Triple Play: Death Stranding 2

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason take their Kas to the Beach for a trip through Hideo Kojima's latest action game, Death Stranding 2. They talk about the changes from the first game, the quirks of the story, and what it's like to build ladders and roads across Mexico, Australia, and more.

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

• 0:03Kirk Hamilton?

  A few years ago, I would have opened this episode with a joke about how Death Stranding is a weird name for a video game. How far I've come that I now think it makes sense. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're talking about Death Stranding 2, the big new PS5 exclusive follow-up to one of the most interesting AAA games in recent memory, and certainly a landmark event for fans of talking puppets.

• 0:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:33Jason Schreier?

  And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello. It's so nice to see you both.

• 0:37Jason Schreier?

  Hello, my friends.

• 0:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Here we are.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  We're back.

• 0:40Jason Schreier?

  I just got back from vacation in Hilton Head, where I went last week, which was lovely. Very hot and gorgeous, and my kids had a great time. But you guys don't hear something funny. So every morning in the hotel, when my wife and I wanted to like sleep an extra hour, we would let the kids watch TV. And so I set them up with a hotel TV, and I put on Nickelodeon, and it had Paw Patrol. And for my kids, and I realized this while I was doing this, this was their first time ever watching live TV. And they had to sit through commercials. And every time a commercial would come on, I would just hear screaming from their room, them just being like, what the hell is going on? And my wife and I talked about it.

• 1:22Jason Schreier?

  It turns out it's very difficult to actually explain to a kid what the difference is between live TV and like what they watch at home on Netflix or whatever, or Disney+. It's a very difficult concept for them to understand. They're just like, why can't I just watch the show? Like, it's a cartoon. Why can't I just watch it when I want?

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Do they understand commercials? Like, how often are they seeing commercials at this point? Probably almost never.

• 1:44Jason Schreier?

  Well, that's the point. This is the first time they've ever seen commercials.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I mean, not just the concept of live TV, but like ads being interrupted.

• 1:51Jason Schreier?

  When else would you see an ad?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:52Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, probably like using apps or something.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Oh, maybe.

• 1:56Jason Schreier?

  No, they don't use, no, this is their only screen time is TV.

• 1:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Do you remember those buttons that they would have during Saturday morning cartoons? After these messages, we'll be right back. And they would play those? Those, I believe, were mandated because... Because they had to tell the kids, the show is ending and what you are about to see is commercials.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  It's not the show.

• 2:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, because kids can't really tell. And a lot of kids commercials, especially back like in the 90s, just looked like cartoons. They just looked like TV shows. So a kid just wouldn't really be able to tell the difference. So that was the idea there was it would identify the dividing line.

• 2:31Jason Schreier?

  So the other funny part of this story is that, yes, I also remember back in the day when we were all growing up and watching Nickelodeon Cartoon Network, all the commercials were for toys and stuff. Here, for some reason, the commercials are like medication and like, there was one for like walking sticks, like walking canes that I watched with them. There were some for like diabetes medication was one of them.

• 2:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Tells you about the likely patrons of this hotel.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's for the grandparent who's taking care of the children.

• 3:00Jason Schreier?

  There's one for insect repellent. And yeah, I mean, I guess Nickelodeon is having trouble selling relevant ads these days. Google and Facebook took them all.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just remember like the toy commercials in the very limited television I was permitted to watch. And my parents explaining to me, like, you know, the toy doesn't come with all of that. That was a huge conversation we had in my household was not trusting the commercial. But Jason, you got out of all of that. You didn't have to explain any of that to your kids because it's for diabetes medication.

• 3:31Kirk Hamilton?

  And you know what's nice? It's nice that we don't have to have commercials on our show at all.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Great segue. Love it. Perfect.

• 3:37Kirk Hamilton?

  You've been setting up this segue for the last five minutes or something. And we don't have to have any commercials on Triple Click because we are totally listener supported by so many of you who are wonderful members of our network, Maximum Fun. Thank you so much to everyone who supports this show and yeah, makes it so that we just run promos for other Max Fun shows, but no sponsors, no paid advertisements or anything like that. And if you would like to support our show, go to maximumfun.org/join and become a member. Support our network and support Triple Click so we can keep on making this thing. And one last thing, we have announced it every episode, but we are really coming up on our live show in Portland. We've sold a bunch of tickets. It's very exciting. We're closing. Singing on the day, it's gonna be really cool.

• 4:22Kirk Hamilton?

  It is on Friday, July 11th, at the Alberta Rose Theater in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. It's gonna be a real extravaganza. I think everyone who is there is gonna have a great time. We're gonna have some merch, we're gonna have some freebies for people for various that they can get in various ways, we're gonna have some songs. It's gonna be a whole big show. So Friday, July 11th, Alberta Rose Theater. Buy your tickets, there's a link in the show notes. Okay, it is time to talk about a video game.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yay.

• 4:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Not just any video game, a new Hideo Kojima game, which is not something that happens so often. So I have written an introduction for our discussion of Death Stranding 2. Here we go.

• 5:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Death Stranding 2: Strand Harder tells the story of Sam Strander, a man gifted with the strongest lower back of any human being ever. And, hang on, sorry, this was a joke one that I wrote.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  It's pretty good, pretty accurate so far.

• 5:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I realized the joke was a little too close to the truth. Here's the true intro to this game. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a follow-up to 2019's Death Stranding. And as one of those video game sequels we don't actually get that often, a follow-up to a genuinely novel first entry that benefits from being the second one of those by refining and elaborating upon its predecessor's many new ideas. Once again, we play as Sam Porter Bridges, intrepid post-apocalyptic delivery man, played mostly in a series of expressive grunts by Walking Dead actor Norman Reedus. We control Sam as he moves across a series of evocative wastelands to deliver packages and network connectivity to a handful of scattered survivors.

• 6:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Once again, we're in a world decimated by a mysterious supernatural event called the Death Stranding, a cataclysm in which the world of the dead collided with the world of the living, killing most of those caught in the blast. And once again, we're learning about beaches and BTs and dooms and Bridge Babies and the UCA and a lot of other terms like that. Though this time, a lot of those terms are more familiar and it is all helpfully indexed by a useful in-game encyclopedia. Once again, this story was Was written and directed by Hideyokojima, arguably at the peak of his ability to realize his distinct creative visions. The story begins thusly after a year off the grid caring for Lou, the bridge baby he carried as he reconnected America in the first game.

• 6:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Sam gets a visit from his old friend Fragile, played by Lea Seydoux, which sets in motion a journey that will take him to Mexico and beyond.

• 6:54Kirk Hamilton?

  The bulk of the game is still a combination of logistics and third-person traversal. Sam prepares to carry large shipments across swamps, jungles, beaches, and mountains, with journeys broken up by tense stealth sequences, avoiding dangerous ghostly sentries, or exciting fights against armed brigands. Once again, you will connect through the network to other players' games, finding their helpful items and structures laying around, and sending requests through the network in hopes that other players might send you what you need. It is all very similar to the first game, just all a bit smoother, a bit more polished and user-friendly, and with a particular improvement made to the Metal Gear-style stealth-action sequences where Sam tays on humanoid enemies. All three of us have been playing early-review copies of the game, provided by Sony, and I should note that the game's servers just went up a day before we recorded this.

• 7:39Kirk Hamilton?

  So, none of us have had that much time with the online version of the game, though I played a chunk of it yesterday. It appears to function similarly to the first game. There is a lot to talk about. One last thing is, we are going to spoil the events of the first game. That is likely that we'll mention things that happened at the end of the first game, if you're concerned about that. We're going to go pretty light on the spoilers for the second game, I think partly because all three of us haven't gotten all that far. I've played a couple dozen hours, but I also just won't share a ton of, like, story information. But if you want to play the game blind, which is actually a cool way to play it, just maybe come back to this episode later. Okay, that's a lot. There's a lot in this game. Let's talk about it. Maddy, how about you go first? What do you think of Death Stranding 2, and how much of it have you played?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  I have played a little over 10 hours, and so much has already happened, story-wise, in the way that I remember happening in Death Stranding 1, and that was something I liked about Death Stranding 1. I don't mind. A really cutscene-heavy game. We should note, this is a very cutscene-heavy game as well. They both are. Loves a cutscene. Cutscene Kojima. Kojima Productions developers also love a cutscene. It's not just the one guy. I feel like I always want to add that in. Just so many people work on this game who aren't just him, but he gets, he gets the accolades. I'm enjoying it. I do feel like it's more streamlined than the first

• 8:58Speaker 01

  one in a few key ways. It is, there's more combat mechanics in this one so far, and it's a little easier to engage in combat, I would say. You can do stealth, the way Kirk mentioned, but I don't really do that in this game. I've been getting in the mix with bandits and just fighting them, and I've found it easier. There are more kinds of weapons you can use. I think that's also just part of the story is that the weaponry has become more streamlined. So there's this aspect of the supernatural world that's established in Death Stranding One whereby Norman Reedus' character has kind of these supernatural properties that means so that whenever he dies,

• 9:38Speaker 01

  he comes back to life, but it also means that his bodily fluids have special powers that allow him to defeat the ghosts that they're fighting, which they call BTs in this game, but I call them ghosts. It's a little easier for me to understand them that way. And that means that he can throw pee grenades. Like, when I say bodily fluids, I mean literally, like they're from in Death Stranding One, you're throwing like blood and pee at these ghosts to defeat them. And in this game, the characters around Sam have like automated that process in some way. So they have, what's the word? Like, they're creating versions of blood. Synthetic is the word I'm looking for, like synthetic blood and pee. And like, just that, I think, kind of sums up some

• 10:21Speaker 01

  of the ways that this game feels more streamlined. It's almost like the people in the world itself have streamlined the process of fighting the ghosts that live around them all the time and dealing with the sort of weird ghost internet that they use to communicate with one another. Like, all of that is kind of level two in this game. Like, everyone's familiar with how it works, whereas in the first one, people were questioning it a lot. I think that's really interesting as a premise, is like, things are more normalized.

• 10:48Kirk Hamilton?

  I think also, to give a specific- Like gameplay reflection of that streamlining. I've played through the first 10 or 15 hours of Death Stranding One, I think, three times on three different systems. So I've become very familiar with the way that game introduces new ideas. And in that game, first, you do get these, like, pea grenades that don't really do anything. And then eventually, it kind of takes a long time until you get these blood grenades that can finally kill a BT. And then the game really seems to open up because suddenly you have an offensive possibility. In the sequel, you very quickly Yes. get blood grenades. Really soon. Like on the second mission. And then they also give you guns. And the gun bullets initially just knock out humans, but then really quickly, they're like, okay, now we have bullets that work on BTs. Yeah.

• 11:30Kirk Hamilton?

  So suddenly, you can, like, throw grenades and shoot BTs, which is, like, very, very different from the first game. And also, that happens much more quickly. So everything is just given to you faster, and the whole onboarding is way more streamlined. Mm-hmm. So anyways, just to give a sort of specific example of, like, the difference there between the games. Jason, I'd love to hear from you. How much have you played and what do you think into the game?

• 11:53Jason Schreier?

  So I'm, like, a few missions into Australia. So I guess chapter three, a few hours into the game.

• 12:05Kirk Hamilton?

  You sound so excited. You sound like you're really getting ready to just, like, share your excitement.

• 12:10Jason Schreier?

  I don't know. I'm trying to decide what I think of it. I don't really know what I think of it. I don't really know how to comprehend this game or engage with this game.

• 12:20Kirk Hamilton?

  To give a little context, you bounced off the first game extremely quickly and never returned to it, right?

• 12:25Jason Schreier?

  Right. Yeah, I bounced off the first game in part because you had to soothe a crying baby while I had just, I had a crying baby in the other room while playing it, which was a little bit... Like, that game came out, what, was it September or October of 2019? Like, literally weeks after my oldest daughter was born. And then, yeah, I've played a lot more of this one, and it definitely feels more welcoming. Um, in the first game, from what I understand, it took forever for you to be able to get these vehicles that let you traverse the world more quickly. And here you get your first vehicle very soon, like before you even leave the tutorial area, um, the first continent or

• 13:07Jason Schreier?

  the first country in the game. Um, but yeah, I, I just still don't know exactly how I feel about it. Like I, I can, I guess, see why people enjoy it. I don't know if I'm quite there yet. Um, I, I have not really been able to, uh, find enough reason to convince myself to really get down and dirty with all of its menus and layers and systems and try to understand why I need to carefully craft my loadout so I can go and, and get through the area of like traverse Australia when I could just kind of like throw a ladder down and, and make my way and take a car and make my way with it. And then also I

• 13:51Jason Schreier?

  am really not gripped enough by the story to feel like I have to get into the gameplay so I can see what's going to happen next. The story to me is just kind of like a, a mess of proper nouns and like nonsense. Um, so I don't know. I, I mean, I'm not like super into it. I'm also not like actively hating every minute of playing it. I, I just don't really know. I'm kind of like ambivalent about the game.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  This is a step up from Death Stranding one, though. Like, I feel like we should know this.

• 14:24Jason Schreier?

  That one, I didn't really take the time to engage with. This one, I've spent a lot more time trying to get into it. Um, I think that talking it through and hearing what you guys enjoy about it might help me kind of figure out how I feel about it.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, let me talk a little bit. It, um, I have an interesting relationship with this series. It's not dissimilar from yours, I think, Maddy, based on my memory of you kind of coming back to Death Stranding one a little later and playing through it.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  And completing it. Yeah.

• 14:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Which I've actually never completed Death Stranding one, though I've played probably like 80 hours total across three different playthroughs. And one of those playthroughs, I got very, very far. I was like across the Rockies, had met Hartman and finished all of that and basically got to where I started building zip lines and then got distracted building zip lines for like 10 hours.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Valid. Zip lines are really fun.

• 15:15Kirk Hamilton?

  So, but at the same time, like, it was that playthrough, I believe that was the director's cut replaying on PS5, where the game finally, like, it didn't unlock for me so much as I wormed my way into its many frictional points and then became comfortable and figured out what it was that I found appealing about it. And I think that's a thing about this game that I really like, is that it's incredibly frictional. It's so full of different frictions. It never just streamlines things to make them easy. It's not really interested in onboarding you. Even the sequel, that does a better job of onboarding than the first game, it still is a really kind of off-putting and friction-filled experience compared to

• 15:56Kirk Hamilton?

  something like Uncharted, or like a game where it's just immediately like, okay, press A to have fun, and then everything feels great, and it's just awesome. And it's just this totally seamless, exciting, explosive cinematic experience. This game is very not that. You mentioned that it's very cinematic-heavy, Maddy, which, there are a lot of cinematics, but at the same time, there's a lot of just unadulterated gameplay in this game, like the first game. It's kind of, to me, I see it more that there are, it is still doing the thing where the story is told in cutscenes that are completely separate from the game, which was true for Metal Gear games as well, where you'd have a cutscene where Solid Snake would do all this acrobatic, cool stuff, and then you'd be back in the game where

• 16:40Kirk Hamilton?

  his actual control scheme is like very specific and weird, and you can only move in very certain ways, and you're never, you never feel empowered and acrobatic. It still has that kind of separation. But, most of the game is just this experience of walking across these gorgeously rendered landscapes, and just kind of slowly making your way from point A to point B, and then gradually getting better and better at doing that. And, for me at least, a big thing that unlocked the first game was reaching that kind of third, it's almost like the third act of the game, where you're finally in the big, open, American landscape, and you start building roads, which is one really major part of this game that just doesn't unlock for a long time in the first game. And really, for-

• 17:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Kind of a while in the second. And then, like I said, building zip lines as well. So once you're building like travel infrastructure, you're building roads, you really have to like get a lot of materials to do that. So then you're kind of going out and figuring out how to carry a ton of metal and ceramics to get to each of the road builder points to build more of the road. But then the more you build it, you have a car and you can like drive up and down the road and it makes it super easy to get around. And then you're building more and more road and you kind of get into this really almost meditative logistical, just road building mode. And then the zip lines are the same, except the zip lines you can place wherever you want. And you wind up like you're crossing the Rocky Mountains in the first game. Or here in Australia in the second one, it's similar. There are mountains.

• 18:06Kirk Hamilton?

  And you're like placing these zip line posts. They look kind of like compressed field goal brackets. I guess is how I would describe them. And they're very visible from a distance. And you need to connect one to the next to the next. And each one just needs a line of sight. So once you're, you're essentially lining up the, um, the flames of Gondor from the Lord of the Rings. Or at least that's how it's always felt to me.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  The beacons are lit.

• 18:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Thank you. Right. And it has that feeling where you're at the top of this mountain and you're looking and you've arranged this beacon network where you drop another, you know, another zip line post and then you climb up into it and just launch yourself around the map. And suddenly you're able to get to all these really hard to reach places. And it just becomes this very satisfying feeling of building and mastering this map that was previously so difficult to traverse.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:57Jason Schreier?

  What you're describing sounds nothing like the video game that I have been playing for the last few hours.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it becomes that over time.

• 19:04Kirk Hamilton?

  It becomes that.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  And you, you, I mean, the thing that I like about the game ironically is the cutscenes. I'm fascinated by how weird the world is. And for me, I don't love all of the other stuff Kirk just said. I'm okay with it. And I also have to kind of worm my way into the friction of it and kind of get into a mindset where I can get through it. That's just my personal preference, though. I just find it somewhat tedious, but I think it's It's also tedious by design in that it's like, it's difficult to navigate this world. And even when you get further and you get zip lines and you get the ability to build a road,

• 19:45Speaker 01

  build a bridge, build a better road, build a better bridge, it never feels like SimCity or whatever. It never feels like a true building game where the point is that building is satisfying and you are like this omnipotent being that is building the world in your image. You're always struggling. You're always having to collect the things that you need to build something and it stays hard the whole time, but that's part of it. And I kind of did that in spite of disliking it because I wanted to know what happened. And if you don't want to know what happens and you don't like that stuff, you need to like one or the others, I guess what I'm saying. And the two halves are not similar. Like, there's the experience of like watching a

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Kojima cutscene that is unique and you either like that or you don't. And I happen to like it. And then there's this other thing that Death Stranding is, which is the walking simulator stuff, the walking and crafting simulator of building a world that is sort of navigable. And also on top of that, there's the piece that I also played just a little bit of the online version of the game today, just to get a sense of it. And it's so much more fun online, which is the version that our listeners will be playing, not the review version that was offline, which is lonely. Like, I'm hiking through the world as Sam and the review pre-release period, just fully lonely. But now, there's signs everywhere, there's other porters in

• 21:11Speaker 01

  the world who like build something that I can interact with and like click the like button on. And I really like all of those mechanics, too. And so there's almost like multiple ways of experiencing the game because of that.

• 21:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, it's all contained within the one game.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Because a big part of the experience is you're connecting everyone to the Kyral Network, which is like the ghost network that they use to send data and then use to build structures. So when you're heading to a new location to connect them to the network, you're offline and everything is, you know, very stark and you're making your way across this beautiful landscape and it's just you, it's just Sam and like his destination.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  And loneliness.

• 21:52Kirk Hamilton?

  You just have to figure it out.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, and I do think, you know, it is interesting, I think you're, I agree that the story and the gameplay are very separate in a certain way, though I think the story really, it's kind of a vibes-based story, like there are specific terms, there's a lot of specificity to the world, but at the same time, there are concepts like the beach and bridge babies and loo and different things that are just never fully explained and weren't explained in the first game and I just elude description or explanation. And so you kind of have to get with the fact that, yes, you know what dooms is, yes, you know what a beach is, but also Hartman is experimenting with beaches and turning out beaches in ways that I didn't know were possible. And then there's the tar, which is like a whole concept that's explored in this game.

• 22:38Kirk Hamilton?

  That's like this, you know, tar that flows under the surface of the earth that they use to navigate. I mean, your base ship like is a submarine that goes through the tar and it's like, okay, I guess this is a new thing I need to learn. But you really are just kind of going on these vibes. It's the feeling of Sam wanting to have a family and wanting to be connected and then losing that and trying to find it again. And so there's a lot of just abstract loneliness in this game. And then when you're walking through the world, especially during these key moments where a beautiful song will start playing, a lot of the music in this game is by the artist Woodkid, who wrote music for the first game too, and writes this beautiful, like ethereal pop music.

• 23:19Kirk Hamilton?

  And Sam will be walking and the camera pulls out and he's walking along this mountain ridge and then this song starts playing and it's really beautiful and it does feel to me connected to the story. Like it makes me think about just where I am and the kind of abstract feelings that I'm having that does kind of tie it all together, at least for me.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  Now the water level rises high in my cold paradise. Where men sit in circles and talk numbers I never really liked. The way they think of life as some kind of gamble and watch the city drown. Where is it that I belong?

• 24:13Jason Schreier?

  So, okay, I wanna make a Metal Gear Solid comparison because I think that might help me articulate my thoughts about this game. I really loved Metal Gear Solid 5. I love all those games, but especially Metal Gear Solid 5. Despite the fact that it was completely unfinished and like you had to watch the the last like finale scene as like an unfinished like campaign mission on YouTube. But putting that aside, I really love that game. And that game shares a lot with this game, obviously. It's Kojima, it's a lot of the same kind of principal people. But I think it's a lot more grounded and it feels a lot more kind of there's a lot more for me to just kind of grasp onto, both in the gameplay and the story. But especially in the story, in the story of these Metal Gear games,

• 24:57Jason Schreier?

  there's a lot of nonsense, like nano machines and clones and all sorts of, again, proper nouns, just like Death Stranding. But you can really, you can connect with kind of some of the, at least some of the characters and their motivations makes sense. The basic world makes sense. There's a lot of highfalutin sci-fi stuff, but it all kind of, it fits within a set of rules that are very easy to understand and grasp.

• 25:23Kirk Hamilton?

  It's recognizably our world, right?

• 25:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, but also it's recognizable, it's even the parts that aren't recognizably our world have set rules that you can understand. And I always appreciate rules in a fantasy or a sci-fi story. And I really hate it when a fantasy or sci-fi story just will suddenly introduce these new concepts that just like totally break everything. And, and you're just like, oh, okay, now they can transport under the ground into tar or whatever. And I think that Death Stranding really pushes into poetry and Vibes in a way that I just have no interest or can't can't really find myself grabbing on to. I mean, the gameplay is similar, like Metal Gear Solid V especially is so good at like crafting this gameplay where you can like take on these bases in all sorts of ways and you can switch between stealth and action and it all feels very

• 26:11Jason Schreier?

  it's very smooth and very it can be complicated. There's a lot of complicated mechanics, but it's also not super hard to get your mind around and understand why something is happening. In Death Stranding, I found that over and over again, I keep running into bases and like I'll get caught by an enemy and not even know why. Or like I'll scout out a base with my doll dude and try to figure out how I can take it down. And then something stupid happens and I just won't actually be able to and we'll just have to gun them down. Again, it just feels so abstract and so just kind of like hard for me to connect to in a way that even the music, I mean, the music you just described, like some of the music in here, Woodkid and Churches and like

• 26:53Jason Schreier?

  what's her name who sings the main thing, a lot of that is the synth pop that I really cannot get into. Whereas in Metal Gear Solid V, there's a ton of like 80s pop music that is fantastic and still gets stuck in my head sometimes. In fact, I was walking through Death Stranding and this song started playing and I was like this kinda, I kinda wish this was that like this sounds like echoes of that Donna Brazile song in the Metal Gear Solid V trailer. And I was just thinking about how awesome that song was and how awesome some of the music was in Metal Gear Solid V. So for me, this all just feels like kind of

• 27:25Jason Schreier?

  inferior versions of the previous Kojima game that I really loved.

• 27:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, let me look at just the gameplay thing that you're talking about there because the combat and base infiltration in Death Stranding 2 is not close to the combat and base infiltration in Metal Gear Solid V. But I wouldn't say that that that wouldn't be the comparison that I would make because I don't think that Death Stranding 2 is primarily a combat based infiltration game where that's Metal Gear V's whole thing. Death Stranding 2 is primarily a game about traversal and logistics. And in that, I think it's just as well designed and fleshed out. And you know, it's, I think, really well made, especially this sequel, because they've refined so many things just in the interface. You know, little things, you can access your cargo and optimize it much more quickly.

• 28:14Kirk Hamilton?

  You can get through the menus a lot faster. It gives you all these nice options for moving around. And that, I think, is really well designed. It's something that takes a long time to just get your head around, or at least it took me a long time.

• 28:26Jason Schreier?

  Well, it sounds like it takes a long time to even get to the fun parts from what you're describing with the zip lines.

• 28:31Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I don't agree with that because I play, I had plenty of fun from the start because I already knew how to play it. It's more that it took me a long time to get my head around it because it just isn't a game I've played before. This, it's not, you know, Metal Gear is a very familiar style of game. And in fact, Metal Gear V feels much more like other games that were inspired by the earlier Metal Gear games. The control scheme is much closer to a Splinter Cell or something where it's like third person controls. You know, Kojima and his designers basically acquiesced to the fact that there was a standard third person control scheme. Where in Metal Gear 4 and Metal Gear 3, it's a much stranger and more particular control scheme. So it's just a much more familiar thing to sneak into a base and to use a sniper rifle and to call in your air support and grab a rocket launcher and blow up a tank.

• 29:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, those are all things that I know how to do because I've done them in tons of games. Planning out how to carry a really heavy backpack across a mountain is just a different thing. And it requires this kind of literacy in the game, just in its menus and it's, it's even its animations and the ways that it works. And because I've played so much of the first game, coming into the second game, I was like much, I felt much more fluent in that. And as a result, I find it really satisfying and engrossing.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the story also, to kind of speak to that part of it, I actually think it is more grounded this time than last time. In a few key ways, it's simpler. So like, I also just re-watched a bunch of the Death Stranding One cutscenes before playing this just because I had the free time for some reason. I can't imagine why. I just wanted to see, you know, remind myself, like, what were the key things that happened? And I just liked it also. That game.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  They sure explain a lot in that game, like the characters will like all but face the camera and be like, here's how the world works. And it is tiring. There's less of that in this game. And almost from the start, it's really focused on the characters emotions about things that are happening to them that even though there are ghosts involved, they're pretty easy to understand. Like, without spoiling anything, this is a game about grief and Sam is lonely for a reason and Fragile is sad and the two of them are sad. And like, you get why. And it's really obvious. And it's like, not difficult to understand their character motivations from that key perspective. Whereas in Death Stranding

• 30:57Speaker 01

  1, there were a lot of times where I was like, I don't really know why this person's even here, or what their deal is. And like, I completed the game and still am like, I'm not really sure what that part was. And this game just has, I mean, I'm, again, I'm only 10 hours in. That could change. But I do feel like, some of this feels like the developers took some notes, in a sense, and were like, let's make this more accessible. That doesn't mean that this game is that accessible, though. It's still a Death Stranding game. But I do think it's easier to get and to get on board with in a way that the first one wasn't. However,

• 31:39Speaker 01

  it is still a game where you're packing a backpack and walking for a really long time. And like, you kind of have to be on board with that. And you have to be on board with the vibes and the poetry, like you said, Jason. Because otherwise, there, there's not anything for you. And it's not going to be like a Metal Gear where it's like, those are really explicitly based on 80s action movies. And some of that is like, parodic, and some of it is imitative. But it's like, it's a really specific genre of thing that you can look to and be like, this is what this is based on. I don't even know that I can draw from that for Death Stranding, other than like, horror movies and games, even though I wouldn't describe Death Stranding games as horror. But like, those are the influences

• 32:20Speaker 01

  that it's pulling from, except that instead of being a horror genre game, it is a logistics and sim game, which is bizarre. So it is kind of one of a kind in that way.

• 32:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it also just has its own iconography and art identity. So Yoji Shinakawa is the art director of this game, and he has been like the character designer for Metal Gear forever. He's definitely one of those names, along with Hideyokojima, who has been responsible for like this whole oeuvre of games. And it's so visually striking. I'm sure there are films and filmmakers that it's, you know, evoking, but it's its own thing. I mean, at this point, the way that the land, the way that the mountains and the light, the sky in this game all look is incredible. And it is like a, it's a real visual showcase. And that like, I don't know, the visual aesthetic of this game is very much its own thing in a way that I never felt any Metal Gear game had its own thing.

• 33:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Even though the character designs, you know, those, the ways that the technology looked and worked, the lights, the way a Metal Gear mech looked, like that is all, you know, that's also Shinakawa, and that is all iconic. But like, those games also do look like an 80s movie, like you said, Maddy, where Death Stranding looks like Death Stranding. And I almost wouldn't be surprised to see, you know, movies and other visual media channeling Death Stranding because it's so distinct looking. To speak to the story stuff that you were talking about, since I've played quite a bit more, I agree, and I think they definitely took notes on the narrative structure in particular. Because something in the first game that was a little challenging was that you met everyone at the very beginning in whatever it is, Edgerton City, or wherever that is that you start. And there's a lot of people right off the bat.

• 34:01Kirk Hamilton?

  There's Hartman, the guy who looks like Guillermo del Toro. Die Hard Man, Dead Man. Or I'm sorry, I said Hartman, but Dead Man is actually Guillermo del Toro. Hartman you meet a little later. But yeah, Dead Man, Die Hard Man, they all have these funny names.

• 34:16Jason Schreier?

  Is this actually a Mega Man game?

• 34:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And then you meet, but you also meet Bridget, who is the president of the United States and also Sam's adoptive mother. And then she dies, but then also there's like a version of Bridget in the beach who's talking to you, the woman in the red dress. Amelie. Who is actually Amelie, who you're trying to rescue. And then Amelie, of course, turns out to not even be Amelie, or she kind of is Amelie, but she's also like secretly the big bad. And there's all this, it's like very Convoluted and complicated and they throw it all at you at once.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  I think you meet like Higgs really early too, like really every, that's like the antagonist.

• 34:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, that's like at the end of the first act.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:50Kirk Hamilton?

  But they throw it all at you at once. But the thing about all of those good guys, leaving Higgs aside.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Is that you meet them all and then you you hit the road. And then like Die Hardman is on the radio with you a lot. And then sometimes you'll get to a base and they use the Chiral Network so that you can have these hologram conversations with people. But it feels like you've kind of left them behind. And so the story just feels kind of diffuse. A really cool thing that this game does, Death Stranding 2, is that you start out kind of alone. And then you join Fragile's team, Drawbridge, her new like contracting delivery organization, onboard of the Magellan, which is her ship. And then the ship follows you from place to place. And as you gather new characters, which you do throughout the story, they join the crew.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Classic video game structure for a reason.

• 35:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:39Kirk Hamilton?

  You're in this ship and you're starting to have more and more elaborate conversations with new characters. The new characters are mysterious. They open new narrative possibilities. You're kind of building a little family that follows you around.

• 35:48Jason Schreier?

  There's Tar Man, there's Doll Man.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 35:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, there's Tar Man, who of course is George Miller, or George Miller's face.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  But not, also not George Miller. This is, that is what such an unusual way that the game is to like have Kojima scan the faces of semi-famous people, but then they're not played by that person. It just makes everything a little uncanny.

• 36:12Kirk Hamilton?

  But it still feels like you're kind of talking to George Miller, which is cool. And he gets to have his idols in the game. I don't know, I sort of enjoy it. It's weird.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  It's weird.

• 36:18Jason Schreier?

  Uncanny that Doll Man, who like looks like a like a wooden like Chucky style doll. For some reason, his frame rate is like different than everybody else's. So strange.

• 36:29Kirk Hamilton?

  I love it. He's animated like a stop motion doll, like in Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer or something.

• 36:33Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's like a stop motion. Every time you see him, so bizarre.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Intentionally uncanny, I would say.

• 36:37Kirk Hamilton?

  That's one of the best gags in the game. Oh, I love Doll Man. And I had, I think I had maybe seen a clip of Doll Man in one of those, you know, SGF trailers or something, but I had forgotten about it. And when they introduced him, I was just like.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  What the hell?

• 36:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Was laughing for like five minutes. And then he becomes a major character and he's like, you're sidekick. He's like, uh, what's his name? The severed head in God of War. You're carrying him around and he's talking.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, good comparison. He is kind of like that. Yeah.

• 37:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, Mimir, yeah.

• 37:05Jason Schreier?

  Not quite as charming as Mimir, but yeah.

• 37:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  I like him.

• 37:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Quite charmed by Dollman, but I've played a lot more than you. I really like Dollman, actually. He's pretty great. You can just talk to him in your room. Anyhow, um, yeah, building that little family works much better narratively. And I do agree, Maddy, I find it much more emotionally straightforward, even though it's still really complicated and weird.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Like the circumstances are complex, but the emotional core of it is very simple. And that helps a lot, I think, in a way that in Dust 31, the emotional core of it still also was confusing to me.

• 37:40Jason Schreier?

  I, I am incredibly confused by the emotional core because of a thing that it's hard for me to really get into without spoiling the first kind of,

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:48Jason Schreier?

  plot point of the game. I mean, can we put a spoiler warning here? And then I can maybe talk about this a little bit for the last couple of minutes.

• 37:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing. Okay, so that's what we decided to do. We spoiled the thing Jason is talking about, which takes place at the end of the prologue, maybe three or four hours in. And we also just talk about some more specifics related to the story after that prologue. When you get into, uh, Australia and you begin the kind of main part of the game, we get into just a couple more story elements. So we talk a little more openly about the story after that point. If you don't want to hear that, skip ahead to the timestamp 47 minutes 30 seconds. That's 47 minutes 30 seconds. Okay, back to what Jason was going to say. And don't worry, he'll give you a little bit more buffer if you're still scrambling to get to that skip ahead button. Bing.

• 38:36Jason Schreier?

  So the thing I'm having a hard time, well, okay, so warning here, don't, don't listen further.

• 38:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, genuinely.

• 38:41Jason Schreier?

  The first kind of major twist.

• 38:43Kirk Hamilton?

  End of the first act spoilers.

• 38:45Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, it's not even as far for end of the prologue spoilers essentially. End of the.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  I, I wouldn't have wanted to know. Yeah.

• 38:50Jason Schreier?

  But yeah, you don't want to know this until, until you've played the game. So here's your, your chance. So, um, the first kind of major event that happens after you're done in Mexico is you get back to. Your base. And I mean, first and foremost, some of the dialogue there when Sam Bridges is going into the base and he's like, I wonder where they could be after getting messages saying that there are gun people outside. He is so nonchalant in his dialogue reading, despite the fact that the entire base has been destroyed. Anyway, point being, you find Lou, your daughter, who's a toddler and she is, appears to be dead. And that's tragic. And that made me understand, okay, like now his motive is like getting over the grief, maybe revenge, whatever it is, trying to figure out what happened there.

• 39:32Jason Schreier?

  And then Lou appears in your baby belt and then suddenly she's in your baby belt for like, whoever knows how long. And I was talking to Kirk about this earlier. He said, it's not clear what the deal is. Maybe it's hallucination. Who knows what? But the fact that you were still having to soothe Lou and having Lou there is like throwing me so off kilter. Then I just like, I just don't understand what's going on here at all.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  I take it as a hallucination, but Kirk, go ahead.

• 39:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Or having not finished the game, but played it pretty big chunk of it. I mean, it is still not clear to me what's going on, but yeah, it's implied that there, I mean, there is ambiguity around it because we're seeing things from Sam's perspective. But there are multiple times at which characters, particularly Higgs, who turns up to torment Sam pretty soon after where you are, is alluding to the fact that like, dude, what is wrong with you? You're just walking around with a coffin attached to your chest. Like, why are you holding on to this? And I think the whole idea is that Sam is holding on to Lou because he can't bear having lost her, even though Lou is a very mysterious and sort of supernatural being. And we don't even really know where Lou came from.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Right. Like as the player, I am hoping she's somehow alive. So like, it's easy for me to put myself in Sam's shoes. But also there's a line pretty early on between Dollman and Fragile, where I think Dollman is like, that is an empty pod. What is he talking about? And Fragile shushes him. And that was when I was like, oh, like something's really off here and Sam's hallucinating.

• 41:02Jason Schreier?

  Okay. I haven't seen any of this stuff yet. Okay. That would help me like follow it a little along.

• 41:07Kirk Hamilton?

  And that's all fairly early and seems to be setting up like. The reveal, I think by the end of the game, we will have a very strong sense of the whole emotional journey that Sam went on. And like what actually happened and what he's doing. And for now, it's it's partly a way for them to just keep the gameplay the same as the first game, like.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:24Jason Schreier?

  Right, the baby soothing.

• 41:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it feels that way.

• 41:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Which I never do. I, for what it's worth, like, the baby soothing, I've never soothed the baby. Like, and sometimes the baby cries if I fall down and then it just stops crying and it's fine. So it's not like that's like a major mechanic in the game. It's like.

• 41:39Jason Schreier?

  You can just ignore her.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's gonna be okay. And Jason, I get that for you, it is like you must soothe the baby and it's probably more stressful.

• 41:45Jason Schreier?

  Well, I was so annoyed. That really annoyed me because I was like, okay, I can go this, I don't have to soothe the baby anymore. I don't have to hear a baby crying. I've had enough of that in my life. And then suddenly it's back. I'm like, oh no, not again. Now the baby's friggin' back. But the other thing, I mean, I don't know, it's, again, this is just me kind of failing to connect with this story in a way that it sounds like you two have. But I also don't really buy that it's just like, that he's just like, okay, to get over my grief, I am going to go and connect Australia because that is what I do.

• 42:16Kirk Hamilton?

  No, it makes, it does not make sense.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  That is, I would say, a separate.

• 42:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Fragile also offers to wipe his slate clean, but just the way that it's presented is pretty rushed. Like, I completely agree with you.

• 42:27Jason Schreier?

  Right. So for for me, it's like, and I was really, I was actually really enjoying the story in the first part of the game. And I was especially impressed by the way that like Sam, the cinematics of him interacting with the baby and like the way Fragile interacted with the baby. I thought it was so cool. And I was really hoping the story would go in a different direction, not really a huge fan of seeing a dead toddler in my games. But then after that, it really, after you meet up with all these people and the story just starts getting pulled and suddenly you have this anonymous benefactor who may or may not be the president, or maybe he speaks for the president, or maybe he's supposed to be someone else entirely. And then the president appears and it's like, is this the president? No, it's the new president. Actually, it's not the president. I was just like, I am so lost here with.

• 43:10Kirk Hamilton?

  We'll see. Die Hard Man was president of the UCA, but this president is president of a corporation.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is so obvious. What are you not giving?

• 43:16Jason Schreier?

  I was willing to put up with the stuff about beaches and car and I was like, okay. Okay, like I can, I can

• 43:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Your ha and your ka.

• 43:23Jason Schreier?

  Even that ridiculous like sequence where, um, what's his name? Dead Man is like talking about my ha and my ka are together at the beach now. And I was just like, what, what is going on here?

• 43:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, that was nice when Dead Man finally gets to die.

• 43:36Jason Schreier?

  Again, willing, willing to put up with that, but by the time I got to Australia.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  It's like one of my favorite scenes so far. Anyway, Jason, keep going.

• 43:44Jason Schreier?

  Got to Australia and was just overloaded with the proper nouns. And I was just like, this is not for me.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Well, I'll, I'll agree with you on one piece of this, which is that there is an inherent tension in the game that Sam as a character keeps pointing out, and I do think it's going to be an issue, which is Sam continuing to be like, why are we doing this? Like Sam, the hero, keeps trying to refuse the call and the game won't let him. Like you need to just keep connecting different parts of the world. And Sam keeps questioning it and being like, isn't this colonialism? Like, isn't this just the UCA extending its borders to Mexico and Australia and all these other countries? Like, aren't I acting as some sort of weird colonizer by going to these places and just bringing the ghost internet there?

• 44:31Speaker 01

  And all the other characters are like, no, no, Sam, it's a private corporation that you're doing this on behalf of. And I, the player, I'm like, why is that better? I don't trust a private corporation more than the invented version of the US government in this game. And Sam also doesn't and says that in so many words and is like, I don't really trust any of this. But then the conclusion of the scene with the president that you just referred to, Jason, is that Sam is just kind of like, I guess I'll do it anyway.

• 44:59Jason Schreier?

  And I, okay, that's the part of the motivation that I just don't understand. And Dollman is like, you know, you could go for a walk through Australia. It'll really help you get over your grief by going and connecting Australia. And I'm just like, will it? Is that, is that really the extent of the motivation here? So that's the only point that I wanted to make is that I just don't understand the motivations at all, which is one of the reasons I'm failing to connect with this story. I'm sure lots of people out there will be more like you two and completely connect with the story.

• 45:26Kirk Hamilton?

  No, no, no, no, I really don't want you to describe me that way.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Like you, Jason.

• 45:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Let me weigh in on this. I want to be clear here. I do not find any of that convincing at all. Like, I've never really connected on that kind of an emotional level to the story of either of these games or to the story of any Metal Gear game ever. I have never felt as though a Hideo Kojima story has made sense to me on human terms.

• 45:50Jason Schreier?

  You're saying that Big Boss never made you cry, man?

• 45:52Kirk Hamilton?

  No, Big Boss never made me cry. It's always this kind of ridiculous stuff. And especially in this game, that part almost made me laugh where he's like, oh, man, my kid died. Well, I guess I'm just gonna go do the game again because we have to do a sequel. Like, it really just, yeah, it really just felt like, all right, we're gonna do the game again. And then, oh, you need to have a ghost baby because there needs to be a baby because there's a baby in Death Stranding and that's how we designed the first game. And like, all of that stuff feels very, uh, kind of rushed. They, it could have been done much better. I do know that a lot of this game's development took place during COVID and that it was an incredibly challenging development. For all of the refinements and, you know, beautiful little extra things that they added, this game was actually made after COVID, since the first game came out right before COVID.

• 46:37Kirk Hamilton?

  And Kojima has talked about how it was incredibly difficult. They were working remotely. He wasn't able to scout locations. He couldn't be on set with people. And a lot of things were very difficult to do. So I think probably some of that, where they're just, they have to get to the next thing and they don't do it in the most elegant way possible, will be due to that. But for whatever the reason is, I do think like, it's incredibly inelegant a lot of times in terms of motivation and characters. It's, again, like, I like the base gameplay and I just sort of enjoy whenever a cutscene comes up because it's gonna be some interesting to look at thing with fun actors, some of whom are very famous and fun to watch, do mocap stuff. And then it just kind of keeps going. And then at the end, I'll kind of just rinse through it all and look it over and be like, all right, so what was that about?

• 47:23Kirk Hamilton?

  That's kind of a fun way to experience it. But I don't want to give the impression that I'm like, I just find Sam so relatable, the way Norman Reedus stares at people and doesn't speak and grunts and like, doesn't seem to have any emotions except when he's on a zipline.

• 47:36Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  No, I don't either, for the record. It's more of a Fascination, if anything, because it's so unusual to write a game or a story in this way. And to, it does also feel like that specific moment that we're talking about may have been subject to rewrites. And I was reading this really long-wired story where they got a lot of access to Kojima, and he's talked about rewriting this game while making it because he changed his mind over the course of COVID-19 about some things fundamentally, that the first game emphasizes this idea that the Kyrol Network is a boon for people, and that this is helpful. And he started to question that and be like, I don't know,

• 48:21Speaker 01

  it was still really isolating, like, people living in these bunkers, you get to actually kind of experience something like that during COVID-19 and be like, this would suck, and maybe I should try to emphasize that more in this game. I don't know that that succeeds, per se. So far, I'm not really getting that, but I know that's, that he rewrote the game, is what I'm saying. And I feel that the weight of that in some of the scenes and pacing, and just, like, somebody who is experiencing a worldwide pandemic along with everyone else, and writing a game about what is essentially a pandemic, it's a supernatural cataclysm, but it affects everyone in the world and kills millions of people and makes it so that they can't easily contact each other anymore. So, like, having that experience

• 49:01Speaker 01

  happen while this game was being made is also just fascinating to me, and makes it a work of art that I'm really interested in, from just a critical level, even though there are parts of it that I'm like, well, this is silly. I don't, you know what I mean? Like, it is, that's helping propel me for sure, is that curiosity.

• 49:21Kirk Hamilton?

  In the end, it really is, for me, so similar to some albums in particular that I've really struggled with. I actually made an episode of Strong Songs this season about the Mars Volta's album, Deloused in the Comatorium, which I always hold up as an example of an incredibly challenging album, that I was kind of turned off by, because it's really aggressive and, like, really all over the place, just a ton going on. The first time I heard it, in, like, the early 2000s, I was like, whoa, this is not my thing. And then, I, but I was like, but I'm gonna listen to it again. And I kind of just stuck with it and made myself keep listening. Listening and then over time, I just kind of grew into it and it gradually became one of my favorite albums of all time. I've listened to it hundreds of times and I hear something new every time. And Death Stranding is really rare for me in that it's a video

• 50:03Kirk Hamilton?

  game that's like that. It's that same feeling where when I played the first game, I was like, okay, this is interesting, but I don't know, man. And I kind of bounced off. Then I came back, I played a little more and I was like, no, this is cool, but I just don't really have time. And I kept coming back and I, you know, the director's cut came out and I played it on PC and then I played it on PS5 and I finally played a whole bunch of it. And now that the sequel is out, I'm like totally conversant in it. And I just find that experience like that I'm so, it's so familiar and it's so unusual. It's just not like any other game. It doesn't have, it just seems to have totally different goals, narratively and in terms of design. And I find that just really, really refreshing and interesting. So yeah, loving it.

• 50:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I'm glad it exists for that reason. Before we go and take a break, Kirk, have you seen any of the actors that you predicted would appear?

• 50:58Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm trying to remember.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, who did we even say? Timothy Chalamet was on there. Haven't run into him yet.

• 51:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Not yet. Elle Fanning is the actress that I most recently saw. And she's actually in the movie. That's my one more thing as well, which is sort of funny.

• 51:14Jason Schreier?

  Your predictions are Sydney Sweeney, Zendaya, Florence Pugh, Timothy Chalamet, Christopher Nolan, Daniel Craig. Those are your six predictions.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Great predictions.

• 51:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, I have not seen any of them yet. Man.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  There's still time. There's still time.

• 51:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Christopher Nolan, the fact that Christopher Nolan isn't in this is actually sort of surprising.

• 51:33Jason Schreier?

  Well, not yet. You never know.

• 51:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe he'll turn up.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  He might be in it. They've really kept the spoilers under wraps for this game. So I could easily open up a bunker door and find Chris Nolan in there, I feel like.

• 51:43Kirk Hamilton?

  I wouldn't be surprised to see Timothy Chalamet as well.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  No, he's gotta be in there. He's gotta be.

• 51:48Kirk Hamilton?

  We'll see. All right. Well, that is Death Stranding 2, a very interesting game. I'm certainly going to keep playing it and maybe we'll talk about it a little bit more in the future on the show. For now, let's take a break and then we will come back for one more thing.

• 52:04Speaker 04

  Hello, this is Alex.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  Hello, this is Katie.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  We host Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, and this week, we released our 250th episode.

• 52:12Speaker 05

  250, dee, dee, dee.

• 52:16Speaker 04

  Every episode stands on its own.

• 52:18Speaker 05

  And every episode is about a seemingly ordinary topic.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  We reveal the history and the science of stuff like salt, and clouds, and your computer mouse.

• 52:26Speaker 05

  And episode 250 is about the word hello.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 52:30Speaker 05

  You know that word. You're ready to go.

• 52:32Speaker 04

  So let us say hello to you. Find Secretly Incredibly Fascinating at MaximumFun.org.

• 52:41Speaker 06

  Hi, is this Brennan?

• 52:42Speaker 07

  This is Brennan.

• 52:43Speaker 06

  This is Ben Harrison. I'm the host of The Greatest Generation and Greatest Trek, along with my buddy Adam, on Maximum Fun. I am calling because you, Brennan, have been named Maximum Fun's Member of the Month.

• 52:57Speaker 07

  Oh, my God. I'm so honored to be the Max Fun Member of the Month.

• 53:01Speaker 06

  As Member of the Month, you'll be getting a gift card to the Max Fun store, a special Member of the Month bumper sticker, and a special priority parking spot at the Max Fun headquarters in Los Angeles, California, just for you. That's a perk that I don't even get as a host of shows on the network.

• 53:19Speaker 07

  This all sounds fantastic. I'm gonna have to figure out a way to use that parking spot.

• 53:26Speaker 06

  Brennan, you have to do it. Just to rub it in my face alone. Have a great day and live long and prosper. I don't know how to do this.

• 53:37Speaker 07

  That works. I will do my best to live long and prosper.

• 53:40Speaker 03

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

• 53:45Speaker 06

  And we're back for one more thing. Jason, how about you kick us off?

• 53:49Jason Schreier?

  My one more thing is a book called Ninth House by Lee Bardugo, who is an author that Kirk has recommended and shouted out on One More Thing in the past for her Shadow and Bone books.

• 54:00Speaker 06

  And really for her Crows books.

• 54:02Jason Schreier?

  Crows, yeah, the Crows.

• 54:03Speaker 06

  Those I like a lot. Those are a lot more than the Shadow and Bone trilogy.

• 54:06Jason Schreier?

  And the concept of Ninth House, which was published in 2019, is that within Yale University, there is this, uh, this, uh, these kind of secret societies of magic practitioners. Um, and there are eight of them. And then there's this ninth house, uh, called Leth. And the Leth's job is to kind of monitor, be the watchdogs for the eight houses. And our main character, um, this woman named Galaxy Stern, who goes by Alex Stern. Uh, she is this kind of this screw up character, drug addict, had a really rough history who is brought in

• 54:44Jason Schreier?

  because she has a very unique ability in that she can see the dead, uh, and nobody else can unless they like take special potions to see the dead. And this book is the story of her kind of joining this, um, society of watchdogs and what that means for her. Um, and then it opens up as many good stories do with a murder. And so there's a murder mystery plot involved. Um, the book, the, the way the book is structured, it kind of jumps back and forth between, um, the past and the present, the past being her kind of introduction to the house and like her, her learning about it and her first kind of months there and the present being a few months in when she is trying to solve this murder mystery and figure out what happened there. Among other big mysteries such as the disappearance, the mysterious disappearance of her mentor.

• 55:30Jason Schreier?

  Um, slash kind of, uh, uh, upperclassman who has been showing her the ropes. It's really cool book. I'm really enjoying it. Not a hundred percent finished with it yet, but pretty close to the end. Um, and the way that the Bardugo, um, tells a story and creates a, a universe is really, really good. Uh, clearly this is, I think this was published after the fantasy books that you've shouted out in the past Kirk and, and you can see that she has had a lot of time to hone her craft and refine her work for this one. Um, it's really fun. Uh, it's got good energy. It's got a really propulsive story and, uh, interesting worlds. Uh, it's fun to see this kind of alternate version of Yale University. The author, by the way, she went to Yale, so she clearly knows it well.

• 56:15Jason Schreier?

  And she, uh, really paints this interesting picture of New Haven, the town that Yale is in. Um, also the town, uh, well known. For Connecticut style pizza, New Haven style pizza, uh, which has not been mentioned in the book so far.

• 56:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Connecticut style, a pizza, New Haven pizza, which I have had and is is quite delicious. I have a bunch of friends who live in New Haven.

• 56:33Jason Schreier?

  Um, yeah, I'm actually going around there this weekend and might have some, some pizza.

• 56:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Go to Sally's, man. Sally's is like the place.

• 56:40Jason Schreier?

  Haven, but just kinda close by to Mohegan Sun nearby. Um, but anyway, so, uh, uh, really cool book, Ninth House, uh, really enjoy it and really enjoy the characters and especially the main character who is a very kind of lovable, um, screw up type character, kind of a typical YA uh, character in some ways, but really flushed out and um,

• 57:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 57:02Jason Schreier?

  badass and awesome. And I'm really enjoying, uh, reading her story. And apparently this is a whole series. There's a sequel that has come out. It's meant to be multiple books. Um, there's also a show that's been, uh, in production. I don't know if it's ever gonna happen, but I think Amazon Prime picked it up. So will probably be a big thing, but um, if it's not already a big thing, but yeah, really enjoying it. Ninth House, Labor Dugo, worth checking out.

• 57:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. I'll check it out. Yeah, that, that trajectory makes sense. Her Crows duology, which are the, I think, Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom come after the Shadow and Bone trilogy, which were adapted into a Netflix show. I've talked about this. It was actually weird. They combined the duology and the trilogy into one show and the show was good for one season and then absolutely fell apart. And those, it's really like her, she becomes a much stronger writer even over the course of the trilogy. So the third book in Shadow and Bone is like pretty good, where the first book is pretty like cut it, you know, it's a pretty standard like special girl with the magical powers and a, you know, whatever chosen one YA novel. And then the Crows duology is sick. You should totally read those, like both of you should.

• 58:07Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I'm going to. I wanted to even when you first talked about it, but now that I, now that I'm reading her other work, I'm definitely going to check it out.

• 58:14Kirk Hamilton?

  She's great. And especially knowing that you love those Lies of Lac Lamora, the Lac Lamora books. They have a real similar kind of seedy fantasy heist, like a dark underbelly kind of a thing. And she, yeah, she kicks ass. I totally want to read this. That's a, a good reminder that she's out there writing books, cause I haven't read anything of hers since those Crows books. Okay, Maddie, what is your one more thing?

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Okay, mine is Claire Obscure Expedition 33 because I completed the game. I watched the ending I didn't choose on YouTube. I've seen the two endings and I wanted to close the book on it without spoiling it. Although with this game, maybe it's more accurate to say like, frame the painting on it or something like that. I actually really liked both of the endings and that's part of why I wanted to mention this because I know that there are people out there who are like, I didn't really think these worked or that's fine. I can understand why somebody would think that, but they really worked for me. And I think they fit the vibe of the game.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  I do think the game loses its way pacing wise, like the end of act two, start of act three. It has kind of a moment that a lot of games have where you just have like extra stuff to do. And you're like, could this end? I kind of feel like I see where we're going with this one and I just want to get there. But for some reason, there's a lot more bosses to fight before I'm going to be permitted to do that. Classic RPG stuff, but I was really glad that I finished it because I thought the endings were really cool. I liked the one I chose, but then also the other one I thought was really neat also. And it made me think like, there should be like some way that everyone can see both endings.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Because I feel like they both say something about the game and what could happen. And I think it's really cool that they're like contradictory endings. Like you can really only choose one. And I just think it's neat that the game writers did that and made a decision and were like, these are gonna be opposite endings, if you know what I mean. Like they, they could not coexist, so you have to pick one. And I liked that. I thought that was brave and cool. And so, yeah, I recommend beating it if somebody also kind of stalled out at some point and was just like, I'm not sure I want to see the end. That's fair. I know both of you at that point. There's a lot of parrying involved. Yeah, no, I get it.

• 1:00:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, no, I actually, I installed the mod. Mod on PC that makes the pairing a little easier. Shh, don't tell anyone. Oh, wait.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Like, you know what? I get it. There were some points near the end where I was like, I am tired of this. I will admit that.

• 1:00:54Kirk Hamilton?

  It was probably because I was curious and I just wanted to see what it was like because I saw it was like a very popular mod. So I thought I'd install it. I was like, oh, this is fun.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  That might be a good way to go.

• 1:01:01Kirk Hamilton?

  And I do really want to finish it. I just haven't. I kind of had to change gears, but I, you know, I really enjoyed it. By the way, did you both see the, the stuff about Charlie Cox?

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:10Kirk Hamilton?

  He's like, I don't know. I just did like three hours of work. I don't, I don't play games. Everyone keeps telling me how great I was.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  I thought that was really funny.

• 1:01:16Kirk Hamilton?

  I feel embarrassed.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  He's like, I have no idea what the game's about. I went in for four hours.

• 1:01:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Super funny.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  It was very, very funny. I did think he was great in the game. Uh, I think all the actors are really great and they get some wonderful opportunities to do more dramatic acting in the last chunk of the game, as you might expect. It's very high drama.

• 1:01:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. I mean, that was the thing I liked about the game best, probably.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Is all the, is all the cutscenes and the acting.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:01:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Cool. Yeah, I'll probably finish it. That's, that's good to hear. The ending is good. Um, well, I will go last. My one more thing is A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan movie, which I just watched partly to prepare for an episode of Strong Songs that I'm going to be recording soon, uh, talking with some other folks about Dylan. But I, I just also have been trying to kind of, uh, brush up on my Bob Dylan knowledge because he's never been one of my guys, even though for some people he's like the guy, like he is the songwriter that they've been obsessed with their whole lives. Understandably because he's so prolific and so enigmatic and so brilliant. He writes such great songs. I was pretty mixed on this movie, mixed to trending negative. I thought it was a little bit of a nothing burger,

• 1:02:24Kirk Hamilton?

  which was surprising. It wasn't what I was expecting, but, um, you know, not, not for better or for worse exactly. It was just sort of unexpected and then in the end sort of unsatisfying. So this movie is directed by James Mangold, known for actually making a lot of franchise movies, which I think is a sort of interesting fact to keep in mind when thinking about this movie, because in a lot of ways, this feels a little bit like a franchise IP movie, despite being a biopic, which is kind of a weird thing about it.

• 1:02:52Jason Schreier?

  Does it, does it end with like Bruce Springsteen coming out?

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  I'm putting together a band.

• 1:02:58Jason Schreier?

  We're gonna talk to you about the band initiative.

• 1:03:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I mean, you joke, but like, I am actually starting to feel as though these music biopics are actually going to start having crossovers where like, you'll see Taron Edgerton's Elton John in the background or something.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Oh, that's weird. I don't know about that.

• 1:03:14Kirk Hamilton?

  But it's this filmmaking style, I think, that really has taken hold across every style of movie. And Mangold, of course, he made Dial of Destiny and Indiana Jones movie. He made two X-Men movies. He knows how to do this stuff. And there's a feeling throughout the movie that you're being fed Bob Dylan Easter eggs. You know, it's like, oh, it's Alan Lomax. There he is in the background. Like, oh, there's the whistle that he blew at the start of Highway 61 Revisited. Like, you're getting all these little scenes. And if you know Dylan at all, you'll know some of them. But then there's a ton of stuff that I don't know.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  You know the lore. From the comics. If you've read the Dylan comics, you'll get it.

• 1:03:50Kirk Hamilton?

  If you're, right. It kind of feels that way. I read a really great piece by Sam Adler Bell where he made this same complaint and was joking about the Bob Dylan Extended Universe. Maybe I'll link that in show notes. He says it much more eloquently than I could. But it was definitely a feeling I had. The whole time I was watching the movie, I was like, this feels like, it's not even hagiography exactly. It just feels like we're establishing more of the lore of the early 1960s folk scene in New York. It's a beautiful looking movie. It's really easy to watch. Timothy Chalamet is really pretty good as Dylan. He sounds like him. You know, there's all this talk. He did the work. He learned guitar. He learned to sing. It's a convincing portrayal. They don't do too much biography stuff, which

• 1:04:33Kirk Hamilton?

  is for the best because Dylan really is a very enigmatic guy. He's really just kind of a weird little dude who was pretty rude to people. And, you know, then Joan Baez, I'm forgetting the name of the actress who played her, but was this kind of wonderful, beautiful singer who they became romantically involved. And they're kind of an interesting contrast to one another because she loved, of course, to sing his songs. She would release albums of Dylan's songs. And she has this gorgeous voice. And Dylan, of course, does not have a gorgeous voice. And you kind of get to see his songs transformed into something else, like when she sings "Blown in the Wind." But they don't really explore that. I think that was the most interesting thing for me as a musician in the movie was just seeing that. I think that the reinterpretation of Bob Dylan is probably the most interesting thing about him.

• 1:05:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Like Hendrix's cover of All Along the Watchtower, there's a million great Dylan covers. And the fact that he wrote these songs that could be reinterpreted, I think is really interesting. The movie doesn't really get into it because the movie kind of doesn't get into anything. It just shows a bunch of scenes and you're excited about them. I think if you're really excited about Dylan, in that same way that a lot of these comic book movies can sort of feel like, well, you know, it was kind of not a great story, but hey, there was that scene where like the Wasp outfit turned up in the post credits. So aren't you kind of excited about that? It has that same kind of a feeling, which is just strange because it's real people. And it's a really interesting musician that I think could be explored in a way that's like a little truer to who he was as an artist.

• 1:06:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Instead of like fitting his story into this conventional kind of IP movie framework. So I don't know. It's a weird one. I don't not recommend it. It's like lovely looking. The recreation of 60s New York is beautiful. The performances are great. There's a lot of good music. You just get to hear a lot of Dylan songs. It's like a cool little take on his story, or at least on that part of his story when he was an early folk musician. And then made that kind of transition to more rock and roll music that was so controversial. But I also just left it feeling kind of unsatisfied and like there's so much more to Dylan that I want to learn. Fortunately, there's like a million books about him and like other movies and other things that I can watch. But as an entry point, it was shiny and kind of substance free.

• 1:06:44Kirk Hamilton?

  So yeah, I don't know. I don't not recommend it, but I also didn't love it. So that's a complete unknown. It's on Hulu right now streaming, but it's around. I'm sure it'll do the streaming rounds. And yeah, and that's another episode of Triple Click, folks.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Did it again.

• 1:07:02Jason Schreier?

  We did it. We pulled it off. We made an episode. Made our way to the beach and repatriated into an episode.

• 1:07:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. There was a void out, but it's okay. It was an unpopulated area.

• 1:07:13Jason Schreier?

  It's okay. Our car is still intact. Our car is still on the beach.

• 1:07:16Kirk Hamilton?

  It's true. If you're hot and your car are intact out there, please keep them so. And we will see all of you in another week.

• 1:07:24Jason Schreier?

  See you next week.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:07:29Kirk 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. Find us on Twitter at TripleClickPod, send email to tripleclickatmaximumfun.org, and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:08:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artist-owned shows. Supported. Directly. By you.