not traffic in this level of knit and. Or grit. But with Assassin's Creed or like a Call of Duty or Madden or whatever, I feel like the knit and the grit is the, is the thing. So how do you level up at this game?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I do not Fully understand it.

[Russ Rushnick]

There are levels.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Well, no. Okay, so you're playing through the game, and every time you, like, stab somebody in the neck, you get a little thing that's like 10 XP and then you, like, stab an important person in the neck, and you're like, 110 XP. And you're like, damn, it sucks, by.

[Justin McElroy]

The way, that you can stab super, super unimportant people and get, like, 5 XP. It's like, that doesn't feel right.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, yeah. There's basically snitches everywhere that they want you to kill. Unarmed snitches.

[Justin McElroy]

Just maids. Just, like, kill a maids with 5.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

XP in this game, we'll come back to the gore. We'll come back to it. But first the xp. So you do all this, and then every once in a while, little numbers pop up and you're like, great, I got, like, a point.

[Justin McElroy]

Right?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And then you go into the menu, and there are, like, I don't know, five trees, but they're locked by tier. So you would think, oh, I spent some points a lot in this. Like, one in the assassin tree, and then that'll unlock my next tier. False. You fill it all up and it doesn't unlock. Wait, why? Why? What's happening? There are also, as Frostic said, knowledge points that you unlock. And you do this by, like, quests, I think.

[Justin McElroy]

I think you find how you pray at all the shrines.

[Russ Rushnick]

I found some scrolls, and that gave me a knowledge point.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes. So you have to unlock those to unlock the future stuff. So what you get in a scenario like me where I did not prioritize that, and I'm just, like, rife with ability points right now. I'm a bank of ability points.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm sitting here wondering, have I ever spent one? I don't know. Am I sitting on a big pile of them?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And when you go in, it does that classic thing where, like, the first thing you see is it increases blank 5%. And you're like, oh, okay, I'm not gonna sift through all five of these trees. But if you do, you will find that you can stab people through a wall. Which gets us to the thing that I wanted to ask y'all about. The violence of this game. How did it hit y'all? Not in a. In, like, a puritanical way. I enjoyed the game. I was kind of surprised where it.

[Justin McElroy]

For me, I would say this. It looks I could still use more animations because the animations are pretty gory. But you do notice them being repeated fairly, fairly quickly, like, almost every Time you kill somebody, you got a stunt on them. And sometimes I wish it was a little bit more like pop. You know that sometimes it's that really funny. Assassin's Creed animation. Every game, every Assassin's Creed has one that, like, casual kill. Like the. Just like a little. I would like more of that. Anton Shigurin. Just like a quick. But. So they do have that. It just feels. I didn't get offended or I got a kick out of it, but it is, like, for Naoe as a character, it does color for me her, like, conversations. Because, like, she is having conversations with people where she seems reasonable and canny. But I know the truth. She is a fucking lunatic. If you get her in a room 100 people, she will level it. She'll murder everyone in there. She's a maniac.

[Russ Rushnick]

I think visually, the violence came off as, like, I finished Shogun a couple months ago. In the same ballpark as that amount of violence.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes. I think they're going for a lone wolf and cub type of, like, 70s.

[Russ Rushnick]

You do the paint stuff.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Japanese. Yes. But it's like when you slash someone, blood sprays across the room. But there's not a lot of, like, dismemberment. I think you can. But it's not. There's some heads that come up common. Yes.

[Russ Rushnick]

If you count that.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, it's gory. It's pretty graphic.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

But to hoops point, there are scenarios where you go into a room and they have the. I can't remember what it's called. It was a way of making the floor sound like a bird crying, basically, when you step in it. It was a security measure in old temples and forts and castles. And you'll step on it and like, three maids look up. Like, you just. You know, they're the gazelle and you're the lion. And you're like, oh, I know how this one's going to end. And, I mean, the room is covered in viscera by the time you're done.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, I went into a table.

[Russ Rushnick]

Who's gonna clean that up?

[Justin McElroy]

Just earlier. Yeah. Right. Who's gonna clean this? I got Harvey Keitel. Get the wolf down here. Listen, I watched. I did one right before this where there was a guy, just a guy, and he was in front of a chest. And, like, I used my eagle vision or whatever. It's like, whoa, chest. Gotta get it. It's like, are you sure? Cause he's right there. It's like, nah. Unfortunately, he's chosen an extremely bad place to post up. Cause he's right Next to the chest. And I do need that chest. I think that they. The moment to moment things. I would say I have not found a lot of them to be super enjoyable. And I would like to talk to you guys about how this game handles getting around the world and finding your objectives. Because I'm curious. That feels very different to me and I'm curious how it resonated with you guys and if you left it like as designed or if you switched to a more guided experience.

[Russ Rushnick]

I don't know which is the design version. Because they do offer, as you sort of alluded to, a pathfinder mode that literally gives you like a GPS ghost to follow to a. To an objective.

[Justin McElroy]

So. Right. So that's like. Yes. And you can. It's confusing again, right? Because it can give you that Pathfinder mode can still work in the. Whatever they call it, like guided whatever. But the alternative mode is like, it will give you waypoints to go to that you're like, literally I started with.

[Russ Rushnick]

That and then there were moments where I was like, I have no idea how to get to this waypoint. And then would.

[Justin McElroy]

Oftentimes you can use the wayfinder to plot a point on the map manually and you can go to the way. You know what I'm saying? The pathfinding works regardless of whether or not you know where the objective is.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes, I'll talk through this. Find your own way mode a little bit more. So if you picture a traditional Assassin's Creed or open world game, you get your quest and then you open the map and then the thing that you need to go do is just plotted there and you go from point to point to point until you finish the game. Right. And then eventually there are like 500 things on the map for all the different stuff you can do in this game. And I think that they had done a version of this in a couple of the previous Assassin's Creeds. There is a fog of war and you clear the fog of war as you travel the map. And one of the most important things about clearing the fog of war is you see the regions and cities and names of things added to the map. That's important because you kind of on a kill Bill esque mission for the game to like knock out all these different heads of a gang, I guess.

[Russ Rushnick]

Basically a secret organization.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Secret organization. And to do that you will say, okay, I'm gonna pick this one person and to find them I need to knock out three other sub kind of goals. And when you pick any of those sub goals, it still doesn't give you the location to go to. A thing comes up on the map, and it's like, hey, it's south of Kyoto, wedged into the mountainside near a bunch of trees or something. And if you have found a person.

[Justin McElroy]

It'Ll be like, they're in the firearms district west of Sakai, near this guy.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And you can open your map and you can be like, dang. Well, I know where Sakai is, but I haven't cleared the fog of war out in that entire area yet, and I'm busy doing other things. You can use a recon soldier effectively in the map and point them at that area, and that character will clear out the fog of war in that and discover, quote, any of the things that are in that area. And you can do this, I guess, like, twice a day. This is where it just gets endlessly complicated to me, because you also use these soldiers to claim special treasures in certain forts. And if you've used them in one spot, you can't use them in another.

[Justin McElroy]

Refill when the seasons change, or you can refill them when you go back to your home base.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

But I'm not sure if there's a punishment for changing seasons. And, yeah, there's, like, so many systems at play. That's kind of the big challenge I had with the game, is there are so many systems that I would end up kind of getting lost in one thing and then forget what game I was even playing. As in, there's a fort that I did last night that was probably, in total, an hour and a half. I spent an hour of it looking for six different sub bosses so that I could open a special crate. And then I got, like, a relatively novel piece of gear. Okay. Right. That's all good stuff in doing that. The sport is so huge, and finding these enemies was so big or took so long. And then at the end, I got that gear. But then there was these other treasures that I just couldn't claim, and I didn't fully understand why. I kind of did, because it was tied to these, like, helper characters. But I was like, I guess, right?

[Russ Rushnick]

You have to, like, send helpers into.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes. And I was like, I guess I should have spent more time getting helpers. But then I realized, oh, wow, I haven't finished the main mission yet. I want to do that before we talk about it. And as I kind of pulled back, I realized I was, like, eight layers deep of not knowing what I was supposed to do. And you can build up your base, but I'm not sure why I should build up my base again. I had already mentioned that I didn't have the knowledge points to use my ability points. So all of these things on their own are cool. I think when you really understand the game and you know the system, they probably work well. But it requires one, that you spend the time to learn every individual part of the system and then two, that you bring your own self control to not getting pulled down any one avenue for too long.

[Russ Rushnick]

It's hard not to feel like Assassin's Creed games in particular are maybe the worst current AAA franchise. For the Besties podcast. No, no, no. He didn't let me finish.

[Justin McElroy]

Wow.

[Russ Rushnick]

For the Besties podcast specifically because I think these games are designed to be played in the way that like I just buy Madden every year. I think people that are Assassin's Creed fans buy like maybe they buy one game and they play it over the course of six to 10 months. And that's what this game feels so dense of all of those systems at play that I think I enjoyed my time with it. But like I think it is not designed for a.

[Justin McElroy]

Just short, you know, I enjoy. I don't know if I enjoyed my time with it, but I did spend a lot of time with it and wanted to keep spending more time on it. And I think that it would be. It's always that thing with Assassin's Creed games that bothers me. Like there's super rewarding stuff, right? Like there's a narrative, there's a story that people have worked really hard on and it's like it looks incredible. I just wish like the time. It didn't require so much time of me to like manage systems and stuff to get at the stuff that's really interesting. Like I like all the content. It's just like, yeah, this. It's not hard to make compelling systems. Like there's lots of big games where the systems are understandable, right? Like, and the leveling is understandable. And like you can understand system like.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

The Assassin's Creed games. I mean. Yeah, for me I. I know what you mean.

[Russ Rushnick]

Fresh.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And I think that's right. I think people who listen to the show who really just like are cool spending as much time as possible in a world and are fine with some of that being like, hey, that's like real 6 out of 10 energy in exchange for the 10 out of 10. This is for you. That said, Odyssey is an amazing game. And what Odyssey does is it traps you on an island at the beginning and you leave that island once you understand how the Game works.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And I think that's the problem here is.

[Russ Rushnick]

I mean, Breath of the Wild does the same thing.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. And it's a great solution. And here I am, you know, I don't know. I'm probably like, somewhere between 15 to 20 hours into this game and I'm still bashing my head against some of the systems, and that's just kind of weird.

[Russ Rushnick]

I had another question for you. You know, while I was playing this, I think it's fair to say that I was thinking of some other games in this milieu, and Ghosts of Tsushima kept coming to mind. And the thing specifically that came to mind was there was, like, a lot of, like, visual design stuff in Ghost of Tsushima, which I wouldn't describe as realistic, but I would describe as striking. And I wasn't getting that same striking, like, picturesque aspect from this game. What, you don't think so?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Well, I think this is just taste. I'm not.

[Justin McElroy]

Are you talking about picturesque, or are you talking about, like, artistic flair? Because this is obviously, like, super picturesque. It loves how picturesque.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yeah, sorry. Flair is a better word.

[Justin McElroy]

It makes you look at it and will not let you skip the synchronization sequences. Even if you're somebody that gets really easily bored watching a camera spin around an environment for 30 seconds. Yeah, I got the zoomies, guys. Let me go kill someone. Thank you.

[Russ Rushnick]

I think it's flair. I guess that's the answer. It's like, you don't have that, like, golden sundown moment that you get from a Ghost of Tsushima. Or the poppy fields that are just like, oh, I could. This is my fucking wallpaper. This feels like more like. I guess the analog would be like death stranding, which is, like, at a glance, not necessarily like a flary environment, but it is, like, picturesque or like a spot you would want to take a vacation.

[Justin McElroy]

I. I will. I'd like to touch on something that I felt while playing this game, and I think it's so close to ephemeral, but I wanted to touch on it. Is that in the. Oh, I understand. I think you're totally dead on about getting around in the open world feeling weird. I will say that I felt like stealthing through the natural world was actually pretty pleasant. I think that they do a good job of, like, integrating the landscape in a way where it doesn't feel like you're fighting it as much as it is like you're kind of using it to your advantage. I think that feels pretty good.

[Russ Rushnick]

A lot of shrubs, a lot of shrubs.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

The forest actually look and feel like forests, as in, they're hard to get around, and when you're up high, they look like a forest in a way they just don't in video games. Yeah. And there is this amazing feeling in the game where you come out of a forest, like, was I even really supposed to walk through that area? And suddenly you're in a field. Dawn is breaking over this little village, and you know that you're just about to wreck shit in it. And that feels incredible. That, to me, is when it. Again, it's the going through the forest. 6 out of 10, approaching a village at dawn, ready to kick some ass. 10 out of 10. And if you can make that exchange, you're in a pretty good spot.

[Justin McElroy]

I don't know if, for me, if you're someone. If you're an Assassin's Creed fan, like we've said on this, I feel like we feel pretty confident that it's a pretty good one of those. Unless you're deep in the lore, I have no idea how the broader Assassin's Creed lore is being.

[Russ Rushnick]

I don't think I can talk to you if you're deep in the lore of Assassin's Creed.

[Justin McElroy]

If you're deep in the lore, actually, you should listen to another podcast. You're not welcome here, but I know.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

We'Re running along on this segment, but that's the strangest part, is you're right. Once you start the game, good luck. It's going to be a long time until you start to tie everything else.

[Russ Rushnick]

You get a little nibble at the.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Beginning, but every time you load the game, it's like, it assumes you must be the biggest Assassin's Creed lore fan on the planet because you can actually cycle through the other characters that you play.

[Justin McElroy]

They're like, trying to make an animus. Like, for you.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes. They're trying to make this, like, giant mega Assassin's Creed game where it looks like at any moment you could switch to any of the other AC games.

[Justin McElroy]

So, yeah, it's very ambitious. There's no reason to think that it is weird. They've set up a UI that looks like something that they cannot do. But you're right, Flint. That's what it looks you want to explore as today. It's like, that's a different video game. I do not own that.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yeah, yeah. They've talked about working on this for many years of, like, having the equivalent of the Call of Duty app for Assassin's Creed. It does not work in this context because as We've all talked about, like, not all. Most of these games are not even supported on the platform you're playing it on.

[Justin McElroy]

So I do think, though, if you wanted to at some point get me, I think that they could do. I would do Animus as a subscription service that isn't just like Assassin's Creed games, but like, some of these, like, more historical environments that you could go explore at will. Right. For a monthly fee, you can go look around Egypt whenever you want. Go explore these other places.

[Russ Rushnick]

Why are you. Why are you turning this into a monthly fee, Justin?

[Justin McElroy]

You can subscribe sales. I want it to actually happen. And I'm trying to.

[Russ Rushnick]

They had that for free, though, I think. Or they sold it for $5. Where you like, explore a fucking.

[Justin McElroy]

I like that.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm saying as a unified thing, right? Unified.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Give you a unified app. That's all. It's the history book of Assassin's Creed. Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

And you can go explore.

[Russ Rushnick]

That's sure to bring soft from the brink of everything.

[Justin McElroy]

I don't know what I was going to say. I think if you like Assassin's Creed, you're going to like this. I. I don't know if it does enough to differentiate itself from, like, to go back to what we talked about. I don't know if it does enough to differentiate itself from the other games that are very, very, very similar to this. I mean, we are. We are getting into, like, nitty gritty again. But like this Ghost of Shushima, Sekiro.

[Russ Rushnick]

Like, there was a Way of the Samurai. What was that one? The Sony one that we played like two years ago with the Glider.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Rise of the Ronin.

[Russ Rushnick]

Rise of the Ronin. Very similar.

[Justin McElroy]

It's very. I don't know that it does enough, and I don't know that it. You know, it's funny. We. There is a meditation mini game in this, and it is a mini game where you try. They try to give you the approximate feel of meditating. And it is a mini game where you can meditate and mess up at meditating. And there's like a little bong you messed up meditating. It's like, okay, guys, with all due respect, we don't break every element, right? I mentioned that to Griffin. He's like, compare that to Wanderstop for a second. Like, how are these two things approaching the same idea? I don't know that it does enough to separate those where if you play a lot of games or if you played other games in this genre, I don't know that there's enough here. To separate it. Cause even during this conversation, we've been trying to figure out which mechanics are which game. Right. Like, trying to remember, like, wait, was this. This. You could do this in, like, I don't know that it feels different enough.

[Russ Rushnick]

Personally, I liked Rise of the Ronin more, and I know that game got kind of buried, but I just like the freedom of it. I mean, realistically, what I want is not something that's narrative driven, and this is incredibly narrative driven, and I don't think the narrative in this is particularly noteworthy.

[Justin McElroy]

Did you guys do English or Japanese? English or Japanese? What? Voiceover.

[Russ Rushnick]

I did do English voiceover. Yes.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I did Japanese, but I think it might be more of a historical Japanese because I was like, really? Some of these games, listen, I do not understand Japanese when I play these games, but I can pick through it. And I was really overwhelmed by it.

[Justin McElroy]

I did plant. Okay, for whatever it's worth, you know, more Japanese than me. But I had a very similar experience where I can, like, listen to Japanese with text on the screen.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

And, like, connect a couple of things. But, like, I. It. And that's not weird. There's whole tenses of the language now that I don't know. There's formal tenses of Japanese that I don't understand. Right. There's like. I understand very little, but it was like. Yeah, it was really hard to grab.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. One last thing of the Ubisoft of it all. It feels like they knew this was the last great bet that they were going to make, and they went all in and frosh. You mentioned Rise of the Ronin. A challenge that I have with this game and where the series has been trending anyway is they want it to be everything for everyone, and they want to make sure they're offering something in there that will make sure that somebody buys it. And that, in my experience, often got in the way of me finding the thing I probably would enjoy doing the most. Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And I was having trouble finding my way through the sheer density of stuff. Yeah, It's. It's not. Yeah. I don't know. I'm very curious how this game does. I'm very curious.

[Russ Rushnick]

I really think people that, like, will spend 80 hours will if. Look, you come home from a long day at work, you have an hour, you play through it, you have an experience, and then you have. You know, you have that for the next six months of your life. I think there are people that want that. Yeah, I. I don't.

[Justin McElroy]

I just. I. Again, I. Russ, I. I do want to push back against that because we do long games a lot here. This isn't that it's like how rewarding is the time and that's the issue that I have is like you spend, if that time is valuable, you don't want to spend it fucking around with systems, you want to spend it playing. Yeah, I agree with that and I feel like that is the what is.

[Russ Rushnick]

I mean part of the other issue is like the experience that we had. I mean Plant played longer than we do, but in the first five, ten hours it's all fucking system. You're buried in systems. And some of that is like a mistake. They should spread that stuff out or figure out a way to better tutorialize it. Obviously once you understand what's going on and you know, oh, I need to recruit these guys to do this, etc, etc, there's less of that. But I agree with you, it's very front loaded and it just, it's just.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Piece of advice for that. Don't, don't make my mistake. Follow the main quest, I suspect for the beginning because I just started exploring every corner of the map I could and I think that was an issue where I get it. I'm not getting into some pretty basic functionality.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yeah, you'll hit walls where it's like you don't have this thing to do this thing. And that sucks. That's not.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. And that sucks to find out. But it's like, it's like the cost of letting you have as much freedom as you do and letting them put as much stuff in. You don't feel that editorial hand. It reminds me of that plant we were saying earlier. Reminded me that Mark Twain quote. I didn't have time to send a short letter so I sent a long one. If this feels like that, right. This feels like a lot of competent teams making really competent stuff and no one at the top saying like this, but not this.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yeah, cut this, cut this, cut this.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, great. Let's take a quick break and then when we come back, we're going to check in on the game developers conference with our man on the street, Chris Plant.

[D]

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[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Beans out there though.

[D]

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[Russ Rushnick]

Chris, tell us about. Man, when you say it out loud, it sounds like the most boring fucking shit imaginable. The Game Developers Conference. Obviously we love game developers here, but.

[Justin McElroy]

That was one of your better ones. Saying Game Developers Conference out loud sounds so boring. He says from the hosting seat of a video game podcast. Like, what are you talking about?

[Russ Rushnick]

It's also a conference.

[Justin McElroy]

Learning about how games are developed, meeting and greeting, networking, snore.

[Russ Rushnick]

I know what it is. I love that. I love attending that conference.

[Justin McElroy]

It is, it's great.

[Russ Rushnick]

But yeah, I don't know. It sounds incredibly awesome.

[Justin McElroy]

You know what? I think there's a little bit of a thing that I think a lot of journalists, I don't know, this was always my experience at gdc. It's such a cool thing. And you are an outsider and you feel that more at Game Developers conference than anywhere else because it is a conference for game developers and you want to feel like more on the inside of that. But it is a little bit like looking outside, looking in, you know, that's.

[Russ Rushnick]

How I felt when I traveled to Japan. It was a similar vibe where it's like I just want to absorb all this thing, all the things around me, but it's very different from my day to day life. So it was cool.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

So true. They're identical. Japan and San Francisco's games of personal analogy.

[Russ Rushnick]

Jesus.

[Justin McElroy]

Wow, they're being hard on you today, Russ. I'm sorry, man. They're not really like this.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

So we talked about it on Orestes. If folks can hear and maybe already have heard on the Patreon, I'll spare people the nitty gritty of the GDC thing itself. But I will talk about what the mood was at gdc, which was weird. The great thing about going to GDC is it's kind of a taste of the state of the industry. They have these sub summits where it's like, AI. Here's 30 panels on AI, and you go and you get a sense of who's feeling confident and who's not. And the answer is, nobody is feeling confident. It's like, you go to the AI panels and everybody's like, it's gonna be great. But, like, this is where the money is. No, there's. There's a general sense of fear and malaise that I would say bounced off the walls. The weird thing, though, is there were a number of people that I spoke with who were doing well. And the sense there is, I don't really want to talk about it. I don't want to make a big thing of it because there's also an anxiety of things are so bad. I don't want to be the person over here who's like, well, actually, my studio's thriving and I'm feeling great. So it was this kind of weird vibe of a lot of people feeling bad and the people who are doing well really not wanting to be seen as, like, the assholes who are, you know, taking a victory lap at an awkward time.

[Russ Rushnick]

Well, yeah, it does seem like the number of people doing well is probably very small compared to the number of people that are, like, kind of struggling right now.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, I think that is almost certainly right. It's also strange because GDC is, as Hoops mentioned, a great place for networking. It's where a lot of students go to learn from, you know, kind of industry veterans. And it is where more junior employees could go to get new jobs, but cost a lot to go. Yeah, I can go and get a press pass, but it cost a small fortune to go, if you are a normal person. And money is tight right now. Money is tight for individuals, but it's also tight for companies who are not just going to drop a ton of cash to send 30 employees like they may have done in the past. Maybe they send just a couple now. So it felt smaller in a way than it used to. So, yeah, it's certainly not dying by any means, in the same way that the video game industry itself is not dying, but both of them are going through pretty Clear change. And you can tell that people are uncomfortable with the growing pains.

[Russ Rushnick]

Did you get to, like. I know they have the section of one of the halls dedicated to very bizarre input devices.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

No, I didn't. I didn't get to do it. So it's called Alt GDC and people should Google this. And you can see whatever was there this year. But this is usually when Fresh and I would go together, our favorite spot. Like, can you give an example of the type of thing that you would see there?

[Russ Rushnick]

I feel like I played a game where I was drumming on a butt. I might be imagining that probably.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That sounds right.

[Russ Rushnick]

That seems like something I did. I did see a video of someone. There was a game. Maybe it was Patches played this Matt Patches Polygon, where you have to, like, pet a dog, like a furry dog. And that was the input device, but it was like a stuffed animal dog. So there's like all sorts of stuff. There's like one where it's like you're eating noodles and that's like the way you interact with the game. I always love. That's always like, my favorite part of the show.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, there was one that I remember that was a single line of LED strip light and they had coded a game using that single line of light, and it was fantastic. But yeah, it's all these kind of like, challenges like that.

[Russ Rushnick]

It does seem weird though, because, like, the. My, like, days of yore when I would cover GDC always had the, like, the indie part of it was always so scrappy. And we're talking about, like, 15 years ago where people would just, like, show up with a laptop and just, like, do their best. And I'm sure that's still happening. But, like, then you look at, like, the Indie Game Awards and it's like, basically a lot of games that you already know and were already, like, super successful. And it's just. It's just like the industry has changed in that way. And it kind of bums me out that there doesn't seem to be as much of a megaphone for those micro devs.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You say that, but. So the igf, the Independent Games Festival, is the awards show that happens during this each year. And the winner was a game by a team of, I think four or five people. A game called, I think Consume Me. But yeah, you can actually. Huh, huh.

[Justin McElroy]

It's pronounced consume.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

The level of pride. I wish people could see your face right now just beaming. Yeah, it's a weird. It's a weird time for the industry and it's a weird Time to be young people. I think that is. You're right. The scrappiness that you're talking about fresh. There would be. There's a park right in the center of the convention center called Yerba Buena Gardens. And it was something different kind of every year. Like some years it felt like, oh, all the college kids had really taken it over and made it their own or kind of an anti GDC movement had taken it over and made it this. Like, hey, if that's the expensive thing, we're gonna give free courses out here. And it could always be something. And this year there was no kind of main gimmick. Nobody had taken the, the. The throne of like what you're gonna use that space for. And I think that is where again, you kind of feel this like sapping of energy where. Oh, you know, there's not. You can almost tell something's like its significance by its counter movement and they're not. Being one is kind of like a bummer in a weird way. But there's always next year, you know.

[Justin McElroy]

Do you have the sense that there used to be. I feel like a GDC thing where it was a place where game developers would often say things that would make headlines because we didn't let game developers talk a lot back then.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

So sometimes I'm speaking specifically in this instance of when Chris Hecker said that the WWII was basically two gamecubes duct tape together. If you guys remember that maelstrom that was also.

[Russ Rushnick]

Also the Phil fish quote about JRPGs was from GDC.

[Justin McElroy]

Right, exactly. That used to be a. Is that still. Do you still. Do you get the sense that you have a lot of people, like, listening? Like you can still like change the conversation at gdc.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I think, I think it's less in that. It's less in that people are just more cautious. I think post Gamergate, post all social media brouhaha, I mean, that's just such a different time. It's also a different time where people would say that stuff. And a few years earlier, the people who would report on it worked at like egm and they only had so much space in the magazine and by the time it was for publish, they forget that they even wanted to include it. Where suddenly you had the joysticks. The Kotaku is the destructoids of the world where if you said anything like that, they were. That post was up within five minutes.

[Justin McElroy]

Right.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I mean, I, I'm sure you remember that period hoops where somebody said something like that and you're like, my bills.

[Justin McElroy]

Are paid for laptop on here. I've got this crappy little WI fi hotspot extender.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think Ira Breeze gotten a bit more shrewd about all of it. For better or for worse.

[Justin McElroy]

Let's see. You want to talk about reader mail? We'll see what people are yeah, we.

[Russ Rushnick]

Have a few quick reader mail things. These are actually from a couple weeks ago, but obviously you guys weren't here last week, so I wanted to save them. This is from Slek. The way you describe Wander Stop reminds me of Monk the Robot books by Becky Chambers. The first one is named A Psalm for the Wild Built and they're pretty short novellas. They're about a tea monk and their wild robot friend with motivation similar to Wander Stop's mc. The books are relaxing, refreshing to read, highly recommended. That's cool. And I also want to call out this Luke Male Griffin mentioned that the Wander Stop soundtrack is going immediately into his Listened at work list. I'm always looking for good ambient video game music to throw on at work. What are the besties? Top tracks? Anything jump to mind Juice?

[Justin McElroy]

I was just getting out my I don't listen to a lot of video game soundtracks in my in my I'll.

[Russ Rushnick]

Shout out one that I've listened to from time to time. Apart from like the obvious, like the Stardew Valleys of the world, Stardew Valley is like a staple packing that game. Packing? Was that what it's called or Unpacking? Now I'm forgetting Unpacking.

[Justin McElroy]

Unpacking.

[Russ Rushnick]

I think the game was called Unpacking. Sorry. Unpacking had a great soundtrack and I've definitely turned to that as just like a productivity soundtrack option. It's not super long, but it is quite good. Plant. Do you have any ambient video game soundtracks you listen to for Vibes?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Not a big video game soundtrack person because I find it a bit repetitive because I think it's supposed to be.

[Russ Rushnick]

When you're what about the Nier games?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, I'll listen to Nier now and then I'll go to a Nier concert now and then I'll go to a Nier concert in Japan and then in Los Angeles. No big deal. It's not.

[Justin McElroy]

I have two that I actually am looking through my writing playlist now that I listen to a lot. The Bastion soundtrack. Oh yeah, I do listen to a lot. That's great. I love the way that thing is orchestrated. That's part of my thing with video game music. I like that sort of more folk sound. Where you can hear more of the instrumentation stuff. That's really, really good for that. You know the other one, this is like. You guys, I guarantee have not even thought about this game for 100 years, because I definitely haven't. But if you remember, remember me.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Oh, yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

That was a soundtrack that the. Let's see. It was by Oliver Derivier. I don't know. Listen to that one. It's very cool. Cause that was a game about time manipulation. And the soundtrack does cool stuff with the sound warping back in on itself and stuff. But that's a really cool game soundtrack that I still listen to regularly. Those are the only two.

[Russ Rushnick]

Cool.

[Justin McElroy]

And. Oh, Elder Scrolls.

[Russ Rushnick]

Do you actually listen to the Elder Scrolls soundtrack?

[Justin McElroy]

When I need to get there, you know, I need to get pumped, remind myself that I am the Dofa Kin.

[Russ Rushnick]

You know, that's a different.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Should we do some honorable mentions?

[Justin McElroy]

Fusaru, don't rain on my parade. Thank you.

[Russ Rushnick]

I have an honorable mention. I wanted to talk about Noita, which is a game that I just recently learned how to pronounce because I've been saying no Ieda for about four years. I talked a little bit about it last week with Griffin, and I've played more since, and, man, this game is so up my alley. It is. It is basically spelunky and binding of Isaac mashed together in like. But. But I would say I think it is difficult to a detriment of the game. And so I would echo what I said last week, which is, please install some, like, quality of life mods.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Is that the game changer for you? Because you. You've played this before, like, you have years ago.

[Russ Rushnick]

I know, I know. I played it before. And the game change. It's. The game is so genius in its systems, but, like, the big chunk of the systems doesn't even reveal itself until you get past the first level. And most people, I think, just die constantly in the first level.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay.

[Russ Rushnick]

And I don't think in this case it necessarily helps the game to keep a lot of that stuff secret. There are tons of secrets in the game and, like, weird, esoteric, like, alchemy shit that. Fine, you want to keep that a secret. That's fine. But, like, the game does not tutorialize the fact that you can build these very intricate wands that have, like, infinite combinations of, like, interactions with the world. And there's just, like, so much of it that I think is just obscured by the fact that it's a very difficult game that you get one shot, like, immediately.

[Justin McElroy]

So this is less of a recommendation, more of a criticism for the people that made it and how they should, like, change it. Right.

[Russ Rushnick]

Like, I'm not. I'm not asking them to change it.

[Justin McElroy]

I think they should change it because I'd like to play it. So focus the things that Russ is saying and then I'll play it.

[Russ Rushnick]

Well, good news, Justin, because they do support Steam Workshop, which makes it incredibly.

[Justin McElroy]

Easy to allow other people to fix it is not the same as fixing it.

[Russ Rushnick]

Rust and I. I'm not a fan.

[Justin McElroy]

Of this gig economy.

[Russ Rushnick]

I already provided some mods that I'd recommend. There's a great health container mod, there's a mini map mod that I think was just really good. And all that stuff has just allowed me to appreciate the game in ways that I couldn't before. In the same way that, like Binding of Isaac gets infinitely more approachable and enjoyable when you have the item description mod installed that lets you know what you're picking up.

[Justin McElroy]

So do you think, Russ, can I ask you something? Do you feel like that is. We've never really talked about this, but I think it's interesting as a mental thing, do you think that is a legitimate game design path is to say, like, if I put it in the game, then that's part of the game. So the pure experience is without these. But I do understand, like, is it a mental trick? Like, putting it outside the bounds of the video game itself makes it so that you're not necessarily approaching it with those things in mind?

[Russ Rushnick]

Are you talking about me or you're talking about the developers?

[Justin McElroy]

I'm talking about how you feel about that as a design thing.

[Russ Rushnick]

How do you feel when you say that? You mean adding Steam, the idea of.

[Justin McElroy]

Recommending a game, but the game is designed to let people mod it, to make it different than it is, to make it easier or more accessible? Because I always get in my head about, well, then, is this cheats? I don't know what experience you want me to be having, I guess, is my question.

[Russ Rushnick]

I mean, here's what I did, is I played a lot of the game without mods and experienced the game as intended and found that I wasn't able to see as much of the game as I wanted to. So the way I was able to get around that was by using mods. And they.

[Justin McElroy]

This is the thing I'm interested in. Obviously that's valid. Would you prefer that be part of the game or is it better for you for it to be outside the bounds of that mentally? Is it different?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Is It.

[Russ Rushnick]

No, I would rather it be part of the game because I think it opens. It makes it much easier for me to recommend this than saying, in addition to downloading the game, install these mods. I'd rather just be like, pop into settings. Turn this on, turn this on, turn this on. I'd rather it be built in. I understand it can't always be built in. And honestly, a lot of these things are pretty intricate additions on top of a game that is already very intricate. So it's possible, like, it creates more instability by having some of these on. But. Yeah, no, I. I mean, it's tough.

[Justin McElroy]

Because, like, the way the ones you recommended for Binding of Isaac, like, really unlocked it for me. Like, I really spent dozens of hours in that after those little tweaks, like.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yeah. And I think that's. It's a similar situation with Noita. You know, there's also a really strong YouTube community of people making content around the game, explaining it and, like, how Wand craf works, things like that. It's been great. I'm playing on Steam Deck. I think it's probably easier to play with the mouse and keyboard, but it is playable on Steam Deck. It's just a little more challenging.

[Justin McElroy]

It sounds like it does not need that. Sounds like it does not need any more challenge than.

[Russ Rushnick]

There is a. There is a mentality that I have about when I'm adding mods. I'm like, well, if I was playing on mouse and keyboard, it would be harder. So let me see if I could balance things out, you know, be easier. So let me see if I could balance things out. So. Noit is great. It means witch in Finnish.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Interesting. I am playing blueprints still under embargo, but I am talking about the demo.

[Russ Rushnick]

I don't. Yeah, I don't even want you to talk about the demo.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay, well, I'm gonna let people know that I'm having a nice time playing the demo.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yes.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Blueprints.

[Russ Rushnick]

Okay.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It's a great game.

[Russ Rushnick]

Don't. Don't tell me secrets. Did you guys figure out the secret of the title? I figured this out.

[Justin McElroy]

I did yesterday. I said it.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yeah. I told Griffin live on the show. I told Griffin.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. And I experienced it, too.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You see, Prince is normally known for being purple, but now he's blue.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yeah. Okay. Sorry for being obnoxious on this episode, y'all.

[Justin McElroy]

Wait, sorry, that was prerecorded. I just have that saved as a bumper. Let me play it again. Hold on.

[Russ Rushnick]

Sorry for being obnoxious on this episode, y'all.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Which One do you got?

[Justin McElroy]

Well, it was gonna be blueprints, honestly, so I don't know. Nothing, nada, Jack shit. What did I. Oh, okay. I played the entirety of a game about digging a hole of flights, so I played all of a game about digging a hole.

[Russ Rushnick]

What is the game called?

[Justin McElroy]

A game about digging a hole.

[Russ Rushnick]

No, no, no. But what's the actual game?

[Justin McElroy]

So you're right. So that's fun. You start with a. Did you guys already give the pitch on this? I don't wanna give this.

[Russ Rushnick]

No, we haven't done this game.

[Justin McElroy]

You haven't done the. Yeah, Griffin mentioned it, I think maybe on a different episode, but he said it in passing. It's a game about digging a hole. You show up at. It is a 3D thing. It's a three dimensional first person game where you show up at a house that you've purchased and you are told that there is treasure in the backyard. At the bottom of this, at the bot, somewhere in the backyard, there's treasure. And you get a very bad shovel. And you're encouraged to start digging. And when you dig, God, I hope.

[Russ Rushnick]

You can upgrade that shovel.

[Justin McElroy]

Oh, good news, man. You can upgrade the shovel. You can start digging and you find minerals. You take the minerals back with you to your shed, and at the shed you sell the minerals and you can upgrade your digging. You can buy a lamp to make the digging go better. You can power up your jetpack to make getting out of your gigantic hole better. And as you start digging deeper, you start finding like other dirt and more dirt that you can't break through right away. So you gotta get a better shovel to keep digging down. And it is very pleasurable.

[Russ Rushnick]

Do you think it's like a click? Is this a clicker?

[Justin McElroy]

It's not, it's not. It's really. It's more about the exploration. Right. Do you know what it reminded me of? Okay, I watched a lot of Curse of Oak Island. Okay. And on Curse Smoke island, if you don't know, is this show about these aging brothers. Everybody's aging, middle aged brothers, old men that go out to this island in Canada where they. There is supposed to be treasure. Everyone knows there's not treasure, but we all have to pretend there's treasure for the TV show. And as they dig down, every once in a while they'll be like, hey, we found wood fibers that date back 600 years. We gotta keep digging here. What's fun about this game is that you'll be digging and then you'll hit like something weird. It's like, I don't know what this is. So I'm going to excavate this thing to figure out what I'm looking at here. That's fun. And that's the whole thing. That's it. It's just about digging around the yard, excavating. There's obviously a. It is obviously doing the video game loop of like a very concentrated version of. You get the thing, you get the more powerful thing. But it is. You're not gated with any of that. Right? So you could dig through the whole yard with just the basic shovel if you wanted to.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

But why would you imagine telling your, let's say 10 year old self that you played two games this week for one of them? It's like 200 hours long. It is a one to one recreation of feudal Japan. You get to play as two awesome characters. Amazing story. It looks real. Like, it looks like.

[Justin McElroy]

It looks real. It's like a movie. It's like a movie.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And you can ride a horse, you can climb up mountains. The other one, you can dig a hole in the backyard. It doesn't really look like a. It doesn't look like much of anything. And there are different types of dirt. I don't know, it's like maybe like an hour long.

[Justin McElroy]

No guns.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And they're like, oh great. So like, good thing you didn't have to play that dirt one very long. No, no, no, no. I'm sorry.

[Justin McElroy]

No, no, no, no, no, no. I played all that, then went back and there was an achievement mode and I played some more of it. So yeah, that's the one that I was really.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yeah, that sounds fucking sick. I got like legit. That sounds sick.

[Justin McElroy]

It's great. Well, here's what I will say. I've made more space in my heart for things that just bring me pleasure and calm. And it was. I turned on a book and I dug around in this yard and I made a nine hour flight just disappear. And it was amazing.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Oh, very quick, very quick. I have a book for you specifically. Hoops. I think you will love. This will be my thing since I can't talk about blueprints. Everything Must Go. It's a nonfiction critical history of apocalypse fiction starting with the Torah and the Bible all the way up to like Last of Us. And it is fantastic. And it is that sweet spot where you can listen to it like you would a podcast and still be able to get your chores done and drive. There's some nonfiction that I listen to where I'm like, it's too Dense. Can't. Can't listen to it while driving. Will run off the road. This is right in that sweet spot. And it is so good. And has also just recommended so many books that I want to read now along kind of the journey of the book. It is awesome.

[Justin McElroy]

All right, cool. We talked for so long even without Griffin.

[Russ Rushnick]

Yeah, Crazy Griffin and I did a long one too. Just us two.

[Justin McElroy]

It's like we're not as anxious to get off when there's not four people screaming at each other. That's it. It's just more pleasant to conduct just a better show with three people.

[Russ Rushnick]

I wanted to thank some folks over at the patreon. Patreon.com thebesties Some new members that have joined us. James, Sarah Ashland and the Eagle. Thank you for joining us over there. You can gift subscriptions to the [e-mail] besties gift if you want to get that for someone. We also have a bunch of merch for besties specifically. We have a nice bestie shirt. There's like a challenge coin that has New York giraffe on it. There's like cool shit in the merch store. It's the McElroy merch store. I don't know how to get there, but I'm sure you could Google it and search besties stuff and it'll pop up. I think we have a good sale going on right now for that stuff. So keep an eye out next week. Next week's a big week. The Switch 2 is being announced next week. I imagine we'll probably do something on that and maybe other games.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes.

[Russ Rushnick]

Atom Fall one.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

One other note. We have a new episode of the Resties up, but the ending got cut off a little bit short.

[Russ Rushnick]

Oh no.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And we will. We're going to do a re upload of that. So people.

[Russ Rushnick]

Sorry about that. I don't know how that happened.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Don't worry, we'll take care of y'all.

[Justin McElroy]

Well, that's going to do it for us for this week on the Besties. Be sure. Join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Besties.