The Witcher, But With Vampires? Yes, Please!

0:00I think it's bullshit that you can't bite the bears. I think it's bullshit. First of all, if they're gonna let vampires eat rats for endear and wolves for their blood, you legit can eat a duck and it makes a like a duck crack. You pick up a duck as you're eating it. Right up out of the wall. You need a lot of ducks. And I don't know if this is part of vampire lore that like woodland animals are super chill with you and you can walk up and just grab it. Have you guys ever tried to grab a duck? It's fucking hard, they have instincts. But if you get up on a bear and you're gonna fight so many bears playing this game, you guys and you try to get a good mouthful of that furry neck so you can get strong bear blood inside you. The game says no, I think that's bullshit. Follow me on this journey. I'm gonna give you a little tour of Catholicism for you right here. Okay. If there's a thing in Catholicism about you can't drink beer blood. I'm kind of convinced. You're gonna sell me on Catholicism right now. Are you ready? Because Catholicism features a lot in this game.

1:00Okay. So I'm trying to put it all together right now. Vampires can't touch like crosses right? Because like it burns their skin right? So we can assume that other religious things holy water that also they can't touch that stuff right? Right? Right. And then I am named after St. Christopher who is the bearer of Christ. But St. Christopher is no longer actually recognized saint because they don't know if he was a real person. Milkshake duck. What if he was? Actually the bearer of Christ had. There was some confusion in history. In this maybe the truest representation of St. Christopher in video. That's too complicated. I'm just saying like. But if the bear just eats a lot of garlic. Oh, that makes a lot more sense. Good. That makes a lot of sense. That's possible. Just want the bear power. I'm going to have to go look at it on this.

2:04What if because bears have thumbs, they can grab you and throw you off. Ducks can't do that. All right. That's a good point. Yeah. I forgot about bears opposable. Me too. Ducks. Yeah. Damn it. It was so obvious because they're always playing game gear whenever you sneak up on them. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's the religious affiliation. You're right. Yeah. I'm not got it. It's probably a circumference thing. Like a duck has such a perfectly biteable neck. But a bear is so wild. No, no, you can't get through the flop. It's easy. The flop. Yeah. Fine. There's reasons. My name is Griffin McRoy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Chris Frittalma's Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Rosfruscia Guy. I know the best game of the week and get in there, Mary.

3:06My name is Mary and I also know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club. You just by listening have become a member of the club. So delighted to have Mary back joining us again this week as we discuss the new game from the new studio, which is called Rebel Wolves made up of former CD project. The studio is called Rebel Wolves. Let's be clear because that does sound like a badass game as well. I'll be honest, Rebel Wolves is a way better name for a video game than the Blood of Dawn Walker. My least favorite thing about this join is the name of the thing. It's got too many goddamn nouns in it. So Rebel Wolves made up a former CD project, Red Devs, who worked on The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk and now they've made a game that is very much like Witcher 3, but with vampires and stuff called The Blood of Dawn. You are stealing all of Chris Plants Thunder here. I'm happy for him too. You know, I mean, easy, peasy for me. I like the game a lot and it is tough for me to like hold back and not just like let it

4:08rip. It is kind of like your poker tell. Like when the long, if I know the game of the developer of the game, I probably gave it to the shit about it because I actually enjoy that. Okay, well, sorry. I stomped all over your shit again, Chris and I apologize and I'll make lots of space for you, but can we take a quick break? Let's do it. I'm about a Hubble duck. Just put your teeth around my neck and jump. So job, Hubble. Have your wish that everyone would just mind their own beeswax when it comes to online stuff and let you watch the European television programs that are not available here in the States and you know, other companies would stop trying to just harvest all of your data to turn into Android's or whatever. You can do that now with proton VPN, which protects your beeswax. Doesn't matter if you're traveling or if you're just browsing the web at home, your online activity shouldn't be up for grabs. Proton VPN adds a layer of protection that keeps your browsing habits private and your data out of the wrong hands.

5:08They're backed by strong European privacy laws and years of expertise creating a safer, faster and more open internet for everyone. You can get it, you know, content from anywhere. You can get around block sites or just keep your activity private on public Wi-Fi. Proton VPN can do all that for you. You're all good. It's easy to get started right now. Proton VPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two year plan when you go to protonvpn.com slash besties. That's protlnvpn.com slash besties for 70% off your two year plan. That's protonvpn.com slash besties. Before we get into it, I want to do a formal recognition of Mary Kish, who is joining us, has joined previously, but I think it was a bonus bracket episode for Patreon members only. Oh, I assumed wrongly that you had been on the core product. This is the core product that Mary is joining us on. Please listen to the bracket episode that we did with Mary. It was so much fun.

6:09It came out a while ago, but welcome Mary. She hails from the FireScape podcast, which is a weekly, excellent podcast for gaming people. You also do Twitch streaming, is that right? Yeah, I stream every Monday as well. Really glad to be back on. It was fun because the first time was the bracket in which I had to do almost no prep. This was a son of a bitch RPG. It took a lot of time. But a lot of good time. So it was good to do. When I booted this bad boy up, I was filled with dread, partially because it's so dark and gothic, it's scary. Vampires come to your valley where you live and they do kill all of the mean rulers who are already doing it. Things were not great. They get in the lead up. Things weren't great in the valley, but then the vampires take over and you're like, oh great, but then the vampires are like, hey, every month you have to come to church and let us drink your blood. But only a little bit of the blood.

7:11But if you're sick or whatever, we'll fucking kill you. It's bad. It's not a great setup. But I was more filled with dread that I didn't like the Witcher that much. And oh, am I going to have to spend 40 hours with a dude who looks like a dark haired Witcher. Like if the Witcher went to just for men's and went to supercuts and got a quick die job, this would be Cohen, the protagonist of the blood of dawn auger. But I was delighted that I actually really liked the spinning time with Cohen and the scary world of Veil, St. Goura. Let's talk about the intro because it sets up what the game is and also is so damn clever. I love the way the game introduces itself. It is doing something similar and different than the Legend of Zelda modern intros where it's like, here's a whole little version of the game that you're about to get and it's going to teach you everything you need to know and then also completely wreck your shit.

8:12So Mary, do you want to take a shot and kind of explain what happens here? I mean, I can give you my best. Now this is the, there's so much and there's like a lot of, there's a lot of factions and there's a lot of names of things that I won't bring up. But I know that ultimately you're just a humble dude, strong but a regular dude who loves his family. But you're dealing with a lot of crap because there's plague stuff and now there's people trying to now now vampiric races are trying to suck the blood of your family every month and your family's not doing well. So how far do you want me to go? There's a whole lot of things. I mean, in defense, again, let me just say, in defense of the vampires, things were bad before too. Who is tighter than you? They're all bad. They're all bad. They're all bad. I love this. It's like the old thing was bad, but the new king, not so bad. Like Chris is getting at is that the prologue sets up the rest of the, sets up the rest of the game.

9:12So I think, and it's just the first hour, I think it's an interesting conversation. If you really want to come at this thing, like fully devoid of spoilers, go like maybe skip ahead a bit, but I think we should talk about the prologue because I, I think it's going to be tough to talk about the structure of the rest of the game without talking about how it sets it up. I agree. I agree. The whole point of this game is that the small decisions that you make have ripple effects throughout the rest of the game. So while we're talking about the first hour, which if you're interested in playing this game, you're, you're going to get through this very quickly and then spend 45 more hours in this game. So this is a very small fraction of it. But I think it's important to recognize the context that you will be given and you're very first prologue, you'll be given a day and you will be given, I'm going to say 12 things you could do, maybe, maybe 20, but you cannot fit them all in because everything takes two to three in game hours, which it lets you know with a little ticker and it tells you, hey, this is going to take two hours. Yeah. If you want to help your daughter go fishing, oh, your dad actually wants to teach you something

10:13with a sword play. Oh, actually, your mom, she's sick and she needs you to go get medicine for her. Which ones are you going to do and why? Actually that which is hot. The which that throws a little puzzle in English on the ball. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it like your sister in your mind. So there's a witch who is an older woman figure in your life who seems to have taught you everything you know. Yes. Are you going to spend time just chatting with her? Yeah, I will be honest. I didn't understand the stakes so well because I did waste one of my eight in game time chunks in this prologue period, helping a man find his little pig. If I could go back, I would have done things a bit differently. Did you eat the pig? Yeah. No, no, I didn't. I did slaughter the pig. It's a sad story. Anyway, yeah, it gives you not enough time to do all this stuff in the prologue. So we were talking before we started recording like, so did you all have this character die? No. Uh oh, how's the rest of the game play out if that character is not in your game anymore?

11:16I'm going to, this is going to, I think it's in the first hour and we could just, I think it's worth setting the stakes here. Okay. Based on decisions you make in that span, how you're spending your time, you can, apparently, and I didn't know this until 10 minutes ago, your mom can either live or die coming out of the tutorial. And I, she died. And to be fair to me, I did spend the time learning Latin with the witch and maybe didn't take super close attention to the recipe that I needed to make for my mom to make her, uh, stuff better. There's rust, fresh, it, game, fat pro tips, pay attention to the witch's recipe. So she died. But I thought like, okay, that's fine. Like this is a stake setting moment where you basically like, if ever there was a reason to hate these fucking vampires, they literally eat your mom in front of you. Let's go fucking get them. About apparently what? Yeah, that did not happen for me or Christopher.

12:17I did a good job with the witch's potion. Say my mom, wait, wait, oh, but not literally. I did kill her. I watched her be eaten because I also didn't pay attention to the recipe. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I thought she'd just be a little loopy. Yeah. That's what I thought too. So what is it's teaching you so many things is teaching you, hey, there's a lot of stuff going on and there's time. Yeah. And if you want to accomplish anything, you should actually just pick one or two things because if you spread it out, you'll just end up failing everything. It's also teaching you that you actually have to pay attention because you can't just spend time with your mom and doing all that stuff and then she lives. It literally asks you how to make a recipe that at one point you were told how to make it. And you can't look at your documents when you are making the decision because I tried. Yeah, that's great. I tried. And then it almost felt like an old Sierra like DRM like you got to have the instruction book a little bit so you know the combination. And it also teaches you that a lot of stuff you're just not going to win.

13:21In fact, a majority of the stuff is going to fail because you didn't have time for it, which leads to one of the darkest, funniest moments I have experienced in a video game ever, which is you know what, at the end of this day, the vampires are coming to town and they're going to have a price that they want of all this human blood. And I won't get into the specifics, but things go pretty bad and set the entire game in motion. And when this happens, it is well done. The writing in the game, great. The cinematic, the animation, all excellent. You are feeling rough. And then tick, tick, tick, you have failed blank. You have failed blank. Like 20 things go up to let you know that you suck shit at this video game. That's oh man. It's so good. It's like both so funny and also really hammered home like, oh wow. So guess that's, guess I'm never going to find that pig.

14:22It does a great job and it sets up. So once you get out of the prologue, you have a month, you have 30 days to basically stop the reign of the lead vampire whose name is Brincess, which doesn't feel like a scary name to me. It's open, Brincess. It's not as cool as Dracula. Or like whatever, I guess that's like two on the nose. But you have chunks of time. What's really smart is that you are not spending the time just looking around. It's not actually moving real time so you don't have to stress about that. You could run all over the map in a single, you know, in game time chunk. It is whenever you do certain activities or when you learn certain skills, there's a skill tree that you will find like manuals to unlock nodes on that skill tree. And then some of them when you learn them, it takes a little bit of time also. But that's, that if the, it is the condensed nature of the game that I think is why I'm enjoying

15:26it as much as I am because it feels so focused, I know I'm not going to be able to do everything I want to do. I know I'm not. And I realize that I've got about 10 days left on my playthrough. Like I'm getting, I'm getting down to the wire a bit and starting to sweat a little bit about some of the stuff that I have not prioritized. I'm having to make decisions like, okay, I'm not going to go with this. What I understand, there's like a fuck ton of endings depending on what you, what you do. And as stressful as that sounds and is like much as you, I worry that I was going to be second-guessing myself constantly. What the game does a really good job of is like connecting everything and signposting stuff. So you will be doing one quest and you will find like a lead for some other one or a lead for another quest that maybe you were stuck on or maybe you will run into a situation where you're confronted by guards, but because you befriend this person, you know, or you save this person from one of the blood dungeons, you know, from earlier in your playthrough, you can get through. It all feels like, it all feels pretty easy.

16:28I think that's where it differs from things like the Witcher or really most open-world games is because you have this end goal and it's very, very clear. You know how everything ladders up. So it adds a certain level of meaningfulness to every decision that you're making. There's not a situation where you're like, oh, I'm not entirely sure how I should be handling the situation. X, Y and Z because you know, oh, if I help this guy out, he might come and help me later in the final fight with Brancis etc. Who knows? We don't know what it is. You can trust that with Witcher, Witcher 3, especially. Part of the reason that most people, a lot of people don't get into Witcher 3 is the first five or ten hours you're dropped in a field and there's 50 side quests. Too much fun. Yeah. Fantastic. And some of them are totally forgettable and you never think about it again. But there's nothing really laddering up until much later when you realize, oh, there's this big boss, whatever. And I think this game structures itself much in a much smarter way to make it feel like every decision really does matter.

17:32What's weird though is it is a more extreme version of the drop you in a field and there's a whole bunch of side quests because that is the structure of the game. Like, first is even a Witcher or most video games. This game is extremely open-ended. It's basically just a huge collection of side quests, but because, yes, because you have this very clear chain of command that you're trying to work through to build up the strength and get the allies to go take on the evil Lord Brancis. Brancis? Yes. You do have a structure, but I did not appreciate until, I don't know, maybe ten hours and how much it was just letting me kind of do whatever I wanted and trusting me to create my own story. And maybe to adapt. Because I will say, I think I've played this game a little bit wrong and I wasn't having as good a time as I should have been having. And here's basically what I was doing was I was kind of nibbling at the edges of the

18:32various side quests relating to the Vampire Captains and nothing was happening. All the side quests were like, run into this camp, fuck these guys up, destroy a bunch of shit, and then you're done. And then I'm like, okay, but how many times do I have to do that? When, for you to have some good pacing to the game, you really should just focus on one of them and do a bunch of them, and then that'll result in story missions. It has a mercenaries style. God, how would you get flowed organizational flow? It's an org chart for the vampires who rule the valley and you can see how you are weakening them, how you are pissing off, Princesses, different generals. Those activities, for me, I agree, are the weakest sort of activities in the game. They were shit that I did as I was running between other more interesting storylines that are honestly, I feel like going to be more meaningful when I reach the end of the game. Because it's like, those are, that's how you make the allies. That's how you find the tools, the weaknesses, the new magic abilities, the really cool stuff

19:37is not on the org chart necessarily. Mary, I was going to throw it to you because I also want to hear about the vampires, which is amazing. We have not talked about vampirism. Like my vampirism? Oh, well, the fact that this is a game where you spend a half your time as a vampire. Yeah, the day is I cycle. The Witcher Twilight? Yeah. You are, you are a dude by day and you are a vampire by night. And I think something we haven't talked about that we should talk about is how much cooler it is to be at night and be a vampire. Because every time it was a day, I was like, the first thing I'm going to do is purchase skills that cost half of my day. Because I don't like to be a man. And I don't want to be this guy. That's interesting. I immediately burned through half of my day every day using my skill. I would never purchase skills as a vampire. That's precious. That's fun time. That's very time. And I use that to run so fast, you use claws instead of a sword, which looks way cooler.

20:44You're biting people and sucking their brain, their blood, which increases your life. Your skill set and your skill tree we do have to talk about is pretty sick. What is a vampire and as a person, but the vampire skills are so much more fun, I think. They are so sick and you get to throw bats at people and zip zap at people. And you can jump really, well, you're not jumping. You're kind of like floating to a white orb at your place in certain areas. I mean, way cooler to be a vampire. And I think that is truly actually what separates it from the Witcher is like it's a similar concept of taking a lot of stories. But what really I think made this more fun was being a super fast, super aggressive vampire that at any point, if you go too far down your vampiric path, which I did, because you get way more powers if you're a bad vampire, your options when you talk to people will start to limit. And it will stop saying like someone will say, help me.

21:45My daughter is in a tree and you'll be like, okay, and your options are I can help you. I can't help you or drink her and give into your thirst. And the more hungry you are or the more you give into your vampiric taste, your options will all be given to your thirst. And then you just eat her. And that's absolutely diabolical. I got really and I the role playing of becoming a vampire was very fun for me. So that's cool because I I in the way I play these games like didn't want to necessarily regear based on whether it was day or night. So I was like, well, I could use the sword all the time. So I just focused on sword abilities and a little bit of witching and a little bit of vampire, but for the most part, just sword stuff. And so now I just kind of smoke shit just using like sword abilities, which has it does have a cool bit like you can dash and throw sand if people, which is really funny when you throw sand. Yeah, you can do sand sand. You can do sand sand that it goes and it was like, oh no, it's very sad.

22:46So you do have the option. I mean, it's basically three trees that you can go down which sword or the middle one. The sword one is like, you can use it either time of day and then you have your vampire powers at use the night and then you have witchcraft, which you do during the day. And you can't do it night. And I actually really like that tree, mostly because like, I don't know, it had it added more sort of like status effect things. The combat in this game is very much focused on directional sort of blocking and parrying. Whenever you are being attacked by an enemy, it will show you like a little shield appear on your lock on cursor icon on them. And then it will show you the arrow from which they are attacking and then it will like flash orange right before it hits. And if you can hit the block button and point it in the corresponding direction, right? When it flashes, you'll get like a good parry which will open them up for another directional sort of follow up attack that does a lot more damage. For the list of dogs, you can also always telling us to play more kingdom come deliverance. Yes, it is very much like kingdom well, yeah, except it feels a lot more.

23:50I don't know, it feels a lot simpler, a lot more actiony, right? It's not that tough to like execute strings of it also feels good within the first hour and not 15 hours in when you've learned to be a fucking farmer for 15 hours or whatever it was. It looks fucking amazing too. I got in a fight where I accidentally aggroed like a huge group of guards in like a church courtyard and I was like, dueling them while like walking backwards of stairs like it looked and sounded so rad. And it's a pretty simple thing, right? Like point your cursor, point your stick in the direction you're blocking and then attacking the right, direct like and you have to kind of do that Batman Arkham Asylum thing where you're looking out for other enemies who are trying to get in there and you got to block them and there's unblockable attacks that you just have to dodge. But it's fairly straightforward, the combat, which makes things like the witchcraft abilities so much more valuable because they allow you to get openings in this otherwise like pretty

24:51rigid rhythmic like block attack, block attack. If you're in a group of enemies that are giving you too hard of time or attacking too quickly for you to get any of your own attacks in like starting to get in there and throwing some pocket sand in their face or like setting one of them on fire like becomes a necessary thing. And I think that that again, like it's the focus of this game that makes it work so well because in the Witcher, I would get a million pairs of pants and they would have such incremental things that I'd be like, I don't really care. But if I find a ring in this game and it's like, this one will let your witchcraft abilities recharge 15% faster. It's like, oh, I like that. I was just thinking I wish my witchcraft abilities were recharging a little bit. I don't know, it feels because they're so limited in scope, it makes the upgrades feel a lot more worthwhile. I think it is doing something similar to the GTA V change your character in an open-world game for different experiences, but better because it's actually the same person and the

25:51things that you are during the day versus the night are so different. And that has like a variety of effects of it. And it's like how you prioritize, how you spend that time, like Mary said, like I'm just going to burn my learning time during the day because I like being a vampire. If you are a person who likes to do a lot of the talking and it's like trying to like talk you out of a thing, you're going to end up spending a lot of time as a human. But there's also just the way you get around the world, not just that you can move fast as a vampire. When you go into a city, this game like, I don't know, I felt like was revelatory of the kind of roleplay of, oh, I actually feel like a vampire because when you go into a city where you are on the ground and you have, you're completely outnumbered. And if you were to start a fight, it would be disastrous and you're not going to be able to steal shit from anybody. Yadda, yadda, yadda. It turns into night and you can climb the fucking cathedral the first time you get there by just like teleporting up it and like looking out and gauge you once you're at the top of

26:55the cathedral, you can gauge and do this like learning thing where you learn more about all the different parts of the city. And you can zip down and you can start just like dive bombing into people and sucking their blood and then zipping back up. You can break into people's houses from their like second floor doors because all the doors in the ground are locked, but the upstairs they leave open and you can start finding all these holes. Does play a fast and loose with the invitation law of vampires I will say? I've had scenes where people are like, I know the rules you can't come in here and Cohen is like, God damn it. And then I will just go into a town and be like, sorry man, your back door was unlocked. So I just came in here and that means all your stuff is mine. It was an unspoken invitation. It was implied. I guess so. Leaving the door unlocked is a way of saying come on in vampires. I had an interesting problem. I don't know, I don't think it's a problem necessarily, but an interesting turn of events regarding the openness of the game because we mentioned previously that there are side quests that lead to some of these captains missions.

27:58I ran into a captain just in the world and killed it without having done any of the side quests. You're kidding me. That's crazy. I didn't even know you could do that. I heard you can kill the or you can go after the main boss too without having to do anything. Sure, you don't have to wait 30 days if you don't want to. It's interesting you can do the bosses as well. It was very clear to me as I was doing this fight and then after the fight that I missed a lot of narrative stuff, which I'm sure like side quests, whatever it was, because all the cool side quests seem to tie into a lot of these people. So I was a little bit bummed, but I also kind of impressed that the game didn't break in that situation. It makes it harder for you that each of the bosses they have different boss fights at the end that are all quite interesting and distinct and not doing any of those side quests likely give you such little help that you're just going to have to brute force your way through that boss.

28:59Which is how that fight was tough. You're fighting a lot. I found, and this is interesting because this is the RPG nature of it. I liked killing more than I liked talking. I liked being a vampire that would kill people and I increased my vampiric powers every chance I could. If it was morally bad, I was like, this is who I am. So I was very committed to that role. I had very few friends in this game. I had almost no allies. I would just kill to get my way through these boss fights. I think that was a fun role play experience, but I would actually caution players about doing that because as Griffin was saying, I think it's more fun when you're interacting and doing these fun side quests. That's actually where this game is the most enjoyable to me. But because I was really into the role playing, I actually murdered my way to the finish line on this one. That's awesome. Thank you. Oh, you finished the game? I finished on day nine. Nine days left. Oh, nine days left.

29:59Okay. Oh, that's great. That's a strategy. Sorry, the opposite. Mary, you might have the 21 in game. I had nine days left. And I said, I've murdered everybody. So let's just move the train going. I think that's the larger question that I had. In my experience in playing, after the tutorial, which I was like really stressing about how I was spending my time, I kind of forgot to like think about it. And I'm wondering like in your experience, having finished it, did you feel any of that time pressure or was just like, you have nine days left, but you really don't have a lot else to do. So I'm just going to end it. I felt it a lot, which is why I thought I really needed to burn through the boss tree. Okay. I was burning through. So each of the bosses, as you were saying, they have like different quests that you need to do. And they don't, you're not really talking or dealing with it. You're just killing them. And so I was, I was destroying their blood barrels. I was removing all of their systems. I was pissing them off. I was infamy. There, you have a bar at the very bottom of how infamous you are.

30:59I was all the way up. I love that. They hated me. I was irritating. They couldn't get rid of me. And I, I did that 90% of my time in this game. I was very committed to destroying all these people like for my family. I think that made my end result, which I won't spoil anything, but it's my result is a direct reflection of how I played this game, which was I was a murderous, ravenous, really angry vampire. And my result is a lot of bloodshed and a lot of sadness and anger. And twist or you try to wipe through with your family at the end, right? Yeah. It's no happy. If the prologue of this hour and how bad, remember how a plant you were saying, like, I caught all these things that I failed at the end of the prologue. Yeah. If that upset you, you're in for a rough ending of this game. Because the rough ending is like, hey, remember that person you met and they gave you a quest to save them, but you didn't. 400 people died because you made that decision. That's great. I love that.

31:59It's going to be, it's a brutal world. They set you up in the prologue to tell you, this is a good thing. A dark environment. A lot of people are going to die. You can't save them all. It's really up to you if your goal is to kill, princess and all of his people to help the people that you find in your way, you know, amongst your journey or to really focus on your family. You have multiple avenues here. And like, even though I didn't love truly like my result, that was what I deserved because I went for a very bloodthirsty journey. I think. Players might be more satisfied if they go for more human based interaction. Yeah. I mean, I actually, I would be really curious to compare notes because like, I've been playing it basically the exact opposite way where I've been trying to like, do everyone's side quest. And like, if I find something that's interesting that is not necessarily related to killing princess and his guys, like, you know, going after that. And like, I don't know, I did a whole side quest that was like pretty huge that like explores

33:03some facets of Cohen's like hit family history that the prologue doesn't really get into. That was like, hey, this is actually really fucking good writing and character development and stuff. But I, but I don't know if you get that if you go like full blown fucking murder mode through the whole. And she about my family history. That's great. I really do. I do. Vizzy. Like, slashing. Chopin. It was a buffet. Yeah. I was brutal. And maybe through the end of that game, I was like, I'm an angry person. It was not a kind game to me. Maybe you learn about yourself. I love a game that is bold enough to do that to say like pretty straight to your face. Like, you're not going to have time to do all this stuff. You're going to have to do another playthrough. And I honestly, I think I'm going to finish it. I've been enjoying it so much. And I do, I am curious like what the other sort of path looks like because it also sounds like a lot of fun. Can I, I won caveat for people who are going to hop into this game? There's just some expectation setting and help you have a better time.

34:03And I know that this problem happened to fresh it too, which is you, the game, they're all over the place. They're so scary. You go into their punch. But hot. We've been discussing some hot. The game expects you to save, scum a little bit in the beginning as you're learning how the hell it works. And there's a very, very immediate example of this where you will go into a, a fort, and you'll go down into the prison and you'll meet someone and he'll, you'll have this opportunity of like, hey, can you break me out right now or later or never? And like my instinct is like, yeah, I'll break you out right now. That sounds good. And we'll try that. And you'll, you'll just get your shit wrecked over and over and over again. If you do this early in the game, there's no way you have the skill to do this. And the game will not tell you this. It'll just keep wrecking your shit over and over and over again. It will not be there are some quests that like tell you, oh, you're not a high enough level. I wouldn't recommend it.

35:04This quest doesn't for whatever reason. Yes. And then you will go back and you can, fortunately, it saves like five or six, the saves backwards because it seems to be aware that this might happen. And you'll talk to them and you'll like, you know what, I'll come back later. And the fucking character will be like, yeah, that's a really great idea. It'd be a terrible idea to go during the day. You should come back at night. So then you'll come back at night and you'll get your shit wrecked again. And what you will learn is that actually you need to go and do things and you need to be at a skill level to accomplish things. As Frush said, there are things in the map or in the quest log that will tell you, hey, that's a little bit tough, but it's not always right. This is all just to say, if you're having trouble with anything, it probably isn't going to fully disappear despite what the time says. And you should go on and do other things and not be like me where you bash two, three hours just against one quest in a game that's otherwise great. And I will also add on top of that much like the Witcher and like every CD project or

36:07a game, this game, fucking rocks. It is going to rock even more in six months when it gets its final round of pat, like not fine around the badges, but get some of this early stuff tweaked because there is a bit of stuff that is going to get fixed. I feel the same way, specifically like I've also had quests where it's just like, well, what the fuck am I supposed to like, this is not clear at all. It felt like, I don't know, something was missing to indicate like you actually can't do this right now. It's nighttime. Sometimes it does it. There's a little sun icon or moon icon that'll show up on quest objectives, but sometimes like it's weirdly missing. That stuff is a little bit weird. I'm really excited though about this being like the start of a new franchise. They've said that they're going to do similar stuff, but at different time periods, maybe not necessarily stuck in the Carpathian Mountains and the medieval times, which I'd be really curious. And I also feel like is one of the reasons I really dug this a lot more than Witcher 3

37:10also is that I didn't feel like I was missing out on a ton of shit. By the time I finished the prologue, like I understood a lot about this region and its history and my family's place in it. And like that made it a lot easier to invest myself in the story it was telling because I felt like I wasn't already operating at it. And Mary's just over there asking for seconds. I, I murdered my way through this game. There's no one left. I don't think I could play a sequel. There's no one alive in my playthrough unfortunately. On earth. I mean, I really wrecked the place. It's pretty wild what you can do. Again, I'm like trying not to get too deep into it, but it, when you're a vampire, you also can decide whether or not you are eating the blood of the places you're destroying, which makes you a stronger vampire. I did all of that. Every evil choice I did. What? Oh, I do that. Yeah, no, that's free blood. That's free blood. It's free blood. Hey, it's free blood. Yeah, it's already in the barrels.

38:10It's just waiting. You just got to tap it. You're not going to suck that blood. It's crazy. It's crazy. And so like I, I went down such a dark path. It got to a point where I was a little worried. I had lost my own humanity in this game. I wasn't really caring about people. And I was, I was, I was just a real violent person. I would have liked, I will just say, I would have loved to see a little bit more variety in the types of, of beasts that I had slain. Because I went on a very action oriented playthrough, I killed a lot of wolves and a lot of boars. And I was hoping for more like, didn't have to be like a tree end like in richer. But I would have liked more fantastical beasts. There are some like, there are ghosts occasionally and like, because I'll be talking to guys. There goes, I mean, there's good enemy variety. But when you're just going from point A to point B, running a mile in this game on the way, you will kill 30 to 50 feral hogs. Like that's a guarantee. Oh, many. They won't be hard. There'll just be little blood bags that you just cut.

39:13And then you can get a little bit of stuff out of them. But I think we all know that that's not the pre-know-shed dog. No, if you stick to the paths, you're going to see less feral hogs. If you go the direct path, so if you put something on your marker and you go directly there, you're probably going to run into some shit. Especially if you go into some logs. And bears, which brings us back bears to the Catholicism, which I just want to put a go on this. There is so much in this game. And it really has a ham sandwich over the fact that you are drinking blood and giving blood to vampires versus what you're doing as a Catholic. They clearly are working through something with this game. And as something grew up Catholic, I really enjoyed every ounce of it. Oh my God. The frescoes alone in this game are stunning. So many frescoes. That's so much time on it. This game rules. I completely agree. Should we take a break and then dive into another somewhat large open world game? I would love to. Have you ever wished that everyone would just mind their own beeswax when it comes to online

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42:19Exclusions apply, non-stackable. Grab the Super Strike today. The winning click is finally here. Can we talk about Mary's GTA? She has been playing it for a little bit early. There are no characters. Mary's the leaker. We can say that now. Mary did all the leaks. Yeah, maybe. Oh, shit. The people in the woods. Oh my God. Yeah, heads up. Mary is anonymous. Yeah, Mary killed everyone in GTA 6. Congratulations, Mary. Keeping that streak alive. You can also play as a vampire. Yeah. Okay, so GTA 6, they had their big debut. It was first on Netflix. And I think it's on YouTube probably, like, full accessible by everyone. It was about 26 minutes of footage. GTA 6 extended look. And extended look. And it certainly was. I'm curated on letterboxed. Yes. I'm curious if you guys have any initial thoughts given the fact that this is the first time we're seeing anything resembling, like, actual legit gameplay.

43:21And we're not going to dive into the leaks, obviously. So, yeah, like, official gameplay, I should say. It looks amazing. Like, it looks really good. Like, visually, everything, the vibe, the writing, the characters. I love the, like, I love the two leads. I really am very compelled by the idea of having, like, two playable characters who are in a romantic relationship with each other. Like, that's just interesting. That's an interesting thing. Yeah. I think this, this extended look does a good job of, like, giving you a feel for what that's going to actually be like. And the sticky situations they find themselves in. The game looks enormous and beautiful, but, like, I don't know, I want to see what the, I want to see more of the, I don't know, is there a ski ball? Yeah. Like, that's the wild open-world shit that I feel like was, was maybe a bit. They teased a lot of it. They teased scuba diving or underwater stuff for the first time. A lot of water stuff. I saw kayaks and, I mean, they want you playing in that water.

44:22That was someone's life for six years is making that kayak. Oh my god, they spent so much time. Yeah, I mean, I guess it does, it did allude to a lot of that stuff, but I, yeah, I don't know, it felt like a very, very, very story and tone focused, like, thing. And that all seems, that all seems great, but I don't know. I wonder if you, the mechanics of it. Yeah, if you remove the visuals of it, like, in terms of like, yeah, they can do splashy story missions with a lot of, like, scripted moments. And crazy shit going on, like, that stuff we saw and even going back to GT4. So they've been doing that for quite a while. I agree with you, Griffin. I think the thing that I am most interested in is like the city and the area as a platform for hijinks more so. That's a playground, right? Yeah. And it's, I'm really looking forward to GT6. I think it's going to be a fucking fun time, man. Don't get me wrong. They've been working on it for a billion years. They spent a trillion dollars on it.

45:24Like, I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be good, right? But like for me, it is the, it is the sandbox playground stuff that I'm most interested in. I'm a little bit bummed that it sounds like GT6, like online is not going to, unless I'm mistaken, it's not going to be there. Not at launch. It'll be there one day. Yeah. I'm sure it'll be there one day. I, that's the stuff I'm like, most interested in because I played a lot more GTA five online that I did sort of single player stuff. I actually didn't know that. You, did you come around? I thought it kind of launched kind of messy, but I didn't realize you put it. It did launch kind of messy, but then they added the, you know, all the different bank robberies and the bank hives were fun. Yeah. The bank hives were fun as fuck. They were so good. They were the most fun I've ever had playing Grand Theft Auto stuff. And it's going to be like, I know they're going to do that stuff. I know it's going to be different. It's going to look better and all that jazz. But again, that wasn't, I don't want to sound too negative because I do think it looked good and it did get me more excited for the game, but I also like, what have liked.

46:25I don't know. A voiceover to appear sometimes to be like, as you can see, Lucie is going to a local arcade to, like, I don't know. One mechanic makes the entire game for me. And so I know this game is going to be my shit and that is you got to fill up your gas. You got to fill up your gas. You want to steal a car in a game Grand Theft Auto? It's going to suck shit. It's going to be really hard. I don't know if this is true or not, but it sounds like depending on the quality of the car, it will be tougher to steal. That rocks. The idea of speeding down a highway and being like narrowly escaping the cops and then running out of gas and then having to steal a couple of cars. But they're just like mock the doors and drive off with their bulletproof windows and something I'm just stuck on the highway alone. That's shit. That is what I want. And I think Grand Theft Auto has been kind of in this weird middle ground between the almost arcade action of Grand Theft Auto 3.

47:27And then Grand Theft Auto 4 came out and they were like, it's going to be super real. It's very dry. It's going to feel like shit. You're very sad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And then if I was like starting to figure out these systems, but this is the first Grand Theft Auto since Zelda, right? But even since the breath of the wild, I think, could that be right? Yeah. It's been 12 years. Yeah. 12 years. It's been between bonkers. Which means bonkers. And I think that this is a game that is recognizing that a system type of play is fun. It is what creates great story moments. It's the thing that's going to be entertaining for your Twitch streamers and is going to get little like clip shorts. But also it'll just be super fun moment to moment having weird shit happen because of the elaborate systems of the game. And that the elaborate systems are not just what you see. Like did you know that the dog will walk around and take a piss? That the systems are actually influencing how you play that.

48:28Yeah. That sounds great if they deliver. I also want to call the attention to the fact that like the two main characters seemingly based on the footage are like affable. And super like I was just about to say this. I one thing that worked seems like it's going to work for me a lot better is like I found the protagonists of GTA 5 so unlikable, so detestable. And part of that is like the kind of vibe they're going for. The like you know Michael man style sort of stylish thieves, but they're also like I don't know. Yucky in a lot of ways. It feels like these two seem like they seem cool. They actually seem like a great hang. And it'll be a much more pleasant experience. They probably spend. They are cool. Yeah. I agree. And they they seem understandable. They haven't gotten too much into the shit that they're in that they're trying to get out of. They allude to it, right? Like, ooh, do you think they can help us? Like they're obviously in in deep and that's what's putting them in these situations. Yeah. But you're also going to some more like ask yourself, there's a reason that they always

49:28put really bad people as protagonists in this game. And it's because you're a really bad person. You're killing a lot of people. You are murdering innocence. Now listen to me. I'm not a cartoon. I'm not a cartoon in a round now. How are you, Mary? You telling me that you're going to be like, I really think Lucy is doing her best. Like, you know, it's not her fault that that baby carriage got in the way during that heist. Like, I think you have hands in it. Just fine. You're going to have to like, really roleplay. Mary, the baby carriage isn't in the game. You modded that in. That was your modded out. It's my sand body. And I put babies everywhere in my play. It is, it is like, it feels weird to me. First of all, let me just address. It feels weird to me to be talking about a trailer, talking about a promotional piece of material for what is ostensibly going to be the biggest blockbuster game maybe have ever released. Feels like we are, I don't know. I'm not doing a service to games journalism, if you will. I do think it's very interesting that Rockstar has this way of doing shit.

50:32Rockstar has this way of like showing stuff off from their games and right around the same time that they had this huge debut that went up on Netflix that Netflix was teasing for weeks. They paid for it. Yeah. Because they paid for it. Huge, huge swaths of the game started to get leaked by someone. Crazy. It is almost enough to make me feel like bad for the multi, you know, million dollar company rockstar, but it is it. Man, that does fuck. I will tell you that I definitely feel bad for the guy who spent a fucking year stalking the shelves in that random convenience store. And now it's released in 480p. Like I feel bad for that guy. Yeah, but yeah, as a company, they'll be okay. That guy's going to be okay. I'm sure you'll be okay. You know who I feel good for though? I feel good for Russ Frushdick because he is going to play Grand Theft Auto 6. And he is going to say, I need some quests. I need some stuff to do.

51:33And he is going to hang out with Stephen Root. One of the greatest set-ups. I was so over the moon when I heard Stephen Root's voice count me fucking it. I didn't realize. I didn't realize Stephen Root. He's the like old fixer guy. Crusty. I love Stephen Root. I think in that scene, you press F to smoke. Yeah. That's going to be the new. Stephen Root of office space, Barry Dodgeball with his May. Yeah. Everything's so good in what I said. He's great. They've gotten good acting from the main pro-tags as well. They're very well acted. That first scene in this release where you're going to do some kind of drug deal. Every character is unbelievably realistic and feels, you feel the tension of going to a drug. I think you go to the door and they say, you say your name and they go, we don't know him. And I went, oh, you know, you're in deep. Shit. And then they go, well, we're here. Do you want us to buy or not? And then they let you in.

52:33It's cool. Like that makes you the writing is excellent. You can kind of feel where they're going with it, but you'll have to, well, have to wait to see more. I get your tension, Griffin, of like this and this is promo and we're talking about it. But when it comes to like a $2 billion game construction. Ancient game. That, yeah, a game that would be a sixth grader that is not available for purchase. Yes. Can you imagine all of the young 20s. And then there are like, uh, teens that are like, man, this GTA looks really good. And it's like, when this last game came out, you were 10. You didn't play the last. I know you could buy that. You could not. Yeah. This is, this is monument. This is generational. And so when you have that type of generational hype, I think you just can't help but react to the nuances of this trailer, the fact that like people are crashing into walls, which alludes that maybe there's going to be dynamic, you know, breaking of spaces and play that you're going to be able to like shoot holes through things and then run through them. I, I think they're going to really up the ante when it comes to how you get to solve

53:36a problem. You're going to shoot your way through it. They're going to put you in that spot. But how you get out, I think is going to be very malleable and up to the player. It also occurred to me. And this is not really for the main game, but for online, whenever that does get released, we're sure they're going to have one hell of a battle royale mode because that platform for battle royale would be fucking incredible. They had to have done that already. It seemed like for GTA Online, it seems like it is five days long because you're just trying to find the last person. Yeah. Somewhere. Well, I'm very excited. We'll see how it is. Obviously no one here knows whether the game is any good or not, but they suddenly agree. It's a little violent for Mary. You were saying it's got a little too much. And I love to kill. It's a lot. Right. It's a lot. Gerjabones. Very clear in the stuff is so married. I was pretty head down on Blood of Dawn Walker.

54:38I didn't, I didn't play a ton else. You know, we just finished this season of American Ninja Warrior and I'm happy to go in deep if you guys want me to talk about my thoughts about they got rid of mountain and Doryama and now they just do a full blown bracket style elimination race thing until there's one person left and I don't know that that's a great idea, but at the same time, races have reinvigorated the sport. So anyway, I will say, oh, I'm going to be so careful on spoilers this time talking about a game called Blueprints for Your Name Manchin. You do things. I have best described as reached the area in which it would be considered to be presumably the end game, the actual end game. I think you're there. I think you hit it, man. You said it like an eight. I know, but now Griffin agrees with me. So he sent me a screenshot and I was like, yeah, you're in the, you are in the end. I will say the last time we talked about Blueprints in the last episode, I was saying I'm kind of in this point where I feel very hemmed in and it feels very narrow and I don't

55:44necessarily know that I'm enjoying it as much because it feels like I don't have a lot of like ways to tackle the thing in front of me. And suddenly I now have like an enormous fucking thing sitting in front of me that I'm trying to tackle from like 16 different angles and it's very overwhelming, but in a pretty remarkable way. So good, good on you, Blueprints. You did it again. Yeah. I will. I mean, if you need me now. That's a tough puzzle. Let me know. I'll tease out the rest of you that we have coming up. We will be talking about Star Wars Zero Company. And y'all, it is hard for me to have too many great games to play. It's rough when the blood of Don Walker is so good. And then you're like, you know what, I'm not even like, I'm, I like to XCOM back in the day. Like the early, early ones, but I don't know if I need more of that right now. I'm kind of soft on Star Wars right now. No, no.

56:45It is so good. It's so absurdly good. And how wide is good? We'll talk about all that on Resties, but even if you're not going to listen to that episode, check out this game. It is. It's so good. They did a very good job. Mary, do you have anything that you're watching or playing or reading or whatever? Yeah. Stop me if you've already talked a lot about blood dungeon, but I'd like to tell you that I'm really enjoying blood dungeon. You see after eight hours of, of playing an RPG and I am tired and I want to like rest my brain for a good bed. There ain't nothing better than a 40 minute auto shooter dungeon crawler session. When you die, you go to sleep. And so I feel like I can really zone out to blood dungeon. This is from the devs that made Nidhogg. You can see it.

57:45You can feel it. You can smell it. These devs like making silly, crazy wild experiences where you're just like shooting lots of things in a dungeon. When you die, you die. Your session is done. But every time you play your collecting bones, which helps you expand the levels that you can play or the characters that you can play. All the characters are very different and fun. One of them has a lot of guns. One of them is naked and has a sword that surrounds him. One of them is really agile and is also naked. One of them is a baby. One of them is a baby. One of them is a spider. I mean, they have a lot of variants that makes it more fun. But the thing I really like about it is that you can compare your scores, global and friend score leaderboards. And so I've been trying to beat all of my friend's scores. And that has been a really enjoyable experience for me. I'm not trying to like diagnose you. But what do you think it means that you played a game where you spend 40 to 50 hours going around killing everything and collecting their blood and then taking a break with a game

58:46called Blood Dungeon, where you go around for 40 to 50 minutes at a time, killing everything and taking their bones. It's coming. All these blood dungeons are wearing me out. I'm going to take a break with Blood Dungeon. Singular. Is the one blood dungeon? It's peaceful in its own way. Hey, Mary, how does baby's in it? It doesn't have been got any of you like. You are the baby. You are the baby. You don't hurt babies. Got to love me. I like to roleplay as a baby who kills everything. Mary, have you beaten flood yet? Yes. I have, I think I've beaten almost all the levels. There's one that escapes me. It's the fucking Starfish one. Yeah. I want the Starfish. I can't beat that Starfish. I want the Starfish. There's some real brutal ones out there. It's great. It's a great game. But I actually find flood to be one of the more interesting ones. I love it. It's kind of when it's just like a square. I'm like, alright, whatever. But like, how fun is it when the water rises over time? Yeah. Or what's the one where it's just a bunch of tiny little cave systems that you have to break

59:47all the blocks to get to. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tumes, yeah. Tumes is sick. Like, that's so fun. And you're like, you got to pick the right character for it. But once I picked like the, there's like a real chunky round character. He barely can squeeze through. And I put, I picked him in Tumes and I was like, well, this is on me. I shouldn't have picked the largest character for two. You can't squeeze through anything. I died in like two minutes. Yeah. Great game. It's great. Everyone should be playing Blood Dungeon. When you're not playing the other blood games, play, play Blood Dungeon. Yeah. Thank you so much for listening to this week. This episode of the Besties plant. Do you want to tell everybody what we talked about today? I would love to. We talked about the blood of Don Walker. I think I got that title right. We talked about American Ninja Warrior, Blueprints, Star Wars Zero Company and Blood Dungeon. We also talked about the GTA VI short film. And as I mentioned, you can and should add it to your letter box.

1:00:48It's an important part of your valuable collection. I also want to mention we have a new bracket battles episode that just went live. This one was not with Mary. Go back and listen to Mary's episode if you haven't yet. But this one was with Matt Apidaca and it was a lot of fun. Oh, God. Such a good one. You have to put it right here. No, I mean, he does have his powers are pretty, pretty incredible. Perhaps the rapist knows how to sing. Yeah. And I think I think Irrefutable has a far more diverse set of skills than yeah, Krapa. But I mean, Krapa, the rapper is a game about Krapa learning skills. But there's only like six songs in the first place. Yeah. He doesn't have a long also. One of the songs is about him trying not to piss his pants while he waits in line for a bathroom. So like I don't know if we can go there. Been there. Yeah. If that's a skill, then I've successfully mastered that one. Yeah. Oh, I could use some work. That's what I think I UMC people. That's right. Yeah, you'll never catch me pissing my pants.

1:01:50Not do it like for rappers iconic, right? You'll never catch me pissing my pants. Pissing pissing pissing my pants. So yeah, that was a lot of fun. We had a good time with Matt. We thank him for joining us. And I also want to thank everyone else for joining the Patreon and supporting us. Some new backers. We have Eric H. We have Richard M. We have Cameron H. And we have Mateo. Thank you for being members over at patreon.com. So I asked the besties. Last thing I'm going to say. Very important. We are just about a month away from the big live show happening in New York City, October 9th, Town Hall. The link is bit.ly slash besties on Broadway. Get in there. Join us. We're going to have exclusive merch on site. We're going to have Q&As, fun live show, actions, special guest. You name it. So it's going to be a whole kit and caboodle. And we'd love to have a whole kit and caboodle. Come and join us. Mary, thank you so much for joining us.

1:02:51One more time. Can you remind the folks listening at home where they can find your work? Yeah. Thanks for having me. I go live every Monday on Twitch under my name Mary Kish. It's spelled M-E-R-R-Y K-I-S-H. And fire escape is where we also play games. I usually stream them first on Mondays and then talk about them on the podcast. It's a nice system. If you want to see how I feel before the podcast, you can watch it live. Sick. Go do that, everybody. And then join us next week as we play a little game called Onimusha, Way of the Sword, which I feel like that game came out already a long time ago. So that's confusing to me. But I've heard it's good. And it looks pretty fun. So you should join us as we talk about it next week on The Besties and join us every week here at The Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games.

1:04:06Besties!