Final Fantasy AND Helldivers 2?!
There are too many great games, but we have no complaints
Listen to this week’s episode
The streak of hot new releases for 2024 continues! This week, we're talking about the opening hours of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (no big spoilers!) and the many hours we've spent squishing bugs 'n' bots in Helldivers 2.
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Games discussed:
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Helldivers 2, Mario vs Donkey Kong, Clubhouse Games
TV discussed:
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Next week on The Besties:
On next week’s The Besties: Deep Rock Galactic Survivor. Rock and stone!
Bonus links:
The Atoll is one of the best corners of YouTube and we’re all fortunate something this specific, thorough, and awesome exists.
Polygon’s review of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Christian Donlan’s description of Kingmakers is perfection
And Pacific Drive!
What to play next if you love Alan Wake 2
I don't wanna drag Juice too much, but I do think that he might not fully understand what's going on with Helldivers 2 servers. Thought i might provide some context as a game developer who has previously worked on an online live service ganme.
First, just because the game is published by Playstation doesn't mean that they got a shitload of money from them/funded the servers. They probably had a funding agreement of some sort, but its not a blank check. This game is cross platform which means they aren't using Playstations servers, they're likely using a cloud service like AWS. That gets super expensive and when you're launching a game you have to talk about capacity and peak users, the fact that they planned for 200k+ peak users when the peak of the first game was only 6k is already (in my opinion) quite ambitious (>30x higher than previous peak). If Sony is only subsidizing server costs, this is still an independent developer so any extra costs they have to put up are just putting the company more at risk.
Second, the engine they're working on is the same one they built previous games in, but it is a really bad game engine that was discontinued over 5 years ago due to how bad it was. Their engine choices are ultimately their choice so I know it can be hard to not fault them, but knowledge of an engine sometimes trumps usability of newer ones. That being said, they've stated that their backend code for server management/login wasn't scalable at that size and they are running into technical limits with the servers they're using, so there is a bit more to it than just "buy more servers/ increase a number from 200k to 1mil".
Sorry for going on a rant here. I know the point was ultimately about being pro-consumer, and I very much share that sentiment, but I've seen a lot of frustrating discourse around this game where people don't really understand the intricacies of the situation and/or just straight up have no sympathy for the dev team and fully fault them (not saying that's your opinion, Justin). I think they are truly "suffering from success" but are doing a fantastic job of patching the game and fixing up the experience so as many people can play as possible.
I know that the McElroy brothers do weekly stream, I am wondering if we'll ever see the Besties do some gaming streams? (Even if it's behind the patreon)