Triple Play: Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced

Jason, Maddy, and Kirk pull out their spyglasses and zoom in on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, the remake of the 2013 classic for modern platforms. They talk about the sea battles, the game's gruff hero, and what works (and doesn't work) about this new reimagining.

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Gather round me hearties and hear the tale of the pirate trio that learned the ways of the assassin. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we talk about Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resinct, the remake of the 2013 game that blends hidden blade stealth with high seas ship combat and pirate vibes.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:31Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:32Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello.

• 0:35Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Hello, yahar ye mateys. Yo ho.

• 0:41Jason Schreier?

  What did you just call me?

• 0:43Speaker 00

  A matey, a fellow mate.

• 0:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Moose the royals in the tops. There's a lot of pirate jargon that goes far beyond my typical go-to pirate jargon in this game.

• 0:52Jason Schreier?

  I was reacting to yo ho.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Oh, well, yeah, that's true. I guess, hmm, I guess yo ho could be interpreted in a variety of ways, but I meant it in the kindest sex-positive, sex-worker-positive possible way. Welcome back to Triple Click.

• 1:07Jason Schreier?

  Yo ho's parentheses complimentary.

• 1:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, this, this is yet another episode of our wonderful show, which, as we all know, I start off by saying yo ho ye mateys every single week. This week is no different. And also, every week, we talk about the fact that we are a show on the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, a network we love very much. And if you want, you can become a member and support our show. We're listener-supported entirely. You go to maximumfun.org/join. And if you were to do that, you would get our wonderful monthly bonus episodes. You'd get the entire backlog, a full cache, a treasure chest, if you will, loot, I guess, is what we would call it in the context of this game.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  You'd get a ton of loot. You would get our most recent episode, which is a Beans Cast. We spill the beans about 007 First Light, really fun game that we all enjoyed. And the next one that we're about to record and release is going to be about The movie The Odyssey, which we have all already seen, but have yet to discuss. I'm very excited to spoil The Odyssey movie and spoil The Odyssey, the epic poem, and talk all about it with you guys. And a really cool adaptation. So that's MaximumFun.org/join to go and support us and get all of those sweet, sweet bonus episodes. But we've also got something cool coming up right here on the main feed.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  So we do an annual bet, a predictions bet. We all try to predict what we think will happen in the coming year of video games. In this past year, Kirk won the predictions bet, which means he gets to make me and Jason play a video game. And we are going to play a game called SOMA. It is a very cool game that I played at the time, but haven't played in a long time. Science fiction spooky game. We're all three going to play it and we're going to spoil it because it's not super long. Kirk, how long is it? 10 hours.

• 3:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, 10 to 12 hours, is my memory of it anyhow. Maybe longer if you if you take your time.

• 3:16Jason Schreier?

  When you keep saying that we're gonna spoil things, it sounds like we're just gonna ruin

• 3:21Speaker 00

  We're going to

• 3:22Jason Schreier?

  But we're gonna talk about them in depth.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  We're going to discuss the game in depth and we're going to fully analyze the entire plot, which I will say has several twists and turns that are really cool. And that is something about the game that's cool.

• 3:34Jason Schreier?

  And also, we're gonna spoil them like Taylor Farm's lettuce.

• 3:36Kirk Hamilton?

  If you thought you liked this game, you're not gonna like it by the time you're done listening to us talking about it.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  No. This is why spoilers is actually a terrible term for what it's describing.

• 3:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Beans, that's why we spill the beans. We're gonna spill the beans on the story, among other things.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  We're spilling the beans and they will be completely healthy, nourishing beans. And anyway, we're gonna do all of that in the main feed for our August 13th episode. And the reason we say all that is because, hey, why not play SOMA along with us? Check it out. Enjoy it. And then you can tune into that app and have your own thoughts. You can shout them at us as we analyze the game. You can participate right along with us. Okay, that's enough preamble. Kirk, what are we talking about today?

• 4:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Today, we're talking about Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resync, which is not called Assassin's Creed for Black Flag Resync. It's just Black Flag Resync. This is the remake plus, according to our spectrum of remakes. The remake of Assassin's Creed for Black Flag, a 2013 pirate-themed Assassin's Creed game that Ubisoft has just recently put a fresh coat of paint on. Really, more than a fresh coat of paint. They've added a bunch of stuff. They've really spruced it up and re-released it into the world. We've been playing it, and now we're gonna talk about it. So, let's talk about it. We've all been playing this game for a little while now. It's been out for a bit.

• 5:05Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm sure a lot of our listeners have played it as well. How are the two of you liking it? Jason, how are you liking returning to Assassin's Creed: Black Flag?

• 5:14Jason Schreier?

  So, I have maybe a controversial take here, which is that I really like the game until you get on a boat and have to sail around and do ship combat, which I know a lot of people like, and I really do not. To me, the ship combat is really slow and meandering and clunky and not fun, and just feels that you're kind of just going through emotion rather than making interesting decisions. Whereas the other parts of the game, where I'm sneaking around and climbing and parkouring and fighting enemies of the new combat system, love all that stuff, good stuff. But when they put me on a ship, I get a little bummed out. That said, I enjoy it.

• 5:59Jason Schreier?

  It's cool, it's fun. I enjoy that the subtitles all have randomly capitalized nouns, which I suppose is the style of English writing at the time.

• 6:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Not randomly, because, yeah, it's on purpose. But there are quite a few capitalized nouns.

• 6:13Jason Schreier?

  It seems random to the modern reader, I suppose.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, it definitely threw me off at first, until I was like, "Oh, this is an artistic choice for capitalizing nouns, because it's the way that people wrote back then."

• 6:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's funny. No, I like a lot of this game. I just don't like the ship combat, and there's so much of it. And I don't like the sailing in general. There's just so much of it. I think in general, I just don't love sailing in games. It just feels very clunky to me. So maybe it might just be a me thing because I know a lot of people like it, but gotta be honest here on Triple Click.

• 6:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, Maddie, how are you liking it?

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Well, guess what? I like the ship combat. So debate time. Let's, let's freaking go. Jason and I are squaring off. I'm throwing cannons at his ship. He's not enjoying it at all. I do like the ship combat in this game. I will say this is my first time playing Assassin's Creed Black Flag in any iteration.

• 7:05Kirk Hamilton?

  I was wondering about that.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  So I do not have the context for what is different and I'm curious about it. I imagine that perhaps you two have played it, so you have a sense of that and we'll get into it as we go. I got to just enjoy this totally new, which I think is also part of the intention of putting it out is that people, not everyone played it at the time, although it's pretty beloved. This is the pirate game. I think I would have really dug it when it came out. I like pirate stuff. I'm a simple woman. I enjoy pirate things, sea shanties and swashbuckling. I would say the thing that I struggled with in this game, I agree with Jason.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  I like the regular combat on land. All of that is really fun as well. I think it's very cool. But the protagonist takes a very long time to get around to being a good person. And that is the narrative arc of this game, but he is pretty unlikable at the outset. And I did not expect that, but I eventually, very eventually warmed up to him. But he really takes his time on deciding that maybe he is going to be a good person.

• 8:17Jason Schreier?

  When did you warm up to him? Do you remember? Was there like a specific moment?

• 8:20Speaker 00

  Um, I don't know. I think, I think it was mostly just that I got used to him. I appreciate that he has this friendship with Adewale, who's his quartermaster and who is this Trinidadian black man and has this whole experience on the ship of being like, I am in this sort of egalitarian pirate situation that respects me as a person. And that friendship between them was part of what really endeared me to Kenway more.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Probably up until they started having conversations about that, I started being like, what is good about this guy? Like, why does anyone like this character so much? And people really love him. I don't know if you two are aware of that, but this is definitely one of the characters of Assassin's Creed lore where people say Edward Kenway's their favorite assassin.

• 9:09Jason Schreier?

  He's a wife guy. People like that.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  He is a wife guy. That's true. That's one of his few good motivations, other than money, which is his chief motivation for the first act of the game.

• 9:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, let me think about that for a second. I want to talk about Edward some more. I guess just to give my background and what I think of this game very briefly. So I have played all the way through Assassin's Creed for Black Flag, and I reviewed it actually for Kotaku back in the 2013. This was right at the cusp of the PlayStation 4 generation. So I reviewed it on PlayStation 3, and I remember going to Ubisoft headquarters. They had a press area in San Francisco, and I went there and I played a little bit of it on PS4 to see, oh, look how the underbrush moves and is animated on PS4 because there's more physics. Look how beautiful the rain looks in HD in the lighting.

• 10:01Jason Schreier?

  Those particle effects, the PS4 era, they were all talking about particle effects.

• 10:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, PS4, yeah. So I reviewed this game. I'm very familiar with it and in fact have replayed it at some point. I replayed, not the whole thing, but I replayed the first chunk of it, right up until I got to where it becomes less fun and was kind of reminded, oh, yeah, older Assassin's Creed games were kind of tedious, and stopped. Because I do really like it. I think it's just a very-

• 10:29Jason Schreier?

  Which part?

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, where do you think it becomes less fun?

• 10:31Kirk Hamilton?

  It becomes less fun the minute you have to do a tailing mission where you're eavesdropping on people. In the original version of this game, they were still quite enamored of this terrible type of mission where you would have to stay within a circle around two guys while they have a conversation while parkouring. The control is notoriously unreliable. If you get spotted, you fail the mission. There were a lot of these sort of follow missions and also follow and eavesdrop missions. And I think I just did the third one within a couple hours. And I was like, oh, this is so tedious and kind of, kind of lost momentum. But I find this is just, it's such an appealing overall vibe, the way it looks, just the, the,

• 11:11Kirk Hamilton?

  being in the Caribbean, the kind of high fidelity monkey island, you know, nighttime, palm trees, monkeys in the trees, a small village lit by torchlight, that feeling that this game gives is just wonderful. And it's a nice, a nice place to be. And I'm really enjoying Recinct as well. I have a lot of sort of particular thoughts and critiques and whatever. Let's talk about Edward a little bit more though, because I think that that's very interesting. It kind of situates us a little more, or it's helpful to situate him in the Assassin's Creed lineage, because I'd say of the three of us, I am by far, or I am, I am the biggest fan of this series. I've played like every game. Our former

• 11:53Kirk Hamilton?

  boss, Steven Totillo, and I would talk for hours about Assassin's Creed. He, the two of us and Luke Plunkett, who's now at Aftermath, actually, the three of us were like total Assassin's Creed sickos and spent much, much time talking about the series. And this game was right at the height of that. I mean, this is after Assassin's Creed III, you know, it was this, this period where just Assassin's Creed was popping off. There was so much going on. Assassin's Creed III Liberation had come out, the one starring Aveline, Freedom Cry would come after this. Assassin's Creed III was also really notable. And let me start there. So Assassin's Creed III, if you remember, stars Connor, who is half, I think, English, half Native American assassin. And it tells an American story, which was a big deal for

• 12:38Kirk Hamilton?

  this series, because originally, you know, it was all set in the Middle East and then in Italy. So first, it's like, the very first one is set in, I think, Jerusalem and a couple of other cities around the Middle East. And then we get the Ezio trilogy. And Ezio, it's surprising that, when you say, there may be people who think that Edward is their favorite assassin.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  It's Ezio. It's Ezio. I think he's like the, the like, cool guy answer to the question. Like Ezio's like, everyone says Ezio, but then Edward is like, somebody else who comes up a lot.

• 13:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe. I can't really imagine why someone would say that, because yeah, like Ezio is the character who was, he kind of proved, okay, if Assassin's Creed has a likable protagonist. Then suddenly it becomes something much more, and that's kind of what Assassin's Creed 2 brought, that Assassin's Creed 1 didn't have.

• 13:25Jason Schreier?

  And he punches the Pope.

• 13:26Kirk Hamilton?

  And then he punches the Pope. So following Ezio was a lot of fun, because he was just a very charismatic lead. He went on a whole journey by the end of his story, and people were really attached to him. Connor was a poor substitute. There was a lot of interesting stuff in Connor's backstory, and making a character, you know, have these sort of two ancestries that are in conflict, and especially like exploring the plight of Native Americans under colonists in America. Like, that's all really interesting stuff, and Assassin's Creed likes to get into that kind of thing. But Connor as a character was just like a bummer. He was just kind of, didn't emote a lot, and just was not very charismatic. And so, that was kind of where they were at at the end of Assassin's Creed 3. The game had a lot of other problems, a lot of major design problems, in my opinion.

• 14:11Kirk Hamilton?

  The stealth was not very fun. It had just, a lot of the systems that they were still using, that they'd been using for so long, had run their course, and it needed something new. They needed to figure out how to make these games feel more modern, how to make them more fun, because it wasn't 2008 anymore. Like, we were in an era where there were lots of open world games, with like, better combat and better stealth, and like, everything just kind of worked better. And Assassin's Creed was still figuring that out. This game, Black Flag, was where they figured a lot of that out, and it seemed like, okay, we can actually really blow out the idea of what Assassin's Creed game can be. We can make it a pirate game, where you're in the Caribbean, you can be a completely different kind of character, doing all kinds of different kinds of stuff.

• 14:53Kirk Hamilton?

  And, they also refined the combat, they refined the stealth, which they've done again, in Recinct, because now if you play, you know, Assassin's Creed 4, it doesn't feel refined, it feels old fashioned. So then that brings us to Edward, who I like as a character only because he's so flawed. I was really struck by it this time. He's a real, he's a real cad at the beginning, just an asshole. Like, he's totally out for himself. And then, his story is one of, you know, discovering a greater purpose. And he kind of, for anyone who hasn't played the game, he's just a, kind of a pirate, basically. And he winds up coming up against a corrupt assassin who is in the process of selling

• 15:33Kirk Hamilton?

  the assassin's secrets out to the Templars, who are the longstanding, sort of, the specter to the assassin's MI6, I guess. They're the, they're the kind of, you know, counterpart organization. And this conflict between the assassins and Templars has always been kind of confusing because they're both like, I want people to be happy and free. And you're like, wait, can one of you just be obviously evil? Like, why does it always have to be so confusing? But that's just how this series works. Anyhow, he meets an assassin, he kills him and takes his robes and then pretends to be an assassin. And for a lot of the first part of the game, he's just pretending to be a member of this order that if you've been playing the games up to this point, you've always, they've always been the good guys. You've always been on their side. I kind of like that a lot, especially because he does grow and has some really wonderful

• 16:18Kirk Hamilton?

  moments toward the end, especially as you realize that he has a stronger character than he seems at the beginning. He is actually more, he has a little more going on. He is an upright and good person, and he gets some really wonderful stuff at the very end, too.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I can tell that I'm growing to like him, and I think it's also pretty bold, actually, to have a story where a character starts out unlikable, even if you understand why he does what he does, and it's clear that the assassin robes that he's stealing, like, you understand that that guy is also bad. It's all in the context of you're rooting for this character. But I do think that that's part of why the game is meaningful for people, is because this is a character who has an arc over the course of the game. They grow, they learn, they change. Like, that is, at least, when did this game come out? The 2010s? Like, this was pretty, pretty innovative for the time to have a story where a character's

• 17:15Speaker 00

  actually going through that much, and they're making the player take a chance on them for several hours at the outset of him being like, I'm only in it for myself. And you, the player, are like, really? How long is this gonna go on before he kind of comes around and realizes that maybe there's more to life than just materialism?

• 17:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I've been struck by the writing in this a lot more than Than I was the first time. So this game was, the lead writer on this was Darby McDevitt, who is a longtime Assassin's Creed writer. I've actually gotten to know Darby over the last 10 or so years. A really interesting guy and very knowledgeable and interested in the English language and the literature of this time period. He also wrote Assassin's Creed Valhalla. That was one of his other big ones. He's got writing credits, I think, on other games, but Valhalla was a big one. And if you remember from that game, it may have been the Viking Assassin's Creed, but really it was the, you know, Dark Ages, England, like, kind of that. It was more about England than it really was about, like Scandinavia. And he's very interested in all of that. And I'm just more struck by how much fun they're having with the language.

• 18:21Kirk Hamilton?

  In part, just the dialogue is a lot of fun. There's so much good slang and just like ship lingo that, that I am enjoying a lot more this time. And just the dialogue in general, I think it really has a great flow to it. And then, like you said, Matty, yeah, some choices in the narrative as well are, are really cool.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, it also does the thing Assassin's Creed games do that I enjoy very much, which is include the actual historical figures of the time. And I, we talked about Our Flag Means Death on this show a while back. And I didn't really know that much pirate history specifically, other than just sort of generally thinking pirates are cool, until I watched that show and started doing the Wikipedia deep dive on all the actual pirates in that show who all have really cool lives and histories. And then seeing them show up again in this game was really funny because I was like, oh, these are completely different, but also not that different interpretations.

• 19:17Kirk Hamilton?

  She showed up, I was like, oh, right. Cause I, similar to you, watched Our Flag Means Death and was like, oh, this guy. Oh, it's Steed Bonnet. Oh, that totally makes sense.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  It was great to see him again. And I can't remember the name of that actor who plays someone on Our Flag Means Death, who's constantly in Chico ITV. Yeah, Reece Darby, I think it's the other way around.

• 19:34Kirk Hamilton?

  I've got it backwards.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  And he's hilarious. And I definitely was like, they should just have gotten him to play the role in this one. Cause like, it would have been really funny if he was just the voice actor for it.

• 19:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I wonder if Reece Darby played this game. This is also where I get to mention, by the way, I think I've mentioned this on the show. That I am distantly related to Edward Thatch, AKA Blackbeard, the pirate.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  Oh, that's cool.

• 19:55Kirk Hamilton?

  The Teach slash Thatch lineage is like goes is connected to me. So I'm in some ways related to him and it's nice to see in this game. He he was a pirate, but he was he acquits himself OK.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:07Kirk Hamilton?

  How some other pirates.

• 20:08Jason Schreier?

  But but are you related to Alexander Hamilton? That's the real question.

• 20:11Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I am not. That that's a different Hamilton.

• 20:14Jason Schreier?

  So there's a lot of new stuff in this. It feels to me I played the original also, although I barely remember it because I haven't played it since I played. It was like the first game I played on my review unit for the PlayStation four back in the day. So I haven't played it since November of 2013. But that said, the combat feels a lot more modern. It feels like to your point that you made earlier, Karaka, about them just kind of revamping things. It seemed, correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole skill system in the bottom right seems like it's totally new. And there's a lot of it that seems very new. And I really like the changes that they made and the kind of the the way it it feels. Definitely feels a lot more elegant than what I remember from older Assassin's Creed games.

• 21:00Jason Schreier?

  And then on the flip side, I like that they kept the kind of old school parkour system of not being able to just kind of magnetize to everything you see. And having to find actual climbing paths, which are often very easy to find and very visibly apparent, very apparent. But but but still better than the kind of the the more modern Breath of the Wild style approach when you can just climb everything you see.

• 21:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, to the combat first, it is revamped pretty significantly and for the better. It's just a much more modern feeling system. I don't love it. It's not as fun as something like Shadow of Mordor or certainly Batman, the Arkham games, which were out at the same time as these. And even at the time, we're kind of, you know, I think the Assassin's Creed games kind of paled in comparison. It doesn't have the snappy rhythm of those because I think it's still a kind of hybridized system. But they've moved way more in that direction. So you're parrying, you know, you're attacking with the shoulder buttons. So it's closer to something like the later games, you know, Origins, Odyssey and so on. And it just has that kind of a feeling. It's a little rubber bandy. I find that enemies hit me. I just can't quite.

• 22:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Lock in on it, and I don't think it's a me problem. I think it's just what they're working with. They can't quite get it to where a game like, you know, an Arkham game or something would be, a game with really punchy, responsive combat. But it's definitely better. And I agree that quick attacks, like quick firing your pistols is really fun. Or they give you the rope, like there's a kind of a rope attack that you get way later in the game originally. They move that way up so you get it super early. And that's really fun in combat because you can like grapple guys and pull them to you. Or you can just spam smoke grenades and assassinate everyone around you, which is what I do a lot, just to kind of bypass. That's the way to go, yeah. So yeah, I think the combat is definitely improved. Matty, have you been finding the fighting?

• 22:48Speaker 00

  I really like it. I was a little put off by how long it takes before you get any ranged attacks. I really like that rope weapon. So it's interesting that they moved it up closer because it's so satisfying. But also the blow dart, I was like, finally, when I got that, because up until that moment, I was like, wow, I've been spoiled by these modern Assassin's Creed games where I have some sort of long range weapon fairly early on in the game. And I don't have to just really sneak around. But I think that just speaks to the lineage and where the game was at the time and how it was probably more focused on just manually sneaking up to people, using smoke bombs, and probably prioritizing

• 23:30Speaker 00

  stealth ahead of any other weapon, right?

• 23:34Kirk Hamilton?

  This one was, the earlier games actually had ranged attacks. There were ways you could kill guys at range that Ezio could. This was a little more notably close range than, you know, Connor had a bow and arrow.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  Okay, that makes sense.

• 23:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Like there were more ranged weapons. And like Ezio, he had like a kind of wrist crossbow that he could use to pick guys off. So this is a little, it does bring things in closer and it's more about coaxing guys to you, like when you're sneaking than about picking them off at range, until you get the blowgun and start to be able to manipulate the AI a little bit more from a distance.

• 24:05Speaker 00

  That was like, okay, now we're in an Assassin's Creed game, at least in my view, where I was like, now I can, I have a bigger suite of options to kill or put to sleep various guys in a given area. Up until then, I would often feel like I didn't have Great control over when people didn't see me. And that's not really a flaw, though. I think it is also pretty fun, even when you do get discovered, because the sword combat is fun enough that I was never too irritated by it. And they don't put so many guys in any given area that if you're discovered, it's completely impossible to get out of it, which I think is a tough balance to strike.

• 24:43Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, we talked about this not too long ago, but the big difference between this and the more modern Assassin's Creed games is that you can insta-kill assassinate anybody in this game.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, which rules.

• 24:55Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's a much different feeling. It feels like in the more modern games, because they have those big beefy dudes and boss types, you can't just insta-kill. That changes the rhythm a lot. You have to get into combat. You can't just sneak around.

• 25:07Kirk Hamilton?

  It's funny how there will be, you know, enemies, like the captain of the ship is this boss that you have to fight. And if you get in aggro, like if you aggro him and get in a fight, there's a big health bar like it's a fight. But if you just assassinate him from the, you know, the riggings, it's just over.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I thought that was hilarious because I, there's one of those very early in the game where I kept doing the health bar thing. And I was like, this is actually really hard. This guy's entire crew is trying to kill me. And how am I going to kill this guy? He's got like the biggest health bar. And then eventually I just was like, can I just assassinate this guy? And then I was like, oh, my God, I can't. Whoa, what? That's amazing. This game is just going to let me sneak up behind this man and kill him. And the fight is already over, which I think is great because it's really encouraging you to take advantage of that rather than going in guns blazing, sword swinging.

• 25:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I like it, too. I don't, I don't see why they had to move to a, to an RPG system. Just because this is fine. Like, if you, if you're clever enough to get close to the guy, why wouldn't he die if you stab him in the neck with your hidden blade? I want to go back to something you said, Jason, about the parkour, because that was such a big part of this series leading up to this game. Well, leading up to Assassin's Creed III, I guess. And I still am struck by some of the animations in this game that they added for three. There's a really cool one where when you're up in a tree and you go around the trunk of the tree. Edward kind of like does this really slick move around the trunk of the tree. He can jump through, you know, the crotch of two trees like where it splits and he does a really cool kind of animation. There's no better word for it.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  That's what it's called. Everyone knows that.

• 26:49Kirk Hamilton?

  So the, those moves are all Connor animations and Connor had really cool animations. That was a big thing in Assassin's Creed 3 because in Assassin's Creed 3, quite a bit of what you were doing was you were traversing the frontier, you know, there were, you were in the trees. Like, the idea was he was kind of, he grew up in a small village and was like fighting colonial soldiers who were moving through the forests of New England. So here, it's kind of similar where there's a lot of jungles and Edward is like jumping through trees and climbing up in the trees. There's not as much parkour in cities just because none of these cities are that big. I think Havana is the biggest city and it's, you know, feels kind of big, but it's nothing like Firenze or any of those huge, the Vatican, like these giant Rome, you know, in Assassin's

• 27:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Creed 2 and the Ezio games. It's not even close. So then they need to kind of work the parkour system into this very different game, you know? A lot of what you're doing is climbing the riggings of ships. And I like how they've done it. It's still a little bit awkward, but it's much better than it was. Like you said, Jason, it's, you can't just climb anything. So sometimes you're trying to get to a vantage point and you have to actually figure out how to do it. But what's nice is, man, the old control scheme for Assassin's Creed was this really experimental thing where you're using the triggers to run. And then in the first one, it was all about like the head and the arms and the feet, I think, where like the triangle was the head and the square and circle were the arms. Like it was supposed, the controller was supposed to-

• 28:17Jason Schreier?

  It was designed by Ben Affleck.

• 28:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Represent the body. Yeah, it was very, it felt very experimental. And then you would just kind of drive Altair Ezio up a wall and kind of hope he goes in the right direction. Then I think it was in Unity, I may be wrong about this, but I think I'm remembering correctly, they introduced the idea of an ascend button and a descend button, which is where you press X and you'll basically go up. And then when you need to get down, which was always a problem in Assassin's Creed, you would- Have climbed up and then you'd be like, okay, I want to go down this wall. And your guy would just take a flying leap off of a skyscraper and like land in the road.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  There's just a convenient hay bale and there's just hay bales wherever you are.

• 28:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Often there weren't hay bales though, and he would just jump into the middle of the road while the guy he's trying to kill is looking right at him. So there was a lot of awkwardness with getting down. Now you can just hold the circle button or the B button and you go down. And that was kind of a later series invention that they've brought in here. This is a good hybrid version. I do sometimes miss the ability to just climb cliffs the way that you can in later games, just because I'm like, I don't want to go around. But then when I think about it, it's actually kind of nice to have to look at the environment and think about where I am.

• 29:19Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, you have to actually, the funniest animation will always be, and I think this is an older one, but it will always be when you are standing, you are climbing up a tower or something and there's a giant scaffolding above you and somehow you fling yourself backwards and up at the same time.

• 29:34Kirk Hamilton?

  The most outrageous free solo move ever.

• 29:36Jason Schreier?

  It is ridiculous. And I, I remember this from like the old school ones too. I feel like that one has been around forever and it makes no sense, but it has just persisted within Assassin's Creed. It's so funny.

• 29:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it is very funny.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, you kind of have magic climbing powers. I, I feel like that was something I did have to get used to because the climbing feels almost exactly as good as a modern day Assassin's Creed. But then every now and then I would hit something and be like, why can't I climb this? This actually looks climbable, but that's just my, my modern sensibilities talking, I guess.

• 30:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I do dig climbing in the ships. It takes a little bit of pausing and thinking to, let's talk a little bit about the ship to ship combat. Because like you, Matty, I like it. I think it's fun. I mean, I have no problem with it. It's a little bit awkward, but I mean.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I can understand not liking it, even though I do like it.

• 30:26Kirk Hamilton?

  I, I like it just fine. I think like, once you're upgrading and you're getting into these mega battles, like later in the game, there are these, I don't remember what they're called. They're like super ships that are at the corner of the map. This is a system they've actually carried on in subsequent games where there are these roving mega bosses that you have to be like max level in game to fight. And there are ships that are like that in this, that are these just absurd dreadnoughts with like a thousand sails, just bristling with guns. You always fight them and it's like a storm, you know? We should say the weather effects in this game. They added all these new weather effects. They're amazing looking. When you're in the middle of a hurricane, like fighting a huge ship, I get pretty psyched. It's pretty cool.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  The songs are cool, too. Like, the battle music is pretty epic and you feel like you're in a movie.

• 31:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I thought you were talking about the sea shanties, which are also pretty cool.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Oh, well, yes, those are cool as well, but I specifically meant like the battle music. It really hypes you up and when there's thunder and lightning on top of that, it's pretty cool.

• 31:17Kirk Hamilton?

  I think it's Brian Tyler is the composer. He definitely got the, just do the Zimmer Pirates of the Caribbean thing.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Pretty much.

• 31:23Kirk Hamilton?

  When it's time for a battle.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  You can tell exactly what he's ripping off, but hey, it ain't broke.

• 31:27Kirk Hamilton?

  No, you nailed it. I agree, I really like the music. So I like those fights and one really funny thing I've always enjoyed about the fights. When you're fighting a bunch of ships, you can, you kind of shoot a ship until its health bar goes red. And then it becomes vulnerable and you can board it. And when you board a ship, you know, then you kind of lock on and that's when you do the like, you jump from the riggings and cut down their flag and reduce their morale until they surrender. And then you get to choose what to do with their ship. You can add it to your fleet. You can use it to lower your wanted level, which I don't really understand. Maybe you like, let them live and that gets you some credit with the, with the local authorities. Or you can use their, you can like destroy the ship to heal your ship. So what I wind up doing in these big fights where I'm fighting like a big old, you know, enemy brig

• 32:11Kirk Hamilton?

  and then a couple smaller ships is like knocking out the little ships. And then when I need to heal, just boarding them and healing my ship in the middle of a other, like a really huge naval fight, which I just think is very funny and very video games. But anyways, I really like those boarding fights. Like, I really like the way that it tells you to go and cut down their flag. Because instead of just jumping into the fracas, you're incentivized to like climb up into the rigging and like, you know, your sails and their sails are near enough that you can jump. And then there's like a guy shooting at you and you have to shoot him and like climb up and cut their flag down. And then you do a leaping assassination off of the riggings onto their deck. That stuff is amazing. Like, the fact that this worked in a, on a PlayStation 3 game, which it did. I remember playing it on PS3 and being like, I can't believe they made this work.

• 32:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, that these two ships lock together and become one combat zone. It still feels kind of amazing. Amazing doing it all these years later.

• 33:04Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's the part I don't mind. It's the opening part where you're just kind of awkwardly ramming into the other ship and trying to fire your cannon at them that I don't like. But I also, I mean, I've always hated like driving sections in video games for the most part, but also driving sections while you have to shoot and drive at the same time. Like, I hate stuff like that. So I guess it's just, again, it's just a personal thing. The boarding part, I'm fine with. It's just the other, the opening fracas that I just didn't.

• 33:33Kirk Hamilton?

  The naval, the actual naval combat.

• 33:35Jason Schreier?

  Love. And in general, I just, I find navigating around the world in the ship to be very tedious. And I remember thinking the same thing about Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which happens to be my favorite Assassin's Creed. I've been thinking about that game a lot recently, both because of this and also because of the movie. That game is really cool. I really love that game. But in that game also, I just found the ship parts to be the weakest ones. But it was much quicker because you could sail a much shorter distance and find a new island and just kind of get on with your day. Whereas this, a lot of the whole point is sailing around and just maneuvering on the Caribbean. And I just don't really enjoy those parts of the game very much.

• 34:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think, I like the sailing in this much more than Odyssey. Odyssey, it's just like kind of an afterthought. It's just nowhere near as fleshed out. I like the Jackdaw. Like, I like that Edward has a ship that is kind of a home base. It's a little redundant that they then give you the home base on Great Inagua. And it's like, okay, now I have like two home bases to upgrade. Like, they could have just made it the ship, but it would be cool if you could like let Adewale pilot the ship and then just like it auto-pilots wherever you're going and you could like walk around. That would be something kind of neat that they maybe could have added for this that they didn't. But I actually find that pacing wise, I just really like when you're just cruising and the wind is blowing.

• 34:55Kirk Hamilton?

  And when you get, you know, going max speed, it zooms way out and you can just hear like a sea shanty on the breeze. And there's always something kind of beckoning you to go check it out. You know, you can go hunt a narwhal or whatever, or like go explore a sunken wreck. Or maybe, you know, there's a settlement over there that you haven't explored. Like, I kind of dig it. I don't fast travel very much in this game. I don't actually find the ship travel tedious.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I kind of split the difference. I do some fast traveling in order to not spend almost the entire game on a boat because I do eventually start to be like, wow, I

• 35:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure, and I do too as well.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  Much, much like real people on boats probably feel, I start to get pretty bored with my surroundings and there are quite a lot of sea shanties, but you know, sometimes you just want to fast travel somewhere and they don't have the ability to do that, but I do. So I take advantage. But I largely agree in the sense that I like the vibe of it and the spirit of that throughout the game of having the ship be your core identity and have that be something that's backed up by the characters and how they feel about it. And like, it's their home and it's where they spend the bulk of the time of the game. So it makes sense that it's such a big part of everything. And we've kind of referred to the sea shanties the whole time, but like that mechanic is so great that I feel like it really can't

• 36:19Speaker 00

  be undersold. Like the fact that anytime you're sailing, your guys are singing all these different contemporaneous songs and sound amazing. I mean, these recordings are wonderful. Like those are, I'd always heard that about the game as well, that that was a really strong part of the game. And it's so, so great and does make it feel worth it to spend some time on the boat vibing.

• 36:43Jason Schreier?

  I can't believe they copied that TikTok trend for this.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  The TikTok trend copied this, I guess.

• 36:49Kirk Hamilton?

  I wonder, I almost feel, this game certainly laid the groundwork for that big trend.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  I think it did.

• 36:55Kirk Hamilton?

  When sea shanties went viral. Yeah, they've actually flushed it out as well. I don't know if they've added more shanties. There are definitely some that I haven't heard, but I'm chasing them down because you have to, to explain to listeners, you have to go collect them in the world to get more shanties.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, that part is silly, I will say.

• 37:09Kirk Hamilton?

  But you're very incentivized. No, they're kind of, it is fun little chases.

• 37:12Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I don't mind.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  You know how you're chasing down a song in order to...

• 37:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, whatever. It's, it's the animus. It's a memory.

• 37:18Jason Schreier?

  I feel like other Assassin's Creed games do that too with like other stuff from what I remember. Like, there's a lot of like parkour chases that you have to do to find various things and fill out your objectives, uh, your, fill out your, your checks. List for each area.

• 37:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, you know, I gotta say regarding Adewale, that's a character note that I, I kinda wish there was more of him. So neither of you, I'm guessing, played Freedom Cry, right?

• 37:43Speaker 00

  I haven't, but now I want to because I think he's such a strong character in this game that I understand why they made a whole DLC about him where you play as him? Or maybe it's just about him? Okay.

• 37:53Kirk Hamilton?

  He gets his own whole DLC. He becomes, you know, a fully fleshed assassin. He gets his own ship and goes on his own adventure. It's super cool. He's a great character and you just get so much of him in that DLC. And I've kind of felt like there's, there's kind of less of him than I want. Like he's such an interesting perspective compared to all of the other characters. I just want more of him in the game and it's kind of like, it's because the original developers had a whole story of his that they wound up telling. Really, the main thing is I, I want them to make Freedom Cry in this engine. Like I want them to remake that. It seems possible at least, like this, the, the content is out there and they've shown that they can do it.

• 38:36Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a lot of the same mechanics. I have no idea if, you know, if they would, but it is hard not to want that. Having played Freedom Cry and playing this gorgeous remaster, like it'd be really, really neat to play that. And I do want more Adewale, as much as I appreciate him as a character in the base game.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, me too.

• 38:54Jason Schreier?

  Steven wrote a newsletter about all the modern stuff that was mostly lost on me. But he wrote that the kind of the new framings is opening is like, leaving the door open for a lot more remakes that just kind of change things within them because of the way Abstergo is, is kind of changed and presented in this game. So I wouldn't, and given that this game has sold really well, it sold like three million copies in its first week or two. I suspect we'll see a lot more remakes of old Assassin's Creed games.

• 39:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, man, I want to talk about that. Let me, I'm going to put a pin in talking about sales and like what this means for the future. Cause that is interesting. I want to say one thing about what you're talking about. So Steven Totillo, who notably a fan of the future storyline. The modern day storyline in Assassin's Creed. We can link to some of his writing because he's written a lot about this game and has played more than I have. There's a lot of cool additional stuff added to this game. And I've mentioned that, but I want to elaborate. Like, there's a lot. There are like character storylines. There are these sort of lieutenants that you hire that weren't in the original game. They dole out upgrades in a different way. There's new side quests and there are these like Animus quests.

• 40:08Kirk Hamilton?

  I just did the first one, but it's like an anomaly in the Animus where you go in and there's this whole crazy storyline going on. Where there's, you're playing through like alternate versions of Edward's future. And there's this narrator, but there's like a conflict going on. There's different people in the Animus. This is very common in Assassin's Creed, telling you, don't listen to her. She's lying, like actually listen to me. Meanwhile, you're platforming through these crazy dreamscapes built out of all of the game's assets. You know, ships coming out of mountains, all these wild traps and sort of parkour challenges. It was fun as a sort of platforming challenge and puzzle, which I appreciate just because I like when Assassin's Creed leans into the platforming a little bit more.

• 40:50Kirk Hamilton?

  It was narratively interesting and it did tie into the broader Animus stuff in a way that I kind of wasn't expecting. Because going into this, I sort of assumed they were going to trim all that stuff out and leave it and just be like, here's the pirate game you guys wanted, okay? We're going to forget all the weird, modern day stuff. But no, they, it's still there and they're leaving the door open for all these connections to other games. There are even like rifts into like Assassin's Creed Shadows, for example. The game set in Japan that came out recently. You can get, you know, armor from that game and you can even like encounter things that have kind of come over from that game. So there's this idea that the Animus is like, the links between all of these games, the walls between these games are kind of degrading and they're all connecting into one another.

• 41:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Which then fits with a kind of broader, ongoing, live service game approach to like all of these different Assassin's Creed games. They're always kind of remaking them and refreshing them and connecting them to one another.

• 41:42Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I feel like I lost trust in the absurd go stuff and the modern day stuff when they introduced all this cool stuff after the end of Valhalla and then just never revisited. Again, that bummed me out.

• 41:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, they've done that a few times like they did that at the end of Assassin's Creed three as well. It has a crazy ending in the modern day. That's the whole Desmond Miles storyline that was ongoing through those early games. This is where Assassin's Creed four is kind of where they moved away from that. And in Assassin's Creed four, you are a game designer, essentially at Ubisoft Montreal. Like, that's who you are in the original 2013 game. That's been cut out of this. But like this, that was when they began just being like, I don't know, man. Like, it really felt like they just did not know where they were going with it anymore. And they were just gonna kind of do weird stuff to see, just to see what would happen.

• 42:28Jason Schreier?

  Well, yeah, they bring Desmond back at the end of Valhalla and then just never touch it with the whole tree of of light thing. And then also then Basim appears in the modern day. And that stuff is just never revisited.

• 42:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and doesn't in Odyssey, doesn't Cassandra also like appear to what's her name, the researcher that you're playing as? Leila?

• 42:46Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, but that's that's then like addressed in Valhalla, like Cassandra pops back up in Valhalla, but then

• 42:53Kirk Hamilton?

  That stuff is all great. I do like that stuff.

• 42:56Jason Schreier?

  It is great, but then it's just never it's abandoned, which kind of sucks. Like, I don't think Basim even got his own game and it barely touched that stuff, which was a bit of a bummer.

• 43:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Because it's not in shadows. Yeah, I have to wonder if they'll ever come back to it. So anyways, I think one, something that really strikes me about this game, the fact that it's so successful, and and just the broader Ubisoft narrative is the fact that it they've spent so long making this game Skull and Bones, this like cursed pirate multiplayer game that was not what people wanted and that just did not succeed. And it just the fact that they just re-released this same game that was very clearly what people wanted and people wanted it again, just makes me feel like, why, why weren't there three of these or something in the since 2013? Like, why did it take this long? And why are we only getting a remake?

• 43:43Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, the answer to that is that, I mean, Skull and Bones obviously had a lot of problems, but like, trying to take that component of this single player game and turn it into a multiplayer live service game changes the the nature of it entirely.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  Was Skull and Bones built on this game's framework or just inspired by it?

• 44:04Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, I don't know. It looks like this. It looked like Black Flag in action.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Interesting. Yeah. It is hard to imagine this really being as good. I feel like part of what's fun about the ship combat, despite its occasional jankiness, is that it's part of an ongoing story and the characters that we've been talking about are part of what make it powerful and meaningful for you to be doing any of this. I guess it's easy for me to say this in retrospect, but making that into a live service game is just such a different energy than having a story where you're like, there's a reason why I'm a pirate and I'm doing all of this stuff with my pirate friends.

• 44:40Kirk Hamilton?

  And there's just, there's so much friction and kind of clumsiness in the way the game works that it just doesn't work as a multiplayer game. Like, there have been a lot of Assassin's Creed multiplayer games. They can be fun in small doses, you know, when you're kind of like playing hide and go seek with one another. But it's not, it's just not smooth enough and fluid enough and responsive enough to work as a competitive game. And I'm just surprised that this was that clear to people at the time because when you're playing in single player, the fact that like Edward goes up the rigging and then gets kind of turned around and like goes back and then I have to turn him around again. And then he jumps in the wrong direction and then he kind of lands and then it's pretty inelegant, but I just shoot some guys and throw a smoke bomb and then I win. That's fine in the context of like a 30 hour, a single player game where I'm just doing that a lot and who really cares?

• 45:26Kirk Hamilton?

  But if you're playing a multiplayer game, it just can't be like that. If you compare this to Sea of Thieves, Sea of Thieves does not have that problem. Sea of Thieves is incredibly fluid and responsive. It feels correct when you're playing it because it has to be to support a competitive multiplayer game. It just, it just seems like it was never going to work. And yet they could have made another single player game. It could have even been called Skull and Bones and not been an Assassin's Creed game and just been about a pirate, like a pirate action RPG, a single player game. And I bet it would have sold a shitload of copies and people would have liked it. It just is, it seems galling to me, or I guess it's indicative, it's emblematic

• 46:05Kirk Hamilton?

  of the 2010s and of the live service, you know, the chase of live service and of all these bad decisions that were made over that time period, that it took 13 years for us to get another single player game like this, and it's just a remake of the one that they already had.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  I mean, it's still kind of like Ubisoft's in a we're so back phase, though, because like Shadows did pretty well and now this is doing well. So I don't know.

• 46:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, people like single player Assassin's Creed games.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  Took you a while to circle back around to the thing people like, but you are in fact doing it again. So, hooray, you did it.

• 46:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, hopefully they're taking some lessons from this. It's just like, people like these big, single-player games. That's the thing that they like to play. Well, that'll do it, I guess, for this conversation. A pretty, a pretty cool, a pretty cool remake. It is a remake plus, according to our, our spectrum of remakes.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  I love that you're sticking with that. You're like, we're gonna open with that and we're gonna close with that.

• 47:05Kirk Hamilton?

  I saw somebody cite that in an article recently. I think they were talking about this and they're like, well, triple-clicks Kirk Hamilton, burnt down, all the different types of remakes. This is technically a remake plus.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 47:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Because it's a new engine and actual new gameplay and mechanics. So this is a, I would say, a really, a really winning remake plus. Seems to be doing well, which is not really surprising. And I'm gonna keep playing it, I think, when I have time. Just, I'm having a great time just cruising around, hunting for iguanas, air assassinating a rabbit from a tree, so that, so that I can upgrade my gun holsters, you know, play in a, play in a video game.

• 47:41Jason Schreier?

  As one does.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, like you do when you're a protagonist in an Assassin's Creed game.

• 47:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Exactly. Well, let's take a break and then come back for one more thing.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  Hi, my name is Bria Grant and I host Reading Glasses and Reading Smut. And I'm here with Maximum Fun Member of the Month, Nick Roy.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  Thank you so much.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  What episode would you recommend to a new listener who's just jumping in for the first time?

• 48:05Speaker 04

  Definitely the one where it's like, let's talk about Reading Glasses. Because as someone who started listening, what, seven years in, even I was like, oh, that's why we say that.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. Mallory's gonna love that you said that, because she really was like, we gotta, we gotta tell people more about ourselves. I'm like, we just talk about ourselves every week. What would you say to other people who are considering supporting Maximum Fun shows?

• 48:27Speaker 04

  I would say if you want to keep listening to content that you enjoy and you want to support the creators, I don't know, I just won't get a Starbucks once a week and I give you guys $10 a month. Sounds good to me.

• 48:36Speaker 03

  I love that. And listen to Nick. Nick's a librarian. He, he knows what he's talking about, so.

• 48:41Speaker 05

  Support the shows you love, including this one. Check the show notes for a link or go to maximumfun.org/join.

• 48:49Speaker 06

  Howdy there. So sorry to interrupt whatever amazing show you were listening to, but it's time for an ad. I'll be so quick and get you back to your show. Don't worry. I'm host Austin, one half of a podcast called Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries that I make with my good friend Brenda. We talk about the pop culture stuff you like, like Thundercats and Yu-Gi-Oh. Did you know that the Thundercats are cousins of Vera Fawcett? Or that Yu-Gi-Oh once caused a riot? You probably want to know more. You can find us at Maximum Fun or wherever you get podcasts every single Tuesday.

• 49:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And we are back for one more thing. Maddie, let me hear from you. What's your one more thing?

• 49:26Speaker 00

  Sure. My one more thing is the Netflix adaptation of Little House on the Prairie that just came out this year. It's a TV show version of the very old Laura Ingalls Wilder books that were based on her real life, being the daughter of a guy who decided to settle in Osage Land in the prairie. And that is something that the Netflix show very directly and specifically addresses in a way that the, I think it's the 1970s TV show. I think that's when that one came out. I know Gen Xers are very fond of that, that version of Little House.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  This, this show is pretty different from that one, from what I understand. And it takes a lot of liberties with the source material that I think are really fascinating and cool. I really liked this show and I read a lot of articles about it afterwards. So I was really curious how they made the decisions that they did. So they've still included all of the Ingalls family. And they've kind of written out some more motivations for Charles Ingalls, or Pa Ingalls, as little Laura calls him all the time, and as I tend to call him, because I read these books as a kid, so I still think of him as Pa Ingalls. They've written out his character a lot more to make it such that he isn't entirely aware

• 50:52Speaker 00

  that he's settling in Osage land when he gets there. And that, I think, helps make him be a more sympathetic character. Whereas in the original books, he says more casual racist things. And it's more, I would say, since it's written by a child, and we're just kind of basing this on Laura's memory, it's not entirely clear if he knows the situation with the land, because the land was in dispute during this time period. It, as it was for many, many, many decades of American history. This was a time period when that land was still technically owned by the Osage people, but other people were choosing to live on it. And that was a matter of great contention, obviously, for the people who wanted to keep

• 51:37Speaker 00

  living there, the Osage. So they've introduced all of these other characters in this show, Osage characters, and written them out and had them be sympathetic, but also complicated. And those characters are not present in the book. But they've also included characters in the book who I had totally forgotten about. Like, for example, there was this black doctor who helped the Ingalls with, I think it's malaria that they all get. And that happened in the book. But when I was watching this Netflix show, I was like, okay, like, cool. They introduced this black doctor character. It's probably part of like, the different stories that they're telling about contemporaneous things at the time. And then I looked it up, and I was like, oh, this is a real guy from the book. And he's like, an actual Civil War veteran of the time, who's like, one of the first,

• 52:21Speaker 00

  like, notable black doctors of this pioneer era. And like, that was really cool to learn about. Anyway, this show, it's just really cool. I think it's interesting. I also appreciated hearing about how some of the motivations of the native people who worked on it was that it would be a family-friendly show, and that it wouldn't just Be focusing on some of the sad aspects of the Osage people's history. And that it would be something that would allow families to have the conversation with kids who are Laura's age in the show. She's like nine or 10. She's like a little girl. But it's like an approachable way to have conversations about pioneers who moved to these places.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  And the dangers that they were facing, but also the fact that they were living in other people's land. And I think that's cool and an interesting project. So. Yeah, I also really liked these books as a kid and as an adult have had to be like, wow, those books included some really messed up shit. So it's, I was really curious to see how they'd adapted and it's interesting. So I recommend it. Obviously it's called Little House on the Prairie and it's on Netflix.

• 53:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. All right. It's, yeah, that and Yester Year. We've got a lot of.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Media.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  A lot of pioneer media.

• 53:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Interesting.

• 53:38Jason Schreier?

  Yester Year is very, very different.

• 53:40Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I know. It's just, of course, very different, but similar, similar focus on a similar time period. There's something to that, I'm sure. Jason, what's your one more thing?

• 53:49Jason Schreier?

  My one more thing is a video game called The Mermaid Mask that came out last week. And it is really cool. This game, it's by the makers of Tangle Tower. This is a sequel to that game, if you remember it. And also Crow Country and Snipper Clips. So a very diverse group of games.

• 54:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Crow Country is so good.

• 54:11Jason Schreier?

  So this game is a, it's kind of a hybrid of like a deductive game, kind of like Golden Isle style deductive game. And a point and click adventure. It is set aboard this submarine and the captain of the submarine is found dead. And you, playing this pair of investigators who are very funny. Have to go and figure out who killed the captain and what happened here by interrogating. These eight suspects and investigating the entire submarine, looking for clues and trying to piece together what went down.

• 54:51Jason Schreier?

  And so there's a few different kind of types of gameplay that play into this. One is these little minor puzzles that you can find while you're investigating little logic puzzles and whatnot. The other is interrogating people and trying to figure out what to ask them about, who to ask them about. By the end, you'll probably be asking all of them about every single object you've found in your inventory. And then figuring out what each of their stories is, because all eight of them, even the ones who were not responsible for the murder, all of them have their own secrets and you can kind of piece together what those secrets are, what they're lying about, what they're telling the truth about, and they're all really weird characters. It's a submarine full of weirdos, which is very delightful.

• 55:33Jason Schreier?

  The writing is really good in this game. The dialogue is really good. The voice acting is really good. The pacing is really good. It's a very well constructed game and I really liked it, really enjoyed it. Played through the whole thing in just a few hours. It's a nice, nice chunk of, it's not too long. It doesn't wear out. It's welcome. And I really enjoyed putting the whole thing together. It's got some legitimately hilarious moments and some clever writing and just a great, solid mystery that I think both of you would really enjoy. I think it took me like six or seven hours to beat. It's really not, not much of an imposition at all to play through at all. And just a really enjoyable experience, I would say.

• 56:14Jason Schreier?

  The point and click adventure aspect of it, by the way, is a lot of just kind of hunting for clues in each of these rooms within the submarine. And there's a lot that you can click on and a lot will just lead to funny dialogue with your investigators, your duo of detectives. And yeah, it's just really well done. I just really enjoyed playing through it.

• 56:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Did you play this with a controller, like on Steam Deck, or is it actually point and click with a mouse?

• 56:36Jason Schreier?

  I played it all on Steam Deck, but you can also use-

• 56:38Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's just controller?

• 56:40Jason Schreier?

  It's controller friendly, but you could also use a touchscreen on Steam Deck if you wanted to. But yes, I played it all on Steam Deck. I feel like you can assume that every game I talk about, I'm probably playing it on Steam Deck.

• 56:50Kirk Hamilton?

  No, right. I ask because like the, on Steam Deck, you can use the trackpads and like play it with a mouse.

• 56:55Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I didn't need that.

• 56:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Adventure games aren't great with a controller.

• 56:58Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I feel like these days, so many of these games are being built with- Controller in mind, even that game from last week, the incident at Galley House, I played entirely on Steam Deck and it was also had great controls. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. It's a good question. It's a legitimate question.

• 57:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 57:14Jason Schreier?

  You would be a good interrogator. You would be a good detective.

• 57:20Jason Schreier?

  See if you can catch me in a lie there. Yes, The Mermaid Mask, I played it on the Steam Deck and yeah, we just really, really enjoyed it. Although I ran into their couple of annoying glitches that I ran into over, over the course of playing it. But one thing I did discover is that if you want to play a game on your Steam Deck while your wife is using the Steam machine, I think I told you both that I've been getting Amanda into Blueprints for the first time. My wife, who doesn't play a lot of games, I've been getting her into Blueprints. She's really into it. So she was playing that in our bedroom on the TV and I want to, on the Steam, uh, Steam machine on the TV and I want to play on the Steam Deck, but you can't play games simultaneously on the same Steam account. So what I did was I took the

• 58:02Jason Schreier?

  Steam Deck offline, turned off the wireless, and then I was able to do it. But it causes some issues, like Steam doesn't like it when you play games offline on the Steam Deck. It starts trying to update things and chugging along and whatnot. It was causing me some problems, but I still, I made it work. Anyway, The Mermaid Mask, really cool game. It's gotten a lot of buzz. I think it's one of the top rated review games of the year, and I think it's been doing well commercially, too. I recommend it. It's really cool. Definitely one of my, one of my favorites of the year so far.

• 58:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Cool. Yeah, that's on my list for sure. I am looking forward to.

• 58:37Jason Schreier?

  You will both enjoy it quite a bit.

• 58:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Playing it. Yeah, it looks, it looks really good. Well, my one more thing is also a new game that's fantastic called Dench Attack. And it is a lot of fun. Are either of you aware of this game?

• 58:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've heard of this game.

• 58:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, so this is a game made by The Undercoders, who are a Spanish studio based in Barcelona.

• 58:56Jason Schreier?

  The Undercoders.

• 58:57Kirk Hamilton?

  It is, is, I mean, it's a skateboarding game where you control a train. And I think that's probably how most of our listeners who have heard about it will have heard it described. It's a, you're a train and you're doing like kickflips and. You know, ramping off the tracks and doing skateboard stuff.

• 59:15Jason Schreier?

  Dencha means train in Japanese.

• 59:16Kirk Hamilton?

  It is very much a kind of combination of Tony Hawk and SSX Tricky. I see a lot of people compare it to Tony Hawk. I actually find the gameplay to be closer to an SSX game, a sort of snowboarding type thing. Cause you're flying forward on the tracks and then you're doing sick tricks. And you're memorizing each run so that you can do better and better and find the right moments to pop the gnarliest tricks in midair. So I would use those as the two comparison points, but I would say for me, and for me, it's closer to SSX Tricky. And I love SSX Tricky and have never totally gelled with Tony Hawk because I'm not that good at them. So that's actually a really good thing for me. So let me rewind or zoom out and explain a little more like what the game actually is.

• 59:58Kirk Hamilton?

  So it's a really brightly animated, beautiful looking game. It looks like a Dreamcast game, like it really looks like your memory of a Dreamcast game. It has that kind of really bright, brilliant game from like kind of Y2K video game look. You are actually playing as a young woman named Emmy, who is a ramen delivery driver in this kind of, I guess it's a post-apocalyptic, or at least a like, it's just a future version of Japan where due to climate change and a bunch of degradation of the world, like most people live in these kind of cities that are connected by train tracks that are controlled by a single company. But then some people still just kind of live outside and maybe it's fine. So it's totally clear what's going on.

• 1:00:42Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm not super far in the game, so it might be that this stuff is all explained. There is that like mega corp overseeing everything and they're definitely kind of looming in the background as a potential antagonist. But Emmy just delivers ramen and the way you get around is you drive a train and it's basically a subway train car, like a single train, like an engine for a subway train. And then because the tracks are designed by video game designers, you're constantly ramping yourself up in the air and doing flips and like jumping from one track to the other to, you know, avoid hazards. And eventually jumping your train up onto a rail and doing a rail grind where you're balancing left and right. And doing all kinds of Tony Hawk SSX type, you know, snowboarding tricks.

• 1:01:26Kirk Hamilton?

  There's a storyline where like Emmy, who is just a naturally brilliant train pilot, learns that Dench Attack is this whole world of people who are essentially competitive athletes. They're, each one has like a really cool style and they're all these like really fun kind of stylized characters with a lot of attitude. And she gets, she and a new friend who's a photographer and kind of publishes a zine about Dench Attack. Like, he kind of brings her into this world. Pretty soon, she's meeting all of the, you know, celebrities of the Dench Attack world and, and rising in their ranks. And that's, it's a very 2000s video game kind of story, but it's very charming. It just, the characters are really fun. There's really cute loading animations. The whole like, the complete package of this game, it

• 1:02:11Kirk Hamilton?

  just lands on both feet sprinting. Like, it is totally self-assured. From the minute you start it, you're like, oh, these people know exactly what they're doing. They've played all of the games that they're referencing and they've got it nailed. Like, there's no uncertainty. Like, they really, they got the brief and they nailed it.

• 1:02:28Jason Schreier?

  The art style reminds me of Hi-Fi Rush.

• 1:02:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, Hi-Fi Rush is a recent one, which again, is another one that feels kind of like a throwback to Jet Set, to Jet Set Radio and to those types of games. But yes, it definitely looks and feels kind of like Hi-Fi Rush. It's not a music game, but it's very rhythmic. And the music plays a big role in it. It has a killing soundtrack. Unsurprisingly, a game like this just needs to have like, you know, it's full-on synth fusion Sega, you know? Sounds kind of like that Sonic, that Sonic music, like a 3D Sonic game. And it gets you just really pumped up.

• 1:03:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing, Kirk here with a little bit more about the music to this game because, well, I said it was good. I think I kind of undersold it when I was talking to Maddie and Jason. The soundtrack to this game is absurd. This is Coastline Funk by Andrew One.

• 1:03:21Kirk Hamilton?

  The game's primary composer is named T. Lopez. Here is one of theirs called "There's A Trick To It."

• 1:03:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Gives you a sense of the time period they're emulating.

• 1:03:38Kirk Hamilton?

  And a composer named Sean Bialo also wrote a bunch of tracks, at least I think I'm pronouncing his last name right. He wrote some absolute bangers. Here's an early one called "Passing Ariake Breeze."

• 1:03:56Kirk Hamilton?

  They also got composers who have worked on actual Sega series. There is a track by Richard Jacques, who composed for Jet Set Radio. Persona composer Shoji Muguru does a track for this game. There are so many great composers on it. There's just way more music than I even realized. And in addition to all of its other great attributes, this game is quite a musical accomplishment. So just wanted to say that and give this music a little bit more love, since it really is so good.

• 1:04:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, back to our conversation. Bing!

• 1:04:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, this game is so much fun. I don't play that many games like this, but I loved SSX and SSX Tricky back in the day. And I really did get into repeating runs so that I can learn all the moves, which I think is a big part of the joy of this game. It is a, you know, there's a series of tracks. Each one has its own little secrets and challenges and sort of secret routes that you can figure out and ways to maximize the score. You're going for time and you're going for tricks. And you just have to kind of learn the track. And you could just play through this and you'd probably get through most of it and you wouldn't have to replay too much. And there's a lot of stuff in this game, so you'd have a good time. But the joy of the game for me has been in replaying a level and like really getting it locked in and kind of, you know,

• 1:05:19Kirk Hamilton?

  the way that I used to play games like this back when I had more time and like was on my friend's PlayStation 2 or whatever, playing SSX Tricky. It kind of, you have to embrace it in that way, or it helps to embrace it in that way. And yeah, it's also just full of surprises. It's not just fun levels. Each level that I've played so far has introduced new mechanics. There are these set piece moments that happen that are like really surprising, like where I'm like yelling in delight. You know, Emily is like playing Animal Crossing on the couch next to me and I'm like, oh my God. And she's looking up and we're both cracking up at something really crazy that's happening, where it's designed well, where when it throws something totally unexpected at you, it's in a way where you're able to react and like...

• 1:06:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Keep playing the game so you feel like you're doing something totally insane. You don't just immediately crash because suddenly you're doing something you didn't expect to be doing. So it keep, it kind of moves you through those sequences in a way that makes them maximally entertaining. There are boss fights that are really cool. I gather there are some later that I haven't gotten to that are like incredibly memorable. So this game is pretty sensational. I have to say, I'm really, really impressed with the developers, that people who made it like are just super skilled at everything they did, like the art, the music, the feel, the design, the level design, the narrative, the characters, the writing, it's just like all really, really strong. So I'm going to keep playing it. It's just come out of nowhere and it's such a surprise.

• 1:06:45Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not like the kind of game that I really go for or that we even really talk about here, you know? We have our styles of games that we like. This is a different thing and it's very old fashioned in some ways. But for me, that's been so refreshing. It just feels like something completely new. You know, I was playing a lot of Assassin's Creed the last couple of weeks and in this last week, I'll just play some Densha Attack for a little while. It's like a great way to break up another game. You just do a couple of courses. It's super fun. Have a great time and then take a break because you know, it's very, it lends itself to bite sized gaming. So I wholeheartedly recommend this game. It is incredibly cool. If you, if you think you will like it based on my description, you will like it almost certainly. It is a very much a known quantity despite being constantly surprising and delighting.

• 1:07:31Kirk Hamilton?

  So just a great game that I, that I really recommend.

• 1:07:34Jason Schreier?

  Very cool.

• 1:07:34Speaker 00

  Awesome. Sounds awesome.

• 1:07:36Kirk Hamilton?

  It is. And yeah, and that's another episode of Triple Click, folks.

• 1:07:41Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so we'll be back soon to talk about the Odyssey. I'm excited for that one.

• 1:07:46Kirk Hamilton?

  We'll be back, yeah, within the week, within the week.

• 1:07:48Jason Schreier?

  Kind of want to go play, replay Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

• 1:07:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, playing Black Flag did make me want to see what, I just go back to Odyssey and play it again. I played too much of that game though. I played so much of it, but it'd be fun to play it again.

• 1:08:00Jason Schreier?

  Me too. I played so many hours and that game's so friggin' long.

• 1:08:03Kirk Hamilton?

  I think I probably played more hours of Odyssey than any other Assassin's Creed game.

• 1:08:06Jason Schreier?

  It was so long. There were so many regions. Oh my God. And then they added all those like mythical creatures that you could fight. God.

• 1:08:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. And there's DLC that I never played.

• 1:08:16Jason Schreier?

  There was a whole Atlantis DLC.

• 1:08:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. I think, yeah, I never really played that. I think I started it and I was like, oh my God, I can't. I'm at 85 hours. That's enough.

• 1:08:24Jason Schreier?

  Too much, yeah.

• 1:08:25Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, well, maybe we'll play that and talk about it in the future.

• 1:08:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, that would be fun. We just randomly did that.

• 1:08:30Kirk Hamilton?

  We're gonna, we're gonna play some soma, something very different. And, uh, and yeah, and be back for another episode next week. So I will see the two of you then.

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, see you then.

• 1:08:41Jason Schreier?

  See you next time.

• 1:08:42Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:08:45Kirk 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.

• 1:09:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.