What's The Deal With: Dragon Quest

Jason, Maddy, and Kirk dive into Dragon Quest, one of the biggest video game franchises in Japan. What's special about it? What makes it so popular? And what's the deal with this week's release, Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined?

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

• 0:03Jason Schreier?

  You know, Dragon Quest is a lot like fast food. It always tastes the same and you always get slime. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about Dragon Quest VII Reimagined and the larger Dragon Quest series. Is it cool? Is it bad? Let's discuss.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Batty Myers.

• 0:34Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello.

• 0:36Jason Schreier?

  Welcome to February.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  We made it.

• 0:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Welcome to February.

• 0:40Jason Schreier?

  For another episode. We've made it. 2026 is almost over.

• 0:46Kirk Hamilton?

  That is what February seems to herald for me. It's the feeling of, oh, God, here we go again. I think we make the same joke last year where one month kicks over and you're basically at the end of the year.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  It does feel that way.

• 0:58Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's like time to talk about game of the year. Time to start prepping for-

• 1:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, February is so short, too.

• 1:04Jason Schreier?

  The game awards.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  It just rushes by.

• 1:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think that's part of it.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  It's the little one.

• 1:09Jason Schreier?

  And hey, if you want to help us make this show possible, you should become a Maximum Fun member. We are entirely listener supported and you can join in on the fun by going to maximumfun.org/join. And in addition to making this show possible, you will also get access to our monthly bonus episodes. We do special episodes just for subscribers every single month, including one we just did for January about the TV show Pluribus, where we all watched the first season and dug deep into it. And I don't think we have announced our February one yet, but we will soon enough. But yeah, lots of good stuff in there. Huge backlog, full of bonus episodes. Go check it out if you haven't already. Become a member.

• 1:51Jason Schreier?

  Go to maximumfun.org/join. All right, guys, we've been avoiding this for way too long, but it's time to talk about Dragon Quest, a series that-

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Finally.

• 2:03Jason Schreier?

  -we have not really discussed all that much on this podcast.

• 2:11Jason Schreier?

  Dragon Quest, for people who aren't familiar, or people who just need a refresher, is a turn-based RPG series originally created by Enix, now by Square Enix. Which, by the way, is a pretty... still maiming to this day. Square was responsible for Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest's biggest rival, and the two of them merged in 2003 to form Square Enix, another part of the same company. They're under the same roof.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Enix sounds like you're giving a cool nickname to Square Enix, but it was actually the name of a previous company. Like, you know how people call Square Enix Square all the time? We should really be using the full names, because this episode, if anything, is proving to people that that's so important.

• 2:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, I'm picturing an apostrophe before the Enix?

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, they're Enix, but it means Square Enix.

• 2:59Jason Schreier?

  The shortcut, yeah. Dragon Quest started in 1986. It was inspired by series like Wizardry and Ultima. It was notable for having art by Dragon Ball Z creator Akira Toriyama, who died recently. It also had music by Koichi Sugiyama, who also died recently. Yuji Hori, the creator of the series, is still alive. There have been 11 mainline entries in the Dragon Quest series, and there is a 12th that is announced and on the way. It was announced a long time ago, and I think we should hear more about it, hopefully in the next few months or next couple of years. And Dragon Quest is, as some people might know, so popular in Japan that it is essentially a national holiday when one of these comes out.

• 3:44Jason Schreier?

  There are all sorts of stories and rumors and internet myths over the years that have floated around about people skipping school, about them having to move the release date of Dragon Quest from weekdays to Saturdays because kids kept skipping school to go and buy it and play it.

• 4:02Jason Schreier?

  It is a humongous series in Japan. The kind of iconic slime enemy who is the Dragon Quest mascot appears everywhere in Japan. But it always, it never really took off in the West quite as much. It came the closest circa 2017, 2018, when Dragon Quest 11 came out. And that became fairly popular here. That was a huge seller. It sold something like nine million copies, more than nine million copies, including a decent number in the West, but still hasn't quite taken over on our side of the ocean, which might be why we haven't really talked about it all that much on this show. So before we talk a little bit about the most recent release and the kind of the news

• 4:43Jason Schreier?

  pick for this series and this episode, why don't you guys talk a little bit, why don't we talk a little bit about our own kind of experiences with this series? Have you guys, let's start with you Kirk, have you played any of these Dragon Quest games? What's your level of experience with this series?

• 5:00Kirk Hamilton?

  So I have a little bit, but the series has never stuck with me. It's never landed. I've never been totally pulled into one. I played, I want to say it was four on the DS, is that right? Did they make a DS port of four? I played some of that and knew that it was a beloved series. So it was during this period in the 2000s when I was playing catch up and I kind of going to video game homeschool, I guess, because I didn't play video games for most of the 2000s and wanted to write about them more and know more about them. So I was kind of trying to play games that I'd missed. And that was a hit or miss experience and some of that process involved discovering

• 5:43Kirk Hamilton?

  that there were famous series that I didn't really connect with, and Dragon Quest was one of them. I played some of it, but I just, I like a turn-based RPG, but there's just a few things about Dragon Quest, maybe that we can get into, that just don't totally connect for me and that I think, I get the feeling maybe would help us understand also why they don't always connect outside of Japan.

• 6:05Jason Schreier?

  Hmm. Yes, we will definitely get into that. Matty, what about you? What's your level of experience with this series?

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Total newcomer. So we're gonna talk about the Dragon Quest VII reimagine demo, which all of us played, and that is my first time ever playing any Dragon Quest at all. But I will say, I do have a pretty significant background that I've talked about on this show with Akira Toriyama and his art style and have watched all of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. So I actually really like his really distinctive art style. So that was very pleasant for me in checking this out. And I'll admit, I had kind of forgotten that was something that Dragon Quest was known for, because these games are such a blind spot for me, that playing it reminded me of that. And I was like, oh, right, this has really distinctive, like, kind of the big head,

• 6:55Speaker 02

  little body style, like, super cartoony animations aspect that I enjoy to Toriyama's art. So that was just something I liked and was like, oh, right, this is a really distinctive piece of this series that I just didn't know about.

• 7:11Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, to jump onto that, around the same time I was going to video game homeschool university, I played Chrono Trigger on the DS as well and really liked that game. And that game, of course, notably has characters designed by Toriyama as well.

• 7:26Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's, you can, you see a piece of art and you can kind of tell it's Toriyama.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, he has such a distinctive style.

• 7:32Jason Schreier?

  Style.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  In a nice way, I think. I kind of like when an artist just defines themselves and is like, this is it. This is my thing. And everybody's gonna be able to tell when I worked on something. And yeah, God bless him. He really did that.

• 7:46Jason Schreier?

  So let's talk about the game. So the Dragon Quest series, it was released, the first,

• 7:55Jason Schreier?

  the release in the West was always a little weird. The first couple of games were called Dragon Warrior, I believe, up through seven, because they thought Dragon Warrior would sound cooler to us Westerners than Quest. I mean, some, some marketing-

• 8:10Speaker 02

  We love War here.

• 8:12Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, some marketing person somewhere was like, oh, Quest, that sounds- Sounds like nerds. We should call it Warrior for these Americans. Ugh. Um, and, uh, and I believe it was eight that switched back to, that switched to the proper name Dragon Quest. And yeah, Kirk, those DS remakes, they, they wound up re-releasing a bunch of games over the years, um, including four, five, six, seven, and eight for the DS, and then three DS. All those games were re-released. Um, nine, I believe, was a DS game to begin with. Ten was an online game, and then eleven was on modern platforms. And then more recently, over the last three years or so, they've been doing these HD remasters of some of the games.

• 8:56Jason Schreier?

  So they started with Dragon Quest III HD, which was released in 2024, and then they did One and Two, which was released last year. Um, if you're wondering, Three is a prequel to One and Two, which is why they released it in that order. And then now is Seven. And so Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is the kind of the most full-fledged remake. On the taxonomy that we came up with a couple of years ago, it would be somewhere in the middle. Not quite Final Fantasy VII remake, but also not an HD remaster type of thing. This is a full-fledged remake. And what they actually did with this game was they streamlined a lot of it. The original Dragon Quest VII was known for being, uh, very unwieldy and padded.

• 9:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Um, and Very long, right?

• 9:40Jason Schreier?

  Very long.

• 9:40Kirk Hamilton?

  It was like famously long.

• 9:42Jason Schreier?

  Because of that padding, yeah. And they changed, uh, and they changed a whole lot of things, and they've redone the entire art style to make it actually seem a lot more like the Toriyama, uh, character designs. It's a pretty cool looking, um, reimagining. Um, and so I've actually, I've been playing all of these remakes as they've come out, which made me think of a lot about the kind of the nature of Dragon Quest. And I want to talk a little bit about what you were mentioning earlier, Kirk, about the, how the rhythms of these games just don't do it for you. There's something very distinct about these games. Very, I don't know, I guess I might call it quintessentially JRPG, in that they all really follow a very similar routine. You start out as a, um, voiceless, young

• 10:25Jason Schreier?

  Person, I believe it's always, almost always a boy. I don't remember if you could play as a girl in any of these, but you're a young person. You like oftentimes you're woken up by your parents and told to go out and do something menial. And then you meet up with some friends who eventually become party members and then you get roped into some adventure. And eventually you just wind up going from town to town across this big world. And every town has a problem to solve and that problem usually involves going into a dungeon and fighting random encounters until you get to the end of the dungeon and then you fight a boss and then you go back to the town and solve the problem and then you get something that lets you go and journey to the next town. Maybe it's a ship or maybe it's a key or maybe it's a bridge or whatever it is that'll let you keep going on the adventure.

• 11:10Jason Schreier?

  And I think there can be, there are definitely appealing parts of that formula, but it also is a formula. And different games in this series try to switch that up in different ways. We'll talk about what Seven does specifically in a bit, but it is very much the same sort of routine. And it's particularly pronounced when they've re-released so many of these in a row. And I've been playing each of them and been like, okay, yeah, this is, this is really the same thing over and over again. But Kirk, I'm curious to hear for you, what, what makes you bounce off this series or what kind of, what's your take on the rhythms of it all?

• 11:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's not really the rhythms for me because that could be said of a lot of RPGs, right? It's not that uncommon for a game to have you go to a town and find a person in the town who needs help and there's a dungeon nearby. I mean, that could be just about any RPG. For me, it's more the aesthetics, I think. There's something about these games that I find just a little bit odd or maybe even uncanny. There's a childishness to them that I think a lot of people like. There's this kind of, oh gee, we're going on an adventure. I'm a kid and it's time to find my destiny feeling that. You know, could be really appealing.

• 12:30Kirk Hamilton?

  It has a kind of, almost a make-believe quality to it, like your children make-believing that you're on a quest. And that's really charming and is a nice contrast, actually, to the angsty melodrama of, say, Final Fantasy, especially Final Fantasy VII, the one that I think we're all the most familiar with. But there's just, there's something else about it. So some of it is the music. I really like the music. Music is by Koichi Sugiyama, a famous composer, and I would say a very particular compositional aesthetic within the world of Japanese role-playing games, and a very conservative one.

• 13:15Kirk Hamilton?

  I think he writes music that sounds very old-fashioned. It almost sounds patriotic, I would describe it. Some of that is knowing a bit about Sugiyama's personal politics, like he was a somewhat conservative guy, and you can hear it in the music. There's a really neat story to the Dragon Quest music. I think it was one of the very early, true acoustic orchestral performances of video game music. You can listen to this on YouTube. There is an album they put out in 1986 that's like a Tokyo, I think it's the Tokyo Strings Orchestra, playing the music from Dragon Quest. And when you listen to it, and when I listen to it, I'm struck by a few things. One is, it's lovely. He's a, he's a very skilled composer and he writes nice melodies.

• 13:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Another is that it sounds just like the music that you will hear in any Dragon Quest game, including the ones that come out now. And it really is this orchestral, you know, martial, these marches, these kind of patriotic themes. If you compare that to the kinds of music that you will hear either in Nintendo games, in Nintendo RPGs, in Final Fantasy certainly, it's like a world of difference from, say, Nobuo Uimatsu, who is like a prog rock keyboard player and is writing like shredding guitar riffs and like 12/8 drum fills. It's just a totally different world. So the music sets me in this certain mindset that I don't mind. I find the music really charming, even though it gets repetitive.

• 14:40Kirk Hamilton?

  It even began to get repetitive to me in the DQ7 remake that we were just playing. But it sets me in a certain mindset. And then there's just something about the way these characters look, the way they talk, that I find a little bit uncanny. I don't like slimes. I just, I find them weird. You know, if you compare the slime to the chocobo.

• 15:01Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, hot, really hot, blazing hot.

• 15:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Is it that hot? I think that a lot of people find them a little odd. I mean, I get why they're funny.

• 15:07Jason Schreier?

  They're cute. Yeah, they're supposed to be cute.

• 15:09Kirk Hamilton?

  But they're cute in a creepy way. Their eyes are kind of dead. They have these just weird, like, they almost look like half-drawn. If you compare a slime to, say, a chocobo, you know, they're two very different aesthetics for a mascot creature. And the chocobo is this big, kind of, horse bird. It has this face. It has this theme music that you really know super well that's kind of goofy. There's just, I don't know, like, for me at least, I find that to be pretty appealing. It's pretty silly, but it's something that I kind of can hold on to. Slimes, I don't really understand. And then there's just a lot of that, you know, with these games in general. I mean, I found, like, the aesthetics even of this remake of Dragon Quest VII to be very strange. The character designs, they look like puppets.

• 15:54Kirk Hamilton?

  They look like the characters from Team America World Police. The first time this big, square-jawed, like, weird puppet guy comes out and his name is Kiefer and he says hello to you, like, it's weird, right? And I think some people like that. And I don't even, I don't hate it or anything, but I do find the whole experience to be a little bit uncanny.

• 16:12Jason Schreier?

  Interesting. Okay, I want to go back to something you said a couple of minutes ago, actually, which is about the, how every RPG, when distilled down, follows that same rhythm of going to towns and solving people's problems and going through dungeons. I think that's true, but I think what's more distinct about Dragon Quest is that in a lot of these games, there are a couple of exceptions, but in most of these, there isn't much in the way of overarching story. And your main character is silent, and in some cases, all the characters are silent or basically don't have personalities. So essentially, it's a lot more pronounced feeling as a series of short stories. Dragon Quest VII is kind of the the epitome of that because it is literally just a series

• 16:54Jason Schreier?

  of short stories. You're going to different islands and and follow and solving their problems, and they just have self-contained stories. But the only overarching story is, oh, the world's in trouble, go save it. Oh, there's the princess has been kidnapped, go save her. As opposed to other RPGs, Final Fantasy VII is an example where you are going out into this world, having these very distinct characters, knowing that this guy Sephiroth, who used to be cool and an ally and a superhero, is now turned into a psychotic villain and is murdering people, and you're following his trail of wreckage as you go. So you're still doing that same, I guess, rhythm of going from town to town and solving people's problems, but you have these larger goals and mysteries that you that are keeping

• 17:37Jason Schreier?

  you going throughout the process, which I think helps make it a lot more palatable and make you want to see it through to the end. With a lot of these Dragon Quest games, I find myself playing five, six, maybe 10 hours max, and then stopping because there's nothing really carrying me through. And as much as I might just find it pleasant to look at a play, there isn't really that kind of driving story part. And we will talk about the gameplay because I want to get into that as well. But that, I mean, I think is is the biggest difference in terms of that town dungeon, town dungeon structure, as opposed to a lot of other RPGs.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  That actually reminds me of something I was thinking when Kirk was talking about the aesthetics of the game, which is it similarly reminds me of a cartoon for children, and especially a cartoon like Dragon Ball, where the characters often reset over and over again. Goku has to fight a new enemy. Oh, they're all stronger than ever. And like, then everything kind of resets again. And that sort of formulaic thing of like, we're just fighting over and over and over again can be kind of pleasing because it's formulaic. And this game has a quality that's very similar to a child's cartoon in the sense that

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Everyone that you meet, like the adult characters as well, I think this is kind of what Kirk is driving at, is childlike and has that aw gee, aw shucks dialogue style. It's not just the three main kids. I don't know if you meet other kids later on, but they have that style as well. But it's like every other adult in the game also has this kind of G rated, boy, boy golly, like even when you meet the king, the way that he talks to you, doesn't feel like the way that a king would be addressing a child. It's, it all feels like it's part of a world of make believe.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  And that to me, combined with the really cartoonish, elevated, uncanny, yes, looking characters is like, okay, well, this is like a child's game. I guess I'm asking, is this game for children? Is that maybe what we're, what we're realizing here?

• 19:45Jason Schreier?

  I mean, all games are for children.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Well, maybe Final Fantasy VII isn't, but.

• 19:49Kirk Hamilton?

  I think you mean primarily for children, which I do think this is a criticism that I've heard Levy, but also one that I've seen parried in very, various descriptions of this game, in part because of the complexity and depth of the combat system and of the various systems in this game. I was reading, I think it was Michael McWhorter's write-up on Polygon, and he essentially made this argument, or he mentioned the complexity of the game in this specific context, saying, yes, there are childlike aspects to the aesthetics and the storytelling, but the game itself is actually quite complex and satisfying once you begin to really get into it.

• 20:25Jason Schreier?

  It's funny because I actually find the opposite to be true with this game specifically. I think with something like Dragon Quest XI, which I played a lot of. Actually Kirk, it's funny, I stopped playing that game or got sick of that game because the music was so repetitive and annoying and really bad in that game specifically.

• 20:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Weren't there two versions of the soundtrack to that game? That's the one where there was famously, they released an orchestral recording.

• 20:46Jason Schreier?

  Well, there were, there's like an entire 16 or 8-bit version of the entire game that has an 8-bit version of the soundtrack like to correspond with it, like NES style, if that's what you're thinking of.

• 20:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think that when the game originally came. And I'll bing in if I'm wrong about this. I believe when the game originally came out, there was a, you know, non 8-bit, but a sort of sampled and not great sounding fake orchestra. And then there were mods released for it where people figured out a way to take the WAV files from the orchestral soundtrack and put them into the game. And then I believe eventually, Square put out a version of the game that had the proper orchestral soundtrack.

• 21:22Jason Schreier?

  You're right. Although for me, it was the music itself, not the quality of the music.

• 21:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, well, it's quite repetitive. I can imagine.

• 21:28Jason Schreier?

  But anyway, as far as the gameplay, Dragon Quest XI, I think that is true of. I don't know, McGorda was writing about Dragon Quest VII, because really the opposite is true with this, because of all the streamlining they did.

• 21:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, it was his article, and we can link it in the show notes. It was his impressions of the new one.

• 21:42Jason Schreier?

  So oftentimes, so the way the gameplay works is you have turn-based combat, you give your party a series of orders, fight, heal, use spells, use skills. In most of these games, there's some sort of class or job system where you can build up your classes and get more powerful and have each party member be a different class. You can customize your party and play around with that. And the strategy is twofold. One is kind of on a micro level, you're trying to figure out, okay, do I want to, how do I want to take out this enemy? What's his weakness? Do I want to heal or attack, et cetera, et cetera, familiar turn-based rhythms? And then on a macro level, it's as you go through a dungeon, you have to think about resource management in your head. So you don't want to blow all your spells on weak enemies

• 22:25Jason Schreier?

  just to make those fights go faster, because then you won't have any magic points when you get to the final boss. And the problem with this remake specifically, Dragon Quest VII Re: Imagine, which if you, I assume you guys won't play much further than the demo, but I played a good chunk of it on a code provided by Square Enix.

• 22:43Jason Schreier?

  And as you play more, you start to really notice this, is that they've made it so streamlined and easy that there's just no strategy involved whatsoever. So I'll give you a few examples. One is that in many games like this, you have to kind of identify an enemy and be like, okay, what's its weakness? Oh, this is a fire enemy. I'll use an ice spell on it. In this game, it will give you a thumbs up for every. When you hover over a spell, whether and it'll tell you whether that enemy is weak to that spell, you won't even have to guess and check. It's just like it will tell you. Another thing is that resource management I mentioned in this game, there are goddess statues placed before every single boss, which heal your entire party's magic and

• 23:27Jason Schreier?

  hit points, which means you don't even have to think about resource management. You can play the game on autopilot. You can have it play itself for you essentially. Another thing is that oftentimes in these Dragon Quest games, you have to think about healing your characters, making sure they don't die, because if they die, you have to jump through hoops to revive them. And that could be a real pain and just adds a little level of tension, a level of friction that wouldn't otherwise be there. In this game, if you're one of your party members dies in combat, they automatically revive at the end of the battle. And I could go on and on, but essentially, not to mention, there are also like objective points on the map that tell you exactly where to go. And I don't believe you can turn those off. So it is really you are playing a paint by numbers in this. There is no strategy. There is no depth. There is no complexity to this, as opposed to something like Dragon

• 24:11Jason Schreier?

  Quest 11, where there is a little bit more of that complexity and some of the other games I've played. This one is streamlined to the point where it's just not even really all that fun to play. It just gets really boring, unfortunately, which I think is a flaw of this remake.

• 24:26Kirk Hamilton?

  When I started my new game, there were some difficulty settings. Have you messed around with those?

• 24:30Jason Schreier?

  Yes. So those are for like, you can make monsters more powerful. You can get less experience. There's some cool sliders you can play around with, but all the things I just mentioned, you cannot change. Another one, for example, on the resource management front is when whenever one of your characters levels up, they will get instantly healed and completely like, so all their magic points will be filled. So again, you just don't have to think about resource management in a way that you did in previous Dragon Quest games. And that can't be turned off. There's no toggle for that. So it's not an option.

• 25:02Kirk Hamilton?

  It seems like the appeal of this game, and even from what I played of the demo, I felt this, is that it is kind of a really good second-screen game. I'm sure it's still quite long, and it's very pleasant. And like you said, it sort of sands off a lot of edges, so you don't have to really focus on it too hard, or at least from what you played. Like, that's an appealing type of game, too. A game that you can just put on while you're, you know, watching Netflix.

• 25:26Jason Schreier?

  I guess, I don't know. I don't find it that appealing as a second-screen game. Like, I would rather my second-screen game be something where I have to think at least a little bit, or at least get some sort of tactile enjoyment. Um, yeah, I hate to sound so down on it, because I do like a lot of Dragon Quest games. It's just that this remake, they've really sanded it down to the point where it's just kind of monotonous to play. And they did a lot of good things, too. I mean, a lot of the streamlining is actually really smart, in that they removed a lot of the backtracking and really annoying parts that were in the original version of this game. They made it much shorter, they've removed some of the islands, as I mentioned earlier. It's the structure of, like, you go to different islands and solve their problems in the past, and then their island is restored and brought back to life in the future, and you can go

• 26:11Jason Schreier?

  in the present, and you can go and visit it and see how things have changed. But, um, yeah, I mean, Kirk, to your point, I think there, at least for me personally, it has not been the ideal second-screen game, just because there's, it's, there's just, I just kept playing, and I was like, why am I doing this? I feel like I'm just, like, going through the motions, paint-by-numbers, like I said earlier. Which is too bad. Um, this series does have a lot going for it, I think. And Dragon Quest 11, I think, is a good example of that. Music, musical woes aside, and that is a game that, actually, I would be curious if you guys, if we ever all play it one day for some reason. Or maybe we'll even, well, we'll check out 12 when that comes out. Because I'd be curious to hear what you guys think of a more complex, more elaborate version of this series.

• 26:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I started Eleven and played just a bit of it because so many people have been so up on it. We should say, Griffin McElroy, friend of the show and Bestie's co-host is like a huge fan of these games. And his enthusiasm for them really makes me just want to feel that and want to get into them. And it does seem like the kind of series that I could maybe find a way into. Because as much as I've never latched on to one, it's not like I hate it or anything. It's just, it always kind of keeps me at arm's length. There's something about it where I think, oh, I don't know, maybe I should just be playing something else. I had that thought playing this game partly because I love this Square Enix house style they've come up with. This 2D, 3D, or HD 3D, what do they call it? HD 2D?

• 27:41Kirk Hamilton?

  HD 2D. HD 2D, where they have these lovely lighting effects and depth of field. And then you're moving around in a world that looks sort of old fashioned, like an old game, but also obviously could only run on a new system. And as I was playing it, I was thinking, I really love this. I think this is a great way to make all of these older games new again, to bring them back, which seems worth doing, especially because a lot of people in the West didn't play some of these older Dragon Quest games. And then I personally would just have the thought, what I really should be playing right now is Octopath Traveler 2, because I played a little bit of that. And I know that game is amazing, and that game also has this style. And, you know, just grabbed me a lot more. And I heard so many warm recommendations of it, you know.

• 28:25Kirk Hamilton?

  So for me, it's a little bit of the challenge of, there are a lot of this style of classic JRPG, turn-based, beautiful-looking, incredible music, cool story, works as a second-screen game, runs really well on the Switch or the Steam Deck. There are so many at this point. My backlog of them is essentially infinite. And so each new one that comes out, like this one, is competing with all of the other ones that I hope to one day play.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm curious also, why Dragon Quest VII? Is there a particular love for this game, Jason? That would like explain why this is the one that they're remaking as opposed to another one? Like, is there something about the story as it goes along that people really love? Or the characters? I thought they were cute, so I could see that.

• 29:12Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, people, there's definitely some love for it out there. Some of the, so each of these islands has a short story and some of them, I think, are pretty heart wrenching. And then the overall story gets a little dark as you go, even if it doesn't seem that way from the get go.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Well, the one that you do play through in the demo, I would agree, is pretty dark and sad, and I liked it.

• 29:36Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, the overall story involving the characters also, because like the, like Marilyn Kiefer's story gets a little dark, even though you don't see that from right away.

• 29:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, Kiefer has to sacrifice a lot of people to defuse the bomb, you know? He's gonna torture people.

• 29:50Jason Schreier?

  Yes, yes. Kiefer, AKA Jack Bowers. Imagine if Jack Bauer had that square face and ridiculous like smirk all the time.

• 29:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Kiefer looks a little bit like Kiefer.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  There should be a Toriyama anime style of 24. I would watch 24 if it was an anime. They should do that.

• 30:07Kirk Hamilton?

  They really, I mean, it's, that's kind of Team America World Police.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  It is a little bit, yeah.

• 30:11Jason Schreier?

  There is actually, I was obsessed with this, there's like a Japanese like guy singing, I think it was a commercial for 24 in Japan, and it's like a Japanese guy singing the Jack Bauer song, and it's amazing.

• 30:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, really?

• 30:26Speaker 02

  That's amazing. I gotta look that up after this.

• 30:29Jason Schreier?

  I'll send it to you guys and we'll see if I can find it.

• 30:43Jason Schreier?

  But anyway, um, uh, uh, yeah, I mean, Matty, I think that with Seven, yeah, I don't think it's more beloved than others necessarily. I think they saw it as the one that needed to be changed the most in the most drastic way in order to be more palatable for people today. And so they chose to remake it with a lot of it cut out and a lot of it streamlined. The producer, I spoke to the producer, Ichiyama, who told me that he, as a kid, played Dragon, he's very young, he's like 30 or something like that. As a kid, he played Dragon Quest Seven and like didn't even like stop playing it in the middle because he was like turned off by it for various reasons. And so this is kind of him being like, all right, I want to make this game a little more approachable for people. And in many ways, I should be

• 31:28Jason Schreier?

  clear, it succeeds. It is like the streamlining decisions they made are really good. There's a whole part of the beginning, you guys did that part where you have to like go and, and, and find things for your like creepy uncle, right? Like you have to find the bucket things, you know what I'm talking about? The empty bottles. Yeah, the empty bottles. That part is like totally streamlined for this. Like in the, in the original game, going through all that, there's a lot more backtracking and back and forth you have to do. There's also like a whole bunch of like very tedious puzzles that you have to do in that first shrine before you even go to an island. You have to go through, you don't even get combat for like the first two hours of the original

• 32:10Jason Schreier?

  game. It is, it's, it's very tedious and a lot, and very padded, I would say. So it was a good one to remake and they did a good job. And also I think it looks really cool. I think the art style is really cool. They just needed to make all these eat like difficulty features have toggles, which would be an easy fix. I mean, they can fix this game by just putting out a patch that is like, hey, you want people to revive after battles? Yes or no? You want to have HP restored after level ups? Yes or no? Do you want to have goddess statues before every boss? Yes or no? And that would make it much more pleasant an experience, I would say.

• 32:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Playing a game like this brings into relief for me the way that turn-based combat has evolved over the last 30, 40 years. I think a lot to the better, a lot in ways that I find really cool. And going back to a game where it really is kind of, yes, there are weaknesses and you need to find them, but there isn't some extra mechanical hook, the way that in a game like Metaphor, Refantasia, or in a Persona, or, you know, I mean, Final Fantasy doesn't really count. Those remakes are kind of real time. So, I mean, that's going in a different direction to evolve the idea.

• 33:18Jason Schreier?

  Well, the turn-based Final Fantasies also have their own hooks. FF10 has its own sorts of like hooks where you could swap out party members for weaknesses.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  And there's still weaknesses, even in the real-time ones.

• 33:28Kirk Hamilton?

  And I would say that FF10 actually feels somewhat in-between for me. It feels a little bit old-fashioned, but moderate enough that I dig it. I played that after, I think I had played-

• 33:36Jason Schreier?

  It did come out in 2001.

• 33:38Kirk Hamilton?

  That's what I'm saying. It was, you're right, that's why. No, it's not like, not a mystery why that's the case. But I think I played the Vita port of that game after playing Persona 4. And Persona 4, of course, a more recent game. And Persona games, like Metaphor, the way that weaknesses work, the way they've stacked these, these systems on top of one another, where you hit a weakness and you get extra turns, and it becomes about the turn economy, and this kind of really complex management of understanding your enemy, understanding your party, arranging your party in these clever ways to build up these kind of satisfying domino structures in the combat. I mean, I find that really appealing. I think a lot of people probably do. And going back to an older-fashioned

• 34:23Kirk Hamilton?

  game, I didn't play enough of this and have never gotten far enough in a dragon quest to find out if there does come a point where combat becomes something more like that, where you're setting up these structures and then watching them activate. I guess my quest, I should ask a question to you, Jason, since you've played more of these. Does that actually happen, or is it just a, a different kind of thing?

• 34:42Jason Schreier?

  It's a different kind of thing, because it's a little bit more about just your kind of, your classic, like, 90's style, where it's about choosing to heal and play conservatively.

• 34:54Jason Schreier?

  Or play aggressively, or like choosing to use buff spells on your party versus just going all out and attacking. It's more about those kinds of decisions, which you've probably played before in a million other turn-based games. There is no complexity on the level of a metaphor or a persona where you feel like you're doing something fresh every time and you're making interesting decisions all the time. That doesn't really happen in one of these games. That said, when they're at their best, you do enter a kind of flow state and you do have to have in the back of your head a little bit of that tension, at the very least, where it's like, okay, I need to be thinking about this at least a little bit because if I don't conserve MP, the boss is gonna kick my ass.

• 35:34Jason Schreier?

  Or like if one of my party members dies here, then that'll be a pain because I'll have to go back and find like a revive spell at somewhere. I'll have to use one of my rare igdresil seeds, which are like in some of the games, a rare way to revive one of your party members. So having that tension there, I think, is the key that makes it, I wouldn't say the best combat system in the world, but at least more interesting than it is where there are just no stakes whatsoever. It's kind of like playing Dragon Quest, playing one of those Dragon Quest games that I just mentioned. It's kind of like playing poker with people and there's a little bit of money on the line. Whereas playing Dragon Quest VII is like playing poker on the computer, just like to kill time during your workday

• 36:16Jason Schreier?

  and there's no stakes whatsoever and you could just quit it at any time and it doesn't matter. Just without stakes at all, it just feels really flat and pointless to me.

• 36:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think, thinking this through, the development or the change that's happened is that more games are experimenting with giving you access to the action economy in the gameplay. This is something actually that the Hundred Line, Last Defense Academy, does as well, where there are enemies that if you beat them, you get an extra action point. That's something that these Persona, the Persona games and Metaphor do as well, where by hitting a weakness, you get more moves. That's kind of the idea, and I don't know who had this idea first or where this development started happening, but it's the thing that makes a turn-based game, I think it's the specific Kind of complexity, I think, that I really like in a turn-based game where not only are

• 37:09Kirk Hamilton?

  you managing damage and health, you know, those kind of two axes, those two faders on your fader board, but you're also trying to manage turns. And if you really play well, you can deny the enemy turns. And that development over the last however many years, that's been the thing, I think, that really adds an extra layer that I find very interesting.

• 37:28Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's one way to do it. There have been other ways that like developers have played around with turn-based combat to make it more interesting. A lot of times with job systems, you can do really interesting things. In some games, as we've talked about in the past, it's more about building your characters and then taking them into battle. And it's it's like largely about the preparation and the execution is more just going to go through the motions. Final Fantasy Tactics might be a good example of that, where a lot of it is more about how prepared you are and how geared out and how how good your job setup is than it is about the actual battle execution, although that can have some strategy, too. So, yeah.

• 38:04Kirk Hamilton?

  This is fun. I'm thinking of, sorry, one other thought I had is that bravely default is another one where I really like how in that you can charge up your turns and you can spend them ahead of time. Another one that plays with the action economy in fun ways.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I mean, I've been thinking about Final Fantasy Tactics as we've been talking too. And I guess it is actually still newer than some of these older Dragon Quest games, because it's 98 when it originally came out, right? So I, in my mind, I think of that as an older game, but it was still iterating on a lot of the things that Kirk is talking about, where it is adding in this this concept of, in that game, it's speed, you're not really gaining extra turns, but you can kind of add on a concept of, there's time mages as a job job class, for example, and that kind of allows you to kind of borrow advanced time and that changes the battle order, for example. And the job system is so complex in that game that it

• 38:59Speaker 02

  allows for what is a pretty simplistic turn-based economy at first to become pretty multifaceted. And that's part of why I found it so entertaining and why something like this, I'm more likely to be like, yeah, I need to be watching a television show.

• 39:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, Tactics also introduces positional.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Yes, that's true.

• 39:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, that is a really big difference. And something that I really like about tactics games in general is that

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Like 100 Line.

• 39:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Not only are you managing an action economy, but position winds up mattering in a totally different way.

• 39:31Jason Schreier?

  I want to bring up two things that I think are interesting about the Dragon Quest series. One is that Enix, as opposed to Square, Enix was always working with external developers and having them come in and make stuff, and then Enix would publish it. And the Dragon Quest games have, I believe, always, if not always, almost always, been developed by external companies. So, for example, some of them were made by Level 5. Others were made by, I believe Armor Project is another name of a studio that works on them. And so, you have a lot of, you have a very different sort of development style than, say, Final Fantasy, where it's made by the same team a lot of the times. It keeps going from game to game, especially back in the 90s.

• 40:12Jason Schreier?

  It was a lot of the same people who moved from FF4 to FF5 to FF6, etc. The other thing that I think is interesting is that Dragon Quest, in contrast to Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest has always avoided change and always tried to follow the same formula. Final Fantasy games, one of the reasons that series is so enduring is that every single game has tried to do something new, create some sort of new level system, turn-based, or some sort of new combat system, action system. Like, it's always new, new, new, to the point where, like, there are some crazy experiments, and some of them work better than others, but it's always trying something interesting and trying to innovate. Dragon Quest, occasionally it'll try to innovate, and then fans will get so mad that they'll, they'll turn, that the developers will say, "Actually, we're not going to do that."

• 40:56Jason Schreier?

  Dragon Quest 9 was announced as an action RPG way back in, I believe it was 2007, 2006, something like that, 2008. And fans got so mad at the idea that a Dragon Quest game would be an action game that they backtracked, and the developers were like, "Actually, sorry, we're going to make a turn-based game." There is something about these games that I think, especially in Japan, feels very familiar, very traditional. It's almost like celebrating Christmas with your family in the same place every single year. Like, you don't want things to change, you want that tradition there, you want to hear that same exact music when you open up the loading screen. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

• 41:42Jason Schreier?

  And you just want it always to be the same. You want the same slimes to be the first enemy. You want the same, like, cast of characters, et cetera, et cetera. You always want to have mini-metals, downwells. There's so many just kind of repeating things that you see in all of these games.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  The mini-metals are in every game?

• 41:56Jason Schreier?

  Mini-metals are in every single Dragon Quest game, yes.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 42:00Jason Schreier?

  And so I think that that is also just kind of a big part of this franchise and maybe why, another reason that it hasn't quite gotten as much steam in the West, where I think people are looking for maybe a little bit more innovation. I mean, it's certainly one of the reasons that I've always been a humongous Final Fantasy fan and much less of a Dragon Quest fan over the years, is because the Final Fantasy games felt like they were constantly surprising me and delighting me with their innovations and just kind of changing up the formula every single time.

• 42:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's funny. I played Dragon Quest Builders and really liked that. And almost, I get the sense that recently Square Enix has been more open to the idea of just releasing other styles of games in the Dragon Quest, like, under the Dragon Quest brand. Is that the case?

• 42:47Jason Schreier?

  That's not a recent thing. No, that's always been there. There have been Dragon Quest Monsters, Dragon Quest Builders, Dragon Quest. There have been all sorts of spinoffs over the years. Spinoffs, fair game for experimenting. It's just the mainline games, like, you're following the same formula. And I'm very curious to actually see what Dragon Quest 12 does and how much it kind of just follows the same path versus tries to do something different. The one thing I'll say about Dragon Quest 11, then, I think is one of the reasons that people rave about that one, especially compared to some of the others, is that that one has a much more, much more of an interesting overarching story that kind of carries you through and makes you want to keep playing, even as it is just kind of repeating a lot of the same tropes and formulas as previous games. It does have

• 43:31Jason Schreier?

  that kind of, like, interesting overarching plot and mystery and questions that it leaves you with. And so I think it's a more interesting game than Seven in a lot of ways.

• 43:42Kirk Hamilton?

  So our friend Chris Plant at his podcast Post Games also has a new episode about Dragon Quests, and he has a theory that I'm curious what you think of, Jason, that in the early years especially, because localization of Dragon Quest took so long, the games were coming out in the West at a time when they were already dated. You know, there was like, you know, it was an NES game being released in America when the Super Nintendo was already out. And so that was part of the reason that they didn't catch on.

• 44:10Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, could be.

• 44:12Kirk Hamilton?

  I was hoping you would be like, no, Plant's wrong.

• 44:16Jason Schreier?

  Well, I mean, that was also the case.

• 44:18Kirk Hamilton?

  You guys could fight.

• 44:19Jason Schreier?

  It's, that was also the case with other Squaresoft games back then, or Square, with Squaresoft games. It was the case with the Enix and Squaresoft games. So like, that was the case with Final Fantasy also, to the point where they skipped releasing certain games in the West, in part because they would be so late. Like, I believe they decided not to release Final Fantasy II or III on the NES because the Super Nintendo was already out here. And so they were like, we'll just go straight to IV, and then we'll call it II in the US. So it doesn't seem like we skipped any. Which is, Final Fantasy also had that same problem, but it picked up a little more steam in the West. So in Cell SA, it sold gangbusters, at least until Final Fantasy VII in the West, but it did pretty

• 45:00Jason Schreier?

  well despite also being localized later here. But yeah, it's definitely possible. I mean, my theory is more that it's just about the kind of, that gameplay just not being quite as appealing to Western audiences for whatever reasons.

• 45:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and also them sticking with it, right, because the series is so kind of fundamentally conservative, that it's been the same this whole time. If it didn't appeal at first, it's not going to start appealing to people now, and they're not changing it. So, you know.

• 45:30Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see how things go moving forward. Anyway, if you're curious, I mean, I cannot say that I like full-throatedly recommend Dragon Quest VII reimagined because of the problems that I mentioned earlier. I think if they do patch some of that stuff, toggle some of that stuff, make it a little bit more of a, kind of add a little bit more attention to the experience, then it'll be a little A bit more interesting, but and and I do appreciate the streamlining they did as a as a dad of two small children who doesn't have like a ton of spare time and wants games to be a little bit more streamlined. I do appreciate that part of it. I just wish it wasn't so frictionless. All right, why don't we take a break and we'll come back with one more thing.

• 46:13Speaker 03

  The Flop House is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

• 46:17Speaker 04

  Guys, how does E.T. poop?

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Uh, well, he's not that regular, but as he's gotten older. He has two Chloe, I guess, one under each arm. No, I was just looking forward to you going through the other ways in which Wild Wild West is historically inaccurate.

• 46:30Speaker 05

  You know how much movies cost nowadays when you add in your popcorn and your bagel bites and your cheese spritters?

• 46:37Speaker 04

  You can't go wrong with a Henry Cavill mustache here at Henry Cavill Mustache is the only supplier.

• 46:42Speaker 06

  The Flop House, new episodes every Saturday. Find it at MaximumFun.org.

• 46:49Jason Schreier?

  And we are back. Kirk, Matty, it is time for one more thing. Matty, why don't you go first?

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Sure. So I played a video game called Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator.

• 47:02Kirk Hamilton?

  So what's this game about, Matty?

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Actually, it's kind of complicated to explain despite the hyper specific name. So this is actually a sequel to a game I haven't played that is an organ trading simulator game that I'll kind of briefly explain because it helps set up what happens in this game. So both games, as far as I understand, having not played the first one, but definitely the second one, take place in a science fiction futuristic world where there's an intergalactic stock market. And there's aliens and cyborgs and they're all trading together on this big show floor. And ethics be damned, they don't care about that. They're trading alien organs in the first

• 47:48Speaker 02

  game. And in the second game, it does sound like they're trading literal babies, but that's actually not quite what the game is about. It is instead, uh, kind of, the game opens with like this, this title card that explains to you psychics exist. And so that means that the entire concept of the stock market has been destroyed because you can't bet on anything anymore because all corporations have predetermined destinies now. Everybody knows the future of everything, except for what will happen to a fetus that has just been conceived. That is something that psychics cannot predict what will happen in their lives. And so you're actually betting on

• 48:32Speaker 02

  the show floor against different events that will transpire in each of these science fiction alien and cyborg babies' lives. So

• 48:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Very bleak commentary, but especially that I find this so believable.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  I know. It's kind of, it's, it's, it's also a game that like opens with a content warning that's like, this is upsetting.

• 48:49Kirk Hamilton?

  In a world where there's nothing left to gamble on.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:54Kirk Hamilton?

  People found one thing.

• 48:55Speaker 02

  It's intended to be satirical.

• 48:56Jason Schreier?

  Is this like a, is this a simulation game?

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:59Jason Schreier?

  What is the actual gameplay?

• 49:00Speaker 02

  So the actual gameplay is that you are, you're, uh, participating in the stock market. You play as a, an alien who's betting. You're placing stock bets on this, this trading floor. And you have to decide whether to invest or not based on what you think is going to happen to a baby that you select at the outset of each run. And then all you're really watching is a graph going up and down, just like you're watching, like, you know, if you're loading stocks on an app, for example. And

• 49:31Jason Schreier?

  Or on the Bloomberg terminal.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So

• 49:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  At the first couple of runs, you're like, okay, this game's completely random. Like, all, all I could possibly do in order to earn money against this is try to guess what's going to happen to this baby. And like, these are all kind of science fiction events for the babies, by the way. Some of them are sort of like events that you might recognize from your real life. Like, oh, the baby, you know, grows to be 20 and they get a promotion and like, then the stock's going up and up and up. That's like a good thing in their life. And then something bad happens to them. Like, oh, they lost a bet with a friend or like their house caught on fire.

• 50:04Kirk Hamilton?

  So, so the up and down is kind of the quality of the event?

• 50:08Speaker 02

  Whether it's a good or a bad event. That's right. Yeah, that's considered good or bad. And you choose to trade and like sell. Yes, and you choose to buy stocks or sell stocks against like people kind of placing monetary value on each of these events in the baby's life. And so. Can you short like future events? Yes, you can. So after a few, after a few rounds, you unlock a couple of additional things, which are you meet some other kind of somewhat psychic aliens who are able to predict some things about each of the babies, which helps you decide like, okay, which baby am I going to select at the outset? And one of the things that I tend to select is. Isn't that insider trading? Yeah, I mean, look, this is not an ethical, Jason, you've heard the name of the game. This is not an ethical stock market at all. So, so like you can, you can find out whether

• 50:53Speaker 02

  the baby's going to have a mostly positive or mostly negative life. I like to select that because then I know whether I'm going to take a short position. Like if the baby's going to have a pretty terrible life, for example, most of the time, like bad things are going to happen to the baby, you wait until the baby has like a pretty good day and then you short that baby. And whenever you short the baby, a thing pops up on screen that says, short that baby exclamation point. And it's really funny pretty much every time. And then you actually don't get to like, close your short right away. That's part of like the stakes of shorting the baby is that like, sometimes you're wrong, you short the baby and then it actually ends up that the baby has a pretty good day after that. And then you lose a ton of money on the short. Anyway, if you don't know that much about

• 51:36Speaker 02

  the stock market, this is a great way to learn all those stock market terms. Yeah. In a fictional setting that is completely absurd. It's, it's really silly and also kind of sad because I feel like when this game was being developed, they probably thought this was like a really extreme satire. Whereas now I'm like, people bet against positive and negative events on Polly Market and Kalschi all the time. So like, is this even satirizing anything anymore? I don't know. But I still had a good time playing it. It's only a few hours long. I think they kind of know that after a few hours, it's going to kind of run out of steam, but it's very funny. And like the different kind of color text that pops on screen about the various types of aliens that are participating in

• 52:20Speaker 02

  the stock market is, is really fun. The world building is really great and worth it. And the soundtrack is like pulse pumping. Like you really are feeling like it's intense and you gotta, you gotta get your bets ready. So yeah, it's called Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator.

• 52:37Kirk Hamilton?

  That sounds good.

• 52:38Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, what's your other thing?

• 52:39Kirk Hamilton?

  My other thing is a book I read by Maria Semple called Where'd You Go, Bernadette, from 2012. Have either of you read this book?

• 52:47Speaker 02

  I haven't.

• 52:48Jason Schreier?

  No, but it sounds very familiar. Was this a movie or something also?

• 52:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Uh, yeah, I didn't actually realize this until I finished it, that they did make it into a movie, which I haven't seen. Um, and it was a pretty big book in 2012 when it came out, I believe. It was just widely read. Uh, and that's because it's hilarious and really good. Um, I read this book just in, essentially in a day. Um, we had a copy of it that I think one of my friends lent me, and then another friend told me she had just read it and laughed and laughed, and I realized we had a copy, so I thought I'd just read it. And I loved it, um, and I really recommend it for a few different reasons. So I will enumerate those reasons now. So this book is an epistolary novel. It is a really, really funny comedy that is also, I think, ultimately a pretty lovely story

• 53:33Kirk Hamilton?

  that is actually about something. It starts out just being very, very funny, and eventually you realize, oh, this is actually, this, this does have something to say. Um, it is set in 2012 in Seattle, and it tells the story of a family, which, uh, the mother, uh, Bernadette Fox, is kind of the central character, and she vanishes. It is made clear at the beginning she has vanished. And her daughter, Bee Branch, is the author of this book, and then over the early stages of it, you kind of discover and that Bee is assembling all of these epistolary documents and also commenting on them. So you're basically reading her work as she puts them together. So an epistolary novel is a collection of letters,

• 54:14Kirk Hamilton?

  emails, um, documents, just anything written that then tells a story as you read through it. So at the beginning, for example, there are a series of emails between parents, neighbors, teachers and administrators at this small private school in Seattle that are very, very funny. And especially if you've had any interaction with private school or with private school parents, you will laugh and laugh and laugh. It's very funny, uh, very satirical and pretty scathing. And, um, and so you're reading this, just like a series of emails in different people's Voices in different formats with fonts. It plays a lot with that kind of, you know, that kind of humor. You know, one guy writes these really unctuous emails and he's constantly bolting random words in his sentences.

• 54:57Kirk Hamilton?

  We have to stop thinking like Subaru parents and start thinking like Mercedes parents. What is a Mercedes parent? And then he lists what a Mercedes parent is. That kind of thing. It's laugh out loud funny. I mean, I was just laughing and laughing out loud next to Emily as I'm sure she was looking at me with mild annoyance as I read this book. Bernadette Fox is a very complex woman. She is B's mother and we get a lot of insight into her because we read a lot of her correspondence. And then also, of course, B's recollections of what her mother is like. Bernadette is married to a man named Elgin Branch. And you find out pretty early on Bernadette was a brilliant, I would say genius.

• 55:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, she won a MacArthur Genius Grant, so she was a genius architect in Los Angeles. A kind of renegade artist, really, more than a traditional architect, who is still venerated by the architecture community in like worldwide, really, even though she has kind of vanished from view after moving to Seattle with her husband. Elgin Branch is a tech visionary who works at Microsoft. There is a lot of very funny Microsoft humor in this book. I don't know Maria Semple's history with Microsoft, but she seems very familiar with just internal Microsoft communications and language and all of the dumb cultural things at Microsoft that make them so mockable. So that's also a fun thing about this book. So anyhow, Bernadette vanishes at some point.

• 56:22Kirk Hamilton?

  A lot of the book's drive is through wondering, well, how did it happen? And then what happened to her? And is she okay? And are we going to find her again? So that kind of keeps you going. But over time, the book, it becomes clear that the title is kind of a double meaning. It's both what happened when Bernadette went missing, but also what happened to Bernadette after they moved to Seattle? And kind of how can specifically a woman lose herself in marriage and motherhood and kind of lose track of who she was? And that is something that has happened to Bernadette and then is the reason that she has gone missing. It kind of goes in some really surprising directions that I found really delightful, like characters that I found really hateable wound up kind of turning around and surprising me with, by doing the right thing.

• 57:05Jason Schreier?

  By becoming Mercedes parents.

• 57:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Or maybe realizing that becoming a Mercedes parent isn't the most important thing. But I hadn't read a book that was almost entirely epistolary in this way in a long time. It makes it so readable because you just feel like you're reading through people's emails. It doesn't really, it doesn't hold you in one place for very long. So you're like, well, I'll just read another email because, oh, this weirdo is going again. Let's see what he said. Oh, interesting, an FBI report. Okay, well, what does that mean? And you kind of just keep going. But I really just found it to be charming and funny and a really, ultimately really lovely book. My final thought on it is that it is also very 2012 in a way that I found really interesting and enjoyable.

• 57:51Kirk Hamilton?

  It is a time right before everything changed. It feels like it's about a different world, especially because it's about tech. It's about the Pacific Northwest and Seattle and Microsoft and the rise of the iPod. There are mentions of Apple technology and the conflict between Microsoft and Apple, which was still seen as a thing in 2012. And it just reflects how much has changed. Social media is barely even present. And just the world was so different. The idea of a tech mogul was so different. Someone having a really successful TED Talk was still something you would talk about and that people would see as worthy of their envy. So it's really a snapshot of a moment in time that still feels timeless.

• 58:36Kirk Hamilton?

  I still found it very relatable. And also, it was a little bit nostalgic and it took me back in a way that I at least enjoyed because I was around in 2012 and sort of aware of what the world was like. So I really recommend it. I mean, if you just want a book that will whisk you away for a day and make you laugh and laugh and laugh, read this one. That's Where Did You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple.

• 58:59Jason Schreier?

  Too bad you can't really write an epistolary novel with TikToks. I don't know if that would work in the novel form.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Could make a movie like that, though.

• 59:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Surely that's already been done, like a horror movie. Haven't they made horror movies that are all on Twitch or something?

• 59:12Jason Schreier?

  American Vandal comes pretty close to that.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's true.

• 59:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, documentary is.

• 59:17Jason Schreier?

  Well, it's documentary, but a lot of it is told through the social media clips of like the people sharing their Instagrams and stuff.

• 59:23Kirk Hamilton?

  That the documentary like format lends itself to that kind of storytelling just naturally.

• 59:28Jason Schreier?

  My one thing is also a relic of another era. It is a TV show called How I Met Your Mother, which I enjoyed quite a bit when it was on and decided to re-watch as kind of a background watching thing while I'm playing a video game on my Steam Deck called Mugenics that I'm obsessed with and we will talk about more next week. So on a whim, I just started watching it and it's still really funny. Holds up pretty well, still a good show. I think that's something that, so How I Met Your Mother, just to describe it for people, is a show where the narrative framing is that it is set in the year 2030 and a guy named Ted Mosby, who is voiced by Bob Saget, is telling his kids the story of how he met their mother.

• 1:00:14Jason Schreier?

  And so it goes back in time, starting in 2006, which is when the first season of the show aired. And then the, the, the kind of the, the back in time part, which is most of the show, almost all the show, is it goes in year by year order, kind of like loosely corresponding with when the show actually aired. So it'll be like from 2006 until, I don't know, 2012 or whenever the show stopped airing, 2014 or something like that. And so the show is told, it's a story of these five friends, Ted, who is not actually played by Bob Saget, just voiced by Bob Saget in the future, and his, his buddies Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris, and Robin Schubert, and Marshall and Lily Erickson, and their interactions in New York City.

• 1:00:59Jason Schreier?

  They all, they start off the show like in their late twenties, wind up in their early thirties as the show goes on. And it's all about their dating lives and their relationships and their friendships and ridic- Ridiculous things happening to them in New York. And it's a very entertaining watch because the characters are very good and the performances are very good. And the writing is very sharp and the jokes are very funny still to this day. A couple of things have not aged well. There are a few trans jokes that I think do not, do not hold up. Maybe we're, we're seen as okay then would not be seen as okay today. A few, a few kind of like jokes in that nature. But for the most part, I think it holds up pretty well. Barney's character is also this kind of like ridiculous, like Lothario type pickup artist type.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  It's like an iconic performance by Neil Patrick Harris.

• 1:01:47Jason Schreier?

  And I also, I was kind of, I was like, man, is this gonna feel gross? Is he gonna be like super?

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  He's so good at it.

• 1:01:53Jason Schreier?

  He's so good at it, Matty. And also, um, a lot of the time, he's the butt of the joke, which I think helps a lot. There are some moments where it's like, oh my God, we're getting a laugh out of him, like totally mistreating this poor woman. And like him just like, like we're supposed to be rooting for him along the way. And so there are a few parts that are a little bit like icky, but it's not ruining the show for me. Like I still am enjoying watching it. Um, and it's a very good comfort watch. It makes you miss the days or it makes me miss the days of like these sitcoms that were just on. And you just hang out with your, with your TV friends for 25 minutes and then forget about them until the next week.

• 1:02:33Jason Schreier?

  And How I Met Your Mother also, unlike some of the other sitcoms of the early 2000s slash 90s is very heavily serialized. And there are a lot of like ongoing storylines and they play around with time in a really fun way. Like sometimes, um, it'll be 2007, so season two of the show. And Ted in the future will be like, oh yeah. And then there was the goat and you'll just see a goat in their bathroom. And he'll be like, oh, but that was actually next year. And then you don't find out about it until a year later in season three. And then it's like, oh, I gotta tell you kids about the story of the goat. And they play around with like the form in some really fun ways. Like, like, uh, at one point, um,

• 1:03:15Jason Schreier?

  Uh, Robin is dating a guy and um, and Ted is like, you know, he probably looked like this. Uh, and it shows a guy who's maybe like in his late 30s and like handsome and grizzled. And uh, then Ted goes, but to me, it looked like this. And it just shows a guy in his 80s. And like the, the entire episode is like Robin dating this guy who's in his 80s. And it's just played for a lot of good laughs. Um, and yeah, it's a very funny show and it still holds up really well. Um, in a way that I'm, I'm sure a lot of sitcoms do not. So I've been enjoying rewatching it. It's, it's, it's been fun.

• 1:03:49Kirk Hamilton?

  I think because you're talking about this show right now, is there a way that you can share your take on the ending without spoiling it? Cause I know people had a lot of takes on the ending and this was not a show that I watched. So I'd love to know what you think.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. You never watched it? Okay.

• 1:04:01Kirk Hamilton?

  No.

• 1:04:02Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I actually liked it. A lot of people didn't like it. I did. But the caveat here is that um, when it was airing, I didn't watch any of that final season. I just skipped ahead to the finale to, just to see what they did for the finale. So I missed a lot of the-

• 1:04:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Ah, you turned to the final page of the book.

• 1:04:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. I mean, it, it got, I kinda tuned out. And I'm curious, um, this rewatch, I'll see if I enjoy like seasons eight and nine. I mean, already I feel-

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  I also fell off of those. I think that was a pretty common experience at the time.

• 1:04:31Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it got a little, uh, I don't know, bad, I suppose. Um, as is often the case with these long running sitcoms, like you have your bad moments, right?

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's hard to maintain that quality.

• 1:04:42Jason Schreier?

  Even, even now, uh, the first two seasons, uh, especially the first season, like are a huge, huge leap in quality over like, like season three was a little bit worse. Season four was a little bit worse. So even, even at the beginning, I think the first two seasons were hard to top, I would say. Um, in that it feels like they just threw all of their true experiences of living in New York and ridiculous stories that had happened to them. And then after that, they had to go into, I don't know, more outlandish territory or more kind of silly and, and tense moments of the characters because maybe they ran out of those fun, fun stories that they had. I don't know. That's me just kind of hypothesizing. Um, but Kirk, to answer your question, so I, I didn't really watch the, the last season,

• 1:05:24Jason Schreier?

  but I skipped to the ending and I actually liked it. Um, I won't spoil it in case people out there want to watch it. But I, I liked the way that it made the show kind of come full circle and make more sense than, uh, yeah, I don't know. I liked it. I thought it was executed well.

• 1:05:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, now that I know that you watched it, Matty, in the same, in the same vein, what did you think of the ending?

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, I'll admit, I didn't think it worked, but I also didn't super care, if that makes sense. Like, I, I feel like because the show is a sitcom, the fact that the premise and the title of the show is How I Met Your Mother actually ended up kind of dragging the show down. Like, they had to stick with that. But like Jason said, what's funny about the show is like, the situational comedy, what sitcom is short for, and like, to just have a group of friends getting into wacky hijinks is like, those are the strongest parts of the show. And the fact that it all had to like, eventually be winding up for an ending, I think would always be anticlimactic. And I found it to be, but I don't see that as a flaw, if that makes sense. I see that as an inevitability of the structure of the show.

• 1:06:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Hmm, interesting. Okay. I'll watch it one day. I've thought about it. I know, I know it's really funny.

• 1:06:35Jason Schreier?

  Do you know what? Oh, you haven't watched the show at all?

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  Oh, so maybe you don't even, you probably don't even know the ending then.

• 1:06:41Kirk Hamilton?

  I have spoiled myself on the ending, but the thing is, if you haven't watched the show and have no context, it just goes in one ear and out the other. I couldn't tell you right now, you know, who the mother is or whatever.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, you should watch the first couple of seasons.

• 1:06:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe I would watch the first couple of seasons and then just skip to the ending.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Honestly, that's not a bad way to go. I, I remember, it's nice to hear it holds up. I remember really enjoying it a lot at the time and thinking it was quite funny.

• 1:07:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Yeah, you should watch the first C season, see what you think. It's a very easy watch. It goes down easy. Like I said, you just have to stomach a couple of jokes where you're like, oh, that's bad. But like, those are few and far between.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  That's every show from the 2000s, though. Like, I, I'm not even going to recommend this, but Dean and I have been watching CSI, and it's my first time ever watching the first CSI. And like, there's a lot of episodes, especially with like queer characters where we're just like, well, this one was terrible. We just like, click the next button. And it's like, oh, this one's great, you know? So like, that's just true of any show from that time period, sadly.

• 1:07:41Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I'd be curious to see what you think, Kirk. The pilot is very strong. If you watch the pilot, I think you'll be hooked.

• 1:07:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's been fun. I've been enjoying having half hour comedies. We've been rewatching Dairy Girls and starting other shows. It's nice to have just a short show that's really funny.

• 1:07:56Jason Schreier?

  Yes, I agree.

• 1:07:58Kirk Hamilton?

  And also, that one's a big, I mean, How I Met Your Mother is such a cultural reference point. It'd be worth watching for that alone.

• 1:08:04Jason Schreier?

  There's a lot of just fun creations that they have, lingo that they come up with. And yeah, there's some very good stuff in there. All right, that is that for this week's episode. Kirk, right, I'll see you both next time.

• 1:08:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, see you both next time.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:08:23Kirk 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.

• 1:09:21Speaker 04

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network

• 1:09:23Jason Schreier?

  of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.