Are Modern Games Too Hand-Holdey? [Mailbag]

The Triple Click gang opens up the mailbag to answer some of your best questions. What are our video game habits? What books would make for good video games? And does Wolverine's hand-holding go too far?

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

• 0:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Every week on TripleClick, we say that we bring the games to you. But what games? And how are we bringing them? And who are you, anyway? Welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're answering your burning questions on topics ranging from handholding in video games to habits games have ingrained in us, why we haven't played Delta Rune, and what a Dungeon Crawler Carl video game might look like.

• 0:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:33Jason Schreier?

  And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello, my friends.

• 0:37Jason Schreier?

  How are you both doing?

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Pretty good.

• 0:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Doing pretty well.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  It's fall in New England. It's beautiful.

• 0:43Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not quite fall in Portland. It was fall for a minute, and now it's the false fall. It's like 80 degrees and sunny.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  It very suddenly became fall here. It's, the leaves are doing their leaf thing. It's beautiful. We went on a walk today. There was a bunch of wind. Leaves are blowing right in your face. Pow, fall!

• 1:00Jason Schreier?

  Love a good leaf in the face.

• 1:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, you know, fall is such a romantic time. And if you're feeling romantic, if you've been feeling the romance of fall, you know, the kind of When Harry Met Sally vibes, and you're maybe undergoing a new, undertaking a new romantic endeavor, you might want some advice on that. And if you did want advice, you can maybe ask, I don't know, your three favorite video game podcasters, which is just what listeners did on a recent bonus episode that we just published called Triple Kiss in the members-only bonus feed. And that is because, of course, TripleClick is a member-supported podcast. We do not sell ads. We do not have sponsors. We only make money from our wonderful listeners who support our show and support our network, Maximum Fun.

• 1:43Kirk Hamilton?

  And if you would like to support our show, you can become a member at maximumfun.org/join TripleClick. And if you become a member, you will get bonus episodes like that one I just mentioned, Triple Kiss, so many more. We publish one every month, and it's our way of saying thank you to the members who support our show. So anyways, maximumfun.org/join TripleClick, become a member, support our show, and listen to bonus material. So those were questions about dating, marriage, love, but we get a lot of other questions as well. Jason, what kind of questions are we answering on this week's episode?

• 2:16Jason Schreier?

  This week is burning questions, of course. I would love to hear, by the way, actually, I'm curious from you two. Do you think we should do another Triple Kiss? I think that was, that was pretty fun. Maybe we could do another one at some point.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  I think so. I did see we got a couple messages from people so far saying they really loved it. It's been only a few days since we put that out as we record this now, but it seems like people liked it, and I liked it.

• 2:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I thought it was cool.

• 2:41Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, let us know out there. Email us and let us know if you want more episodes like that. As for today, yes, we are opening up the mailbag and taking some listener questions, mostly about video games and not so much about dating advice. For the dating advice, you gotta go behind the paywall. As always, you can reach us at [email protected]. These are real emails from real listeners. There. Maddie, why don't you read the first one?

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Sure. This is from Ellie, who writes, "Hey there, TripleClick. Hope all is well. What are some gaming habits or intuitions that you feel may be lost on new or inexperienced players? For instance, whenever I reach a crossroad or even at the start of a level, I always go the wrong way. Years of gaming have taught me that the best secrets are always found off the beaten path, but these can also be game-specific. And from soft games, you'll often find me hitting on random walls like a crazy person. What are some of your video game habits or intuitions?"

• 3:46Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a good question.

• 3:47Jason Schreier?

  Just like Silksong, just smashing, smashing random walls. Yeah, I mean, so I do the same thing where I try to go the wrong way to get the chest before I go forward, especially in JRPGs where that's like a very common part of game design, level design. But the problem is, you don't always know which is the wrong way. So what I do is, like an insane person, if I start walking in a direction and it seems like it's gonna be the main path, I have to backtrack and go get the chest and the other path. So then I can go turn around and go through that main path, which really has probably wasted many hours of my life. It's a little depressing to think about the amount of time that's been wasted just doing that.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Probably about as much time as Kirk has spent running forward in Assassin's Creed loading screens. I think we can measure all of that out, if only.

• 4:32Jason Schreier?

  Those'll, those'll stop any, like those take the same amount of time, no matter how much running we do.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 4:39Kirk Hamilton?

  You're never really actually getting anywhere. It's like a metaphor.

• 4:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Let me think, I have a few. One is that I don't level up for a while. I think that's something I've learned from a lot of games, like, I don't know, I was just playing a Souls-like, where I'm kind of getting a lot of experience points and also getting the consumable experience points, like, you know, that you can choose to spend at any time. And these days, I really wait to spend those for a long time. And that's because I don't really know what I want to spend them on at first. And I think if I were, like, I have enough experience with these games to just know, okay, at some point, it's gonna be clear to me what kind of build I wanna do and where I wanna start to invest that stuff. But I don't just start spending them right away, because you can wind up spending them in a way that you regret. And then I'll say another one that's kind of the opposite of that, which is a habit

• 5:28Kirk Hamilton?

  I've actually tried to develop is spending more things in video games, like using more items, because I think my older impulse used to be to save everything. So like, you know, health potion, like health potions and whatever, like especially things you would use in a boss fight.

• 5:44Jason Schreier?

  A common impulse.

• 5:45Kirk Hamilton?

  And then never wind up using them. A very common thing, right, where you wind up at the final boss, and you have 6 billion of every single potion. But also in a game where like, you have a standard health potion for the first act, and then by the second act, you're using the enhanced health potion, and then the concoction that does, that heals more health because your character has more health, so the potions don't do as much. And like, the game actually, a lot of games are designed for you to just use stuff, but then I didn't use to do that. So now I've actually tried to develop the habit of just like, use things, it's fine, just use them up. So those may seem kind of like they're in tension with one another, but I don't think that they exactly are. But I guess it's like, I think about items and progression much more consciously than I used to, because I've played a lot of games.

• 6:25Jason Schreier?

  Well, maybe you have to be using your items because you're super weak, because you haven't leveled up and...

• 6:31Kirk Hamilton?

  They do kind of go together in that way.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're making the game way harder for yourself if you'd never level up. I guess I'm, I have a video game bad habit that I think I've talked about on this show before, perhaps. This really upsets people, so I just need to warn the listener.

• 6:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Throwing your controller at the screen?

• 6:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Your rage since you're uncontrollably outraged?

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that I'm regularly destroying stuff from my home. No, I sell a lot of stuff in video games.

• 6:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, that's right, yes.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  And sometimes regret that I have sold something that was very important. I've been trying to break this habit, which I would say is the opposite of an intuition. It is an active choice I make. I'm also, like, in real life, I'm a real big remove clutter person, and in life have also gotten rid of things that then...

• 7:17Jason Schreier?

  Marie Kondo act.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Years later, but like, too much so. Where like, years later, I'll be like, oh, I wish I hadn't gotten rid of that. Like, that's a, that's a flaw, a character flaw I have, that I've had to kind of look at over the years and hold on to things for longer and be like, am I sure I want to get rid of this? Or am I just in a excessively cleaning things up phase? And I do that in games, and it's a problem, but I've gotten better at it.

• 7:38Jason Schreier?

  For what it's worth, Maddie, I think better, better to be a seller than a hoarder, I would say.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  I think so, but I, hmm, you say that up until, like, you find out, in my case, that I like sold the special set of armor that made me uniquely powerful against some really specific midboss, that then I'm just slogging my way through because I sold some key item more.

• 8:00Jason Schreier?

  I was thinking about real life more so than video games.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, no, totally.

• 8:03Kirk Hamilton?

  If you're gonna overcorrect in one direction or the other, yeah, I can see that, the argument for that.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tricky. It's tricky. I'm definitely using up my potions, though. That's always been something that I feel like I'm really good at, is conserving healthily and using all my, my video game power-ups at precisely the time when they most need to be used.

• 8:20Kirk Hamilton?

  I have one more before we get to the next question, and it is one that was actually imparted to me by Stephen Totillo, our former boss, now game file author. He loves the menus in video games, and I learned from him that when I'm playing a game and kind of approaching it like a reporter, that it was really helpful to start by just going through all of the menus and looking at everything in the menus. And to, you know, you could look at the credits, too, and kind of go through all the information that's in the menu screens. And as a player, I don't really do that, because I'm not trying to really approach games the same way. But I still find that, like, I have that habit where when I start a game, I'm pretty likely to like go into options, and especially into accessibility, because these days, the accessibility menus are really interesting.

• 9:04Kirk Hamilton?

  And a lot of times, there are things in there, not just that make the game easier or that you might want to turn on, but just some really interesting settings or things that convey interesting information about the game. So I tend to just like always go through the menus just to see what's there and what I can change and like what options are available, since a lot of games do have really cool and interesting and transformative options in the menus that you can get to right away. Like, I'll go into the menus before I've even started the game sometimes and just read them.

• 9:31Jason Schreier?

  That's a good one.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  I think that's a really good habit. I've definitely trained myself to do that, and it's super useful, where sometimes I'll be like, wow, this game hasn't explained anything. And then I'm like, wait, it has? And I simply skipped all of those screens, and now I'm just gonna sit back, actually read.

• 9:46Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, that's a good related point, actually. Yeah, it's like the lore recaps and character, like, codex that you get in a lot of role playing games. I used to just completely ignore that stuff. And I do find that when I stop and like go read the, like, character summaries, I'm like way more aware of what's going on in the story, and I do try to do that more than I used to.

• 10:05Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, if you do that in blueprints, you'll like find helpful hints and solutions.

• 10:08Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  It's very important in our game.

• 10:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Important part of the game.

• 10:12Jason Schreier?

  Stephen once wrote an article, at least I think it was Stephen, for Kotaku about like bad habits in video games or something like that. And he talked about how one of his things that he did was he would always ignore the part of the game where it's like, make, change the lightness until it's slightly, until the image is slightly not visible or something.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  He would just skip it?

• 10:36Jason Schreier?

  And he would always make it really not, really visible. He was like, I want the light, so he turned it up. Which, so every time I see that, I think, I'm like, let's just jack it up. Yeah.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  I'm like, I gotta make this light.

• 10:47Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, read the next one, please.

• 10:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, this comes from Sophie. Sophie writes, hi, I'm Sophie.

• 10:52Jason Schreier?

  Great name.

• 10:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Sophie writes, so recently, and by recently, I mean the last two, three years, we have been bombarded with bad news. And during the recent Xbox layoffs, I started to wonder, as a gamer and someone who still dreams of making my own game studio, what do I do with all of this?

• 11:08Jason Schreier?

  There's a little bit more that I cut out, because I do, I think this is a good question in its own right.

• 11:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, sure.

• 11:16Jason Schreier?

  I think that like, you just have to reframe your thinking, if you're thinking about starting a game studio. And it also depends on like, where you are in your life. If you're just out of college, and you're like, I want to make a game on my own and start a studio and see what happens, then friggin' do it. Like, go live with your parents for a year and try to make a video game, or like, get a day job and try to make a video game on the side, if you can't, if you don't have like, if you can't live with your parents or something like that. Like, find a way to support yourself while you're doing it. If you're later in life, if you have kids, if you have a family, less possible, unless you find funding. And I think what's a little less realistic these days is finding ample funding for a game studio to be able to like, support big ambitions and a large

• 12:00Jason Schreier?

  group of people to, to pay them salaries and pay yourself a salary and stuff. If you just want to make a game, the barriers for entry are lower than they've ever been. It's easier than ever to just download a, an engine, and Unreal or Unity or Godot, and just play around during your spare time and try to make a video game. So, in that sense, I mean, it's, it's like a renaissance for games. It's easier than ever to make games. You could go to Roblox and like, make some friggin' games and potentially even make money. So, I think there is room for optimism there, even though the industry itself is less able to support people making games with a full-time salary. And those two things are very much

• 12:43Jason Schreier?

  related. So, just from a sheer artistic point of view, it's, it's, there are definitely room, reasons for optimism.

• 12:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Hmm.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that. I, I can only speak to it from our side of it, but I know that after I got laid off from the Boston Phoenix, which was my first job out of college, I really went through it emotionally, like, oh, can I actually make a living doing this thing? That is a really insecure industry. And when I was freelancing, I also found different day jobs, and sometimes part-time jobs, that I could do writing on top of. And that is how I subsisted for about two years, until I got another full-time job at the Mary Sue. And that was, it was really difficult, but it also taught me a lot about what I actually wanted to do. I, I'm not pretending that the whole work a day job thing isn't

• 13:34Speaker 01

  really hard, because I think part of what was hard about it for me was finding something that wasn't a creative day job at all, so that I didn't feel so exhausted at the end of the day, that I couldn't go home and make something else and use my brain in a different way. So, I will say, my day job tip is actually to try and, try and find something that's completely different, and really low impact, and you can just kind of survive.

• 13:58Jason Schreier?

  That doesn't require a lot of brain power.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. I don't know how easy that is now, compared to when I was doing it. But it is generally what I tell people, especially people in our job, where they're trying to make it as a writer, and they don't have a job. I'm like, well, do something completely different and write at night. I'm not saying it's fun. It's just, sometimes that's what you have to do for a while.

• 14:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's good advice. I'll just add, I guess, Sophie's question is, what do I do with all of this? I think if you're thinking really big, the way that Sophie probably is in thinking about this question, you know, what's going on with the games industry, and why, what do I do in the face of so much terrible news? It's really easy to just sort of feel a little immobilized or stuck, because it's, it's so big, when you're kind of contemplating this, you know, Microsoft and what's happening there, or these massive moves in the games industry, or maybe the current games industry crash, or that kind of stuff. And I've felt that way about other industries, you know, writing or podcasting, or, you know, things that I've, feels that I've worked in. And you

• 15:06Kirk Hamilton?

  do just sort of start doing the work. Like, you start making stuff, you start doing things and finding collaborators, you begin a project, and then you just kind of find your own little shelf in it, and you start to figure out what it looks like to kind of make it work for you financially, whatever that looks like, if, you know, that, how it dovetails with a day job, or, or what, you know, kind of project you want to do. And it just, you kind of start to make a little space that you can actually see, because it's something that you're standing in and is that you're a part of. And that sort of feels different than the, at times, paralyzing feeling of just looking at a whole industry, especially an industry that's kind of in shambles, and thinking, oh god, like, what do I do with this? So, you know, it's that, it's like Act Local. It's like the Act, the video game,

• 15:51Kirk Hamilton?

  the creative work development, like, the creative work version of Act Local, is just do something, start doing it, find people to work with, and you may find that it feels a little less overwhelming, because it's all a little more you scaled.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Hmm. Like, the video game equivalent of, of running for public office in your town.

• 16:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, or like, going to a local, you know, town council meeting, and, yeah, getting involved with something where you can actually like, make a difference.

• 16:14Jason Schreier?

  Make your own compost. Make your own mulch.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  I think what you're also getting at, Kirk, is that by actually doing that, even if you're only doing it part-time outside of a day job, or whatever it may be, Sophie can learn what jobs are actually any fun or interesting, which I think is also a really big existential question to answer, if Sophie's younger and just starting, which, given the phrasing of the question, I think maybe is the case. So, that, I think, is good. Just try it and see if you even like it, before you get too existential about it. And I say that as someone who gets existential about her job all the time, so it's pretty hypocritical advice. But, I, I also just really like what I do. And I only know that because I've

• 16:57Speaker 01

  tried doing it in a lot of different ways for many years. And there are certainly people who think they might like this job, and then find out that they don't. And I think making a game is probably exactly the same as that, where you actually have to try it, and see if you even like it.

• 17:15Jason Schreier?

  All right, next question. This is from Vishal. Hey, three clickers. Marvel's Wolverine is getting hammered for its, quote, "handholding like a glowing scent trail, waypoints, unviable QTEs, and it turns out some of that guidance can't even be turned off. The backlash has been loud. Would love your take. Is this a symptom of AAA accessibility defaults going too far, and stripping agency, or just this game being sloppy about it? Where is the line?"

• 17:45Kirk Hamilton?

  I like that the question is, where is the line, given that the thing people are objecting to is a blue vine?

• 17:52Jason Schreier?

  The scent trail.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Where is the line? Vishal, leave the scent trail to the line.

• 17:56Kirk Hamilton?

  It's right in front of Wolverine. You can't miss it. It's right there. It leads to Jean Grey.

• 17:59Jason Schreier?

  So, okay, so I haven't played Wolverine, so I'm actually curious to hear from both of you about something, which is, so, my understanding is that there's these like, big, open-worldy areas that have been turned into linear, more linear sections, or you're doing more linear stuff than that. Is that where the scent lines are, is to like, help you navigate through, because they're bigger, open-world areas, to get to where your objective is? Because otherwise, you might get lost?

• 18:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, people can listen to us talk with Lucy James more in-depth about this. And Maddie and I got into the whole thing on that game. But yeah, I mean, you know, the, the thing with Wolverine is that there are these multiple redundant systems of player assisting happening, where like, Wolverine's heightened senses are reflected by these blue clouds, that even, you know, they lead you where you're going. And so they really just, it's like the Witcher senses thing, or in Blood of Dawnwalker, like, it's, a lot of games do this, where you can kind of see something. But in Wolverine, you know, they're, they're kind of always there, and it's their reflection of one of his superpowers, so they can't be turned off. Then there are other things, there's like, a waypoint bug that appears in your UI, I think that can be turned off. And then also Wolverine will say like, I should find Jean. And there's a lot of those kind of,

• 19:09Kirk Hamilton?

  you know, AAA-style, like, reminder lines of dialogue. And then also, there's a lot of the world design stuff, like, there's paint all over everything, where you're supposed to jump, and lights shining on things. So, it became kind of this, you know, a kind of flashpoint in critique. Skill Up, Ralph's video for Skill Up was very like, he really went off on this, because it really, really bothered him. I've heard some other people who like, this super bothered them as well. I think Patrick Kleppik was like, really, you know, really bugged him. I found it to just be messy. I mean, it felt to me like, and to kind of answer Vishal's question, it felt like a particular thing with this game. I mean, granted, this is like, a trend across a lot of AAA games that bothers people. But I think this game, partly because it so clearly was like, kind of, they changed

• 19:54Kirk Hamilton?

  course when they were making it, and they had an open-world game, and then they turned it into a linear game. And then they were kind of like, throwing a bunch of stuff in that they'd maybe made to serve other functions in a different kind of game, but then they still had them, or some of the like, art that they designed for some of the levels was like, serving a different function when the game works differently. So, it just starts to feel kind of like a jumble. That was my sense anyways. Maddie, did it feel that way to you?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I really agree. I also do think that they, I think they added some ability to turn more things off later on. But yeah, the scent trail, it, I understand what you're saying. Like, yes, those are Logan's powers, no matter what, they're there in the comics. He has heightened senses, he can, he can smell people like a dog, and he can smell Jean, wherever she is. So, I get that you can't turn it off. But I will say that there's so many other things in this game that they have, quote unquote, "turned off" about his powers, like, the fact that he can die in combat and have to be respawning later, is like, well, it's fine, just have a detective mode button, where suddenly Logan is taking

• 20:58Speaker 01

  a big whiff, and then the scent line shows up. But yeah, other than that, I, I totally agree. I think that this was just a case of this particular game. Uh, suffering from having all of those different pieces thrown together. And then maybe somebody somewhere along the line just got a little bit concerned that people would not be able to find their way around these open environments. And there's one too many helpful tips.

• 21:24Kirk Hamilton?

  I think one mistake they did make that is, I'm sure in other games, but it's pretty egregious in Wolverine is like, some of the specifics were especially related to optional collectibles, like the way there are these crates that you find, but they like create this massive blue pulse that like takes up the whole screen.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:39Kirk Hamilton?

  They might have shrunk in those. I know like Insomniac has been adding, has been patching the game, so they maybe changed that since I played it.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 21:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Or even just the fact that there's like, the whiskey collectibles like have a scent trail leading to them and it's so that it's a little like, you're like just guiding me straight to the optional collectible. Like what, like what is even, like, it just kind of undercuts it a little. And one thought I'll have, you know, I did see people saying this is a Sony first party thing. I think remembering God of War Ragnarok, which had some of that like, you know, Atreus tells you how to solve the puzzle kind of stuff.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  And like Aloy talking to herself and the Horizon games.

• 22:12Kirk Hamilton?

  I will say that I, there is also a notable exception, which is the sucker punch games. Ghost of Yote, I think, is a really notable example of a game doing a lot of creative stuff with player direction where, if you remember, there's no mini map in that game. The wind sort of indicates where you're supposed to go. There's a lot of really cool environmental, like, it's really beautiful and really artistic, actually, like very artful, I guess. The way that you can see like a tree in the distance that's painted a certain color that tells you that some kind of story event will be there. And like, I think there are games being made in this space at this level where they're coming up with more creative ways to kind of tell the player where to go. And I at least, yeah, I super prefer that. I think that that's really great.

• 22:55Kirk Hamilton?

  I'd be interested in like what the actual player feedback that they're getting is, since I also get the sense that like, there has been a lot of pushback on this stuff, but it's also been in like, games critics and podcasts and like forums, like it's like, people who are really keyed into this stuff. And I'd be curious what just like the average player, you know, who's only going to play one or two games a year thinks about like this level of handholding, like whether it bothers them or even if, if they even really notice that.

• 23:19Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the anecdotes that I hear from people who work on these games is that stuff like this is, comes up because they test out the game with so many players who just don't know where to go next. And the reason I asked that question about the open world design is because it seems, it is, to your point earlier, Kirk, it is a game that was going in one direction and then pivoted, had a director shift. And I just wonder if like, it was because it was a big open world exploration area and they needed to put you in the right direction, which it seems like is part of that here.

• 23:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think Wolverine is just a messier example than usual. And as a result, like this part of the game is like more muddled and jumbled than usual. And while it's like, become a flashpoint, at least in like discussion spaces where people are like really worked up about it, it's also, it's kind of the exception, or it's a pretty exceptional example because the development of the game was messy and you could just kind of see how like, it's kind of a mess, like that part of it, where like most games, there are games where they are too handholdy, like some of the Ragnarok, or there were like parts of those games where like, I wish you could just turn off the NPC telling you what to do in the puzzle. Like there are these smaller things that were just, you know, part of a less chaotic development that I think are like easier to critique, or like maybe a stronger source

• 24:36Kirk Hamilton?

  for critique because they're actually, they were like decisions people really made. Where with Wolverine, it seems like they were like really just trying to make it work. So the fact that it's really messy isn't a huge surprise.

• 24:45Jason Schreier?

  Sometimes all these things come online together so late in the process that it's like, not everyone even gets a chance to like test everything out and see it working in that way. So, yeah, I mean, is there a line though? Vishal asked about, where's the line? Is there a line when it comes to this stuff? I don't know if.

• 25:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Probably, right? There's like some percentage of players need to not feel confused about where to go next. That's probably where it is for developers, is they need to know that the majority of players know what to do. And then I suppose also that players who want to be a little more lost in the world and finding their process, progress like on their own, like that those people have the option to do that and that you can kind of make that work. That seems like the ideal system is there's kind of a different level of it depending on how much of that you want.

• 25:34Jason Schreier?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, the fact that you can't turn it off.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I think we've seen that trend with paint in games that you can change the color of the paint or make it completely go away. Like I've increasingly seen that in larger games as like reflection of.

• 25:46Jason Schreier?

  Now you change the yellow paint to be another color.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can make it like a different color. I can't remember what game, games, plural, I've seen this in, but I, it's definitely an option I've seen in the menu. However, I, the reason I don't remember is probably because I always leave it on because I actually get lost in games a lot. Wolverine was a little much even for me. So that's how I know that it was really going to bother people, but.

• 26:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I gotta say, like, Control Resonant is a super interesting kind of point to Wolverine. Like the fact that it, that game has like no paint in it.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  I know.

• 26:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Like it, there are so, and to a fault at times.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  And I'm getting lost a lot.

• 26:18Kirk Hamilton?

  There are definitely times where I go all, I go to a door and then I'm like, wait, why can't I go to this thing on my map? Like I have to go all the freaking way around and it's annoying. But other times where it's really cool and I just have to kind of figure out in these insane, you know, abstract environments where I'm supposed to go. And the developers have said like, yeah, we straight up decided not to do yellow paint. Like we didn't want to give too much of a handheld because we wanted people to have to explore and get lost in this like non-Euclidean world. So it's a really interesting that like both games kind of came out at the same time. Control could actually maybe use a little bit of a like nudge at times.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  There's just a slight.

• 26:54Jason Schreier?

  Maybe you found the line. Maybe the line is somewhere between Control and Wolverine.

• 26:58Kirk Hamilton?

  But I really respect what Remedy is doing. I think it's really cool playing that game. And I think I, well, and everyone knows, or people who've listened to this show for a long time know, I love that kind of thing. Like I love like an organic, like the way, a game that organically tells you where to go and doesn't give you a whole bunch of on-screen stuff. It's just, that is a lot harder to do. And there are times where Remedy kind of doesn't quite get it right. I'm fine with that, you know, overall, because the overall experience is very cool. But I can see how that's like, it feels like a risk if you're a game developer, right? To go in that direction.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 27:29Jason Schreier?

  Matty, you want to read this next question?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Sure. So this one is from Kayla, who writes, sending on behalf of my eighth grader, who is a massive fan of the show. And Kayla's eighth grader Owen writes, dear Matty, Jason and Kirk, I'm a huge fan and your episodes have been something that I wait impatiently for every week to listen to. So I have one very important question. Have any of you played Delta Rune? I know that you don't talk about every game you play, but through all the episodes, I feel like I've only heard Delta Rune mentioned like two or three times. This is probably one of the most formative gaming experiences I've played. I know Delta Rune isn't for everyone as it's episodic with it being one to two years in between chapters, but you should definitely give it a try if you haven't. Love the podcast. Thanks, Owen.

• 28:15Jason Schreier?

  Did I tell you guys, I think I might've said this on the show before, but I was looking through my daughter's middle school or elementary school yearbook, which ends in sixth grade. And the sixth graders, each of them has a page with like their picture and like their favorite activities.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is familiar.

• 28:30Jason Schreier?

  There's a section at the bottom that is like favorite game slash app. And a lot of people wrote like YouTube and Roblox and Fortnite. And then a couple of people wrote Delta Rune slash Undertale.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember this.

• 28:41Jason Schreier?

  So Delta Rune has reached the youth. The youth love Delta Rune.

• 28:44Kirk Hamilton?

  I remember that being true of Undertale for what it's worth.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  It makes sense.

• 28:48Kirk Hamilton?

  That so many middle schoolers, like around that age in particular, just really loved Undertale.

• 28:51Jason Schreier?

  It makes sense because those are games that I think are universally appealing to the, I mean, very, especially appealing to people who are just going through puberty and, and growing up and learning how to become adults.

• 29:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I think, and if you're like learning how to draw, the art is like really lends itself to like, the characters are very fun to draw.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  And it's like a coming of age story with like a kind of sci-fi fantasy twist. It like fits right in the realm of like young adult novels. It's like the young adult novel of video games.

• 29:17Jason Schreier?

  That said, I've played the first episode and then stopped, mostly because to Owen, like Owen brought up, I'm probably just going to wait for the whole thing. But also, I don't know, I'm not a hundred percent into it. Now, I don't, I'm not quite as into it as I was Undertale, but I will play it all or at least give it more of a chance when the whole thing is out.

• 29:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, same. I love Undertale. I love the music. Toby Fox is a great composer. I mean, he's a, he's great at a lot of things, but honestly, as a musician, that's maybe my favorite skill of his, is music is great. And I haven't played it at all and it's for that same reason. I, I mean, I like Undertale because of the complete experience. Like I love the way that it ends. I love the way it all ties together. I think that's just such an important part of it. I'm sure Delta Rune is different in that it's just structured differently. And I know people will say, especially now, I think where it is right now, they'll say, oh, you can play however many episodes are out right now and it feels super complete. And it is like that same feeling, but at the same time, I know there's more.

• 30:17Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, but it's not complete.

• 30:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And there's so long of a wait between chapters that I'll forget. And I really just, it's like Kentucky Route Zero was that way for me. I actually played Kentucky Route Zero, episode to episode, and then I kind of ran out of steam on it really toward the end. And it required really like, okay, I'm going to go back and like do this whole thing and play it all the way through. And I was glad I did, but I think this time I'm just going to wait, even if that means waiting like three or four more years.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember I played Kentucky Route Zero all at the same time. And I think it was one of my early one more things on this show at the time when it all came out. And that was a really great way to play it. And I do have a code for Delta Rune. It might even be installed, so I'm just going to wait and play it until it's all out.

• 30:59Jason Schreier?

  All right, next.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  We'll, we'll get back to you, Owen. How's that sound? We'll get back to you about it.

• 31:02Kirk Hamilton?

  It'll happen.

• 31:03Jason Schreier?

  Give us a few years. Next question, Kirk.

• 31:05Kirk Hamilton?

  This comes from Ed, who writes, hi Kirk, Matty and Jason, first time, long time. Listening to your latest episode, I stopped and wondered. You start each show with the phrase, welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you.

• 31:18Jason Schreier?

  Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking-

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. For our first glass, we have a nice-

• 31:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Today, we're answering-

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Who came up with this intro? Were there any other contenders? And most importantly, what one game is each of you bearing? Thanks for pulling out so many great episodes, Ed.

• 31:42Jason Schreier?

  I think the games we're bearing are just the Triple Click picks. Like, they're, that's what we're presenting to you.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Oh, you don't think it's like whatever games we're talking about in a given episode? Because that's how I think of it.

• 31:51Jason Schreier?

  Well, I don't know. I always thought that this was like ironic in some way or another, but I don't know. I don't know what my read on it. I don't know who came up with Kirk. You came up with this?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  I think Kirk did.

• 32:01Kirk Hamilton?

  I did. And it was really spur of, it was like off the cuff. I was recording, so I had written the music. And in writing the music, like crafted the music to work with the intro as it plays each episode, where you get the little clicks and the chord, and then you talk over the buildup, and then the melody comes in and you give the little spiel. Like, I kind of designed that. So then, when I was designing it, to send it to the two of you and be like, this is what it's going to sound like. We'll take turns doing it. I just recorded one and was just like, I had to, I was like, welcome to Triple Click. Like, I do the same thing for Strong Songs. I say, welcome to Strong Songs, a podcast about music. I'm your host, Kirk, and it's always that, which is easy. But that, I didn't want to be like, welcome to Triple Click, a podcast about video games, because that's literally identical to my other show. So I straight up was, I think, I don't even know.

• 32:44Kirk Hamilton?

  I think I was just like, what about like, where we bring the games to you? Because it's a little, like, it's a little corny, right? Or it's a little bit like, it has that kind of, welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Like, it's a little bit of that vibe. But it sort of fits the music.

• 32:59Jason Schreier?

  That's why I thought it was ironic. I thought it was a tongue in cheek.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it is. Yeah.

• 33:03Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a little tongue in cheek, but we do bring the games to you. Like, I think that-

• 33:06Jason Schreier?

  We do.

• 33:06Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, you're on your commute, you're at work, you're on a walk, you're listening to the show. We're kind of coming to you with video games, and we're telling you about them. And so it seemed appropriate, and it worked, and we just kind of kept it and kept going.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  I feel like I imprinted on your sample intro, and I was like, this is the intro? This is what we're doing?

• 33:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it was.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Even though I had the context that you were just recording it as a placeholder intro, I thought it was good. But yeah, I also think it's funny. I always think it's funny. Every time I record it, I'm like, I feel like I'm doing an infomercial. Like, we're a late night, a super, super late night infomercial that's like four hours long, and each of us is coming out and like presenting a video game on a little platter and being like, you won't believe what Control Resonant can do. Dylan can slice, he can dice. Like, that is, that is the vibe that we're bringing.

• 33:55Kirk Hamilton?

  It's that second person, where you're like, you. Like, when you're talking to the you, it has that kind of, you know, QVC.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 34:02Kirk Hamilton?

  So I think, yeah, to answer the question, I think we're just bringing the games. Like, I'm not bringing a specific game. It's whatever game we're talking about this week.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  It's all the games. We're bringing them all.

• 34:12Kirk Hamilton?

  All of them, every week.

• 34:14Jason Schreier?

  Well, six and a half years later, we're still bringing games to you. And next is Tom, who writes, hi y'all, it feels inevitable that there will be a Dungeon Crawler Carl video game adaptation. What are your thoughts? Are there any books that you would like to see made into a game? Kirk, do you think there's going to be a Dungeon Crawler Carl video game?

• 34:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, right there.

• 34:37Jason Schreier?

  Isn't it just the book already?

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Well, they're making a TV show right now, right? They're doing a show.

• 34:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, there's like an RPG, I think, like tabletop stuff happening with this game already. It kind of maybe lends itself more to a tabletop universe than a video game, is my thought. Having read all of these books, or I guess listened to all of these books. So yeah, they're making a TV show. I'm not sure how that'll go. They have a lot of talent and money behind it, because it's very successful, but also, I don't know, man. Having listened to all these, I mean, they cast Jeff Hay, the voice actor, as Princess Donut, as the voice of Princess Donut, which is the correct decision. So like, whoever's making calls is like making the right calls so far. But I don't know how you adapt this thing, man. Like, I really don't. The books are perfect.

• 35:25Kirk Hamilton?

  The audiobooks in particular are just exactly the thing. That's Dungeon Crawler Carl. So that adaptation, we'll see. It's a little more straightforward, though. For a video game, I don't know, it would be so hard. Like, the thing about Dungeon Crawler Carl, you know, the setting of this book is series, is that there's this like intergalactic game show happening on Earth, where like the overseers are this, you know, this incredibly technologically sophisticated, you know, aliens who have put together just a world that is, it's almost, it's so powerful, like the simulation that you're within, that even though it is real, like it's your real body and you're inside of it, it's basically the Matrix. Like, it's like all of reality is being rewritten by a computer at all times.

• 36:07Kirk Hamilton?

  So that is kind of what a video game is. But the thing is, like, the rules are a little wibbly wobbly in the books. Like, the whole idea is that there's like, people are not playing fair. Or like, some of the best things that Carl and his team pull off are when they work out an exploit, and they like pull off some crazy trick that the people who programmed the game didn't anticipate. Because it's really a story about breaking the game. Like, it's, it's an unjust and horrible thing that's been done to everybody. And it's the tale of like revolutionaries inside of a video game, figuring out how to break the game in order to kill all the people who made the game in revenge for what they did to us. And like, that works for a story, but if you're building a game around it, suddenly you have to design like both the game and the ability to break the game, which like can work.

• 36:52Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, like, I don't know, I feel like Saints Row games feel like kind of spiritually connected on a design level to what Dungeon Crawler Carl is doing. But I also really struggle to imagine it working all that well. Where a tabletop universe, where you just have a bunch of rules and you can tell your own stories on like a different planet with a different game, like that makes a lot more sense to me. So those are the Dungeon Crawler Carl thoughts.

• 37:14Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, let's all answer this last question. Are there any books you would like to see made into a game? My answer is the, the Lives of Locke Lamora series, which is written by Scott Lynch, who is a big video game fan. In fact, he named Locke Lamora after Locke from Final Fantasy VI. But also would make a killer game to be doing heists with this group of-

• 37:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Feels like Dishonored, right?

• 37:37Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it could be, yeah, it could be kind of Dishonored-y. More teamwork, though. More of like a heist game than a Dishonored game. Dishonored is mostly by yourself. Kind of like a, it could also be like, I don't know, turn-based RPG, Claire Obscurry.

• 37:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Mm-hmm. That's true. I mean, like Six of Crows, the Lee Bardugo Crows duology, that would be a really fun, team-based, kind of invisible ink style, like stealth game. I could see that working really well, because the Crows in those books, which these are fantasy heist novels, they're really great. The first one's called Six of Crows. You know, there's kind of like the sharpshooter, the stealth knife girl, the mastermind, like, you know, kind of, he can kind of be the mouth, you know, and the, the magic user. Like, they put together a crew that feels like a party and, you know, Fire Emblem or Invisible Anchor in one of those kind of turn-based tactics games. I could see that being super cool, and I would play the hell out of it.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is total recency bias, but that's always how answering these questions work, right? It's like whatever book is coming to mind that you're thinking about right now. But my sister is reading the Tamora Pierce Song of the Lioness Quartet books to my niece right now. And these, this is a series that she and I loved as kids. And so this is a real, like, we're forcing my niece to enjoy these. The premise is, it's this young girl who lives in this medieval fantasy world where women can't be knights. And so she disguises herself as a boy, and she goes to knight school and has to train to be a knight alongside all of these boys and trick them the entire time. She also has magic powers and like eventually learns how to use them as well.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  So I, I'm also like thinking of Ciri and the Witcher, and like how much potential there is for like sword fighting and magic using for lady knight characters. And I feel like that setting, I mean, I'm a huge fan of the setting, and like, Make has been texting me about it, and I'm like remembering how great those books are and being like, oh, man, these were so wonderful. I, I don't know if Tamora Pierce has specifically like not wanted to adapt them, though, because it's a series that for many years I've always been like, how has no one made this into a TV show or a movie or anything, especially in like the post Game of Thrones worlds, where I feel like we were seeing so much stuff getting adapted. And I don't know, I don't know if, if she's out here just being like,

• 39:55Speaker 01

  no, it's only a book. And I will say, they're really wonderful young adult novels, and I still recommend them.

• 40:01Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, a lot of the shows that people tried to make after Game of Thrones just failed miserably.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Totally, yeah. But you know, then there's stuff like the Six of Crows, like Netflix kind of combination series that Kirk seemed to really like.

• 40:14Kirk Hamilton?

  That show was a huge failure, though.

• 40:16Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Was it? So only Kirk liked it? See, I live in a bubble.

• 40:20Kirk Hamilton?

  No, no, no, Kirk didn't like it. You're forgetting my second one more thing, where I said it was a disaster in the second season. It started okay, and then it really fell apart, and it's nowhere close to as good as the Crows books. I just read the books.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Fair enough.

• 40:31Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, you're mentioning Ciri is interesting, just because it is worth mentioning that The Witcher III, which just got that update, I played a little bit of that, and it reminded me-

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, those are based on a book.

• 40:41Kirk Hamilton?

  This is a book adaptation. This is like a really, and a really, really good one.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  I didn't even think about that.

• 40:46Kirk Hamilton?

  There's no other, it's, I don't know. I mean, I can't say this for sure, but it is like the greatest video game adaptation of books ever. Like, it's really remarkable how good it is and how true it is to those novels. And that is a very cool thing about it. And, I mean, I think it's like the exception that proves the rule. It's a really hard thing to do, and they did it, but like, that doesn't mean it should, that everyone else can do it. But it is like a really great adaptation of a series of books.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  And it's also making me think, actually, that there is a benefit to adapting a fantasy, almost RPG-esque story to a game as opposed to a TV show, because The Witcher TV show, I thought was fine.

• 41:25Kirk Hamilton?

  It started all right. Kind of like a typical Netflix thing, just like the, just like the Grisha shows.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 41:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Based on Bardugo's books, where it started pretty good, and then it fell apart. Then they recast Geralt's. I stopped watching that for a while ago.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Totally, yeah. Whereas like, I can totally picture The Song of the Lioness, where I'm playing as Alana, and I'm having to do like the school stuff and hide from my friends, but I'm also training as a knight. Like, you have the full RPG trajectory there, because the books follow her all the way to adulthood. So it's pretty perfect.

• 41:55Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's do one last question. Maddie, can you read this last one?

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Sure. This one is from Matthew, who writes, as editor of the show, Kirk has the ability slash power to bing in with corrections, updates, extra thoughts, et cetera. I've noticed that, as a music nerd, he often will also bing in with samples of game music as well. Maddie and Jason, if you were the editor, what noise would you use to announce yourself? And what one kind of additional non-correction slash update information do you think you'd introduce?

• 42:28Jason Schreier?

  So mine would be a clown horn.

• 42:32Jason Schreier?

  And I would be coming in to throw in the jokes that I thought of later. And so didn't get to put in at the time, or the one liners, the comebacks.

• 42:44Kirk Hamilton?

  What you should have said.

• 42:45Jason Schreier?

  Got it. Like, basically, I would come in, I would clown noise in, and then I would be like, "Yeah, well, the jerks are called."

• 42:53Speaker 01

  It wouldn't just be notes that you don't play jokes every single time?

• 42:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that'd be good, too.

• 43:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Every single time, right? You make some variation of that joke.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Every single time. In a way, the clown horn is the note that Jason doesn't play in every episode, because it's not there.

• 43:09Jason Schreier?

  Right. Jason here, and I just wanted to chime in to say, it's all about the updates you don't make.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Mine would probably be me snapping my fingers, because I like snapping my fingers, and I think it's a fun, fun noise.

• 43:26Kirk Hamilton?

  You wouldn't say "bye"? I thought that maybe it would be "bye."

• 43:28Speaker 01

  No, because that would be confusing. I wouldn't want people to think the podcast was ending.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  "Bye" is preserved for the end of the show.

• 43:36Kirk Hamilton?

  I just like imagine it's like, "Bye," and then you're like, "Hi, everyone, Matty here." Anyway, "Bye."

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Well, okay.

• 43:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Hi, what if you said "hi" and "bye"?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  I could say "hi."

• 43:46Kirk Hamilton?

  You could be like, "Hi," and then you say your update, and then you say "bye."

• 43:48Jason Schreier?

  Have you been saying "goodbye"? I thought you were just saying bisexual every time.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just coming out to you guys every time. I was turning around mine, because you know when, as bisexual people, have to come out again and again, and like, because I'm married to a woman, people might not know.

• 44:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Bisexual visibility is important.

• 44:03Jason Schreier?

  I've been saying "boors."

• 44:07Speaker 01

  What would my corrections be? I mean, I feel like a lot of times on this show, and you two can relate to this, so maybe you can add this into your corrections, I'll have, like, continued playing the game more after the episode comes out, and I'll, and sometimes we'll never return to it, it won't be quite enough for one more thing. So that would probably be what the, most of my corrections would be, would be that I'd just be snapping back in. See, that's why it has to be a snap, is because it's, it's a good way to verb that word. I'm verbing it. I'd be snapping in, and I'd be like, "So here are my additional thoughts."

• 44:39Kirk Hamilton?

  I played a little bit more of it, and actually, the story is terrible.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:45Jason Schreier?

  I mean, Kirk already does that.

• 44:46Kirk Hamilton?

  I do that sometimes, yeah.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  That's true, that's true. Kirk has all the advantages that we don't have.

• 44:51Jason Schreier?

  That is that for this week's Burning Questions. Once again, you can reach us at triple click at maximumfun.org, send us questions, keep them short. All right, let's take a break, and we'll be back with one more thing.

• 45:08Speaker 03

  Hey, guess what, Sue the subway train? No, not that gross. I'm just trying to tell you I realized what Dr. Game Show is about. You know that part of any game show where you meet the contestants, and it's only a 30-second conversation? At our podcast, it turns into two hours of small talk with listeners from around the world. Also, the games we play are the ones that they submitted. We have to play them no matter what. Oh, and Alex is here to help keep the pod running.

• 45:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Hey, I'm here, too.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  Anyway, I like talking to silly billys and playing their weird games. Find it on maximumfun.org, Dr. Game Show.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  Wonderful is a podcast where we talk about things we like. That's hard to sell in a promo like this, so we even listed the help of piano rock superstar Billy Joel to tell you about some of the topics we've covered. Take it away, real Billy Joel.

• 45:59Speaker 05

  City rock spin on Lake Sun, Wilson Shire, Circle Time, Sega Dreamcast sees the salad tower of Annoy. Keep me up, big time capsules, Wayne's world cheese bulls, Wallace Stevens donkey gone, fun size almond joy. They didn't start the podcast, except that's not true, they didn't 22. They didn't start the podcast, no, they actually did, that was a fact of fib.

• 46:26Speaker 04

  Listen to Wonderful every Wednesday on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, real Billy Joel.

• 46:32Speaker 05

  No problem, Griffin.

• 46:33Jason Schreier?

  All right, Kirk, Matty, we are back, and it's time for one more thing. I'm going to go first. I am playing a video game that we gotta talk about. It's called Echo Weaver, and I'm gonna read a quote. This is a quote from Chris Samsky, the director of Echo Weaver, to Steven Tocchello at Game File. Quote, "I love platformers, I love metroidvanias, I've always wanted to make one, but they're a dime a dozen. And I was like, man, no one's really taken the time-loopy, outer-wild-y way of rolling out a game and merged it with movement, speed-running influences, mastery of platforming, which seems to be, seems, to me, seems like a natural fit. I know this character will be here blowing up half a station

• 47:17Jason Schreier?

  at the three-minute mark. How do I get there in time? Learn your routing, combine it with shortcuts, and all kinds of crazy secrets. This game, you guys, is best described as Outer Wilds as a platformer, as a 2D platformer, where part of the way to solve the time loop is not just knowledge, knowledge is a big part of it, but also 2D platforming mechanics, and like, figuring out how to get somewhere as quick as possible. So let me explain you how this game works. So it is a sci-fi game, it is set on a mysterious sci-fi environment, and you play as a Weaver, which is a sort of like, robot clone thing that you learn more about as time goes on, because this, some tragedy has befallen this space station,

• 48:00Jason Schreier?

  and so you're finding little logs of like, certain people who were there before you. Not that it's abandoned, because there are actual living people, too, but you're learning more about your history and what happened there. So when you first start, you're dropped into this room, and you see that there's like, you can open a chute and wind up in the, like, underbelly of it, and you go in the underbelly of it, and there's fire everywhere, and you just have to kind of jump over a bunch of platforms and get to this new sequence. Sorry, get back to where you were before in that sequence, once you're done with that sequence. And then, maybe by that point, you'll be out of time, because there is like, a little time ticker on the top. You'll notice that you can replenish it by picking up resources, these little blue crystals things that give you more time. So time is kind of a resource,

• 48:43Jason Schreier?

  and you learn that. But let's say you're out of time, then you find yourself back in the same exact place, so you're like, "Shit, I have to do that again." But then, next time, you find a code somewhere, and that code lets you unlock a shortcut. So then, the next time you start your loop, you can unlock the shortcut, and you can get there much quicker, get to the new place much quicker, and on and on and on. Eventually, you'll learn that these things around the world actually have, like, these objects that you can find actually have multiple uses. And hey, you can find shortcuts in other ways. Oh, hey, you can teleport around the map. Oh, hey, you got an ability, a special ability, that lets you do things in a certain way. And as you're going, you're learning more about what's happening, you're learning what is happening at certain points in the time loop, and you're

• 49:26Jason Schreier?

  using that knowledge to your advantage, just like in Outer Wilds. It's super cool. It's just as cool as I just described it right there. Eventually, you get to this, like, village area, and you talk to all these people, and you, and they explain to you what's going on. You also have this little notebook in your menu screen that works kind of like the ship's computer in Outer Wilds, and that is keeping track of leads, and will, and will help, like, you, you will, it'll automatically keep track of you, what you should be keeping track, and what you should be trying to answer, what kind of questions you have, how to learn more. It'll be like, "We should be learning more about this, we should learn more about this." And then, so you'll have all these different goals as you are going. So like, one of the first things you have to do is you learn from your kind of weird, bizarre

• 50:11Jason Schreier?

  companion, who is in your head and helping you along the way, which is manifested as that cat eating pizza for some reason. You learn from this cat eating pizza that, that there's a door that you need to get past in order to get out of this first area, but that door is only open for 10 or 20 seconds, something like that, at the beginning of every time loop. And every time you get there, and you try to get there, it's like, the door has shut, like, what are we gonna do? And the cat is like, "There's no way to do this." But then, eventually, you figure out that with the proper use of, of these things that you're learning, and these, there's like, one ability that you gain, and you carry over from loop to loop, but everything else is just knowledge. So like, you could

• 50:54Jason Schreier?

  theoretically do a lot of stuff at the very beginning. But, um, yeah, you, with that knowledge, you can figure out how to get to that door before it actually opens, and then, so you kind of speedrun your way there, and you use your platforming skills and precision platforming, it's not that hard, don't worry. But anyway, you speedrun your way there, and you get there just as it's closing, and you kind of barrel under it, you roll under it just in the nick of time. And that, on a grander scale, is like, how a lot of the things in this game play out. I haven't finished it yet, I made some pretty good progress, but I would say it is a killer video game that you two should play, and that everyone out there should check out, if you are into metroid-branias, if you're into knowledge-based

• 51:37Jason Schreier?

  metroidvania games, and also, you like platforming, because you do need to enjoy the platforming slash metroid, traditional metroidvania aspect of this to, to like it, because there is some, some basic combat and, and a whole lot of jumping along the way. But yeah, it's, it's, it fits, it scratches that Outer Wilds itch in a lot of ways, and it's really cool to kind of see the, the clockwork piecing, to like, to piece the clockwork together, to figure out, to open up the clock and see how it is all working, and see where different people are at different parts in the loop, and see how you can manipulate them, and how you can, like, veer the loop in different directions, if you talk to someone at this

• 52:20Jason Schreier?

  point, and then you do this, and this, and this, and eventually, learn how to escape from the time loop. But yeah, it's pretty damn cool.

• 52:29Kirk Hamilton?

  It sounds awesome. I have this installed, I'm definitely gonna play it. I guess the one question, or one thing that you didn't talk that much about, that I'm curious about, is like, how is the story in the world, and kind of like, is that, you know, one of the things that made Outer Wilds so cool to me was the writing and the kind of feeling of it, the emotional part of it, the story and the way it all came together. How is that part of this? Like, is it as cool as all the mechanical, you know, ticky-tacky, click-cluck stuff?

• 52:54Jason Schreier?

  TBD. I don't know yet. I haven't seen enough to know yet. These, as you're playing, as I mentioned before, you're getting these kind of like, not quite audio logs, but narrative logs, where you'll see a scene unfold that happened in the past, and they'll be talking about like, their science experiments and the tragedy that unfolded, and we'll meet the villains, and the, and the kind of hero scientists, and it seems really interesting so far, but I don't, I haven't seen enough of it unfold to be able to tell you if it's, if it's like, how good it is.

• 53:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Got it.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  It sounds really cool. I also installed it, but we're in the thick of it now. I have a lot of games installed.

• 53:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Playing eight games at the same time.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  What are we gonna do, guys?

• 53:32Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's cool. All right, Kirk, what's your one more thing?

• 53:36Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing I alluded to last week is a novel I just finished called The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. This book rocks. Have either of you read The Count of Monte Cristo?

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Nope, only seen the Wishbone episode.

• 53:51Kirk Hamilton?

  I watched that after finishing it.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Really?

• 53:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's really, it is not bad. It is not bad. There are so many adaptations of The Count of Monte Cristo, holy crap. I kind of want to go watch them all. There's an anime adaptation that my friend Tyson has been telling me to watch.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's pretty good.

• 54:09Kirk Hamilton?

  He says it's the best adaptation of all. He was like, it captures the vibe. It like changes everything. But it's also actually somehow truer to Dumas's story. So I had read The Three Musketeers, or my dad actually read me those books when I was little, like he read them to me. So I was familiar with that story. And then I remembered The Three Musketeers movie, the one with like Oliver Platt. I can't remember who's in it, like the Disney movie from maybe the 90s. As a kid, I remember really liking that movie. And of course, that's the same author, Alexandre Dumas. And Count of Monte Cristo, I believe, was written right before The Three Musketeers, but right around the same time. So he published this novel, it was published as a serial from 1844 to 1845.

• 54:51Kirk Hamilton?

  He is, of course, a French novelist, author, very famous as, I think in particular for The Three Musketeers, the story of D'Artagnan, and also The Count of Monte Cristo, in addition to other things. Super interesting guy with a really wild story and a wild family story. I've been learning a little more about Alexandre Dumas. Wow, quite a figure, a historical figure as well as a literary one. So I read this book because a surprising number of my friends out in Portland like love this book. And in particular, my friend Tyson, who's a drummer, actually, he played drums on Strong Songs Live. He and his wife both like love The Count of Monte Cristo. And we would be like having dinner with them and they'd start talking about how much they loved this book and how funny and strange it is.

• 55:34Kirk Hamilton?

  And it made me just want to read it to talk with them about it. So I started reading it and it really is such a trip. Like, I can't do the language in this book justice. I don't have any excerpts prepped, but I might have to like bang in and read it. I read the Penguin translation because there's a bunch of different translations of this. It's in the public domain now. I'd say The Penguin is like widely held up to be the best one. And just the way, because it's been translated from French and because the style of writing was just super different, you know, 200, almost 200 years ago. It's just wildly different than anything I've read in a really long time because I haven't read anything from this time period or anything by Dumas.

• 56:14Kirk Hamilton?

  And that alone like made it such a hilarious and generally just like very entertaining read. Everyone in this book talks like a WWE, like a pro wrestler, like they all are, it's so dramatic. And like the narrator is like really catty and is always kind of like, or just making these really grand statements like, "Well, he was a Corsican, so we know that that meant he is prone to being an assassin." And you're like, "Okay, is that true?" And it's just like a lot of stuff like that. Bing. Okay, as promised, I'm gonna read some excerpts from this book just to give you a sense of just how unbelievably melodramatic the whole thing is. Here's an excerpt. "Valentine lowered her head. She was overwhelmed. Listen, said Morel,

• 56:55Kirk Hamilton?

  this is not the first time that you have thought about the situation in which we now find ourselves. It is serious. It is pressing. It is crucial. I do not think this is the moment to give way to sterile misery. That may be enough for those who want to suffer at their ease and have time to drink their own tears. There are people like that, and God will no doubt reward them in heaven for their resignation on earth. But anyone who has the will to fight will not lose precious time, but immediately strike back at that fate which has dealt a blow. Have you the will to fight against ill fortune, Valentine? Tell me, because that is what I have come to ask you."

• 57:30Kirk Hamilton?

  And just a couple other short examples. Here's a good example of the things the narrator will say. Sometimes the narrator will just say these incredibly specific opinions. Quote, "I think I may aspire to that honor," said Danglars with one of those fatuous smiles, "which had the same effect on Monte Cristo as the pallid moons that inferior painters plant on the sky above their ruins."

• 57:55Kirk Hamilton?

  And then last one, short example, just because I don't want to imply that Dumas is like not a good writer. He just writes in a very florid and emotionally intense style. But occasionally he'll say things that are really profound and beautifully stated. For example, here is one. "Moral wounds have the peculiarity that they are invisible but do not close. Always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain tender and open in the heart." So anyways, some excerpts from The Count of Monte Cristo. Back to the show. Bing. And I mean, this book is very much of its time. It's incredibly retrograde in some ways. Certainly its views on gender and race differences, like there are so many things in this book where you're reading it and you're just like, oh, man.

• 58:39Kirk Hamilton?

  It's been almost 200 years. Though I do have to say, there is a side storyline with a queer character or like heavily queer-coded character that's remarkably cool, just given the time period and some of the other stuff in the book. But for the most part, I found that it really just, it holds up and it's such a like rollicking and entertaining read. And it's so kind of luxuriant. This is an incredibly long book. I think it recently went kind of viral on BookTok because all these young people were like finding their physical copies of it. I should have brought down, I bought a paperback of this and it is like monstrous. I wound up buying it on Kindle because I physically didn't like reading a book this large. Like it was so big that like holding it and reading it was uncomfortable.

• 59:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Just because it's like not really meant to be held as a collected volume because he wrote it as a like episodically. And he was definitely getting paid by the word. Like it's like so-

• 59:31Speaker 01

  Oh, so like kind of a Charles Dickens situation.

• 59:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it repeats itself so much and like things just go on for so long.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Because like if you missed it on the previous episode, yeah.

• 59:39Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, in the last two weeks, Kirk has finished Wolverine, Blood of the Dawnwalker, played through most of Fire Emblem, and also read a 1200-page book.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Jason, you have no leg to stand on. You're playing Echo Weaver. I don't know how you had time to do that. We can't even get into this.

• 59:53Kirk Hamilton?

  I will say that having, once I finished Strong Songs Live, I was like, I'm not doing, planning a live show. And I suddenly felt like I had so much more free time. I kind of planned that for the fall so I could focus on all these games and stuff. But it's been nice to fit this in with all the video games I've been playing as well. But anyways, let me summarize the book really quickly for anyone. So this is the story of revenge. It's like maybe one of, it's maybe the most famous story of revenge of all time. And I'd summarize it, it's basically the story of a man who is wrongfully imprisoned for more than a decade, who then escapes from prison, becomes incredibly rich, and infiltrates Paris high society in order to troll the people who had him locked up until they die. And that's basically what it is. I would have thought, given that this is by Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers,

• 1:00:38Kirk Hamilton?

  that it's like a swashbuckling tale of like adventure. And it kind of is. It's definitely like an epic. It kind of travels all over the place. There's a really amazing early sequence that's just several chapters set during Carnival in Rome. That's just really vivid because clearly Dumas just like went to Carnival in Rome in like 1837 or whenever it's set in the book. And it's just really cool. Because it's this amazing account of what it was like to be at this totally wild event that goes on for a week and all this stuff happens. But it's not actually like an action book at all. There's, I think, basically no violence in the entire book. Like many people meet violent ends and things happen and there are guns and swords and et cetera. But it's not actually a swashbuckling tale of adventure.

• 1:01:23Kirk Hamilton?

  It's actually kind of a story, it's like a tale of like social foibles and of clever misdirection and manipulation. And a lot of like kind of parody and humor about Parisian high society and about the aristocracy in Paris in the 19th century, which is actually like really funny. It winds up dovetailing actually well with The Gilded Age, the TV show, which Emily and I have come to really enjoy.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Great show.

• 1:01:49Kirk Hamilton?

  That's set, you know, several years after this and in America, but it's a similar vibe, like a similar kind of time period in the 19th century and a similar energy. So this guy named Edmund Dantes is like a young sailor. He's got his whole life ahead of him. And he gets framed by three men who just, like really it's one guy, this guy Daglars, who just doesn't like him and is just like, man, fuck that guy. Like he's getting a promotion and I should get it. So he and this other guy who's in love with Dantes's fiance, they like write this letter accusing Dantes of being a bonapartist, of being sympathetic to Napoleon. Because this is during the period after Napoleon's reign, when he's been sent to the Isle of Elba and is like in exile.

• 1:02:32Kirk Hamilton?

  But the current rulers, I think it's Louis XVIII, they're like really paranoid because like he's still kind of right there and he could just come back and like kill them all. And they're kind of weak rulers.

• 1:02:42Jason Schreier?

  Is this before his army became zombies?

• 1:02:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, so it's really funny that we're, yeah, we're playing Valer Mortis. And considering that game is like, set also during the Napoleonic era. Yes, this is before the zombie period.

• 1:02:55Jason Schreier?

  Okay.

• 1:02:56Kirk Hamilton?

  It's, it's before the like, there's like a return called The Hundred Days. One part of reading this book is that I like, learned some of the timeline here, which I didn't really have a handle on. There was a period where Napoleon returned from Elba and like, rose to power in Paris called The Hundred Days, where he like, briefly was returned and then he was deposed again and he, you know, left again. And like, it's kind of, the book begins right before that happens. And they basically, they falsely accused Dantes of being a bonapartist and of like, facilitating the return from Elba. And as a result of a number of like, just sort of, bad coincidences, the Crown Prosecutor, who's like, in charge of Dantes's case, also is like, realizes that he's compromised by Dantes's story. So he's like, "Uh, actually, I'm gonna just bury you and they'll send you to prison forever

• 1:03:41Kirk Hamilton?

  and no one's gonna find out that you're innocent." So it's like this, it's a combination of like, malicious intent and also just like, bad coincidence, that three guys wind up kind of, conspiring unknowingly to screw over this one dude. Then he's in prison, while he's in prison, he meets a dude who's basically the ultimate guy who knows everything. They become friends. The ultimate guy who knows everything teaches Dantes everything. So over the course of 10 years, I mean, I'm summarizing very quickly, I'm seeing Jason's face here. But over the course of 10 years, Dantes essentially becomes like, the ultimate Superman. Like, he becomes, I don't even know, it's like, Thomas Crown, mixed with James Bond, mixed with like, Wolverine. He can like, see in the dark. Like, he, I think in the anime version, he actually like, merges with some supernatural entity that gives him superpowers.

• 1:04:25Jason Schreier?

  The anime version. You know, the anime.

• 1:04:27Kirk Hamilton?

  I mentioned earlier, there's an anime adaptation.

• 1:04:30Jason Schreier?

  I know, it's just so funny.

• 1:04:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, well, it is very anime. Like, a lot of this is very anime. Like, there are showdowns that are, you know, just people talking to each other, but it feels like, you know, Goku and Vegeta, like, facing off. So he becomes the ultimate dude, there's a buried treasure on the island of Monte Cristo that he goes and gets, and then he like, uses his impossibly vast fortune to orchestrate the ultimate revenge. And then the whole book is just, this luxurious, really fun trip through Paris as these jerks who have become really powerful, just gradually, he like, dismantles their lives and like, toys with them as he sort of destroys them in, in front of everybody. And that's a lot of fun. What I really appreciated, I won't spoil the ending, even though this book is really

• 1:05:12Kirk Hamilton?

  well-known, I actually appreciated like, that the ending is much more complex and it isn't just as tidy as like, "And then he owns all the dudes and he gets revenge and is happy and it ends." It has, I think, a really great ending. And it does reckon in the end with retribution and punishment. And in particular, like, there's a very religious undertone to all of this. Like, everybody in the book just believes in God and talks about God's justice. And Dantes believes himself, you know, as the Count of Monte Cristo, to be acting literally as the embodiment of the will of God. Because he's saying like, "If Providence, like, capital P, carried me out of that prison and gave me this fortune and has made all of this work for me, then I am an instrument of God and thus, this is like, God's divine vengeance."

• 1:05:55Kirk Hamilton?

  And the reason, like, it's all very contrived and everything goes his way for most of the story. And it's like, because literally, God is like, acting through him. But then at the end, he actually does have cause to question. Like, was this the right thing? Like, was I actually God's will? Like, is it, is it right for a man to claim that and to do this to people, no matter how horrible the thing they did to him was? And I appreciated that there are these scenes that where he like, questions that and some of the outcomes were not what I was expecting. So I really liked the ending, too. So anyways, this is a really fun book. I'm super glad to have read it. It's like, such a piece of the like, firmament of literature and of, you know, Western culture. Like, it's been adapted a thousand times. And I was really glad to go read it. It made me wanna just read more classics, honestly.

• 1:06:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, it was so entertaining and readable.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  You should read Moby Dick if you haven't. It's so weird.

• 1:06:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's on my list. And there's a few other ones that I've, that I've gotten. I've been getting recommendations from some of my friends of just like, the classics to revisit. But I'm really, I was struck by just how readable it is, how funny and outsized it is. It's not a slog at all. Like, it's so, just goes when you read it, even though it was written so long ago. So I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it and wants something different and, and something really substantial, you know, to really, to really dive into. Count of Monte Cristo is a hell of a book.

• 1:07:12Jason Schreier?

  Cool. Maddy, close us off.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  All right. Mine is a podcast, which, you know, if you have time issues, you can actually listen to this while you do other things. That's my, that's my hot tip to anybody listening to this and thinking, "Wow, I don't have any time." Maybe that person is me. Anyway, the podcast is called Dolly Parton's America. It's a Radiolab Limited series. It actually came out in 2019 and I had intended to listen to it way back then because it was pretty beloved at the time. And after Dolly Parton died, I was like, "Oh, right, I really wanted to listen to that deep dive Dolly Parton podcast." And I really recommend it. So it's nine episodes.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Jad Abumrad and Shima Olié are the hosts of it and they interview Dolly multiple times and do like, really extensive, extensive interviews with her. And she is just a fascinating person to begin with, in terms of her life story and career and her really complicated and yet, common sense leftist politics. She's also, because this is 2019, this podcast is like, really kind of honed in on her audience and how unusual it is that she has kind of people across the political spectrum and across like, every diversity you could imagine that are, and just love her and love her music

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  and also love what she's come to represent, especially by that point and what I think she still represents after her death now, because it wasn't that long ago. And they interview a lot of people who kind of have really different life experiences and how they came to Dolly Parton as fans. And so like, they have kind of the cultural side of things, as well as the historical side of things. And I think that blend is really effective. And I, you also just get to hear a bunch of great Dolly Parton songs interwoven in the podcast as well. And just some history of like, some of the lyrics and musical influences. It's got, it's got it all. It's, it's one of those podcasts where you're like, "Wow, I really just get to learn a lot about this person and also their music." So if you're like me and you were putting it off, now you have an excuse.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  It's called Dolly Parton's America. Really loved it and I really recommend it.

• 1:09:25Jason Schreier?

  Cool.

• 1:09:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's been cool seeing people rediscover that. I had, I don't know if you remember this, I had Jad on Strong Songs last fall.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  Oh, that's great.

• 1:09:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Because he put out a recent series, it was my one more thing when it came out, about Fela Kuti.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Oh, right, right, right.

• 1:09:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Called Fela Kuti, Fear No Man.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:09:41Kirk Hamilton?

  And Jad is the creator of Radiolab. He's like, the master of this stuff. And the funny thing about Dolly Parton's America is that like, his dad was her doctor and that's why he wound up making it, which is-

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's like, in the opening episode.

• 1:09:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Just such a coincidence, that this like, master podcaster who like, created Radiolab, master audio storyteller, like, happens to just have this connection to Dolly Parton and then is able to tell that story.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like, one connection away from her and that's-

• 1:10:06Kirk Hamilton?

  It's so funny.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  That's how the pilot episode starts, is him kind of describing the comedy of that.

• 1:10:11Kirk Hamilton?

  He's an awesome dude. And man, he's an, he's an amazing pod, he's like, a podcast visionary, too.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a wonderful host as well of this show. It's just really great to-

• 1:10:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  He kind of takes like, an outsider tack to it as like, a, "What is this person's life story and situation and how did she become who she is today?" Which is a effective, effective reporting technique and it really works.

• 1:10:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's a great series.

• 1:10:33Jason Schreier?

  Awesome. Well, that is it for this week's episode. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions that we answered. And thank you to Kirk and Maddy for being here.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 1:10:47Jason Schreier?

  And I will see you both.

• 1:10:48Kirk Hamilton?

  It's my pleasure.

• 1:10:49Jason Schreier?

  I'm, I'm also, it's also my pleasure. I'll see you both next time.

• 1:10:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, see you both next time.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:10:59Kirk 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.

• 1:11:56Speaker 06

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• 1:11:59Speaker 04

  Of artist-owned shows.

• 1:12:00Speaker 06

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