Triple Play: Resident Evil Requiem

The Triple Click gang pull out their blood harvesters for a trip into Resident Evil Requiem, the latest entry in the longrunning horror-action-goofball series. They talk about playing as Grace and Leon, exploring the care center and all the shades of Resident Evil 2.

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

• 0:03Kirk Hamilton?

  I know the S in Leon S. Kennedy stands for Scott, but I think it should stand for sick, both because he is sick and because he has so many sick moods. Also, a lot of sick burns. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about the terrific new game Resident Evil Requiem, a game filled with big scares, buckets of blood, and a very hot uncle. 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.

• 0:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello, my friends.

• 0:37Jason Schreier?

  It's good to see you both.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  We're here again.

• 0:39Jason Schreier?

  As always.

• 0:39Kirk Hamilton?

  It is nice to see you both. It is, it is nice to once again face the awful misdeeds of the Umbrella Corporation, the long legacy of the T-virus together.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  They keep doing it. They simply keep creating horrifying viruses that mutate people under the auspices of helping them. Why?

• 0:59Kirk Hamilton?

  We just can't leave the legacy of Umbrella behind. Fortunately, there are three of us to face such horrors together. And the reason for that is that so many listeners support us and allow us to stay together every week to make this show. Triple Click is a listener-supported podcast. We love our listeners. We love our Maximum Fun members who support us. If you would like to support the show, go to maximumfun.org/join. Sign up to become a member of Maximum Fun and get access to monthly bonus episodes of Triple Click, which we've been making since we started, six years ago, almost six years ago, which is a lot of bonus episodes. You can listen to the newest one, which is about The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, an incredibly named documentary and honestly also a very entertaining,

• 1:44Kirk Hamilton?

  if somewhat flawed documentary that we had a great time talking about. Had a really good time making that episode with the two of you. And that just went up. And actually, this month, we're going to also be releasing a Beans Cast where we spill the beans about the game that we'll be talking about today, Resident Evil 9, Resident Evil Requiem. So, we will not be getting super into spoilers in this episode, but there will be another discussion with all of the spoilers and everything that happens in that game in the bonus feed a little bit later this month. So anyways, that's MaximumFun.org/join. Become a member and support Triple Click. Okay, Matty, I kind of already gave it away, but what are we talking about today?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  We are talking about Resident Evil Requiem, or Resident Evil 9, RE9, as I've been nicknaming it. It is the latest Resident Evil game from Capcom, just came out. The three of us have all been playing it. This game has two protagonists in it. It has the diminutive Grace Ashcroft, tiny blonde, theoretically an FBI agent, but doesn't seem very equipped to handle the horrors of a typical Resident Evil game, which includes zombies and really big guys that are also technically zombies. And the other protagonist is, of course,

• 3:05Speaker 01

  returning, Leon Kennedy. He's older, but he's just as beautiful as always. And I would say Grace is the horror section of the game, and Leon is the action section of the game. You can switch between first and third person in this game, which is really cool. I played all of it in third person, because I am a scaredy cat, but we're going to talk about what is and isn't scary in this game, and how much each of us played. For myself, I know this game apparently isn't that long, but I've been collecting everything and having a great time, so I'm really taking my time with it. According to my friend Kirk, who beat the game, I'm probably about three quarters of the way through it. But I want

• 3:50Speaker 01

  to hear from you two about how much you've played and what you think of the game. Jason, why don't you go first?

• 3:57Jason Schreier?

  First of all, to be fair to Grace, she does know how to hold the flashlight and the gun like at the same time, which I think it requires some good.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  That's a Resident Evil protagonist requirement is to hold a flashlight and a gun.

• 4:10Kirk Hamilton?

  She attended firearms training at Quantico at some point and she remembered some of that.

• 4:15Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so maybe, maybe she is an FBI agent after all. Um, yeah, I am really enjoying this game. I just finished the first kind of big chunk, chunk of Grace. Um, and so I just got to the, to Leon and Meattic is where I left off. Um, I am glad that Kirk made us play Resident Evil 2 a couple of years ago because that is a very, very useful reference point for this chunk of the game that I just played, which is, which is very much a mirror of the first part of Resident Evil 2. And that happened to be my favorite part of Resident Evil 2. I wonder if it will also be my favorite part of Requiem. I don't know, but I did enjoy it

• 4:59Jason Schreier?

  quite a bit. Um, I, I really dig the structure of like getting a key card that lets you access one part of the, the giant mansion slash manor that you're slash care ward that you're exploring. And you find some zombies, you find some items, you try to turn a wheel, it breaks off. So you gotta go find a wrench to, to open the door instead. Along the way you're getting coins, you can spend those on upgrades. Uh, the rhythms are just great. I just really am enjoying it and looking forward to seeing how things switch up, uh, as I keep playing, cause I assume they will.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Kirk, how about you?

• 5:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I love this game. I have finished it. I finished it last night. Uh, it took me, the gameplay clock said 12 hours. My Steam clock said like 16, so maybe the truth lies somewhere in between, but it felt like more than 12 hours, but it was a real roller coaster ride with a ton of variety and just a lot of really exciting, different scenarios.

• 5:59Jason Schreier?

  I think I read somewhere that the game clock is a little off on this, cause I saw other people talking about that as well.

• 6:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, 12 seems low, unless you're really hustling.

• 6:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I tend to trust game clocks over the Steam clock, but in this case, it just felt a little bit low. I would, it just felt like more like a 14, 15 hour game to me. So anyways, I finished it. I really liked it. Um, I think. I've played a lot of these games at this point. I have not played every Resident Evil game, but I've played a bunch of them. And it seems to me that Capcom has been trying to achieve the kind of balance that this game finally does achieve for a really long time. And I do think that this is the closest they've come to nailing it between Grace as the horror character, Leon as the action character, Grace in first person being the horror character, which is in line with Resident Evil 7 and Village, Ethan, of course, being

• 6:50Kirk Hamilton?

  a first person protagonist in those games, then Leon being third person and more action-focused, much like, well, Resident Evil 2, but also particularly Resident Evil 4, because the Leon sections are designed much more like Resident Evil 4 action sequences. So it's kind of got the best of both worlds. And to me, my two favorite Resident Evil games that I've played are Resident Evil 2 Remake, which, yes, I made the two of you play when I won the predictions bet, and also Resident Evil 4, which just got remade last year. So this is really them giving the people what they want. And by the people, I mean me. And by what they want, I mean more Resident Evil 2 Remake and more Resident Evil 4. So I

• 7:31Kirk Hamilton?

  really like it. I like the balance of gameplay. I like the pacing. I think that they've really got the pacing nailed. I felt like totally engaged the entire time I was playing this game. I just, it never stayed in one mode for too long, and it punctuated each game style with the opposing game style. I think just masterfully. I think it really carries you along. It's such a playable game. It's just a big, long roller coaster ride, which is to say, there are times when you're slowly climbing, there are times when you're flying downward. You know, it's kind of got both of those in equal measure. And then last thought, without getting too into story specifics, first of all, I found the story to be pretty cool, and I found the kind of conclusion of it to be more interesting and subtle,

• 8:16Kirk Hamilton?

  and just easier to follow than I was expecting. I've never actually quite had that experience from Resident Evil.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  They can be very hard to follow.

• 8:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Where I'm like, oh, oh, cool. You know, Tricell and Umbrella and the connections, and I know what all this means. Like, that stuff is still there, but actually... The denouement of this story, again with no spoilers at all, was surprising and subtle in a way that I was not expecting, that I really enjoyed. And that tied a lot of things together for me in ways that I liked. And I will also say, I am very glad that we played through Resident Evil 2 Remake. I second that feeling, Jason. I mean, the whole thing really is so in conversation with that game in particular. And I thought that was really cool. And it was just nice because I love that game. So it was fun to be playing a kind of fan service-y game, like a later entry in a long-running franchise that is very fan service-y.

• 9:07Kirk Hamilton?

  And yet to feel for maybe the first time, I am the fan who is being serviced. Like, I'm getting the references. And I really enjoyed that, too.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, same. And Jason, again, without spoiling it, I feel like that Resident Evil 2 stuff that you liked and cited here is really present in the entire game in various ways that I really enjoyed. And also was like, okay, I'm so glad we played this game. So just to be hyper-clear, although I don't think the listener is probably that confused, we're talking specifically about Resident Evil 2 Remake. That's the version of the game we played. We didn't go all the way back to the 90s and play the original, original Resident Evil 2. Although I suppose we could have done that. But that isn't really the game that this one is harkening back to, other than in just sort of grander theme and concept of the way that Resident Evils work.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  We're talking about the modern-day Resident Evils, where there is often these two protagonists switching back and forth, but there's a real emphasis on first or third-person play. And there's been kind of like a debate in the fandom, and I think among us as well, as to how scary should Resident Evil be and how scary is it? And I think the different games have, the different game developers over the years have dealt with that. And Resident Evil 4, I would say, I don't think it's a controversy to say it's one of the least scary Resident Evils. It's a game where you feel really powerful. And playing as Leon in this game, I felt refreshingly powerful most of the time. He can literally pick up a chainsaw.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  I think the first time you get him, that's really, what's better than just sawing a zombie in half? What feels better than that? Whereas Grace, in addition to being physically really small, is...

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Herself terrified for the entire game and never really gets over what's happening to her, which is, I think, something that not everyone likes about her, but that I actually really like. I like that. I like how competent Claire Redfield is. We talked about that in our Resident Evil 2 chat. It's fun to play as somebody who knows how to use a gun and, you know, has, has her little sarcastic one-liners with zombies and is like, this again. Like, that is, that can be kind of empowering. But playing as a female character in a horror game who is like, what the fuck is going on? Like, every time she turns around is also kind of great. And I feel like I haven't played a game in recent memory where

• 11:32Speaker 01

  the character seems as stressed out as they reasonably should be given what is happening to them.

• 11:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I, I guess, I am sometimes a little bit bugged by Grace's whimpering in particular. I think there are just times where her breathing, you know, you hear her making these keening sounds as though she is very scared. That is incredibly effective. It works on me, especially playing in first person. You're really embodying Grace. And so you're, you're hearing her breathing, which, you know, is just such a, like, physical embodiment of a person. It makes you feel like you're her. And she's so freaked out, you know? She's, she's audibly kind of crying to herself. She's so scared. That is very effective. There does come a point, and this is even part of the way through the, the Rhodes Hills section. This is the chronic care center that Jason mentioned that kind of echoes the design of the, of the police station

• 12:22Kirk Hamilton?

  in Resident Evil 2. There comes a point where she has murdered 25 zombies, like, really effectively. She's carrying this revolver, the Requiem, this massive magnum that Leon gives her in the beginning, the best weapon in the game, one of the coolest things in the game. She's carrying this gun the size of a howitzer. She has, like, blown the face off of zombies 10 feet taller than her. There did come a point where I was like, could she maybe be just feeling the adrenaline a little more and, like, be a little bit less freaked out? I think, and it's, it's not really like, I think Grace's story is okay, and it's not really to knock her character development exactly. I think they did miss a couple of opportunities to underline the fact- That she is coming into her own. And it's like really little stuff, but I think that could have been cool. Because Grace is like an analyst.

• 13:07Kirk Hamilton?

  And I was joking with a lot of friends while I was playing this, saying kind of, how is Grace an FBI agent? She seems wholly unprepared for this. But the idea going in is that she's a really brilliant analyst. She can kind of connect the dots and look at a bunch of different things. And she sits at a computer screen and is not really a field agent. So it's kind of believable. But I don't know, there's a point at which kind of earlier, earlier on, Leon is kind of picking through the aftermath of the part that you just played through as Grace. And I really wish that there had been one line from Leon where he had acknowledged the fact that there are dead zombies everywhere. And he doesn't know who did it and just said something like, man, someone really wrecked shit in here. I wonder who that was to just let you see Grace's actions through someone else's eyes. Like, I did want a little bit more of that for her.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be cool.

• 13:54Jason Schreier?

  Is it possible to beat the game or beat that section without killing any zombies?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  That's what I wonder. I wonder if that might be part of why.

• 14:00Jason Schreier?

  I think maybe they wouldn't be able to do that if that's an option.

• 14:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I had the same thought. I think it'd be possible to have that line trigger only if you had killed a certain number of zombies. Not so hard to do. You can do a lot of running around. And that's something I love about the early goings with Grace. You start out with the requiem and one bullet in it, which is such a cool decision. And then you have to make your way through a pretty harrowing gauntlet before the first save room of just, there are zombies everywhere. Grace is completely freaked out and you have a bullet. And I wound up really making that bullet count. And it was one of the most memorable sequences of the game for me. So, so yes, it is true that you're doing a lot of scrapping and kind of sneaking and running. And I suppose there could be a version of it where Leon comes in, there's still a bunch of zombies.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:41Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I had a moment like that too, where I went into full on survival mode because I was out of ammo, out of healing items, had to like scrape and run away and loop around to get zombies like in one place. And, and so I could escape out the door at the other way. It was, it was fun times. I actually didn't even use the requiem for that section. I put it away and was just using the pistol because the requiem ammo is so limited and so rare that it wasn't even worth using at that point. Maybe I'll take it back out later if I have a chance.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's worth it for special occasions and that's it. And I think that that. Survival horror aspect of Graces sections is really effective. You always feel like you're scrambling. I mean, again, I assume we're playing on normal difficulty or above. I don't know how it is otherwise. But I think that's all by design and it's very effective. And it's part of what's scary about the game is that you don't really, or at least I often don't feel like I have enough ammo to kill every zombie. And so instead I have to make some decisions about which ones are in bottlenecks where I'm like, well, this one's going to be really annoying to avoid. So I'm going to try to make this one happen. Also, I feel like the enemy design in this game

• 15:53Speaker 01

  is pretty good in that the zombies will actually follow you a fair amount, which I don't recall, but I don't think happened as much in. I mean, Kirk, you've played more of the kind of latter day Resident Evil, so maybe this is true in seven and eight. But in RE2, the zombies were pretty, pretty dumb. They would just stand there most of the time. And so Claire could kind of go around them and be fairly safe if she didn't have ammo at the time. Whereas in this game, they'll follow you. And also very similar to RE2 and similar to like other certain Resident Evil games that do this, there are a couple of characters and one notable character who is like a big zombie that follows you repeatedly during Big jungas.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Well, there's chunk, but I'm referring to the girl as she is eventually called. Where she, it's a character that just keeps showing up again and again, and you have to either learn their patterns or figure out what triggers them showing up. And you just have to avoid this, this character. It's, it's Mr. X or the tyrant in Resident Evil 2 remake. And this was the character that was very harrowing for me personally in playing that game. And then I was like, this, this game sucks now. As soon as this guy is here, it's too hard. I feel like that was me training for dealing with this game because I felt so much more emotionally prepared for it.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Or at least that's one explanation that I have for how I've approached this because I didn't feel as scared of, of playing this game. As I did when I was playing Resident Evil 2 Remake where I was like, how am I gonna deal with this? This guy's following me everywhere, whereas I have gotten through massive chunks of RE9 with this character following me and I've just been like, I'm going tactical mode. I'm just fully embracing tactics. I'm thinking about the map. I'm thinking about where to go and that is at the forefront of my mind.

• 17:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Expert gamer.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  I guess, I don't know. I'm doing some human psychology on myself.

• 17:54Kirk Hamilton?

  I think some of that is game design too. The, the approach to special type zombies in Requiem, I think is really cool and reflects another kind of evolution for Capcom. Because Mr. X just shows up and he follows you everywhere. He just is in the main level that you're in with you. Like he's in the whole police station and there are whole chunks of that game where you just never know when he's gonna turn up while you're kind of just going around the levels you've been exploring and trying to do the same stuff that you were doing before. It's just now this huge dude in a trench coat might walk in and ruin your whole day. That's not exactly how Requiem works and I think that that kind of reflects that, the way that you feel a little more in control, Matty, the way that you're describing.

• 18:36Kirk Hamilton?

  I felt that way too and that's because I think of a smart way that this game is designed and it's a little bit of a difference compared to Resident Evil 2. So, yeah, there's this kind of variety of different special zombie types, right? There's, there's the chef, I think he's called.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's just called the chef.

• 18:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Who's a big guy that you run into early and he is pretty unkillable for you for a while. He'll really get you and if he catches you, it's kind of a one-hit kill. If he gets grace and he's big and he's scary, but he's slow, but he does follow you around the whole like west wing of the building. And so it's that initial feeling of, oh man, there's this big dude and I just have to get away from him. I have to fake him out. And he feels a little bit like Mr. X, like a slower moving tyrant. And then there are a couple of other special types that are pretty cool. These like banshees that scream at you and kind of paralyze you and take a bunch of bullets to kill. There are these guys who get pissed off if you make noise. And it took me a while to realize that this is a special zombie type and they're roaming the level. And so- When you break something, you'll hear someone way off in the distance be like,

• 19:38Jason Schreier?

  Quiet.

• 19:39Kirk Hamilton?

  What is that? Shut up. Like, ah, what was that noise? And then you're like, what was that noise? And then next thing you know, this dude has like run into the room with you. And you're in a fight, even though maybe you were sneaking past some unaware zombies. So that's another kind of cool special zombie. He's not as tough. He doesn't want to kill you. But he does mean that you have to kind of modulate how you're playing.

• 19:57Jason Schreier?

  The lights ones too, who don't want the lights turned on. Yeah.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'll turn off the lights if they can get away with it.

• 20:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. So there's, it's cool that they've designed these kind of different types of zombies. And then there's, you know, there's the huge guy over in the east wing.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  I hate this guy.

• 20:15Kirk Hamilton?

  He reminds me of the baby from Village.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I looked up the baby because I saw people comparing it to the baby. I think the baby's a lot scarier looking, but we don't, we don't need to drill down into scary contests.

• 20:25Kirk Hamilton?

  The baby has a better build up, I guess. The setup to the baby is so good and the first reveal is so good. And then there's the girl and the girl is kind of, was marketed heavily for this game. Is a big stand up and I believe, I think it was just a joke about a developer basically saying that too many people wanted to have sex with Lady Dimitresk, the giant lady who chases you around in Village. And so they tried to design a character that nobody would want to have sex with.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  I don't know if a developer's ever officially said that, but it does kind of feel that way, doesn't it? Or they're like, what if we made a really tall lady, but she's so heavily and horribly mutated and her teeth, it's like double rows of super sharp teeth and like her skull's been like caved in. Like you, they just want to make a tall lady nobody can be attracted to. They challenged themselves.

• 21:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Now, Rule 34 being what it is, I am not certain that they achieved their goal.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  You can't be done.

• 21:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, there's a lid for every pot, but, um, but at the same time, she is very scary. And then she is dropped on you usually in these discreet sections. They do feel kind of like the, uh, you know, the big castle or whatever it was in Village where you're dealing with Lady Dimitresk, but it's only in this one part of the game. And a lot of times it's these kind of set piece sequences as well, where the girl is chasing you, but you really only have to do one or two things before moving on. There's one exception to that where it's a kind of more extended level, but it's not that feeling of Mr. X where like suddenly the game. Just transforms and now you're just being hounded by this guy.

• 21:49Jason Schreier?

  It's yeah, that's a better balance. And yeah, it's funny. She was and I played this game at Summer Games Fest last year when they announced it and she was in that demo. The demo is basically that first part of the game where you see her and you have to bring her into the light to to to kind of knock her out. Can we talk about Victor Gideon? Tell me if you guys have this thought because I think that Victor Gideon is channeling Heath Ledger's Joker. Like he acts and talks like the Joker. Yeah. And like the way he talks, the way his mannerisms are. I don't know. Next time you guys play the game, watch out for that or like look for footage of that and see if you feel the same way because that was my immediate first thought.

• 22:30Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I totally agree. He has like stitches on his face and he's always licking his lips and he has this kind of mannered way of speaking. Yeah, for sure. And he is a kind of jokery character overall, like in his worldview and his sort of the shortcomings in his understandings of the world.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we're referring to the major villain of the game. I would say there's certainly other villains who appear who are kind of human villains in the sense that they can have actual conversations with you on like like actually, you know, people who may have been mutated in some way, but they can still carry on a conversation with Grace early on. Victor is kind of the main one of these who shows up the most in the game. And he is, he he's so goofy. I really like how goofy he is. This to me is also like a return to form for Resident Evil for me and that the villain is just fully heightened, corny.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  At no point did I feel like we were set in our real world. Like when Victor is on screen, we are in just a really silly world. We're in a world where a guy is just saying absurd lines to you that and kind of talking to himself a lot. Like when you when you see scenes with him, he might be just muttering something ominous to himself with like a big zoom in on just his lips. Like that's the kind of thing I like to see in a Resident Evil game is just pure, pure goofiness. But yeah, he also has um.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Kind of like shades of like a Nemesis style character because he has like fully white skin and like, uh, kind of like the Frankensteinian patchwork of stitches on him. He's wearing like a big coat, like a Nemesis or a Mr. X would wear. So you kind of imagine like, oh, is this character going to stalk me in the same way? But he's pretty erudite. He, he can, he has motivations and who, who knows what they are. Unlike Kirk, I haven't beaten the game. So I'm excited to hear that the motivations will make some sort of sense because I had no expectation of that at all.

• 24:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I like him too. I like that there's an antagonist like this, you know? One of my favorite parts of any of these recent games is the sequence in Resident Evil 7, when one of the siblings of the family locks you in this kind of saw maze. And then suddenly, for a little while, he's kind of your antagonist. He's on the radio talking shit to you as you try to solve these puzzles. And there actually isn't that, always that strong of a sense of having an antagonist like this. Like even is it the Bakers? I think Jack Baker was the patriarch of that family in 7. He's kind of the dad who's hunting you around the big, or who's chasing you around, the big scary guy. But he's not really the main antagonist of the game. There are always bigger forces at work. And then in

• 25:15Kirk Hamilton?

  these other games, at least the ones that I've played, in 4, there are villains in that game, but they aren't established early on as much. In 2, certainly not. You know, the, the Berkens, I mean, they don't even really kind of make their appearance until pretty later, late in the game. So the fact that there's this real weirdo, you know, puppet master established really early on, I think kind of makes for a fun dynamic. It's, I think it's similar to Wesker, I guess, in RE5, which I didn't play all the way through that game or really like it. So I think that that kind of the, the higher key villain works well for this game and does feel like something that they lifted from maybe different games than the, than RE2 and RE4.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would agree. I think one of the few things about RE5 that is fun at all is Wesker's monologues in the back half of the game because he's such a goofy, over the top, just posturing guy. And that similarity is, is present in, in the kind of human-esque villains in this game, which is something that I also feels like a return to form to me. So Jason, I feel like when we were playing RE2, you didn't think it was scary, right? Am I remembering that correctly? What do you think about this game? And is it, does it scare you at all? And what, if not, why not?

• 26:29Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't really get scared from games or really much of anything. And I'm not saying that in a macho

• 26:39Speaker 01

  No, I don't interpret it that way.

• 26:40Jason Schreier?

  way. It's more that it just doesn't have that impact on me. Like, I don't know. I'll be sitting there being like, oh, this is creepy. This is like spooking me out. Or like, oh, there's a jump scare here. That was surprising. And I'll kind of like, I'll be like, ah, there was a jump scare. But I don't really feel the same sort of adrenaline. I don't know, which is why like, I've never been into horror movies or, or anything like that. It's, to me, it's more gross than anything. Like, there's a lot of just gross stuff. Like, at the very beginning of the game where you see that flashback to Claire's mom, or sorry, Grace's mom, Alyssa getting shanked in the throat. It's friggin' gross. There's just blood everywhere and all sorts of other just kind of grossness

• 27:22Jason Schreier?

  that has me just like sitting over with a disgusted face on. But scariness, no, not so much other than like the jump scares.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Do you still feel like it does feel really different to play Grace and Leon, though? And do you have a preference or you kind of feel like they're well balanced?

• 27:38Jason Schreier?

  I haven't, that's a question for Kirk and you, because I haven't played enough of Leon. Yeah, because I just started in the attic. I played for like a second and I saw that big Chungus was back in the attic and I could shoot him with a shotgun and stuff. But like, I haven't gotten to play through the real proper Leon section yet, which I'm looking forward to. And we could talk more about, or I can, I'll share more thoughts about once I've done it for our Beans cast. But you guys tell me, I mean, what's, are those sections more, more RE4?

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think we can speak to something that you've already seen, which is Leon is older now and he has this different attitude. I mean, I think you probably remember the version of Leon who's like the rookie cop and like sees all of his welcome letters at the police station and he's a little baby. And like comparing that Leon with this Leon is probably kind of fun. I think it's fun to see not just physically how much he's changed, but how at this point, his attitude is so, he's so dead inside. And perhaps figuratively, that's part of what's intended by all of this. And I really enjoyed that characterization of him. He's also much funnier in this game. I would say it continues to be pretty corny writing, but I laughed.

• 28:50Jason Schreier?

  At one point, he's, he literally says the line that Bojack is always making fun of. He's like, well, that went well, which is, I think the, the, the whole, like in Bojack Horseman in the animated show, where he does the horse in a round skets, it's like the, the parody of like the sitcom one liner. And this is 2026 and we have the unironic, that went well.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, he does have some, well, that just happened-esque lines in this game, but I, I think he deserves them. He's been doing this for what 30 years? If anyone's allowed to do it, it's Leon.

• 29:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Leon works for me in this game. He's never been my favorite character. And I think there's actually a compelling argument that it should have been Jill and not Leon in this game. That we can maybe talk about more in the Beans Cast, but I do think I've read that argument in a few different places that take. And I have to say, I think there's something to it. It's an interesting and a good argument. Even though Leon, of course, was an essential part of Resident Evil 2 and this game is very much in conversation with that game. Having Jill be the action character would have been really cool. That said, I think they made a smart call by having Leon be sick. And we know he's sick because he gets infected with the T virus. Well, I think at various points, he's been bit or he's been infected.

• 30:02Kirk Hamilton?

  So he's kind of slowly dying and that adds this nice layer of grit to the performance and to his overall affect. And that's like an important part of his character. Over the course of this game, he really starts to feel like Solid Snake to me. There are points in this game that really start to feel like Metal Gear. Where it just, he moves his armor, the way that he looks, he kind of just moves like Solid Snake. And then he's in these scenarios that are very kind of Metal Gear. And I was laughing at just how similar that feels, that he's now this, you know, weathered, grizzled old soldier, trying to just make good and save, maybe just save one more person. And it just has a very Metal Gear feeling to it, which I really enjoyed actually.

• 30:44Kirk Hamilton?

  And given that I find the Resident Evil world as kind of labyrinthine as it is, the lore. And the backstory, I do find it able like decipherable in a way that I've never found Metal Gear decipherable. So fitting a character with that kind of, you know, Solid Snake archetype into a world that I can actually follow really works for me. And it wound up making me like Leon a lot by the end of this game. This is actually probably the most I've liked Leon in any game, even though I've loved the two Leon games that I played, RE2 and RE4. Leon himself in those games is like not the draw for me. In this game, I actually really did come to like him by the end.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I totally agree about Snake despite having almost no Metal Gear familiarity. Even I felt that way at various points about him and was like, oh, that's like an interesting influence. But yeah, he's such an action guy compared to Grace that in some ways it feels like I'm playing a different game. Not a bad thing because it's nice to have a break from Grace, but the stuff in Grace's sections that I don't think is as strong in Leon's, although they do eventually give him some of this, is the puzzle solving, which Jason referred to at the beginning and which I found to be really fun in this game. So obviously, I was playing this game before it came out, so I couldn't look up any walkthroughs, but at no point did I ever feel like I needed to

• 32:00Speaker 01

  or wanted to. And I really appreciated that the puzzles were just simple enough that at no point did I ever be like, okay, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do next. I feel like I'm wandering around the care center and I don't know what I'm supposed to get. I always felt like I knew what I was supposed to get and at least had some concept of where it was. Did you two think this? Did you feel like it was too easy? For me, it struck just the right balance of like, okay, I'm unlocking the keys. I'm trying to find a key card. I'm not sure where to get it. Okay, here it is. I liked all of that.

• 32:31Jason Schreier?

  It's definitely a little easy, the part that I played at least. Hopefully it gets a little harder, but I think compared to other Resident Evil games, it's a lot more linear feeling in that you're rarely getting something and not knowing what to do with it yet. It's more common that you're getting something and it's just, it's, you just found it because it's relevant to the puzzle you just found. And so you just have to go back to that place. That said, the level design is really good in the way that it loops into each other and that you open shortcuts. That's that get you to right where you need to go. I think is a really cool way of designing the whole care center. But yeah, a little easy for me, I would say.

• 33:10Kirk Hamilton?

  I would describe the average puzzle less as a puzzle and more of just a multi-tier objective. Because like you described, Matty, I mean, you kind of, you never really feel like, oh, man. Okay, I really got to figure this out, you know? It isn't like you find a safe and you have to kind of do some creative problem solving. Like, oh, they circled these numbers on the calendar and that tells me how to open the safe. No, you will find a note that will say the code to the safe are these three numbers in this order.

• 33:35Jason Schreier?

  So you're saying it's not blueprints?

• 33:37Kirk Hamilton?

  No, and it's nothing like that. Well, except for one exception that I'll talk about in a second. So instead it's an objective. But then because of the way Resident Evil is made, you know that when you pick up the key, it's you're probably gonna have to like turn off the power to do that. And all the lights will go out. And then maybe some of those zombies that were sleeping so peacefully on their gurneys between you and where the keyhole is are maybe gonna wake up and then things are gonna be more complicated on your way back. Or God forbid, you're in one of the sequences with the girl.

• 34:07Kirk Hamilton?

  You press that button that leads to the next objective. She is gonna drop down from the ceiling and make your life more difficult. Right? So it's more about these, these variables that they introduce. And you kind of, I've learned that literacy playing these games. I just know, okay, when I pick up the key, now I'm gonna have some new challenge to deal with, even though I know exactly where I'm supposed to go with it. The figuring out was never the problem, it's the execution. Now, there is one cool thing in this game that I want to just highlight in case anyone listening to this doesn't know. There is this big puzzle in this game, this big hidden puzzle that's really cool that I think people have solved. Now, I haven't looked up everything about it, but it's an ongoing and very elaborate puzzle that involves some hidden items, some items that seem optional in the game that

• 34:49Kirk Hamilton?

  you discover that then have clues written on them that have led people down this whole long rabbit hole. Trying to solve a very elaborate puzzle that is actually much more like something like blueprints. I don't know whether it's

• 35:01Jason Schreier?

  That's so cool.

• 35:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Actually super satisfying. I don't know if it like unlocks anything really cool, like a new game mode. I think it's maybe just for fun, like for people that just mess around. Maybe to reward multiple playthroughs as people are waiting for, you know, the, the new modes that they'll inevitably release. But it is really cool and it's something that I, I like, I was finding items that I wasn't really sure what to do with. And I was, I was talking with our friend Steven Totello as he was playing through it as well. And he's kind of telling me, oh, well, there's this puzzle people are trying to figure out.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  The big puzzle, yeah, which I think some people have solved. I've really tried to avoid this because I also think it's really cool and it, it rewards the player who, like me, is trying to collect all the medical files and search every room. And in my case, it's because I enjoy reading files that are like, oh, here's who the girl is and, and why any of this happened.

• 35:48Kirk Hamilton?

  I collect everything because I'm terrified I won't have enough ammunition.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Oh, well, of course I'm, okay, just to clarify, yes, I'm collecting all the ammunition. That's not really what I mean. I mean, I'm also trying to read all the files on every desk, which is kind of like a separate form of collection that is more optional, I would say in this game, although you never really know. Like you're kind of looking at a file and you're like, oh, this actually has a relevant piece of puzzle information versus, oh, this is just a piece of information about an enemy that I've just fought, or an enemy that's been dogging me this whole freaking time. And that's kind of cool. And I appreciate that because there's sort of generally a light touch with the lore, at least in this Resident Evil. It's not always true, but in this one, it's fairly true. There's not a ton to read, but what's there is pretty succinctly written.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  And I appreciate that and I have enjoyed reading everything I've picked up so far.

• 36:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I appreciate how short each written document is. You can read it really quickly.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Too short for if these were real doctors? Like, maybe they should have gone into more details.

• 36:47Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true. But, and I like that they, yeah, I think when something is gameplay relevant, it's highlighted in yellow. So you'll always know if you look at something, okay, that's actually going to apply to the game.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're probably right. And I haven't noticed that.

• 36:58Kirk Hamilton?

  And then, um, over the course of the game, and then at the end, you know, once you've kind of seen the whole story, the game actually really lays the whole thing out for you in a way that I find really cool. It's something that I kind of wish more games did. They don't just leave you, you know, to wonder, wait, what was that? And then to go look up some article about it. They actually give you a lot of information, kind of explaining everything, um, so that you can really, if you Want, orient yourself in the story and like really understand everything that happened and what it meant. Which is really neat. It means that they actually kind of, they told the story that they wanted to tell and they want people to see that story and understand it.

• 37:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm excited to know more about this big puzzle. So wait, so can you do the, is this one of those things where like everybody, people on the internet have had to work together to solve it? Or is it something that like I could just play and figure it out?

• 37:41Speaker 01

  No, any one person could solve it on their own with just collecting.

• 37:45Jason Schreier?

  And how do you even know where to start? Is it just like you'll find something and it'll be obvious how to start looking for it?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  We haven't solved it, so I don't know.

• 37:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I haven't solved it. I believe that's the case, that it begins, the first thing you can find is an object that is, that you can miss. And you can miss stuff. So you could be at a certain point, you know, you're in the whatever, late in the third act. And then you realize the story, this puzzle exists and you're like, oh, it's too late. I can't get that thing I need. So it's more like maybe you play through it another time and grab the things you need. And yeah, and like, like Matty said, neither of us have solved it. And I haven't looked everything up about it. Cause like, I might go do it or see if I can solve it. So I can't totally answer that.

• 38:23Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, man, this sounds so cool. Man, this is getting me excited for potentially finding stuff.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's cool that they're doing something like this. I, I mean, I guess I don't know, but I think this is the first time a Resident Evil game has done something quite like this. The puzzles are usually pretty simple. It's not to say this one's like highly complicated, but just the fact that you're rewarded for collecting everything. From a lore standpoint, usually the reward is simply the lore that you read as opposed to there being some other final reveal.

• 38:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. I mean, I never say anything is the first time for anything, just because nothing is first, but like it seems, it's not the norm for Resident Evil. They don't do this every game or anything. So it's cool that they decided to try something like this. And I would imagine that a certain subset of players really are enjoying it because it seems pretty neat.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, like you, I really enjoy the story. So I feel like it's its own reward anyway to collect all this stuff. I don't know. I'll have to report back on the beans cast if any of us have solved the puzzle. If I can't figure it out, I'm not above looking it up, but I will give it a shot because I think I've collected everything. So maybe I can be the one to pull it off.

• 39:28Jason Schreier?

  By the way, so one other quick thing about the section of the game I've played at least is that immediately you see a door with three insignias and you're like, oh, okay, this is Resident Evil 2. And then you start, you realize the foyer is kind of the same shape and it's got the same layout as Resident Evil 2's police station. Then there's a little girl who helps you solve a puzzle, which is just so funny. It's really just-

• 39:52Kirk Hamilton?

  One of the things I loved is that there's an area with upgrades that you can unlock if you find stuff around the level.

• 39:57Jason Schreier?

  The parlor.

• 39:58Kirk Hamilton?

  And that parlor is located in more or less the same area of the map as the locker room in the police station. I mean, they're not being subtle about it. It's not an accident. They're very much going for this echoing of RE2.

• 40:10Jason Schreier?

  Isn't the save room in the same exact spot too? And there's like even a staircase going down and like a little winch next to it?

• 40:17Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess. Well, in RE2, you save in the foyer. Like you save in the lobby.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Oh, that's true. Yeah.

• 40:22Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess it's a little different, but I mean-

• 40:24Jason Schreier?

  But there is like a little safe room that like leads you down, that has like an elevator going to the basement or something going to the basement or something. I don't know. But yes, it's just-

• 40:33Speaker 01

  They're very, very similar.

• 40:34Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm sure someone could do like a level design analysis that shows all of the little echoes, which, because there's a lot of them.

• 40:39Jason Schreier?

  I would love to see, yeah, I would love to see them mapping, mapped on each other. Yeah.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:44Jason Schreier?

  It's cool. No, it's like, it's the type of thing where it's serendipitous that we did play that game just two years ago and are now getting to see how it is called back to in this one.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  And I do think the little girl is an intentional parallel, Jason. And the more that I play, the more I'm like, oh, this is really reminding me of escorting Sherry around. And I feel like that part was absolutely intended to hearken back to RE2. And the more you play, the more I think you'll agree.

• 41:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and I mean, Leon is on the radio with Sherry, so they're remembering their time together. And I mean, it's so, Sherry is even in the game. And then, yeah.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 41:22Kirk Hamilton?

  And the relationship between Grace and Emily is actually really cool. And it's really interesting. It winds up being a really interesting sort of narrative thing.

• 41:30Jason Schreier?

  Although it's funny that Grace needed to get Emily to solve this puzzle when she could have just very easily, she knew the pattern already. She could have just easily tried three times.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Funny myself. And I was like, you know, it's interesting. So in RE2, you can like, I guess you could cheat and just look up the passcodes on the internet. In this game, there isn't quite something like that direct, but there is a puzzle that we're referring to that uses Braille, and she needs Emily's help because Emily can read Braille, because she also happens to be a little blind girl. And so she helps, helps, I keep calling her Claire, helps Grace solve the puzzle. I think we've all called her Claire at least one time. Nothing wrong with it. But I was like, what if I looked up these, these Braille words on the internet? Would I, would I be able to translate them? And then I could just solve the puzzle myself? And that is not an option. No matter what you do, if

• 42:22Speaker 01

  you try to like, click the Braille buttons, it just says like, can't read these, can't figure these out.

• 42:28Kirk Hamilton?

  There's also the fact that those buttons are replicated on other machines that also have Braille. There are different, definitely ways that Grace could have figured it out.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  But even if they were different, you got what I'm saying? Like, even if you could, even if you, the player, knew Braille, and there was some variation there that needed to be unlocked in some way, it wouldn't matter. Because Grace doesn't know, so you don't know.

• 42:48Kirk Hamilton?

  I think we found it. I think we found the biggest plot hole in Resident Evil.

• 42:51Jason Schreier?

  Finally, someone's taken apart this Resident Evil plot holes. Finally, finally, someone pointed out that something is silly in Resident Evil.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  I don't, I actually feel like it's kind of nice.

• 43:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, Maddie's okay with it.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Well, I am okay with it, because I feel like the intention of it is like, Grace can't figure it out. So it doesn't matter if you, the player, can figure it out. She can't figure it out. And perhaps she might be a little too helpless for our taste at times, and this is one of those times. But it also forces her to go and actually get Emily out of her weird glass cell that she's sitting in and sort of begin the mystery of trying to figure out maybe what her deal is and why she's there. And that is like, obviously, part of the larger plot of the game and one of the fun parts of the game.

• 43:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I gotta say, this opening six or seven hours at the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, this is just peak for me. It is the best part of the game. I love the whole game as a whole. I actually really like the ways that later parts of the game are kind of in contrast to those opening hours, only because it actually feels to me like that chunk, you know, seven hours, that amount of time, is a pretty solid amount of time to spend on the Resident Evil arc. It's not a narrative arc, but the gameplay arc of starting with absolutely nothing. You know, the way we were describing these early moments, the first maybe 30, 45 minutes where you're really scrapping. I would have two bullets in my gun and have to be thinking so creatively about how I was gonna get somewhere else to find more things. Like, that really intense,

• 44:18Kirk Hamilton?

  up against it feeling, that then gradually gives way as you explore and unlock the map, till you get more bullets, you get more ammo, you get more powerful, you start leveling up, you have more health items, you feel more confident, to pretty soon, you're kind of a wrecking machine, but you're still fairly vulnerable, but you're getting closer to unlocking, and you're getting closer to your goal, and you see it all kind of unfolding. That feeling is the thing that I love the most about all of these games. It's why I really love Resident Evil 2 Remake so much, is because it does that so well. And that game actually, because it has two playthroughs, you gotta do it twice, which is one way of approaching things. In this case, they don't do that, and the fact that they then just kind of, they do that once really well, and they move on to other things. I think that's probably a smart approach,

• 45:02Kirk Hamilton?

  but I do have to say, those opening hours, that whole sequence as Grace, punctuated by a couple of short Leon segments, is just killer. I mean, that is like them at their best. That is this team doing what they know how to do it. It's really remarkable how well they do it.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would agree. That experience of even solving extremely rudimentary puzzles is really strong, in part because it is overlaid with the survival horror aspects that you mentioned. And the puzzles, at least in my case, kind of need to be easy, because like, that's not where the stress or interest of the game comes in. The interest is in navigating this building that is also overrun with a variety of enemies that are kind of... Of intelligent, some of them, as we've talked about, like they're a little more intelligent and and less mutated by the this virus that's present in this game as compared to the other zombies that we've seen in other Resident Evils. So that makes them a little scarier, like they can turn off the lights. Some of them have like the ability to talk to you like Kirk was describing and yell

• 46:02Speaker 01

  at you for being loud. And like, that's kind of creepy that you're like, oh, these zombies like kind of still have some wherewithal and but might even make you feel like, oh, is it, I mean, I'm never gonna feel that bad for shooting these guys, but you feel a little bad. You feel some some compassion for what's happened to them all.

• 46:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Bad for what happened to them.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Of course, yeah. You feel bad for the circumstance, even if you also understand like there's they're too far gone. There's nothing, nothing for them now. But that's what's interesting about it is not the puzzles, but the fact that you have to navigate everything that's overlaid on top of that world in the care center specifically.

• 46:35Jason Schreier?

  Well, part of what the puzzles do, I think, is add a layer of resource management, because every time you have a puzzle, you have to hold an object that is taking up a spot that otherwise would be a healing item or an art, a piece of ammo or something, or an upgrade.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  That's a good point, yeah.

• 46:49Jason Schreier?

  I think that's a part of it as well. By the way, we haven't even talked about the blood harvesting.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Oh, we gotta talk about that before we go.

• 46:55Jason Schreier?

  Mechanic. Just real quick, it's extremely entertaining that Grace, who is scared out of her gourd, has no problem with just using this injector device to just suck up blood so she can craft it.

• 47:06Kirk Hamilton?

  To stab zombies in the dick. Let's be clear. To stab a bunch of dead zombies in the dick.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  But then she's also, so this is a part of the game, this is a plot hole in Resident Evil to me personally, is the fact that she can use this infected blood to craft handgun ammunition and grenades and a variety of other things.

• 47:23Kirk Hamilton?

  With scraps, so you combine the blood with the scrap metal.

• 47:26Jason Schreier?

  Scraps and blood equals ammo.

• 47:27Kirk Hamilton?

  This is perfectly reasonable stuff, Maddie.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, it's the same as death stranding. You're taking bodily fluids. In this case, it just so happens to be infected blood and you're using that to create ammunition to destroy the very thing that you've extracted the blood from. Doesn't make a lot of sense, but whatever it does, I think add a really fun layer to the game. I grew to really enjoy extracting blood from the various dead bodies around the care center. And

• 47:53Jason Schreier?

  And buckets, buckets of blood.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Buckets. And like, there's a bathtub of blood that she runs into at one point. Really just luxuriously large bathtub. Don't know, don't know how it ended up being filled the brim with blood.

• 48:06Jason Schreier?

  Amazing.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Who can, who can say how that happened, but it's very helpful as a resource and just goofy. So goofy. I mean, this is the stuff for Resident Evil that I also kind of love is that it's like, why would this be the case? I don't care. It's funny.

• 48:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. The crafting system is fun throughout. And like, when you spend a while not playing as Grace and then play as her again, I had kind of forgotten, oh yeah, she crafts with blood and just being reintroduced to that because Leon crafts in a different way. And so coming back to this harvesting blood from the, you know, fallen bodies, from the fallen dicks of your enemies was a, it was like a fun thing to be reminded of and to get to do a little bit more later in the game, too.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed all the resource management aspects, just in general. I think it's, I think it's really fun, but hey, there's tons more to talk about with Requiem and we will talk about it in a bonus episode on the bonus feed. So

• 48:57Jason Schreier?

  In a few weeks.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Get ready for that in a few weeks. Gotta give, gotta give me and Jason time to complete the game after all, don't we? But we'll spoil it and we'll talk about everything in the second half of the game at that point. But for now, let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing.

• 49:14Speaker 03

  Hi there. Sorry to interrupt your podcast listening time. I know you're doing the dishes right now. It's okay. That's, I don't, don't worry about it. You might not know me, but I'm Brenda and I'm here to tell you about the podcast I host with my good friend Austin. It's called Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries and we cover all kinds of pop culture topics. Like, did you know that there was a real life replica of The Simpsons house in Las Vegas, Nevada? Or that Flint, Michigan was once home to an indoor amusement park themed around the automobile? If those things sound interesting, you should definitely check us out every Tuesday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get podcasts. Goodbye. Keep eating it back to your dishes now. It's fine.

• 49:49Speaker 04

  The wizards answer eight by eight. The conclave's call to demonstrate their arcane gift, their single spell. They number 64 until a conflagration. 63 and 62 they soon shall be as one by one the wizards die. Till one remains to reign on high. Join us for Taz Royale, an Oops! All Wizards Battle Royale season of The Adventure Zone.

• 50:30Speaker 04

  Every other Thursday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  We are back. Jason, why don't you tell us about your one more thing?

• 50:40Jason Schreier?

  My one more thing is a video game that really could have used a call to Spider Mansion Name Consulting. That video game is called Esoteric Eb. Esoteric Eb really rolls off the tongue.

• 50:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Are you sure that isn't an E double flat, like technically a D natural?

• 50:58Speaker 01

  It's E D D.

• 50:58Jason Schreier?

  Would it be written as an E double flat? Is that ever a thing?

• 51:02Kirk Hamilton?

  That would be an even better name. Esoteric E double flat. Because an E double flat, that is a fairly esoteric music notation.

• 51:08Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, how many times in your life have you seen E double flat written in music?

• 51:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Not that many, not that many.

• 51:13Jason Schreier?

  No, so it's called Esoteric Eb and I would describe, have you guys heard of this game before I get into this?

• 51:18Speaker 01

  I have, yeah. Zoe's enjoying it too.

• 51:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Only from you. I saw you post about it on Blue Sky, but that was the first I heard of it.

• 51:23Jason Schreier?

  Yes, so it's best described as kind of D and D meets Disco Elysium by way of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett. It's a...

• 51:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Keep talking.

• 51:33Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  I'm in.

• 51:35Jason Schreier?

  I, that's why I wanted to get the bad name out of the way first because then after that, it's kind of, it hooks you, right?

• 51:41Speaker 01

  It's all uphill. It's all good.

• 51:43Jason Schreier?

  When you start playing, you're very much like, oh, this is Disco Elysium. It's very much a disco-like, as you might call it, because it is all, it is all text. It is all, or it's not all text. There's graphics and you move around a world, but like the, your primary function of engaging with the game is through text. It all is like column style, just like Disco Elysium, and there are voices in your head, just like Disco Elysium. Except instead of the voices just being these kind of obscure traits and, and personality quirks. It is all, it is the six, six.

• 52:15Jason Schreier?

  Stats of Dungeons and Dragons, Strength, Charisma, Wisdom, Intelligence, Dexterity.

• 52:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, cool. So like your charisma will speak to you?

• 52:23Jason Schreier?

  Yes.

• 52:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Or your wisdom?

• 52:24Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, exactly. And then at the same, also, you have your D and D style D20s that you are rolling as skill modifier, and you have skill modifiers on top of that. So like at the beginning of the game, you built a character, you decide which attributes to boost, and then as you go through the game, you can get items that like will boost some attributes or maybe lower other ones. And then everything you do, pretty much every time you do something that requires any

• 52:50Jason Schreier?

  sort of challenge or skill check, you are rolling a D20 to see if you can beat the modifier involved there. So it's very much D and D roles applied to, D and D rules applied to Disco Elysium. And he plays this dude called the cleric who's wearing a big ol' helmet, and he is tasked with figuring out, investigating, who blew up a tea shop in this city that you are exploring. It all takes place in one big city, just like Disco Elysium, and that city is very rich and dense and full of people that you can interact with and have interesting conversations with. And it also happens to be five days until the election in this city, of which various political parties are running each of their own kind of

• 53:37Jason Schreier?

  attributes, each of their own characteristics. There's the fascist party, the kind of anarchist party, etc., capitalist party. And you have to go around and talk to people and investigate and interrogate people and try to figure out what happened. There's also combat in this, unlike Disco Elysium, except the combat is just kind of, it also plays out through dialogue options. So you just pick what you're doing and roll dice accordingly. Yeah, it's a really cool game. I think what is really special about it is the humor. I mentioned by way of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, that is very much channelled throughout. There's a lot of ridiculous gags, very silly characters, very entertaining dialogue and exchanges. The humor is very different than Disco Elysium.

• 54:21Jason Schreier?

  Disco Elysium was a lot darker. This is a lot straight up goofier. There's a little bit of darkness too, but for example, your main character gets extremely excited anytime he talks to someone and they might be offering him a quest. And you can pick all these dialogue options that are just like, that sounds like a quest and get really, really, you can play as somebody who's just extremely enamored of the guy, of the, the concept of doing quests and solving problems for people. There's just also a lot of just silly disco style stuff. You can die from eating too many apples, et cetera, et cetera. And yeah, it's very entertaining. I'm really enjoying playing through it. Uh, there haven't been a ton of like Disco Elysium likes. I think there are more coming this year.

• 55:04Jason Schreier?

  I already got a code for another one that comes out at the end of this month. There's also Studio Zalm, the makers of Disco Elysium are releasing a new game, even though many of the creative folks behind Disco Elysium have since left Studio Zalm. So there's a little bit of kind of untangling to do there, but there are a lot of games of this nature coming out this year specifically, which is funny. I guess it takes seven years, six, six years to make a game. Disco Elysium came out at the end of 2019, so six years later, people are coming out with, with clones. But yeah, but this one I'm really enjoying and I recommend it. Um, I'm not super far. I'm on day two of five, which is a good chunk of the game. Like it's a long game. There's a lot to do. It's very dense.

• 55:44Jason Schreier?

  Like I said, there's a lot to do. Um, and of course, just like with disco, like every action or dialogue option takes up time on your clock. And so the time is ticking by and, and that's how the time limit of five days plays into it. But yeah, I'm really enjoying what I'm playing so far and I have a feeling you two will enjoy it too. If you do both wind up getting into it, maybe we could talk about it more in depth on the show. Cause yeah, there's definitely, it's definitely a fun game to play through and talk about it. I'm really enjoying it.

• 56:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Are you playing it on Steam Deck?

• 56:15Jason Schreier?

  I am playing it on Steam Deck.

• 56:17Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's, it's good on Steam Deck?

• 56:18Jason Schreier?

  It's great, runs great. Couple of weird glitches here and there, but nothing, nothing that has ruined the experience for me.

• 56:26Kirk Hamilton?

  It sounds amazing. I'll definitely check it out.

• 56:27Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah. Get it on your Steam Deck for sure. Um, it's Steam Deck verified. And so, yeah, it's, it's a good one on Steam Deck and definitely does it. Like a graphically intense game, but it does have a pretty cool art style. It looks really cool. Some of the character faces are a little silly looking. They look kind of like weird, like 80s cartoons in kind of a bad way. But the overall graphical style and the colors and the shades are really cool looking and distinct.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  You want to hit him with that really memorable name again, Jason?

• 56:57Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's called Esoteric Eb. Look in the show notes if you want, if you keep, if you forget it.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's maybe a better way to go.

• 57:06Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe it doesn't matter because last year's like top selling best acclaimed game was Claire Obscure colon Expedition 33. So maybe it doesn't matter, but Esoteric Eb is harder to say than Claire Obscure. Hey.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Disco Elysium is like sort of a notably strange name, but maybe that can work in your favor if the game's good enough.

• 57:28Jason Schreier?

  That has a ring to it that Esoteric Eb lacks.

• 57:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Disco is a great word, though.

• 57:33Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, Disco Elysium, it's like, it's easier on the tongue than Esoteric Eb, which is just kind of hard to say.

• 57:41Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, a name that I've been really struggling with, speaking of Resident Evil, is The Connections, which is the name of one of the vast organizations in that world or this criminal organization. They've been around since Resident Evil 7 and every time I have to remember their name, I forget. I'm like, wait, what is it? Because it's just The Connections. It's such a barely a name name. They really should have come to Spider Mansion for a better name.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  This illicit, illicit Illuminati.

• 58:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Umbrella Corp is great.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, Umbrella Corp actually is great. T-virus, very memorable.

• 58:11Kirk Hamilton?

  The Connections? What are you guys doing?

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

• 58:13Jason Schreier?

  We should really just do this name consulting business.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, we should do it for fictional characters. We should have had.

• 58:19Jason Schreier?

  Do it for everything.

• 58:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Video games, supervillain groups, whatever.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Spencer himself come to us and ask us for advice on how to name his corporation. Why didn't he do that?

• 58:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, Spencer is pretty good at it. I mean, Spencer named Umbrella. Spencer knows what he's doing.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  That's true. Spencer, I can't remember who named Umbrella. Did he not? I don't.

• 58:33Kirk Hamilton?

  I think it was Spencer. It's Spencer and that other guy.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 58:36Kirk Hamilton?

  The Connections people, I don't know who's in charge of that.

• 58:38Jason Schreier?

  But Phil Spencer should come to us for name advice.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  What is he doing these days?

• 58:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe we could hire Phil Spencer for Spider Mansion.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's looking for work.

• 58:46Jason Schreier?

  How much, what should our quote be for a name, for name advice, for giving people a better name?

• 58:52Kirk Hamilton?

  You have to let us play the game before anybody else.

• 58:55Jason Schreier?

  That's it?

• 58:55Speaker 01

  That's a quote.

• 58:57Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. That doesn't, I don't want that.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  It's more of a policy, but it's also, it's also a motto.

• 59:01Kirk Hamilton?

  I just want to play.

• 59:02Jason Schreier?

  All right, we'll talk about this later.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  All right, cool. I'll go next. My One More Thing is a short story called The Pill by Meg Ellison that I thought was really good. This is a horror short story that I read this recently just because Ash Parrish, formerly of The Verge, linked it. And I read it and it stuck with me. Horror is cool. So this is a story about a weight loss drug, but it's a science fiction story. So the drug works perfectly, except it has one horrifying drawback. And it kind of takes place in a world where everybody gets completely obsessed with taking this weight loss drug. What would that be like? The heroine of the story is a fat character and her family, she comes from a fat family and like each of her members of her family

• 59:46Speaker 01

  kind of gets sort of individually obsessed with the concept of this pill. She refuses to take it for a variety of reasons. And then the rest of the entire world is affected by this pill in the end. And it's just kind of like, what would society be like if something like this existed? And how would, how would things change? I thought it was really haunting and cool and just interesting. And I'm still thinking about it. But yeah, anyway, it's called The Pill. It's by Meg Ellison. You can find it just by Googling it because it's a short story. But after I read this, I followed her and I'm going to check out some of her other work because apparently she's got a new book coming out. And I thought this was really cool. So maybe I'll be back with a future Meg Ellison update.

• 1:00:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 1:00:26Jason Schreier?

  And this, of course, is different than Megan Ellison of the Ellison family that owns Paramount.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I don't think it's the same woman at all. Her, her Blue Sky bio doesn't mention that. I think she's just a, a science fiction writer.

• 1:00:39Jason Schreier?

  Yes, different Meg Ellison.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  Kirk, I believe you're last.

• 1:00:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I am last. My One More Thing is a 2016 movie that I've been meaning to watch since about then and that I finally watched called Your Name, which is an absolutely beautiful movie that I'm sure a lot of our listeners have seen, but I bet that some haven't. And I'm going to make this one more thing in honor of those people. So they can finally get it together and watch this movie. So Your Name is a 2016 anime film. It's made in Japan, directed by Makoto Shinkai, who has also directed another follow-up, actually, that I think is somewhat similar, that is also available on streaming. I watched this on HBO Max. It is, I think, it and its follow-up, it's not a sequel, but a sort of spiritual success, or whatever. His next movie is also on Max.

• 1:01:27Kirk Hamilton?

  So HBO has got, they've got a lot of really good Japanese movies. And this one is available. And I think part of the reason that I didn't watch it for so long is that it was kind of hard to find it. I would have had to maybe buy it. I couldn't rent it, I remember, for a little while. And I kept kind of waiting for it to turn up on a streaming service. Then finally, there it was on HBO, so I watched it. I don't want to say too much about this movie, because anyone who has seen it will know all about it. And, you know, if you've seen it, that's great. See it again. This is really just, I want to be giving a recommendation a little bit more. And for me, anyways, all I really knew was the basic setup. And then the movie wound up being a much better experience for me as a result of that, because it is a much broader and more surprising and engaging story than I realized going

• 1:02:12Kirk Hamilton?

  in, just knowing the premise. The premise is there are two high school students, a boy named Taki, who lives in Tokyo, and a girl named Mitsuhara, who lives in kind of rural Japan. She lives in a town called Itomore, which I believe is a fictional town, but it's just kind of a rural Japanese town. And they begin to cross over with one another, and they'll wake up in the other one's body, almost like they're dreaming. And then the next day, they'll wake up again and think, oh, that was such a strange dream I had. And then their friends will react to them in ways that indicate that, yesterday, you were being really weird. It was like you didn't even know who you were. And you don't always see those sequences. You sometimes just see the aftermath.

• 1:02:55Kirk Hamilton?

  And the whole, the whole movie is kind of presented in this dreamlike way, where things blend into other things. And it's all a little bit mysterious and hard to follow, in that way that a dream can be. And that's one of the really beautiful, kind of aesthetic through lines of the film, is this feeling of dreaming and of trying to remember a dream and trying to understand which parts of you are the dream and which parts of you are real. So. It's kind of a body swap movie, but it's not like a Freaky Friday body swap comedy. It isn't just as straightforward as that. It's actually much more mysterious and spiritual and ultimately, I think, beautiful and very romantic in maybe the purest form of the word romantic. It's not just that it's a romance, it's that it's, there's just something so romantic about

• 1:03:39Kirk Hamilton?

  the idea of having this dreamlike connection to another person and becoming intertwined with them. It's really, really cool. And then, like I said, it goes in unexpected directions and it becomes like a really, I was totally on the edge of my seat really watching it for the whole second half of the movie and was so drawn in and so like to the very last line of the movie was just on the edge of my seat, I was dying to know what was gonna happen. So I really like, I liked it at first and thought that it was notably beautiful looking. This is a gorgeous looking movie. I think this might be the like highest grossing Japanese anime film ever made. It's so beautiful looking. Like if you've watched Studio Ghibli movies and you like like just gorgeous hand drawn

• 1:04:21Kirk Hamilton?

  art in films, holy crap, like this movie, every, any, you could just pause the movie and like print it out and put it on your wall. Like every single thing in it is just beautiful, full of detail and the places are so rich with personality. So it's just beautiful to watch. And I was thinking, oh, this'll just be a neat, you know, a cute story about two young people figuring themselves out that is also really beautiful looking. So, and I was really surprised by just how great the story was and how, you know, how much it pulled me in. So I want to give it that recommendation for anyone who hasn't seen it because go watch it. Like just get, you know, get the family together, sit down for just a really magical and transportive experience. It is just so, so good. So again, that is called Your Name.

• 1:05:06Kirk Hamilton?

  It's currently on HBO. It may bounce around or something, but it is absolutely worth tracking down and watching because it is a very, very special movie.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Cool. That sounds awesome. I want to watch it. I have also wanted to watch it since 2016, but I forgot about it until you said you watched it.

• 1:05:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. So you are one of the, one of the listeners that I'm speaking to right now. Oh man, I'll be excited to know what you think of it if you watch it. It's really something.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  I think I'll probably love it. All right. Well, this has been another episode of Triple Click. Did it again. Did it again, folks.

• 1:05:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we did it.

• 1:05:38Jason Schreier?

  Congratulations.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, congrats. Congrats around.

• 1:05:41Kirk Hamilton?

  High fives all around.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  And we'll probably do it again next week. Not probably, definitely. We will. We'll be back. I'll see you both then.

• 1:05:48Jason Schreier?

  Is there anything really definite in this volatile world of ours?

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  So true. So true.

• 1:05:53Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, I think people can count on Triple Click if they can count on anything.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. If nothing else, you can count on us.

• 1:05:59Jason Schreier?

  Death, taxes, and Triple Click.

• 1:06:00Kirk Hamilton?

  That's what Ben Franklin said.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  You didn't know what it meant at the time, but finally it's become clear.

• 1:06:06Kirk Hamilton?

  It just sounded good. Yeah, he had a lot of foresight.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Very prescient. All right.

• 1:06:11Kirk Hamilton?

  All right. Well, I will see the two of you next week.

• 1:06:14Jason Schreier?

  See you next week.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:06:18Kirk 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.

• 1:07:16Speaker 05

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