EA Goes Private And We Play Ghost of Yōtei

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy convene to talk about the big news of the week — Electronic Arts going private as part of a $55 billion leveraged buyout — and what it could mean for the people involved. Then they talk about Ghost of Yotei, the latest PlayStation 5 exclusive and an open-world samurai game about exploring feudal Japan and killing ronin with a sword. It's fun!

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

• 0:03Kirk Hamilton?

  If I had a dollar for every time this year I've played a video game about a woman with a blade on a quest for revenge against a powerful foe, I would have at least $4. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're talking not about Silk Song, or Hades 2, or even AC Shadows. We're talking about Ghost of Jotay, the PS5's big new revenge epic. There's a lot to talk about, so let's get into it.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:33Jason Schreier?

  And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:36Jason Schreier?

  Hello, my friends. Welcome back.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Back again. We're still here.

• 0:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice to see you. Nice to see you both. We are back again, making our favorite video game podcast to make. I mean, the only video game podcast.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  But our favorite one.

• 0:49Kirk Hamilton?

  It's our favorite. Yeah, it's my favorite, for sure.

• 0:52Jason Schreier?

  I've been secretly making another video game podcast.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  But it's like way worse.

• 0:56Jason Schreier?

  Well, and also, it's not published online. It's just for me.

• 1:00Kirk Hamilton?

  I was realizing that either of you could be making another video game podcast, and that would actually be cool, and I would listen to it. But at the moment, the three of us only make Triple Click, and this is one of my favorite things to do each week. We love making it, and we love making it for all of you, and we really appreciate all of you who support the creation of this show. Of course, we are only listener-supported. We don't sell ads. Really nice thing about making this show is that we don't have to worry about ads. I tell you what, I've been listening to this some like hour-long podcasts lately. When they sell ads on an hour-long podcast, there are so many ads. Like, I love podcasts. I love all my colleagues who make hour-long podcasts. There are some really great ones, but wow. I get they've got to make a living, but it can really like, it can really distract you.

• 1:43Jason Schreier?

  It's also very dangerous ads. You guys know that, right? Because people who are driving have to like, feneagle with the skip ahead.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  You have to frantically be skipping ahead.

• 1:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Honestly, I don't know if you're basing that on like some...

• 1:55Speaker 01

  I don't know. It sounds real to me.

• 1:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Some article that I could imagine there being.

• 1:59Jason Schreier?

  No, Kirk, I'm basing it on personal experience.

• 2:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes. Because, no, it's the same for me.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  I also do this, where I'm trying to skip the ad. There's certain things I have heard again and again. And I'm like, I can't stand to hear this again. These are all things we don't do to you here at TripleClick. We're keeping you safe.

• 2:16Kirk Hamilton?

  No, we are pro-driving safety. We want you to keep your eyes on the road and just listen to the podcast. So we make this show with no ads, other than, of course, some Maximum Fun promos, which are different each week, and support our network.

• 2:28Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, people might skip through the promos.

• 2:31Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true. If you're skipping through the promos, that's fine. You do you, but please don't do it while you're driving. Be careful. Anyways, Maximum Fun is our network. We do run promos for other shows because we love being part of Max Fun. If you want to join the network and support our show, go to MaximumFun.org/join. And of course, if you are a member, you get access to monthly bonus episodes. We make one every month and have been doing so since we started the show. So there's a ton of them. Most recently, there was an Ocarina of Time Beans Cast. And coming right up very soon, it'll be like a little at the start of October, because we're recording it at the end of the week. We will be running a Hollow Knight Silksong Beans Cast, or Beads Cast, as we're going to call it.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:10Kirk Hamilton?

  There are so many beads spilling all over the floor in that game. And we're going to spoil everything in that game, talk about it. We've all finished it, or at least rolled credits. And there's a lot to say about all of the hidden stuff in that game. So that's going to be really fun. Anyway, MaximumFun.org/join. All right, so we are going to be talking about Ghost of Yotay today. But first, we're going to talk about a little bit of news. Jason, what is that news?

• 3:32Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, man, Electronic Arts is going private. Some crazy news that broke last Friday and took over my weekend. I had to work over the weekend handling some stuff on this. So the long and short of it is that a consortium of investors, which includes Saudi Arabia's Sovereign Wealth Fund, Jared Kushner, son-in-law of the president, and Silver Lake, a private equity firm, is buying EA for $55 billion. They are funding, it's funded by an equity of about $36 billion and debt of about $20 billion.

• 4:12Jason Schreier?

  And it is a leveraged buyout, which means that the debt is actually going to go on EA's books. Essentially, they are buying EA. With EA. And it's crazy news. We it'll be a while before we see how things shake out with it. But leveraged buyouts have a spotty history, to say the least. A lot of people know about what happened to Toys R Us, which was which was bought out in a leveraged buyout in, I believe, 2005, something like that, a while ago. And eventually just drowned in debt payments and went bankrupt as a result. Joey and Fabrics is another high profile example. There have been a lot of them over the years.

• 4:54Jason Schreier?

  So these are highly risky moves to make these LBOs, leveraged buyouts. So a lot to unpack there, but my immediate reaction was like, oh, my God, this is going to lead to a lot of cost cutting because these LBOs always do. And cost cutting means layoffs, among other things, which is a scary proposition. So this news, I mean, normally news of like a company going from being publicly traded and having to deal with the pressures of Wall Street and and monthly and quarterly goals and pleasing shareholders every year. For that to go for them to go private, something like can be a freeing thing.

• 5:37Jason Schreier?

  Often you hear about something like that and you're like, oh, OK, cool. Now that they can be more innovative and creative and they don't have to kind of follow the short term pressures. But in this case, they will have the extreme pressure of $20 billion in debt hanging over them. So, yeah, man, we'll we'll be talking about this more as the months come. It's expected to close in the next six to nine months. So at some point in next year, and man, it's gonna be wild.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  It's wild that leveraged buyouts can even exist at all as a concept. Like, you can buy something and pay for it with debt. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

• 6:15Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, not entirely with debt. You have to, as part of a leveraged buyout, they're like different. The amount, it's called like the amount that you leverage is the debt and you have to put up some level of equity. So I can't just be like, hey, I'm going to buy Activision by paying for it. Yeah. But yes, but it is a crazy proposition. It's very appealing to banks, like JP Morgan is financing this debt and it's appealing to them because they get some very, very nice underwriting fees. And also the debt is, it's what's called junk debt typically. Bloomberg reported that this is expected to be single B rated debt, which means that it's a junk debt, which means it's very risky and speculative. And so that means that the interest rates can be very high, which is again, if you're

• 7:01Jason Schreier?

  the bankers and you're collecting on this interest.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  That's good for you.

• 7:04Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's good for you. Usually what happens is like a JP Morgan will sell it. And the debt markets, there's a whole giant kind of financial apparatus called the debt market where a lot of this stuff is played around with, which is why sometimes I think normal people might have some insight into this because if you have a mortgage, a lot of times your mortgage might get sold to some other company and you'll just be told like, hey, your mortgage belongs to this market now.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  And these are the new terms.

• 7:27Jason Schreier?

  And nothing about it'll change. Well, no, no, no, that, they can't change your terms. If you're on a fixed, a fixed term mortgage, like a 30 year mortgage, you, they can't, which is one nice thing about America and other company, in other countries, mortgages tend to be more like variable. I believe in Canada, it's more of a variable system. Here in America, we have a nice system, which is like you put down, you sign a 30 year mortgage, you get the same terms for 30 years no matter what, other than like your taxes going up. But, but, yeah, but this debt, it's very appealing to the bankers and the bankers will definitely come out ahead. EA shareholders, including a lot of employees, to be fair, will come out ahead because they'll be getting $210 per share, which is a big premium on,

• 8:08Jason Schreier?

  I think before the rumors of all this started, it was trading at 150 or 160, something like that. So pretty big premium on the shares. But yeah, for employees, I'm certainly worried.

• 8:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Could you put EA in context for people listening? Like if, if there are some people who maybe don't know exactly what to think of when they think of EA?

• 8:27Jason Schreier?

  Sure.

• 8:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Like what is EA? What games does EA make?

• 8:29Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Um, man, I've been doing this all week on like financial radio and Bloomberg TV.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  But now you can do it for the gamers.

• 8:36Jason Schreier?

  Now I can do it for the gamers.

• 8:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Pretend I'm a public radio interviewer.

• 8:41Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, EA, I mean, for people who don't know, EA was founded in 1982. It's been around for 43 years. So it's one of the stalwarts of the gaming industry, despite its kind of up and down reputation over the years. It makes a lot of sports games, Madden and EA Sports FC, which used to be called FIFA. There are soccer games, there are football and, and football. Um, and it also makes the Battlefield games. There's a new Battlefield coming out in just a few days, um, which makes this very strange timing. The Sims, yeah, that's another, that's another, they're kind of cultural institutions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Sims is a big one. Dragon Age, Mass Effect, for people who are into the Bioware games. Um, of course they make Anthem. Um, they are.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  That's their biggest child.

• 9:28Jason Schreier?

  All the Anthem heads up there.

• 9:32Jason Schreier?

  And, uh, and yeah, a bunch of other stuff. Skate, they just came out with. They used to make a lot more games. If you ever look at like the history of EA and like in the early 2000s, they were releasing dozens of games a year, but they have consolidated. One more thing I'll share is a crazy stat, um, which I had known, but was really thinking about in the context of why this deal happened, which is that in the last fiscal year, which ended in, uh, March, the end of March of this year, um, EA's revenue was 75% from live services. 75% of EA's revenue came from live services, meaning microtransactions, in-game payments for stuff like FIFA and Apex Legends and Madden and so on and so forth. 75%.

• 10:15Jason Schreier?

  It used to be, this used to be a business of like making a product and selling it to people. Now it is a business of making a product and getting people to spend money within that product, which I think is pretty, pretty wild. Um, and I think that's why it's kind of, it's appealing for a private equity. Takeover, or in this case, a Saudi Arabia slash private equity takeover, because live service revenue, I think, is more predictable than product revenue, where you're just like selling a game and hoping it's a hit and putting a big investment into it. Live service is a little bit more dependable. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack here.

• 10:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, if I could make a recommendation for anyone who is interested in private equity and wants to know more about it, there is an episode of the Culture Study Podcast from June that I listened to. This is Anne Helen Peterson's podcast that she just has a variety of guests on to talk about whatever. And this time she had on Megan Greenwell, who is actually a former colleague of ours. She was the editor in chief of Deadspin. And she has a book out about private equity. And she came on that podcast to just talk about it. And I found it really helpful because while I know like what private equity is, sort of, I found I didn't really, listening to the conversation, like they explained the difference between venture capital and private equity.

• 11:32Kirk Hamilton?

  And even that conversation was like really helpful for me. And then they also got into just, you know, I mean, Megan wrote a whole book about it. So it's all about private equity, how it works, the types of businesses that it buys, and also just the sheer scope of private equity's influence in our culture, like in America, like so many things in the medical establishment. I'm seeing it a lot in music, a lot of small like instrument makers or just kind of smaller musical companies are getting bought by private equity. So it's like spreading and spreading and spreading. It's a really widespread thing and kind of good to understand. And then, of course, also, you will understand the context of what's going on with EA a little bit better. So I recommend that. We'll link to it in show notes.

• 12:13Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, although it's worth noting here that the biggest stakeholder in the future private EA is going to be Saudi Arabia. So this isn't a typical private equity deal where it's a company swooping in, seeing an investment opportunity, seeing an opportunity to maybe sell assets or do a quick turnaround and try to sell a struggling company, as happened with our former Diggs, quote unquote, Geo Media.

• 12:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure.

• 12:38Jason Schreier?

  And so I don't Don't know if this is like, there's really no precedent for this. We really don't know it's going to happen. I think it's safe to say there will be cost cutting. I just, I, we have no idea what the scale is going to be. We have no idea what Saudi Arabia wants to do with EA. They've been making a lot of investments in other gaming companies. In fact, they already had a 10% stake in EA before this. They had bought up 10% of EA's shares. So this is just them kind of like basically getting more shares in EA. And they're also very into esports. They're very into sports plays. They've been doing a lot of golf stuff. And of course, they're very controversial because of Saudi Arabia's there. I mean, there are all sorts of allegations and accusations and Saudi Arabia's human rights

• 13:21Jason Schreier?

  record and the story about the journalist from the Washington Post. I mean, there's a lot, again, a lot to unpack here. But one thing we can say for sure is that EA will look very different a year from now than it does today.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't even have a prediction as to what it could look like, though. It just doesn't seem ideal to me for this to be like who knows, that would happen to a major game company.

• 13:47Jason Schreier?

  It's very, very crazy. But anyway, let's talk about a video game. Kirk, what are we talking about?

• 13:54Kirk Hamilton?

  We are going to talk about Ghost of Yote. This is a new PlayStation 5 exclusive from Sucker Punch. It is a lot like Ghost of Tsushima, which came out in 2020.

• 14:04Jason Schreier?

  Can I just pause for a second? Video game studio names are so bizarre. The way that you casually just say, oh, from Sucker Punch, yeah.

• 14:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Sucker Punch, actually, I think is a great name. It has a really good rhythm to it. If we're doing our name, our Spider Mansion name critique, I think Sucker Punch very memorable. It's got, it's really fun to say. It has like a good rhythm. So I give Sucker Punch an A. It's pretty solid.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Ghost of Yote, not bad either while we're here.

• 14:30Kirk Hamilton?

  No, not bad. Also fun to say. Ghost of is a good, a good sort of premise. And I appreciate that it's not called like Ghost of Tsushima.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Two.

• 14:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Ghost of, I don't know, you know, Ghost of Tsushima two or something.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yote Edition. Yeah.

• 14:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Since of course it is in a new region. Yeah. So this is a sequel of sorts to Ghost of Tsushima, though. It's really just a separate game in the same, you know, world and with the same systems and the same kind of approach. It tells the story of a woman named Atsu who is seeking revenge in medieval Japan. She's in the Ezo region, is that how it's pronounced? The Ezo region in northern Japan. This is the region with like Hokkaido and some other kind of regions of Japan that you might have seen in various video games or movies. Or if you've visited, of course, you may have been there, but it's a little more remote. It's a little more rustic and it's kind of portrayed in this game as a frontier, a kind of lawless frontier where one clan of samurai are trying to kind of impose law and

• 15:27Kirk Hamilton?

  order, but it's still very much like the realm, like realms of warlords and there's not really any, any law. And Atsu's family is murdered by a group of, I guess, warlords called the Yotai Six. They're each a little bit different. You know, each of them wears a different mask and has a different kind of whole deal. And she swears revenge and sets off after them. And of course, this then lays out very neatly onto an open world video game, which is what Ghost of Yotai is. You will ride your horse across beautiful vistas, you will upgrade Atsu and learn new abilities, get new weapons, you'll get kind of all of the familiar weapons of a samurai or ninja video game and you will kill so many guys.

• 16:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, everyone in this game just like, they all just want to throw down. They don't want to talk, they want to die. So you will kill a lot of people.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, every time you meet anyone, they're like, could you just kill me? Could we enter a fighting cutscene?

• 16:24Kirk Hamilton?

  They're like, I was gonna claim this bounty and you're like, okay, cool. And they're like, no, how about I fight you to the death? You're like, well, okay.

• 16:30Jason Schreier?

  Sometimes you can pay them to go away, which I don't know why anyone would do that since it's very easy to just kill them.

• 16:36Kirk Hamilton?

  That is true. I have killed, I have, I have bought off some people to, to save their lives, to save them from themselves.

• 16:42Jason Schreier?

  Oh, I, I guess you're the, one of the people who would do that.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're magnanimous.

• 16:45Kirk Hamilton?

  I did it once. I'm not sure if I would have killed the guy. He was training at a bamboo stand and he didn't want to get out of the way. And I was like, can I just go? I don't, I don't want to wait for you. And, um, and instead of fighting him, I paid him because it was not that much money. And it seemed like the nice thing to do.

• 17:02Jason Schreier?

  I would pay him so I didn't have to do the bamboo mini game again.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 17:07Kirk Hamilton?

  I like the bamboo video game. Let's get into it. Let's talk about this game. We've all been playing it. You know, I, I, I think it's actually pretty fun. Maddie, what do you think?

• 17:17Speaker 01

  I agree. It's actually pretty fun. I, I'm definitely curious Kirk for your Ghost of Tsushima take on it, but personally I'm coming in having played none of that game at all. This is my, my only ghost game. So anything I'm comparing it to is just other third person action games and games where you call a horse. You know, like Ocarina of Time, a game where you call a horse and ride across some plains. It's a lot like that. Much, much prettier. I, I'm really digging this game. Yeah, actually another good comparison. You play an instrument in this game. You play the shamisen and I really like that mechanic. There are a lot of just individuated mechanics in this game and I don't know how

• 18:00Speaker 01

  necessary all of them are, but I've just kind of been enjoying leaning into them. In part because this game is so different from what I was just playing, which was Silk Song, where you're like, you're just move, move, move all the time. This game has moments where you just sit down and meditate. And that's like part of the game or you play the shamisen and you're just watching yourself play an instrument. You learn different songs. They have different utilities, but really I'm just enjoying the songs. I, this is a vibes game, I would say. That's, that's my take after, I'm only about 10 hours in. I'm not sure how long it is, but it's very vibesy. Yes, every person I run into is essentially asking me to kill them. I think plot wise, it's a little, it's,

• 18:42Speaker 01

  I'm, I am enjoying the plot. I don't think the plot is super complicated, but I'm digging it. Uh, it's a classic revenge story, but mostly I'm liking the vibes. I like how beautiful it is. And I like just the music and sound design of the game and the sword fighting. I'm really into the sword fighting design. I, I could take or leave the color coded specialized attacks, but the baseline sword fighting mechanics I think are cool and interesting and more complicated than I expected. To be as compared to like a classic sword and board type of a fighting in like a Dark Souls or what have you. This one is like, you gotta learn to use a katana, pay attention, and then you learn how to use two katanas. So yeah, I'm digging it. I'm not too far, but I'm digging it so far.

• 19:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Jason, how are you finding it?

• 19:27Jason Schreier?

  Matty, you're saying you don't want another game where if someone's glinting red, then you can't block them.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  You know?

• 19:34Jason Schreier?

  Glinting blue, then you can.

• 19:35Kirk Hamilton?

  This game does introduce the yellow attack.

• 19:37Jason Schreier?

  That's true. That's a new one.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  It's got a third color.

• 19:41Jason Schreier?

  They're gonna disarm you and then you have to run around.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  The primary colors are all here, red, blue, and yellow. And what will the attacks correspond with? Who can say? Not great for colorblind players, from what I hear. I hope they patch in some other alternative for that.

• 19:54Jason Schreier?

  Oh, is there no option?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  There's apparently no option.

• 19:57Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm surprised. Usually Sony has a lot of accessibility, but I hadn't actually checked.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  I know. That surprised me, too. So I figured I'd note it. It doesn't bother me, but apparently it is an issue for people who can't tell the difference between those attacks. And it really does matter. Like, you need to do a different action in response to each color.

• 20:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Jason Schreier?

  So I used to call, there's a series, there's a Japanese RPG series called Tales of, Tales of, and then it's a bunch of different games, like different kind of weird proper nouns, Tales of Xilia, Tales of Arise, whatever it is. I used to call them the kind of the fast food of video games because they often, they were always the same. There was this like the same kind of food, but sometimes you're just in the mood for them and you want to just like gobble down some fast food of JRPGs, basically. I think this, this kind of feels like the fast food of like AAA open world games in that I'm playing it. It's, it feels like, it's like comforting in some ways. It's, it doesn't feel particularly new or innovative. It feels like I played this game a thousand times before, but also it's very well made and I appreciated it for what it is.

• 20:57Jason Schreier?

  And yes, it is a fun video game. And I think if you out there are in the mood for just like a AAA open world Samurai game, like you can't do much worse than this. It's just that I keep having this nagging feeling about like, okay, everything I am doing in this game, I just have played before in other AAA games. And I think that the, it also is a real victim of. Timing because Assassin's Creed Shadows came out in March and it is for all intents and purposes, the same video game you play as a woman ninja who like is seeking revenge for her parents deaths on the like at the hand of these masked warlords and you have to go and

• 21:40Jason Schreier?

  find them and kill them. Obviously, there are differences, but still, it's just like, I think one of the reasons Ghosts of Tsushima was really enjoyable and cool and felt like a breath of fresh air is that there weren't a lot of big AAA open world games or any AAA open world games set in feudal Japan at that point. And now we have a lot of them. And so getting a sequel to that is kind of like more of the same. That said, I mean, like I said, it's a very well making it's very pretty. There's a lot to like about it. There are a lot of like fiddly mechanics that as you alluded to that I don't like, including having to like flip mushrooms or start fires with the motion controller.

• 22:19Kirk Hamilton?

  You can skip that.

• 22:20Jason Schreier?

  I know, I know, I know. But I mean, I'm just looking at it as what it is. I'm not like, of course, you can go into the menu and set your own toggles and skip mini games or whatever. But like, I'm just trying to assess what I have played so far and those I could do without the bamboo button meshing I could definitely do without. But like I said,

• 22:38Speaker 01

  I'm not sure you can skip those. I think you have to be the bamboo.

• 22:41Jason Schreier?

  If you fail enough times, it'll let you skip it. Speaking not not that I would know, not that I would ever fail. But yeah, I mean, more of the same, but enjoyable and well made and fun. And I'm sure seeing through that I'm not going to play much more of this, but I'm sure people who are into it will like get a lot out of it.

• 23:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. So to give my own impressions, I am enjoying it. I'm actually enjoying it more and more the more I play, which is something that I remember being true of Ghosts of Tsushima as well. And Jason, you played Tsushima, right? Since I know Matty has not.

• 23:17Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I played, I think, the first half. Basically, I played up until. You get your uncle, is it your uncle, right? And that, that kind of, that big main fortress? The first island I played through.

• 23:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's one of those games where you complete the first island and then the second island opens up and it's like, do it again. It's a, the Far Cry 2, as I call it. Yeah, so this game is structured very differently and I really think it's an improvement. So something that Ghost of Tsushima introduced a little later on was a DLC area called Iki Island. And that was really cool. That was a huge improvement over Ghost of Tsushima, I thought. It just added a lot of interesting gameplay, new enemy types that forced you to change up how you were approaching a fight. Give you some like horseback maneuvers that were sort of cool that carry over to this game. And some other abilities that they continue and, and give you the option of using in Ghost of Yotai.

• 24:11Kirk Hamilton?

  And I feel like Iki Island provided a framework that they're using in Ghost of Yotai. Because in this game, you start out in a kind of, I don't know, just open area, like a kind of one region of the world. And that's where Atsu's home is and there's a little inn where you can get bounties. And you start to go around and you find little side quests to do. And the way that you explore this game to explain it to people is similar to Tsushima in that there's no mini map. And if you want to go somewhere, you can call it up on the map. Uh, yeah, there's something that I like. You call up, you can call up the big map and like set a waypoint. But if you do so, that causes the wind to guide you in that direction.

• 24:51Kirk Hamilton?

  So then you swipe on the touchpad on the DualSense controller and the wind pushes out in front of you. It's very nice looking and kind of a cool way to keep you up in the game, that your eyes are up in the game. Instead of looking down at a map in the corner of your screen.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like it.

• 25:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Also, sometimes little gold birds appear and the birds are very funny. They look kind of like remote controlled drone birds.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if they're quite as good as the wind when it comes to subtle environmental clues as to where you should go next.

• 25:18Kirk Hamilton?

  I like what they're going for.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  I appreciate the thought, but it's, it's a little heavy handed. But the wind, I think, is pretty good, even when there's really, really gusting. I still feel like the vibe is good.

• 25:29Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's nice that there is a sort of an implication that the wind is Atsu's mother. Like, there's in her flashbacks that her mother is like, "I will always be on the wind with you," or something, and I like that, too. Like, the wind is guiding her on this quest that she's on. So you explore this kind of main region, and it kind of seems like, okay, this is just gonna be like Ghost of Tsushima. But then you go to the first secondary region, because you're following these leads. It's kind of set up like a mystery story, because each of these people you're hunting down is wearing a mask when they kill your family. So you don't know who they are, and you're kind of like, Atsu is constantly interrogating people, or like, asking, "There are friendly people, not everyone wants to die."

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, every now and then.

• 26:08Kirk Hamilton?

  And when you talk to a friendly person, she'll say, "Hey, tell me about the Yotei Six. I want to know about the Oni." Or, "Tell me about..."

• 26:13Speaker 01

  The Katsune.

• 26:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, the Katsune, which is the other... Those are the kind of two first ones that you're asking about. So pretty soon, people will say, "Well, the Oni is at these, you know, he's up in these fields. So if you go to this northern region, you'll, you know, you'll be in his area." So that's where I've been exploring. And it turns out, you go to a region, and the regions are actually all very different. And they feel, each one feels a little more like its own little iki island. It's this kind of self-contained area. There's a long story quest that's very involved. The one up in the plains where I'm looking for the Oni is actually really cool. I won't spoil stuff in it, but there's like major story revelations, and we're meeting really cool characters, and it's kind of going and going and going. It's really an involved, multi-chapter story that's pretty unpredictable,

• 26:59Kirk Hamilton?

  and really well-done, like, really well-acted and well-done.

• 27:02Jason Schreier?

  A fun little twist, yeah, in that one. That's what I'm in the middle of, too, Kirk.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:07Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's kind of, and it also like has a theme. So this area is kind of the fire island, like, the Oni are like the fire clan. They're really, they all wear masks, and they're the demons, and they kind of light everything on fire. So you're fighting fire enemies, and there are all these specialized enemy types who are like throwing bombs and using fire. And you also unlock new abilities, some really good ones, that use fire. So the whole story is like revolving around fire and fire abilities. So if you go and follow the Katsune, that's like in the frozen north. And I believe that's more of a like- Shinobi ninja hidden like there's codes that you have to decipher. You're trying to figure out where things are and I think you're unlocking a different type of ability. And the region has its own kind of identity. So I actually really like this approach.

• 27:52Kirk Hamilton?

  The more that I've played through this only region, the more I've felt like I'm in a really distinct and cool part of the game. And I really like that. It's actually made me want to just keep going because I'm getting some really cool abilities. I'm like enmeshed in this whole little mini story and then I'll finish it and go back to the main area. And then I'll go do the Katsune mission. So I think that structure is actually an improvement over Tsushima.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I also do like the story so far. I think we're all around the same spot, so we can all kind of say what we think of it. I'm not going to spoil it, but I do like the story and the, I've kind of noticed like, oh, this is a game I can't play while watching TV. It's way better when it's like on the big screen. I'm playing it with the Japanese voice acting and subtitles. So I'm just fully ensconced, having to really pay attention. And I really appreciate a game like that. I feel like it's been a minute since I played a game where I really had to lock in and just be like, okay, let me actually remember what's going on and follow who each of these characters is. I don't know that it's like so strong that I'm like, oh, it's practically a TV show, but it is strong enough that it's hooked me.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  And I'm like, I'm interested in finding out what's going to happen next. And I will also probably continue playing and see what the rest of the characters and areas are like too, because I'm rooting for Atsu. I will also say, since we've kind of started comparing it to Assassin's Creed Shadows. I think that something that you'd only know if you bothered to play this and that I appreciate is that Atsu is a pretty different character from Naue. Like Naue has this really like high emotion intensity, like she's angry at everyone all the time and lashes out at them. And she's impulsive at first and she's, she kind of refuses to work with people. Atsu is more like the ice queen.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  And also there's some kind of magical realism elements to this game whereby she's kind of capitalizing on this idea that she's a literal ghost and like encourage. That superstition in other people, but also I because it's a video game and she's so powerful and has some of these great attacks. I've kind of wondered as the player like it almost feels like some of this is real and she has this wolf that follows her around and is much kinder to her than any wolf in real life would ever be. And so I do kind of like that this game just has a really different tone and energy from AC shadows that distinguishes it, especially just in the story and characters. But again, I feel like if you didn't play them, why would you know that?

• 30:22Jason Schreier?

  I wonder if it will turn out that the wolf is the spirit of your parents.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Like maybe that's your dad and your mom's the wind. I don't know. Who does the brother get to be?

• 30:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Kind of already implied. The wolves are like the protectors of is like that's sort of how she describes them. So I think it's a little more like her connection to the natural world, since the natural world plays a big role in this game.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  You run into the wolf too during that cutscene where you're still a child and like Lord Saito attacks the wolf and like that's kind of like your early foreshadowing that something's off about him because like the wolf is a good thing and why would he attack a wolf? And I kind of appreciated that. I mean, it's again, not that deep, but I was into it.

• 31:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Let's stay on the Assassin's Creed shadows comparison.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, go for it.

• 31:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Because I actually think that it is interesting how the games are similar and different. They are very similar in the setup. Actually, that's the strongest similarity.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Like the setting and the setting.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  The very first.

• 31:14Kirk Hamilton?

  The fact that, yeah, there's like a fire in the background and there's a group of people wearing masks.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:21Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, the the main character puts those people on a board and is like, I'm gonna kill you all one at a time. I mean, that is very similar, but the games are very different, too. And this was true of Tsushima as well, that it looked like an Assassin's Creed. It had some Assassin's Creed like qualities, a mix of stealth and action, outposts that you take down, repeated side quests, you know, a historical setting. But as a game, and let's just stay with Yote here, it is much simpler. It's especially as a stealth game, far simpler game. This is just like, you know, you go into an encampment, you can sneak around and kill everybody. It's kind of. Fun like it's pretty easy to do the AI is not super strong.

• 32:02Kirk Hamilton?

  But there are not a lot of systems at play here. I went back and played some shadows over the weekends just to compare and contrast and shadows is this like incredibly complicated game. There's so much going on. You're in a, you know, like whatever, an enemy fort sneaking around. And I mean, there are just there are all these options that you have, all of these tools. There's so much like the layers of enemy awareness are so much more complicated. You can be seen, you can hide. It just feels like way, way more involved. And then you get in a fight and there's also a lot more going on in part because there are two protagonists. So you're sort of meant to be switching between Yasuke and Naue and kind of like melee combat Samurai or stealthy ninja.

• 32:44Kirk Hamilton?

  And you can fight as either, or you can kind of sneak as either, but, but not really. Where in, in Ghost of Yote, like it's just Atsu and she is very much. I would say much more of a combat like warrior than she is a sort of sneaky ninja, even though you're given tools to do that. And so it's, it's just a much more straightforward game. That's much more than designed around this combat system that is itself like a lot more of a kind of. I think it's more fun like than shadows, like the actual just sword fighting. And it's really just designed to be this like sword fighting system.

• 33:16Jason Schreier?

  Well, to be fair, there are, so there's a skill tree system, of course, because it's AAA comfort food once again. And there are different kind of stealth tools you can unlock. I'm not sure how elaborate they get, but for example, I was doing some sneaking in one area and there was a big dude that I could only do critical damage to with the, with the stealth strike. I couldn't kill him. And then I unlocked an ability that is like now you can stealth kill brutes like these big dudes. So now I was able to go and do that. There's another ability that lets you take out two dudes at once with your stealth. So it does give you a few more options, but yes, you're right. It's not as elaborate as shadows.

• 33:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I don't mean to suggest that there are no stealth options, just that it is a far more pared down stealth game. In particular with how enemy awareness works and just how you're kind of meant to do it. Like you're kind of meant to walk in and challenge guys to a fight.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:10Kirk Hamilton?

  And this is a carried over mechanic.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Katanas blazing.

• 34:14Jason Schreier?

  When you're walking around, even when you're sneaking, there'll be a big button prompt that is like standoff, like it wants you to.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And this is a carryover from Sushima, because a big part of the plot of Ghosts of Sushima was that Jin, the protagonist, was a samurai, and that he saw the sneaking and the stealth killing as dishonorable. And like, a big part of the first, like, the whole, really, a big part of his character arc in the game is him transforming into the Ghosts of Sushima, who is this, like, mythic figure who also fights dirty and sneaks around and kills people. And it's him sort of both becoming disillusioned with, like, the samurai code and setting that aside, and just changing as a character and, like, embracing this brutality he didn't know that he had to or didn't want to. And like, so as a result, there was always this honorable option, because a samurai would just walk in and say, like, "Come fight me." Like, that's how we do things. Or at least in the game's presentation of

• 35:05Kirk Hamilton?

  this honor code. And in this game, that's not really like Atsu's deal. Like, Atsu is a very much like, "I will kill anyone in any way that I can" from the start, but she still has that, they still have that mechanic, which can be a fun way to go. You know, you get this showdown where you, like, wait, and the other guy is, like, waiting, and then the minute he attacks, you attack, and it fills up your focus gauge, so you're kind of ready to do a bunch of special moves. And, um, and I gotta say, like, at first, I was kind of frustrated by the combat, because I just didn't have any good abilities unlocked. But the more I played, like, I have a bunch of cool abilities unlocked, and there are a lot more to go. And like, the weapons each have their own skill trees, and also Atsu has several skill trees that are just like combat-related. And the more you're, like, getting slow-mo's on a perfect block or a perfect dodge, or you have, like, I have

• 35:50Kirk Hamilton?

  a bunch of really cool katana abilities now, I can disarm guys, you know, I have slow-mo on my bow, so I'm like, headshotting guys. Um, and it, it really is very fun. Like, it's a very dynamic, um, and just like punchy, good-feeling combat system.

• 36:05Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, definitely starts out weak and gets better. Um, yeah. Uh, so in Ghosts of Sushima, there is this, like, system of stances, where different stances that you could switch to would be more or less effective on different types of enemies. It was cool in theory, although it was a little bit unwieldy to actually use in practice, at least for me. I mean, maybe better gamers were better at it.

• 36:29Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I kind of felt the same way. It was fine.

• 36:31Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it was fine. It's just a little clunky. Yeah, in this, it's a similar sort of system in that you're still like holding R2 and then picking one of the face buttons. But instead of switching these stances and trying to remember like, oh, stone stance works with this guy. You're actually switching weapons. So like at first you have just a katana, then you get two katanas and you get other stuff too. Um, and each of those works, uh, works better depending on the, um, enemy you're fighting. And it's much easier to remember like, oh, switch to dual katanas to fight this spear dude than it is to remember, oh, water stance is effective against this spear dude. So I find that to be a much better system. And yeah, you're totally right. And I think that like people who start out the game and maybe like, don't get any upgrades or don't do any side stuff or don't explore a lot.

• 37:17Jason Schreier?

  Um, we'll find the combat to be very repetitive, but yeah, it definitely gets better the more you go.

• 37:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, the weapons are also just really fun. I mean, the spear that I've got in the second era of the Yari is just a really fun weapon. It has a super long reach. The heavy attack, you like plant it in the ground and then pole vault and like double kick a guy. And like, there's just really, it's a very different move set from, you know, a katana and the, the moves I've unlocked for that. And then, yeah, as you play, you get points to unlock even more moves for each one. Um, and then, yeah, they're each kind of matched against a weapon type.

• 37:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I'm about to get the spear. I'm excited for that. Yeah, you, you make it sound cool.

• 37:51Kirk Hamilton?

  It is.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sounds awesome. I also like any ability tree that has like a slow mo on perfect block or parry situation. It's very bayonetta, but it's also kind of like Arkham Asylum or whatever. Like, oh, you remember like Batman, like speeding up and slowing down and how cool that felt? There's just something about that in combat, any type of melee combat where it just, it makes you feel really, really cool and powerful. Cause your, your person can just slow down and be like, and now the perfect shot or slice in Anzu's case, it feels great. So, yeah. And I totally agree. The stealth, I haven't super been using. There've been like a couple of moments when I've been like, I'm going to stealth through this and see what it's like.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  But yes, it super encourages you to press that standoff button. And also I assume this is in Ghost of Tsushima too. It encourages you to like switch the camera. Angle when you enter into standoff mode. And so you, so you like, you are the cinematographer of your own battles sometimes. And it's corny, but I enjoy that as well. Like just suddenly you're in an overhead shot or whatever it is. And you're like, oh, the, the battle's gonna be so epic, even though you're just fighting some random guy who's like guarding a gate somewhere and doesn't know what's gonna hit him.

• 39:02Jason Schreier?

  Some guy who wants, wants money.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Some guy who would have happily taken 20 bucks just to get out of your way, but you're like, no, now we're fighting and the Shamasen is playing in the background.

• 39:13Jason Schreier?

  I must direct a Quentin Tarantino movie while slaughtering you.

• 39:17Kirk Hamilton?

  There are these cinematic modes in the game as well. There's like Kurosawa mode, which I think is in black and white. And I think there's like a Takashi Miki mode that I haven't messed with. I haven't really messed with those. I think they're kind of for fun.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Those seem a little much even for me, but I am enjoying, there's a pretty good photo mode as well in this game. I don't know if you've played with that at all, but I've been enjoying that too.

• 39:38Kirk Hamilton?

  It's fantastic. It's similar to, it was the same in Ghost of Tsushima where you activate it, but the wind keeps blowing because we should really underline, this game is really beautiful. Like it isn't just a nice looking video game. It is absurd. Like on a nice 4K TV with HDR lighting, the mountain, Mount Yote, which is in the background of a lot of the game is so, it looks just better than any mountain I've ever seen. So there are a lot of really breathtaking vistas in this game.

• 40:04Jason Schreier?

  Are you guys playing in the graphics mode or performance mode? Cause I'm in performance mode.

• 40:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, good. On a base PS5. I'm sure on, I know that on the PS5 Pro, you get some bells and whistles, which will be a nice justification for anyone who bought one of those.

• 40:17Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, it's so funny. You just said that for a second. I just had this moment of like, oh my God, that's a thing. Like I totally forgot that that exists in the first place.

• 40:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's, it's very much for a subset of gamers who I, that I do not fall into, but I know that they, it adds the ray tracing and whatever and gets 60 frames per second. But no, I'm playing in performance mode.

• 40:34Jason Schreier?

  By the way, this game, it's coming out at an interesting time because PlayStation 5 just had to raise prices due to tariffs and this is a PlayStation 5 exclusive.

• 40:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, for now, which of course we know eventually it will come to PC and I'm sure it'll, it'll do well there. Yeah. One, one other thing I want to kind of. Or something that you said, Matty, that I think that I agree with and kind of want to expand on a little. You talked about leaning into some of the systems. There are a lot of systems in this game and you don't always have to lean into them. It's I can tell that there were people who wanted to make this a little bit more immersive, a little bit more frictional. Where like, maybe you couldn't fast travel since now if you've been somewhere, you can just fast travel there instantly on the map.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  I was kind of shocked by that, by the way. I was like, I thought you were going to make me ride my horse around way more video game, but nope, nope.

• 41:22Kirk Hamilton?

  There's a camp system, as Jason mentioned there, you like have to start the fire. And then you realize there's a little hold X to skip prompt in the corner. And I was like, oh, I will be skipping these cooking mini games from here on out.

• 41:32Jason Schreier?

  That comes later. You have to do it a bunch of times.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  I did it one time.

• 41:36Kirk Hamilton?

  You have to do it once, I think, first, at least anyways, you do some of this like camp stuff.

• 41:41Jason Schreier?

  Oh, well, you also have to do that, like during quests and stuff is the starting the fire and you can't.

• 41:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's gimmicky. Use the motion controls, whatever, flip the fish over to cook it properly. But when you're in camp, also, you can like, you can practice Shamasan, you can, I don't know, you can do a variety of things. But also vendors will come to your camp and it's kind of cool. They'll like come walking in and it's, hey, it's the lady who sells me bows and arrows. And she's just walking around, apparently. So here she is. And then she hangs out in camp and I can buy stuff from her. And that system is actually really cool. And given the frontier vibe, you can imagine one version of this game or a, you know, designed idea, a designed version of this game being like, oh yeah, you have to camp. And that's how you get vendors to come to you and there's no fast travel. And it's all kind of, you're following the wind and you're exploring and finding stuff.

• 42:29Kirk Hamilton?

  But because I can just fast travel to any inner town and then all the vendors are there, I just do that instead. So there's a little bit of, you need to kind of lean into some of these systems in order to make the game the kind of best version of itself. Similarly, in combat, like bows are really overpowered in combat. I cleared one outpost where I was trying to do stealth and I got spotted and it was a ton of dudes chasing me. So I just ran in circles around a building, just waiting for the slow mo to recharge on my bow. And then I would just headshot one of them and then I'd run away and then I just killed them all. And you also, you can pick up and throw weapons, which is like incredibly powerful. It's like basically a one hit kill.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  It's so powerful. It's like a one shot.

• 43:09Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's like a one hit kill. Yeah.

• 43:11Kirk Hamilton?

  It isn't always, but like with with most regular enemies it is, especially at first. So I was like just grabbing swords and throwing and running and I like never fought anyone and I killed like 20 guys this way. So you can do kind of silly stuff like that. I'd say even more so in this game than some other games that kind of really punish you if you try to break them in that way. This game lets you, but if you just lean into it and just have a big sword fight with a bunch of guys and really just try to play well, it'll be challenging, but it'll also be pretty fun. And I actually am finding that I might kick the difficulty up, which was something I did in Sushima as well. Because once you're doing that, you really will be challenged by fights and have to start, you know, cooking food to get bonuses and like leaning into some of the other systems that they've put in place.

• 43:54Kirk Hamilton?

  So it's a game that kind of gives back what you put into it, even though it is, in the end, it is just like, you know, a very pleasing, maybe in Jason's words, somewhat fast foodie, open, open world game. Like, it's just one of those. But you can get more out of it and have a more particular experience.

• 44:11Jason Schreier?

  I want to be clear, that's not a derogatory thing by any means.

• 44:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I get you.

• 44:14Jason Schreier?

  It's just kind of like AAA. It almost reminds me in some days, some ways, this game was way worse. But do you remember when we talked about Days Gone and we were just like, this is AAA the video game? It's just like a checklist of everything you need for a AAA game. I think this is better, better made in several ways, especially the writing, but, but that, that it's, it's just along that line of just like another open world. A lot of these PlayStation games are similar to Ubisoft games in that they just hit the checklist.

• 44:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and I've been finding that kind of nice, especially after finishing Silksong and like needing something that's just a little more like, here, just come have fun.

• 44:48Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, a little.

• 44:49Kirk Hamilton?

  It's gonna be really pretty. You're gonna have a good time.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, come have fun. Watch some cool cutscenes.

• 44:54Jason Schreier?

  It's a good, yeah, it's, yeah, that's a really good, it's good. These are two games to bounce back and forth between because one is like, you must focus and like be patient and get pattern, like master pattern recognition. And the other is just like, here, just chill in Samurai Japan and watch a revenge story come to life. Yeah, it's, and of course, there are a million like difficulty settings in Ghost of Iote, so you could just like play with combat like super easy if you wanted to and.

• 45:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  I don't really recommend that, though. I do.

• 45:24Jason Schreier?

  No, no, no. But if you, if you wanted, if you're like, man, after Silk Song, I just want to breeze through something.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  You're like, I really just want to kill every guy instantly. No judgment.

• 45:32Kirk Hamilton?

  I was really having that experience where I was like, this is just nice. And now I'm actually to the point where I've got enough skills that I'm like, okay, now I kind of want to engage my brain a little bit more. But what's nice is that you can get it to do that as well. So, yeah, I'm digging it. It really, it's just these, these big PlayStation open world games, you know? I, I tend to just like them, like they're very likeable. They're designed to be liked by the maximum number of people. And I find this one to be, it's a pleasing one. It's really lovely looking and, and pretty fun to play. So, yeah. All right, well, let's take a break and then we will come back for one more thing.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  Hey, it's Sue the subway train. Hey, guess what, Sue? I just inherited a game show and I have to continue it because there are people out there who like to curl up into a ball and listen to it. Yeah, it's a podcast where listeners submit game show ideas for others to play on air. Well, it is. In fact, the dumber, the better. Right, right. It's called Dr. Game Show. Some curled up balls consider it a tradition, while others call it a train wreck. No, not you, Sue. It's Dr. Game Show. If you're the sort that likes to listen to people competing for refrigerator magnets, then curl up into a ball and listen to Dr. Game Show every other Wednesday, MaximumFun.org.

• 46:56Speaker 04

  Are you a five star baddie? If you answered yes, then Black People Love Paramore is the podcast for you. Contrary to the title, we are not a podcast about the band Paramore. Black People Love Paramore is a pop culture show about the common and uncommon interests of black people in order to help us feel a little bit more seen. We are your co-hosts, Sequoia Holmes.

• 47:15Speaker 05

  Jewel Wicker.

• 47:16Speaker 06

  And Ryan Graham.

• 47:17Speaker 04

  And in each episode, we dissect one pop culture topic that mainstream media doesn't associate with the black people, but we know that we like.

• 47:24Speaker 05

  We get into topics like Ginger ale, the Golden Girls, black romance, Uno, and so much more.

• 47:30Speaker 06

  Tune in every other Thursday to the podcast that's dedicated to helping black people feel more seen. Find Black People Love Paramore on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 47:40Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, we are back for one more thing. Jason, how about you go first? What's your one more thing?

• 47:45Jason Schreier?

  First of all, I hope nobody got into a car accident skipping through the promo list with you. Oh my god, nobody skips any of them. Not that you should skip through the promo.

• 47:51Kirk Hamilton?

  If you did, stop listening, just focus on emergency response.

• 47:55Jason Schreier?

  I watched a movie. I went to the movies and saw a film, saw a picture, as Martin Scorsese would say, called One Battle After Another. And as, I think I mentioned this a couple of years ago, and I went to see Killers of the Flower Moon, but a lot of, most of the time when I go to the movies is to see one of the new Marvel flicks. So it's like, it's fun, it's nice to go and see a movie and be like, oh, so this is what a movie is like.

• 48:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I thought that was seeing Sinners. It's like, oh, right, an original movie.

• 48:22Jason Schreier?

  Really good movie. This is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, stars Leo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, and the wonderfully named Chase Infinity, who plays Leo's daughter in the movie. And it's a really fun, just like, wild story that just like has a lot of fantastic performances. I almost, I don't want to say much about it because it's fun to just kind of watch it unfold, but essentially it's about this guy who is a washed up ex-revolutionary who has to find his daughter. And I'll just kind of leave it at that. But one thing I will say, because this is kind of the highlight of the film, is that I suspect that Sean Penn is going to get an Oscar for his role as the character Stephen Lockjaw, who is this

• 49:05Jason Schreier?

  kind of embarrassing looking and acting army general who is responsible, almost sort of like an ICE like general who is responsible for like rounding up immigrants and monitoring them and all sorts of other just kind of like police state, almost like fascist in this movie stuff. And his performance, the way he moves and the way he talks and the way he acts is just so insane that it's just, you can't stop watching him. Like, he really steals the movie. And this is a movie with a lot of good performances, but he steals every scene he's in. The way he looks and the way he moves, like his gait in this movie is just so compelling.

• 49:50Jason Schreier?

  You almost have to watch it just to see this performance because yeah, I expect it will be an Oscar winning one. It's almost, it's the kind of transformation that is like reminiscent of Heath Ledger's Joker transformation where you're just watching this and you're like, oh my God, this is another level of, of character performance. And it's almost, it's worth watching the movie just for him. But yeah, very fun movie. I really enjoyed it. Benicio del Toro also steals a bunch of scenes as this kind of like sensei who has some, some kind of, some tricks up his sleeve and very enjoyable moments where like he, he's part of this community of, of Hispanic

• 50:32Jason Schreier?

  immigrants and he's protecting them in a lot of ways. And he, he gets a lot of phone calls and like a lot of, has a lot of conversations with people and they're always speaking to him in Spanish and he's always speaking back to them in English, which is a very realistic depiction of like what it's like for a lot of families where like one person is speaking, like my grandma all the time speaks to me in Hebrew and I'll like respond her in English. It's a very realistic depiction of like some, like multi-generational families where like one person is culturally, or one person's native language is, is different, which I thought was a cool little detail. But yeah, just an extremely fun movie all around, I would say. And Sean Penn is just wild.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really want to see this movie. I'm excited for it.

• 51:16Jason Schreier?

  It's good. It's got a lot of hype and I think the hype is maybe a little overblown. I wasn't like, oh my God, this has changed my life. Like this is not, I didn't watch it and come away being like, this is an all time classic movie or anything like that. But yeah, no, it's extremely fun. It's just like, it's just captivating. It can, it's a little bit long. It's like two hours and 20 minutes, which I think, I think it could have been cut down a little bit, but it's fun. It's just very fun.

• 51:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Yeah, I want to see it. They're showing it in 70 millimeters at the Hollywood Theater here in Portland, and I think that would be a really fun way to see it. That's where I saw Sinners as well. And there's nothing like seeing an original movie with a crowd at the theater. Yeah, who knew? It's like a thing people like to do.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Going to the movies?

• 51:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe they should put out more of those.

• 51:57Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, man. Well, I don't know. Apparently, the box office has been pretty bleak, so I don't know if it's a thing that...

• 52:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, for this? That's too bad. Sinners was a hit, which was nice.

• 52:06Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah. It's like, it had a budget of like a hundred something million, and the box office has been much lower than that. I don't know, I'm not a, not a box office expert.

• 52:15Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess P T. Anderson gets, gets a few bounces, so hopefully he'll, he'll get another shot.

• 52:20Jason Schreier?

  Well, but also, I mean, I think if, if it wins Best Picture, then the, it breaking even at the box office is a little less important, I think, for Hollywood studios.

• 52:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we'll have to see. Matty, what is your one more thing?

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Mine is also a movie, but a much older movie that I had never seen before, and it's called Drop Dead Gorgeous. This is like a cult classic movie about beauty pageant. And the reason I watched this is because it's actually the first movie that Amy Adams was ever in. And I started listening to this podcast called Chasing Amy Adams, which is a very funny podcast title, because they're not watching Chasing Amy, they're just watching every single Amy Adams movie. It's just a joke. And they, so I was like, oh, I want to check out this podcast. I love Amy Adams. It's a delightful podcast. And I had to watch Drop Dead Gorgeous in order to even listen to the show, because I was like, I don't want

• 53:15Speaker 01

  to spoil this for myself. I gotta, I gotta check out the first ever Amy performance. And she's incredible in this. So she was just a young person, like, living in Minnesota. Like, this was not filmed in Hollywood. And she just did the audition and got the role as this. She plays like the kind of slutty parentheses complimentary cheerleader in this movie. She's so funny. She's electric in this film. Just, you can't take your eyes off of her.

• 53:46Kirk Hamilton?

  What, what is Drop Dead Gorgeous, maybe? I bet that some listeners won't even know what it is. So explain what it is.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess I have to. Explain this. So again, it's about a pageant. It's about a beauty pageant, but it is an extremely dark comedy whereby so Kirsten Dunst is a star of this and she's the beauty pageant girl that you're rooting for all along to win. It's clear that she should win.

• 54:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, I was rooting for Denise Richards.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  But Denise Richards is the mean girl, the rich girl in town, daughter of Kirstie Alley, and the two of them play these just unhinged performances. They're the richest family in the small town and they have a complete chokehold on the beauty pageant and Denise Richards is going to win no matter what. And also, all of the other contestants start mysteriously dying in a series of bizarre accidents, many of which seem like they're probably aimed at Kirsten Dunst's character, of course, since she's the favorite. And eventually, you know, it all comes to a head at the end. But you really got to get on board for some dark comedy. And I think at the time, people just didn't understand what this movie was. And I also think in 1999, the

• 54:52Speaker 01

  whole like, women aren't funny thing was more of a cultural mainstay. Whereas watching it now, this movie's hilarious and like every actress in it, including the little baby Kirsten Dunst. And I even liked Denise Richards's performance in this, honestly. She's so weird in this movie.

• 55:08Kirk Hamilton?

  She's great. It's like maybe her best performance.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  I think it kind of is. I they kind of have an argument on the Chasing Amy podcast. Well, not an argument, but like a debate as to whether she's acting badly on purpose at various points. And I would say she is.

• 55:21Kirk Hamilton?

  The fact that she dances with a life sized Christ on the cross.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Like that alone makes this her greatest performance.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  In the talent show. I don't know. It's it's iconic. It's a very funny movie, very weird movie. And Amy Adams is incredible in it. So yeah, drop dead gorgeous. I watched it on some terrible streaming site with ads. It's called like Plex or something, but I'm sure there's better ways to watch it than the way I did. You could probably pay money to rent it and get a better version. But I went with what was there. I recommend it. Really good movie.

• 55:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we actually watched this movie with my nieces when they were in town just recently. We were looking, we kind of watched Clueless. We were looking for some other similar movies. Yeah, I mean, it's it was there were definitely things in it that have not aged well, or that at least feel kind of 90s ish like that people should know that going in. And it's a pretty mean spirited movie. It's presented as a documentary, which I'm not sure if you mentioned.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  That's true. It's a mockumentary. Yeah.

• 56:16Kirk Hamilton?

  I actually saw this movie when it first came out.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 56:18Kirk Hamilton?

  I saw it in theaters. I thought it was very funny, so I don't know about people not getting it. But I really, I thought it was hilarious when I first saw it.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  It apparently did badly at the time. I, I mean, they detail all of that on the podcast, which kind of helped me put it in context.

• 56:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Yeah, it's kind of not fish nor foul, but it is really funny. And I do, yeah, the fact, like, some of the visuals in it, I realized just how memorable it was because I hadn't thought about it in whatever, you know, 20 years or something, 15 years. And, uh, and just some of the visuals in it are so memorable. And some of the lines, it's just a very, a very funny and very Midwestern movie in some ways. So I'm glad that you watched it. It's a weird little cult classic.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:58Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, well, I'm gonna go last. Uh, before I say my one more thing, which is a game, a couple, I just wanted to add a couple of updates. Really just one update.

• 57:05Jason Schreier?

  Oh, here we go. Kirk Hamilton.

• 57:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, a couple of people asked about this in the Discord. So I had mentioned Alien Earth, the FX show, Noah Hawley's new Alien show. That was my one more thing a little while ago. I'd watched the first few episodes and I was like, man, this show is super great. And some people were like, what do you think of it now that it's ended? And I still think it was a pretty fun show, but I do have to say that it's like gone from, it's an A, this is gonna be the best thing ever, which is how I felt after the first couple of episodes, to, okay, there was some kind of silly stuff in there. It was still fun. Timothy Olyphant was great. This had some cool ideas. It was a fun, kind of interesting, weird show, but also pretty goofy at times. And there were things about it where I was like, I don't know if I would have made that choice. Um, so by the end, I was a little more like, this is maybe a B for me.

• 57:52Kirk Hamilton?

  So I just wanted to mention that as a kind of complete, to give a complete opinion of the show, since I had only seen a few episodes when I made it my one more thing. Um, and figured I would mention that for anyone else who, who watched the show. Fun show to talk about, though. There's a lot, a lot going on in it. And, uh, you know, I like shows that take big swings. So anyways, my one more thing is, uh, the new game from Bennett Foddy and a couple other developers called Baby Steps, which I'm sure some of our listeners will have heard of and some might not have. Uh, I wound up playing this game with a friend of mine who, he was actually over to just watch some movies and hang out. And then we didn't have time to watch movies for reasons he had to go take care of something. So we had a little bit of time and I'm like, well, I had this game Baby Steps installed. You want, you want to try it?

• 58:37Kirk Hamilton?

  And so we put it on and had so much fun, um, playing it together. So. Bennett Foddy, the, I think, principal architect of Baby Steps is best known as the creator of Quop and Getting Over It. He makes games that I have seen referred to as fumblecore. The idea is that they are very, very difficult to play, and that's kind of-

• 58:58Speaker 01

  The point.

• 58:59Kirk Hamilton?

  That's the game. Like, that's, yeah, that's the point. That's what makes them funny.

• 59:02Jason Schreier?

  Well, specifically difficult to walk, right?

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:04Jason Schreier?

  Like, that's always the concept.

• 59:06Kirk Hamilton?

  To move.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  The thing that's hard in the game is to move at all.

• 59:09Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, movement is difficult.

• 59:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And so Baby Steps really explores that, I think, in a way that is so interesting and so fun. I've taken to just watching videos of this game now, because it's so much fun to watch. So in Baby Steps, there is actually a narrative, which was not something that I realized.

• 59:25Jason Schreier?

  I know. I noticed you said "fun to watch" and not "fun to play," but yes, go ahead.

• 59:30Kirk Hamilton?

  No, it is, but it's fun to play, and it's also fun to watch, and that actually, like, leads to the best way to play it, which I'll get into in a second.

• 59:35Jason Schreier?

  Okay.

• 59:36Kirk Hamilton?

  So first off, this game has a story. I have not actually really played Getting Over It. I played some Quop. I don't remember that having a story.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  It doesn't really.

• 59:45Kirk Hamilton?

  But in Baby Steps, it starts out so it's, I think that all the, all the dialogue was improvised. I believe I, I saw that somewhere or something. It has a very improvisational vibe to it. I think Foddy performed a lot of it. He's Australian, and so there's like this, it has this kind of low-key absurd Australian energy that actually feels to me like Flight of the Conchords. I know that that's a Kiwi show, and I'm sure that some New Zealanders would get very upset at me sort of conflating the two things, but it has that kind of energy of a, a kind of muttered, low-key, awkward, and unpredictable comedy that I really, actually, the writing is very funny. I don't kind of want to explain too much of it, because it's fun to be taken by surprise by it to start it and to have

• 1:00:27Kirk Hamilton?

  these cutscenes playing out that are just incredibly bizarre and very funny. But through a series of events, a guy who is just like lying around in his sweatsuit in his parents' basement suddenly wakes up at the bottom of this huge hill that looks a bit like the Australian Outback. This, it's more of a mountain, covered in trails and obstacles and strange things. You know, really, early on, you find like carnival, pieces of a carnival are like buried in the woods, you know, a- Carousel, like the horses from a carousel are sticking up everywhere. And what it amounts to is a gigantic obstacle course that you would have to, you know, it looks almost like a national park, like a bunch of trails and weird steps and stairs and ledges and bridges and all kinds of other things that you would have to cross.

• 1:01:10Kirk Hamilton?

  So, okay, sure, you have to, I guess, get to the top of the mountain. And then you realize that you can't just walk like you'd walk in a normal video game. And that's what makes baby steps, baby steps. So you, let me see if I can get this right. By pressing the right trigger, you lift your right foot. By pressing the left trigger, you lift your left foot. If you push the stick forward, your character will lean forward and his momentum will carry him on to whichever foot is picked up if you lean into it correctly. And if you don't, you'll just lean forward until you fall down on the ground. So immediately, if you play a lot of video games, the first thing you will do is just fall on your face because in most video games, you just press the left stick forward and you walk forward and like, that's just how it works. Like, your guy takes care of the walking, I'm just telling him which direction to go.

• 1:01:55Kirk Hamilton?

  In this game, that is absolutely not the case. And the whole game is just, can you figure out how to make this guy walk like 10 feet in a straight line, let alone up this crazy obstacle course of a mountain? And it's really, really funny. It's incredibly, I mean, it's not frustrating, what's the word? You will be constantly flummoxed by the, the, the just mechanical strangeness of it because it's so unlike any video game. It just is this totally analog, really strange thing where you're like, watching this character who is hilariously animated and really well animated. He moves his arms, he tries to catch his balance, but he's taking these huge lunges and then tiny little steps and then he's slipping to the side and falling.

• 1:02:38Kirk Hamilton?

  And of course, you never take fall damage or anything, so you're basically like a, just a big rubber man kind of flopping around. And because he's this kind of bigger guy in a sweatsuit and there's like jiggle physics, so he's like just flopping around and he looks really, really funny. And he's this very hapless character in the cutscenes. The whole feeling of it is basically just this, of this hapless comedy that you're playing a part in. And I have to say to the like, watching versus playing, playing this with my friend Sam, and handing the controller back and forth, and just laughing and laughing and laughing as we watched one another try to just, okay, see if you can get to the top of that rock, and then just falling and, you know, all kinds of horrible things are happening to this guy on screen, and then handing the controller back, okay, I'm gonna try it. And then like, wait,

• 1:03:21Kirk Hamilton?

  wait, wait, no, don't do that, like, do that. Like, the, the sharing of the controller and of the experience totally made it for us. Like, playing it by myself, it would have been funny, I would have been laughing, but playing this with a friend is really the way to go. If, if you can, if you wanna do that, like, if you have a friend over, it would be fun. I'd say older kids would probably think this was really funny, too. Bing, Kirk here, just updating this episode because, of course, I had not played a whole bunch of Baby Steps when I made it my one more thing and had this conversation, but it turns out, this game actually has some fairly adult content and some of the humor and stuff that I think a lot of parents wouldn't think was appropriate for kids. And, you know, it's just stuff that I hadn't seen yet. So I just wanted to add that note when I'm

• 1:04:04Kirk Hamilton?

  making this recommendation. You know, I think you should look into what is in the game before you decide if it's something that you think would be appropriate to share with your kids. So, okay, just wanted to mention that. Back to the show. Bing. But really, playing with your friends is the way to go. And I, I found that very enjoyable. This would also totally just be a fun game to watch, like, an entertaining streamer play. You could just, like, watch someone just fail in it. It's a great game to share. I think that is really how I would describe it. And I have not gotten very far, but man, I, I really like what I've played.

• 1:04:35Jason Schreier?

  Given the streaming potential and given what I've seen, I think his other, like, Getting Over, it was pretty popular on streams. I'm surprised I haven't seen this discussed more, maybe because it came out in the thick of, like, September with all these other games.

• 1:04:47Kirk Hamilton?

  I wonder if that's it. It really was me just grabbing it in this one moment, where in my gaming time, you know, it's, I'm playing Hades 2, I'm playing Ghost of the Otre, I, like, for a long time was finishing Silksong, like, there were so many other things taking my attention that I had it downloaded and I was like, I do wanna play that. Our friend Russ Frustick is, like, wild about it and has been telling me about it. He loves these games. And I think he's gotten really far and played a lot of it. And he kept telling me, oh, man, you gotta play it, it's so great. So I- Had it in my head, but it was very hard to find the time. And yeah, it was just being in that circumstance that made it work so well. So I would have to think that is not helping it, that there are all these other games competing for people's attention. But um, yeah, it's a, it's a lot of fun. I um, I can only imagine how hard it would be to get through the whole game. But also I think it's a skill you can learn.

• 1:05:32Kirk Hamilton?

  It isn't, you know, you, you, I got better the more I played it. Like, and there are times where you're really in the groove, especially going uphill. Cause you lean into the hill and the, like, your momentum kind of carries you. And I was like, oh my God, I'm just walking. Like, I'm doing it, I'm doing it. Oh, then I fall. You know, and um, and yeah. And you can really see like in Death Stranding in particular, you can see the influence that Fadi has had. I don't know whether Kojima played one of his earlier games, but there is a little bit of that there. When you're playing Death Stranding, it's that same feeling where like, the act of traversal becomes interesting. Because they've added gameplay and friction to it. And I really like that. Like, I think, you know, I mean, the Zelda games, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have some of that as well. Where just getting around sort of involves you a little bit more than a game like, for example, Ghost of Yotay.

• 1:06:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Where you're kind of just, okay, I gotta go this way. I'm gonna get on the horse and just press the button. There's not a whole lot for me to do, other than like, collect herbs and stuff. It's not to say one is better than the other, but it is cool to see um, other game developers experimenting with stuff. If not on the level of Baby Steps, at least in that direction. And that's, that's pretty cool.

• 1:06:32Jason Schreier?

  A game where you can't just turn off your brain. You have to be actively participating.

• 1:06:37Kirk Hamilton?

  No, very much not. Yeah, and you really have to, and that physical part of your brain, the like analog, like, how did my legs need to move? Which is um-

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Something we never think about, really. I, I don't think about it.

• 1:06:49Jason Schreier?

  Well, we're fortunate to not have to think about it.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:06:51Kirk Hamilton?

  It makes me think of the VR, um, I Think You Should Leave sketch where he puts on the VR headset and he's like, "How do you work the body?" And he can't breathe.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:59Kirk Hamilton?

  "How do you, how do you work the body?"

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  How do you, he like, forgets to breathe, as I recall.

• 1:07:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, right. They're like, "Take the headset off him," and he almost dies. This, you will feel kind of like, uh, Tim Robinson in that sketch in this. You'll be like, "How do you, how do you work the legs?"

• 1:07:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Falls down a mountain again and again and again.

• 1:07:15Jason Schreier?

  So good, so good.

• 1:07:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's pretty funny. Uh, all right, well, that is, uh, yeah, that is another episode of Triple Click. Congratulations to us. We did it.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Did it again. Made another one. Congrats all around.

• 1:07:26Jason Schreier?

  Really patting yourself on the back there. Yeah, congrats.

• 1:07:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Really proud of us.

• 1:07:29Jason Schreier?

  That's Obama giving the medal to himself.

• 1:07:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, we really deserve a medal for this podcasting performance. Thank you all, as always, so much for listening. Our Silk Song Beans cast will be out ASAP, possibly by the end of the week. We'll see, but within the first few days of October. And of course, thanks to all of you who are members and will get to check that out. And yeah, we'll see you all next week for another episode of Triple Click.

• 1:07:52Jason Schreier?

  See you next time.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:07:57Kirk 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.

• 1:08:54Kirk Hamilton?

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