Marathon Is Both a Miracle and a Monster

Could've used a dinklage.

Could've used a floating dinklage.

That accompanied me all about Marathon and would sort of, you know,

it's quip, drop cracks, bring back to life.

Do you understand how deep into the destiny hole you would need to be to know that

Peter dinklage at one point, but no longer voiced the ghost that followed you around

in Destiny?

I actually downloaded an update to fix it because they did swap them out with Nolan

North in 2016.

But then I found an update online.

Did you pay Peter dinklage a camera go?

So yes, it was a very, very complicated, so basically what I had to do, every time

a bunch of you released a new expansion, I would transcribe all of the ghost dialogue

and then I would buy many dinklage cameras.

It's like 60 or 70 per expansion, yeah.

Some of them needs a little bit less for ghosts than others, but yeah, I think it would

be better, I think it would be a better game if there was a, there's a class of someone's

little healing bots.

All I'm saying is just have dinklage say like no problem, I'll get in there and heal

them up.

Good boss.

Yeah.

Stuff like that, like I think we, and you could probably do like the Pokemon anime thing

where they just keep reusing the same animation.

You could probably slot in some of those lines.

Oh, for sure.

For sure.

No problem.

Yeah, I could probably take lines from his other movies that sound like, like maybe there's

a movie where he's a doctor and he's like all heal him up and you can put that on the

healing robot.

But I think a dinklage would have bumped this up to a 10 for me.

That's the question about the cameras, because I hate to like dwell on it.

Yeah.

Did it get annoying that every line was like, I think you should heal up.

Thank you for another cameo, Griffin.

Yeah.

Well, no.

Sometimes if it was a short one like that, you can trick him into saying, he won't just

do it.

You do have to trick him.

And all these stuff like, hey, it's my niece's seventh graduate anniversary of her wedding.

And it would really make her day if you would say drone incoming, prepare to, prepare to strike

like, and then he doesn't ever fall for it because I use a fake name every time.

And you did change the black pyramid to be called cameo, so you could kind of work it

in that way too.

Yeah.

Every time I was like, I got him, that one was three different cameos because I had to

get the in one.

Yeah.

And then like black was like a different one.

And then pyramid, that pyramid was tricky to say into, but I did manage to get that one

in there.

Thank God.

I'm just doing a thing about the food pyramid for my nephew.

He has really complicated views about that.

So we probably shouldn't be going for it.

Yeah.

No.

How?

My name is Griffin McRory, another best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Timberlant and I took a lot of drugs, and I saw you take down a

hearty golf.

He's so used to having that Justin beat.

Yeah, for sure, that's our water buddy. Yeah

Take it again Chris. No, it's good. No, no, no, no, I'm really happy with it. Okay, my say your name

My name is most frustrating guy. I know the best game of the week

Welcome to the best season we talk about the ladies and greats and home interactive inter game

Justin's recovery continues. He is now. This is maybe the worst possible game for him to try we put four logo in a twitch-based

intense very

Demanding shooter very punishing very time-consuming shoot. There's a lot of heats that this thing was bringing that

That that juice was not able to sort of if anything it was kind of mean of us, but I think yeah

Put that on Chris plant who is the one that suggested we play this game. So rather than

You know the three of us speak

enthusiastically about this cyberpunk

Extraction shooter while one of us just kind of

Waits for the bits of me over

We're gonna be rocking Trio mode just like in marathon. Oh

Chris what the heck is marathon, dude?

Marathon's latest first person shooter from Bungie the people who brought you Halo and Destiny and Destiny 2

But this time they are going after a new multiplayer trend. They're going after the extraction shooter where you land on a

Terrifying train of enemies and other players. You try to collect a lot

It's a good loot complete a little mission or two and you then get the hell out of there without dying

If you don't care about extraction shooters and I don't

There's some really wild choices that this game makes that I think are interesting to talk about and we will get

All up into that and more after this short break. Can I try and set the scene for like

The vibe before Marathon's release and it's been out for what a few weeks. Yeah, couple weeks

So I was playing Destiny 2 pretty actively when they announced that they were working on marathon

This was already when the I don't know vibe around

Bungie in general had started to get a little bit weird just because there've been some like higher-up changes at Destiny 2 and some really really really

shitty decisions made for that game

I remember it being announced during a sort of not great period and so there was already kind of that vibe hanging around

I think people were not so stoked about marathon as a pro

I mean, I think people were had no opinions about marathon because it had been dormant for 30 years

Yeah, so they've been dormant for a very long time and then when the news came out that it was an extraction shooter

I feel like that that was also a little bit tough and then there was the thing where it turned out that some of the

Some of the art from the game had been plagiarized and so like there's just been kind of a lot of I have been very hesitant to

Check this game out despite my

Thousands of hours. I have logged across Destiny 1 and 2 because of that stuff and I don't know. I think it's a

another object lesson that like

Reputation should maybe not proceed a game when you are in the position of talking about games professionally

Because it's it has surprised me that I've been having some fun with me

I was totally ready to fully skip it because of a lot of the things you mentioned and emphasis on me not really liking the genre

Yeah, the fact that Chris

Plant of all people the last person I would ever think topsy term to be into an extraction shooter and we talked about it last week

So obviously we know we were all surprised about that

But the fact that he was into it genuinely was the most peaking of my interest for this game

That is what got me to be like, okay, I've got to see where Chris plans brain is to for this to be clicking for him so hard

Could we do Chris could you set up sort of what the extraction shooter model is?

Before you kind of get into what works about about this for you

I think we all sort of what I thought it was and then what I think it is now after falling in love

kind of this game. I thought in an extraction shooter was

Collect lots of loot and then lose lots of loot and therefore it's a waste of time that you go into a

really terrifying map full of really hardcore

NPCs and also other players who are absolutely ruthless and

You try to find rare guns that you can then use in another round where you will die and then they will steal those guns and suddenly

You're back to where you started and that didn't sound super fun. And everyone's worth there

There are those games like extraction shooters like what you described do definitely exist in fact

I would say just kind of the norm in a lot of ways. Yes, for sure

What I read this game as is closer to a game with a campaign that takes place inside of what I just described

So before you go into any mission with your buds or solo

You can select a variety of missions for different corporate leaders and it might be as simple as like

Break 20 windows or it might be more complicated like a four point process where you need to go back and forth across the map

Loading different, you know like computer terminals

triggering various enemy things these are not complex is one of the missions really break 20 windows because that's very funny

Yeah, one of the onboarding missions for one of the factions is like everything you need to know about us is where bad boys go break 20 towel

Settied for windows. It's like holy shit. And why is this your whole deal?

So you and you go in and you complete those missions you do not have to exalt rate to have completed that mission

So right away the heart most hardcore thing about it is gone, which is go in you can do the mission and then if you

Die that's terrible if you happen to get out with lots of cool weapons that will help you in your next mission

That's great. That's that's the real gravy and you can do that over and over and over again

What is interesting about the missions is they start to

establish what the meta is and

Why people are doing what they're doing so another the bad boys of of marathon have a mission that's like

You need to go and not just down 10 people, but you need to execute them on the ground, which is

Rough move to do because it immediately puts you in the fire of like whoever they were with right like it's probably gonna

Get you killed trying to show off doing that

But once you do that you then know the next time you get executed ah, they were probably

They're probably just

Pretty happy for them and it completely changes your mindset about the kind of hostile behavior that you're going up against

There is this equalizing that you start to feel in the game of I

Get it. We're all here to get our job done. Yeah

So that's I would say like that's the top level a week at talk for the whole episode just about that

That is a that is a that is a core pillar of the extraction

Shooter model that this game kind of just

Handles with vibes right the two things are true simultaneously one would turn me off of this game and did I

I fucking hated my first couple hours with this game and I haven't had time to play it

I've played like maybe five hours because it I'll talk about this later tough to fit into to the to the routine. Yeah

But like I have not had a single encounter with another player that did not begin and end with one of us shooting and killing each like

I have not in our graders that I played a little bit of you always have that moment when you roll up on someone like hey

I'm chill in this game

There's like there is a dedicated hey, I'm chill button that you could do you could just like save like friendly friendly

But like it's never a big just fucking drop you because the time to kill is insanely short. So why not?

And to it just kind of seems to be the

The weird in grain behavior in this community where there is no doubt

You are going to shoot and you're gonna kill people. There's a class that is basically just a kind of hunter of other classes

Which is very interesting, but what makes that not so bad is that the game gives you so many ways to like

Soft in the blow of that there are sponsored loadouts that you can get for free

That will just like fill you up with some basic shit and you can go out there and if you die

It's like eh whatever if you live usually you'll get a reward from that sponsor

So that's great

There's a whole class that you don't equip loadouts at all. So you're not going in and losing a bunch of stuff

That class is just kind of about going in there solo picking up what you can and and getting out of there

So like this this hang up I have in my mind of like too stressful

I don't want to work to get a bunch of shit and then lose it or

You know, I don't want to go down on the map and find something dope and then get killed like the game kind of has an answer

For all of that stuff and I don't know it is what has made me want to keep playing the game

It is the single most sort of like defining feature of of the game so far to me. We're where I've kind of run

I don't know how to approach this necessarily because I don't want to come off as negative because there are certainly no no fresh fresh go

Go full throw it on this you I I want to hear like your real opinion cuz

I had a journey this game also has huge

Problems that I do what I get into but the game is

Unquestionably I played a lot for this podcast and in general played a lot of video games

Maybe top five worst onboarding games. I've ever played in my life like yeah horrible

indesernable onboarding where the UI makes no sense

You don't know where you need to look for your inventory or where quests are or assignments are or what these people are that are talking to you and why they're talking to you

It requires a good I would say two hours of like someone in this case Chris plant

Walking you through each and every screen and where you should be looking and what icons mean and which things to pick up and what not to pick up

And if you don't have that I guess you could probably watch a YouTube video for an hour but

Christ for it for even the fact that like bungee

Made destiny and spent a long-ass time getting the onboarding of destiny at a really good place

Came up with like six different onboarding solutions. They kept trying to nail it and here

It feels like they did not even try and in its place is

Genuinely one of the most stunning games to look at and also one of the most interesting

UIs to look at but from a actual like navigating at standpoint

horrendous like really bad

There's there's a question of like what's the loop of the game the loop of the game is obviously like an extraction shooter

Okay, I go down I pick stuff up the question of like what do I prioritize picking up so my inventory space is like super duper low

Okay, well, okay, I got out. I got a bunch of stuff

What do I do like what do I do with this? There's a there's an upgrade screen

But I can't really get oh, I need 12 unstable biomast Jesus Christ like that stuff is so there is no visible care it

for

Most of that sort of early period of the game and so you're just kind of playing because it's up the guns feel good

I would actually say there are there's a carrot and there's about 30 other carrots and you're in the middle of them and you're like

Yeah, which character while you're getting shot at by robots the what I'll point to an example that I think would have been better

Which is another extraction shooter

The game is hell divers two hell divers two has three upgrade resources common

Where ultra rare whatever the fuck it was called

Uh, and this game seemingly has 30 and

There's only one resource that you really want early in the game and it's unstable diodes. I want to say I don't know what they're called

But you're drowning in other things and if the game was just kind enough to like throw you a bone and like highlight the things that you need for an upgrade

For example like those are the sorts of things that I think would make the onboarding a lot. I

Yes, I I have theories about all of this one

I had a very simple onboarding experience, but I increasingly think it was rare

I think it was like I just was playing with the right people and it all felt like natural and it was definitely people giving me the yachting onboarding experience

Sure and not the game itself

the

The thing that you're talking about fresh with hell divers where it's like well

You have these three things and how much simpler that is I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to solve for the fact that

Everybody is splitting the same loot so with you not having a ton of inventory and they're being a wide variety of resources

The odds that you need the same thing as your other players need at any given point are lower and therefore like you're gonna grab

These things out of the bin. They're gonna grab those things. It's gonna all life equal out

The other thing and I'm not saying this is a defense. I'm just saying like no, no, I'm just saying that they put in the game

They further the thing of like what items do I need?

You can go into the upgrade chart and then manually pick an item and then mark it and then it will show up in the game when you go

They are and will even tell you which areas of the game have that that material what have been cool for the game to tell me that

The weird thing is the game does at a certain point tell it you in big print like it comes up as like a whole screen that you have to pop out of

And even when it tells you it it doesn't really tell you how it works

So it's like hey, you should probably go and mark your gear and it's like yeah, what does that mean like yeah

Tell me more that the I struggle a lot with the with the loot economy of this game

I I still feel like I'm just playing it because it's kind of fun

I have gotten good enough now that like when I'm in a team of three and I roll up on another team of three runners

Like I actually feel pretty good about my chances. I can hang in there

At again with seven runner eliminations last night. I felt pretty fucking good about that and that's fun for me

I don't feel like I am getting cooler guns or attachments that are making those guns like noticeably more particularly stronger

I'm not unlocking news like

Abilities or anything like that. I guess it's the perks that you're working for with the it's the perks right there's and the perks are

Extremely helpful and they go across all of the characters it'll be like inventory space more inventory space

Your heat which is like the way that the game keeps you from just sprinting the whole time

That that is improved. There's upgrades that just improve the rook, which is the solo only

Go into a middle of a match class

Disguise yourself as a robot NPC and try to fucking murk other players and get out with the much more limited time limit that you have

That's how the rook class works and it's fucking cool and sometimes the only thing I can play because I will set as a set aside

30 minutes to play this game to knock out a match, which is 30 minutes and then I'll get my clock clean 10 minutes in

And be like well, I don't have time for another full match

It's rook time bit time to get in there and just get nasty like but those upgrades

Are are the most meaningful thing I think that I am sort of chasing down it is a far cry from

There's this exotic I'm trying to get or I'm trying to like get enough resources to unlock this class feature or I think there are class

Chores that is like a type of equipment that do kind of modify the what is there seven different classes that you can equip

But like I'm saying like I've been playing this game. I've played maybe it doesn't match as I've gotten okay at it

I do not feel like I am working towards anything super exciting or that I have found anything where I've been like oh god

Damn yeah, I'm gonna use this gun until I inevitably am killed and someone takes it from me

Maybe that is a I don't do a lot of ranked play

Maybe if I'm like moved up the ladder a bit

I do think the loot drops in general are more kind of desirable, but like I don't know

I just it doesn't excite me which also means if I die and I lose shit

It's like yeah, I didn't really give a shit if I lost my unstable biomass

That's a pain in the ass because I'm trying to get in like my heat reduction perk upgraded, but like I don't know

I don't know if that gets better Chris you have played you have played more than me

So maybe you are finding yeah, I mean the exciting guns and you should like the answer to that is not exciting

It's like it will help you survive more so on top of I'm being able to upgrade these like works these permanent

Buffs you also unlock the ability to buy items

They are significantly better so you can buy a shield

Do you start with the lowest possible shield in this game to the point that it's barely even there and barely effective and

You can start every time you drop by being able to buy a much much much better shield for relatively cheap

Those are the the kind of I don't know about relatively cheap man

I feel like I'm always dying for credits

You I mean that's yeah as you as you get on you will be finding better weapons

Which you can cash out for like more money, but that it's it's not a a sexy

You know growth trajectory, right? It's like you get to live a little bit longer. I I agree with you

I'm I am largely playing it just because it's fun like I I am treating this I

Fresh I think I talked to you about this like a single player rogue like that happens to be trapped inside of an extraction shooter universe

Yeah, I have these goals that I am doing as if we're a single pair campaign and I'm largely

Avoiding other human players unless I know I have the jump on them and because the time to kill is so fast in this game

You get the jump on somebody you're gonna knock them down. That's it

Which I love because I am could not stand playing a game like halo or even destiny where if I got the jump on somebody

Often they would just kill me because I had not grinded enough hours to like have the weapons that I needed to bring them down

It's right the time to kill was just much longer

Yeah, but as a result that means that it is not always about skill

It is about who has the best weapon and it is it also it also lends itself to a general

Sense of paranoia that you will have the whole time that you play this game

Especially when you make your way to an extraction point which you have to activate wait about a minute and then it will

turn

It'll light up and then you can step near it and you have to stay near it for 10 seconds before you can extract and

Half the time. Yeah, there is somebody camped out hiding with a shotgun waiting to fucking

Purferate you or a thief with their nasty little drone. Oh my god

I found a fucking cool like upgrade and as I was getting

X-filled out I heard

And I was like what the fuck I looked out it was on the ground and I picked it up again and I heard

And they yorked it out and then I teleported away. I was like, no, please no

Can we talk about the classes? Yeah

Yeah, I think we actually probably played mostly different ones which should make it for interesting

Discussion, I think they are interesting right comparing this to a destiny, right?

Which was always struggled with how they are balancing between PvE and PvP and people on both sides of the album

Like kind of pissed off most of the time about the decisions that they were making to benefit the other side

This feels entirely kind of PvP balanced and as a result, there's not these like huge dramatic like

You know, oh man if you're running warlock you got to do Sunsinger because this is like the meta

The powers are like a lot more kind of like subtle right?

There's a triage class that can

Drop a little healing drone out and when you heal yourself it heals your allies to and then you have an ult the where you shoot out like

prods to

Recessitate someone instantly or found this out yesterday. You use it to absolutely destroy an enemy

If you're in like a tunnel fight and you launch those down the the hallway you will you will clear them out

But it's not like those take a long time to recharge. I think I really

Yeah, I think that's so it's not like you're throwing them down left-right in center and that's true of like all the class

I think that's the biggest difference with destiny is

Destiny what I was used to is like I could use my class ability every eight seconds and here

It's like once a minute if you're lucky a lot of that stuff takes a really long time

So you have to be smart about using it and I I have like kind of locked it

So I've been playing as a sassin which is the like sneaky class

I mostly play it defensively. I'm sure there's a very aggressive way to play a sassin where you go invisible and like run up on people

Mostly it'll be like oh they got the jump on me. I'm going invisible or I'm gonna drop smoke

It's a great ocean, but it's a great ocean button and and it's worked out like a few times where we were extracting and I dropped a smoke bomb

And it saved everyone. There was another time where I think I was alone and there was a whole squad that wiped out plant and the other

Many Hill moment you were you playing last night and all of us got down and he I was like fresh rush run run run and he went and

Assessened but then just went and hit in a corner like literally five feet away

It was like I took I took two right turns and then ran to the nearest corner and went invisible and crouched and the that's great and the whole squad just walked right past me and it was love it cool

So I like those moments. I think those moments are good it

For me I like the power fantasy of using powers more than I do the gunplay

So it is kind of a bummer that's like oh I have to save this invisibility for when I really need it

I understand there's a reason for that from a balanced standpoint, but it's just

Yeah, you know, it's a little bit of a drag that it just takes a little bit of fun out and plan

I know you talked about thief in the last episode, which sounds quite fun. You mainly you mainly play

Yeah, thief is what I mean you have the thing that you were talking about a drone that you can use to scout spaces and also use to like

Steel things rather oh as a scout. It's incredible

I feel like the player bases gotten wise and like they hear the sound and immediately start looking for the drone in the sky to shoot

But you can tag people while you are flying around with the little like loot drone and

Then be able to get the get the drop on them. Yeah, pretty incredible another fun thing that I'm not sure if they will keep it in or not

But you can put a claymore or a proximity mine on the drone

Cool. Yeah, and then you can start chasing people with it, which is great

But the other power of what the other two things about the deep is you can put on a visor that shows you the color of gear

Inside of every box and does it through walls

I'll tell you I love most about that is it just lights up where the boxes are because they are a lot like the other non-interactive boxes

Which is another at sometimes I play thief just because I get so fucking fed up of like running around a whole station not finding any

Containers at all and being like I know they're here. I know that they're here

I had a quest yesterday that was find this key card from this commander

pick it up and then scan the nearby crate and there were

About 30,000 crates within spitting distance and

Eventually like plant I guess just walked on it, but

There's no indication of what that thing is really tough to find some of that shit

I yeah, I that the ability is like yeah, super duper you that sounds very useful. I

Think this game is very doing very interesting things. I don't think this is my game like as a genre

And I think a lot of it is just because of the amount of focus required

You know to some extent we look at a multiplayer gaming

It's like just key hangout time with your friends, right and plant was saying this earlier like it is not a

Hangout game because there's so much communication that has to happen for minutes a minute to be successful

That there's like no opportunity to actually have a conversation with anyone

That being said there's a lot of people that like want to

Like go like fucking tactical hardcore and good for them like that's this game is like you can go fucking beast mode

with it and be really successful

It's it's it is if I if I were in a different place in my life

I would play this game probably a lot. I find it very enjoyable to play

I actually haven't played it with people. I know yet. I've only played in like groups

And I've had some actually genuinely pretty great like teamwork

Encounters that harken back to like you know pick up groups for destiny raids and stuff like that

That's really really great when it happens. I would love to play it with friends

We tried to set up a session three or four different times that I was unable to make work due to mostly kid

interruptions and so like it's simply incompatible

I do think it takes a little bit too long to queue into a match unless you're playing as a rook again

Why sometimes I'll just dip in as the nasty solo boy because like I know there's not going to be a queue

It's gonna be a shorter match. It is tough for me to sit down and like play a game for you know 30 40 minutes

However long it takes me to get my load out and shit together before I queue into like it's yeah

There's no pausing obviously here. It's a multi-perky. Yeah, obviously

So it's it's I've really been enjoying it

And I've been struggling with it because like there's stuff about it. I definitely think

as

as much sort of

Early release time as this game had like it's weird some of the things that haven't been sort of addressed seem kind of weird to me

The fucking aesthetic is through. Yeah amazing the the the music and sound that plays just in the like lobby is

so

supportive and

Fucking weird and like ASMR

You'll be like listening to it and then you'll hear just a weird atonal plucked string that like has nothing to do with anything

Like what the fuck is going on? I thought I had like a a chrome tab open that like had started playing some like add

But it was just the game like getting getting weird with it like all that stuff is so so so cool

It's a swing man and and I'll say I

For beginners that just want to fuck around a little bit play rook

I actually like now that I've played more of it just to like wet your feet a little bit

You're gonna die a lot, but like a whole lot just figure out like what the UI elements are when you're playing with other people

I think it moves too quickly to like really absorb a lot of that stuff. Yeah

It'll also take you a long time to figure out like what guns you like yeah like some of that

Some of that I mean it does the gunplay does feel similar to destiny a little heavier a little slower maybe but like

The the the feel of the guns like they obviously they know what the fuck they're doing in that category

But like I it took me not until very very recently did I start to like pick up a gun and kind of know like

This isn't like I want that like battle rifle. I want that like semi-automatic

Rifle or the bully SMG like I know some of this stuff now all that stuff just takes a

Wild to kind of and I don't know figure out figure out what you like and what's worth kind of like chasing what's worth going for

There's definitely homework. It's a homework kind of game

It's gonna take a while and for people that don't have the time or patience and I'm certainly to some extent one of them

You just need to be aware of that going in yeah, yeah, I I mean I

Agree and I disagree with that and just in terms of like people who are considering this all of this is true

If you're gonna play this game

Competitively and I wonder if this is where the difference between y'all having so much experience with destiny comes in first of me

And your expectations of like how to invest in one of these games because for me

Almost none of this is true. I've been playing it in like 15-minute burst because that's about how long around is

I

Have not had to do much homework because I'm kind of just doing whatever the quest line says well

But you had you also had a personal person guiding it for the first maybe like hour and a half

Yeah, and then a few other matches, but then a lot of a solo. I just I

I think all of this is true if you are going and you have a lot of experience with multiplayer games

I am just

Prepared to be surprised by like my experience with this game is so the opposite of the experience that

people who love these sorts of games have and I think that is

Strange like it's just I think I think it is a reflection of the fact that I do not play this game

So I don't have all the baggage of like how to play these games well

I don't think I'm measuring like it was this successful or was this just me like having fun

I don't know like what the the rub was there. I mean even we talked about rook, but like I

Never shoot and anybody is a rook like to me rook is just like a scavenge

It's a stealth scavenging

Oh, man, if you get the drop on someone who thinks you're a normal ass NPC and then you start moving

Decidedly unlike an NPC and watch their being get freaked. It's pretty good

I would recommend getting nasty with the rub I might I feel like

I would love to check in on this game in like a year right and see

If maybe the economy is a little bit more exciting and you know, whatever

But so much of this

genre and really any kind of like live service game

I guess this kind of like fits into that sort of category is

Like will it be around in a year?

That's what I was gonna say I know that that's like tough to I

Generally don't sort of go for that kind of prognostication of like oh who know it but like well here's what I'll say

I just chat it's sitting at 91 on like this deem activity

Well, I'll say they're at 50 around 50,000 peak concurrence per day right now

And I guarantee when Sony bought bungee knowing that they were working on their next shooter and it was gonna be all online

They were expecting much higher than 50,000 peak concurrence. That's just on steam. Obviously. It's on consoles as well

But yeah, I'm sure they were expecting more of a phenomenon right out of the gate

Yeah, there's three times as many people playing our greater like yeah, and that's an older much more established game

But like I I don't know man

I'm a little I'm a bit concerned

Yeah, yeah with the Concord and the

What was the more recent one that just got asked?

Yeah, I don't know I think these are all like such different things and I worry about

Comparing every online game being compared to this and it being a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy

The game sold over a million copies. Yeah, it has the number is going up like I don't know

I just I think it's more the the investment if someone's making an investment whether that's a time investment or whether it's a literal

monetary investment and I'm gonna buy skins or whatever it is sure

You want to know if the game's gonna be around any year like yeah

I also think a lot of this just comes down to that like reputation stuff that we talked about you know at the top of the bit because

The reviews have been like pretty positive for this game

I think it has a very positive score right now on steam and I I don't know

I was surprised when I saw that because of the

just

Pure disdain that that that folks out for marathon and everything it kind of

Represented so like I don't know. I maybe it's maybe it's maybe it is having slow start

I think the the gap that they have to close and if they are running into now is the

Said we've done a totally different type of shooter before we've gone from the competitive multiplayer to the

Living game in the most title shooter and we it felt like our fans followed us and now we're doing that again and what they're

Finding is that just like

Both the y'all hardcore Destiny 2 players who almost didn't play this game

Maybe wouldn't have played this game if not for this podcast right right and I think that is

Pretty common. I think there are a lot of people who played destiny who see an extraction shooter and they're now even older and they're like

Wait, so you want me to get even more hardcore as I am no, no, thank you and that's the recurring thing that you see is like one

People play it. They're like oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it

I can get into this but that's a big ask for a lot of your fan base especially as they get older and

You know, they're playing fewer and fewer games to say hey

We need you to try a genre that you're already afraid of and the first five hours are gonna do practically nothing to use those

concerns. Yeah, that's that's a big ask which again is why I get to the like

Weirdly I think the people who are finding this game

First in these early stages are either other extraction shooter people are weirdos like me who have none of that baggage

You're like I don't fucking know like to me. This is one that you just like that ghost in the shell shit

You're like all about that like easier. Honestly

Infinitely easier to parse this game than to parse destiny to

Getting everything that you are describing was

Absolute hell in yes sure. Yeah, it was miserable every time I played that game with y'all and it was fun because I had

I was hanging out with you, but like dear God if I had to hear about a new type of like

Vendor that I needed to go with you. Mm-hmm. I was I was just completely barfed out

But yeah, but again, it's it's all expectations, and I think

Bungie in deciding to do this

There has to be this moment now where they're like oh well

We we chased this genre and it turns out our core fan base

This is not exactly what they were looking for but isn't I mean yeah, I feel like a lot of people could have

Said a lot of people could have guessed that I think that they first and now I don't know I will I want

Bungie is such a like

The developers that like raw

Tunnage of talent at at bungee and like

Institutional knowledge about what makes

Shooters feel good because I do think they make the in my opinion the best feeling shooters in the business

Good thing thing that that that stuff is like all there

I'm and I'm like I think that it has been best executed when the people making it are clearly like passionate about the thing that they are that they are making and

I'm sure that there's lots of people who were passionate about about making this game

And I think that that some of that does come through. I mean the fact that it's such a swing is I think

It's a huge such a swing and I but at the same time like

Destiny 3 also would have been a bigger swing and in my opinion probably a safer best for Sony for like

Still happening. Griffin. Yeah. I mean

Winned like your wife Cooper get off the pot on that one man. It's it's that that that spring hair isn't as live that

I think that's the bigger question about the speculation of marathon's life that I'm curious about is that Bungie is not that big of a studio

Yeah, it is not big enough to make destiny 3 and make marathon

Right skill at the same time. So like

They they they they could be in pre pro for sure and maybe or even an early design, but like I

Think that that is where the bigger decision has to get made about the future of what bungee wants to do

Yeah, sure that's tough

I'm that said the lore fucking rocks destiny lore sucks don't you fantasize?

Destiny or fucking rules do you do not talk to me about destiny?

No, no, if you want that hard sci-fi you watch a 15 hour long. My name is bifucking full lore breakdown of sword logic and don't

What part of the nerds between fantasy and hard sci-fi with their space operas?

It's great. I could talk about this game for another hour

Yeah, I think it does a lot of really interesting shit and it

Interest me more than our graders. I'm not talking about the quality of the thing because like I don't know

I think our graders honestly has fewer rev edges about it, but like

There's so much interesting stuff even when you get killed there are times where I'm like, that's it

Okay, that's cool. Wow. We even haven't even talked about no no the so quirm that

Creates all of your your your cyber and I

So cool so so cool

The and like I don't know this game's been out for not that long and there is all of this kind of like player etiquette

Like happening. Yeah, Brooks like I went on the discord and there's just like a rook channel on there where people are just like

Here's the fucked up shit. I did here's the dreams I crushed like there's just like a lot of that stuff has already kind of

Taken root and I think that that's also very interesting

I don't know me

I don't know if this is the extraction shooter that makes me like fall in love with the genre or anything like that

But I am glad I played it and I do want to play some more of it if we could ever actually get all together

In the same room and play yeah Griffin to rap if I have a rook straight

I want to share which is I had I thought the rook meta was shifting towards rooks protect other rooks that were all just

Vultures that you know scavenging

It was for about a day. It felt like I was coming across some really happy scenarios and then I got to an X-Fill

Loden X-Fill it was probably by a ton of the NPC robot characters big big beastly robots and

As I am waiting behind a shipping container. I see on the roof

maybe like

100 yards away from me a rook with a sniper rifle

I'm like, what are we doing here? We're both rooks. He knows what I am

Not Adam. He fires at me. I don't fire back. I come back out. He doesn't fire at me. Okay, we get it

Night we're not here to fight

Put on my robot mask. I walk over to the X-Fill site. We're all good. He's there. I'm there

And then I see that gun raise

Sprint to get into the X-Fill site. I get down to whatever you can X-Fill in this game if you're down. That's all okay

five four

Three two he fucking executes me. Oh

Right before the X-Fill pops not even have time to take your shit

Exactly just

Slime you just to slime you that's

I mean, that's a real one. It was it's bad when you like know like oh man

I'm gonna show up on a highlight video this sucks. Yeah, don't try don't don't trust a brook basically ever

That's good. That's my number one marathon pro tip

Break. Yeah, let's take breaking. We'll answer some some reader man

Crack that back

Okay, so we've got a bunch of reader male coming at you

Some of this is from a couple weeks ago, but we wanted to cover as much as we could because we've missed a couple

About pacopia

In that episode we mentioned that this was one of the only maybe the only Pokemon game that does not have Pokemon in the title

And as far as we can tell there have been two thank you readers Brian wrote in to say that

Pockin tournament does not have Pokemon title and Joe wrote in to say that detective Pikachu also does not

Yes, yes, you are right

Case wrote in said my partner and I have been loving Pockopia this past week

We've both been playing on our own switch to's and I'll usually take the handheld shift

Which can be more uncomfortable in a longer play a session. Does anyone have good recommendations for grips while in handheld mode?

I've continued to use the satisfy Zen grip to

They make pretty good grip what's nice about as you can dock it, which is a rare

Community I know there are a bunch of grips out there

I don't know if you guys have used any but that is the one now, but I need one

I I've been playing so much Pockopia still and it after a long sash in handheld mode

I could feel it man

I will say the one thing that I've been doing more that I very rarely did with the switch one is I'll put it on a desk and

Use a pro controller and because of the larger screen size. It's like actually viable and enjoyable. So that's another alternative

We have another ladder this one comes from Christian since it came up

You might already have answered this, but do I need to play desk stranding before playing desk stranding too?

I'm excited to play the sequel on PC, especially because I've never experienced any kajima game

What do you guys think?

I mean it helps, but I've never finished that stranding one nor do I plan to so like it's a big fucking ask

There is ample like

Recap shit like from the main menu you can recap the entire plot of the first game if anything

I think it tells a better story because it's so focused on the actual plot beats of the first game rather than getting lost in the actual game

Which that does stranding sickos may disagree? I don't I don't think it's worth it. I play the whole game

I prefer desk stranding one as a game. I think you should play desk stranding too first

Destraining two will teach you how to actually just read the game and then playing desk stranding one is almost like playing on hard mode because it's

It's a way less forgiving. It's also the story is

You should play desk stranding and also I would say just largely not as much fun because like combat is a mess in

Destraining one whether intentionally or not

It depends on what you want from fun

If you if what you're wanting is the combat and stuff definitely play desk stranding two. Yeah, desk stranding one is much more of

Yes, it's like a stealth game with deliveries. Yes, stealth and construction. I do love it

But yeah, no, too. I think is much more approachable

We have another letter. This one comes from Samantha

Definitely recommend sway the Spyro 2's co-op. It works really well

It's super fun and a different way to engage the game and there are cards and events specific to multiplayer that change things up to keep it a bit more interesting

My spouse and I've been playing on the couch at night with his steam link and my steam deck

That sounds like a good way to do it. That does sound fun

Yeah, no, I want I'm I'm eager to do it. I still think I'm gonna wait

Maybe I'll save that as like the exciting new thing

I know is going to be there when I you know the game is out in full access

Yeah, it seems like a really fun just multiplayer like

Just the idea that you're like all sharing strategies and things like that would be pretty interesting and really no one in the genre has attempted it

So it's cool to say

This last letter comes from Mike

I'd like to respectfully disagree with plant on the differences between a battle royale and an extraction shooter

We were talking about marathon again last week. I think plant was making the point that they're

Similar, I don't remember your initial point

Anyway, for me the anxiety of an extraction shooter and a battle royale anxiety are not the same

I think the biggest difference is that you start with all the same equipment and a battle royale and RNG is important for your kit

Which takes a bit of the pressure off and an extraction shooters you either go in with good gear and the fear of losing it or bad gear

And you have an automatic disadvantage

This gameplay loop is a lot harder for me and it seems like a larger risk of wasting time rather than loading up a battle royale

Yeah, I think that gets to what we were talking about earlier about the structure of marathon is if you

Go into an extraction shooter and you think your experience is about the loot. It's gonna be I I think a pretty miserable experience

Yeah, the loot is the bonus that the experience is the reward and the what I said last week was that

You have a better chance of actually quote winning in an extraction shooter of getting out than you do in a battle royale

Just numbers wise. So it depends on what your what your goal is

But I I completely understand this point if if you play these games and you're you're

Where your brain or your heart tugs you at is is the items is the loot. Yeah, an extraction shooter is gonna be a

Big-ask

Yeah, I I still think this game could do more to try and have its cake and eat it to a little bit

But it does also like I love the sponsored kits like I know

That there is a way of playing this game without having to risk the shit that I have and just get in there and get some more

Experience fighting and like find some some more materials for my upgrade like

I really do think that this has not been nearly as big of a concern for me as I as I thought it was going to be yeah

I think that's right

I don't mention anyone been watching play in

Did you see project Hill Mary Chris? I did we talk about that last week

Prush unfortunately we only saw the beginning of it. So I won't I wasn't

I was full for anybody else you see that I'll just say that it was a very enjoyable movie and it's so nice to see a

Big-budget blockbuster that's like

Beautiful as in yeah visually interesting and has great framing the use lots of practical effects their bright colors

It doesn't have that that kind of sludge you paste you look that we've come to expect from a lot of big-budget stuff

that is not called avatar and

And rank causing the the most beautiful special effect of all, you know, you know look at that face

In sweaters and off. He's just he's got it all going

I've been watching the I think it's the fourth season of Shorzy on Hulu

This is the Canadian

non-professional

hockey moot show

From the creator of letter Kenny and it's great. It's like weirdly warm-hearted and sweet

mixed with like 8 EDM and like

Kind of shameless sexuality stuff, but I don't know I capital S shameless not like the rest fresh dick is like judging

No, no, yeah, it's correct with people with their shameless. Yeah, yeah, right

They they don't hold back is what I'm saying and that's fine good good on them

But yeah, it's really well written and lovely characters, and I'm always happy to see it come up again

I've been playing a few things, but I think we've talked about all of them very very very I got quite into

following Russ's recommendation

And like that like that one a lot very self-contained

Which I which I do appreciate from time to time from my from my incremental games

A lot of pokopia just a lot. I finished the main story of it and now like I don't know

I've just sort of been undergoing projects on the palette town with Henry

We just finished up building a huge nine room apartment complex for all the EV and evolutions

In palette town

It's just like I don't know. I haven't fucked around building stuff in a game like this said that since like you know early Minecraft

Days

So I'm very much enjoying that

played a little Diablo 4

You can play as the new paladin class if you pre-order the the next expansion which I think is out soon-ish

But I don't know that I've played enough to like really comment all that gave us changed

Though thing I really do want to talk about on Amazon Prime the new season of last one laughing UK

This is the

Truly truly brilliant kind of concept for a show a reality show with comedians and they were not the first to sort of come up with it

If you're familiar or documental the Japanese television program. It's very much the same

They lock 10 comedians in a room for six hours and if you laugh once you get a yellow card

If you laugh another time you get a red card and you are ejected from the competition and

If you watch taskmaster, you're gonna know about 75% of the cast on on this season

Sam Campbell is on it. He's a fucking stone cold killer Bob Mortimer is back from season one who is

Pound for pound. I think the

One of the funniest living human beings

Diane Morgan who plays philomena cunc from cunc on earth. Wow is on this season

Mel

It's a really really wild list and from the jump it is just like

Absolutely astonishingly funny so many people taking so many heavy swings at each other trying to make each other laugh

And then having to literally stand up to remove themselves physically from like

The the location where the jokes are taking place before they laugh like to me. There is nothing funnier than that

So so I think there's only three episodes of it out so far no episodes are coming on Wednesdays and

I'm waiting with baited breath because it is hysterical

Plant what if we talked about this week. Oh, we talked about so much we talked about marathon

We talked about shoresy. We talked about last one laughing the envelope for pacopia and project Hill Mary

That's a lot of stuff a lot of stuff covered a lot of

Stuff if you if you only hear us talk about more stuff

May I suggest going to patreon.com slash the besties and joining our patreon

It helps us out a lot and you also get access to

sweet boco and

Episodes of the resties and just all kinds bracket battles episode. We have a very good one coming at you

We just did a besties

We just did a resties on a very cool racing game called screamer

And then we have bracket battles coming at you

First week of april, which is a really fun one. I'm very excited patreon.com slash the besties again

Do you want to shout out some members? Oh, yeah, absolutely. We have

Sorry, I'm gonna book for this syroja b. I'm sure there's a better way to pronounce that but I'm gonna just go with that

Eric are Jacob M and just the letter v

Also be vendetta could be those aliens from the 80s. We don't know

could be um

Thank you all so much for supporting us and thank you to our dear listeners now for listening to us next week

I don't know that we have a game selected. I'm actively working on it

But it has not been fully confirmed. So we're gonna keep it up in the air. It'll be a mystery episode

Okay

Join us for a mystery game

Next for next week

That new legacy of cane game comes out March 31st. That might be fast. We'll see we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out

So join us next week as we play more games and we talk about them to you for you

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