The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Is Still Magic

Maddy, Jason, and Kirk whip out their ocarinas for a trip to the past in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the 1998 masterpiece that set a new bar for 3D video games. They talk about how it holds up in 2025, how it set a blueprint for Breath of the Wild, and how Link got adult clothes after seven years in cryostasis.

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

• 0:04Jason Schreier?

  Link, hey, listen, Link, hey, listen, hey, listen, there's a new episode of Triple Click. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a game about a spider exterminator who just happens to save the world.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers. Hello, hello.

• 0:36Jason Schreier?

  Hey.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  It's us again.

• 0:37Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Did it again.

• 0:39Jason Schreier?

  It's us pulling out our adult wallets for another episode of Triple Click.

• 0:43Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know about you, I have my Giants wallet right here.

• 0:45Jason Schreier?

  Well, hey, if you out there have a Giants wallet, you should take some rupees out and use them to support our podcast.

• 0:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Throw some gold scultula tokens our way.

• 0:55Jason Schreier?

  We are a listener-supported podcast here at Triple Click. We don't have advertisements. We are able to keep this show going through all of our lovely listeners who make it happen. And you can do that by joining our network. Go to maximumfun.org/join, become a Triple Click subscriber, supporter, member. And in addition to making the show possible, you also get bonus episodes every single month, including the full version of Triple Click Live, which we just ran a couple of weeks ago, and a massive backlog full of other cool bonus stuff, where we talk about games in depth, we talk about movies, we talk about TV shows, and it's a lot of fun.

• 1:36Jason Schreier?

  So become a member today and go to maximumfun.org/join. All right, we've got much to discuss this week. Maddie, what are we talking about today?

• 1:51Speaker 02

  We are talking about a game we all played called The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which we could have just played this anyway, but we had a very specific reason for playing it, which I will briefly explain, and it is this. Every year, we do a series Predictions, each of the three of us predicts something we think will happen in the following year. We do 10 of them, actually, and only one of us can win. And this past year, it was me. And the terms of that annual bet are that that winner gets to pick a video game that all three of us are going to play on the show and talk about. And I chose Ocarina of Time because I love this game and also because I thought we'd all

• 2:34Speaker 02

  like it. I figured we'd just all have a great time playing this one. And hopefully, I'm right about that. I have had a wonderful time playing this. This is a third time through, playing it for me, after playing it on the GameCube when I was pretty young, and then playing the 3DS version in 2011 when it came out. And then now I am again playing the 3DS version, which I do think is quite good. We are only talking about the beginning of the game today. We all played up to The Temple of Time. This is a game that kind of has two major sections, story-wise. You start off as a child, young little baby Link. He's

• 3:16Speaker 02

  like age nine or 10, and he's running around Hyrule Field with his own little baby animations. And then we played up to this magical time travel Sleeping Beauty experience that he undergoes in The Temple of Time, where he's asleep for seven years, and then he becomes an adult. And there's a whole other rest of the game after that, but we're not going to talk about that quite yet. We're just talking about young Link. I've had a really good time playing this, but I want to hear from the two of you first. Kirk, what have been your experiences playing Ocarina of Time in the past? And what do you think about returning to it now?

• 3:59Kirk Hamilton?

  I have played chunks of this game, and I've never really just sat down and played it all the way through, which is a common experience for me with these Baldur's El The games, because I did not have video game consoles, growing up as a kid. But I coveted my friends' consoles. And I especially coveted this game. This was one of the games that I was most envious of as a kid, watching my friends play it on their Nintendo 64. The area in between Kokiri Forest and Hyrule Field, there's this bridge. It's my favorite area of the game. It's just this bridge with mist everywhere and those little particles that float through the air in the forest. They're just little light particles. They're not quite fairies, even though there are also fairies.

• 4:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, every time I see that bridge, I think of the magical possibility that this game inspired in me as a kid. I just, there's something about leaving the forest and you're not quite out yet. You have this bridge that you have to cross and the bridge is this mystical mist-covered pathway. I don't know, it's like the path to Avalon or something. It's just magical to me and it still is, playing it all these years later. It really connects with that child that dreamed of what video games could be. So I really wished that I could just sit down and get lost in this game as a kid and I never really was able to. And then played it a few times, I was a little bit older and I played it on GameCube, I think, because I had a roommate with a GameCube.

• 5:36Kirk Hamilton?

  That was also when I played a big chunk of Wind Waker.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Amazing game. Could have easily chosen that one, but not.

• 5:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, a great game. And I got up to Adult Link, but I didn't get that far. I have, I know how it ends because I think I've read critical essays about the ending and about this game's approach to time and music. And then I played through the beginning parts again on 3DS, so the child era, the child chapters that we just played. But I've never really just sat down and played it all the way through like a Zelda game, which I am, of course, doing now. And man, it's great. What a great game. I have, I have been loving it and I'm very excited to talk about it.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Jason, how about you?

• 6:16Jason Schreier?

  Uh, yeah, man, what a fascinating game to play in the post Breath of the Wild era of Zelda. Yeah, I didn't play this much as a kid because I got a PlayStation instead of an N64 when I was growing up. So I came to it a little bit later. But I did play hundreds of times or dozens of times at least Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, which are kind of my templates or my kind of knowing these Zelda games by heart games. And so it's interesting, it's always been interesting playing Ocarina of Time later with that in mind, because there's a lot just kind of of lineage there, especially from Link's Awakening.

• 7:01Jason Schreier?

  And it's really interesting to see how many ideas Link's Awakening brought to the table. For example, the worst part of Ocarina of Time is an owl who won't shut up. And that owl originated in Link's Awakening, but also, but a lot of other stuff. Malin and Talon came, came up through Link's Awakening. That one mini boss in Jabu Jabu where it's like in a, running in a circle and you have to hit it in the back. That is a boss inspired by, heavily inspired by a mini boss from Link's Awakening. So there's a lot of stuff like that, which is really interesting because Link's Awakening was kind of like a Game Boy spinoff type thing. But I digress. Anyway, playing Ocarina of Time today is a really cool experience. It's aged really well in some ways and hasn't aged well in others.

• 7:47Jason Schreier?

  One thing that was driving me crazy was trying to aim the boomerang by like not being able to see where it's actually aiming. You just have to aim Link's head in a certain direction.

• 7:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Sort of right ear.

• 7:58Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, his right ear. You have to just line it up just right.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Have you been moving the 3DS around and using the motion controls at all? Because I have been doing that and my wife has only occasionally made fun of me for just pointing it at the ceiling while I'm aiming the hookshot at various things. It's, it looks great. I look really cool while I'm playing this game.

• 8:21Jason Schreier?

  But in many ways, it has aged at all. I mean, the music still holds up. It still looks pretty good. Foreign and 64 game especially. I mean, the 3DS has revised graphics and that's the version I'm playing. So that version especially looks pretty good today. The combat still feels generally good. Z targeting, it takes a little bit of getting used to, but once you get in the rhythm of it with the 3DS controls, I think it feels pretty good still. The dungeons are still a delight. The dialogue is still a delight. There's a lot to love about it, even playing it today. But the thing that really struck me was like walking into Hyrule Field and seeing that open world and walking around a little bit and just seeing how empty everything is. And comparing that to the modern day Zelda games, because in 1998,

• 9:05Jason Schreier?

  just the idea of being able to explore this massive 3D space and you see Death Mountain in the distance and that's actually a dungeon you can go visit. Or that's actually a location you can go visit. It was so revolutionary at the time. I say this not having played it back then, but just being aware of it. But then we get to Breath of the Wild and it's kind of like taking that and expanding it 100 fold. That it's really interesting to go back and look at that. It's kind of, it feels very much like a blueprint playing it today, which is cool. It's a cool experience. It's cool to revisit now. But overall, I mean, I've been having a really good time with it. I mean, it's a phenomenal video game, both for its time and also to revisit today, I would say.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:48Kirk Hamilton?

  To talk about that scale question a little bit that you mentioned, Jason. I think that this game does a lot of creative work to make itself feel big, to make the scale feel large, even when it's not. One thing that comes to mind is these first person cinematic sequences. The opening of the game from Navi's point of view is one where Navi is flying around the forest, this little village and crashing into things. There is all this really creative camera work. And then after you finish, Dodongo Cavern, the owl is helpful for the first time in the whole game. And pix link up and carries him back down to the bottom of Death Mountain. And there's this just wonderful sequence where the camera kind of flies into the air and you really,

• 10:32Kirk Hamilton?

  you just get this sense of the sweep and the scope of this vast world and it's so exciting. And again, it's something as a kid that just really struck me seeing those sequences. I mean, it made me feel like I was in this large world and I didn't think at all about how empty Hyrule Field was. It's actually very similar to what I mentioned earlier, that interstitial screen, that one bridge in between Kokiri Forest and Hyrule Field. It just, it's a one, it's one room. It's not very big, but it feels, it makes the world feel bigger because you have to pass through this liminal space and there are things that happen on the bridge, you know? It's this, this gateway between childhood and the world outside.

• 11:15Kirk Hamilton?

  So I think they, they're very creative about making the world feel bigger than it is.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think no matter what, you're gonna hit the day night cycle when you walk across Hyrule Field because it takes you just long enough. So the first time you do that, you're probably going to run into some of the creepy undead beings that walk around in this game. And that's kind of like a preview for the evil that is encroaching upon Hyrule. Obviously it gets way worse and you get that amazing moment in Temple of Time as adult Link that we can talk about next time, where you walk out and you get to see how different Hyrule is. And that matters because you're going to explore it so much as child Link. You're gonna walk over those same paths over and over and you're gonna talk to the same

• 12:00Speaker 02

  NPCs and get to know where every single person lives and is because there's just a lot of, oh, going from place to place. But that sense of timing, the other point in the game, this part of the game that we're talking about that I really like is the moment when Zelda gets captured by Ganondorf and you get stopped by that cutscene outside of Hyrule Castle.

• 12:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, she escapes Ganondorf.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  It's true. She technically does. Well, we don't know what happens to her yet.

• 12:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, she's with her bodyguard on the horse. Ganondorf is chasing her.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  There's that, there's that moment though.

• 12:33Jason Schreier?

  And she, and she's got an arm. She's like NFL quarterback.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's really got, she's really got.

• 12:39Jason Schreier?

  Peyton Manning.

• 12:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Tom Brady over here.

• 12:41Jason Schreier?

  Tossing them.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  But that always happens at night. It always happens at night and it's so cool. Like for me at least, like as I was walking up to the castle to experience that cutscene, it just so happened to already be nighttime and then you get to start seeing the rain coming down because this is a big dramatic moment. Ganondorf's really scary, so it has to be nighttime when this unfolds. And I can only assume that if it's not nighttime when you walk back to Hyrule Castle, it either doesn't happen or they just make sure it's night the next time you see it.

• 13:12Jason Schreier?

  It switches. It just switches.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 13:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I went in the day and the drawbridge is up no matter what. And there's kind of just dark clouds in the sky.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:20Kirk Hamilton?

  So it becomes dark, but it's not night, but it becomes just darkened and dramatic.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. I really like those touches because they're another thing that make the game feel big and almost out of your control where sometimes like the experience itself just zooms out and is like, no, something's going to happen to you and you're going to lose control. That also makes the game feel really cool, like a movie. I mean, these are all things that when I was younger, I was extremely impressed by. But even as an adult, I'm like, these are, this is a pretty cool move. Like it's, it's not as open worldy as you might think it is at first. If you're me as a kid, that could gets cool, that you could just go anywhere in any order. You kind of can, but as an adult, I'm also still impressed by how open it feels.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  And even though Hyrule Field is small, it still feels big in certain ways.

• 14:12Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, this is a year, by the way, after Ocarina of Time came out about a year after Final Fantasy VII. For context here, and Final Fantasy VII, of course, had these humongous cinematics and just constant movie like movies in, inside of your video game. Oh no, they put some movies inside of our game. So that was, that was a common trend at this point by 1998, by the time Ocarina.

• 14:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I would say the other piece of historical context to keep in mind is that Half-Life came out this year. And while that was on PC, that was the game that. I was playing and that was a very different approach to cinematic storytelling where you stayed in person and the movie happened around you.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:49Kirk Hamilton?

  It feels a little bit more modern, I guess now, but it was definitely like a lot of different, very creative people were experimenting with this type of storytelling in video games.

• 14:57Jason Schreier?

  But the big difference between Ocarina and a lot of other console games, especially that played around with cinematics and storytelling in that front is that Ocarina really felt like you could go anywhere. It felt like it gives, gave you this open world that you could just explore and just wander and do side quests and like find fun things to do. Even if you weren't following along with the story, whereas, I don't know, Final Fantasy VII for comparison is a lot more linear. There is a little bit more, there is an open world, an open world map, but a lot of that is just kind of like you have to just kind of look at metaphorical versions of towns and then go into them and explore them. It doesn't feel like an open world. It feels like a metaphor.

• 15:37Jason Schreier?

  Half-Life is a lot more linear, of course. So it's a very different type of kind of cinematic storytelling game because you look at something like Zelda running away, like escaping on her horse and you realize you could go and chase her and try to find her if you wanted to. You won't, but you could do that, which I think is a cool, a cool, just kind of play on that. It feels very different. The kind of when you're, when you're seeing these kind of cinematic angles of everything, it's also all areas you can see and explore and jump around.

• 16:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's partly the feeling that the game inspires that we're talking about here. It's a bit of an illusion. Some smoke and mirrors to make you think that you could chase after Zelda and see where she went. But it's also the design of the game world. It's remarkably different from something like Half-Life or Final Fantasy VII or, you know, any other games really. It's, it's this distinct Zelda thing where very little of the game world is wasted and there are secrets and surprises and hidden challenges hidden all over the place. Something I'm doing differently this time is just really engaging with all the side quests and the hidden challenges. Trying to get the heart pieces, trying to, you know, find gold skull chillas wherever I can. And

• 16:47Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, there's so much cool stuff in this game and that stuff really is nonlinear. You can do it in whatever order you want. There are things you can only do as a child. Things you can only do as an adult, but. Once you start really digging around and exploring, you know, getting bugs in a jar and going and finding areas of soft soil to dump the bugs in, to get the scultula to come out, to plant the seeds, so that when you grow up, there's a plant there, there are so many little challenges like this that are technically optional that I'd never done before, just because I kind of would mainline the story when I played this game. And that's really where the game starts to feel big to me. It starts to feel, the more I do it, the more it's this honeycombed, layered, really complex, little interlocking world that has so much possibility in it.

• 17:32Jason Schreier?

  So I want to talk a little bit about Link to the Past, because a lot of Ocarina is built on the structure of Link to the Past. Link to the Past is the first Zelda game to introduce what became the Zelda formula for about two decades, until Breath of the Wild, which is-

• 17:45Kirk Hamilton?

  And a game that we have played and talked about on this show-

• 17:47Jason Schreier?

  That's true, we did.

• 17:48Kirk Hamilton?

  There is an episode about it that you can go listen to if you want to hear more about-

• 17:50Jason Schreier?

  And the way Link to the Past works is you're dropped into this world, you go get a sword and a shield, and then you ultimately have to get these three things, they're pendants in Link to the Past, which get you to the master sword, which unlocks the second part of the game. Instead of changing from a child to adult, you're going from the light world to the dark world. And then instead of switching back and forth between child and adult Link, you're switching back and forth between the light world and the dark world, to solve puzzles, to explore dungeons, to collect new items, et cetera, et cetera. All throughout the game, you're finding tons of side stuff, tons of optional stuff, that is oftentimes locked behind some sort of item gate, some sort of rocks that you have to blow up with bombs, or a pole that you have to reach with your hookshot. So, very similar structure

• 18:35Jason Schreier?

  to Link to the Past. The biggest difference, of course, is that Ocarina of Time is in 3D, which I think adds, has some pros and cons, at least for me, for my personal taste. I think the pro is that it's beautiful looking, and it's cool, and it just feels awesome to be exploring a 3D world. I don't, I think the graphics in Link to the Past have aged much better, because I think in general, 2D sprites look a lot better than kind of polygonal, blocky 3D, but that's a personal taste thing. I think the downside, at least for me, or the drawback for me- When looking at Ocarina versus Link to the Past is that it feels like everything takes a lot longer in the 3D space than it does in Link to the Past. In Link to the Past, there's no horse,

• 19:18Jason Schreier?

  because you don't need to get a horse, because you can just explore the world really quickly. You move through this two dimensional space pretty rapidly, and you can even get these Pegasus booths that let you run through them, so you can really blaze through from place to place. And so doing the side stuff in Link to the Past is a lot easier and a lot smoother. You can do it a lot more quickly. Ocarina, it takes a lot longer. It takes a lot longer to walk through Hyrule Field, even just getting from like, the Lost Forest to Hyrule Castle, takes a lot longer than it does to go from a few, a few screens in Link to the Past, which, I mean, I think can have some benefits. It can give you kind of a meditative state. You can really sit there and just kind of soak it in, enjoy it. The Death Stranding Effect.

• 20:00Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, which, but like, for someone like me, if I wanted to do side quests and stuff, I'm a lot more incentivized to do them in some, in a smaller space that is going to take much less time and feel much less tedious. So when I'm playing Ocarina now, I'm kind of like, I don't really feel compelled to go and do the mask trading quest, or like, collect all the scultulas, because it feels a lot more tedious to me than it does in Link to the Past. So if and when I keep playing through Ocarina and play through the adult section, I'm probably just gonna stick to like, the main stuff, the main dungeons, and whatnot, which I'm having a lot of fun with, just because the backtracking is, is so much more, takes so much longer in the 3D space. But

• 20:42Jason Schreier?

  that said, all that said, one more really thing that I, one more thing I really noticed about playing this 3D Zelda, especially in comparison to Link to the Past, is that like, the innovations that come with it are just so brilliant. This concept of Z targeting, that had never existed, as far as I know, before Ocarina of time. This idea that you could lock onto an enemy, and then you would, as long as you're holding down that button, you're only attacking that enemy, and you could focus on him, and your arrows and your slingshot automatically hits them. I mean, it was such a brilliant concept, and such a smart way of navigating the 3D space. And then on top of that, like, having you automatically jump if you're like, a contact Text sensitive, like you jump, you, you try to move past a block or something and there's

• 21:22Jason Schreier?

  another block nearby, you automatically jump it. Um, all that stuff is really smart and just brought so much innovation to the table back in 1998. A lot of stuff that like we take for granted today, especially if you play Mario 64 these days, the camera just hates you the entire time. And playing Link to the Past is such a refreshing change from that because the camera is just so much better. They really, in those two years between Mario 64 and Ocarina, they really figured out how to get a good 3D camera working, which is pretty impressive.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think it's one of the things that playing it in the modern day, obviously, the first hour or so that I was playing this, I was like, oh, it'd be really nice if I just had a twin stick camera. Like I kept putting my thumb down as though there was a joystick on the 3DS that doesn't exist and being like, oh, it'd be really cool if I could look around. But eventually your brain just gets over it. You get really into the Z targeting and you move on. And also I agree, you accept how clever it is. And also just by having 3D dungeons, you can do so many different kinds of environmental puzzle design, some of which are very frustrating and some of which I think are really fun. So I will say I really liked Dodongo's cavern and I also

• 22:35Speaker 02

  like all the Goron city stuff that leads up to it in part because it's multiple levels. There's also like a water temple when you're adult length that I think is kind of cool for the same reason. That's like a multi-level structure and that's something that a 3D game can really take advantage of in the way that a Link to the Past style dungeon design. It's not to say those dungeons aren't fun, but Ocarina can really show the scale of, oh, this is how big this city is. There's the Goron that's rolling around and you have to figure out how to stop him. But when you first get there, you're like, okay, there's just so much going on. There's all these guys here. I, I don't, I'm, I'm overwhelmed and excited by this different culture that I'm experiencing as Link and who are these people? And then you like understand not only how to navigate it,

• 23:19Speaker 02

  but also how to use bombs in that world. And that opens up more areas. I mean, this is like the classic stuff that I enjoy about metroid games also. It was like exploring someplace, not really understanding how it works at first, but being excited and overwhelmed by all the different ways that other characters or NPCs are getting around. And then eventually by the end, you're like, oh, I can also get around it in an intriguing way. But by having it be 3D, you can have all these other things that happen and the scope and scale of it be totally different and more exciting.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Or just annoying if we're talking about Jabu Jabu's belly, which I will go on record as saying I do not enjoy.

• 23:57Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's a little rough. I mean, the fact that it all just looks so gross and like sickly and like samey.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Everything I like about Dodongo's cavern is everything I dislike about Jabu Jabu's belly. These two are equally weighted in my mind on a perfect scale.

• 24:14Jason Schreier?

  Although the boomerang, getting a boomerang is pretty cool.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:17Jason Schreier?

  And cool boss, cool final boss in that dungeon.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I was actually gonna go all the way back to the great Deku tree as the first dungeon.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, go for it.

• 24:27Kirk Hamilton?

  And I think that there's a kind of very early puzzle in that dungeon that lays out some of what we're talking about. And that's the puzzle where you have to jump from the very top of the tree down into a spider web to break it, which is a logical leap that you wouldn't necessarily make in 1998. Actually, I mean, I don't know, since I didn't have to make it. But you know, you can burn those spider webs as well using fire. There are different ways to get through them. And just thinking of it in terms of physics of just, well, what if I just climbed up to the top and then just jumped off and then hit it hard enough to break the spider web? That's just not necessarily what you would think. And it's a very 3D game way of thinking. And actually, remember that in A Link Between

• 25:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Worlds, there are at least one or two dungeons that do this same kind of thing where it's a top down game, but you are thinking in terms of the layers of the dungeon. Where I think it's the Ice Dungeon, maybe where you drop stuff from the top and it goes down to the bottom and you're having to think in three dimensions, even though you're looking from the top down. So they kind of translated this way of thinking back into a 2D game, at least in that game. I don't, I don't know Link to the Past as well, if they ever did that. But I just, I think that that initial puzzle is a real. Eureka moment, or it's a kind of, it's like one of those big, look, we're doing it in 3D moments that especially if you think about it in context, when this game came out, there were definitely designers at Nintendo thinking, okay, we're going to put this in here now

• 25:56Kirk Hamilton?

  so that we can acclimate people to the idea that you're going to have to start thinking this way.

• 26:00Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, LinkedIn has said some similar stuff. You would like, a dungeon might be multi-level and you might have to push a block into a pit on one level and then it lands on the next level and then you use it to solve a puzzle like by going downstairs and pushing it along the way. So it was definitely there. The spider web aspect, I mean, that kind of just like sends it up to 11. It's really just kind of exponentially bigger and better and cooler. And that part in particular is awesome because you're kind of like, you have this thought process. If you've never seen it before or played it before, you're looking down and you're like, wait a minute, this is a cliff. Am I supposed to jump here? Or like, am I going to, if I fall off, am I going to have to go all the way back up here?

• 26:40Jason Schreier?

  And you look down and you see the spider web and you're like, hmm, wait a minute, I should try this.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Like a heart or a ruby there too, just to kind of tempt you into jumping off the cliff.

• 26:51Jason Schreier?

  But you could also think of it as like, oh, I want to get this heart and then quickly move back before I fall off.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  That's true, but I do feel like the, especially the child sections of the game, I've continued playing the adult section, so I feel like confident making this comparison. These really encourage experimentation in the way that a child would by just being like, let me just see what happens. A lot of the puzzles are kind of oriented around that type of logic. And there's also a really comprehensive hint system in this game that kind of tapers off in the adult section, but is very present in the child section of the game. Where if you're stuck, you can just walk up to these sheikah stones and get a very, very specific hint in the form of a quote unquote, vision of the future that just shows you doing what the puzzle is.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  But also, if you just walk around a nearby town, there will often be somebody who's like, well, have you tried this? And it'll just be the character almost breaking the fourth wall and just telling you exactly what to do. So there's kind of the childlike, just go. Ahead and try something and see what happens aspect of environmental puzzle solving that is very often rewarded. And then also just there are many adults and teens around to help you in the way that it might be if you were a child and you were Link and you were trying to get through these experiences. And that has always just felt like something about the game that still really holds up and kind of makes it not as necessary to use a guide. I mean, I did use a

• 28:18Speaker 02

  guide for some parts of this, but I do feel like the game is of a time when that was less easy to do. So it keeps a lot of that just baked into the experience of like, well, we don't want you to stop playing. So we want you to like, continue having fun, even if you are nine years old, like Link is, and you this game is still for you, even if you're that young. We still want you to like it.

• 28:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I've liked that element of the game of just trusting it and going and talking to people and assuming that someone will probably tell me where I'm supposed to go. It makes me almost wish there was a way to turn off Navi, just because I would really like to play the game. Yeah, without Navi. And I actually just don't summon Navi when Navi's like, hey, hey, hey, because, you know.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I ignore her a lot.

• 28:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Navi will tell you what to do, and I don't really need that. I actually didn't know that you could get the Sheikah Stones to just tell you what to do. I've never done that. I had never seen that. So I didn't know that was possible. They just tell me the time when I hit them.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Oh, there's the other kind of Sheikah Stone that has like a little door in it that you can crawl through. There's one by your little house that you wake up in in the beginning of the game. And there's another one in the Temple of Time. It's a different kind of Sheikah Stone, but yeah.

• 29:23Kirk Hamilton?

  I do remember this. I just haven't found that in this game. Yeah, I like though, going and just talking to people and then they say, hey, you know, like, I heard Saria went up this way. And then you can go find her. It actually reminds me of Suikoden 2, of the some of the puzzles in that game where you would just go and talk to people. And eventually someone would tell you what you need to know. You just have to kind of pay attention. And I appreciate that the game does that.

• 29:46Jason Schreier?

  Navi, by the way, is way more annoying in the N64 version. He's kind of toned her down for the 3DS remake, because instead of just being like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, she's, she's just like a little icon on the bottom screen and you press her to something.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  It's very easy to ignore her now.

• 30:02Jason Schreier?

  In the N64 version, she's just screaming at you the entire time.

• 30:05Kirk Hamilton?

  I remember it was such a meme. Also, I want to call out the biggest UX fail in video game design history. Probably an overstatement, but still. The fact that when the owl finishes his extremely long monologue-

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 30:17Kirk Hamilton?

  And then it says, "Do you want to hear that again?" And the default is yes.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Horrible. So upsetting.

• 30:22Jason Schreier?

  I remember whenever you watch like a speedrun of Ocarina of Time, they're like, "This is the hardest thing in the game."

• 30:28Kirk Hamilton?

  It's to not hit yes because it'll blow like 30 seconds probably off of your speedrun time.

• 30:33Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's a little ridiculous. And this is something, I think, in kind of critiques that would come later, after like the Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword era, when a lot of people were critiquing the kind of the structures and the constraimment of Zelda games. One of the big critiques is that it just holds your hand way too much. And that was very much kind of withdrawn, like taken back, reversed for Breath of Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. But you can see that start to come with Navi because Link to the Past is really not quite as bad. There is, Link to the Past does have a map with like heavy markers of like where all the things that you have to go find are. So it's pretty easy

• 31:15Jason Schreier?

  to follow along and like it does give you guidance, but it's not, there isn't someone who's with you the whole time trying to get your attention so they can give you helpful hints. And there isn't the owl, that friggin owl.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, the owl is somehow worse.

• 31:29Jason Schreier?

  Unnecessary.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  I don't know if I can explain why, but it is worse.

• 31:32Jason Schreier?

  It's because it's so unnecessary. Like the whole game, you could get just as much out of it without an owl just giving you long-winded, unnecessary exposition because you can figure most of that stuff out through context clues. By the way, I have an important question for you guys. I had never thought about this until this playthrough. If Link is frozen, like kind of in a cryogenetic stasis for seven years-

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Magic sleep.

• 32:02Jason Schreier?

  Magic sleep. How does he get earrings? Is like, is Sage Raru just like going and piercing his ears while he's like in cryogen-

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Somebody in the Discord shared a comic that somebody had drawn of Raru. Piercing Link's ears. So yes, somebody has thought of this.

• 32:18Jason Schreier?

  Oh, my God.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  I thought that was a really funny comic that somebody drew. I don't know who the credit is for the artist, but it's in the Discord right now. And it made me really laugh yesterday.

• 32:27Jason Schreier?

  Okay.

• 32:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I mean, also, Link grew older and significantly more chadly.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:32Kirk Hamilton?

  And yet, his clothing still fits.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Hmm, somebody changed his clothes.

• 32:37Kirk Hamilton?

  So he just pierced his ears while he was.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, he just gave him a full makeover and gave him the same outfit.

• 32:43Jason Schreier?

  So Raru is is taking clothes off a child who is in deep sleep. And putting new clothes on him. Okay.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Or waiting every couple of years. Did he change Link every time Link grew? There's a lot of questions about the seven years. What I thought you were gonna ask, Jason, and what I think about every time I play this game is, does Link have a child's mind when he is an adult in this game?

• 33:08Kirk Hamilton?

  This is a big situation.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:09Kirk Hamilton?

  You see Tom Hanks from Big.

• 33:10Jason Schreier?

  Well, Link doesn't really have a mind because you're controlling it. You're kind of the mind of Link.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  And also, this game, I mean, this is not the only example of a Link that is silent. But this Link is sort of notably silent to a degree that also inspires a lot of jokes. Where I, I, as the player, always interpret Link as speaking. And we just don't know what he's saying. We don't get to hear it. And so as the player, we get to imagine what Link is responding with. But the way that that plays out in dialogue and conversation is that it seems as though he's never speaking. And everyone else talks constantly in this game to him, to each other, et cetera. And the result is really funny because it it just seems like Link is just this strong silent type or like kind of the perfect himbo who's just kind of bumbling around. And other people are like, wow, Link, you're so dreamy.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  You solved another series of incredible problems.

• 34:03Jason Schreier?

  Which is why Link is your mind. Um, the other thing that I noticed on this playthrough that I was like, what is going on here? Is after the stealth section at the beginning of the game, that awful stealth section.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  What you hated, I know.

• 34:16Jason Schreier?

  I hated it so much because it's so stupid. It's like, there's no way to really tell, especially that beginning part. Unless you like know by heart the exact root, there's no. The 3D space is designed in such a way, it's just bad.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  This was one of the things I looked up a guide for. I I've tried to find a map and even then it's really hard to tell.

• 34:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the the second part, inside the castle, that part isn't as bad as the opening part at the first, because that you have no real way of knowing like exactly where the guards can see you. Anyway, um, after all that stuff, uh, Zelda is like, I think that man in there is bad. And you look through the window and you see Ganondorf and it's never really explained why Ganondorf is in the castle. Like, what is he doing there?

• 34:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Meeting with her father because he's an emissary or something.

• 34:58Jason Schreier?

  Okay, so he's just like repping the Garudo.

• 35:01Kirk Hamilton?

  It's funny because I'm playing Tears of the Kingdom right now and the whole backstory of that is a little bit similar where Ganondorf was an ally. So he was a, he was like a prince, you know, or a high prince or something. And then he's coming to the castle on under auspices of like diplomacy. But of course he secretly has a plan to rule the world. So I think I would assume that he was in an audience with the king or something.

• 35:23Jason Schreier?

  Got it, but we never actually meet the king. Just, just Ganondorf. And then, yeah, the other, you mentioned this, Matty, earlier, but another thought I had was that after you leave the Temple of Time, the entire, all of the castle town is just devastated. It's full of zombies. Amazing moment when you come out there and you like go up to try to talk to someone and you realize it's a frigging like scary. Well, is it, is it the same as the, it's not a, it's not one of the ones who pop up um in, when you're a kid in the overworld. It's like a scarier, I forgot which one is the reded. I think these are the rededs.

• 35:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, no, it's, you find them as a kid in the graveyard and in a few different places.

• 36:02Jason Schreier?

  Right, but they're not the skeletons that pop up from.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  No, they're not.

• 36:07Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the rededs, those are the truly terrifying ones. Anyway, yeah, you go up to try to talk to someone, you realize it's reded. Anyway, so then, but then you get to Kakariko Village and it's totally fine, which is just a fun little quirk that it's like, only Castle Town has been turned into this zombie apocalypse wasteland and other cities are fine. Which is just interesting.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Although Lon Lon Ranch, I do really like the changeover there where like before, in the before times with Lon Lon Ranch, what's his name, Ingo, the guy?

• 36:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Or like Iago or something?

• 36:37Speaker 02

  If it's Iago, that's a little off the nose.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  But but he's like, kind of this surly, like, helping hand at the farm and he's constantly complaining about how Malin's dad is terrible at his job talent, I guess is his name. And there's like the perfect environmental storytelling smash cut where you walk up to Longland Ranch and it's like, Ingo's Ranch or whatever, and you walk in and he's ruling it with an iron fist. I really enjoyed that as an adult. I was like, this is, this is a great juxtaposition of how much can change in seven years because for whatever reason, that was the second place I went to after the castle. So it was all really hitting me. But yeah, Cockerico Village is like, kind of fine, especially considering how close by they are.

• 37:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  They're like, eh, things have been bad, but we're sticking it out.

• 37:25Kirk Hamilton?

  The reedheads didn't get them. They're chill. They're all good.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  It's good. I mean, they do have that big gate and that helps probably. That's enough, apparently. I want to talk about the Ocarina. So obviously, a central magical component of this game is just the fact that you have this musical instrument that you carry with you everywhere. And one of my favorite parts of the game is that I slowly learn the songs over the course of it. And they're just button presses, but you really feel like you're playing an instrument. But it doesn't have very many notes. It's not very hard to learn each of the songs. But they get more complicated as time goes on. And the fact that you learn them and you don't have to keep looking up the sheet music always feels kind of magical

• 38:12Speaker 02

  to me. It's like I'm along with Link, learning the songs. It's just one of my favorite parts of the game. But I don't know if you two like it. It occurs to me that it might be irritating to other people, but I love it.

• 38:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Don't get me started.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  I am willing to get you started, Kirk. I'm ready to do it.

• 38:29Kirk Hamilton?

  I made a whole episode of Strong Songs about Zelda music and talked a lot about Ocarina of Time. And yeah, I mean, I love the score to this game in general. I think it's just absolutely wonderful. That Hyrule Field music is such a trip.

• 38:50Kirk Hamilton?

  There are so many beautiful themes that are all kind of not what you expect. And yeah, the Ocarina as a central game mechanic is one of the coolest things. So what I think is so remarkable and is kind of tied to what you were saying, Matty, that they have so many different melodies that you're able to keep in your head. And even if you don't remember which note is which, I find myself just using my ear to remember, okay, wait, how do I play, you know, Epona's theme, for example? Oh, right, okay, well, that's, you know, whatever. I know what the notes are, and so then I sit and figure them out. A big part of that is that there are only four notes available on the Ocarina. There's more available with the modifier keys, but the game only uses those four notes.

• 39:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Plus, there's the D is up the octave, so there's four notes plus an extra octave of the D. And I think that the specific four notes that are available are actually really interesting. Can you guys hear if I play a piano note?

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:44Kirk Hamilton?

  So it's a D, an F, an A, a B, and a D.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Even if you just play those notes, it's like, that's Zelda. That's Zelda to me.

• 39:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 39:53Jason Schreier?

  What you just played is also a chime from Zelda, where you're just playing them all.

• 39:58Kirk Hamilton?

  A lot of the soundtrack is built out of these notes and out of the scale. And it's funny, because it's all white keys on the piano. And a lot of the melodies are those white notes, which is just a C major scale.

• 40:09Jason Schreier?

  Is it all just in C?

• 40:11Kirk Hamilton?

  It would be, except it's modal. So this is something that I would explain on Strong Songs and will not explain here. Or a mode is just where you take the notes of C major and then you start on D instead. And that's called D-dorian. It's a type of minor. There's a lot of Dorian in Zelda in general. The Song of Time is D-dorian. Or if you play F in the key of C, that's F-lidian. Saria's song is lydian, like, super hard lydian. It's F-lidian, so that's like F with a sharp four. And it's just cool that they chose these four notes, because it's just kind of neither fish nor fowl. It's not a pentatonic scale. Like, it's almost a G pentatonic scale, but it's not. It has an F and a G.

• 40:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Be natural, it has a tritone in it, and then pentatonic scales don't have a tritone. That's kind of their whole thing. So as a result, all of the melodies just have to be a little bit more interesting, a little bit weirder than you would expect, I guess. And then that just makes them so much more interesting. Every single one of them is just a cool little jingle. And of course, you only play the first three or four notes of a piece of music. So then they can, you know, Koji Kondo can write a more elaborate piece of music that comes after you play the first three notes of the Sun Song, or the first three notes of Zelda's Lullaby.

• 41:30Jason Schreier?

  But you say that, but it's worth noting. It's so striking that those first three or four notes are so recognizable and stand out so much that it's just like, oh, yes, of course, this is that.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that helps you remember them.

• 41:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes.

• 41:44Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 41:44Kirk Hamilton?

  It's extremely strong, like, motific composition that he, each piece has been written that way, and it's very like functional writing, where whatever piece of music he's writing, it has to give you those first three notes. Zelda's Lullaby is a great example of this.

• 42:09Kirk Hamilton?

  It's wild, like, those three notes, like, there's so much more to Zelda's Lullaby than just those three notes. And then, of course, Zelda's Lullaby winds up turning up in every Zelda game. It's this huge part of Tears of the Kingdom. It plays in all of these beautiful, like, clever ways that reflect what's going on in the story. Like, when you find Zelda for the first time, when you find the Light Dragon, you hear just the first two notes of it, and then it becomes the dragon theme because she, like, can't remember who she is. Like, it is, these pieces of music that we're hearing in this game eventually become just part of the fabric of Zelda over the next 30 years, which is also incredibly cool.

• 42:50Jason Schreier?

  It's also reversed for Ballad of the Goddess and Skyward Sword.

• 42:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, of course, a very famous and amazing little trick they did in that game.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Is this the first game that has Zelda's Lullaby in it? I don't think I realized that.

• 43:04Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't think that it is. My memory is that it is in one of the earlier games. I looked this up and talked about it in my Zelda episode.

• 43:12Jason Schreier?

  It's in Link to the Past.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Okay, so it's more just that this is the game that takes a song you know and makes it into a magical totem that unlocks all of these other things in the world.

• 43:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, and has you play it over and over. I really think that's such a crucial part of the game is that you're constantly having to remember and play these melodies and they just become ingrained in your mind. And it's, I mean, it's just such a different thing. And it's just the power of interactivity, like the power of play. It really does feel like you're playing a musical instrument. That side challenge to get the harp piece with the Skull Kids in the Lost Woods, did the two of you do that one? You basically have to mirror back to them these songs that they play. And if you keep doing it and you do three of them, then eventually they give you a harp piece. And I did the whole thing and they get really long and difficult, but over the course of it, it's all just those same four notes. You're just having to play them in a different order.

• 44:06Kirk Hamilton?

  And so you really like, it really feels like you're like getting better at the instrument and kind of matching them and doing a dueling banjos, you know, dueling Ocarina's thing. And it's just a really awesome part of this game.

• 44:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, music has always been a big part of Zelda, but Ocarina of Time is, I believe, the first game in the series where you actually have a musical instrument that you are playing by pressing buttons, like you are playing the notes. Link to the Past, you got a flute that could like summon a rooster to let you fast travel.

• 44:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Link has always been a musician.

• 44:38Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, but this is the first time where you, the player, are playing stuff as far as I can remember. And that would be carried forward. In Wind Waker, you get your baton and you play songs with that.

• 44:51Kirk Hamilton?

  And then, of course, in Tears of the Kingdom, one of the very funny things in that game is that when he is cooking, he hums all these different melodies from all these different games, like he'll hum, you know, Zelda's Lullaby.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Song of Storms, or yeah.

• 45:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Yep, he hums Song of Storms. Yeah, which, by the way, speaking of great pieces of music, when you walk into that windmill and that song plays, that's like... Pound for pound, possibly my favorite Zelda melody of all time. I think that's such a beautiful piece of music.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  It's pretty great, although I feel like I like Saria's song, but like Darunia loves Saria's song, and that is one of the greatest cutscenes in the game.

• 45:34Kirk Hamilton?

  No one will ever love it as much as he does.

• 45:35Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, Darunia, he goes all out.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  He loves Saria's song. It's just great. And that is also one of the good examples of just tiny animations showing Link's expression, expressiveness, because he like has this moment when he kind of backs up as though he's a little freaked out by how Darunia's dancing, and it's just the funniest thing I've ever seen.

• 45:58Kirk Hamilton?

  You should have read this, and I hadn't noticed it when I played it. It's hilarious. It's so funny. He's like, "Okay, dude."

• 46:03Speaker 02

  It's so good. There's so many moments like that. Yeah. And Kirk, I think you were the one talking about like Link's expression when he learns a new song on the Akiro, and how he looks like his mind is completely blown.

• 46:15Kirk Hamilton?

  He's like, "Holy shit, it can play a beat?"

• 46:18Speaker 02

  It's so adorable.

• 46:19Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I think that this is all worth noting, because I was talking about the differences between 2D and 3D before. This might be the most profound difference. It's like suddenly you are seeing people's faces in a way you can never see in a 2D game. You're seeing their animations, their expressions, and that just brought so much character and humanity to a video game that like 2D could never do. So whatever you're kind of losing in terms of speed and efficiency and other kind of aspects of 2D, you're gaining so much of it in that stuff. Like, having Link back away like that, I mean, you're never gonna get that same level of of touch in a 2D game.

• 46:56Kirk Hamilton?

  I think also for the time period, this game is remarkably elegant as a 3D game compared to a lot of other 3D games that were coming out at this point in the 90s. There was a lot of really janky, ugly stuff with big, huge, you know, textures stretched across kind of awful-looking character models. Especially the things you see a lot, like the back of Link's head, the cap that he's wearing, they look really beautiful. The character designs are striking. Nowadays, the faces look kind of... Silly, a little bit dated, but the animations, the the less is more approach to a lot of the character animation and character design and just world design. It's very elegant and really beautiful at times, even now, like which a lot of games from 1998 and from the late 90s in general just are not like they just look like poop.

• 47:41Kirk Hamilton?

  And this game doesn't. I think that that's actually a real mark in its favor and shows how just how artful it was.

• 47:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, it didn't. It deliberately didn't try to make realistic looking people. It tried to make these kind of cartoony looking people and just like set this art direction that would carry forth in in many Zelda games from here. And not all of them. A lot of them tried new things. But the idea of having Zelda people not look like look like cartoons, not look like real people, really started in a big way here. And I think is what helps it age really well.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:12Jason Schreier?

  Although I still think Link to the Past, Link to the Past looks better to me like.

• 48:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, well, there's.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  Depends on what you mean by look better.

• 48:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Ganondorf looks like a big weird triangle, like his face looks a little like the animations on the horses look pretty like they kind of look like little, you know, marionettes like moving around like there are definitely things that do look dated that they just couldn't quite get there. So, yeah.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  But it's enough to make you really care about everybody. And I mean, obviously, I kept on playing. And I feel like story wise, we also stopped at a bit of a cliffhanger like at the end when Link walks out and he's older and he sees all the zombies everywhere. Like, I was like, I gotta keep playing, even though I know what happens.

• 48:51Kirk Hamilton?

  I just, I was just having fun. I just wanted to keep going.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  I gotta see what Hyrule looks like now. Everything's gonna be terrible. Well, we'll just have to keep playing and see what happens next. And where did Zelda go? Oh, my God. What could she be doing? It seems like she must have escaped that terrifying horseback ride.

• 49:09Jason Schreier?

  Who is this mysterious, mysterious sheik?

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Who is that guy?

• 49:14Kirk Hamilton?

  And why did Jason ask that question after Maddie's question?

• 49:17Speaker 02

  That seemed like totally unrelated, like a complete non sequitur that I don't know who that is.

• 49:22Jason Schreier?

  Also, I hope you've never played Smash Brothers before.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  I know. Yeah. So we'll keep playing this game and then we'll revisit it. But for now, let's take a break and come back with one more thing.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  Jackie Keshen, hi, and welcome to the MaximumFun.org podcast, The Jackie and Laurie Show, where we talk about stand-up comedy and how much we love it and how much it enrages us.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  We have a lot of experience and a lot of stories and a lot of time on our hands. So, check us out. It's one hour a week and we drop it every Wednesday on MaximumFun.org.

• 50:00Speaker 05

  Hello, Internet. I'm your husband host Travis McElroy.

• 50:03Speaker 06

  And I'm your wife host Teresa McElroy.

• 50:05Speaker 05

  And this is a promo for Schmanners.

• 50:07Speaker 06

  It's extraordinary etiquette.

• 50:08Speaker 05

  For ordinary occasions. Every week, we're going to tell you about a bit of culture, a bit of history, how etiquette still applies in the modern day, all that stuff.

• 50:18Speaker 06

  We also love to do biographies and histories of and, you know, general procedurals, how to do etiquette in today's society.

• 50:27Speaker 05

  So, come check it out every Friday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you find your podcasts.

• 50:33Speaker 06

  Manners Schmanners. Get it?

• 50:36Speaker 02

  And we are back with One More Thing. Kirk, why don't you go first?

• 50:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure, I will go first. My One More Thing is a book written by a friend of mine, friend of mine and Jason's, Matthew Seiji Burns, who is probably best known to our listeners as the director and writer of Eliza, the Zachtronics game, but he works at Zachtronics.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  Or he might be best known as a guy who guessed it on split screen one time, like several years ago.

• 51:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, he has guessed it.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  And people probably mostly know him from that.

• 51:05Jason Schreier?

  He's guessed it on split screen like five times, not just one time.

• 51:08Kirk Hamilton?

  He is a regular guest and like I said, a friend. So, and I, that is also a disclosure here that I have bias in favor of this book. I really liked it. And I also like him. So, I support his creative endeavors. But I would say to gamers, he is known as Zachtronics composer and writer and director of Eliza, which is a phenomenal game that would actually be really interesting to revisit now, a game all about AI and AI therapy that I think was really kind of just ahead of its time. It came out before all of this AI stuff and has a lot to say. Anyhow, this book, wow. This book is a trip. So, Process is just

• 51:47Kirk Hamilton?

  a fictional story about the world of tech and about an incredibly intense, misanthropic, messed up dude. I mean, it is a book with a very challenging protagonist. He's just an awful guy, really, but a fascinating one. And it presents, it views the whole world through his perspective in a way that I think is just fascinating. I really enjoyed this book and just found it provocative and interesting and challenging and great. I read an e copy of this that Matthew sent a while ago, so I just read it on my Kindle. Though, the book has been published in this format with like a ton of art. They hired this whole designer. So there's this really elaborate sort of physical version of it.

• 52:30Kirk Hamilton?

  You can get, I think, a digital version as well, and you could, or you could just read it on Kindle. I liked it just reading it, but the art is really wild and kind of, I think, underlines the vibe of this book, which is kind of like, I don't even know, really creepy dude worldview kind of a thing. This won't be for everybody, I think that's safe to say. It is a book, like I said, with a very challenging, very creepy and very messed up protagonist. That is on purpose. It is, I've talked to Matthew quite a bit about writing it, especially after finishing it. It was really fun to actually finish a book and then just get on the phone with the author and talk about what he was trying to do. And I appreciated that the book wasn't just a comedy about tech.

• 53:12Kirk Hamilton?

  It is funny, it's very funny at times, very darkly funny, but it, and it is very critical of the world of tech. It's set in Seattle and it's, this, this character, his name is Lucas Aderson. The protagonist is just driven to be a tech visionary, but he's just not. He is very socially awkward, he's very self sabotaging and self defeating. He wants to be seen as a Steve Jobs, you know, as a brilliant visionary of tech, but he just isn't. He's a smart guy who's just not really that great at anything. But then, he keeps trying, he keeps working, and over the course of the story, he does eventually become. A visionary of tech, I suppose, and that's kind of made clear from the beginning. The story is told somewhat non-linearly.

• 53:57Kirk Hamilton?

  And he, you know, takes his horrible poisoned brain all the way to the top. And in so doing, kind of is surrounded by so many different types of guys, so many different types of tech people. He works at so many different companies in so many different formats. It winds up being this really pitiless lens through which to view the entire world of tech and tech workers in somewhere like Seattle over the course of the 2000s. So that's kind of the narrative premise. And yeah, I mean, it is just, it is a book with a protagonist who is so awful and yet so unself-aware that as you read it, you begin to understand the ways that he doesn't understand

• 54:42Kirk Hamilton?

  himself. And I found that to be just a very interesting and compelling way to engage with a character. It's, you know, I compared it to Catcher in the Rye when I was reading it. That's because I'm not like, I haven't read all of the classics, but of the sort of great American novels or whatever that I've read, Holden Caulfield and Catcher in the Rye just seemed like the easiest comparison of another protagonist who is just this misanthropic turd, kind of, but at the same time offers you a really interesting way to view the world. So I've just found this to be a remarkable book. It wasn't like anything I've read in a really long time. And like I was saying earlier, or starting to say earlier, I appreciated that it wasn't just a comedy. Matthew's a very funny writer.

• 55:27Kirk Hamilton?

  He wrote for a long time for Game Developer Magazine. He wrote a column that was always this kind of comedy, like humor column at the end. And it was very observational. It was very true to the, you know, the experience of working at a game company. It would be like a company memo regarding the coffee machine. And it would be this kind of thing that really just captured the kind of office space energy, like the kind of, that kind of comedy, or maybe Silicon Valley is a more modern comparison. And he's funny in his own way, but I would compare it to that, just in terms of outright humor. I think he could have very easily written a book like that with that same tone. I think that it would be more forgettable and it would be a little bit less bold and a little bit less exciting. Where reading this by the end, I was really excited by it, just the fact that he took

• 56:09Kirk Hamilton?

  this huge swing, that he wrote this really odious character and really spent so much time in that guy's head, I just thought was remarkable. So it's very cool to see a friend. Take a shot like this, write a story like this. And I really just, I really enjoyed it and was really glad I read it. So that is Process, a novel written by Matthew Sagey Burns, friend of the show, and his debut novel. So I really recommend people check it out.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  Cool. It sounds good. I'll go next. I watched a movie this past weekend that I feel like has taken over a lot of my social media timelines. And I was like, what's the big deal? It's this movie. It's called K-pop Demon Hunters and it's on Netflix. And it's an animated movie. It's for children. It's very simple. But the notable thing about this movie is that it is about a K-pop group and the music is very good. And after I finished the movie, I immediately started reading articles about how they wrote the songs for this movie. And it's not just like, oh, one composer or one composing team. They enlisted a lot of people who write pop songs. And there are multiple composers, like over a

• 57:18Speaker 02

  dozen people writing different, you know, it maybe two people wrote one song and two people wrote a different song. And the result actually feels like the landscape of modern pop music, which is really cool, as opposed to feeling like you're watching a movie musical and you're like, okay, this, this is Alan Menken's vibe and the songs are really going to sound like that guy's work. Love Alan Menken. But you get what I'm saying. This, this movie really feels like it's written by a lot of different people in terms of the music. And that's really exciting and cool. And now I just want to listen to the soundtrack all the time. I would say that is the number one reason to recommend it. But also, it does also have a plot that's endearing. It's about this K-pop group, three

• 58:01Speaker 02

  young women. They're all also secretly demon hunters, just like the title says. And the demon world intersects with our world in ways that are mysterious and humans don't know about it. It has to be a secret. So they have these secret identities as demon hunters when they're not on stage singing. But then the demons make a demon boy band and the boy band has all these really amazing songs that human beings are extremely taken with and they're losing their souls because of this. And so we get to have like, You know, Battle of the Bands-esque showdown between the Demon Band, whose songs are predictably incredible and catchy, and then also our heroines,

• 58:42Speaker 02

  one of whom, dun dun dun, it turns out she's part demon herself. Anyway, you could imagine where this is all going. It's, it's fine. The plot is really, doesn't have a lot going on.

• 58:54Kirk Hamilton?

  The devil went down to Georgia at K-pop edition.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Exactly. And the songs are so fun. And it's been such a hit with people that they're gonna like, make a TV show or something, which I think is good, because not a lot happens in this movie, but I feel like there's a lot of potential for more to happen. And so I'm like, maybe if they did a TV show that like, explained more about the demon world and how it works, that could be really fun. But mostly just as a soundtrack, I strongly recommend this. It's really, really fun to listen to these songs and watch the attendant music video, which is called K-pop Demon Hunters. All right. Jason, it's your turn. What's your one more thing?

• 59:28Jason Schreier?

  I went to the movies to see a Marvel flick, the new, the new MCU piece called Fantastic Four: First Steps. And that is a good movie, a solid movie. Between this and Thunderbolts, I feel like the MCU has had a pretty good year, if you don't count Captain America, which I mean, I think, I don't think anyone.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  No one needs to count it.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  I actually forgot it came out until you said that, so I wasn't counting it.

• 59:58Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, it's, I think everyone forgot about that movie. Harrison Ford was in it.

• 1:00:03Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess all the, all the Disney Plus stuff, have you watched any of those shows? The Daredevil show?

• 1:00:08Jason Schreier?

  No, I'd like to watch Daredevil.

• 1:00:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Some other new shows? I haven't watched any of them.

• 1:00:11Jason Schreier?

  There was like, yeah, a couple of those just came and went. Like, there was an Ironheart one that just like, really came and went.

• 1:00:17Kirk Hamilton?

  That's right, which is supposed to not be good.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  That did come and go.

• 1:00:19Jason Schreier?

  I don't think anyone, I don't, I don't think I saw one person mention that, like, even in passing.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  I saw a friend talking about how it wasn't good. That's all I got for you two.

• 1:00:31Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, not too many of those. I just saw a headline, like, "The Vision series is finished filming", and I was like, what? Like, great, come on, man. Anyway, but Fantastic Four, I mean, Those characters everyone knows the Fantastic Four, I think, because there have been so many attempts to get it off the ground.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  So many bad movies.

• 1:00:47Kirk Hamilton?

  There have been so many movies.

• 1:00:49Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, there have been so many of those movies. They're a fun gang. Pedro Pascal is in it. And most importantly, something I found very refreshing about this particular film is that there's no references to anything else. Like, this film is, is just Fantastic Four. It's just their story and set in this.

• 1:01:05Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like set in a separate world.

• 1:01:07Jason Schreier?

  Separate dimension. At the beginning of the film, it's like, universe, like, 818 or whatever it is, which is different than the, the standard MCU one. Of course, there is a teaser at the end that is like Fantastic Four will return and it gives the, the classic post-credits Marvel teaser for a future thing. But the movie itself is all standalone. You don't need to have seen any other films in the MCU. You don't, you don't need to know anything. It's, it's set a couple of years after the Fantastic Four have already established themselves. So we're not getting an origin story here, other than just kind of like a, a brief montage at the beginning. And so it's able to tell this one standalone story about the, the Fantastic Four and this,

• 1:01:49Jason Schreier?

  what happens is they're, they're known as like the defenders of, of Earth and everybody knows who they are. Everybody loves them. They're action figures, yada, TV shows, et cetera. And this woman who is clad in silver, the Silver Surfer, appears on the planet and says, "Galactus is coming to destroy your planet." And then she pieces out and the Fantastic Four have to figure out what to do. And the story is really cool. I think if you just watch the trailers, you don't really know much of the story, which I think is a good thing. It's really interesting and fun to watch and unfold. It's very serious. It's a lot more serious than other MCU movies. There's still some fun, like, jokes and gags, but it's a lot less quippy than previous Marvel movies.

• 1:02:33Jason Schreier?

  And the casting is really good. Pedro Pascal is amazing. As are all of the rest of the gang, the Fantastic Four. Uh, and yeah, it's just a solid movie. It's just a fun, fun action movie to, uh, just go to the movies and watch without having to do any homework beforehand. I really enjoyed it.

• 1:02:51Jason Schreier?

  And I like, I, you don't need any comics knowledge because I didn't have any going into this. And, um, yeah, just really enjoyed it. No, no MCU knowledge required, just a fun movie, just a fun standalone movie. Uh, what else could you want from, uh, from this world? And also I think the last MCU movie until like Avengers or Spider-Man next year. So last one in a while. But, uh, yeah, it's good. I really enjoyed it.

• 1:03:17Kirk Hamilton?

  They're like, starting up the whole Victor Von Doom thing.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Kirk Hamilton?

  With, with Robert Downey Jr. Returning and Victor Von Doom, of course, is a Fantastic Four villain. So I think the idea is that this is set at, get the first step. Maybe that's what it's called first steps. So I guess it's about a baby or something, right?

• 1:03:33Jason Schreier?

  So we know, like, it's been very public that, yes, Robert Downey Jr. Is coming back as Doctor Doom. And that the, the next Avengers is called Avengers Doomsday. And that's like December of 2026. And they said they, they put out this weird teaser that had a bunch of chairs of like actor names on the back of them.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  And there's like a bunch of X-Men in that movie.

• 1:03:54Jason Schreier?

  And included X-Men. The old X-Men.

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:57Jason Schreier?

  And that included, um, the Fantastic Four on it. And then also all the Thunderbolts and also all the old characters that were like, uh, it was like 40 names on there. So we know that the Fantastic Four are going to be in Avengers Doomsday.

• 1:04:12Kirk Hamilton?

  They were in the teaser at the end of Thunderbolts as well.

• 1:04:15Jason Schreier?

  Yes, yes, they were mentioned. It was their ship, like coming at the end of Thunderbolts.

• 1:04:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Into the world of Earth, whatever, the current.

• 1:04:22Jason Schreier?

  None of that matters for this movie, which is nice. Like this movie is a standalone movie. It's a fun movie. It's fun to watch. It's fun to see the Fantastic Four working together and, um, taking on Galactus and the Silver Surfer. And the performances are really great. The casting is really good. Like that, I think is the most impressive part of the movie is the Fantastic Four. Each of them just is a highlight, um, in their own right.

• 1:04:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Notably, Yvonne Mas Bakarak is playing the Thing.

• 1:04:45Jason Schreier?

  Yes, he's great.

• 1:04:46Kirk Hamilton?

  From the bear and.

• 1:04:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Andor, such a standout small performance in Andor. I love him, so.

• 1:04:51Jason Schreier?

  He's fantastic, but all of them are, all four of them are really great. And yeah, just an enjoyable movie. Like the fact, I mean, the fact that you're bringing up all the doomsday stuff and is all, will be important in the future, but does not matter one bit for this movie, which is very refreshing.

• 1:05:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I bring it up in the context of you talking about Avengers and what's coming.

• 1:05:10Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll see what happens next year and how like what's going on. I mean, we could do a whole nother episode where we talk about the MCU and its woes and what's been going on there. The fact that we didn't even know that there's this Ironheart thing or care about that is kind of telling about the state of the MCU. But between this and Thunderbolts, it feels like they've had just two strong standalone, solid movies that just came out. And as a fan, I appreciate it. So yeah, Fantastic Four, go see it as we're seeing.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've been hearing that overwhelmingly, so I think I might check it out myself.

• 1:05:44Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  I like a standalone movie that doesn't require me to know anything about it.

• 1:05:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Have you seen Thunderbolts yet, Maddie? Thunderbolts is good.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  I haven't. I'm waiting for it to come out on streaming, which I think it finally is, as I'm saying this sentence.

• 1:05:57Jason Schreier?

  Thunderbolts is good, but it is very much not a standalone movie. There are so many friggin tie-ins to everything.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  That's okay. Unfortunately for me, I've interacted with almost all the media necessary to understand it, so I'll be fine.

• 1:06:09Jason Schreier?

  MCU pills, so we don't need to.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  I will understand it. I watched the Black Widow movie and everything else, all the other characters in there. I've seen all their movies and shows. I'll be fine. But yeah, Fantastic Four. I love that they made that a standalone movie. That was a great idea. So glad to hear it. And with that, this episode, also standalone, it's over, folks. We're ending it. Ain't no post-credit scene either. We're just, we're just wrapping it up here. And with that.

• 1:06:37Jason Schreier?

  Well, actually, we've mentioned our Link to the Past previous episode. We mentioned Matthew Burns' previous episode, so I wouldn't say this is a standalone episode.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  You do need a lot of backstory and order to understand.

• 1:06:47Kirk Hamilton?

  And I do sometimes put a little stinger at the end of the episode, this little post-credit.

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  I guess I don't know what you're gonna do. So you know, I do feel though, that if somebody just started here, they would be able to understand. Into our dynamic and what's going on. And I think that's important, that we remain accessible in that way.

• 1:07:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Really, the MCU stole that from us.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, we really, we really did that first in a lot of ways. I think you'll find that's true if you were to go back and check out all of the previous material, but you don't have to. And I'm gonna end this bit because it's time, the time has come. We'll see all of you next week.

• 1:07:20Kirk Hamilton?

  See you next week. Yep, see you both next week.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:07:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddy Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join. Find us on Twitter at TripleClickPod, send email to [email protected], and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:08:23Jason Schreier?

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

• 1:08:33Speaker 07

  Travis. Welcome home.

• 1:08:39Speaker 07

  I am

• 1:08:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Kritaki's split screen.

• 1:08:42Speaker 07

  You think you're the only

• 1:08:43Kirk Hamilton?

  podcaster

• 1:08:44Speaker 07

  in the world? Mr. Stark, you've become part of a bigger universe. You just don't know it yet. Who the hell are you?

• 1:08:53Speaker 07

  Nick Fury, director

• 1:08:54Kirk Hamilton?

  of Maximum Fun.

• 1:08:58Speaker 07

  I'm here to talk to you about

• 1:08:59Kirk Hamilton?

  the Triple Click Podcast.