Triple Play: Elden Ring Nightreign

Arise, tarnished, and watch out for server errors. Jason, Kirk, and Maddy team up for some co-op in Elden Ring: Nightreign, the new multiplayer spinoff by From Software. It's a fun game to talk about! They talk about the high highs, low lows, and the opacity of it all.

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

• 0:03Jason Schreier?

  Arise now, ye tarnished, ye dead who yet live. The call of long-lost grace speaks to us all. Where are we dropping, boys? Welcome to Trip a Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're talking about Elden Ring: Night Rain, a new multiplayer game from From Software. The three of us have played it. What do we think? Let's find out.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Shire.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:32Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:34Jason Schreier?

  And hello, we are back.

• 0:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello, my friends.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Back again.

• 0:39Jason Schreier?

  We are one week away for the release of a new console.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  I know.

• 0:43Kirk Hamilton?

  It doesn't feel like it.

• 0:44Jason Schreier?

  It does not feel like it. It really doesn't.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  And we'll get it just in time for Jason and I to already be on a plane to Summer Game Fest. It will be arriving on our doorsteps without us present. And our wonderful wives will be running out and picking up the package and being like, "Why am I doing this?"

• 1:00Jason Schreier?

  Maddie, I pre-ordered it at the GameStop around the corner here in my wife's name so that she could go and pick it up.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna be texting Dina from the plane, being like, "The package is here. Can you go get it?"

• 1:14Jason Schreier?

  Is it here yet? The clerk at my local GameStop recognized me and he was like, "Oh, Jason Shire." I was like, "Oh, nice to meet you, blah, blah, blah." I was like, "Actually, it's not in my name, so please." But you're gonna have to put someone else's name here.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Actually, I don't play video games.

• 1:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm gonna be visiting my niece for her eighth grade graduation in California on the day that it comes, so it will be delivered here and I think our dog sitter will get it here in Portland. But because they are also a Switch household, they have pre-ordered one. So the first Switch 2 that I'm going to see, presumably, is going to be delivered to them and I'm just gonna have to watch as they play Mario Kart and covet their console.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, then they won't let you play it with them.

• 1:55Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, somehow, yeah, you just definitely won't be able to play a multiplayer game with your nieces.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:01Kirk Hamilton?

  No, they'll be like, "No, Uncle Kirk, you cannot play with us."

• 2:05Jason Schreier?

  So hey, if you want to help us afford to buy Switch 2s, you should become a member of Max Maximum Fun, the network that hosts Triple Click, the podcast about video games, where we bring the games to you. Go to MaximumFun.org/join, become a member. In addition to supporting us, you also get monthly bonus episodes, including one we just published about the video game Blue Prince, where we go in-depth on that game's story and puzzles and all the things we loved and a couple of things we didn't love about it. And Kirk and I complain a lot about loose ends and it's a lot of fun.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Big spoilers.

• 2:40Kirk Hamilton?

  It is a good episode. It's really helpful, I think, for some people, just to hear Jason give his exegesis on the narrative contents of Blue Prince.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  It helped me.

• 2:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Because it is easy to miss so much of it. Yeah. And there's just a point at which, Jason, you just outline a ton of what happens in the story. And I've seen a lot of people saying, you know, it was just helpful to hear that, like just to hear it all broken down.

• 3:00Jason Schreier?

  I'm glad to hear that.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Just Jason saying, in order, all of the full timeline of Blue Prince.

• 3:05Jason Schreier?

  The crazy number of hours that I spent on that game have paid off.

• 3:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's paid off. You have the wiki basically memorized.

• 3:12Jason Schreier?

  I do, I do. I have every single book, Blue Prince, Red Prince, I got them all.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Jason is the wiki.

• 3:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. The wiki is actually just an email forum and you email Jason.

• 3:21Jason Schreier?

  Go to MaximumFun.org/join, become a member. All right. Maddie, what are we talking about today?

• 3:29Speaker 02

  We are talking about a video game called Elden Ring: Night Rain that is coming out, for you, the listener, at midnight, your time tonight, I believe, or tomorrow, if you wake up at a normal time and play video games then. But we all got it in advance and we got to play it ahead of time in a pretty sparse multiplayer environment. I will say I'm very curious how this game is going to go once everybody gets to play it and once I can hit that matchmaking button and not maybe wait for 15 minutes. That is, of course, when I'm not queuing up with Jason and Kirk. The three of us did also make some time to play together.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Why? Because this is a three-player Elden Ring. It is a lot more like a Fortnite or a

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Destiny Strike than base game Elden Ring. It has a closing circle that moves around you that you have to escape like Fortunate style. It has a boss that you have to fight at the end. It feels good with three players, kind of like a Destiny Strike. It has randomized elements. There's random bosses that generate throughout that that ever smallening map that you're on. It's pretty interesting. It doesn't quite feel like Elden Ring, although of course it's got all those Elden Ring assets. And it sure does look like Elden Ring. So I would like to know, what do you two think about it? Jason, how much did you play overall?

• 5:01Speaker 02

  And what are you thinking about this very unusual From Software video game?

• 5:06Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I was really looking forward. The three of us had made plans to start to play a little bit before we recorded this episode. But like the servers are down, so we can't, which is just classic, classic.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were gonna play more, but we did what we could.

• 5:19Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's interesting. It's, it's not, I don't love it necessarily, but it has some really high highs. And the three of us playing together, we played two full matches together. And I think it actually encapsulated like the ups and downs of this game. The first one, we got screwed, like ran into the super tough boss, like started running out of time and wound up screwing ourselves and like dying to the first night. The way this game is structured is there are three days. At the end of each day, there is a boss and the third day is like the final, final boss. And then you're done with the match and you unlock new bosses and you unlock other stuff as you go. And so that first match was very frustrating for the three of us. And then we started another one.

• 6:01Jason Schreier?

  And this time we like had a better path on which we went through and we got better stuff. And we leveled up on time and geared up and so on and so forth. And then we did much better. We got, I think to the second night, very close to beating the second night of our match. And yeah, I think it does have a little Fortnite, does have a little Destiny Strike to it. But I think the closest comparison I would make is to a Rogue like where you are kind of where, where.

• 6:30Jason Schreier?

  Understanding the language of it and understanding how to make a build and how to properly root yourself is the key to success, which can be, there's a really big barrier for entry there because the UI in true from software style is very unfriendly and obtrusive. And there's a lot of stuff that it doesn't seem to me like there's any way of knowing. So you can just get screwed by random generation. For example, you look at the map and you kind of like look for different points of interest on your map, which are marked by like little churches or like little ever jails, which you might remember from the main game of Elden Ring.

• 7:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Whatever gowl you mean.

• 7:07Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, sure, ever galls. And you can like wind up somewhere where you you wind in where you fight a boss that is super appropriate for your level and you take it down with your team. Or you could wind up somewhere where it's an ultra tough mega boss that just immediately destroys you and you lose a level. And then you're screwed for the rest of the run. So it doesn't really feel well balanced to me in that way. Or at the very least, it doesn't feel like I understand it quite yet. And it feels like you have to learn a lot to really start to understand it. And that is compounded by the frustration of the fact that you cannot enjoy this game by yourself. I've tried. It is not fun to play by yourself. Matty, you tried too, right?

• 7:46Jason Schreier?

  Like soloing it. It is not fun. And so you you need to either line up the time to spend with two friends. And that can be tough if you're like a player like me with kids and stuff. Or play with raiders of the internet, which is also not nearly as fun or good because there's no in game voice chat as far as I know, where you can communicate with those people. And so the the barrier for enjoyment is really, really high. And that I think is going to turn off a lot of people. I have a lot more thoughts, but I'll I'll throw it to one of you to give some initial impressions first. Kirk, if you want to share some.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, Kirk, what do you think?

• 8:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, so I've played, you know, a number of rounds as well. I played with the two of you, which was certainly the most fun that I've had, especially because I had some fairly catastrophic performance issues early on that hopefully other people don't run into, though I do get the feeling the game is not the most stable experience. There are definitely, there's some latency issues in multiplayer that we were having, and I saw that mentioned in a number of reviews.

• 8:45Jason Schreier?

  You should say how you solved your PC problem.

• 8:47Kirk Hamilton?

  I rebooted my PC, the biggest problem.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was huge. That's a big Elden Ring Night Rain tip. Try rebooting your PC. See if that changes anything for you.

• 8:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Have you tried turning it off and on again?

• 8:58Jason Schreier?

  Plug it in.

• 8:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it, uh, there are still, there are a number of latency issues. Like it'll have the thing where it freezes for a minute and then moves super fast.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  I was definitely having that, even in our match.

• 9:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, especially during boss fights, which is a really unfortunate time to begin having latency is when the three of you are trying desperately to stay alive against a very difficult boss. So some technical issues for us, and I would imagine there will be some at launch, only because Elden Ring sure had its share of them. And that is a bigger problem in a game as unforgiving as this, because in Elden Ring, if you die, all right, well, you have to go try the boss again. But in this, if you die due to latency or something technical, you lose the whole run and have to start over. Yeah, I have a lot to say about this game. It is so interesting. I think it puts a lot of things about Elden Ring into relief because it's so very different. I think you've both done a good job already of explaining how it works.

• 9:48Kirk Hamilton?

  I think it's interesting how opaque it is and how much friction there is between me and the version of me that fully understands this game. There are a lot of upgrades that you get. It's all fairly complicated, though I'm starting to figure it out. There are, I think, runes that you equip. There are amulets you can equip. You pick up gear as you run through the map. So you'll kill a mini boss and they will drop gear and you kind of choose from a little list of things. But you have to move very fast. And I think that's the first thing about this game that I noticed, and that is a very striking difference between it and Elden Ring. Certainly the way that I play Elden Ring, which is incredibly methodically and carefully.

• 10:32Kirk Hamilton?

  There's a reason that I died seven times in Returnal, and it's because I go really slow in these kinds of games and, uh, and I take my time. So in this game, you cannot go slow because there's this Ring of Fire circling you and it really comes on fast. I mean, you drop in and then you have a little bit of time to kill mobs and hopefully get a level or two. And then boom, it starts closing in on you and you've got to go, you've got to run. And mobility is also not great. Great. I don't think you can run, but you don't have torrent. You can jump up walls in a bizarre wall climbing system that is funny. It just feels like a mod or something. It's barely a new mechanic. It looks almost like the game is breaking as you sort of bounce up the wall really awkwardly.

• 11:15Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a far cry from, I don't know, you know, some of these more mobility focused multiplayer games. It just looks kind of janky and feels a little bit janky and you feel kind of slow. So you're trying to outrun this fire and move really quick. And then you're, you're being faced with these constant decisions about your build as you try to pick up different items. And it's very hard to tell sometimes what is good and what isn't good. You know, some item will have like a certain type of dragon fire modifier attached to it. Another one will have a different type of like dragon's heart attached. And I just don't really know what anything is. Sometimes you're trying to level up really quickly or grab an item and you have just seconds until you're going to die. So you have almost no time.

• 11:58Kirk Hamilton?

  These are all points of friction that I think will be ironed out by lots and lots and lots of play. And eventually a fluency in the game and in your character build. So I was just struck by that, given how your average multiplayer game like this really tries to onboard you. They really try to show you everything. They, they work super hard on the UI and the, the whole experience to make it so that you can really quickly level up and understand the kinds of choices that you're making. This game is not interested in that at all. And I guess that's the end of my thought. I do want to mention one other thing that we haven't mentioned yet. For anyone who hasn't read about this game yet, there are character classes in this game, which is also another layer of complexity that is sort of different from Elden Ring.

• 12:39Kirk Hamilton?

  And you choose from one of, I think, eight different character classes and they're all pretty different. And they level up according to their own just preset path. You don't have to choose, you know, individual attributes like you would in Elden Ring, which is nice. But you start with just a very different build and they all have special abilities. I mostly played as, I'm forgetting what it's called, but it's the tutorial. Thank you, the wilder, who has like a grappling hook that's really cool. So you can fly around the battlefield and this kind of charged explosion attack. That's cool. I mean, I like the idea of learning a different character class, though, again, that's a lot more friction because you have to learn what weapons parallel with that class. And you know how you should be leveling them up and sort of building them out as you work through the game.

• 13:21Jason Schreier?

  And the learning, yeah, that presents an issue. The learning combined with the time restraints. So, okay, for each class, you can play around with them in the, this kind of hub area, which is you are just by yourself and you can chill and you can upgrade and do all sorts of stuff with them and get story stuff. You can also spar a little bit in this little training area, but you can't really learn a character class until you take him or her on the run, on a run. And if you go on a run, it's like a waste of everyone's time if you're just trying to learn things and you're not like actively trying to beat it. And so it's really hard to learn things because like if you're playing with strangers, they might start barreling ahead and you're just like trying to keep up with them. And you don't actually learn what you're doing along the way. You're just kind of following them.

• 14:03Jason Schreier?

  Whereas if you slow down, either the timer will kill you because the flames circles will get you before you even have much of a chance to explore or like experiment. Or like you just won't be able to do it fast enough. It's all, it's a very frustrating experience because it doesn't, it feels very poorly paced because of that timer.

• 14:22Kirk Hamilton?

  What if there were just a free play mode? Wouldn't that be cool? I'm thinking out loud here, but what if there was just a mode where you could just load in with three friends? And it was just the first day forever, maybe? And you could just screw around.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  And like the circle never closed.

• 14:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, you, the whole map is just open and you could just go mess around and like experiment with your character. And you don't make progress exactly, but you just can explore and figure things out.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  That would help.

• 14:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe that's against their design goals because it would allow you to become too familiar with the map and they want you to play it a bunch of times, but I could see that being pretty fun, at least for me.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of thinking about how easy they make Fortnite for your first match. Like it, everyone knows this. They purposefully put in a ton of bots for you, the first couple matches so that you win. And part of that is because they want to grab you, like the developers are like, we'd like you to keep coming back and continue playing this game. And like, I guess the most From Software aspect of this game is that they're like, we don't really care if you have a horrible time.

• 15:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, so you bought our game? Well, fuck you.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  You get here, you might just get killed immediately. Which, speaking of, can I tell you two this story about how I did go about beating the first boss before the three of us even queued up together? So. I did it in my second ever match and here's how I pulled it off. My first match ever, I died almost immediately, which I think is probably going to be most, most people's experience with Elden Ring Night Rain. I queued in with two complete strangers. They immediately were running at breakneck speed and so I, I never saw them again. Like as soon as we like landed in our two, our three eagles from the sky, like those two guys were gone.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  And I was like, I don't even know where they're going or why. Like I just got here and like, I couldn't keep up on any level. I was like slowly, methodically, like going around the map and then just eventually died to the fire. And they never came back for me because I'm sure they were just like, she doesn't know what she's doing. So I'm like, okay, I don't understand this game. That's like two, three minutes total of my life. So then I go into my second match ever, and this match is going to conclude with me beating the first boss, which is absurd. So I queue in with two strangers and out of the kindness of their hearts, and this is another classic From Software thing. So I will credit them.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  They just decide to carry me for the entire game, like, you know, wordlessly in the way that people do in these kinds of games. Where like, I chose a class that I like, didn't understand how to use at all. I, I probably made it to like level five by the end of the match, but like, I was not helping them. I like, didn't know how to use my ultimate attack. I was just hanging back, watching them kill mobs, very slowly learning how to do everything. And like, this was super helpful, like just watching what they did, going around with them, seeing everything and how it worked. Making it through all three days. This is how I finally understood how the game worked because I had these two people basically showing me how it worked. Again, completely wordlessly, we get all the way to the final boss. They're doing all the heavy lifting.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  I should get no credit for beating this boss. We get to the end of the match. And then who should DM me on Discord, but former Polygon staffer Tyler Culp to say, was that you, Maddie? And yes, it was. Oh, nice. It turns out I was playing with two people that I- Kind of know because I was playing with Tyler and a guides writer from PC Gamer. The entire time looking like a full idiot like I was not playing well at all. I was like, thank you guys so much for literally just teaching me how to play the game. Because I never would have gotten that at all. And so I guess the lesson here is like, you gotta play with. Somebody who's gonna be patient with you, either because they very literally recognize your gamertag.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  And they're like, we're gonna help Maddie play the game and then DM her afterwards and be like, you're welcome. We helped you play the game or queue in with two people that you actually know. Like Jason and Kirk, because it's gonna take you a long time to figure it out. Like you just aren't gonna be able to figure it out with two strangers that run at a breakneck speed ahead of you. I don't, I don't know. I feel like that'd be almost impossible, right?

• 18:36Jason Schreier?

  Even if you do, it's way less fun when you're playing with strangers. I think what I mentioned hi highs before, the best time that I had playing this game was when the three of us were playing. We were on voice chat. We like beat the boss and we're like, hell, yeah, we're all cheering each other on, rezing each other, doing teamwork. Those are the moments where the game succeeds. And I think if people are kind of are in a situation where they can easily just jump in. And spend a bunch of time with two friends playing over and over again, which I think is a tall order. It's a tough ask because this isn't the type of game where you're just like online a lot. And like you're running into buddies who you can do stuff on your own and then you run into buddies. And they're like, hey, let's do a strike the way you would in Destiny.

• 19:18Jason Schreier?

  Destiny has such a different rhythm because it's not designed in a match based system. Like in Destiny, you can go in on your own, have stuff to do, tag team with your friends, like do stuff with them if you see them online, et cetera, et cetera. In this, it's like you have to coordinate with your friends to play at a specific time. If you can do that, then and then also if you have the patience to go through, jump over all those massive barriers of entry. Then you can have a really good time with this thing and we did in bits and pieces as we played.

• 19:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think it's also a real shame this game doesn't have cross-play.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Just because it so requires you to have friends to play, like to have friends that you're talking to, to play with. And no cross-play is just a real bummer. The fact that Helldivers 2 had that was so great.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  I know, and it clearly helped it so much, success-wise.

• 20:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Just makes me miss it. To shout out Tyler Culp a little further, he wrote a great review of this game at PC Gamer. I thought, there were a few reviews that I thought were helpful, and I'll mention it especially because, you know, the three of us have played some, but we haven't played a ton. And so, we're not like, the most authoritative on the totality of this experience. One thing that is certainly true, or at least appears to be true, is that the final boss that you fight in each of these rounds is often incredible. I figured for this episode that I should go and just see what they looked like, and just found some screenshots and footage of a couple of those fights, and holy crap, I just saw, you know, just the basics of what's going on. But they're like MMO raid bosses, so

• 20:53Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that's one really cool thing about this game.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:56Kirk Hamilton?

  That we should make sure to make clear. You fight bosses throughout this, and a lot of the enemies that you're gonna fight, especially early on, the mobs in the world, are Elden Ring, you know, bosses that you would have seen in that game. The big bellhead guy, or a giant with a bow standing up on some ramparts, et cetera. You know, you go down into a sort of dungeon catacomb room, and you'll fight any of a number of the bosses that you would fight in those catacombs in Elden Ring. And then later on, there are some Dark Souls bosses that get remixed in, which is kind of cool. It's like, from, again, drawing from across their different games. But the bosses at the very end of each run, I believe, are all unique, and they're new to this game. And they are crazy! Like, it isn't just, they're big and they're hard. They have unique mechanics, they're doing

• 21:41Kirk Hamilton?

  all kinds of wild things, where they're summoning team kills, super abilities, where you have to do a certain amount of damage to stop them. It's really like a raid boss. It's like, some of the later Destiny Strike bosses that were closer to raid bosses, where you really have to be coordinating with your team. And I can only ima- Imagine how fun those are because we didn't get to them as a team. But like you were saying, Jason, I mean, when the three of us were playing and we're all on chat and we're working our way through the world and we're all rez'ing each other and working together in a fight. And it's really chaotic, but cool. That was incredibly fun. So if you can clear that very high bar of getting with two of your friends and playing, you could have a really, really good time, especially if you already like Elden Ring.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:21Jason Schreier?

  But it's also, it's very frustrating because unlike a raid boss, it's very easy to get to a point where you can't actually beat it because you haven't done enough stuff in the setup parts of the run to be able to. You haven't gotten good enough gear. You haven't leveled enough. And you're getting punished constantly. If you die in this game and you don't get rez'ed by one of your teammates, when you die, you are like crawling around on the ground and your teammate can smash you a bunch of times and that'll rez you. But there's a timer and if you run out of that timer before getting rez', you lose a level. You die and you lose a level and you could really punish yourself by not playing optimally on some of these runs. And maybe once you've played enough and this is a, maybe some people have gotten much further than us and they've gotten to the point where they have everything nailed down and they can just breeze through runs

• 23:05Jason Schreier?

  and get to the final boss without a problem. But at least where we are now, the point where the three of us are, it's, you can get to a final boss and just be unable to take him down, which is like a very frustrating experience that you don't have in MMO raids because MMO raids don't require you to go all the way back 45 minutes ago and start a run from the beginning just to take another shot at the boss. And it really sucks to lose progress and feel like you're wasting your time. And in Souls games, it's especially in Elden Ring, you never really feel like you're wasting that much time because you have a save point right outside of a boss. And so you can just keep trying and if you are like making very little progress, you can go elsewhere and level up, et cetera, et cetera.

• 23:49Jason Schreier?

  In this, because of the time limits and because of the structure of each run, you can really just waste a lot of time and that's really frustrating for me.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Or like lose out on practicing, really. Like you're kind of referring to the run back. Like, you know, even if you're literally running back from a Safe point that's really far away from the boss. We're all familiar with the From Software experience of being like, I'm just trying to get past this really hard thing. I've memorized its attack patterns. I know what it's gonna do. I'm just going back and back and back to this one guy until I get past him. Yeah. And like, this game is never gonna operate that way. It can't operate that way because that big boss, those really cool like raid-esque bosses that Kirk was describing, they're always gonna be at the end of day three. And they should be, that's the way the game works. But that means you could get all the way to the end and be like,

• 24:41Speaker 02

  okay, I've only seen this guy one other time. I hope I can figure it out. And that kind of difficulty is just a super different mindset that, at least for me, has taken some serious adjusting to. And just the overall randomness of every area as well. Because I'm really used to the idea of like, okay, every, you know, From Software game is gonna have all the characters in the exact same places as they always were. And every time I reset at a bonfire or Sight of Grace, they're all gonna be back exactly where they were before. And in this game, that's like, kind of the idea in a certain way. Like, there's sights of grace, but like, every time you die and

• 25:22Speaker 02

  like redo an entire match, things are in different spots if they're bosses, if they're like mini bosses, or like bigger enemies. Those small guys are still there. And like, the chess and vendors are all in the same places. So it's somewhat familiar each time. But there's like, just this element of practicing and getting better and better that is just a super different mindset for me. And that's just weird. I mean, I know that it's bad, but it is something that I've had to kind of rethink in playing Elden Ring Night Rain.

• 25:52Kirk Hamilton?

  It can be frustrating, especially because your upgrades are also random. And some upgrades are really good, and some are not. And so there's an upgrade, apparently, that makes it so that if you use one of your Estis flasks, or whatever they're called in Elden Ring, it heals your whole team. There are some legendary upgrades that are incredible, you know, that can be really game changing, but you're never sure if you're going to get them. And We were talking some when we were playing about how cool it would be if there was a seed and you could do a seeded run like in Balatro or a lot of these roguelikes where you do a run and then you can just try it again if you fail. And maybe it puts an asterisk next to it or you don't get as much progress. It goes kind of back to some of the extra features that this game maybe feels like it's missing.

• 26:36Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a little bit bare bones. There are a lot of cool little details. I like that there's a little story for each character that you're unfolding as you play. They each have a journal that you can read back at their roundtable hold. I like that. I like that there's some lore implications. There is a whole kind of unique story to this, but it's all pretty pared back. And then the game overall, just, I don't know. I know it's not a full-priced game. It feels a little more like a mod for Elden Ring or maybe something that would have been included as part of the game, not to say that it should be. Elden Ring was huge. It also had DLC. It's fine. But having it be standalone just makes it feel a little like, okay, there's one thing. And the one thing is very fun if you do it a certain way. And that's kind of it.

• 27:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And there's just not really any of these other options. And I could see them adding them. It'd be cool if they did. But then again, the game is going to be sold to people now without those features.

• 27:31Jason Schreier?

  So I want to talk a little bit about that randomization you mentioned, Matty. So the way this game is structured is, like I mentioned before, it's a roguelike essentially. And so you have a limited number of time to choose how you want to build out your character. And so you see a bunch of icons on the map and you can go. You have to kind of decide which ones to go to. But unlike a lot of roguelikes, which deliberately limit your choices so that you feel like you're making interesting, educated decisions, this game gives you dozens of choices from the get-go. And you'll look around and you'll see all these different interesting things on your map and places that you could go to. And again, maybe once you've been playing for 20 hours, you'll have a deep understanding of exactly where to go and what the optimal path is.

• 28:14Jason Schreier?

  But at least from the beginning and those early hours of playing this game, it's very difficult to even know if you're making a good decision. And that can be a really frustrating thing where you don't even know what your options are, let alone which is Good one, or which one will get you X thing and which one will get you Y thing. And then you add the randomness of like, oh, this boss here could actually be a super powerful enemy. That's going to ruin our entire run. And it becomes really frustrating to have to deal with when you're planning out your route and trying to figure out how to optimally like get through a run. And then on top of that, you feel like you're being punished if you take the time to slow down and like contemplate. Like if you look at your, because of the way the the fire works and because that circle is going to close in on you after the first, I don't know, five minutes, 10 minutes or whatever. Pretty fast.

• 28:59Jason Schreier?

  It's very fast. It's like when you get to, after you beat a boss, it'll usually drop this little orb thing that'll get you, let you choose between three, three options. And they can be weapons, it could be shields, it could be abilities and powers and stuff like that, or stat boosts or whatever. And you have to make that decision really quickly because otherwise you're punished. And sometimes the wall of fire might be heading your way. Sometimes you might be cognizant that like you're wasting everybody's time. If you just stand there like thinking too much about your decision. And that can be really frustrating because again, there's just so many potential options and so many potential builds you can go with.

• 29:38Jason Schreier?

  It's just like, it's such a learning curve that there's really, like, I enjoy the learning curve of a game like Elden Ring because I can slow down and think. And to your point earlier, Kirk, you can be contemplative about it and you can really take your time and, and optimize your strategy and learn levels and really just like sit there and, and think. And the time limit here, I don't know, maybe if I really sink into this game and play a ton more, maybe I'll grow to appreciate it, but at least on first blush, I really find it off putting.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're kind of reminding me of how clever. I mean, I know we talk about Hades all the time and it's not just us, but like how clever that design is in terms of giving you super limited choices early on. They do spread out, they do get overwhelming, especially your first time through because you're like, I don't know what the symbols on each of these doors mean. But eventually you're going to be like, okay, there's a pattern here. Every time I click on a door that has this. I actually get this same set of enemies or the same power or the same type of conversation with this NPC. That's interesting and you could even take notes on it if you want, and then that becomes familiar. Even though the moment to moment combat of Hades is extremely fast and you do need to rush,

• 30:51Speaker 02

  quote unquote, and really like get through it in order to not die or perform poorly. You are still observing the environment as it changes and like you have certain clues you can pick up on. In this game, something that I remember you were saying, Jason, when we were all playing together was just how obfuscated our choices were. Like when you're just looking at the map, you're like, I don't know if when we head to that area, whether the boss is going to be at our level or not. We just won't know until we get there. And maybe we can just kind of scrape our way through if they're a little too hard. But sometimes you would end up with a boss that we're like, well, that was really easy. And so it kind of, I feel like in, there needs to be a predetermined path in a rogue like that like levels you up as you go really cleanly.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  It can't just be an open world and a rogue like because, but that's kind of what's happening here in a weird way.

• 31:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, it's an open world and a rogue like, and it's on a timer. And the timer is definitely the probably most defining element of this game. It is and likely the most divisive. It's the one that makes it feel the most different to me because Hades as a point of comparison is a really helpful one because yeah, when you're in the middle of a fight in Hades, the only decisions that you're making are how to avoid enemies and how to kill enemies. And then you get to, you know, a hub area.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Take a breath.

• 32:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Where you're buying upgrades or you're, you know, you're having a little bit of a narrative beat. There's no, there's nothing rushing you. You're not going to die if you don't make the decision quickly. You can think, okay, hang on. So I'm doing this build. Oh, but I could actually switch builds right now.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  This is a great point.

• 32:30Kirk Hamilton?

  That'd be a good idea. Oh, we're going to take a gamble here and I'm going to switch over to Athena because that'll give me this better shield ability, whatever. And those, you know, that, that pacing variance makes the game a more dynamic and just comfortable.

• 32:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Experience? This is not that, and I think that's very interesting. And I really don't, you know, we're being very critical here because this game is very strange. But I do want to stress, first off, of all the reviews I've read, they all, a lot of them are making the same complaints as us. And they're also all saying, but like, it works, it's fun, because it is, and it does.

• 33:05Jason Schreier?

  It works some of the time. It has moments where it works.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  It can be fun if you're with two friends and you're all kind of in it for the wackiness.

• 33:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  And some of the comedicness of a FromSoft game.

• 33:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And my specific point here is that, yes, it works according to its certain stringent requirements. But also that it is just very specific. This is, they are doing one thing, they are not doing a whole bunch of things. And it's not, it's just not really a game that's interested in letting you in or giving you familiar rhythms. Because I've never played a game like this before that pushes you this resolutely and quickly in one direction. And that forces you to quickly and constantly make these snap decisions all the way through. Which I think some players will probably find exhilarating.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, they might.

• 33:52Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's certainly different.

• 33:52Jason Schreier?

  I think, I think it could, for me at least, I feel like it could be more exhilarating if there were other things the game did that like made it more accommodating. And I know that like, I think there is a level of charm in FromSoft or games just being like deliberately obfuscating.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Obuse, yeah.

• 34:07Jason Schreier?

  And obtuse and just kind of like hiding things to the player. I'm, I'm fine with that a lot of the time. But in this game, I mean, just as an example, the, the three of us were talking about yesterday. There are, there's this wall of fire, the circle fire that encloses on you and is your time limit. And that's like these blue flames. And then there's also these kind of like slip, slip jet things. I forget what they're called. They're these like elevators essentially. You press them and you leap on them, but they look like the blue fire. And it's just like the most annoying thing because you, you find them and it's just like, oh, I don't want to go in there. Oh, wait, actually I can. That's just a little thing. Also, the map is just absurd because you can't zoom in on it. You can open it, it appears on your screen, you can kind of navigate it, place waypoints. So you can be like, hey, team, let's go over there.

• 34:52Jason Schreier?

  But like so many of the icons on it look exactly the same and it's So hard to do. You have to really have to squint and like get close to your screen to be able to tell them apart. Um, and there's no like UI on the map that tells you what they are. It won't be like church. It won't be like a castle or whatever. You just have to kind of figure it out.

• 35:09Kirk Hamilton?

  And furthermore, there's no pop up. There's no like radial in game for dropping pings or quickly communicating with people. So you do have to go to that map in order to do a lot of waypoint.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  I wonder if they're gonna change that.

• 35:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, although the map is in game. You do it while you're, you can do it while you're moving.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  It's live.

• 35:24Jason Schreier?

  But yes, but yes.

• 35:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, but still having something where you're just looking around and you're able to just really quickly drop a pin on the thing you're looking at would be pretty helpful.

• 35:32Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  That feels like such an obvious change that I could actually see them implementing it quickly. I, I will also say, I do wonder if once the game is out for everyone, if there will just be social conventions that develop that are very positive. Because I, I think that could really change the way that people feel about this game in a, in a very positive way. If just certain people learn these maps, and I know this is the from software fandom, or at least a certain segment of it that I choose to engage with. Where it's just people who are like, I just want to carry somebody or like help out with a specific boss and like, that's the thing I'm into. I'm just gonna only spawn on this map. Like this game is very friendly towards that kind of pro social behavior.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  And that is also a from software design ethos. And like, even though Miyazaki didn't make this game, it does feel very Miyazaki coded to have a game that's like, people need to help you. You can really only play this with three people and it's not gonna feel that. It apparently they're developing a version of it that will work with duos. The developers have said that.

• 36:39Kirk Hamilton?

  That'd be nice.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  And that would certainly help. I think it would open up the game to more people, but solo, it feels really bad. It's super overwhelming. A lot of the bosses are designed in such a way that they just need a distraction. They need one player to distract them and get aggro so that the other one can hit them in the back. It's not like a normal from software boss where like, you can kind of get away with just fighting it on your own. A lot of the really big bosses here. Have mobs as well that are attacking you. From all sides, it's, this is why it's almost impossible to play solo. I'm sure some of you listeners are extremely good at games and maybe you can pull it off, but it's certainly not designed.

• 37:15Kirk Hamilton?

  There will be solo freaks that beat the crap out of this game solo and it'll be amazing.

• 37:19Jason Schreier?

  Solo naked ones.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  I'm really looking forward to this other form of freak parentheses complimentary, who enjoys leading people through games and is like, this is actually the best route through all the sights of grace that avoids the approaching fire, but also gets you like pretty good boss power ups along the way and will be ready every time for the boss. Like there will probably be a meta that emerges for every area and then like guides that tell us what that meta is. It's just, we're not there yet. We're not in the version of the world yet that has all those additional things and the game doesn't come with them and it probably never was going to because it's a FromSoft game. They're gonna make you figure it out.

• 38:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. I think it just comes back to obfuscation plus the time constraint for me. Like the obfuscation of a FromSoft game is one of the defining elements of those games. A lot of things are obfuscated, the way the game works, the story, it's this really interesting opaque experience. And if you have the time to just sort of sift through it and experience it, that's one thing. But the minute you put a time constraint on it, it just completely changes the experience. And I think the collision of those two things is this game's defining element. And it's something that I'm sure some people will think is cool, but it's also something that really makes it very specific. And it just makes me think of how,

• 38:42Kirk Hamilton?

  how From is always putting some limitation on their games in a way that feels slightly unsatisfying or a little bit frustrating. I mean, Bloodborne had this multiplayer mode that this reminds me of a little bit, where you could go into those Chalice dungeons with a friend. I can't remember if you could do those with two, with three people or if it was just with two, but it might've actually been, I think it's actually three players. So it is pretty similar to this. And it was this fun mix of PVE exploration where you're going through the Chalice dungeon together and then there's a boss, but it was also kind of limited because the Worlds, you know, the Chalice dungeons were kind of repetitive. They weren't as cool as the world and they still had, they weren't as cool as the game world.

• 39:23Kirk Hamilton?

  And it still had the limitation of, you know, you go into the Chalice dungeon, you fight the boss and then your friends despawn and you have to redo matchmaking, the same as in another From game. Meanwhile, in Elden Ring, everybody just wanted to play that game with their friends. They just wanted to get some friends together and just walk around this big, cool, open world. And you almost could do that. I kind of did that with some friends, but it was always this weird thing where you're really supposed to be fighting a boss. And then once you fought a boss, you got despawned and you had to redo matchmaking. And the matchmaking was this whole insane process where you had to drop items in the world and whatever else. So they just never quite give people what they want. And even in this game, there isn't this, you know, time, like no timer mode where you can just

• 40:08Kirk Hamilton?

  mess around and just have fun for a while with your friends. It's like, no, there's going to be this crazy restrictive time limit.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  The fire is coming.

• 40:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Chases you into a boss fight within, you know, whatever, 15 minutes or something. And you need to be leveling up and you have all this stuff that you have to be doing, so you just can't relax. So it's, it's another very specific From experience, which is on brand for them, but also is on brand for them.

• 40:32Jason Schreier?

  I think the timer is one thing. The fact that it's a timer that also locks out parts of the world is really what makes it just kind of like, puts the shitty cherry on top of the.

• 40:43Kirk Hamilton?

  It funnels you.

• 40:44Jason Schreier?

  Of the cherry.

• 40:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Because it's like.

• 40:46Jason Schreier?

  Shitty cherry.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Cause you can't even go back.

• 40:48Jason Schreier?

  Well, okay, because it's like, well, you can go back on the second day to like the same areas, but like, but, but the, but in a game that's like about exploration, as a series, it's about exploration. It really restricts you because it constrains, like it makes it so that exploration can't keep happening. You can't keep exploring. And it's really not fun to be in the middle of a dungeon or something, or a boss and have the boss really down to a sliver of health or like be just at the end of this little dungeon area, only for them to fire, the fire to come and lock you out of it because you happen to be 30 seconds too slow or something like that. There's. Definitely some tension there, which, which can be enjoyable, I suppose, but I don't know. I, I found it more frustrating than not in general.

• 41:33Jason Schreier?

  And yeah, locking you out of there, like if there's a time limit, if there's a timer on the top right of your screen and it was like, okay, we have 20 minutes to get through this first phase. I feel like that would almost be more enjoyable than the way it's set up now. And I don't know, even as I say this, I'm kind of of two minds of it because it is fun to be like, all right, we gotta hustle, we gotta bail, we, there's a fun little tension.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's such a certain energy that is also exhilarating, as Kurt keeps saying. Like, once we kind of got it for the second match, we were all like, working like the cogs in the machine and being like, okay, next side of grace, let's go, everybody pick your power ups, hurry, hurry, and like alerting each other if the fire was coming and one of us was stuck in a UI screen, still picking their little power up and like pensively contemplating what they were gonna choose. And we'd be like, go, go, go. Like, there was some fun involved in that. But it's also stressful.

• 42:25Jason Schreier?

  So, yeah, there is that. It is, it is, it's kind of, it speaks to the dichotomy of this game. Like, and I think the, the reviews speak to this too, in that, I mean, I mentioned at the beginning, high highs and low lows. And I think sometimes it's both at once. And you're just kind of like, I don't really know how to feel about this game, because on one hand, it's exhilarating. On the other hand, it's extremely frustrating. And I wish that the design wasn't this way, but also I'm getting these great moments out of it. So, I don't know, I think it'll be interesting to see if any of the three of us, or all three of us, like, have the urge to keep playing even after we're done covering it for this episode. And if, if we want to keep playing, because I definitely felt like, like after we were done last night, I was like, oh, yeah, hell, yeah, I want to play more. Like, let's keep playing.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:09Jason Schreier?

  And so I'm curious if, without the triple click obligation, if the three of us will feel compelled to keep going.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I could see it, if only because I like have a standing gamer night with Tyler and Nico. So like, if they want to play, I'd do it. But I'm also like, I don't know, because we also have other stuff we like to play. So we'll see, we'll see. I'll, I'll keep, I'll keep the listeners updated if it.

• 43:32Jason Schreier?

  So that, I mean, it's interesting.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Standing Gamer Night, you need something like that.

• 43:37Jason Schreier?

  That's the thing. We mentioned barriers for entry. One big barrier for entry is the game itself and the the opacity and the way it's designed. The other big barrier for entry is having to get two friends and schedule. It's kind of like scheduling D and D night. It's like you gotta have this session planned into your schedule. And that might be the barrier. Maybe if I could play more seamlessly, I would jump more into it. But that might be the barrier that makes it so I can't just like regularly play this game and keep going with this game. And I imagine that's the case for a lot of people who don't have just like a spare couple of hours every night to that they can get together with their friends.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  And like specifically two other people that you regularly play games with. It's not just that you need one or three, because that's not gonna work. You need two other people.

• 44:21Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. And on top of that, if you're playing Destiny or something like that, and you're like, or World of Warcraft, and you're like, alright, time for raid night. We're all getting together this Saturday night. It's gonna happen. We're making it happen. You know you are going to get something out of that experience, because like there's, you're not going to just like fail a run because 30 minutes in, you got hit by some bad luck and ran into a boss that like wiped your whole party. So I think that adds to the frustration is that like you could block out two hours of your night, get two friends together, like get past all that, and then still just not have a great time because of the RNG, because of the frustrations of this game, or because of latency and like technical issues. So that also kind of like takes away some incentive to even

• 45:05Jason Schreier?

  get together with your friends and and pull off a night rain session.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. I'll see if I play with the same group of friends that I play Helldivers with. I think

• 45:14Speaker 02

  I could see that working.

• 45:15Kirk Hamilton?

  It being really fun if they get into it. It's the kind of thing that that group of guys might get into. So if they did that, I would play along with them some. And I'll definitely be watching this game. I think a lot of people will probably get something out of just watching YouTubers and Twitch streamers play this game, because it would be really fun to just watch Iron Pineapple or whoever.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Just run through this thing. And I'm sure all of those, you know, FromSoft content creators are gonna have a ball with it. So at the very least, you know, people can do that. It doesn't even cost you anything. And that'll probably be a lot of fun.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, that might be a good way to. Experience the game. I, well, I'll just put a button on this conversation by saying, this has made me really wonder what Dusk Bloods is gonna be as a game. Now that From Software is entering its multiplayer era, I don't know what to expect anymore.

• 46:00Kirk Hamilton?

  The big question for me is gonna be, does Dusk Bloods have some sort of a time limit? I think now I'm gonna be coming from this with that question, first and foremost.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, great question, and not one I would have even thought to ask a few months ago. But now I'm realizing that it can completely change everything and make the game feel exhilarating. Let's go with exhilarating.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  All right, let's take a break and then we'll be back for one more thing.

• 46:31Speaker 03

  Hey, Sydney, you're a physician and the co-host of Saw Bones, a marital tour of misguided medicine, right?

• 46:36Speaker 04

  That's true, Justin.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  Is it true that our medical history podcast is just as good as a visit to your primary care physician?

• 46:42Speaker 04

  No, Justin, that is absolutely not true. However, our podcast is funny and interesting and a great way to learn about the medical misdeeds of the past, as well as some current not so legit healthcare fads.

• 46:55Speaker 03

  So you're saying that by listening to our podcast, people will feel better?

• 46:58Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 46:58Speaker 03

  And isn't that the same reason that you go to the doctor?

• 47:00Speaker 04

  Well, you could say that, but...

• 47:02Speaker 03

  And our podcast is free?

• 47:04Speaker 04

  Yes, it is free.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  You heard it here first, folks. Saw Bones, marital tour of misguided medicine, right here on Maximum Fun. Just as good as going to the doctor.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  No, no, no, still not just as good as going to the doctor, but, but pretty good.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  It's up there.

• 47:17Speaker 05

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

• 47:21Speaker 06

  Guys, how does E.T. poop?

• 47:23Speaker 05

  Well, he's not that regular, but as he's gotten older...

• 47:27Speaker 07

  He has two Chloe, I guess, one under each arm.

• 47:30Speaker 05

  No, I was just looking forward to you going through the other ways in which Wild Wild West is historically inaccurate.

• 47:34Speaker 07

  You know how much movies cost nowadays? When you add in your popcorn and your Bagel Bites and your cheese sliders.

• 47:41Speaker 06

  You can't go wrong with a Henry Cavill mustache. Here at Henry Cavill Mustache is the only supplier. The Flop House. New episodes every Saturday.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Find it at MaximumFun.org. And we are back. I'll go first because I'll be quick. I I've really pretty much been playing this video game. So the only thing I'm watching on television right now is trash, which is to say that I've been watching Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares for the first time. I'm a big, we're a big Gordon Ramsay fans in this house. We've watched a lot of his shows, his network of shows. And I just wanted to note, we did try to go back and watch Hell's Kitchen, which is the very, I believe, the very first show that Gordon tried to do here in America. I think he also was pretty famous in the UK before that even. But like, you can kind of get

• 48:34Speaker 02

  a sense of like, where he got to start with Hell's Kitchen. And I really don't recommend it. We stopped because it wasn't fun. And because the way that Gordon was mean to people on that show was like, unproductive and not as fun to watch. And I think a lot of people who don't like him probably remember that version of his TV persona, where a lot of times he would like, insult chefs for the sake of insulting them, kind of seeming to be playing it up for the camera, and like, being really performative, and like, just kind of like, telling jokes and stuff, and like, having it not really be about the food or his skills as a chef. And like, that's super not interesting to me. And I know that the last time I talked about Gordon Ramsay on

• 49:19Speaker 02

  this show, some listeners in the Discord were talking about how they like, kind of had that sense of his reputation being that. And I was like, that's so interesting, because I haven't really seen that. And then I watched Hell's Kitchen, and I was like, oh, the man has actually changed his TV persona significantly over the decades. And Kitchen Nightmares is like, kind of in the middle of that persona shift, where you still get some Gordon who's insulting people purely for the sake of insulting them. But then you also see the start of like, compassionate Gordon era, where he starts being like, but how do I actually help these people transform their kitchen in a productive way? And those episodes are really great and fascinating.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Actually about the food and he teaches people how to cook and that stuff is what Dean and I really enjoy. So I will say for anybody else who like is kind of skeptical of him, I think there's like different eras of Gordon that are more palatable. The modern one might not be what you think. He's, he's gotten a lot softer over the years and I think changed into a different kind of guy. But also, if you're going to go back in time, I wouldn't go back quite as far as we tried to do. But going back to Kitchen Nightmares, which is 2007 and onward, still pretty good. It's like the start of the new Gordon and, and I think is a pretty fun show.

• 50:34Jason Schreier?

  Maddie, I've got to say, this is the most slot I've ever had about Gordon Ramsay.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  What can I say? Uh, we watch a lot of him in this house. Dina loves to cook, so she has a lot of opinions about cooking shows and I just like to eat food. That's all I do.

• 50:46Kirk Hamilton?

  And he's a media magnate. I mean, he has like a chillion shows and is, is really the center of his own.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  And he also has legitimately good cooking tips. I'm not going to undersell it. Like, if you want them, he's got them.

• 50:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Ever since, see, because my, my sister's family got into MasterChef Junior and watching that, I was like, oh, okay. So this guy is just playing a variety of different versions of a character on TV.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Yes. That's right. MasterChef Junior is like fully extreme on the other side. Uh, and it's fascinating. He's really like-

• 51:13Kirk Hamilton?

  It's the most warm and cuddly Gordon Ramsay.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Figured out his series of personas, which is also a skill. Uh, Jason, what's your one more thing?

• 51:20Jason Schreier?

  Speaking of a series of personas, my, uh, my one more thing is a TV show called The Rehearsal that just ended its second season. Um, this is a show, uh, created and starring the comedian Nathan Fielder. Uh, a lot of people, there's a lot of buzz around the first season in 2022. Um, but the premise in short is that, uh, Nathan Fielder, uh, gets anxious about things. And so he creates these elaborate rehearsals to prepare for them in advance. And that, that could range from social interactions to, um, child raising. And in this season, uh, the theme is airline safety. And, uh, Nathan Fielder sets out on

• 52:02Jason Schreier?

  this journey, uh, for the season of the show to, uh, find out why, uh, airplanes crash, why pilots don't communicate each other, with each other very well. And if he can find a way to improve that through, uh, a series of elaborate rehearsals. And, uh-

• 52:21Jason Schreier?

  Man, this season touches upon a whole lot of things ranging from,

• 52:27Speaker 02

  This is confusing to me because I've seen some screenshots and they do not indicate. This show gets so crazy. I haven't even watched it. I've only seen the screenshots and I'm like, how is it about airline safety?

• 52:38Jason Schreier?

  But that's ranging from, from breast milk to autism to,

• 52:45Jason Schreier?

  people who take too long to make a move on people, potential significant others, and the signals that one sends out when, when they want someone else to kiss them.

• 52:58Jason Schreier?

  But it all culminates in this finale, this season two finale that just aired and is one of the most brilliant pieces of television. Really makes the whole season kind of retroactively into one of the most brilliant pieces of television that has ever been aired. It is unhinged. It's, it is simultaneously hilarious and also poignant and it just says so much and is such a work of art. I really don't want to say anymore, but there's this kind of like, I guess, structural twist that comes at you. And so if you're considering watching this, you've seen some buzz about it, whatever it is, try not to get spoiled because it is quite, quite a plot twist up there with any other TV plot tests I've seen

• 53:40Jason Schreier?

  that comes in the, in the season two finale and it is a banger. It is quite a watch. And the way he ends it is just like so beautiful and brilliant and God, I mean, there's so much I want to say about it, but I can't without spoiling anything other than to say you should go watch it. Everybody should go watch it. Season one was pretty good, but season two especially is just a work of art and should just be watched. It's only six episodes. It's on HBO. Just watch all six episodes. It'll take you a couple of nights and it's just worth every minute of it. It's just insane and bonkers and brilliant.

• 54:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Can I just say that I watched it as well? And to underline that, it is unbelievable. And the finale is genuinely an incredible episode of television. It totally rocked my world. And I appreciated that as far ranging as the season was, you mentioned all of these different things that he's rehearsing. It is also very focused on this one problem, the problem of a subordinate not being able to speak up and question his or her superior. And that that is like at the heart of the problem that he's exploring is that basically the copilot has the ability to take the controls away from the pilot if they're questioning the pilot's decision making. And that in a number of crashes, that did not happen when it could have.

• 55:02Kirk Hamilton?

  And how do you engineer a system in which the second in command, who is empowered to take control, feels empowered to take control? Which is actually a really thorny problem, as explored in the Tony Scott film Crimson Tide, which many of you will probably have seen and will be aware of, but also is, of course, reflected in all manner of parts of our lives, including our government. Hey, it's like if there was an executive branch that was completely running amok and maybe the other people, the systems of checks and balances, that were able to step up and do something and are legally empowered to do so, actually felt like they could. But unfortunately, they don't. And as a result, the plane, AKA the country, crashes. Anyways.

• 55:44Jason Schreier?

  All right, we're getting a little off the rails here.

• 55:46Kirk Hamilton?

  But it is a very cool and focused season, despite how far ranging it is.

• 55:51Jason Schreier?

  There is also a meta layer of that in that Nathan Fielder, as the pilot of this show, takes it to some pretty extreme directions. And a lot of people could have stopped him at any point and chose not to, including.

• 56:04Kirk Hamilton?

  It's true. He keeps trying to put people in that position.

• 56:07Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like makes HBO culpable for funding the show and allowing it to happen. I'll just leave it at that.

• 56:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Also, he takes some fun shots at Paramount. Oh, man. It's such a great season of television.

• 56:19Jason Schreier?

  Oh, my God.

• 56:19Kirk Hamilton?

  I can't wait for you to watch it, Matty.

• 56:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna watch it.

• 56:21Jason Schreier?

  It's a map, Kirk, that map one. It's like.

• 56:25Kirk Hamilton?

  The hardest I've laughed in a long time.

• 56:27Jason Schreier?

  Well, it started in Germany.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Anyway, Kirk, what's your one more thing? Take us out.

• 56:34Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is a show that I watched the first two thirds of on a couple of flights that I was on this weekend. It's a good flight. TV show, I would say, called Your Friends and Neighbors, which is airing on Apple TV+ It is about to have its season one finale, so I haven't gotten that far yet. It's alright. It's a good, it's like a pretty sordid, fun, kinda cheap thrills show that I had a perfectly good time watching, though it kind of, it got me thinking a little bit. So to just explain what the show is, this is a Jon Hamm vehicle. So it's already gonna be fun, because Jon Hamm is great and he's fun to watch.

• 57:15Kirk Hamilton?

  He is a hedge fund shark who is incredibly successful and wealthy. He lives outside of New York City and, you know, works for a big hedge fund. He is married to Amanda Peet. They have two kids. They have a massive house. He has everything. He kind of tells the story in voiceover at the beginning of the show of how you finally can afford your own life and you're making presumably millions and millions and millions of dollars every year, and he has finally made it. And then everything comes crashing down. Amanda Peet cheats on him with his best friend. He is, they then are divorced and he leaves the house and she lives in their house with

• 57:55Kirk Hamilton?

  his kids. And then at the beginning of the show, he is fired from his hedge fund for what appears to be sexual impropriety, but then turns out to, very quickly is revealed to be a kind of a power move where his boss like edged him out using the like smokescreen of sexual impropriety just to get him out and get all of his, get his book and like take all of his money. So Jon Hamm is left immediately with nothing. Super over-leveraged. No one knows that he's lost his job. He has debt. He has all of these like massive financial obligations, because of course, if you're that kind of wealthy, you also just have a billion recurring payments. And so he has to figure out how to start paying for things and he begins to-

• 58:35Jason Schreier?

  Private school, tennis lessons, house payments.

• 58:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, they do a lot of the like listing of all of our expenses.

• 58:40Jason Schreier?

  It's like those articles, like, that would pop up and be like, "We make $400,000 a year. Here is how we're broke." Like, do you guys remember that? They would pop up on like CNBC sometimes, like, "How we barely just get by."

• 58:52Speaker 02

  I can only think of the drill tweet with the candles, but yeah, same idea.

• 58:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think it's a commonly explored idea now that you can have a lot of money and be completely overleveraged and not be able to afford your own life.

• 59:07Jason Schreier?

  It's not like the candles thing, because it's actually like you look at it, the breakdown, and at first glance, it kind of seems reasonable. It's like, oh, OK, like, it's like, here are some things there. And then you're like, wait a minute, it's like $10,000 a year just on vacations? Like, what?

• 59:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. We're hiring a professional tennis player to give our daughter lessons.

• 59:26Jason Schreier?

  Right, exactly. That's the type of lifestyle. And I know people like this. And in fact, the show is set in what Westmore it's called, which is based on Westchester, the New York suburb where I live. So it's like, it's a very, it hits close to home in some ways for me, even though I do not, this is, the country club lifestyle is not, not mine, or people I hang out with regularly. But I do know people in that world. So it's fun for me to watch, too.

• 59:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. So the, the big twist here is that he loses everything, and he begins breaking and entering and stealing things from all of his friends. And then in the process, he kind of begins to see them in a new light, and he begins to understand this world of wealth and, you know, the sort of various facades that his friends put up. And, you know, sort of see through it all and kind of puncture this increasingly, apparently empty American dream that he was once at the apex of, but actually was, was really empty to begin with. It's an OK show. I think it's, it's not great. It has, I think what's so interesting about it is that it feels quite a bit like American Beauty, but like an American Beauty that came 15 years later. The composer's name is Dominic Lewis. He's

• 1:00:32Kirk Hamilton?

  done a good job. He is really clearly channeling Thomas Newman's score from American Beauty. The first thing you hear during a voiceover, so this is, you know, Jon Hamm is floating in a pool, and his voiceover is basically, yeah, that's me. You might be wondering how I got here. And the music is like marimbas. It's this like, and I was like, holy, what is this? Is this actually Thomas Newman doing the score? No, it's, it's Dominic Lewis doing a Thomas Newman impersonation. And it kind of feels like American Beauty, but it's a little bit more just kind of straightforwardly materialist.

• 1:01:07Kirk Hamilton?

  It at times looks like a car commercial. There are a lot of camera techniques where, I don't know, you know, someone will be in a car driving to the city and the camera will do a like, like zoom out to a kind of horizon shot that is accompanied by a sound effect. There are just, the way that it looks and moves is very slick. And then overall, I think the show can't quite sense, it can't quite shake its fascination with these marvelous things. Every time John Hand breaks into a house and he steals a watch, they do a little ironic commercial for the watch where he explains, this is this watch and it's, you know, actually like costs $500,000 and they only made this number of them, or this is an Hermes bag and you have to do all this stuff to get an Hermes bag.

• 1:01:48Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's, you know, like a lot of these kind of wealth porn slash critique shows, it is both, it's having its cake and eating it too. It's showing you all of the obscenity of this kind of extremely wealthy lifestyle while critiquing it and showing it as empty. But at the same time, you're really kind of watching this show because it's like a bunch of hot, middle-aged actors having like hot illicit sex with one another and him breaking into these fabulous houses and stealing these incredibly beautiful, cool things. And so, I don't know, there's, it's kind of trying to do this social commentary where I actually wish the show was more of a crime show. I think if they focused a little bit more on his criminal, you know, his criminal operation

• 1:02:31Kirk Hamilton?

  and him learning how to be a better thief, I think that would be fun. And that's kind of more of the Breaking Bad side of it than the American Beauty, our lives are so empty even though we have everything, part of it, which leaves me a little bit more cold. And it's, it's also interesting because I'm reading Long Island Compromise, Jason, the Taffy Brodensner Akner book, which is so interesting and fantastically well-written and so similar to this, I think. It's another exploration of very wealthy people living in a very similar part of the country. It's looking at wealth from all these different points of view. Of course, it's a book, so it is able to go deeper on character, but also I just find that what it's saying about wealth is so much more nuanced that I, I think the shallowness

• 1:03:16Kirk Hamilton?

  of the show, which isn't Necessarily a critique is just brought into relief by the fact that I'm like, reading the book at the same time as I'm watching the show. They're almost complimentary because they're doing such different things. So, um, yeah, I think it's, I think it's a pretty fun show. I'm looking forward to how it ends. I'll, I'll probably finish it. It was perfect for a plane. Now that I'm home, I'm a little like, I don't know, there's other things I'd rather watch, but I think I will finish it.

• 1:03:39Jason Schreier?

  It's pretty short. It's very easy.

• 1:03:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. And it's a fun time. It's a, a, a good enough time to at least finish the season.

• 1:03:46Jason Schreier?

  I think it's interesting. You mentioned wealth porn, which of course makes me think of succession, which is like the ultimate like wealth porn show.

• 1:03:52Kirk Hamilton?

  And a show that had no interest in showing wealth as being something cool or like desirable at all.

• 1:03:58Jason Schreier?

  But okay, but, but I actually think it's a really interesting contrast because in succession is a show where the, the characters involved are so rich. They're billionaires or the B, um, that like wealth is never something they think about. They will write, like Roman will write a check for a million dollars. Like it's a potential to dangle in front of this, this poor kid and not even think about it. Like they're flying around on private jets and like living in a, in a world that is like almost a different world. They're living in a very different world than the rest of us. And I think it's interesting to contrast that with the, the characters, the kind of upper crust of your friends and neighbors. Because they are very much living in a world where they have to worry about money.

• 1:04:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:36Jason Schreier?

  Because they're all over leveraged and because they're like, keeping up with the Joneses is a very heavy handed theme there, but it's, it is, it is very real where it's like, you kind of, you feel like you're poor, even though you are very clearly not. You live in this house that is worth $10 million. And you have a Hermes bag and like a roll, a collection of, of the highest end Rolexes and all this stuff. But because all of you are, you are making a salary or you are making like hedge fund money, you are not making like capital B billion dollars money. You do not have that kind of wealth. So. I do think it's kind of, it's an interesting contrast because it kind of shows you how there's one plane of wealth where money is not something you ever think about or worry

• 1:05:19Jason Schreier?

  about, and earthly concerns are not really yours. And then there is another where you are obscenely rich, but like you have to work and you have to think about that, that level of wealth. And I think it's, it's interesting to think about sociologically. And then like there, there are layers below that too, where like some people would see like a doctor or a lawyer as being obscenely worthy, wealthy. And they're also like in a different category where they're like also thinking about money. And it's just, it's very interesting as an American to live in a world where we have real b-b-billionaires, b-billionaires that

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  They see us as ants.

• 1:05:57Jason Schreier?

  Put it another way, if we're gonna take out the guillotines, there's some layers here, there's some levels here.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  We need different sizes. We need to figure out who gets it first.

• 1:06:07Jason Schreier?

  It makes you think about how like, if you have, if you have a net worth of $10,000, and you know someone who has a net worth of a million dollars, that's 10 times that. But then you meet someone who has a billion dollars, and that's add another multiple of a thousand to that. And even just putting that in perspective.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of unfathomable amounts, too. Like even trying to imagine how much a billion dollars is, is really hard to do for the human brain.

• 1:06:32Kirk Hamilton?

  And all because there's, there's a point at which money becomes infinite because it compounds on itself. So it actually just stops mattering at all. Yeah, I mean, I think that's an interesting comparison socially and an interesting artistic comparison to compare succession in your friends and neighbors, because they are very different. And I think that succession really successfully sidesteps the materialist concerns and the wealth porn angle, partly because of the world that it's depicting. They are so wealthy that wealth is just the water they swim in. And you never even get a sense that anything is unusual. They never really appreciate or admire anything around them, even as they take private jets and helicopters and go to these fabulous estates. And also, they're just miserable,

• 1:07:15Kirk Hamilton?

  horrible people who are just sitting in a room somewhere.

• 1:07:18Jason Schreier?

  Don't have to think about it. Something I appreciate about Long Island Compromise is that it really explores like what it's like to be born poor and then get into come into wealth. Or like what it's like to be born wealthy and what that means for your children and their your children's children and like, do they lose their drive? Those are themes that I think are really interesting, um, that are just like a totally different world, a much more realistic world than the billionaire class.

• 1:07:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And I think, well, Succession does a good job of just not ever fetishizing any of the things that these people are clearly able to afford and just focusing on the characters.

• 1:07:53Jason Schreier?

  I don't know, the tropical islands and the scenery of like some of those vacations.

• 1:07:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Some of the locations are the closest they come, but even then, the way they shoot it, the lighting, the staging is so rarely fabulous.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  And they make sure all the people are miserable even while they're there so that you can be kind of mad at them and be like, what you were in this beautiful place. Yeah.

• 1:08:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. I mean, and it's, it's really just not doing the kinds of sweeping establishing shots that your friends and neighbors would do. And that a lot of, I would say maybe lesser works do than Succession where they're just, they just can't resist the drone shot of the fabulous houses and the city skyline and all of that. Which is just a little bit, uh, you know, dialing it up in that way. The Long Island Compromise comparison is also very interesting. I think that Long Island Compromise, there are some very similar plot points across the two. There's a renovation that goes horribly wrong in both stories where you see two different people who have theoretically plenty of money, start a renovation. And then the renovation goes wrong in that way that renovations do. And suddenly you're being told by your contractor, oh, well, God, we found, you know,

• 1:08:59Kirk Hamilton?

  whatever shale in the backyard or we found asbestos. It's going to be a lot longer and a lot more money. And then both of these people are realizing, oh God, this is going to be horrible. Of course, the circumstances in Long Island Compromise are. Closer to Coop, the main character of Your Friends and Neighbors, circumstances where they have lost their money and no one knows it yet. But there are some just interesting parallels between those two things. And yeah, it really just seems like we're at a time where we are really examining wealth. To bring it all the way back, and this has been a long one more thing, but whatever, it's an interesting one. To bring it all the way back to American Beauty. American Beauty is not really about wealth. It was 1999. It was the end of history. It was that year of Fight Club and The Matrix and all of these films and these works of

• 1:09:42Kirk Hamilton?

  art that sort of all existed at this odd time where it felt like, to a certain subset of America anyways, history had ended and we'd kind of just figured it all out and we won and it was going to be fine. And now, why are we so sad? Why are we so bored? What's really going on here?

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  Annoying.

• 1:09:59Kirk Hamilton?

  And so, American Beauty is just, I've got my job, I've got my wife, I have my kid, I've got that life, and I'm so unfulfilled. What the hell? This is, You're Friends and Neighbors is significantly different. It's much more about money. It's much more about having enough and the feeling of precarity that I think has really set in, in the, whatever it is, 16 years since American Beauty came out. And I do think that that's an interesting evolution of the same type of story. I think it does say something about what's happened to us and how America at least has changed in the intervening years.

• 1:10:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, just one more thought is that like this world that you can wind up in and the trappings of that and how like you can get to the point where, at least in the show's world, where you, where losing your job is enough to push you to crime within like a few short weeks or a few short months.

• 1:10:52Kirk Hamilton?

  And maybe a little bit heightened there, but then again.

• 1:10:54Jason Schreier?

  Sure, but I don't know. I mean, it's like, it's like you're so, you should be making, if he was making, I don't know, let's say he was making a million dollars a year, or two million dollars a year, or something like that. Anyone normal, like most of the world would look at that and be like, holy crap, like I would be set up for the rest of my life on one year of that salary. That would be a life-changing amount of money. But like, it is very realistic and very easy for Americans to fall into this trap where it's like, you gotta have the private school, you gotta have the country club. And once you get into To that world and all of your friends are part of that world. It is impossible to just kind of sever from it. You can't tell your kids like, oh, well, lost my job. We got to switch schools, like can't go to tennis lessons anymore. It's, it's really interesting to me because it's very real. And it's like, it's very easy to see how people can fall into that trap.

• 1:11:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it is interesting. And I think interesting that it is such an element of this story. And it was so not an element of American beauty. It just wasn't something that was even mentioned, even as it was about, uh, you know, primary breadwinner, at least one of the two breadwinners of his family, like quitting his job and having this whole blow up and eventually dying. Like it never, the whole financial part of their life just wasn't even really considered. And if anything, it was viewed as, yeah, maybe we'll sell the house and we'll lose all this crap and we'll finally be able to like find ourselves again and have some peace.

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I mean, I think after the 2008 financial crash, like all media changed on this point. And like precarity just became a theme across the board for even like your rich characters.

• 1:12:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I mean, look at how wealth disparity has changed in the 15, 16 years. Like all of these things that have happened. Certainly the, the financial crash was a huge part of it.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  Whereas like American beauty era, it was just like, we'll just get another job, which like you could still say now, but it just seemed so plausible then that the character could get one, that it would be comical to suggest otherwise. Whereas now it's like, okay, we can believe that Jon Hamm's, Jon Hamm could be canceled, quote unquote, and it's now impossible for him to ever re-enter the hedge fund arena. He now has only one other choice. Like, that does seem weirdly believable within the extremely tiny, clicky, high stakes world of the specific millionaires he's a part of. I haven't watched the show, I'm just ripping.

• 1:12:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, there's, there's, no, he just has like a contract that means he can't work for two years. And yeah, they've contrived to put him in this position.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:05Kirk Hamilton?

  But that contrivance works to create a sort of heightened, you know, crucible for him to then be in the middle of, which then makes for good drama. And I could, I could see why they did that.

• 1:13:14Jason Schreier?

  I mean, the theme that precarity just never goes away, even when you think you made it, is so interesting.

• 1:13:19Kirk Hamilton?

  And so current, so modern.

• 1:13:21Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  And I think relatable, even for like us normals to be like, okay, well, I'd rather watch a show about precarity. At least I understand what that feels like.

• 1:13:30Jason Schreier?

  It's so interesting. Like, I think you look at Silicon Valley, right? And a lot of people wound up getting jobs at these FAANG companies where they're making crazy amounts of money and maybe think that they're set for life. And then here comes AI, and that's about to just all tip over because of that. And these people who thought they were established and maybe bought houses in San Francisco and are like in this same kind of world that's depicted in the show now might be in the same city, might have to go to steal their friends and family stuff.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it sounds like a great option to just pivot to stealing from your friends.

• 1:14:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, so I would say it's like a B show that leads to A conversations, as evidenced by this one more thing. It's perfectly fine, and it will definitely lead you to have some-

• 1:14:12Jason Schreier?

  I'm higher on it than you are. I like it more than you do.

• 1:14:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Fun thoughts. No, I know you're-

• 1:14:15Jason Schreier?

  Also, Olivia Munn is in it too, and she's great.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  I do like her.

• 1:14:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, she's having fun. And Amanda Peet, it's nice to see her in something again. It's got a good cast. And of course, Ham is the best.

• 1:14:25Speaker 02

  He's pretty good. He's all right.

• 1:14:27Kirk Hamilton?

  He's pretty. He's pretty good.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  He's pretty, and he's pretty good at acting.

• 1:14:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. All right. Well, that's my one more thing.

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess we can stop talking about your friends and neighbors and bring the show to a rolling stop.

• 1:14:40Jason Schreier?

  Extra bonus episode at the end of this.

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  Just a little extra, a little extra for you, for you-

• 1:14:45Kirk Hamilton?

  For all you listeners out there.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  The listener. And you know, that's what we give you here at TripleClick. We just, you never know what you're gonna get in this week. This is what it was. And next week, who knows? More of this. I will see you both next week.

• 1:15:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, see you both next week.

• 1:15:02Jason Schreier?

  See you next time.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:15:06Kirk Hamilton?

  TripleClick 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. TripleClick is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join. Find us on Twitter at TripleClickPod, send email to [email protected], and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next week.

• 1:16:04Kirk Hamilton?

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