My 2¢ on waiting til full release for hades 2: my interest in a given game usually comes in a single, intense, several-week burst. I loved hades to death and I want to see all of hades 2. My worry is not that it’s not great right now (I’m sure it is), but that whether I like it or not, when the extra level/ending content is complete and the game is in full release, I won’t be interested in it. I want my honeymoon phase with the game to be with the full game; it’s just how my brain works, and as a result I am not a big fan of the early access model in general - though it is what it is.
I’m on the same page as you. I think early access is dope and I’m glad it exists for those who like it. But I tend to hyper fixate on a game and not return to it, so I’ll be waiting for 1.0 alongside ya.
I completely agree! I've learned recently that no matter how much I love a game in early access, I am always having diminished fun on the full release because I'm often rushing thru to get to where I was and throwing the balance of the game off.
I was so stoked that Soul Reaver got a mention a few weeks ago. It's the game that got me into gaming as a kid and I agree that it absolutely holds up today. Do y'all think a remake is even a remote possibility? Because it's all I want in life.
Gotta be honest, this episode is a non-starter for me. Hades II has been one of the most anticipated releases this year, and only having Frush and a guest on is a pretty poor decision for it. I get that Plante was supposed to be on it too and that the McElroys are touring, but for a game this big, even being in early access, this shouldn't be how it's covered. Slam me for not listening to it - I'm sure it's a great conversation - but this isn't why I listen to the Besties. Especially now that there's a patreon and listeners are directly supporting the production of the Besties, this is not great. Cover a different game (there's plenty of backlog games to cover), reschedule so everyone can be part of the conversation, wait til it's out as a full release, but don't do this to try to squeeze it because it was on the schedule or is the game du jour. I'm sure this won't be a popular comment, but I feel like something needs to be said. It's become more of a pattern as the McElroys start touring again and they miss more conversations around big games. A different approach is needed.
Plante (me) was going to be on the episode until 5 minutes before recording. And while this is a big release, it is Early Access. We figure a full team will be necessary for the official release, presumably early next year.
Ultimately, this is a thing we all do on the side of our full time jobs. And while the Patreon support is immensely appreciated and literally make it possible to do these episodes long term, we still do have to juggle the show with the many other parts of our lives.
Appreciate your response, Chris. First wanted to say, I really love listening to you all and the discussions. I usually enjoy the episodes where guests come on. I totally get it with unavoidable hiccups and changes that mess up plans. For me, the biggest disappointment is what others have said. Justin at least teased that he had thoughts that we'd want to hear, and then, that tease didn't have any payoff.
It's hard giving feedback or criticism in this forum because I realize there's a ton of nuance here (balancing schedules, dealing with last minute problems, balancing coverage, etc) and I'm under no pretense that this was an easy decision. Overall, I probably would have been happier with a 2 minute episode with Frush explaining the situation and saying the Besties were skipping the week so the conversation could be longer and have more perspectives. I get that a last-minute pivot to another game is impossible in that situation, but I think no episode would have been preferable to what ultimately felt like a letdown.
Hey, not OP but tbh I’m glad somebody gave the feedback even if I don’t vibe with their tone - I have no expectation that you drop your plans because of a last minute mishap especially when you had a guest joining, but it was/is weird that the game topic was announced in advance but not the absences when last week Justin was riffing about how excited he was to do this episode.
At the end of the day it’s still an episode with at least one personality I’m familiar with and a topic I’m interested in, and I don’t consider the main channel to be paid for by Patreon so I feel no sense of entitlement for these episodes, but I think you’ve bumped games in the past by a week or so if only even to have enough time to check them out, and in the softest possible terms, I think that would have been an approach for this week/ep that no one would have been mad at.
Podcasts take weeks off, rotate hosts and change plans all the time and y’all have changed the topic before cause of like not getting codes in time or what have you and that’s no biggie to me. Just for my personal preference, though, I would have thought this week would have been planned differently- though I think you guys are very mindful of the EA label and that not being the full game, as you said, and I can see how that would colour how big of a drop this release was, which is fair.
To be clear, I’m not like upset by a podcast changing hosts for an episode, I just find it weird when it’s planned to be different from the regular makeup in advance and yet telegraphed to be not that - I don’t think anyone would mind, or at least to the extent OP seems to, if the most recent episode ended with a heads up of like hey we’ll be on tour and have a special guest, like there would just have been less of a disconnect there. Still happy to hear from you guys, hope you’re (Plante) not affected in the rest of your work by the equipment mishap and everyone’s doing well travelling and at home.
Personally, I would’ve been pretty okay with this bottle episode of the podcast if Justin literally didn’t tease that he had opinions ready to share on Hades 2 last week.
He said he was excited to get into the minutiae of Hades 2, and I was pumped. Sequel to one of his favorite games. I was ready.
Huge bait and switch. I made it about 30 seconds in this morning and switched it off. I love Russ, but this wasn’t the episode that was teased.
I think this is unfair to Brendan Bigley - regardless of your opinion on what the episode “should” have been like (guess what life happens) - it was a great conversation and I think well worth publishing.
Will the Besties also be covering PokeRogue at some point? Pokemon battling with rogue-like & gacha mechanics, what's not to love? Please look into it before it inevitably gets wiped from the internet by the Pokemon Co!
Question for the besties: Dave the Diver recently came out on the playstation game pass, including the Dredge DLC, and it got me to try Dave for the first time. It was a great game and I loved seeing the two worlds come together in fun and wacky ways. Have y'all tried out the dredge DLC yet? And aside from that, what are some of y'alls favorite video game crossovers?
I’m an outlier here (i go weeks without console gaming, zero PC gaming) and i played a little Hades back when it was GotY but I don’t think I ever even made it through Elysium— something about the size scale and chaos on screen didn’t vibe. (Playing it on Switch and attempting to do some handheld mode made this worse on my middle aged eyes.) With all the run-up to Hades 2 i dipped back in, swallowed my pride and put on God mode, and finally had a successful run a couple days ago. I was really surprised by how moved I was by the end of the run and now have been regularly putting in one or two attempts per day. I stand fully corrected!
Also! I picked up Chants of Sennaar and tore through it after hearing it listed adjacent to Animal Well in terms of “make you feel smart”. Fantastic (despite the occasional momentum killers with stealth segments and the underground labyrinth that i never really grokked)
I am astounded by how much content is in Hades II, and it's funny hearing you guys talks about, say, the "third boss" when I now know how expansive the game is in early access.
I really appreciate a lot of the changes they've made to grow the sequel beyond the first, but I think the thing that has struck me the most - and something you guys touched upon - is the tone of the overarching plot. Both games have that often silly, fun dialogue that brings levity to the story and situations, but here that feels especially important. Zagreus' journey of escape in the original title was always something very personal, and ultimately functioned as a means of connecting him better to his family, so while I was invested in the characters and their relationships, I would say the main story was never what kept me coming back. In comparison, Melinoe's task feels far more important and significant in the grand scheme of things, even while her own reasons for getting involved are very personal. You see the dire impact of Chronos' rule all throughout the locations you visit, and learn more about it through the various characters. It's honestly made it even harder for me to put down compared to the first game simply because I'm so much more compelled to see things through to the end. Like, I REALLY want to bring death to Chronos. That's rad, and with characters and relationships just as strong as those in the first game, it really feels like Supergiant has managed to push the genre forward narratively (for a second time).
I am in depths of Animal Well which made me think of a previous honorable mention on the pod. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (thank you for whoever mentioned it). I can’t stop thinking of the enormous house universe concept though with Animal Well with style mysteries in a 3D search action game. just thought I’d throw that out there. Someone should make that.
Question on Animal Well: when does it become "more"? I've played for like 8hrs and collected 3/4 flames, just have the mean cat to do. It just still feels like a search-action game. Should I keep pressing on? Am I missing something at this point? I loved outer wilds, tunic, chants of sennaar, etc so the comparisons got me interested but I'm just not feeling those games in this.
I beat it, and collected a few more eggs, and then ... it didn't actually do any of the things they promised it would do, so I stopped. So if you're missing something, so am I.
Yeah I beat it last night and definitely sense some weirdness going on but genuinely have no idea what I'm missing. I'm fairly certain it's to do with the flute but idk...
I beat the main story and collected about half the eggs. I found myself with little desire to scour the world further for more clues and puzzles. I looked up spoilers for the rest of the puzzles and while I wouldn’t encourage anyone else to do the same unless you’re REALLY comfortable with your decision to do so, I’m glad I looked up some stuff as there’s zero chance I would have come to the correct conclusions conclusions on my own. I really feel like the in game guidance you get with the instruction manual in Tunic, or the bullet points you get in Outer Wilds, was missing here. Animal Well is just *so big* and by the time I finished the main story, I had no desire to backtrack through the entire world again.
This is just a guess, but I feel like what was missing for me (that the besties got to experience) is collaborating with a friend on solving the extra layers of puzzles. If I had someone to talk about everything with, I might have been more engaged and wanted to keep uncovering the mysteries enough to get past my exploration fatigue.
I think that makes perfect sense. I just never saw got the breadcrumbs to make me want to dig deeper. I knew that crumbs existed but for the life of me I couldn’t find any and there wasn’t a “story” as far as I could tell that would get me to push any harder.
Great callout imo on the story. Hadn’t even thought about that angle. If there’s a narrative there, it’s over my head. If the secrets were tied more closely to a narrative I could understand, I definitely think I would have been more driven to go further.
hi! i really enjoyed the conversation around scarlet maiden on resties this week, and i was thinking about how sex is addressed/portrayed in video games and in society more broadly. i've been reading the sympathizer by viet thanh nguyen, and in it there is a scene where the protagnist tells an anecdote about masturbation, and then responds to the reader's imagined shock by basically saying "you didn't react with shock when i discussed warfare and murder en masse. why is a conversation about an unapologetically positive sexual experience more uncomfortable than that?" (said better in the novel). one thing i kept thinking about in this conversation is that one of the most popular video game genres is the first-person shooter, where interaction with the world is done via gunfire. the 'violence in video games' question is pretty trite (and certainly scarlet maiden seems to include no shortage of combat!) but the way that what is considered taboo or not taboo in our culture is filtered through video games, one of the more interactive art/entertainment forms, is really fascinating to me!what do you all think?
Guys - I am agonizing over whether or not to get an OLED Steam Deck. I’m lifelong console gamer and this would be my first official move into modern PC gaming. Talk me into or out of it, I beg you.
Plante was divinely punished for playing Scarlet Maiden, I see
My 2¢ on waiting til full release for hades 2: my interest in a given game usually comes in a single, intense, several-week burst. I loved hades to death and I want to see all of hades 2. My worry is not that it’s not great right now (I’m sure it is), but that whether I like it or not, when the extra level/ending content is complete and the game is in full release, I won’t be interested in it. I want my honeymoon phase with the game to be with the full game; it’s just how my brain works, and as a result I am not a big fan of the early access model in general - though it is what it is.
I’m on the same page as you. I think early access is dope and I’m glad it exists for those who like it. But I tend to hyper fixate on a game and not return to it, so I’ll be waiting for 1.0 alongside ya.
I completely agree! I've learned recently that no matter how much I love a game in early access, I am always having diminished fun on the full release because I'm often rushing thru to get to where I was and throwing the balance of the game off.
Love Frush and Friends Episodes!!!!
I was so stoked that Soul Reaver got a mention a few weeks ago. It's the game that got me into gaming as a kid and I agree that it absolutely holds up today. Do y'all think a remake is even a remote possibility? Because it's all I want in life.
Gotta be honest, this episode is a non-starter for me. Hades II has been one of the most anticipated releases this year, and only having Frush and a guest on is a pretty poor decision for it. I get that Plante was supposed to be on it too and that the McElroys are touring, but for a game this big, even being in early access, this shouldn't be how it's covered. Slam me for not listening to it - I'm sure it's a great conversation - but this isn't why I listen to the Besties. Especially now that there's a patreon and listeners are directly supporting the production of the Besties, this is not great. Cover a different game (there's plenty of backlog games to cover), reschedule so everyone can be part of the conversation, wait til it's out as a full release, but don't do this to try to squeeze it because it was on the schedule or is the game du jour. I'm sure this won't be a popular comment, but I feel like something needs to be said. It's become more of a pattern as the McElroys start touring again and they miss more conversations around big games. A different approach is needed.
Feedback is always appreciated!
Plante (me) was going to be on the episode until 5 minutes before recording. And while this is a big release, it is Early Access. We figure a full team will be necessary for the official release, presumably early next year.
Ultimately, this is a thing we all do on the side of our full time jobs. And while the Patreon support is immensely appreciated and literally make it possible to do these episodes long term, we still do have to juggle the show with the many other parts of our lives.
Appreciate your response, Chris. First wanted to say, I really love listening to you all and the discussions. I usually enjoy the episodes where guests come on. I totally get it with unavoidable hiccups and changes that mess up plans. For me, the biggest disappointment is what others have said. Justin at least teased that he had thoughts that we'd want to hear, and then, that tease didn't have any payoff.
It's hard giving feedback or criticism in this forum because I realize there's a ton of nuance here (balancing schedules, dealing with last minute problems, balancing coverage, etc) and I'm under no pretense that this was an easy decision. Overall, I probably would have been happier with a 2 minute episode with Frush explaining the situation and saying the Besties were skipping the week so the conversation could be longer and have more perspectives. I get that a last-minute pivot to another game is impossible in that situation, but I think no episode would have been preferable to what ultimately felt like a letdown.
Apologies if my initial comment was too harsh.
Not too harsh at all!
Hey, not OP but tbh I’m glad somebody gave the feedback even if I don’t vibe with their tone - I have no expectation that you drop your plans because of a last minute mishap especially when you had a guest joining, but it was/is weird that the game topic was announced in advance but not the absences when last week Justin was riffing about how excited he was to do this episode.
At the end of the day it’s still an episode with at least one personality I’m familiar with and a topic I’m interested in, and I don’t consider the main channel to be paid for by Patreon so I feel no sense of entitlement for these episodes, but I think you’ve bumped games in the past by a week or so if only even to have enough time to check them out, and in the softest possible terms, I think that would have been an approach for this week/ep that no one would have been mad at.
Podcasts take weeks off, rotate hosts and change plans all the time and y’all have changed the topic before cause of like not getting codes in time or what have you and that’s no biggie to me. Just for my personal preference, though, I would have thought this week would have been planned differently- though I think you guys are very mindful of the EA label and that not being the full game, as you said, and I can see how that would colour how big of a drop this release was, which is fair.
To be clear, I’m not like upset by a podcast changing hosts for an episode, I just find it weird when it’s planned to be different from the regular makeup in advance and yet telegraphed to be not that - I don’t think anyone would mind, or at least to the extent OP seems to, if the most recent episode ended with a heads up of like hey we’ll be on tour and have a special guest, like there would just have been less of a disconnect there. Still happy to hear from you guys, hope you’re (Plante) not affected in the rest of your work by the equipment mishap and everyone’s doing well travelling and at home.
Personally, I would’ve been pretty okay with this bottle episode of the podcast if Justin literally didn’t tease that he had opinions ready to share on Hades 2 last week.
He said he was excited to get into the minutiae of Hades 2, and I was pumped. Sequel to one of his favorite games. I was ready.
Huge bait and switch. I made it about 30 seconds in this morning and switched it off. I love Russ, but this wasn’t the episode that was teased.
I think this is unfair to Brendan Bigley - regardless of your opinion on what the episode “should” have been like (guess what life happens) - it was a great conversation and I think well worth publishing.
Will the Besties also be covering PokeRogue at some point? Pokemon battling with rogue-like & gacha mechanics, what's not to love? Please look into it before it inevitably gets wiped from the internet by the Pokemon Co!
Great show! Played Hades for hours and hours and had zero idea about familiars being available 😅
Great episode! I can't decide, in my head, should this kind of episode be called Russites or Guesties? 🤔
Guesties is pretty good
Russites are the followers of Russ (us). I think you meant Russties :)
100%
Question for the besties: Dave the Diver recently came out on the playstation game pass, including the Dredge DLC, and it got me to try Dave for the first time. It was a great game and I loved seeing the two worlds come together in fun and wacky ways. Have y'all tried out the dredge DLC yet? And aside from that, what are some of y'alls favorite video game crossovers?
Brendon is excellent and I’d love to hear him on more guest-pisodes 🙏
Guesties!
I’m an outlier here (i go weeks without console gaming, zero PC gaming) and i played a little Hades back when it was GotY but I don’t think I ever even made it through Elysium— something about the size scale and chaos on screen didn’t vibe. (Playing it on Switch and attempting to do some handheld mode made this worse on my middle aged eyes.) With all the run-up to Hades 2 i dipped back in, swallowed my pride and put on God mode, and finally had a successful run a couple days ago. I was really surprised by how moved I was by the end of the run and now have been regularly putting in one or two attempts per day. I stand fully corrected!
Also! I picked up Chants of Sennaar and tore through it after hearing it listed adjacent to Animal Well in terms of “make you feel smart”. Fantastic (despite the occasional momentum killers with stealth segments and the underground labyrinth that i never really grokked)
I am astounded by how much content is in Hades II, and it's funny hearing you guys talks about, say, the "third boss" when I now know how expansive the game is in early access.
I really appreciate a lot of the changes they've made to grow the sequel beyond the first, but I think the thing that has struck me the most - and something you guys touched upon - is the tone of the overarching plot. Both games have that often silly, fun dialogue that brings levity to the story and situations, but here that feels especially important. Zagreus' journey of escape in the original title was always something very personal, and ultimately functioned as a means of connecting him better to his family, so while I was invested in the characters and their relationships, I would say the main story was never what kept me coming back. In comparison, Melinoe's task feels far more important and significant in the grand scheme of things, even while her own reasons for getting involved are very personal. You see the dire impact of Chronos' rule all throughout the locations you visit, and learn more about it through the various characters. It's honestly made it even harder for me to put down compared to the first game simply because I'm so much more compelled to see things through to the end. Like, I REALLY want to bring death to Chronos. That's rad, and with characters and relationships just as strong as those in the first game, it really feels like Supergiant has managed to push the genre forward narratively (for a second time).
I am in depths of Animal Well which made me think of a previous honorable mention on the pod. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (thank you for whoever mentioned it). I can’t stop thinking of the enormous house universe concept though with Animal Well with style mysteries in a 3D search action game. just thought I’d throw that out there. Someone should make that.
Maybe the egg was kidnapped and brainwashed by the Well?!?!
Question on Animal Well: when does it become "more"? I've played for like 8hrs and collected 3/4 flames, just have the mean cat to do. It just still feels like a search-action game. Should I keep pressing on? Am I missing something at this point? I loved outer wilds, tunic, chants of sennaar, etc so the comparisons got me interested but I'm just not feeling those games in this.
I beat it, and collected a few more eggs, and then ... it didn't actually do any of the things they promised it would do, so I stopped. So if you're missing something, so am I.
Yeah I beat it last night and definitely sense some weirdness going on but genuinely have no idea what I'm missing. I'm fairly certain it's to do with the flute but idk...
I beat the main story and collected about half the eggs. I found myself with little desire to scour the world further for more clues and puzzles. I looked up spoilers for the rest of the puzzles and while I wouldn’t encourage anyone else to do the same unless you’re REALLY comfortable with your decision to do so, I’m glad I looked up some stuff as there’s zero chance I would have come to the correct conclusions conclusions on my own. I really feel like the in game guidance you get with the instruction manual in Tunic, or the bullet points you get in Outer Wilds, was missing here. Animal Well is just *so big* and by the time I finished the main story, I had no desire to backtrack through the entire world again.
This is just a guess, but I feel like what was missing for me (that the besties got to experience) is collaborating with a friend on solving the extra layers of puzzles. If I had someone to talk about everything with, I might have been more engaged and wanted to keep uncovering the mysteries enough to get past my exploration fatigue.
I think that makes perfect sense. I just never saw got the breadcrumbs to make me want to dig deeper. I knew that crumbs existed but for the life of me I couldn’t find any and there wasn’t a “story” as far as I could tell that would get me to push any harder.
Great callout imo on the story. Hadn’t even thought about that angle. If there’s a narrative there, it’s over my head. If the secrets were tied more closely to a narrative I could understand, I definitely think I would have been more driven to go further.
hi! i really enjoyed the conversation around scarlet maiden on resties this week, and i was thinking about how sex is addressed/portrayed in video games and in society more broadly. i've been reading the sympathizer by viet thanh nguyen, and in it there is a scene where the protagnist tells an anecdote about masturbation, and then responds to the reader's imagined shock by basically saying "you didn't react with shock when i discussed warfare and murder en masse. why is a conversation about an unapologetically positive sexual experience more uncomfortable than that?" (said better in the novel). one thing i kept thinking about in this conversation is that one of the most popular video game genres is the first-person shooter, where interaction with the world is done via gunfire. the 'violence in video games' question is pretty trite (and certainly scarlet maiden seems to include no shortage of combat!) but the way that what is considered taboo or not taboo in our culture is filtered through video games, one of the more interactive art/entertainment forms, is really fascinating to me!what do you all think?
Guys - I am agonizing over whether or not to get an OLED Steam Deck. I’m lifelong console gamer and this would be my first official move into modern PC gaming. Talk me into or out of it, I beg you.