Fire Emblem, Wolverine, and Control Resonant (with Lucy James)

There are so many games to talk about!

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  The fire hose is on and we are drinking up as many video games as we can. Delicious. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. For our first glass, we have a nice Fire Emblem Fortunes weave to be followed by Insomniac's Wolverine, and then a little spoonful of Control Resonant. Three games, three of us, but not quite the usual three.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Lucy James.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Hey!

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  You're not Jason Schreier.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  I know! It's Lucy James. We have Lucy James with us today because Jason is still in Japan. And Lucy, in case you didn't know, is the founder of the LookingFor.GAME newsletter, which is wonderful, and people should definitely check that out.

• 0:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Very helpful newsletter.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  Also, the co-host of the Friends Per Second podcast. Very fun list. And Lucy, thank you so much for coming on the show today and being a...

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:04Speaker 00

  A sub in.

• 1:05Kirk Hamilton?

  I am thrilled to have you. And can I just say, as the first member of FPS to come on the show or that I've ever talked to, I think that's such a good name for a podcast.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  It's so good.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  It's so good.

• 1:17Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm a real stickler about podcast names, and FPS Friends Per Second is chef kiss. A fantastic podcast name.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  I always joke. So, we had a big Google Doc, and I suggested that one as a joke.

• 1:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, it was your pick? Oh, nice.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  It was my idea. And then the boys were just like, "Oh, that's it, that's it." And I was like, "Oh, I thought we were kidding about that one." So, thank you.

• 1:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Sometimes you just know.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're picky about names here, so it's high praise coming from us. And if you know, then you also know that every week, we talk about the fact that we are part of the Maximum Fun Network, our podcast network that we love very much. And if you go to MaximumFun.org/joinTripleClick, you can get our monthly bonus episodes. Most recently, we released a super double-wide episode that was us talking about Sopranos Seasons 4 and 5. I've been seeing Sopranos for the first time. Jason and Kirk have seen it before. It's been a really fun journey, so the bonus backlog has a ton of Sopranos content.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  But it also has us talking about video games and other TV shows and movies and our personal lives and all kinds of other wonderful things. Also, our upcoming bonus episode for this month, which we have decided to call Triple Kiss, is us soliciting dating advice questions.

• 2:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Us giving dating advice.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, us giving dating advice. Can we give it? Or should we be soliciting it ourselves? Maybe? We've decided we can give it. But I will say, we've actually gotten a ton of questions at this point, so no need, unless it's an emergency. I feel like I have to include that. Like, if you're listening to this right now and you're like, "But Maddie, I'm only now hearing about Triple Kiss, and I'll just, I won't know what to do if you and Jason and Kirk don't answer my question." But truly, we have plenty of questions at this point. I'm really excited to record that and get into that. That'll be a first for us, and since we have so many questions, maybe, maybe we'll do it again. Who knows?

• 3:19Kirk Hamilton?

  We'll see how it goes.

• 3:21Speaker 00

  Obviously, [email protected] is our email, but hey, you don't even need to email us Triple Kiss emails. You could just email us regular listener mails if you want. And once again, to become a member and support our show, our wonderful listener-supported show, you would go to MaximumFun.org/joinTripleClick, get access to the bonus apps, support us, all that good stuff. Okay, enough preamble. Let's talk about video games, shall we?

• 3:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Let's do it.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Go on, then.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we're going to talk about a couple of video games today. We're fitting multiple games into one episode. And the first one we're going to talk about is Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave, which all of us have been playing. This is a Switch 2 exclusive that came out very recently. And I, speaking for myself, I have been a Three Houses fan and not so much a player of other Fire Emblem games. So, I did play Engage, and I thought that the combat was pretty fun to play in handheld mode in front of the television set. So, I was really like, Fortunes Weave could go either which way for me. And I'm still only a few hours in. I think it's somewhere between those two games in my estimation.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  But Kirk, I really want to hear from you, because I know that you were really excited for this game, and I want to know how far you are and what you think about it so far.

• 4:45Kirk Hamilton?

  I am pretty far. I guess I'm like five or six hours in or something like that. It ate more of my weekend than I was planning on. I started playing it with a Code Nintendo scent, but it was at launch, so I've only been playing it the same time as everybody else. And I'm playing Kai's storyline. There are four different kind of protagonists that you pick pretty early in the game, and then you play through their storylines. You can play through all four of them. They're all very different in tone and design, and kind of, it really is like, it's like the Three Branches in Three Houses, only you can do them all, if you choose to, in the same playthrough. So, I've played that much of Kai. I'm, I think, on chapter eight of Kai's story, if that helps orient anyone who is playing it.

• 5:29Kirk Hamilton?

  I think the game is really cool, especially the story stuff and the missions. I am much less enamored of the amount of busy work in it, and I'm surprised to find myself a little more mixed on like the mercenary recruitment and just the kind of opacity of some of its systems and the way that I feel a little bit like, I'm so overwhelmed at all times by information, and the tools that the game gives me to sort that information are not quite up to the task. So, I've found that a little challenging. I've had a good time in our Discord, actually, just talking to people who've played a lot harder than me and getting advice from them on just like, "Okay, what do I need to be focusing on here, and what can I excise?" Because I'm just cutting, cutting, cutting as much as I can so I can get those good

• 6:12Kirk Hamilton?

  story missions and kind of get that. But man, I am very curious, Lucy, what you think. So, I would love to know, and also your history with the series.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, same. Light history with Fire Emblem. I had one that was on the 3DS, and I forget which one that was.

• 6:28Kirk Hamilton?

  It might have been Awakening. That was the first one I got into. Yeah, that was a great game.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  That sounds familiar. I really enjoyed that, and then I kind of never went and played other Fire Emblems. I did get into Three Houses in a big way, Golden Deer for Life. And then I skipped Engage.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Decent choice.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm also doing Kai's.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Me too, by the way.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  I really wanted to do that Lestat Griffith-looking a la carte map.

• 6:55Kirk Hamilton?

  That's full-on a la carte.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Because, you know, a girl's got to type.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  It feels like you should start with Kai, though, because Kai's on the far left. And once I started Kai, I was like, "It feels like the game wanted me to start with Kai." So, I guess I did the right thing with the beginner storyline here.

• 7:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, left to right, yeah.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Kai has such, it has such like Sora energy from Kingdom Hearts, and, well, I guess more like Roxas energy in Kingdom Hearts 2, where it's like the two pals who just kind of tag along. And I'm really enjoying it. I totally understand what you mean about the busy work. I'm not as far in as you, Kirk, but even the dungeon crawling stuff is very strange to me, because I'd rather just be, I'd rather be moving on my grid. I'd rather, just give me the grid.

• 7:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, can you explain what that means, like the dungeon crawling? Because I agree with you, but I think for listeners who haven't played the game, like, what do you mean by dungeon crawling versus other types of gameplay?

• 7:54Speaker 02

  So, it's, actually, it's kind of strange that Xero Company, Zcom, did this a little bit, too, with pulling characters back into third person, and you walk around in a dungeon, and you come up against enemies, and they're called clashes. So, you're not on the grid moving things turn by turn. It is real time, and you, basically, your entire party has a pool of health. The enemies have a pool of health, and it's just whatever you chip down first. They are phenomenally easy. You can, I never take more than, you know, six to eight damage in an entire dungeon. And there's also a way to just auto-battle for you. And so, I've basically just been doing that and sort of skipping to the, and I'm, you

• 8:38Speaker 02

  know, five hours into the game, but I'm already doing that. So, but I mean, it's a great way of getting XP early on, but it just does feel a bit...

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Superfluous.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Is that what it's for, do we think? Like, it is, it is strange that that aspect is there. And that's also what I've been using it for so far.

• 8:57Kirk Hamilton?

  It is weird. Like, why would you put a, put a different type of combat into your game that you then make skippable, which is somewhat of an acknowledgement that this is inessential? It feels a little like, you know, a kind of mobile tie-in game or something. Like, it just, and it's, yeah, I'm not really feeling it, I guess. That's, I was about to say, that sounds harsh, but I don't mean it that way, but I kind of do. Like, it's not, when you then play a story mission, especially, and playing as Kai, it's very easy for the first five chapters. But then the difficulty starts to ramp up, and I'm only on normal. I'm a little baby about Fire Emblem. I do play with Perma Death, but I play on normal difficulty. And it's gotten a lot harder. And man, each one of these challenges in the kind of Colosseum is really fascinating

• 9:42Kirk Hamilton?

  and engaging and difficult. There's all kinds of new strategies with every single one. Like, I'm really, really into them and into the story. So then, when I'm kind of doing this 3D kind of weird dungeon, it just doesn't feel that great. It's not that great to, to explore. The combat system is this just totally watered-down thing. I'm like, why am I doing this when the other part of this game also exists?

• 10:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really strange. Because like, if you think of, I was kind of thinking in my mind, sort of comparing it to maybe Final Fantasy XII. But the joy in the combat system with XII is that you've set all the gambits up. And, you know, you are basically sort of masterminding and watching your plan unfold. Whereas with this, there's no tactical element to it. It's just, these are my guys, these are your guys. My guys are gonna win, unfortunately. Sucks to be you.

• 10:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Sorry you ran into us.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. It reminds me a little, the feel of the dungeons reminds me a little of the dungeons in Metaphor: Refentazio.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  I thought of that, too, because you have to run up to people and hit them first.

• 10:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, which is that Persona thing as well, where you, there's this little bit of kind of twitch, it's not really very twitchy, but you do want to attack first while you're in the dungeon. And just the feel of the world, it has a kind of insubstantial, floaty feel to it that reminded me of Metaphor. And I didn't love that part of Metaphor, even though in Metaphor, when you do get into a battle, then you're in the full Metaphor combat system, which is very delightful and cool and well-designed. So it kind of makes up for it with that. The thing is, that, that is like one part of this game that I don't like, right? And there's a lot of busy work, too, which I've mentioned, and I kind of want to explain it. But also, we're giving early impressions of this game, and I don't want to like, just spend too long focusing on those parts I don't like, because so much of this game

• 11:28Kirk Hamilton?

  is really hitting for me, and I think it's really cool. It actually feels to me like a game that I could play for the next six months to a year, and almost like it was designed to be that. Like, if you play through all four of the main storylines in Act One, then I think they all come together for Act Two, and then there's an Act Three. You know, I think this is like a 150-hour game or something, and I could see myself burning out on it if I'm just like, alright, I'm gonna finish this entire thing as fast as possible. But I really like the characters, the character designs. The music, of course, is killer. Fire Emblem music is always killer. And like I was saying, those like, story combat encounters are, I think, just phenomenal so far, anyways. I've, I've found them so cool.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've really enjoyed the story so far as well. And similarly, those big, you're in the grid, you're doing turn-based battling, it's Fire Emblem. That's the part that I'm really enjoying. And I totally agree with you, Kirk, like, the kind of busy work of, there's like a recruiting mercenaries system that just has me opening up a guide on my phone and being like, what's the best gift to give to each of these mercenaries? I truly don't want to deal with this system at all. I'm literally just-

• 12:37Speaker 02

  I have a Google Sheet pre-saved of stuff that someone's already made.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  Just trying to get through this busy work so that I can get to the part of the game that I find enjoyable. And luckily, that's, that's speedy enough, although it does provoke the question in me of like, well, why have a system like that if it's, can so easily be mastered through a spreadsheet? But hey, maybe that's part of the fun. Sometimes spreadsheets are fun. But I do-

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, look at, look at Football Man, look at the success of Football Man.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 13:04Kirk Hamilton?

  There are whole games that are nothing but this, that's true.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and it's all kind of building up to the parts of the game that I really do enjoy, which are those big Colosseum battles, as you refer to them, Kirk, which is an apt framing, because that's really what Kai is doing in his storyline. I don't know what it'll be like for the other three when we get to them, but Kai is basically battling to get this wish granted if he's, if he wins this fighting competition, and his father's been imprisoned for sort of archaic reasons, and he's, and is going to be executed, and that's like the premise of his storyline.

• 13:40Kirk Hamilton?

  And he's pretty chill about it for a 15-year-old. He's like, oh yeah, my dad's gonna die.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  Kai and his dad are both weirdly chill about it.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Which is funny, and there is at least like a moment after the, that conversation is had, where like, his dad's being taken away by the prison guards, and then Kai kind of like admits to his friends, where he's like, I guess I'm not really feeling anything about this. That's weird. Like, he has a line where he sort of lampshades the fact that he's having no reaction to his father being dragged away. But it's fine.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  We all react in different ways.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Grief is different for everyone.

• 14:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, we do, it's true. Everyone deals with hardship in their own way.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, that, when that bit happened, I was sort of, there was this sort of, not plot hole, but it was like, you know, there, there was a person there who could have really overturned everything, if you think about it.

• 14:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. There's a lot of that.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Which I thought was good.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  There's a third character that maybe could have stepped in, in theory, and still could, maybe, prevent it.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Honestly, I just thought, you know what? It's fine. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna get back and, and fight.

• 14:38Kirk Hamilton?

  That kind of big-picture stuff, especially that, I think that is something very Jerry, we're not the only ones to point this scene out, where it's a child's father says to him, you're never gonna see me again, and everyone's being weirdly chill about it. Like, there, there is some writing that's a little off-tonally, but also, I will say, a lot of the dialogue is very funny and clever. There's a lot of really great writing in this game, or I suppose localization, where they've done a really good job of just including lots of fun turns of phrase and jokes. There's a lot of good sarcasm, that each character kind of has their own voice. So a lot of the writing is really working for me, and I'm very curious to see the other sort of four, the other three, I suppose, storylines, because they're all really different, or that's what I gather. So these four characters to explain to listeners.

• 15:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Kai, who all three of us are playing as, is like a kid. And it's kind of the first sort of shonen kids adventure story that I've seen in a Fire Emblem game. Fire Emblem games are actually kind of adults in their storytelling, at least. Like, it's usually like war and people dying and a lot of just sort of, I don't know, there's not a lot of kids adventure vibes in Fire Emblem, as much as it's kind of animated and feels a little bit like a cartoon. Then there's Dietrich, who is the Alucard character we're talking about. I gather his storyline is like, really intense, and there's a lot of fighting. I think it's harder, like, difficulty-wise, there's like more intense battles. Then there's Lida, who is a very cool character, the musician, she's like a bard on a quest for revenge. I gather that her tone is very dark and very different from Kai, like, that those

• 16:08Kirk Hamilton?

  two storylines are incredibly different, just tonally. And then there's Theodora. I know Jason is playing as Theodora, and we're gonna talk about this game again next week. So Jason will be able to speak to Theodora. Theodora is like the Amazon mega babe, like, punch, punch you into the ground, like mommy character, basically.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  I'm glad that's a trope now, by the way. Like, we, we deserved this. Why, it should have been a trope for our whole lives, but at least now she's here.

• 16:33Kirk Hamilton?

  What I think is cool, and what I've seen of the story so far, is that, you know, the frame of this narrative, and this is set up at the very beginning, is that your character, like, is actually none of those four people. It is a, they are like this other kind of spiritual figure who exists in the future, where the world's been overrun by undead monsters. And then we're doing a Terminator, where like, we want to travel back in time and then change our fate so that we can, you know, subtly shift these four characters' fates so that they can then come together to fight the big bad. So you've kind of, that's why you're able to jump between these different timelines, and your character is always kind of present in shifting things, which I think is a neat idea for a framing, and also allows for these different tones and lets you play all

• 17:15Kirk Hamilton?

  four storylines without having to restart the game and play it four times, which I like, just never had time for in Three Houses, as much as I wanted to. And it's cool, because playing as Kai, like, as far as I've gotten, you're in these, it's like during this Olympic kind of, you know, heroic, this invitational Colosseum competition, where like, all the greatest warriors in the land and from lands afar have like, come so that everyone can fight. And you fight against Dietrich and Lida and Theodora, or alongside them. And so you meet them, the first time you meet them, you fight alongside them, but then, presumably, I'm gonna have to, I know, actually, I'm going to have to take them on in the Colosseum. I don't think I'm killing them if I beat them, but like, it's gonna mean that I think there are gonna be like, different alternate histories almost, eventually.

• 18:00Kirk Hamilton?

  I can't really imagine how it works, because I would have to think that each of these characters will win the heroic games in their timeline. And I think that's all really kind of, it's mind-bending in a cool way, at least I'm into it.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I didn't really think about whether the characters were gonna win in their timelines. That does seem like it also provokes a question of how that could work, but hey, we're revealing-

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Or if it just gets them to survive enough.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  We've only played a few hours. Yeah, maybe they all just survive, or at the end, something happens.

• 18:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I wonder if, I guess, even thinking of Fortunes Weave, the title, I could kind of imagine, given that there's so much metaphysical time magic nonsense going on, that they come to the Act One break, when you've played everyone, and it's like, okay, and now, you're all in slightly different places, but we're gonna like weave you all together into one big army to fight the bad guy or something. That kind of feels like where it's going. That's not based on me knowing anything, that's just kind of my, my gut.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, again, we're all really early in the game, and I, I love that. I love that prediction, I think that makes a lot of sense. But that feels like as good of a place as any to transition the conversation to a different video game that I completed playing and is not as fun to play, according to me, as Fire Emblem: Fortunes Weave. It is called Marvel's Wolverine. It is a game by Insomniac, the team, the studio, best known for making the Spider-Man games, which we've talked about on the show a ton. I believe we even have a bonus spoiler cast about Spider-Man 2, that people can go back and listen to if they want to.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Big, open-world Spider-Man games, they're swinging around New York. This Wolverine game, very, very different from that. It is a linear story that I completed in about 11 hours. It is a melee action game, and it is very story-forward. I-

• 19:57Speaker 00

  I'm really curious what you think, Lucy, because I listened to the Friends for Second episode about this, and that was before you had played it yet.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  You were like refereeing.

• 20:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I think you did a great job, actually, of sort of refereeing this conversation between a bunch of different people who had finished it and reviewed it.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  Which is a great conversation, by the way. Really enjoyed it.

• 20:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, very interesting. We'll link that in the show notes.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  But we forced Lucy to play it for us. So Lucy, what did you think about this video game?

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Because I was traveling and I had a PC with a laptop with me, but I didn't have a PlayStation. And so I couldn't have played enough to partake in that conversation. But a good few hours in now, I think it's just, it's fine to say that this game isn't for me. I, of all the Marvel properties, the X-Men are my favorite. I would not say that Wolverine is my favorite, but you know, just in terms of him playing as a playable character, yeah, it's always going to be that guy. He's recognizable, he's iconic. He is more in the zeitgeist because of Deadpool versus Wolverine or whatever that. I don't like Ryan Reynolds, I can't bring myself to do it.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  And so this game is really interesting to me because I think it looks really good. Early on, at least, I don't know about the ending or kind of where it goes from the middle onwards, but it's, you know, like, there are some story stuff that I like that it's doing. There were some moments between Logan and Jean Grey that I really like and feels like really cute. And it just feels like I'm a little voyeur looking in on something that I shouldn't be. But then when it comes to the combat, it's just very, very repetitive. And I've been bouncing between Blood of Dawn Walker, Control Resonant, and this. And so it feels, I mean, I think the most damning thing I can say about Marvel's Wolverine's combat is that I was answering a bunch of text messages.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  I think I was even emailing you both with one hand and I was completing.

• 21:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Parry, parry, parry, kill, kill.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Combat scenarios with my, with one hand, just square, square, square, triangle to jump. Does, and then there are these sort of, this game would have killed if it came out in 2010. This would have been the Bastion. This would have been the game that we held every eye into. I mean, between this and sort of like, but even Arkham is really good to go back to now. Maybe not the boss fights, but Arkham Asylum and City especially, like, they are so great to go back to.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  And the lineage of Arkham is here, and I feel like it's casting a pretty long shadow over this game.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Stood the test of time, whereas this, it's kind of pulling in a lot of AAA design tropes that I'm not a fan of, and that is the excessive handholding. I know the fart gas is unfortunately their legacy on this game, has been dialed down in a recent patch, but just.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  In case the listeners don't know, Lucy's referring to Wolverine's heightened senses, which allow him to sniff where different characters are going. So if he wants to trail somebody, there's like a glowing gas on the ground that he follows around.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Obnoxious blue trail.

• 23:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, which I believe Gene Park dubbed fart gas, quite memorably.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think Gene Park came up with that. Yeah. Which is a very evocative turn of phrase to describe the linearity of the game and the, it's kind of like this game's version of yellow paint, I guess, is, if you want to.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  And there's also white paint, though. They have that, they have got that, too. But the, yeah, the thing is, is just, it just, the trend that I hate in AAA is that they desperately don't want you to lose attention for even a second. You can't get lost, there can be no friction. And there is no friction for me in Marvel's Wolverine. There are some nice moments, I can just fully accept it's not a game for me.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. Kirk, where are you, where's your head at on it? You ended up beating it, possibly because I said I was going to complete it and maybe that socially encouraged you to complete it because you knew I was.

• 23:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Not exactly. So I played a lot of it, and I made this my one more thing last week, and then I just decided, well, I might as well finish it. I do kind of want to know what is going to happen, and I want to be able to talk about it with you, Matty. So I went ahead and finished it over the weekend. So people have already kind of heard my broad thoughts on the game. It's kind of a mess. I really like Liam McIntyre's performance as Wolverine. I think some of the writing is great. There are things that I like, but I think the game, it just really clearly shows to me that it was rebooted midway through development, which I suppose is something Jason has taught us, happens to every single game, so that's not necessarily a sign of trouble, but it seems much more evident in this game than in some more successful games.

• 24:33Kirk Hamilton?

  It seems as though they were working on a more open world thing. There are these big open world maps that somebody made that you do linear story missions through. It just has all the hallmarks of a game that had that happen. Jason was basically like, yeah, man, like, that is what happened. Like, I can't speak for him, but he was essentially saying that is the case. And we know that the creative team, the creative director changed midway through. I think more of the Miles Morales people, or at least the director of Spider-Man, Miles Morales, was working on this to begin with, a game that I quite liked, Matty, I think you also did as well.

• 25:02Speaker 00

  I did like, yeah.

• 25:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Lucy, were you a Miles Morales fan?

• 25:05Speaker 02

  I liked Miles Morales, yeah.

• 25:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I thought quite a bit of that. I liked the smaller scope and was actually reminding myself of Spider-Man 2. I was going back because I'm like, yeah, that was a cool game, but it was very like, for whatever reason, I've memory-holed it. And then I was remembering things that happened in that game. I was like, that game was a mess, dude. Spider-Man 1 is the one, narratively at least, where I'm like, that was a very strong story and a, you know, a good game. The 2 is kind of pretty messy. Anyhow.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  But I think what you're getting at is that Miles Morales as a game is very focused and tight.

• 25:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  And that can have a lot of benefits, actually, and is not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to this type of game.

• 25:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And while I can't speak to the particulars of development, I could imagine more of the Miles Morales folks at Insomniac coming up with a game that is once again a kind of limited open world game in the same way Miles was. And then it's not working, they're struggling. For whatever reason, they brought in a new creative director, and these are the people from, I think it's two people, from Ratchet and Clank: A Rift in Time.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  A Rift Apart?

• 26:07Kirk Hamilton?

  And that is not the name of that one?

• 26:08Speaker 00

  It's A Rift Apart.

• 26:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Rift Apart, sorry. These names are all the same.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  It's fine.

• 26:12Kirk Hamilton?

  I did never keep it straight. From the most recent Ratchet and Clank, which is like not my favorite Insomniac game, it's more of the console video game-y thing. And so they, I would, I get the sense, rebooted it, turned it from an open world game into this linear game, and it just has all the hallmarks of a game where they're like, all right, we built all this stuff, we have this story, we have all these pieces, we just got to put them together into something that plays from start to finish that looks like a complete video game. And now that I've finished it, yeah, it kind of feels like that. Like, it's pretty messy, and I said a lot about the combat before. And when, I think we'll talk some with spoilers right now, because I just think that would be kind of interesting. I mean, not right now, but in this episode.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, we'll give it a few minutes, but I do want to take a break and spoil the game for Lucy, who has admitted to us ahead of time that she's fine with being spoiled.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not going to finish it.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  But listeners, don't worry, we'll warn you, we're not there yet. Kirk, go ahead.

• 27:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, so it's just like that narrative stuff, like, especially the relationship between Logan and Jean is really interesting. Matty, you're an X-Men expert, and I would love to hear a little unspoiler-y, like, what you thought when you finished it, because I think that stuff is just interesting because it's totally new, a lot of what they're doing. And that's cool that they were trying to do that, even if narratively it's quite convoluted, and I found myself having to just go like, look up what the hell happened at the very end to really understand it.

• 27:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, this game was really strange to play as somebody who's familiar with X-Men comic books, but I would argue it should be strange to play for anyone who has even a passing familiarity with X-Men from, say, the live-action movies.

• 27:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Or even the cartoon.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  Or even if you watched the cartoon growing up, because this canon in the game is very divergent from any of those previous ones. Specifically for Wolverine, which is like, this is a story that has been retold in those three formats and many, many other formats. There's a bunch of different adaptations of Wolverine. There's even a Wolverine anime, it's really bad, no one, no one needs to watch it. But like, I really have engaged with all of these things. And like, his storyline is usually, he's many hundreds of years old, at some point he gets kidnapped by the United States government for a program called Weapon X. They infuse adamantium into his bones, he has a healing factor, we all know that.

• 28:27Speaker 00

  They brainwash him and use him as a weapon, and that's why he can't remember who he is or what his past is by the time he eventually meets Professor X and all of the X-Men. And meanwhile, of those X-Men, one, Jean Grey, would have been converted into an X-Man at a very young teenage age by Professor X. That's pretty much always her story as well. She meets her childhood sweetheart, Scott Summers, at that age, grows up already in love with him before Logan even shows up in her world, thus igniting.

• 29:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, really? I didn't know that, actually. I didn't know that they were childhood sweethearts.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Igniting the love triangle, the love triangle for the ages. These are kind of like the basic plot beats that we're all familiar with. Every single thing I just said is not the case in this video game. Weapon X, like, it's not, it's not there. And that's obvious from frame one of the game. Like, this isn't me spoiling the game. This is like, the opening of the game makes this clear by having this character, Nathaniel Essex, which is a name that comic book fans will know, but I think maybe other people will not, which is fine, is kind of the Professor X character seemingly at the outset of this game. And he recruits Logan to be part of Team X. It's not the Weapon X version of Team X, it's a different version of it.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  And this team is also going on black ops missions together, but the reason why Logan's memories are different seemingly doesn't have to do with brainwashing in the same way. And like, that mystery sort of unfolds throughout the course of the game, it is explained by the end, but it's a different explanation than the one we know. And meanwhile, Jean, the Jean that we meet in this game, she's not a member of the X-Men because there are no X-Men. And that is a fascinating choice as well, because these, this Jean, this version of Jean is like, she's a 40-something character, like, she's a fully adult woman, she's played by 40-something actress, which I think is really cool, by the way, that they cast like older characters in this.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  But it also means that I'm like, as I'm playing this as a person familiar with these characters, I'm just kind of like, this is like, kind of a cool story, but like, I don't know these guys. Like, that's fine, like, to be clear. Like, that kind of kept me going through it all, because I was just like, this is like a what-if comic, where it's like, okay, what if Scott Summers never existed and Professor X didn't exist and all the other original five X-Men didn't exist? And like, who would Jean be in that world? And what if Weapon X didn't exist? And who would Logan be in that world? And like, let's imagine, let's cast these characters into a world where those things didn't happen, and they fall in love organically with no other love triangle standing in their way. What would that look like? And it's interesting.

• 31:12Speaker 00

  But I also find it really strange that Insomniac made that choice. Because I'm like, these are such well-known stories. Like, why? You're taking away things that people know really well. And like, as an Axeman fan, I actually like, kind of backed my way into enjoying it just because it was so strange. Because I was like, this is such wacky choices. Like, what are they gonna do next? And like, that kind of kept me going to the end of the game where they continually make choices that I'm like, "All right, that's literally never happened in a comic book."

• 31:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Which we can describe in a second. But like, that was fascinating to me. However, another non-spoiler thing that we can get into, I just never vibed with this game's combat. I don't know how you two felt about it. I thought we'd quickly go over that before we break. I know some people like it. I went back and read some reviews now that I've beaten the game and was kind of surprised to see some reviewers actually really enjoyed it. And we're like, "Oh, I love the combos. I played it on hard and like, really enjoyed the challenge." I just, I thought, almost every enemy is a humanoid enemy. They're almost all the same height. Like, it just-

• 32:20Kirk Hamilton?

  They'll have a sword.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  I mean, they're almost all the same.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  They're almost all the exact same guy.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  They're all the same character models.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, that-

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Being attacked by three of the same guy.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Sometimes there's a bigger guy, to be fair.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  Sometimes there's a bigger guy.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Sometimes there's a bigger guy.

• 32:30Speaker 00

  Every now and then, there's a guy who's like, a couple of feet taller than you. And then, like, one time, you have to fight a really big Sentinel. Well, a couple of times, but like, there's only one kind of like, official-

• 32:40Kirk Hamilton?

  At the low point of the game, that Sentinel boss fight.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  Sentinel boss fight. So like, that was, that was tough for me and really was part of why I have trouble recommending this game to anyone who isn't in my position, personally, of being like, "I want to see what happens in this story because it's so strange and reads like a what-if comic. And I just want to know what this Logan slash Jean fanfic writer designed in a world where Scott Summers doesn't exist."

• 33:08Kirk Hamilton?

  This, yeah, I mean, I, I think, I've seen a lot of people start it and be like, "Dang, this is pretty good." And I remember saying that as well. I started it and I was like, "All right, this is pretty cool." And then over time, that's when the kind of repetitiveness, the skill tree is just, it doesn't have any branches, you just go straight up it.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, wild.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Well, no, and also, I got, I got to a stage where it was, they were like, "Oh, you have unspent technique points, but they weren't unlocked in the skill tree, so I wasn't allowed to spend them." So I was like, well-

• 33:35Kirk Hamilton?

  There's a lot of that. Like, speaking of the messiness, that's just kind of got that, okay, nobody like, did a whole blowout of this skill tree at the beginning and then designed the game around it. It feels more like, we had to make something that worked, so whatever, fuck it, we're just gonna do like, a linear skill tree, basically. And the abilities you unlock are okay, but they're not that exciting. One gripe I have that's, I haven't seen anyone else make, I think that the, there's a very specific complaint I have about the cooldowns of your special abilities.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 34:05Kirk Hamilton?

  A lot of times when I'm fighting, I want to do the cool special abilities, where you do unlock these, kind of, hit the trigger, press a face button, and you do a kind of whirly, you know, whirly bird attack that kills a bunch of dudes, or whatever. The thing is, they have very long cooldowns. I have to imagine that's because in Spider-Man 2 especially, I remember in that game just only using special abilities because the cooldowns were so fast and the special abilities were so good, it would be like, you know, this robot spider would shoot everybody with lightning or whatever, and I would just-

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Or like, Miles would electrocute like, six people at once, or whatever.

• 34:38Kirk Hamilton?

  So I was like, "Well, my thumb is tired from punching guys, so I'm just gonna like, bring in my robot spider to defeat everybody." So I can see why they slowed them down, but I constantly, in this game, found myself being like, "All right, here's a fight." "Oh, man, everything's on cooldown, all right." And then just kind of pressing the two buttons. And my very specific pet peeve is that many times, at least in the version of the game that I played, you would, Wolverine would do a big fight, and always in the fight, you burn all your special abilities. So I would use all of those, they're all on cooldown, and I'd beat the final guy. And then it ends, and there's a cutscene. And Wolverine and Jean talk, and they like, go back to a place with their friend and have a drink. And then, they, they go to another place, and then they're maybe in another country, or something.

• 35:20Kirk Hamilton?

  And then they're getting ready, and then another fight breaks out, and I'm like, "Here we go, let's fight." And then all my cooldowns haven't budged, they're all still completely blanked out, and I can't use the abilities. And I was like, "Wait a minute, like, come on, at least reset these long cooldowns."

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's an old man now.

• 35:35Kirk Hamilton?

  So that's my very specific complaint.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  I think it's a very fair complaint. I also think there is, I'm not gonna like, get into the Ludo narrative dissonance of it all, but I do think there is like, an inherent trouble with adapting a character who literally cannot die into a video game where you can die. And like, I do understand. Like, I understand that Logan has to be able to not be quite so powerful to be in this video game, but it is something that I found myself chuckling at from time to time. Also, anytime another character like, threatens to kill Logan, I'm like, "Do you know, do you even know who this guy is? Like, this is one of the things they did. Man can die."

• 36:16Kirk Hamilton?

  I, I wish I could remember, because I've listened to a couple of different podcasts talk about this, but someone made the observation, it might have been on NextLander, that it feels as though everyone in a fight knows their role and is just doing it. Like, because you can't imagine why any of these guys would be fighting Wolverine, because, like, they're just going to die, like-

• 36:36Speaker 00

  How do they get the Reavers to keep doing this?

• 36:39Kirk Hamilton?

  And so, they pointed out, like, there's an ability you can unlock where when you do a really gory, gnarly kill, it makes everyone like, recoil, and so they kind of push back from you, but then they just keep fighting. They don't say like, "Wait a minute," you know? Man, there's a moment in, I don't know if either of you remember this, in Iron Man 3, the Shane Black Iron Man movie, there's a very funny scene in that movie where Tony Stark is like, infiltrating the compound, and he like, takes out a bunch of dudes, and he's like, being this super effective fighter, and he wrecks them all. And then the last guy is there with a gun, and he drops his gun, and he's like, "You know what, honestly, like, this was just a gig for me, like, I'm out." And he just leaves. And like, I feel like everybody in this game would do that. And-

• 37:18Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 37:19Kirk Hamilton?

  To tie on to that, that kind of, you know, Wolverine kills 10 million people in this game, like, or probably 10,000. And yet, is this likable character. I think it's really interesting that Walt Williams is the lead writer or creative narrative director of this.

• 37:33Speaker 00

  Was, yeah.

• 37:34Kirk Hamilton?

  He's credited. I mean, I think he at least-

• 37:36Speaker 00

  I just, that's true. I just also want to note, there's a ton of other writers listed on the game, and I was really curious about that process.

• 37:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, he didn't solely write it. Well, and the reason I mention that is, so Walt Williams, known as the lead writer of Spec Ops: The Line, he's talked about that actually in his book. He wrote a book called Significant Zero, that's his like, kind of, kind of reflecting on his life and his creative work, and also on that game, because that game was such a big deal to a lot of people. Spec Ops: The Line, of course, is a third-person shooter that does a lot of really daring and kind of crazy narrative stuff to implicate you, the player, in the violence that your soldier players are like, perpetrating. It's a really, it's an interesting game, a very flawed game, but has a lot of interesting ideas. And he has said as much about that game, that like, a lot of the stuff in that game was just a result of like,

• 38:25Kirk Hamilton?

  the chaos of development and them doing the best that they could. And it was like, a really challenging game to make. I get the sense that this also was a very challenging game to make, and it like, didn't break the same way, where you don't end it thinking, "Wow, like, they really like, said something interesting about violence in this game." Like, no, it's, it's pretty messy, and that kind of just comes off in the writing. So I would imagine that so many of the narrative issues are, just like all of these other issues, are like, born out of the, what was clearly, I think, a pretty tumultuous development.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  I think for me, the pacing of the game, this is actually a criticism I have around broader Marvel, is that when everything is exciting, when everything is the end of the world, nothing is exciting and nothing is the end of the world. There's, there's a bit early on in the game where you are, what are you doing? Like, you are chasing down a group of rogue mutants that Jean is involved with, and it's just fight, fight, fight. Enormous set piece in a dock, then an enormous set piece on a highway, and you're on a bike. And the whole time, I was just thinking, there is nothing in here because there hasn't been enough downtime for me to properly enjoy anything, and everything has been so samey.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  But then it got to the point where, I think you're, what was he doing? He was like, jumping on and pulling a gun off a thing or doing something, and it was all a cutscene. And I was like, "This is the coolest thing he's done, and you are not letting me, the player, do it. I'm watching it. Is this my reward? I don't understand that." Because that, to me, feels like a cop-out. Honestly, I'm, I'm not gonna kind of say like, oh, I mean, I know it's gonna be expensive and time-consuming to do from the development side, but that's my kind of overarching thing, is that everything just feels dampened because I'm doing so much of it. It's just, it's lost the excitement factor. Even going into, again, I'm gonna bring up Arkham, but you know, there was downtime, there was investigations.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  And you can see where Wolverine tries to do that, where it tries to have these quiet moments, but it is, again, too afraid to let you- Like exist in those moments of quiet because it wants you to keep going on and doing the next thing. So in Batman, every time you came up against, you know, a predator room, or, you know, you are gliding around Gotham, you just see a bunch of thugs, you're like, okay, I'm gonna go do that. Wolverine just throws it all at you all the time. And it's, it is the Zach Branigan, I'll send waves after waves of my own men at them approach to game design that I am just not a fan of.

• 40:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that early sequence where Wolverine is like chasing the mutants, I feel like that was also a press, like that was shown at some big press event.

• 41:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was a preview.

• 41:03Kirk Hamilton?

  I can start to sense that from games like this now where I'm in the first act and it's, because it's the first act, they can, they want to put it in the first act because narratively, they don't want to be giving away story beats from the end of the game. But there's this kind of, like, it doesn't match up, like in terms of the pacing of a story, where there's this incredibly expensive looking, like bananas, multi-tier set piece, like action chase sequence, that feels like the, what should be the end, and instead is like happening kind of early on. I'm like, I feel like this was a press demo. And I think that that, I think that that one was. And yeah, oh man, we're gonna get into spoilers. And I guess, something to set that up maybe, or preface it is, I'm

• 41:45Kirk Hamilton?

  a huge defender of Arkham Knight, actually, the third Batman Arkham game.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  I'm also, I'm in Arkham Knight.

• 41:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, I re-reviewed that for Kotaku when I was writing there. And did, Steven, our boss, gave me a ton of time to just like, really play the hell out of the game and do this like, super comprehensive re-review, which I did. And I wound up thinking, God, this is an ambitious and remarkably successful storytelling experiment. Like, I think what they're doing in that game where the Joker is in Batman's mind, and a big part of the story is like, understanding how that's working, like almost the mechanics of the Joker taking over Batman. And the whole finale, you have to understand that like, there are two people inside of Batman, and the fear gas is like, at this point, it's hitting Batman, and at this point, it's hitting Joker. And then Joker's, we're in Joker's nightmare here and not

• 42:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Batman's nightmare. It's like really complicated, like inception, Christopher Nolan stuff. And the first time I played the game, I was like, whatever, that was kind of a mess, who knows? And then I went back and I truly understood it and was like, oh, that was actually really ambitious and they kind of pulled it off. That was really cool. With this game, I had the same feeling at the end. Like I was saying to you, Maddie, I like went and looked stuff up and watched the secret ending and stuff. Cause I was like, what the hell is going on with Logan and Jean? Like, what is this? And I do kind of just think it's a mess. And I don't think I'm gonna go back if I ever replayed it and be like, oh, they kind of really nailed this. I don't really think so.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe we should go ahead and mark for spoilers here so we can tell Lucy about where this game goes.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Please do.

• 43:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, okay, I'll, I'll do the thing where I will remember to say the timestamp. Okay, the timestamp to skip to for one more thing, to avoid the Wolverine spoilers is 1 hour, 3 minutes, and 39 seconds. That's 1 hour, 3 minutes, and 39 seconds. Okay, Maddie, let's get into spoilers.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  I'm ready, I'm ready.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  This, this game is a true romanticy story in the end.

• 43:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it really, it's really a romance story.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  It goes full romanticy. Yeah. And, and it creates, again, these are, this is like wholly original. Like this is-

• 43:50Kirk Hamilton?

  No, you're right. It is romanticy. Sorry, Maddie, go ahead. I'm just realizing what you're saying, and it's very true.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. So like, it's, you know how in romanticy stories, like, it's like, the woman tames the beast. Like, we're kind of going Twilight with it by the end of this game in some ways, that I was just like, okay, like, I, again, this really feels like a Logan Jean Shipper wrote this game. I don't know if that literally happened, but there's some big fanfiction vibes that like, kind of came out of nowhere at the end of this game. So I think most people know Jean from like, the many times the Phoenix Saga has been adapted, usually pretty poorly. So in this version, Jean just kind of like, has reincarnation powers. And that's never really explained. And so much-

• 44:39Kirk Hamilton?

  It is the Phoenix Force, right? It's like making her-

• 44:41Speaker 00

  That's my head, Tannen Kirk, but I wouldn't say that's the game's explanation.

• 44:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay. It's at least alluded to, where they're like, she's a real Phoenix, that one, or whatever.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Yes. They, they kind of like, Logan's kind of version of himself in his head that does remember Jean from past lifetimes, because it turns out they've known each other from many lifetimes ago.

• 45:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. That's the lead line.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  He kind of like talks to himself in his mind during this sort of like astral plane memory sequence near the end of the game, where Logan finally starts putting some pieces together. And if you've been doing these just absolutely odious nightmare door sequences in the game that we didn't even talk about, but they're like deeply unfun, little like puzzle rooms. I can't even call them puzzle rooms.

• 45:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Placed in the middle of like, a chase sequence.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. Why would Logan be leaving in the middle of like, a really breakneck fight to like, go do a memory, memory door?

• 45:30Kirk Hamilton?

  They're like, look, we made these and we had to put them somewhere.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  He's working on himself, okay?

• 45:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, he is.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  He literally is like, guys, it's the only time my therapist could do. I gotta go do a nightmare door. Anyway, so he goes through these nightmare doors, and at the end of each one, he'll like, recall a memory. And like, sometimes those memories will like, involve him pursuing a redhead. But sometimes he'll be doing it in like, 1932 or something. And like, I'm playing this and I'm like, Logan's pretty into redheads. Like, there's definitely some past redheads of Logan of yore. Like, you know, sure, maybe this is like, Heather Hudson or whatever, like Rose O'Hara, like, okay, like, we can throw in some other redheads from like, Logan's many 200 years on this planet. I don't know. No. It turns out all of those redheads are reincarnations of Jean, and that she also kind of existed in past versions over the course of this 200 years.

• 46:20Kirk Hamilton?

  It's unfortunate that listeners can't see Lucy's face right now.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  I know, Lucy's just twisting-

• 46:25Kirk Hamilton?

  It's telling a whole story.

• 46:27Speaker 00

  Face into like, squinting, like-

• 46:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Really? Okay.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  The fry squinting meme of just like, what are you telling me right now? And so, Jean has also somehow forgotten that she is this reincarnatable being. Which, again, in my mind, I'm just like, okay, let's just say it's the Phoenix Force, and every time the Phoenix Force becomes somebody in this past, it just happens to become a beautiful redhead that looks like Jean Grey. Fine, okay. And in all of these versions of reality, Logan and the Phoenix Force find each other, have some type of love story, and usually Jean kind of like tames the beast inside him. And like, in this canon, like I said, there's no Weapon X. And I would say the implication is that like, Apocalypse, who's

• 47:12Speaker 00

  also kind of like this eternal villainous figure in X-Men canon, that's generally true, kind of recruits Logan as the Horseman of Death at some unspecified point in time in the past. And that's how Logan gets his, his power up, which is plausible, and like, happens in a comic book storyline later on, after Logan like, loses adamantium. It doesn't matter, who cares? They stick that in, in like, the past. And they're like, that's how Logan got his adamantium. And he's kind of like haunted by this time when Apocalypse like, made him become this death figure. And like, that time in the past is also when the Hand worshipped him as this death god. And that's why the Hand is obsessed with Logan in the present day, because they like, have memories of him.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  So that's why he was reflecting on being a death god. He doesn't care about being a death god, which he essentially is.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  I guess.

• 47:59Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like, why in the Hand chapters, they keep talking about this guy who looks like Logan, and they're kind of worship him, or they used to worship him. And it's because it was him, because Apocalypse made him the god of death, which is kind of from the comics.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  It's kind of cool. Yeah. I mean, it's like, it's, it's sort of time displaced, but like, yeah, again, Apocalypse has had Logan in his, in his clutches before. So it's not like, totally unheard of.

• 48:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm saying god of death, but he's like a horseman of the apocalypse.

• 48:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, we should say he's a horseman of death.

• 48:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes. He is death, the horseman of the apocalypse.

• 48:28Speaker 00

  But in the Hand's estimation, he's a god of death. And like, so that kind of like, god of death meets the Phoenix Force in this sort of tortured romanticy storyline that plays out over hundreds of years. And they'll always find each other. And that's kind of how it ends, is that there's like, this big culminating fight with Nathaniel Essex, who of course-

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Oh, with Essex?

• 48:53Speaker 00

  Is Mr. Sinister. And I was kind of curious how this comes across for, like, maybe you, Kirk, wouldn't have necessarily known that Nathaniel Essex was gonna turn out to be a bad guy. Was that like, a twist for you? Because as soon as I heard his name, I was like, okay, yes, he's a bad guy.

• 49:09Kirk Hamilton?

  It wasn't for me, because I, he was just so evidently evil to me anyways. Like, he has red, his eyes are like, dark purple red. And when he does his power moves, like, the music is like, oh.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not exactly subtle.

• 49:23Kirk Hamilton?

  And just, he seems like, clearly this guy. And then, over the course of the story, it's like, oh, everything this guy is doing is the kind of thing that supervillain in X-Men does.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  And also, Troy, Troy was giving it the English accent, which is-

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Yes, you know-

• 49:36Speaker 02

  That's how you know evil.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  You know somebody's bad when they're an English gentleman from Victorian times.

• 49:40Kirk Hamilton?

  I get the sense Troy Baker has enjoyed playing villains lately. And it just, I was like, this guy's gonna turn evil. Like, this just has to be how this goes. And then at some point, very early on, I think I saw actually, what's his name? From, from Marriage Story and from Girls, Adam Driver was like, cast as Mr. Sinister.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, he's playing Mr. Sinister in the live action upcoming movie.

• 50:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. And so I saw that. And I was like, oh, that's the same guy? That's kind of wild that this game has, that's, he's like the villain in the upcoming X-Men movie.

• 50:09Speaker 00

  And I, I was kind of curious about that too, given that Jean in this version of the story is sort of like this vigilante who works with characters, led by Callisto, who in the comics are referred to as the Morlocks, but in this, they never actually use that word. But that's who all those characters are. They're like, in X-Men comics, they're known as the Morlocks, because they're all mutants that can't pass for human. That's like, what binds them all together. And they like, live in the sewers, much like Morlocks in the time machine do. And that's kind of held here in this game as well, except that Jean is a part of that group, even though she can definitely pass for human. And that's like, kind of the closest the game has to an X-Men storyline, I think. And at the end of the game, it's like, sort of implied that maybe Jean will become-

• 50:53Speaker 00

  A leader of some future group. Anyway, I, I kind of enjoyed the Mr. Sinister stuff, even though it was really campy. I thought that was like fun.

• 51:00Kirk Hamilton?

  And obvious, right?

• 51:01Speaker 00

  And like, I enjoyed it. I saw some people saying they felt like it was rushed. And that's fair. To me, it wasn't. To me, it was like, super dragged out. Cause I was like, we've gotta know Mr. Sinister's evil.

• 51:12Kirk Hamilton?

  And cause the combat's so annoying that there just came a point where I was like, I just wanna know what happens. I'm so sick of fighting Sentinels and whatever. Like, I just don't wanna do this anymore.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  But the other complaint people had that I saw that I think is a little more fair is that at the end of the game, in order to save Logan from ever being like haunted again by this apocalypse death drive that he has, that's embedded in his psyche, he asks Jean to completely wipe all of his memories, like including that stuff. And so she gives him like a fresh reset at the end of the game, which means he doesn't remember her and their long and tortured romance arc that they've had over many hundreds of years. And it's sad.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  All those nightmare rooms, gunplay.

• 51:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, it's so sad.

• 51:54Speaker 00

  All the quote unquote therapy that he was doing is gone. And so he leaves at the end of the game and is like, I don't know you, bish, and just walks away. And it's like, kinda, yeah, like he kinda is like,

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Back on the X, baby.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  I don't know who you are. Bye. Like, it's, it's strange.

• 52:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that, so I think that story, like, I'm actually kind of a sucker for like lovers across time who keep finding each other. I don't know. I love that shit. Like, and I have always liked that. Like, when I was a kid, I just have very strong, like, this is my first love triangle memories of watching the animated show and being like, oh, but he really likes her. Why is she with Cyclops? He's a dork. Like, he sucks.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 52:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Wolverine's tortured and like, he's real, man.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  He's brooding.

• 52:42Kirk Hamilton?

  So I like that as a story. I don't, I'm not sure like where that came up. Like, it just has the feeling of something that was sort of superimposed onto an action video game, where like, there could be a comic run, even like an alternate history comic run or something, that told a story like this. That could be really cool if that was the real centerpiece of it. And I do think that those two actors and their scenes together are great. There are some really nice romantic scenes where they go to the casino or whatever, and they're like dancing together and you're spying and like,

• 53:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love that scene.

• 53:12Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know. They have chemistry and there's, it's really, it's cute. And it's just fun to see them actually get to be a couple in the way that they so rarely are. So I like that in theory. It's just that like, putting that into this game is a little odd. And also, I guess I came away from it thinking as wild as all this stuff is, especially for an X-Men fan, like it's just totally out of left field. It's also, it feels to me like this could all just be a setup for the X-Men to come together. Cause presumably Insomniac is still making an X-Men game. And that, just at the end of this, so one thing that happens at the end that you didn't mention, Maddie, that is pretty minor, but like Sabretooth goes and finds Apocalypse or whatever.

• 53:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 53:54Kirk Hamilton?

  And is, the dialogue makes it sound as though he is now going to be War. So he's gonna be the horseman of the apocalypse that is War, and he's gonna be the new big bad. Which also, side note, Sabretooth rocks in this game. Like,

• 54:06Speaker 00

  He's actually amazing in this.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  I'm enjoying Sabretooth a lot.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  Honestly, the Sabretooth Logan dynamic is the same in the comics. Like, this is one of the things that they keep. And I'm like, that's kind of cool that like, some of these characters are like, have the same dynamic. Now, they don't have the same backstory, so there's like no explanation for why they have this dynamic. Cause like Weapon X didn't exist and they didn't come up together in it. And so instead, it's like, well, how did they get this way? But I was kinda fine with it at a certain point. I was just like, who cares?

• 54:32Kirk Hamilton?

  There's a scene, there's a scene, Lucy, that you probably haven't gotten to, where Wolverine and Sabretooth like attack this facility together. And, and like, it's so much fun, cause it's like them finally working together and they're terrifying. They're just like ripping this place apart. And Sabretooth just keeps being like, you're loving this, aren't you, man? And like, there's a lot of like dudes rock, kinda like, it's, it's great. And like, the two actors have so much chemistry. It's like really popping. That whole part was popping so much for me. So anyways, all that is to say, Sabretooth, a highlight of this game, honestly. And when Wolverine does kill him, it's very funny, cause he like falls off a cliff or something.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  Another moment where I'm like, he's not dead. What are we?

• 55:09Kirk Hamilton?

  You got a quintuple tap in this universe.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  I, that was another moment that I was just like, are we supposed to pretend that Logan killed him?

• 55:17Speaker 02

  That he's not.

• 55:18Kirk Hamilton?

  And take it with you.

• 55:19Speaker 00

  I don't understand. Like, the emotional arc of this scene is not landing for me. And then like later Mystique is like mad at him for pushing Sabretooth off a cliff. And I'm like, I don't know why.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  He's fine.

• 55:29Kirk Hamilton?

  And also, he's a huge dick. Like, does anyone actually really like him, other than me as an audience member?

• 55:34Speaker 00

  I, you know, I don't know. I did feel for him. There's like this one pivotal moment where Sabretooth like kinda turns to Logan and is like, you didn't ask me to come with you. And I was like, that got to me, man.

• 55:45Kirk Hamilton?

  A great, a great moment. There are these moments, and you can see the, the game that, you know, if they hadn't had all these troubles.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, like they have, that's the thing. That's the thing.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  There was something in there.

• 55:56Kirk Hamilton?

  There was.

• 55:56Speaker 00

  There's occasional scenes that I think are really great. And like, some of Mystique's scenes I thought were really great too. I felt like she was like, really herself, quote unquote, in like how tortured she is as a person. And she's like, I never really am anyone. And like, I thought that writing for her was pretty, on par with her comic book persona in a way that I enjoyed. Even though they very randomly have her married to this character Tiger Tiger, who's like an extremely minor comics character that she's like never even met in the comics. And it's like, okay, like, I don't, I don't know. It's fine. I, again, I'm just like, everything I say, I'm like, I don't know how we got here, but.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  It's like, it's like a potluck of just reaching in and going, okay, Tiger Tiger is married to.

• 56:42Speaker 00

  We're like having some macaroni and cheese, and then we're having like some scrambled eggs with it. And then we're having like a steak. And it was like, what is going on? What is this meal? There's no vegetables in it. I don't know.

• 56:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I liked Mystique. I mean, I like Mystique a lot as a character, just because there's so much you can do. And what's cool about the X-Men, it's that, it's like that old Buffy thing, right? Where like each power is a metaphor for something that people struggle with.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  You know, Jess, we literally based Buffy on X-Men, right?

• 57:08Kirk Hamilton?

  I actually didn't know that, but it totally makes sense.

• 57:10Speaker 00

  Like, Buffy's like a direct Kitty Pryde allegory. I mean, there's a reason why they have such similar vibes. It's a good thing, I would say. It's one of the stronger choices he makes.

• 57:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it totally makes sense. And like, when you have, like Rogue, you know, Rogue can't touch anyone. And so it's like, oh, like, you know, there's, there's so much room for pathos there. And with Mystique, it's like, who am I really? You know, that is the question. It's like, she's a walking identity crisis, and that makes her an interesting character. And I wanted more of her. And it is like, also, yeah, Tiger Tiger, I'm not familiar with. Her wife, like, they own a bar together in Madripoor, I guess.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  This isn't from anything, so there's not gonna be a familiar one.

• 57:46Kirk Hamilton?

  And then, kind of a bummer that Tiger Tiger is just sort of her like bummed out spouse, who's just like, ugh, like, what are you even doing? Like, they seem to be disagreeing a lot in this story in ways that I was like, I don't really get this, like,

• 57:57Speaker 02

  They're newlyweds too.

• 57:59Speaker 00

  They are newlyweds. They just got together and it's going terribly.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Some nightmare doors gonna be opening up for them. You know, couples, couples nightmare doors.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, you go in together and you fight waves of enemies, and then your marriage is stronger when you leave.

• 58:14Kirk Hamilton?

  You do wonder about the Mystique game, or certainly the Jean Grey game. I mean, one of the things that happens throughout this game is like, Jean Grey seemingly could just like, annihilate everybody in any of the fights that I'm in instantly. She's so powerful, which is true of Jean Grey, right?

• 58:29Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 58:29Kirk Hamilton?

  She is an incredibly powerful mutant.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  Yep, she's an omega level mutant.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  It's true.

• 58:35Kirk Hamilton?

  And then the way the game ends with Jean like walking toward the camera, I'm like, oh, are we gonna get a Jean Grey game next? Or is that just gonna be our way in to like her finding Professor X and Cyclops and Gambit or whoever the hell?

• 58:45Speaker 00

  Or maybe becoming the Professor X.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  Was she originally playable?

• 58:50Speaker 00

  I had read like rumor that she was supposed to be playable at some point. They were supposed to be like switching back and forth.

• 58:56Kirk Hamilton?

  She's in so much of the game that that would not surprise me.

• 58:59Speaker 00

  It would have made sense.

• 59:00Kirk Hamilton?

  It seems like they could have built a lot of her powers, you know, into it.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  But again, it's like, if, if a character is too powerful, then it's not interesting.

• 59:07Speaker 00

  It's tough. I think that's an inherent problem with these characters. But that's part of why I'm like, the fun part of this game, if, if there is any fun to be found, is in this story that just doesn't always fully succeed. Like, we've kind of listed off some of the things that I think are really fun about it. But like, every other scene, I'd be like, this just isn't landing. And I feel like I don't totally understand the characters' motivations in this moment. And then like, the next scene, I'd be like, okay, I can kinda map this on to who I think these characters are, based on what I know about them. And I can like bring my own emotional baggage, I guess, to the table and like let that carry me through in some form. But that's almost unfair, because it's like, well, the things I like about the game are the times where I'm like,

• 59:49Speaker 00

  they kinda remind me of my guys. And I like those guys, and like, that's fun. But it's, it's inconsistent. It's, it's tough. It's kinda left me not knowing how I feel about the game, honestly. Like, more so than usual. Like, I don't know if I really hated this, cause it did have some moments that I thought were really interesting.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  The thing, I don't hate it at all as I'm playing it. I'm just like, oh, you know, go and jump up here and jump.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  Yes, AAA.

• 1:00:15Kirk Hamilton?

  It's very handsome looking.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  Punch people and you got claws.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Good looking, well acted, AAA game that is remarkably frictionless. But that's not a bad thing. Like, it's, it's, it's a, it sounds like a bad kinda compliment. But honestly, it's just, it's a vibe game.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  It is a vibe.

• 1:00:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and I mean, it seems to be selling well. Like, it seems to be like, you know, which is kinda, it's nice just in this day and age, honestly. Even while I have a lot of critiques of the game, like, the worst thing that could happen is it comes out, it was clearly a mess and difficult to make, and then it doesn't do well, and then Insomniac suffers for that. I'm like, let Insomniac make another game, by all means.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, let him have another shot.

• 1:00:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Make another Wolverine game. Like, keep doing this, you know, keep this cast around, keep, keep in this direction. Like, this had a lot of cool narrative ideas, and it seems like those ideas were just necessarily suborned to the chaos and the reboot and the fact that they had to fit stuff wherever they could to make this kind of shambolic game that they could ship that was fun enough to work. And that's kinda what they did. And like, sometimes it seems in game development, that's what you gotta do. And yeah, I definitely, you know, it was a pretty messy game for me in a lot of ways, despite the moments that, that did really work.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I'm really curious where they're gonna go from here though, because it does seem like this is such a different world from the one that I know, that I'm just genuinely curious. I'm like, I wanna see them make another game in this world, because I'm gonna have no clue where it's going and no way to predict it. And that can be kind of fun too. Like, that, that's really daring for them to make that decision. And I think the changes could end up continuing to be really interesting, cause I, I definitely didn't hate all of them and found some of them to be really creative and cool. So, uh, that's, that's Marvel's Wolverine. It's a weird game that I both liked and disliked at different points in time while playing it. And with that, let's take a break and then come back for one more thing.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  Friends, it's your captains Janet Varney and John Hodgman.

• 1:02:19Speaker 04

  As we come in for a landing on season three, we want you to know that all episodes of this season of E Pluribus Motto are available now. Be ready to binge hours devoted to the Yellowhammers of Alabama.

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  The tree octopi or octopuses of Washington or Washington.

• 1:02:35Speaker 04

  And motto's official, unofficial, Latin and otherwise from states like Nebraska, Florida and more.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  Once again, all E Pluribus Motto episodes are available now on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:02:47Speaker 04

  We hope you've enjoyed your journey with us and we look forward to traveling with you again soon. Please stay seated until the podcast comes to a complete stop.

• 1:02:58Speaker 05

  Hey Alexis.

• 1:02:59Speaker 06

  Hey Ella.

• 1:02:59Speaker 05

  What animal has the most teeth?

• 1:03:01Speaker 06

  I would guess a shark.

• 1:03:03Speaker 05

  A snail.

• 1:03:05Speaker 06

  No, snails don't have teeth.

• 1:03:07Speaker 05

  They have thousands and they are freaky looking.

• 1:03:10Speaker 06

  No, I don't want that to be true. Okay. Did you know that the hippocampus in your brain is named after the half horse, half fish sea creature found in Greek mythology?

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  I didn't know that, but we're meant to be doing animal trivia and hippocampus isn't a real animal.

• 1:03:23Speaker 06

  Well, that doesn't matter on Comfort Creatures.

• 1:03:25Speaker 05

  You're right, it doesn't matter at all.

• 1:03:27Speaker 06

  Comfort Creatures is a cozy show for lovers of animals of all shapes and sizes, real and unreal.

• 1:03:32Speaker 05

  If that sounds like your cup of tea, then join us every Thursday for new episodes on MaximumFun.org.

• 1:03:39Speaker 06

  And we are back. It's time for one more thing. Kirk, why don't you take it away?

• 1:03:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure, I will take it away with a new video game that I believe is out today, the day that you will be listening to this, which is Control: Resonant, the new one from Remedy Entertainment and a game that I've been playing over the weekend. Lucy, I gather you have also been playing it over the weekend?

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:04:02Kirk Hamilton?

  So I'm like three or four hours in. So this is really like early impressions, kind of similar to us talking about Fire Emblem where we're going to do a dedicated triple play of this game in a couple of weeks, just like we will with Fire Emblem. And I'll have played a lot more of it by then. So I just kind of want to share some early impressions because it's out and I feel like some people will be curious what I think, especially as our show's, I'd say, most rabid Remedy fan, the one who likes all their games and even likes the things that some people don't like about their games. So I have been playing this game with great interest. So Control: Resonant, man, where to start with this game? I didn't know anything about this when I started playing it. Lucy, did you know like that it was open world and it was in the city and stuff?

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did a preview. They had a couple of digital previews for it. And then I did, I played it at Summer Game Fest as well. They had, they had a like a two hour, I think, hands on bit. So I played from the very beginning and then a later mission, the sinkhole, if you, if you're there yet, the sinkhole mission.

• 1:05:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Hmm. I think I am. Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yes, I played past that. So yeah, I've played like through a few areas and beaten a few bosses and definitely have some thoughts. So I guess to really quickly nutshell it, this is a direct sequel to Control, which I believe is a 2019 game. Am I remembering that correctly? I'm going off the dome here. I didn't take good notes. And you play as Dylan Faden, right? Dylan, who is Jesse Faden's brother. Dylan was kind of the antagonist, or at least the MacGuffin of the first Control. And in the first Control, Jesse entered the Federal Bureau of Control, a secret government organization dedicated to basically the backrooms, what we now think of as like backrooms aesthetic, like, I don't know, what's the

• 1:05:50Speaker 06

  SCP Foundation inspired.

• 1:05:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Thank you, SCP Foundation, like government, like a bunch of creepy crawlies.

• 1:05:56Speaker 06

  Bureaucracy horror.

• 1:05:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, bureaucracy horror.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  Power utilitarian.

• 1:06:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, brutalist architecture and lots of like possessed items that go to other dimensions. So she broke into this building looking for her brother who had gone missing because the two of them discovered a slide projector that was like possessed by an entity from another dimension. And then that led to a really wild and incredibly cool story, I thought opened a whole new, like a rift into this extradimensional world that Remedy was building with all kinds of cool stuff. And in particular, a villain called the hiss that is basically a nefarious frequency, which I just think is very cool, that it's like, it's just a sound almost that just travels like, it's not a consciousness that it is. Very cool idea for a villain. And these games are filled with that kind of thing.

• 1:06:43Kirk Hamilton?

  So anyways, that game was very cool. We've talked about it. We did a Beans Cast in the bonus feed like years ago about Control 1. Then came Alan Wake 2, which actually tied to Control in a lot of ways. The Federal Bureau of Control turns up in Alan Wake 2, so Remedy is kind of expanding their cinematic universe and connecting things. And here we are with Control: Resonant, where you get to take control of Dylan, who has now been cured of the hiss possession in the first game and has become, he has become like forced warrior on behalf of the FPC. He has like a chip on the back of his head that'll kill him, but he has a lot of powerful psychic abilities and is very useful in the battle that is ensuing, which is happening because the hiss has escaped from the Federal Bureau of Control and gone into Manhattan, which is very bad

• 1:07:27Kirk Hamilton?

  because it's possessing people and turning them into monsters. But also there's something else going on. There's like some kind of a like resonance frequency cascade event that has caused New York to completely lose the thread with physics and reality. It's essentially become the version of New York in the deep subconscious of Inception where like sometimes the walls, the roads are going up and sometimes they're on the ceiling and everything is like, is folded around onto itself into a big series of weird cubes and things are cascading and mirroring and copying all over the place. And then the game itself is actually kind of reminds me of an infamous game. You're like a, it's a third person, open world superhero game, more or less, where you can fly ish and jump and, and there's a bunch of encounters all around and little puzzles. And then you can solve the little puzzles or you can chase down story

• 1:08:12Kirk Hamilton?

  missions and fight bosses. And I don't know, I've seen some slightly mixed reviews on it, I guess. For my part, I think this game rocks. I think it's so cool just because it's so visually amazing at every turn. There are things that happen in this game, like it's playing with three dimensional space in a way that a game like Gravity Rush did. I think of Gravity Rush when I'm playing this where the world is so like inverted and complex and beautiful in these really striking and disorienting ways. And I just find myself repeatedly just like laughing and be like, man, this is so cool. Like, look at this. How are they even doing this? And then that's on top of the lore, which is cool.

• 1:08:55Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, the feeling of discovering, being these little hints of kind of weird devices and strange occurrences that happened. And then really fun little puzzles where you'll see like, a lot of times there are stores that you can go into because you're just on the street in Manhattan and it'll be like a, you know, a laundromat and you go in and there's actually a little puzzle where the cash register has something funny written on it and there's a note by the door and you realize like, oh, there's a puzzle. And if I actually enter the right number on the cash register, a secret door will open in the back. And then that leads you into this very backrooms kind of, you know, space where it's like the FPC has all these depots or whatever. And just a feeling of like constant mystery hidden all around us and even underneath the layer of reality that we're

• 1:09:38Kirk Hamilton?

  looking at, that they're, I think, so fabulous at exploring in these games, that they conjure with such consistency and such beautiful artistry that like, the combat is like, ah, it's fine. It's kind of repetitive. Like the bosses are like, okay, but it's not on a musha or whatever. Like it's, it's not like top tier combat, but the, it's so enchanting and engrossing that I just am like, I just want to keep playing this because the vibes are so cool. So that's my early impression at least. I haven't played enough to maybe get sick of the repetitive parts. I haven't gotten to the end to maybe find the story disappointing, but so far I'm finding a lot, like the things that I wanted from it are really, really there. And I'm enjoying it more than I even thought I would, especially when I learned, oh, it's an open world superhero game. Oh, maybe I'm like, is that a good fit for Control for this world? It's working for me so far.

• 1:10:24Kirk Hamilton?

  But Lucy, I'm curious what you think from what you've played.

• 1:10:27Speaker 02

  I'm also a huge Remedy fan. I have the Nightless Night poster behind me.

• 1:10:31Speaker 06

  Wow, you do?

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  I've got like the Alan Wake thermos and everything in here.

• 1:10:35Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 1:10:38Speaker 06

  It's on us for not noticing all those Easter eggs throughout the call that were leading up to this moment.

• 1:10:43Kirk Hamilton?

  A very specific thermos.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  Call me Phil Spencer, the way I have everything in my shelves in my background.

• 1:10:47Speaker 06

  Oh my God, I will not do that.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  But no, and so I played, I really enjoyed what I played with. And I think the thing with Remedy games that is all just about, everything in it feels so purposeful and striking that even though they're not handing out all of the answers about what the hell the FPC has been doing or the hiss or anything, it's like, I don't want those answers because just being submerged in that world is interesting enough. And in terms of the combat, I'll take a step back, not in terms of the combat, but in terms of getting around the world, navigation, talking to people, reading notes and everything, Control: Resonant is sort of like the kind of opposite to Wolverine, where with Wolverine, there is little to no friction, whereas in Control, you have to read signs. The map is not good. That is a fixture of Remedy games. Like the map is not good.

• 1:11:36Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's very disorienting. Like the world, right, is so disorienting.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's also sometimes you will be walking on walls or, you know, like in different planes than you're used to. And so it's a game that demands attention and then rewards you by just absolutely being like this absolute feast for the eyes and ears. I also really love the sound design. Like you said, like with the hiss being this

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  Entity that can take over by just you hearing it. And then they've just done really incredible things with sound work, uh, both in the open world and when you are up against enemies, it's just, it's sumptuous.

• 1:12:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  Would be the word I would describe.

• 1:12:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Totally agree.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  And then, and then also it's just like, you know, there are those, Jessie, who was the main character of the original Control, the director of the Federal Bureau of Control has gone missing. The last thing she did was take this

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  spear sword thing and just put it into her brother's chest and that woke him up. And now that is his weapon. And there's also just like even the little, the little things about that weapon, the aberrant. You know, he's sort of tossing it to the side after he strikes it, you know, like discarding these things. Sort of like how Lepa does it in Overwatch. It's just like, just throwing stuff to the side. It transforms, it changes form. And so, yeah, and then, so it's all about Dylan. And from what we knew of Dylan in the original Control, he was, he was not the, the brother that Jessie grew up with. He was taken over by the hiss. He was, he was kind of annoying. He was just speaking riddles to you.

• 1:13:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Weirdo, yeah.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Weird little freak.

• 1:13:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  And now he is this very, you know, he's this quite boyish charm to him. He is this character who is just, you know, he is reckoning with the fact, the fact that he did something terrible years ago, but not necessarily under his own control. But he was responsible for the deaths of a lot of people and is now trying to make amends, trying to find his sister. And then you have resistance within the Bureau itself where they are screwed. Manhattan is screwed. They need every help they can get, but a lot of them, a lot of the characters you can come up against will have lost people because of Dylan. And so there's this great little push and pull there where they're kind of reluctant to accept his help, but they know they desperately need it. Um, and I really enjoy the, you know, the relationship that Dylan has with Zoe, a new character for Resonant, who is, uh, his handler.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  And she is this very, you know, just gotta get the job done, gotta get the job done. But she's kind of warming up to him in certain ways. She loves music and they're doing a cool thing with, you know, if you do certain story beats, you unlock another track on her, her mixtape that she always has. Um, I'm, I'm really enjoying it. I'm not as far in as I would like to be. The one thing I will say is that I think tuning of the difficulty is maybe a little off. The original Control was difficult. This one, I'm finding it more difficult, but I would say that is because I have repetitive strain injury and so I can't be doing, uh, yeah, playing Wolverine this and Dawn Walker has kind of been a bit of a nightmare. But credit where it's due, the assist, uh, and accessibility things, uh, that they have put in Control Resonant are incredible.

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  I tweaked my damage output just a bit, um, and I increased my, like the, the stagger. And that has made it much more manageable for me and I'm not getting penalized for it. It is more comfortable experience for me and I'm just really glad that that is all in there from day one.

• 1:14:55Speaker 00

  That's amazing because Control One did not have all of that stuff from day one. And I know it was added later.

• 1:15:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. But I remember, what is it? That Tomasi fight in Control is like kind of notorious.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yes.

• 1:15:08Speaker 00

  That's like the stopgap for a lot of people and I still, I don't know, it's a tough one.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  A hard game.

• 1:15:15Kirk Hamilton?

  This, yeah, I'll totally cosign that. I reduce, I reduce like the damage that I take to like 80% because I was just absolute on health constantly in fights and I, maybe I'm just bad. I don't know. I, but I just wasn't having that much fun. I was like, oh, another group of guys and they weren't even a story fight. It was just sort of some enemies in the world and like, here we go. And then I'm just kind of really up against the wall. And that, some people will like that for me. It really helps to just make that one small change. And it is, it is something they added to Control and I heard from a few people about that because when I played Control, that wasn't in the game and I kind of just

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  No, me either.

• 1:15:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Worked my way through it. But then they added these like amazingly granular controls, you know? And you can make the game harder for yourself too. So you can take more damage or do more damage or, you know, increase stagger, et cetera. And this is something that has come up many times, Lucy, on our show talking about. I, it started with Silk Song because I wound up playing around with some mods for Silk Song that were very similar to this, where it like increased hornets damage output by something like 10%. It was a tiny amount, but it just had enough of a impact that it made the game more enjoyable. And I was like, it, I came away from it thinking this should be a norm. And I think that it is gradually becoming a norm. I think we're seeing more and more games give these options. And then when we were talking about Mina the Hollow earlier this year,

• 1:16:33Kirk Hamilton?

  that's a game that almost gave too many options for some people and people felt a little overwhelmed by it or not sure how to optimize their playthrough. But I think it's really cool that more and more developers are playing with this and I applaud Remedy for sticking with it and like putting all those options right there in the menu and like not shaming you for using it. They tell you very clearly, there is an intended way to play this and that's with assist mode off. So like, if you want what we intended, play that. Like they don't, you know, they're, they're clear that that's what they intended. But then go ahead, like play with it if you want. And it's totally made the game like more fun for me because I'm here for the vibes and the story, for the exploration. I like the fights. They should feel a little challenging, which they still do. I just don't need it to quite push me that hard. And yeah, I have, I think that's a great feature that I'm really glad is in the game.

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm really, really to hear it. I haven't started this game yet and I'm excited to start. And I remember just like strong arming my way through some of those early Control fights and like, yeah, I beat the game the hard way, but like it, it, there were definitely moments where I wish it had just been tuned slightly differently and it's.

• 1:17:34Kirk Hamilton?

  It's that thing too, where like at the beginning, you just don't have as many abilities and powers and Dylan is just super underpowered. And by the end, I'm sure he's going to be like a god on earth, you know? And, and by then I might just kick the difficulty back.

• 1:17:44Speaker 00

  That's what's great about Control One.

• 1:17:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, which is what Control did, right? So I can imagine changing it as well. But anyways, yeah, we'll talk much more about it in a couple of weeks when we do a full episode on it. But I, I'm very positive on it so far, I gotta say. It's a very cool game.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  The movement too.

• 1:18:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it feels good to move around.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  Thipping around.

• 1:18:03Kirk Hamilton?

  And it runs great. I'm playing it on PC and it runs really well. I'm like, I don't have a super powerful PC, but I am continually impressed with Remedy, with just how gorgeous and well-made their games seem to be. Like that engine they use, whatever it's called, it's like.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  Northlight.

• 1:18:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, that's right. Northlight, uh, some very impressive technology.

• 1:18:21Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Cool. All right, I'll go next. Uh, so I've been reading this ongoing manga that because it's a manga, it has a very long title and the title is going to tell you exactly what happens in the manga. And I'm going to read it to you now. It is titled, "The guy she was interested in wasn't a guy at all", which is a hilarious title.

• 1:18:42Kirk Hamilton?

  What's it about, Maddie?

• 1:18:43Speaker 00

  Who could say? Um, so this is, this is a manga written by Sumika Arai and it's, it's very cute. I got, it's about two Japanese schoolgirls. And of course they discover that they are both queer over the course of this story and I, I, I'm 40 years old. I don't really make a habit of reading queer coming of age stories at this point in my personal journey. Like I, I feel, I've, if anything, I'm like one of those old queer people that's like, there should be more stories about 40 year olds. And like, you know, I was shouting out Wolverine earlier for having that, even though those aren't queer characters, except in my own fan fictions. But regardless, part of why I recommend this manga, although I kind of like started reading it

• 1:19:26Speaker 00

  just sort of like as a, as a joke, because I'm like, oh, it's such a funny title for a manga. Like what, what is gonna happen? Um, but the like full premise of the manga is that these two teenage girls who live in Japan and have always lived there are obsessed with Western, specifically American rock and roll music from the like eighties and nineties. And so the premise of like how they get together is that one of them works at a record store. That's like owned by her Gen X uncle, who's like very into like Nirvana and all that stuff. And she wears like a full KN95 face mask and like puts her like

• 1:20:08Speaker 00

  super goth hoodie over her hair when she's at work, which is why she doesn't look feminine. And so the other girl comes in and keeps like buying all these Nirvana records and like all of this like rock and roll music that the girl at the counter is like, I can't believe she's interested in this. And so that's how they come to like form this relationship is over this shared love of music. And some of the music references in this are like very comical to me and the way that I think you two can probably relate to if you've ever heard like of rock station that we hear now, where they'll play like, you know, The Smiths and then they'll play Hoobastank. And then they'll play, you know, like Red Hot Chili Peppers.

• 1:20:52Speaker 00

  And then they'll play like Fun Period. And you're like, okay, yeah, I guess technically all of these are pop rock songs, but they're all from like super different time periods and they all have like really different cultural contexts. And like for the first few issues of this manga, I was like running into that a lot where I was like, these two girls are listening to songs that are so random and have like, and are like completely divorced from the time in which they were created. But I also think that's part of what ends up being so charming about it because it is about and is written by someone who has their own associations with these songs that are totally different from ours. And like these two characters like come to them organically and like have their own love of them

• 1:21:35Speaker 00

  that is divorced from time and, and space and is divorced from like all the cultural contexts that like we have, or at least I have about Nirvana and like what we know about it. And like, I'm going to look up this quote. So like on the Wikipedia, which I was reading, because I was like, oh, I, I like wanna know like what, how, how this story came to be. And like, it's just kind of enjoyable to like read. It actually started as like a joke, like the artist, like she put it up on Twitter as like one panel or like a series of panels, just as like a bit. And people loved it so much that she like wrote out the whole story. And like, that's very cute to read about. But also on the Wikipedia, there's this quote from Dave Grohl, who's in the Foo Fighters now, but was obviously the former drummer of Nirvana.

• 1:22:18Speaker 00

  And he has read it and likes it and was like Kurt Cobain would love this story. And that just like shook me because I was like, oh, that's so sweet. It like makes me tear up to think about because Kurt Cobain was such. A like advocate for queer people when he was alive. And I just like, wow, okay, that's like really cool. So anyway, that was something else about the manga that I thought was neat. And it's gonna be an anime soon and I will watch it. And so if people want to read it, it's like corny, but it's really adorable. And I ended up being very won over by it in the end. So yeah, it's called The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't A Guy At All. It's actually about music and it's pretty adorable.

• 1:23:01Kirk Hamilton?

  That sounds awesome. Dave Grohl approved. That's a very Dave Grohl thing to do also is to like read a manga like that.

• 1:23:08Speaker 00

  It is. And like, they've also like approved like the song Breed for the anime. And like, I'm so excited about like what other songs are gonna be in the anime now. Cause I'm like, oh, like they have so many great tracks. Like the girls put together all these mixtapes for each other. And like, that'll be really cool if they can like get all those songs in the show. So, cause obviously reading it is fun, but like watching it, I feel like will be even better. So yeah, I'm psyched. Lucy, what's your one more thing?

• 1:23:40Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, hey, in that musical theme, my one more thing is the new Beck album, Ride Lonesome.

• 1:23:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  I am an enormous Beck fan, have been for a very long time. I'd say Hyperspace didn't really hit for me, but my favorites of his are unfortunately for him, the sad ones. And they're kind of the ones that he always does after big breakups. So Sea Change, obviously being sort of the, the go to sad breakup album after his relationship with Lee Lemon. Uh, Lee Limon?

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  And now Ride Lonesome is, it's been a couple of years now since his, uh, his divorce from Marissa Ribisi?

• 1:24:47Kirk Hamilton?

  It sounds right.

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  Giovanni Ribisi. Yeah.

• 1:24:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, Beck's had a storied life of romantic relationships and so on.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  Winona Ryder?

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:24:58Speaker 00

  Plenty to write songs about, I'm sure.

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. And so for me, it's, it's quite funny listening to Ride Lonesome, the album, because there are these sort of like motifs, I guess, if you want to call them that. But there's certain chord progressions that he would use in Sea Change. There's one like very specific one from things like, um, The Golden Age, which he kind of echoes in Ride Lonesome. And then in the middle of these two albums, of these two sad albums, the bookends, the one in the middle is Morning Phase from 2014, which Grammy Album of the Year.

• 1:25:30Kirk Hamilton?

  An amazing record for anyone who hasn't listened to it.

• 1:25:33Speaker 02

  Beautiful, beautiful album. And I was originally a little skeptical of Morning Phase because it was sort of positioned as this concept album about waking up. And I was like, oh no, has he gone, has he gone too up his own ass? But no, it's, it's a stunning album. And a couple of years ago, I saw him, he did, he did a tour performing with local orchestras. And he performed with the Berklee Philharmonic and he played, I mean, he opened with Golden Age and I just burst into tears. And I've never really had that experience at a concert before. So I'm going to see him on Friday, uh, here in San Francisco.

• 1:26:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Wow.

• 1:26:08Speaker 02

  And I can't wait. This album is, cause Beck is that, I mean, the, the joke from Futurama is that he transcends genres even as he reinvents them, which is unfortunately the only thing I can ever think of when it comes to trying to explain the music of Beck.

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  But he's dabbled in so many different genres. And I think when it is just him and the guitar and the beautiful string, uh, compositions that he, I think they're done by his father, like David Hanson.

• 1:26:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:26:37Speaker 02

  Um, he has just, it's like an ethereal, otherworldly quality to the music. And it is just, feels like a warm bath that you can kind of just let wash over you. And so Ride Lonesome has that, you know, quiet acoustic, but also just like elements of country. Um, and just, I, I'm really enjoying it. I think he is just absolute all-timer of an artist that I feel like doesn't get as, as much credit as he should. Like the people who get Beck really get him. And then other people, you kind of say, oh, Beck, and they go, oh, the loser guy.

• 1:27:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 1:27:10Speaker 02

  He's so, he's so much more than that. I mean, please, here's my copy of Mutations, go listen to it.

• 1:27:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, man, I've had a, I have a, I've had a long tortured relationship with Beck. Or no, I've had a long and winding relationship with him.

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  He's, he's made some interesting choices.

• 1:27:25Kirk Hamilton?

  He has. So my background, when I was like in high school, I was a jazz nerd and I was a big jazz musician. That was my whole thing.

• 1:27:31Speaker 00

  Not like now.

• 1:27:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I am still a jazz musician, um, in addition to other things. And a lot, and I was a big snob, like I was a big snob about harmony and complexity and technical ability. And that was my whole thing. And I would listen to like Odeley and I just thought this guy sucks. Like that, when, when I was 17 and didn't know anything, I barely listened to it. I didn't give it the time of day. I didn't know what was cool. I didn't know what vision sounded like. I did not understand that record at all. And I heard it and was like, this sucks. And totally skipped mutations. And it was, it wasn't until like after music school that I heard Midnight Vultures.

• 1:28:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:06Kirk Hamilton?

  And I was like, oh, this is sick. And then I looked at the personnel and realized like, oh, this guy is playing with like some of the top motherfuckers like in the whole country. And his bands are always that way. Like on this new record on Ride Lonesome, he's got Jason Faulkner playing guitar. Blake Mills is on a track who like Blake Mills made, um, Notes With Attachments, like one of my favorite records. So he's got these amazing musicians that he's collaborating with. And then I started realizing like, oh, all his records were good. He was always good. Like Mutations is like one of the best mixed and sounding albums I've ever heard. That album is so cool. I still just put it on like in a, in the studio or like when I'm trying out new speakers, just because it's so gorgeous sounding. And I've really come, like, I've come all the way around on him and like, I think he, I totally agree with you.

• 1:28:51Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm really digging this record, all that is to say. I've only listened to it a couple of times through, beautiful sounding, so much beautiful guitar playing. The songwriting is great. There's a lot in there. It's, it's really great. So to co-sign that, really good record.

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  It's unfortunate that the sad, the sadder he is.

• 1:29:06Kirk Hamilton?

  We don't want to wish for bad things.

• 1:29:08Speaker 02

  I don't want him to be sad. And yeah, but he's also, he's also like a great showman live. I've seen him a few, I've seen him a few times. Um, and he's just really good and engaging and funny. You know, sometimes you'll go see artists and they are just, you know, I'm just gonna play the song, play the hits. And that's kind of it. Beck digs into the back catalog a lot. And he has, there's a, there's an infamous, um, fan site called WhiskeyClone.net. I'm not sure if it's still around, but they had a list of every single song that Beck had ever, ever made. And in a, in a section called, I think it was Paper Tiger, every, every section of the website was named after a Beck song. And, uh, one of them was Paper Tiger. I forget what that was.

• 1:29:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Um, it's here, I'm looking at it. Oh, man, and it's just a freaking blog. It rules. It's totally still here.

• 1:29:56Speaker 02

  It's awesome.

• 1:29:57Speaker 00

  Hell yeah.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  This is, this is the best kind of internet. And yeah, just looking at how deep his archives go and how much music he has created. It's, I mean, I think, I forget which show I saw him do, but he pulled out, you know, stuff from Derrapathic Soul Manure and like something that he had on Golden Feelings that was later on, um, Mellow Gold. And even some stuff that he never really recorded. The one, the, my one holy grail song that I actually did see him perform live is Ship in a Bottle, which is a Japanese exclusive from Sea Change.

• 1:30:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Wow.

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  It was only available on the Japanese release of Sea Change.

• 1:30:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Deep cuts.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  And I was like, I'm gonna lose it. And so I'm so excited for Friday.

• 1:30:38Kirk Hamilton?

  That's so cool. Oh, I hope it's a great show. I'd love to see him live sometime. I've heard it's great. Yeah, I should go.

• 1:30:43Speaker 02

  He's on tour?

• 1:30:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, you could.

• 1:30:44Speaker 02

  It's just starting this week. Yeah, they had to cut, they had to move the couple of first shows because of some production issues. So it was originally supposed to be in Portland and somewhere else. And they've moved that to later on in the tour.

• 1:30:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I'm in Portland, so.

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  Oh, well, that means you can go in November.

• 1:30:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  That's when they moved it to.

• 1:30:59Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, I'll, I'll, maybe I'll go. This is inspiring. I should go see Beck.

• 1:31:04Speaker 00

  All right. That's awesome. I'm gonna check out this album. I, I had heard about it, heard it was coming out, didn't realize it was actually out. So this is, this is good. I saw Lucy add it and I was like, oh, cool, that new Beck album's out. Uh, and obviously I'm thinking a lot about Gen X music lately, cause I'm reading this manga. So why not, why not embrace it and make, make a mixtape? Uh, and just baffle my wife by making her a mixtape of things that came out before she was born. Uh, anyway, uh, thanks Lucy for coming on the show.

• 1:31:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Thank you, Lucy.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  Thank you. That's lovely.

• 1:31:38Speaker 00

  Do you have anything you want to shout out before you go? Once again, Friends Per Second, really cool, really cool podcasts that Lucy's on.

• 1:31:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're recording that one tomorrow. So yeah, Friends Per Second, uh, on the Skill Up channel or everywhere you find your podcasts. And then my newsletter is Looking4.Game, where every week I send out video game indie recommendations, um, always with a demo. So you can try it yourself at home. You don't have to take my word for it. Um, and yeah, we've cultivated a really cool community, uh, over there of folks who just, they just love games, which is all that matters, really. Everyone's having a good time.

• 1:32:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's awesome. It's really joyful. Uh, it's a great, it's a great concept and I'm, I'm, curating games is no small feat. So I'm, I have a lot of admiration for people who just really devote themselves to that specifically.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  My inbox is a nightmare, but my steam shelves are so organized.

• 1:32:24Speaker 00

  I love that for you. Let Lucy do it for you. All right. Um, and with that, uh, we're, we're, we did it. We did an episode.

• 1:32:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34Speaker 00

  We did another TripleClick episode for you this week and now it comes to a close.

• 1:32:39Kirk Hamilton?

  And ordinarily, I would say I'll see you both next week, but Lucy, it was a pleasure. And Maddie, I will see you next week.

• 1:32:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right. Thanks again, Lucy and Kirk. I'll see you next week.

• 1:32:49Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 1:32:50Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:33:06Kirk Hamilton?

  For review consideration, you can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. TripleClick is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at MaximumFun.org/join. 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.