Dispatch Sticks The Landing

Jason, Maddy, and Kirk have played through all of Dispatch, the new narrative superhero game from a crew of former Telltale directors, and there's a whole lot to discuss. They share their thoughts on the game, disclose whether they picked Invisigal or Blonde Blazer, and talk about what makes it all work so well. First section is spoiler-free, then they get into spoilers later on!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  With great power comes great responsibility, or maybe it's more like reprehensibility? Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we all played Dispatch, a hard R-rated workplace comedy about a team of supervillains trying to do good and get laid. There are narrative choices, large and small, and we all made different ones.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:31Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:32Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Hello. We made it back.

• 0:36Jason Schreier?

  The Game Awards nominations came out this week, and we were actually nominated. Did you guys see this? We were nominated for Best Indie Game, because that means nothing, so.

• 0:47Kirk Hamilton?

  You have a podcast in there.

• 0:48Jason Schreier?

  Triple Click would be on there, why not?

• 0:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we were up there alongside a photograph from 1985.

• 0:56Jason Schreier?

  And the dishwasher.

• 0:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Met 2023 Whirlpool Dishwasher.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  And like, I hate doing dishes by hand. What can I say?

• 1:03Jason Schreier?

  Best indie game is actually Timothy Chalamet. Oh, congratulations.

• 1:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Wow, wild. Who knew? He just happened to be at the awards. How convenient for everyone.

• 1:11Speaker 00

  What is a video game?

• 1:13Jason Schreier?

  What is an indie game?

• 1:14Speaker 00

  We are just coming closer and closer to answering that question without ever quite answering it. And if you want to hear more about us trying to figure out what a video game truly is, just kidding, we've never recorded an episode on that. But if you want to hear more of us, you could be getting our monthly bonus episodes. And how would you go about getting them? Well, you'd go to maximumfun.org/join. You'd become a member, and then you'd get them all. You'd get the whole backlog. Because soon as the gates are opened, all of the Triple Click just comes rushing in at you, and they all appear for you, ready to be downloaded. And this coming month, we're going to record a very special bonus episode

• 1:57Speaker 00

  that I personally decided we should do. I just really had to convince Kirk and Jason of this one. They didn't want to do it, but I started watching this television show. It's kind of obscure, but it's because it's old. And so people might not have heard of it. It's called The Sopranos. And I just think it's really good.

• 2:17Jason Schreier?

  The Sopranos, Maddie?

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's kind of some dispute about pronunciation because it's been talked about so little that there isn't really a canonical agreed upon one. So I started watching that and I just think the first season's really good and that I that maybe Kirk and Jason should check it out and that we could record a bonus episode about The Sopranos. So we're going to do that this month.

• 2:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, Maddie, you've been talking about this so much. I'm looking forward to finally watching it. I it was totally off my radar and then you started talking it up and I it sounds interesting. I, you know, I like mafia stuff, so I guess I'll give it a watch.

• 2:52Speaker 00

  And Jason hates mafia stuff. So this is gonna be tough for him.

• 2:57Jason Schreier?

  I feel like a lot of this is like we're referencing conversations that the three of us have had off the air where so the joke, the joke doesn't play quite as well.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  Well, there's been some of it on the air. Some of it's been on the air.

• 3:11Jason Schreier?

  For those of you who are not in the loop, I've spent years trying to convince Maddie to watch The Sopranos, my favorite show of all time. And it's finally happening. So I'm very excited that we get to talk about it, which will be really soon. I think next week we're gonna run this or within the next two weeks by the end of the month.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's streaming, so hopefully people will enjoy rewatching it along with us. But hey, you probably remember it because I was joking before. It's one of the most famous TV shows of all time. But hey, maybe you haven't seen it before. Maybe you're like me. Check it out. Pretty good. Kirk, you have another quick note before we get to the meat of the show today. So go ahead.

• 3:48Kirk Hamilton?

  I do. So I we actually have another little extra thing coming. And this is not just for members. This will be for everybody. But I wanted to give you all a heads up to keep an eye on the feed next week at the beginning of the week, especially if you're a fan of medieval history and video games related to such that I maybe have mentioned on the show recently. Through a series of funny events, there will be a little extra something for everyone. This is again, this is just totally like an extra thing in the main feed for everybody that's just for fun, kind of because I wanted to do it. So keep an eye on the feed and you may get an extra episode next week.

• 4:25Jason Schreier?

  A Thanksgiving bonus.

• 4:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. The bounty. It's it's just the fall harvest coming through for triple.

• 4:32Kirk Hamilton?

  The cornucopia of pods, the poducopia.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  That's right, that's right. Okay, let's get to it. So, the three of us played a video game for this week called Dispatch.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  And let me just describe this game. So this is an episodic narrative game that takes place in a world of superheroes and villains. It's a very blue comedy game with a lot of F-bombs in it. And also, this game is the debut game from developer and publisher Ad Hock Studios, but doesn't quite feel like a debut game because some of the developers who made it used to work at a studio called Telltale Games. And anybody who's played a Telltale game is probably familiar with the format. It's really similar here. It is a lot of cutscenes and then occasional narrative choices. There are also quick time

• 5:28Speaker 00

  events in this game that I chose to turn off, so I didn't experience them at all. The only or the primary method of gameplay is making narrative choices on behalf of the protagonist, Robert Robertson, aka Mechaman. He wears a big mech suit all the way up until it breaks. That's in episode one. Not a big spoiler. It's the premise of the game, I promise. He becomes a dispatcher, sort of like a 911 dispatcher for a superhero network, where he has to assign a ragtag team of former supervillains to go out in the streets of Torrance, which is a real place, apparently. I didn't know that, but it's a real city. And in this

• 6:10Speaker 00

  game, it's rife with other supervillains that you have to fight. So that's the other gamy part of the game is that occasionally you have to actually run dispatch shifts and put people on the job. So we all played it. I think I said it was episodic. There were four different chunks of episodes that came out over the past several weeks. It's over now. We've all played it. And we're gonna keep it spoiler free for the first 30 minutes or so, and then we're gonna get into spoilers for a little bit. But Kirk will warn all of you and tell you when to tune back in.

• 6:41Kirk Hamilton?

  I promise I will remember to do it this time.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Also, this game's a rom-com. There's a lot of little things to say about it, but it's a rom-com as well. You have to, you have to pick a love interest out of two. So I'm really curious who you two chose and also what you thought about this game. Kirk, why don't you go first?

• 6:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure, I'll go first. I loved this game. I loved it from start to finish. If a game has me grinning as much as Dispatch did every time I was playing it, just laughing and just delighted at pretty much every moment, then I, it is safe to say that I love it. I love Dispatch. I think it is a wonderful game. I am thrilled to have read Jason's reporting on it and his discussions with the developers to know what an uphill battle it was to get it made, only because it's such a tremendously entertaining and wonderful game, and it's been so successful. So it's a rare feel-good story as well. But yeah, I mean, I have a lot to say about this game, and in particular, I think the

• 7:37Kirk Hamilton?

  way that it sort of mechanizes, I guess, that it uses its various mechanics to reinforce the narrative of a team becoming a team. And I think that's something that games can do very well and that no other superhero game aside from Marvel's Midnight Suns has done in the realm that they're doing it with Dispatch. And I just, I really think it's amazing what they've done. Like they are, it's very current. It feels very James Gunn-inflected. I think they're, they've learned a lot of lessons from how James Gunn approached Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad, and Peacemaker. It's something he's done over and over with these acerbic characters who come together to form a kind of found family.

• 8:20Kirk Hamilton?

  They did a great job of it, and I think the pacing is remarkable, the music, the acting. We'll get into all of that, but I really, I was like bowled over by this game. I'm head over heels for it. I loved it.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  Jason, what about you?

• 8:32Jason Schreier?

  I also loved it, and I expected to love it. Kirk, you mentioned the story I did. We'll link it in the show notes, so we can talk about that a little bit as we go. But one thing that I'll shout out is that this game was revealed at the Game Awards last December, and it was a cool splashy reveal where Aaron Paul and his co-star Laura Bailey, the Voice actor who plays Invisigal, the two of them took the stage and they had this kind of weird moment where they like almost kissed each other, but then they introduced the game and it was really cool and we were raving about it on the show. We were like, that was one of the coolest things there. Like, we were all excited about it.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, the trailer looked amazing.

• 9:10Kirk Hamilton?

  If memory serves, it was the only thing at the whole show that made me sit up and say, what is that? I want to play that.

• 9:16Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that made you really excited, right?

• 9:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Quite a feat.

• 9:18Jason Schreier?

  Which is, I mean, this was a show where they announced Witcher 4, so that's really quite a feat. And at the time, I got a text message from someone at the studio who I've known for a really long time, who was like, hey, our whole Slack is buzzing about like you guys mentioning this and shouting it out on triple click. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. But what I didn't know at the time, this person did not mention, and I didn't know until this, until I had this interview with Nick Herman, one of the directors on the game, is that they didn't have funding at that point and were like scrambling and like after the, at the game awards, like at the hotel bar, at the parties afterwards, they were talking to people about potentially finding funding to finish the game. So that trailer and all the buzz around it, including possibly buzz on shows like this, I think

• 10:03Jason Schreier?

  helped them out when it came to ultimately securing that deal with Critical Role, the D and D podcasting network to help fund and finish the game. So yeah, as for the game itself, I also loved it, just like you, Kirk. For people out there might not know, if you just listen to Kirk and his congenial demeanor, you might not know how much he loves dick jokes and they are in spades in this game.

• 10:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, some really good ones in this game.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  I don't know. Our Ball X pit references might have shown listeners where all of our hearts truly lie on this sort of thing, but I don't know.

• 10:39Jason Schreier?

  No, I really like it. It's, it's one of those games where you play it and you're like, man, there are a lot of cliches in this, but they're done so well that it kind of makes you realize that cliches don't matter. It's execution is the only thing that matters. And this is an extremely like phenomenally executed, phenomenanally executed.

• 10:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Phenomenal.

• 10:58Jason Schreier?

  Video game. It's like, it is written by, you can tell that the core of this game, the four Co-founders of this game and also the people around them are people who have been making games for two decades and not just that, but making games together for two decades. You can really feel that in the way that it's written and the confidence that it's all created in and how it's shot and how it doesn't like, it never drags. It is paced so well. It feels like just an extremely well-made TV show the entire time. And the narrative choices, some of them are like really hard to, hard to actually choose, which I think is a good, just like a telling sign of like a game like this that is made really well is when you actually are

• 11:40Jason Schreier?

  sitting there and be like, oh my God, the timer is running out. I don't know what to pick here. I really loved it. The performances are incredible. It looks really great. I like everything about it. I'm not a huge fan of the dispatching management sim part. And for a lot of those, I felt like I wished that I could just skip ahead to the story, but there's so much good dialogue in those that I just wound up enjoying it regardless. Yeah, I love everything about this game pretty much.

• 12:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Maddie, what did you think?

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, we can get to the dispatch mini game in a second because I do feel like that's worth diving into because it's, it's pretty interesting when it does and doesn't affect the story and how clear it does and doesn't make that to you. I, I also really liked this game. I think it gets better as it goes along. It's not to say I didn't like episodes one and two. I thought they were good, but I, I thought it kind of started out, I've been comparing this to Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but saying it's way worse sex jokes than a network television show could ever have, but it's similar and then it's like, you know, the cops in working together, workplace comedy, but there's romance at the workplace as there is in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, lots of sitcom

• 12:46Speaker 00

  vibes, like strange goofy characters being thrown together and also the vibe of a pretty unprofessional workplace, but in service of humor. And you just put aside any feelings you may have about all the HR violations being committed in the game. But also, these are supervillains we're talking about here. So what do we expect of them? Probably not much when it comes to that. So I, you know, I was having a good time and laughing at the game, but I feel like episode five is when it Really becomes something stronger and more interesting. And that's around when the the team really gels and they become not just characters who seem to hate each other. And Robert, the protagonist, but also like the found family aspect that Kirk was talking about.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  And it's easier to like them.

• 13:32Jason Schreier?

  The taco scene for people who played.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  The taco scene, but also the bar fight that precedes the taco scene was extremely entertaining as well. I feel like all of episode five pacing wise, I was really impressed by, and then the rest of the game is a whirlwind. Up until the climax in a positive way, I thought it really moved, really gets kicking after that.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  And like Jason, I also thought some of the choices were really difficult. I really struggled with these. I ended up romancing blonde blazer, but I went back and watched all the invisigal scenes afterwards. Those are your two main love interests. And I think they're both really compelling romance arcs. And you could make an argument for either of them, although the game really puts a finger on the scale with invisigal by giving her a pretty graphic sex scene that's quite titillating. So I think the writers might have a favoritism thing for her when it comes to that. Blonde blazer doesn't get one of those.

• 14:28Jason Schreier?

  I would say they put their finger on the scale by making her an actual character as opposed to just like a.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, blonde blazer, if you go on days with her, there's like a little more to her. But yes, invisigal gets way, way more scenes in total, I would say. So I'm kind of curious how you two feel about that. Did you both pick invisigal? I feel like she's the more obvious choice.

• 14:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, based on the percentages they show you, this game does the telltale thing.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, literally. I know I'm in the minority.

• 14:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, where it shows you the percentage of your choice and you know, what percentage of people sided with you. Some of them seemed a little bit bugged when I played. There were times where it would say like you and you were better than all but 1% of people. And I'm like, I don't think that that's actually true. But for the most part, you know, for the really big decisions, especially Vizi versus Blazer. It kind of tells you. And yeah, invisigal is clearly the more widely chosen pick. Some of it is Laura Bailey. I mean, she's great and she gives a lot of soul to the character. Not to like knock Erin Yvette's performance as blonde blazer. She makes a very strong first impression. I mean, she's this like beautiful, tall, strong character. She shows up and carries Erin Paul.

• 15:37Speaker 00

  They're both hot.

• 15:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and like their first interactions, like her interactions with Aaron Paul when he's at his lowest point, or I should say Robbie Robertson. I guess it's Robert Robertson. I always want to call him Robbie Robertson because like the guy from the band is named Robbie Robertson. Anyway, they have, they have a really wonderful rapport as well.

• 15:54Speaker 03

  Why are you holding drinks?

• 15:57Speaker 04

  Nightcap?

• 15:58Speaker 03

  You're in trouble.

• 16:00Speaker 04

  Actually, according to the bartender, that's exactly what you are. What happened in there?

• 16:05Speaker 03

  A little flare up with some guy, but it, you know, extinguished pretty quick.

• 16:10Speaker 04

  A flare up?

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. Does that not sound convincing enough?

• 16:16Speaker 04

  Hold these. I know a place.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Who's gone?

• 16:20Speaker 04

  It's a little out there. Easier if we fly.

• 16:22Kirk Hamilton?

  So I could see going with either, but yeah, I went with Invisigal. It just seemed like that was where the story was going. And I was kind of following, not like, what do I think is the better choice here, but just what would make for a good episode, like of TV, what would make it for a good season of TV?

• 16:37Speaker 00

  That's a good way to play this game, I think.

• 16:39Kirk Hamilton?

  And I think, yeah, there are some real branches. There are some really variable outcomes. And if you think of it as, well, if this were just a TV show that I watched, how would I feel about it? I really think that all of the outcomes are pretty valid and interesting. Like, they all could make for a good season of TV. So yeah, that was, that was my choice.

• 16:58Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I also went with Invisigal. I, when we get into the spoiler section, I'll talk a little bit about my ending and how I felt about that. But yeah, to me, I mean, it felt like the more natural choice, just because she starts off one place and winds up a totally different place. Like, her arc with you is just like, like, she's the little shit. She's like someone who you want to like boot off the team immediately because she won't listen to a single thing you say. And then by romancing her-

• 17:28Speaker 00

  Enemies to lovers.

• 17:29Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. I mean, that's, it's a more natural kind of arc than, where you start with Blonde Blazer, which is her just being chill and helpful and nice to you, where it doesn't, doesn't leave it a ton of places to go. Kind of like the, I don't know, Kate and Jack versus Kate and Sawyer. Like, it was always going to be Kate and Sawyer because they were, they were at odds with each other and gradually grew to fall in love with another. As opposed to Kate and Jack, who just started in one place, they're not going to like end in the same place. So that always, that always felt true to me. Although I think Jack and Kate did wind up together at the end of it sadly. And Sawyer wound up with Juliet. Um, which real, real mistake there not to get into Lost.

• 18:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, I loved Sawyer and Juliet. They were like my favorite couple on Lost. They were maybe my favorite thing about those later seasons of Lost.

• 18:15Jason Schreier?

  They were cute. Yeah, they did have that, that moment at the end with the vending machine. And yeah, that was, there's some cute stuff.

• 18:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And the actors just had chemistry, I think. You know, speaking of chemistry, I, to say a little bit more about the, the presentation, the acting and the, the feel of this game. I think if you haven't played this, the way we've talked about it so far, we've made it sound like it's a comedy because it is a workplace comedy. There are lots of dicks. There are, there's various nudity and like lots of sex jokes, sex jokes. Pretty funny dick jokes. I would say actually in those terms, it, it does actually remind me of The Legend of Vox Machina. And the only one of us who's watched that, this is the critical role. Animated adaptation of their tabletop campaign. Somewhat different, but similar characters, some same characters, all the same voice actors.

• 18:59Kirk Hamilton?

  It has a similar energy where it's like really blue, as you said, Matty. It's, there's a lot of dick jokes. It's very sexual. It's very silly. But also it's very dramatic. There are incredible action sequences. You get really invested. And then when there's a big showdown at the end of the season, it feels super excited and you, exciting and you can't wait to see what happens, which is how this felt as well. The thing I really want to underline about this is that this game also has a lot of heart. It is a story. As much as it is, it is full of cliches, as you say, Jason. You know, Robert Robertson's story, the fact that he is the third in the line of basically, you know, Iron Man. Though I guess he kind of, he like flies the Hulk Buster or the Iron Giant, like a bigger suit, but it's the same idea. He doesn't have any powers, but he uses this suit.

• 19:44Kirk Hamilton?

  He's inherited it and his grandfather and his father both died in the suit. And this is something that like informs his character and he doesn't want to die in the suit and he almost does at the very beginning. And this is so down to Aaron Paul, who by the way, was snub at the game awards for best performance, which has to be a subject or a matter of timing. That this game came so close to the awards because like his performance, it is so soulful and strong. We know he's a good actor. He's a good voice actor. He's great on BoJack, but man, I mean, as good as everyone else is, his performance, like the, there's this soulfulness, this quality to his voice. And his reads that is exceptionally strong.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  Three times this happened?

• 20:23Speaker 03

  There was Grandpa Bobby, then my dad, who I call dad, but everyone else called Robbie, and then me, Robert. Because I wanted to be taken seriously.

• 20:33Speaker 04

  Mmm, a family tradition.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  In more ways than one. Gramps was the first mecha man. He died in this suit before I was born. Dad was killed fighting Shroud. That's when I took over. There was a little inheritance and the life insurance money.

• 20:51Speaker 04

  I'm so sorry. I didn't realize.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Just your run-of-the-mill sad superhero origin story. The family tradition, if there is one, is dying in that suit, which I guess I don't have to worry about anymore.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  What is it?

• 21:10Speaker 04

  I'm not quite drunk enough to share my origin story just yet, but remind me to tell you someday.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 21:22Kirk Hamilton?

  And it kind of dovetails with the animation. The animation in this game is outrageous. There's a scene where he is like, he leans back and he's like, "Oh." And he does, you guys can see me, he like rubs his hands over his eyes because he's tired and doesn't know what to do and he's like, "Oh." And he does it for a while and it's like, it's so amazing. There's so much stuff like that, this body language, these little scenes, these little movements that are so believable and detailed and just bring you into the world. This game has total swagger. We haven't mentioned it yet, that a lot of the people who worked on this made Tales from the Borderlands, the, I would say probably in retrospect, my favorite of the Telltale adventure games, and the one that also had a similar swagger,

• 22:07Kirk Hamilton?

  like with the music, the vibes, the editing. It just had this like confidence from the drop. And for me at least, from the very beginning of this game, it had that. And one other thing I want to shout out is Andrew Arkady. I think that's how you pronounce his last name, the composer? Or primary composer. There was additional composing by Skylar Bartow. The music in this game is fantastic. Everything from the like really chill beats that play during the dispatching to the like really dramatic music and especially all the like synthwave stuff that he writes in. It gives this almost cyberpunk feeling to some of the vistas as they're flying over the city.

• 22:50Kirk Hamilton?

  It really manages the tone beautifully. And every time I started playing, the music just locked me in. So all that is to say, this game is like an aesthetic triumph across the board, just in terms of all those non-gameplay type things.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. And also because they have actual pop song needle drops, it can feel like a TV show in a complimentary way.

• 23:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Because I was pleasantly surprised by some of the needle drops.

• 23:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, Something Tales From the Borderlands did exceptionally well as well.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, I haven't played it, but that makes sense.

• 23:25Kirk Hamilton?

  It's good.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  I feel like in this, it makes the world feel more real, because sometimes the music is diegetic, but also because it just feels more like you're watching a really highly-produced piece of television or a movie or whatever that is a romantic comedy and has those elements to it, but then also has the superhero climax stuff. I mean, it's, it's hard to know when to use a powerful needle drop these days, I think, because it can be really corny. But I just, I thought they were extremely well done here. So I wanted to shout that out.

• 23:58Jason Schreier?

  I think the smartest decision that this game makes is that it has most of the cast be reformed villains and like just barely reformed villains.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was gonna say, like, some of them are kind of still villains.

• 24:13Kirk Hamilton?

  This is the James Gunn thing, right?

• 24:15Jason Schreier?

  Well, yeah, it's like, yes. Or like, what's it called? The Thunderbolts last year worked really well.

• 24:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Arguably also aping James Gunn.

• 24:23Jason Schreier?

  Whenever you have kind of a bunch of assholes who are trying to be good, you always have good potential for drama. And also, I mean, you mentioned Tales From the Borderlands. The highlight of that game was, of course, Handsome Jack. And I think that handsome, this is kind of like the archetype of like the villain, like it feels like they have a lot of experience writing villainous characters. But really, I mean, I think the fact that they came up with this cast, and some of them are cliches. I mean, all of them are like cliches in some way or another. But it doesn't really matter because they're all executed so well. Their voice acting is so good. Like everyone from- Flambe, this ridiculous asshole.

• 25:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Really won me over by the end of the game.

• 25:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, totally. They all do, right? They all do. To like Sonar, who's like a tech bro who talks about investing in crypto, but also his head is a bat. Extremely inspired stuff. All of these characters were just like, are just so, they're really put first in like front and center is just like the character development. And like, it's almost like the story itself doesn't really matter in the way that with the best TV shows, you're just watching to hang out with these characters for an hour every week. It doesn't really matter what actually happens. And I think this, this game is, has kind of a similar vibe. Like you, you just want to hang out with these people, but because it doesn't wear out its welcome and you don't have to have like endless, like, just kind of like background

• 25:46Jason Schreier?

  conversations with these people. They stay fresh throughout. It's worth noting, I think that like for some people, they might see this game as 30 bucks and be like, oh my God, like it's only eight hours, but to me, this is like perfect, perfect length. Like I, I would not want it to be a second longer. It, it really is just like that sweet spot of like, this is a perfect amount of time to play this game.

• 26:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I was really struck by the pacing. I think there's so much smart shorthand and so much, like, I don't know whether this was luck or what, because I know with things like this, you're always cutting stuff. You never are really sure how it's all going to wind up. And they maybe weren't sure. Did we do enough development on this character or on this storyline for it to feel satisfying and the payoff? And it does move fast, but I was struck over and over again by how smart they are about things. I think one example that comes to mind is Invisigal. So Invisigal is typical bad girl. Her character design, if you just saw her, like the character design of this character just on Twitter or something, you would just think like, oh, that's kind of generic. It's like, not to knock it exactly, but it's, it's a little generic. Oh, and side note, if you get the collector's edition of this game, you get

• 26:54Kirk Hamilton?

  all these art books and they show you iterations of the characters, which I almost never go through that kind of stuff, but I was having a great time going through these. And for Vizzy, they showed they, she was the first design and then they had all these other. Shots at it that are all very different and then they wind up just going back to the first design, which is kind of

• 27:10Jason Schreier?

  Interesting.

• 27:11Speaker 00

  Makes sense, though. I get it.

• 27:13Kirk Hamilton?

  With her character design, if you look at her, you're like, okay, typical kind of bad girl, you know.

• 27:17Jason Schreier?

  The long spiky bangs.

• 27:18Kirk Hamilton?

  But then they make this one choice, I think. It's a single choice for her, where she's a chain smoker. She's kind of bad, but she also has an inhaler because she has asthma. And her power is like tied to holding her breath, too. So her breath winds up being like this part of her character, but it's all about the inhaler. It's this little decision, but the minute you see that, it's this vulnerability and you realize like that she's a person with a story. I don't know how else to put it, but by just doing that one thing, they've done it already. Like you look at her and you get it. You're like, okay, she's bad, but she's trying to be good. And she has a backstory that explains why she is the way she is. And they do that kind of thing with the characters and with the story and with the storylines. They're very smart about making these little decisions.

• 28:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Flambay's karaoke song, for example, other things that like, it's just one choice and it only takes a couple of minutes, but it gives you everything you need to like form an attachment and to get invested.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's talk about some of the gamier parts of the game. The dispatch part and the hacking segment. So Jason, you've weighed in, not a fan, but Kirk, as I recall, you really enjoyed.

• 28:23Jason Schreier?

  I don't want to go that far. It's just like.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  Okay, fine.

• 28:27Jason Schreier?

  I enjoyed all the character development. Just sometimes I would be playing and I would be like, okay, I want to get to the story already. Like I don't need to be doing more of this. I wouldn't say like I dislike it or anything.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know what you mean. I, I think I liked it a little more than you, but there were definitely times when I was like, I feel like I've been doing a lot of dispatching and I want to get back to the main thrust of the game. But Kirk, as I recall, you were talking in our group chat about how you really dug this and you liked it a lot. Do you feel that way having completed all of the dispatch shifts?

• 28:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I would separate the hacking from the dispatch. The hacking is cool. I like the idea and I think that it adds tension at some really key points. To explain this to listeners, Robbie at his dispatching console also has the ability to hack into things. So sometimes you do this hacking mini game that can be fun, but sometimes it feels like it's not explaining the rules to you or it's kind of tripping. You up in ways that are like clever, but also kind of annoying. The main gameplay, though, I guess I should, let me explain the main dispatching gameplay and how it works. This is the bulk of what you do at the desk. You know, you're looking at this overlay of the city with exclamation points with timers on them. And you have to click on an exclamation point and then a little, you know, dialogue box pop up, pops up.

• 29:37Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's anything from there's an assault underway at the bank to the fans of this book signing are getting really rowdy. And we don't know what to do to there's a flood to like, I need someone to walk my dog or I need somebody to get me coffee. Like, there's just all kinds of things, anyone who calls the SDN, the superhero company. And then you look at the, at whatever the scenario is, and it will give you a few facts about it. It will say, you need someone to calm the crowd and be ready to fight if things escalate. Or maybe it'll say, you need someone to chase the train and catch it before it crashes and disarm the bomb. And it kind of highlights the verbs. And then that kind of tells you like which of your superheroes you want to dispatch.

• 30:21Kirk Hamilton?

  So the whole game, you're kind of assembling mini teams from among your available superheroes. You know, Sonar is really smart and Golem is really tough. And so maybe you need someone who is, can withstand a lot of damage and also can be smart about figuring something out. Or like, you know, they're charismatic or whatever. And then throughout the game, you kind of level up your, your characters and you customize your build out. That's to explain how this works. That stuff, I think, is all really cool. I love what they're doing. I love the, I think the pacing is actually very good. I never, it never wore out its welcome. And I think that it mechanized the team coming together in a way that worked really well narratively.

• 31:01Kirk Hamilton?

  At the beginning, it was fun reading Steam reviews for this game because when the first two episodes were out and then the first four, it was kind of, I was on mostly positive or something, very positive. It was pretty good, but a lot of people were complaining, saying, oh, I want all the episodes. And a lot of people were saying, I want more dispatching, like, I just want to play that forever. And then I think as the game went on, you can see reviews start to see what the game is. And now they're like overwhelmingly positive. And there's way more of them because the game is over. And I think people got a feeling for how the dispatching was like stretched out over the whole game. And once you play the whole game, you get what they're doing. You start out, everything's a mess. There are dispatch rounds where it's kind of a wash. It's supposed to be. Everyone's pissed, their stats are all reduced, you're losing all the time, you're overwhelmed,

• 31:46Kirk Hamilton?

  there's too much to keep up with. It's all on purpose. Like, each one is kind of a little set piece. And then toward the end, when you've really kind of got everyone cooking, they're all riffing, they're referring to past things that happened, they're friends, they're kicking ass because you've really maximized them and learned how to dispatch. And it's this feeling of like, having as Robert, like, coached this team into being a well-oiled machine, that's incredibly satisfying and like, fits along with the story. It's a great example of like, ludonarrative consonants, or whatever you want to call it. So I loved all of that. And then the hacking, like I said, I have some quibbles with like, the specifics, I didn't think it was great. It's fun to give you something, some variety, and it added tension in some places. So I didn't hate it or anything.

• 32:24Jason Schreier?

  There's one moment when something really tragic happens, and then the entire dispatch mission afterwards is just silent, which is so striking at the time.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's very effective. Because they're usually talking your ear off the entire time.

• 32:38Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, they usually won't shut up, and here it's just like so silent.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  Being so distracting sometimes, in a good way. Because they have so much character.

• 32:44Kirk Hamilton?

  There's, I think, a point at which everyone is hungover, and they like, don't, or at least some characters will show up hungover. There's just a lot of kind of tie-ins to what's happening in the story outside.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I agree with you, Kirk. We're almost up to the point where I want us to start spoiling things, but any closing thoughts before we get to the spoiler section of the cast? I will say, just overall, definitely recommend it. I think maybe Romance and Visigoe, even though I have Romance Blonde Blazer, and in real life, she's probably the better choice, but for story reasons, go with the toxic, enemies-to-lovers arc, I think. Any other thoughts?

• 33:24Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I really liked it. I guess last spoiler-free thought is that Beef is maybe the best dog I've ever seen in a video.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Oh my god, yes. So cute.

• 33:32Kirk Hamilton?

  And I would die for him.

• 33:33Jason Schreier?

  Let me, let me kind of, before we get into the spoilers section, let me get into what we were alluding a little bit earlier, which is the kind of the crazy story behind the game's making, which is, I'll give the short version again, people can click the article in the show notes, and even that story is kind of an abridged version of what is, what happened, all the kind of crazy twists and turns along the way from what I've heard. But basically, these guys all left Telltale, they went to Ubisoft for like a year or so, they worked on a Splinter Cell game, that was kind of abandoned or mutated in ways they didn't like. Then they started their own thing, and they had this contract with this New York company to do like a live action, interactive thing. And they wrote what would

• 34:17Jason Schreier?

  eventually become Dispatch for them, and they were about to start shooting, and that was in March of 2020, and then a pandemic hit. And then they like had to scramble, they started working with Telltale on Wolf Among Us 2, which still has not come out. They parted ways, they had a divorce with Telltale over that. They started working on another thing for a bit, that fell apart, and eventually they pulled Dispatch back off the shelf, and they were like, hey, we should work on this. They signed with the publisher, that publisher, after like a year or a year and a half, was like, man, market research shows that nobody wants these kind of games, sorry, we're out. And they were scrambling, the founders didn't take paychecks for like six months, as they were just like, oh my god, like, how are

• 35:01Jason Schreier?

  we gonna pay for this thing? And this is an expensive production. They had like animation houses, they were paying Aaron Paul, and all these other top notch voice actors, Jeffrey Wright, who we didn't even mention is in this, also the killer role.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, Jeffrey Wright's in this. We haven't mentioned him yet.

• 35:14Kirk Hamilton?

  And he's fantastic.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  He's so good in it.

• 35:16Jason Schreier?

  And then the Game Awards announcement happened, like I mentioned, and then they were about to sign this deal that I think was pretty bad terms with another publisher, until they talked to Critical Role, because Critical Role had them signed up to do a different project, they were gonna make a game with Critical Role, which is their next thing on the docket, that's what's coming next.

• 35:36Kirk Hamilton?

  It's very exciting, honestly.

• 35:37Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, which is pretty cool. And Critical Role was like, hey, why don't we just find Dispatch? And so that's what happened. And so they funded the rest of the game and led to the game getting finished in October. And there's a lot more along the way, including lots of conversations about like whether it should be episodic or not. I think it was perfect for this because it was all each, each chunk of episodes, each two episode release was only a week apart, which made people really excited and led to these humongous audience spikes every single week. I think episodic has gotten a bad rap because in the Telltale days, they were so inconsistent. And it would sometimes like, sometimes you'd get a new episode after a month and sometimes you'd have to wait a year for a new episode. So that was really frustrating for people. Nobody had any idea when they were going to come out.

• 36:22Jason Schreier?

  And they were sometimes underwhelming along the way. But yeah, this, this I think worked out really well. And then the game has sold a million copies in its first 10 days, probably many more since then. Been a huge hit. They're almost certainly going to make a new season after this. And yeah, it's a, it's a feel good story.

• 36:41Kirk Hamilton?

  The one thing I would say to that story, I think that's worth kind of thinking about and highlighting is that this is an example of one group of creators who own their own product in this is critical role, who were so successful and successful by creating something on their own terms, the way that they did. These are voice actors, you know, of course, Matt Mercer, who we know and came on the show and have talked to you about this a little bit, just off the air when we were playing D and D with him. But this is a group of people who are in so many games, who are all very high profile and very successful, who then basically stepped outside of that and made their own thing in critical role that was wildly successful.

• 37:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And now they're able to take that success and use it to allow other people who are doing the same thing to become successful. This is a virtuous cycle and the kind of virtuous cycle that I think is really cool to see. And then I kind of just want to highlight for people like there aren't that many feel good stories in the world of video games, but seeing one group of people go independent and help another group of people make something amazing. And like dispatch is amazing. I just think that's really, really cool. And it just makes me very happy to see it.

• 37:50Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's good stuff.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, same. All right. Let's go spoil this thing, shall we?

• 37:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, let's go spoilers. Okay, so I'm gonna give you the warning. I swear I'm gonna come back and put it in. And we won't like yell spoilers immediately either. So we'll give you a little bit of time after this. But if you want to, just skip right to one more thing. Go to this timestamp, 57 minutes, 55 seconds. That's 57, 55. I remembered.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Okay, we're back. Let's talk about some of the choices we made and whether we felt like they were significant or not. There's some that I felt were great, but one that I wanted to mention that I didn't love is the choice between Couper and Sonar. Because the game kind of tricks you here. I mean, I understand this type of gameplay trickery. It kind of makes you feel like there's a really stressful dispatch call where you have to make careful decisions. And in my mind, I was like, oh, any hero could be at the bottom. I have to really think about who I'm gonna send out. Any of my heroes could get cut. But as it turns out, there's actually only two heroes who can ever get cut, which I'm it's totally logical for gameplay and game development really reasons. It's always gonna be these two.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  And it's gonna be relatively simple choices at the end. I've watched all the endings of the game at this point, and they're pretty similar as to like whether Sonar or Couper showed up at the very end too. And I get it, but it definitely made me think about some of the other choices in the game as being meaningful or not. And I was wondering how you two felt about the choices in the game. That one and also some of the other ones that matter way more, like the romance.

• 39:27Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess first of all, I want to know, who did you cut?

• 39:30Speaker 00

  I cut, I cut Couper, and that's because I just thought Sonar was really funny.

• 39:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think almost everybody.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  I don't really like her that much, so bye. Yeah.

• 39:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, she's just less likeable. And I think as a character design, just less interesting. I mean, one guy is like a bat, like finance bro, and the other lady is sort of just throws knives.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  She's got knives.

• 39:51Kirk Hamilton?

  And has wings. Yeah, she has. Really, for me, it was more that, though I do think they do something clever in the gameplay in that. I don't know if this happens for everybody, but for me, Punch Up and Coopay formed the first synergy right before I cut her. And then that winds up, that wound up being like part of the story is that Punch Up and she were friends. And he kept like, he was like apologizing to her later when you're fighting her in the boss fight.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, that happens every, for everyone, I think.

• 40:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, I think, I assumed that happened for everybody. And I think that's clever, like that they give you this synergy. And they're almost like giving her a little more weight as like an acknowledgement that Sonar is just as a character designed so much more interesting that most people are probably gonna stick with him.

• 40:32Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Yeah. Although, I mean, whoever you don't pick, ultimately like winds up getting a little bit less time moving forward. And you can kind of tell because there's always like specific, like a cut, a cut scene will just like cut to one shot where like Sonar is in it and then there are other shots.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  They were filmed in a separate room, see?

• 40:49Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it is one of those things. Like Arrested Development, season four, where they're all different.

• 40:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, right. Since we're doing spoilers, Maddie, so you romance Blonde Blazer and Jason and I both romance Invisigal. And I really liked the arc that Blonde Blazer had in the Invisigal romance, only because at the very end, she gives her amulet to Chase and it allows him to like be the last minute save. And then you see that she actually looks completely different and doesn't naturally have superpowers, which is a really sweet scene for me. And I partly liked it because, again, to think of this as a TV show that I'm watching, I actually would put her and Robbie Robertson together as more of a long-term thing. And that Invisigal seems like maybe this will be exciting and eventually flame out because like they have lots of chemistry,

• 41:37Kirk Hamilton?

  but also they're kind of both a little messed up and like maybe it won't work.

• 41:41Jason Schreier?

  Kate and Sire.

• 41:41Kirk Hamilton?

  And I really thought those final scenes were really nice, especially given that they're two people who don't have any, any powers. And that she's actually like much more down to earth than she appears to be in all those early scenes. I gather when you date her, if you go out to dinner with her, you learn this earlier. Is that, that's the case?

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Yes, you learn it right away because I appreciate this. She doesn't want to lie to you about who she really is. So she takes off the amulet right away for you and he makes a joke about how she looks almost exactly the same and is like, Absolutely beautiful because she like really, really builds up to it. And she's like, you might not like me anymore. And she looks almost exactly the same. It's a really funny moment.

• 42:17Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like the Ready Player One thing. When you meet me in real life, I have a birthmark.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Exactly. She looks gorgeous. And like, and I think he says something like, okay, you're two inches shorter and you have brown hair. It's very funny. It's good. And they have a really, they have a lot of chemistry as well. And this is part of why I, I wish they had just like given Blonde Blazer one more scene or two to kind of help make the decision more difficult because Invisigal is also so charming, but in a completely different way. But also, I really liked the ending I got, even though from what I understand, it's the bad ending. I, I don't know an ending you two got. And if you don't mind me spoiling mine.

• 42:56Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I, I know. Cause I talked to Jason about it. This is the ending where Invisigal turns villain.

• 43:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, but it's not, I don't quite read it that way. I would say it's very vague.

• 43:05Kirk Hamilton?

  I totally, I totally don't think it's a bad ending for what I said.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what happens in my ending is I didn't get the opportunity to kill Shroud or spare Shroud as Robert, as I gather other people do. And instead, Invisigal shows up and kills him for me very dramatically. And then she and Robert exchange a mysterious glance that I think, this credit to the animation in this game is that a lot of times you just see characters have facial expressions that you could interpret a lot of different ways. And she takes Shroud's mask with her, which you could take as like, oh, she's gonna take over his gang or be a villain. And you have a conversation with Blonde Blazer afterwards where you ask her, like, or she asks you rather, what she,

• 43:51Speaker 00

  what do you think? What do we think Invisigal meant by that? But I take it as just she isn't necessarily still a villain, but she is a loner. She's a lone wolf. And I thought that that interpretation of her character made sense for the arc that I'd been playing the entire time, which is a Robert who repeatedly rebuffs Invisigal's absurd sexual advances towards him. Her kind of not sticking with the team after that made sense for the arc that. I had just played and her necessarily not wanting to be a part of the group also made story sense. But obviously, if I'd romanced her, or at least had a better relationship with her than I ended up having, I think it wouldn't have made sense.

• 44:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so the way it works is there's like a mathematical formula where you're getting points every time you select some options with Invisigal and losing points every time you select others. And that is kind of independent from whether you're romancing her. I'm not 100% sure if you can romance blonde blazer and then also get Invisigal like saved. I think you can.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  You can.

• 44:56Jason Schreier?

  Because you don't need to be romancing her. Yeah, that's what I thought because then I did the opposite. I got the worst of all worlds. I was romancing Invisigal and then also she did what she did with you, Maddie.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  Oh, fascinating.

• 45:09Jason Schreier?

  Likely because I chose to cut her from the team. Cause like, why would you leave her on when the rest of your team is threatening to revolt if you're gonna keep her? And also she like, almost got Chase killed. So like, what the hell? She needs, she needs to see punishment for her actions. So I thought that was the most logical choice, but by doing so and not, not, I guess, sticking up for her. I got called a bad mentor by the game's, by the game's achievements.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, me too.

• 45:35Kirk Hamilton?

  So to me, that's the best of all worlds. I think that's the best media storyline is that there's a flirtation and a romance between Robert and Invisigal. And then eventually she becomes quote unquote, turns evil. She kills Shroud at the end and we're left with that cliffhanger at the end of the season. To me, if I were writing this show, that would be the season that I would write.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  It's good, yeah.

• 45:57Kirk Hamilton?

  And I would leave Blazer and Robert like hanging out and talking and like realizing that they have more in common than they thought. That sets up a great story for season two. I think the one misstep the game makes is that achievement you mentioned, Jason. I think it's the fact that when I got my ending, which was a romance ending with Invisigal and a happy ending where I spared Shroud. Invisigal took a bullet for Robbie and then she, she wound up like being a good guy and joining the team. The achievement said succeeded as a mentor and the one that you both got said failed as a mentor. And I think. That alone, it just, it puts like, it kind of qualifies what you're doing and tells you you did a bad job. Or makes you feel like you got a bad job. And then you see everyone referring it to it as the good ending and the bad ending.

• 46:39Kirk Hamilton?

  But I honestly think the good ending in like narratively, the better ending is the one you just described, Jason. And the one you described, Maddie, is cool too, where you're romancing Blazer. That's fine. The really like, if it's a TV show, it's the one Jason got. I think that to me feels the most canonical. And the one that I got, it was great. It was nice. It was fun. They like kissed while she's being loaded onto the, into the ambience.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  It's actually really corny. Like I watched it and it has fireworks. I was like, wow, this is almost too neat.

• 47:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, is that it like, it was nice. I love these characters, but it was a little, it was so positive. I was like, ah. If I were watching the show, I'd way rather that it ended the way that it did for Jason.

• 47:16Jason Schreier?

  Well, I wonder, maybe your ending is like, if they never got a second season and my ending is like, okay, setting up for season two.

• 47:23Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a very good way of thinking.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  I'm really curious if they do get a second season.

• 47:27Jason Schreier?

  Because they have to pick one to be canon.

• 47:29Speaker 00

  Correct. Yeah. Or maybe they don't. Although it's a heck of a lot of writing if they don't.

• 47:33Jason Schreier?

  It would be very difficult. You'd have to have so many permutations. Like if, if the story.

• 47:37Kirk Hamilton?

  They could like wrap it up in the first episode.

• 47:38Jason Schreier?

  Sure. That, that might be, I, I think it would be interesting to have a story where like Invisigal is the bad guy the entire time. I think that would be a fun, a fun season too. But yeah, I mean, I like, at the end of the day, I don't care that much because for me, the fun of it all was just hanging out with these characters. And I'm excited to spend more time with them. At some point, I might replay the whole thing with different choices just to see it and just to spend time in that world again. And here again is where like the fact that it is so short, relatively short compared to other games. And, and I think the fact that it doesn't have the Telltale style, like walking around and picking up objects just does so much, just does it such a service.

• 48:16Jason Schreier?

  Like, um, it makes it so much better, so much more quote unquote replayable, but so much more enjoyable and, um, fun to, fun to go through.

• 48:25Kirk Hamilton?

  I totally agree. I want to replay this, actually just on TV with Emily. I started it on my own, having previously thought maybe we could play through it together, and she would love this. I mean, this is something that anyone, people who don't play games, you could share this thing on the TV and just play through it together. Man, I mean, it's like, what a game to welcome in people who maybe don't play games, or you know, spouses, or siblings, or whoever, who just want to hang out. I mean, this is just a fun TV show to watch together.

• 48:50Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's on PlayStation 5 and PC. I kind of think of it as a PC game because that's where I played it, but I was actually thinking, when The Steam Machine comes out, I'm going to set one of those up in my bedroom and play it with my wife, because I think she'll really enjoy watching it. The Steam Machine is a nice, nice way to do that.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, because I know you two played Until Dawn, and it's kind of a similar, like, you could make decisions together about how you want to proceed. It's funny, because we keep referring to this as a TV show, and something that I've kind of struggled with internally is like, would this have been better if it just were a TV show, and if they had actually made the decisions? And I don't think it would be.

• 49:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Definitely not.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Having seen the multiple endings, and having had my own emotional investment of making choices that ultimately I wish I'd made different ones, but I think that's really powerful, and it's a good thing that I feel that way, and a testament to the game being powerful and effective, that I want, I wanted to see what would happen if I had made the other choices and happily watched through them today, and had a great time doing that, too. So I do feel like it shows that it can be a game, and have that still be really effective.

• 49:52Kirk Hamilton?

  I completely agree. I mean, it definitely would not have, I mean, it would have lost a lot without the interactive elements. And like I said, like, I really liked the dispatch gameplay, and I think that's an essential part of the overall experience. Like, I think it makes it so much better.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Even though I didn't like it as much as you, I agree, that it really adds to the story.

• 50:08Jason Schreier?

  And it's worth noting, we've been talking about the major decisions, but there's so many little decisions you make along the way that don't really mean anything in the long run, but still are just so entertaining and fun, and give you a little more agency over the story than you would if you were watching a show.

• 50:20Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, since we're doing spoilers, one that I'll call out is, very early on, Gollum knocks Robert over while you're going into a group meeting, and it's really careless, and he's huge, and Robert's really kind of skinny and small. And it's this moment of like, man, I guess neither of you have been classroom teachers. But when you're a classroom teacher, there's like kind of some prison rules to it, especially when you're starting. And especially when you're a young teacher, which I was when I was a classroom teacher. I was like 24 and you walk in and like, they will mess with you and you have to establish your authority. And it's very hard to do. And there is always that kid in the class who pushes you, not physically probably, but like in, in some other way. And you have to figure out how to do it. It's like a very real thing.

• 51:05Kirk Hamilton?

  And in this moment, Robert has to establish his authority. So for me, I like kicked Gollum out of the meeting. I was like, you're out of here, man. And he was like, kind of looked at me and I was like, you gotta go. Like it was, it felt very true to the moment where like-

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Like power struggle.

• 51:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. You're standing there and you're just waiting and you just have to like stay strong. Cause if you cave, it's over and you'll never have authority. And then he goes outside and then over the whole course of the game, they work together. They form a rapport. Gollum becomes a very useful part of the team. Man, he's like a goat in the field. He has like some really good super power, like special powers. And then when Flambay, and for me anyways, I told the team that I was Mechaman and Flambay tries to kill Robert and Gollum saves his life. And it was this great little thing that especially because of the way I played it, kind of illustrated an arc between the two characters. And that Gollum was totally there for him and he, he saved his whole life or whatever it is that he says to him. And I love that. I think like, that's one of those smaller decisions that you were referring to, Jason.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I also confess to being Mechaman there. And it's, it's wild to me that you can choose not to do that and have Flambay, I think not know that you are. I really liked that I got to see that arc because I really liked it. I, I don't know how it plays out. See, this is the thing is that I actually don't know how every single small decision plays out in the game. And that there are so many that are really interesting.

• 52:19Jason Schreier?

  I mean, you can also, I'm like, there's also these tiny things like you could choose not to fist bump Royd in the, at the urinal. And that which is what I did.

• 52:27Kirk Hamilton?

  And the fist bump between them becomes a whole thing.

• 52:29Jason Schreier?

  Right. And I chose not to, which is fun. Uh, just seeing as he, he got mad and you're like, we're at the urinal, dude. I'm not going to touch your hand.

• 52:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Here's a question that you both might not know. So you can you add Phenomenon Man to the team instead of Waterboy? Does that actually?

• 52:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what I did.

• 52:46Kirk Hamilton?

  And he really is on the team then?

• 52:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's great.

• 52:49Kirk Hamilton?

  That's so funny.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  That's so funny.

• 52:50Kirk Hamilton?

  I love Waterboy. I added him.

• 52:52Jason Schreier?

  I had Waterboy. Waterboy is great.

• 52:54Speaker 00

  I had Phenomenon Man. He's so funny. If you guys play it again, you should pick Phenomenon.

• 52:59Jason Schreier?

  Waterboy levels up so quickly that you can like beef him up.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, so does Phenomenon Man. I think probably by design.

• 53:06Kirk Hamilton?

  He's pretty beefy to start with.

• 53:07Speaker 00

  He's already so powerful and he's, his lines are so funny. I truly recommend choosing him if you two play it a second time because his dynamic with the rest of the team is great. He's such a deadpan like, cause he's an alien and doesn't understand people.

• 53:20Kirk Hamilton?

  And he's depressed.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  And that is an archetype that I really like. And he's depressed. So instead of going in resting mode, like the other heroes, he goes into depression mode.

• 53:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, he joins the team.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Which is also very funny. Yeah. So I guess you got to see that at some point.

• 53:31Kirk Hamilton?

  He joins the team at the very end. So you get a little bit of him. But yeah, I really, I just wasn't sure if that was a false choice. And then I chose Waterboy.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  No, it's real.

• 53:38Kirk Hamilton?

  And also I was, I did not choose to admit that like I kissed Blonde Blazer, but I know that you can.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 53:43Kirk Hamilton?

  And I, I haven't watched how that plays out. But that's another one of those like, you know, in the broad scheme of things, not that consequential, but it's kind of a major revelation. Like, I kissed your girlfriend or I didn't. And I was like, I'm not telling this guy I kissed his girlfriend.

• 53:56Speaker 00

  I didn't tell him either. I don't know what happened.

• 53:58Jason Schreier?

  I did. It's not, it's, it's kind of a small thing. Like he's, he gets sad anyway.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  Cause he's pretty, he's pretty chill about human interactions in a way that's very comical. So I could see that being the case where he'd just be like, okay, I guess this is what.

• 54:11Kirk Hamilton?

  What is it? He says, he's like, you might want to stand back. Like my launch has been known to damage humans or something.

• 54:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's great.

• 54:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, what a funny game. I do, I really do wanna, I wanna replay it.

• 54:22Jason Schreier?

  Well, it's funny. It's funny how that all plays out. Cause when you first see it, you think of him as who's gonna be the just like jockey douchebag who you have to like.

• 54:29Speaker 00

  Like a Captain Hammer type?

• 54:30Jason Schreier?

  Who, who becomes your kind of your antagonist along the way. But no, it turns out he's just kind of a clueless alien dude and he means everything he says. And then he break, like they break up almost immediately, um, which is, which is an interesting subversion. Cause like, uh, I think I, I had thought that like romancing Blonde Blazer would have to involve like. Talking her out of him or something like that.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, me too. And I was like, God, that's annoying. But instead, they do subvert that by just having her immediately dump him and be like, that relationship was already not really anything at all.

• 55:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Of all the, of all the writing, maybe missteps in this game, the one that I will really call out is that I don't think that these writers understand what a dad bod is.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 55:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  Robert doesn't have a dad bod.

• 55:13Kirk Hamilton?

  They refer to Robert as having a dad bod when he is in fact totally shredded.

• 55:17Speaker 00

  He has a six pack.

• 55:19Kirk Hamilton?

  And yes, as someone who increasingly has a dad bod with every year I go into my 40s.

• 55:24Speaker 00

  That really bothered me.

• 55:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I was like, guys.

• 55:26Speaker 00

  If they're listening, I need them to patch out that joke. It's inaccurate.

• 55:30Kirk Hamilton?

  It could be they had a different character design for Robert when they wrote that joke or something.

• 55:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe, but he's, he's shredded. And I mean, he is very small. So I actually feel like there are probably other jokes you could put there to describe his diminutive stature compared to the other characters that make it clear that he doesn't have the classic superhero body type and maybe not even a normative male video game protagonist body type. And I thought that was cool and interesting, by the way, but he doesn't have a dad bod.

• 55:55Kirk Hamilton?

  No.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  So thanks for calling that out. That was bugging me, too.

• 55:58Kirk Hamilton?

  I thought it was important.

• 55:59Speaker 00

  It is important. And on that very important note, why don't we take a break and come back with one more thing?

• 56:12Speaker 05

  Hey, I'm Jake Heath Van Stratten from Go Fact Yourself, and I'm here with Max Fun Member of the Month Josh Mentor, who has been a Maximum Fun member since 2016. Hello, Josh.

• 56:23Speaker 06

  Hey, Jake Heath. How you doing today?

• 56:25Speaker 05

  I'm so well, and thank you so much for being a listener and supporter of our show. What made you decide to support Max Fun in general and to support our show Go Fact Yourself?

• 56:35Speaker 06

  Jordan Morris on Jordan Jesse Go has a thing that he likes to say, which is, you know, you tip your bartender a buck a beer, you tip your podcaster a buck a month. You know, I get way more use out of Max Fun podcasts than I do like Disney Plus or Netflix.

• 56:50Speaker 05

  Well, it's something we very much appreciate. And by the way, when was the last time Netflix selected you as a member of the month?

• 56:55Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 56:57Speaker 05

  Exactly. Josh Mentor, congratulations, and thank you again for being the Max Fun Member of the Month.

• 57:04Speaker 06

  Thanks so much, guys.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  Become a Max Fun member now at maximumfun.org/join.

• 57:12Speaker 07

  Walking About is the podcast about walking. It's a walkumentary series where I, Alan MacLeod, and a fun, friendly guest go for a walkabout. You'll learn about interesting people and places and have the kind of conversations you can only have on foot. We've got guests like Lauren Lapkus.

• 57:35Kirk Hamilton?

  I figured something out about this map, like how to read it.

• 57:39Speaker 07

  Betsy Sidaro. I had no clue. That's awesome and nuts. John Gabris. This is like great first date for like broke 20 something, you know? And more. Check out Walking About with Alan MacLeod on Maximum Fun.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  We are back. It's time for one more thing. Kirk, why don't you go first?

• 57:59Kirk Hamilton?

  All right. My one more thing is a book that I finally finished after reading it for many, many weeks. This is the latest in my Sandin Branderson fantasy odyssey, JK Brandon Sanderson fantasy odyssey. Wow, say that 10 times fast. This is Oathbringer, the third book in the Stormlight Archive. I have, I believe, made the first two books, each their own one more thing as well. And I have finished Oathbringer. And man, it is a hell of a book. And I mean that in like mostly positive way, but also in a kind of wow, what a big book kind of way. So this book is a jillion pages long. It's like 1,200 pages or something, something like that, more than 1,000 pages.

• 58:44Kirk Hamilton?

  The next book, Rhythm of War, I believe is even longer. I'm not sure. And I think that's the longest one. This is a fantasy series that is typical to Brandon Sanderson, set in the Cosmere, which is his whole sort of broader universe of kind of broad, like vaguely connected different planets and kind of lore and, and magic systems and stuff. It's a long, long story that is basically about.

• 59:11Kirk Hamilton?

  A war, a war between two peoples, humans and the Parshendi, I suppose you would call them, or the listeners, they have a lot of different names, a sort of a different species of human-like people who both live on this continent, on a planet in the Cosmere, and they're fighting one another for very complicated reasons that I will not explain. And what is remarkable about this series is that it was clearly mapped out in advance, and he is telling a story with pacing unlike I at least have ever read in a fantasy series. This is a story that is designed to be paced out over, I believe, 10 books, and it's two halves, so it's like two five-book halves, so this is like the halfway point of the first major arc.

• 59:54Kirk Hamilton?

  And unlike Mistborn, which I've mentioned before, which is another trilogy that he wrote, it actually feels like it was mapped out in advance. Mistborn, the first Mistborn book, great book, really cool story start to finish, then you read the second and the third one, and you're a little like the Matrix sequels, where it feels kind of like, oh, he decided to tell more stories, but he already kind of ended it, so he didn't quite know where to go, and it's not quite as satisfying, it's a little bit of a muddle. This does not feel that way. This is like, there are things that were set up in the very first book that are just now being explained, that I'm like, oh, wow, you really, you really did know what this was gonna be. It is so long, it takes a very long time to read, and there are definitely points in the book where I felt like, dude, this is so long.

• 1:00:35Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm reading it on Kindle, and I would just like bang away at it for an hour. You're on your percentage. And the percentage would just not punch. It was just that feeling of like Sisyphus pushing the narrative boulder up the hill. That's amazing. And I'm like, I want to read so many other books, and like, this is good, this is fun, but like, my god, dude. So then comes the Sanderlanch, which is what his fans call the big explosion, the climax of the story, the ending where all of the storylines come together, and there's usually a massive battle and a huge showdown, and every, all of this stuff goes down. And the Sanderlanch is always worth it. It always has been, I've read a bunch of his books by now, you always get to the end, and when he just starts cooking at the end, you're like, dude, it was all worth it, hell

• 1:01:18Kirk Hamilton?

  yeah, like, because it's, he goes so over the And the fight scenes are so exciting and the new revelations, people channeling powers that they didn't know existed. You know, two guys having a sword fight flying in the air in front of a hurricane. These unbelievable set pieces and they're all intercut. His pacing is masterful. I mean, it's really well done. This book, because it's so huge, has the most gigantic Sander Lanz ever. It's like seven seasons of an anime of like seven different anime shows. All ending at the same time and like simultaneously. And so you're cutting from person to person to person as like they increasingly are overwhelmed. And then somehow they are saved at the last minute, or there's some Deus ex machina, or they get some new power or et cetera. And it was really cool, but a little bit exhausting.

• 1:02:03Kirk Hamilton?

  But overall, I liked it and I just, I'd like to say for starters, I have mentioned Sanderson and he can be a polarizing person. Or that's not quite the right word. People have very strong opinions about his books. In our Discord, a lot of people were talking about it when I was talking about the last book, Words of Radiance, which I really enjoyed. The last book in this series, saying, oh, well, Kirk, enjoy. That's the last good one and they all suck. Which first off, don't do that to people. This is just my advice. Don't say that when someone is like in a, even if you think that that's true. Don't tell someone that like the next book sucks because it just sort of bums them out and it did bum me out. And it made me think, oh, well, maybe I won't read this. Then I kind of started it and was like, oh, this is pretty good. And I got halfway through and I was like, this is fine. This is just like his other books. Like it's totally good. And by the end I was like, this was great. What is everyone talking about?

• 1:02:48Kirk Hamilton?

  So I no longer listen to people who say that, but I'm just saying, if you said that, don't say that. And also you were wrong. I thought this book was pretty good. And, and, and my final thought is just, I'm ready to read some shorter books, so I'm going to take a break. It'll happen at some point, but I actually like his shorter stories. He has some like novellas in this world that maybe I'll read at some point. But no, I've already moved on to some, some like whodunnits and some, some books where I read and I, and I move like 5% on the Kindle within an hour.

• 1:03:20Jason Schreier?

  King Sorrow, which I recommended last week as my one more thing. It's big, but it doesn't feel big. It moves at a, at a breakneck pace. So it might be, it might be a good one for you to start.

• 1:03:29Speaker 00

  Also, it probably sounds like it's so. Shorter than Oathbringer is.

• 1:03:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Probably, yeah. But that is true, that like, depending on the style, it doesn't always feel long. And Sanderson's books do feel long. I don't know that that's exactly a bad thing. Like, and I don't want to sound like I'm saying the length is a problem exactly, because the sheer scope of this series is like, part of what makes it, at least for me, a unique experience. It's really cool. I mean, there's just so much time in this world. There are so many characters. It's so richly imagined, and that's very, very cool. I think that's what people like about it. But yeah, you can write a long book that just like goes. Stephen King certainly has done this with some of his longest books. You know, you read It, I mean, that's a long book, but like, you never feel like it's like dragging, or at least I certainly don't. So, yeah, it comes down to style, I think, a lot in the end. Anyway, Oathbringer, cool book.

• 1:04:18Kirk Hamilton?

  I'll read Rhythm of War next year sometime, probably.

• 1:04:22Speaker 00

  Fair enough. Jason, what's your one more thing?

• 1:04:24Jason Schreier?

  My one more thing is a video game called Kingdoms of the Dump. And it is a Super Nintendo-style, Earthbound-inspired RPG with turn-based combat that was made by two janitors. And they decided to make a game about trash. This is a really fascinating game. This was Kickstartered in 2019, but unlike many JRPG-style games that are Kickstartered, that were Kickstartered years ago, this one actually came out, and it's out this week. It's very charming. It's clearly made by like, an amateur RPG-making crowd, because it's a little janky, there's some glitches here and there. A few things are pretty fiddly. But it is very charming, and it's got a lot of heart,

• 1:05:08Jason Schreier?

  and it's fun to play through, and I'm really enjoying what I've played so far. I'm like, I don't know, five or six hours in. And I spoke to the, one of the janitors behind it, and he's got a really interesting story. It's not gonna be up when this episode airs, but it'll be up on Bloomberg and my newsletter on Friday. And it's a fun story. He's got a really interesting story. He spent 13 years as a janitor. He really enjoyed the job. He was telling me about how he found it very... Kind of useful for to have that kind of job while he was trying to be creative because he could just zone out and just be like cleaning things and then Yeah, that makes sense. Like he could just pour it all out into creativity afterwards. He was like,

• 1:05:53Jason Schreier?

  and the benefits are good, the people were good. The only bad thing was the pay, he told me, which sucks. But yeah, he is so. So it was made by these two custodians who worked at schools and it's a really interesting game. It's so it stars like a it stars an anthropomorphic trash can and he gets a party of other kind of trash related things and he explores this massive JRPG style kingdom and he goes on all these adventures and fights bosses and explores different kind of areas, swamps and landfills and there are different kingdoms, each of which are trash themed or animal themed. They're like bees and roaches and ants and a lot of different

• 1:06:37Jason Schreier?

  garbage jokes and fun little, just kind of like, and it's very earthbound, right? It's very inspired by earthbound. So like every item has a funny description and a lot of the items are based around garbage. You're eating moldy like food, moldy sandwiches or whatever, and using jumper cables to revive your party members if they die. And you save at these kind of like porta potties that are like all around the world. And yeah, again, it's, it's just cute. It's like fun and funny and charming is the word I that I keep using because that I think is the most apt one. If you liked Earthbound, you'll probably like this. Just like be prepared for like a little bit of amateur quality here and there.

• 1:07:20Jason Schreier?

  But it's fun and the writing is fun. It's, it's like very cute and enjoyable. And yeah, I'm really enjoying it. And I guess it's a clear obscure ripoff because it's got timed attacks and defenses. So every all these JRPGs trying to rip off. Rip off clear obscure.

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  Well, it sounds like they maybe started working on it before that game ever

• 1:07:45Jason Schreier?

  Oh, I thought Clara's girl came up with timed button attacks. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, it's got the Paper Mario thing. And yeah, it's just very adorable. I'm enjoying it. I'll probably play more. It's been fun to play on my Steam Deck and fun to see the story through as our little hero Trashcan has his adventures through the Kingdom of the Dump.

• 1:08:08Kirk Hamilton?

  The trailer for this is very, very charming and very, very fun.

• 1:08:11Jason Schreier?

  It is. Yeah, it's just such a charming game. It's one of those, and just knowing that it was made by these janitors is just a fun, just such a fun story. When I first got, I got an email from the guy, the lead guy, who was like, hey, I'm a janitor and I made this game. I expected it to be way more amateur than it is. Like, it feels like a legitimate game. It's just got a little bit of jankiness to it, but it feels like a real game. It doesn't feel like the type of thing you would download like for free through RPG Maker or something like that. It's definitely a legit game. And the music is really good, too, I should say. Aesthetically, it's really interesting, because like it combines these kind of like very displeasing like trash visuals with this graphical style that if

• 1:08:54Jason Schreier?

  you grew up playing Super Nintendo, you'll really enjoy. But yeah, the music is really cool. Yeah, I'm digging it.

• 1:09:00Kirk Hamilton?

  The art looks great. It looks beautiful. Yeah, this gameplay that I'm watching.

• 1:09:04Speaker 00

  That's awesome. What a cool story. I have also been playing a game called News Tower that I think you two have played at least a little bit.

• 1:09:12Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:15Speaker 00

  And I really, I really dig this game. So this game's a management sim that I'm playing on PC. And by that, I mean, you're sort of placed into a kind of godlike zoomed out view where in this case, you're looking at a 1930s era newspaper office. You arrange the desks, you build the walls and the floors, you put up the lighting, you decide how many houseplants each of your employees are allowed to have, and that sort of thing contributes to whether they're happy, good reporters or not. And if you were to, say, for example, sell all of their houseplants For cash, as I did at one point, you might find all of their reporting suddenly gets quite sloppy

• 1:09:56Speaker 00

  and poor. And then on top of that, you have to lay out your paper. It's a weekly paper in this game. So you have to charge up for a Sunday press. And then that actually means like deciding what stories will go on the pay on the front page and laying them out physically, which is really fun to do. Eventually you get more than one page and then more than two pages as the game goes along. What's really interesting about this game is that it's extremely devoted to historical accuracy. Every single headline that comes across your desk or proposed story, I guess I should say, and they become true headlines in your paper are real events that happened, which and they happen in order on the days

• 1:10:39Speaker 00

  that they actually occurred. Like the very first story you cover is the stock market crash, of course. And then, you know, eventually you're going to do like Al Capone getting arrested and Babe Ruth called shot and all of that stuff as as it actually occurs on the day. And you're, if you're me, you're going to be like, oh, these are really important stories. But also there's like some gamified bits where it isn't quite accurate to how I might lay out a newspaper whereby you get extra points if you have an entire page full of sports stories on your front page as opposed to having a more diverse front page, for example, but you have to actually pay attention to all of those numbers or else your newspaper will go out of business. What I thought was really interesting about this game is when you start it. So your dad owned the paper before you and he's dead, but he was in the pocket of the mob.

• 1:11:25Speaker 00

  And so now so are you. And so at the outset of the game, you have to run stories according to what the mob wants you to run. And that means sometimes you have to print outright lies, which I really hated, honestly. It's it's part of the game. It's part of the story of the game. And eventually you run into these other three factions that you can bargain with. Actually, there's kind of more like mini factions, but there's four main ones that give you big rewards if you bargain with them. But there's other like people about town that you that have their own aims. And the other factions are the mayor and the military and wealthy socialites. Each of them have obviously either intense social influence or wealth or both.

• 1:12:05Speaker 00

  And they can pay you or influence you to end up having more subscribers or just more be more financially successful. And you actually have to participate in those schemes in order for your paper to succeed. And that was accurate to the time period. Like, that's how journalism worked in the 30s. But ideally, it's not how it should work now. I do realize

• 1:12:27Jason Schreier?

  Ideally.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  We live in a world where Jeff Bezos owns a newspaper, for example, and where wealthy people certainly pay off reporters to get what they want. They certainly have never paid me off. But you have to really engage with those systems to make this, make your paper succeed in the game. And I think that's by design. But it is also kind of stressful in an interesting way that I found tense, but also just, just kind of cool. Like, it's cool that they made a historically accurate game. I just, I also hope people know that that's not how every newspaper.

• 1:12:58Jason Schreier?

  They should make a sequel where you have to pivot to video and then private equity applies your company.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:13:03Jason Schreier?

  And runs you out of business.

• 1:13:07Speaker 00

  And it keeps changing and you have to figure out how to do e-commerce and like Amazon affiliate links.

• 1:13:11Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the, the game, by the way, for people who have played management sims back in the day, it's very reminiscent of like Sim Tower or like other kind of games of that ilk.

• 1:13:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Reminds me of Game Dev Story a little bit, too. That game, that was one that I

• 1:13:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you've, if you've played, or like, there's a Fallout management sim that I can't remember the name of.

• 1:13:29Jason Schreier?

  Fallout Shelter.

• 1:13:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's a lot like that one. If you played that, there's, if you've played one management sim, you've kind of played them all, I suppose. But this one, I think, is interesting because it's actually got all the historical headlines. And I thought that was really cool. And it has a great jazz soundtrack, although I will say the longer you play, the more you might wish that maybe there were just a couple more jazz songs. Bye.

• 1:13:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, yeah, I love, so I love this game and I love the music. The music was recorded by this Dutch jazz group called the New Cool Collective, who are like real jazz musicians, like top level jazz musicians. They're really good. I've heard them independently, like someone sent me their album forever ago. They have a bunch of albums out. They're really cool. Their albums run the gamut. It's not all like old big band style jazz, but they can do that really well. There are times, playing this game especially early on, ah, the trumpet player in this group is killing it.

• 1:14:43Kirk Hamilton?

  These are real jazz players and as someone who just appreciates that kind of thing, it was really nice to hear. A lot of games will go for a jazzy thing. The Root Trees Are Dead comes to mind from earlier this year where they kind of got like musicians on Fiverr who were fine and they'd play a tenor sax solo with a lot of reverb and it was kind of bluesy. But like, these guys are players. This is like a real band and it's, that's very fun. I, even from the amount that I've played, Matty, I can see that criticism that the downside of getting a real group in the studio, in the room together, there's actually a little YouTube video you can watch of them recording this music. The downside is you can, it's hard to create enough music to support, especially this kind of game. And they do a good job with what they have. They have these like stems and different versions of the songs that grow more and

• 1:15:28Kirk Hamilton?

  more elaborate over the course of the week as you get closer to your deadline. But they're, yeah, you kind of wish they could have a little bit more. That said, it's like an independent Dutch studio, you know, they only have so much money.

• 1:15:39Speaker 00

  That's like one of my very few complaints. It's truly just that like after you've had enough Sunday papers, that specific music string, sting of the Sunday paper does eventually get you sing.

• 1:15:49Kirk Hamilton?

  I love that though. It's that like Gene Krupf of the like, when you pull the lever.

• 1:15:58Speaker 00

  Oh, it's great the first 300 times.

• 1:16:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I guess. I haven't gotten sick of it yet, but you've maybe played more than me. Yeah, I really like this game as well.

• 1:16:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Did any of you play New York Times Simulator, the Paolo Petterciini game?

• 1:16:16Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:16:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, man. I'll at least mention that as a like much more sharply satirical game that's about writing headlines for the New York Times and like obeying the dictates of the various perceived influences on the New York Times. It is a much toothier critique, as you can maybe imagine, the modern New York Times. But this game at times reminded me of it. I mean, this is a much more gamified and sort of gentle version, but the two games are kind of have some things in common. So I'll shout that out if anyone wants to check that out. It's you can play it online. Kirk here, as I mentioned in the episode, I know we've gone long, but just to add a little bit more context here, New York Times Simulator was actually explicitly a reimagining of a Lucas Pope game, one of his early games, called The Republica Times, which is a similar

• 1:17:02Kirk Hamilton?

  kind of an idea and kind of clear precursor to Papers, Please. So that's just to put all of these newspaper games in a broader context, because I thought some of you might think that was interesting. Okay.

• 1:17:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. So once again, this one is called News Tower. Just came out in a 1.0 release. It's been in early access for a while and already received good reviews then, but the 1.0 release is super polished and great and definitely recommendable. So, yeah.

• 1:17:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:29Speaker 00

  That's that.

• 1:17:30Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a good game.

• 1:17:30Speaker 00

  Okay. We've done it again, folks. It's been another episode of TripleClick.

• 1:17:36Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, sure has. It sure has. Many say that with such surprise, like, oh, yeah.

• 1:17:42Speaker 00

  We did it again, guys. We did it again.

• 1:17:45Jason Schreier?

  281st.

• 1:17:46Kirk Hamilton?

  281st.

• 1:17:49Speaker 00

  Wow, we just keep putting them out.

• 1:17:51Jason Schreier?

  Finally figured out how to do it.

• 1:17:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, we should probably put out all those other ones. I think they were pretty good, too.

• 1:17:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, you gotta learn somehow.

• 1:17:59Jason Schreier?

  It's crazy how much longer we've been doing this for than split screen now.

• 1:18:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  It is. That is wild. That is wild. You know, it's because we finally decided to make it official, as we established last week.

• 1:18:10Jason Schreier?

  Right.

• 1:18:11Speaker 00

  TripleClick is the marriage.

• 1:18:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Speaker 00

  And split screen was only the dating era.

• 1:18:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Here's the 281 more. I'll see you both next week.

• 1:18:19Jason Schreier?

  See you next week.

• 1:18:20Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:18:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddy Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join. Email us at [email protected] and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:19:21Speaker 07

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network

• 1:19:24Speaker 05

  of artist-owned shows supported

• 1:19:26Speaker 07

  directly by you.