Triple Play: Metroid Prime 4

Maddy, Jason, and Kirk put on their Varia Suits for a dive into Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, the latest adventure of bounty hunter Samus Aran. They talk about how this fourth entry has evolved the series, what they like (and don't like) about the game, and that dreadful desert.

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Hey there, Samus. It looks like you're listening to TripleClick. Did you know this episode is fully compatible with your power suit? You should keep listening to it. Welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you. This week, we all played Metroid Prime 4 Beyond. It's been many years in the making, but does it live up to the hype? It's quite a bit more like Metroid Prime 3 than Metroid Dread, and that might not be for the best.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:31Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:32Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Hello. We're back after 18 years of no TripleClick whatsoever. We're finally back, inexplicably, with a new episode.

• 0:45Jason Schreier?

  With TripleClick Beyond.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  TripleClick Beyond.

• 0:48Kirk Hamilton?

  TripleClick 4. Everyone's been waiting for it.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right, and we can integrate with a mysterious new form of alien tech. It works perfectly with our power suit.

• 0:56Kirk Hamilton?

  We're the Chosen One. I don't know if you've heard.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  I can't wait to get into it. I'm so psyched. But, you know, I got a couple of things I gotta say first, because this is an episode of TripleClick, so I have to tell the listener. What if this is their first one and they don't know that we're a completely listener-supported podcast, which we are? You two know that very well, but if you're just starting, just today, that's what we do, and if you want to support the show, you would go to MaximumFun.org/join. You'd become a member, and if you did that, you'd get even more TripleClick than you get in the public feed for everyone. You'd get a monthly bonus episode from us, and we got a lot of bonus eps in the backlog. There's one every month since TripleClick's inception, but it's not just video game stuff in there.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Our most recent episode is actually about The Sopranos, the HBO show from a couple decades ago. We all watched the first season of that, and we talked about it, and it was really fun, but we do pretty different episodes every time, so those are really fun, can't-miss episodes, at least according to me. So MaximumFun.org/join is where you'd go to get those eps, but...

• 2:06Jason Schreier?

  Before we talk Metroid, which I'm excited to do, I... I'm in Los Angeles this week. We're recording this. I'm in my hotel room right now for the Game Awards. Which has been cool. I've done a lot of fun, fun stuff this week. I met Seth Rogen on Sunday night. Nice to you. But I wanted to share with you guys. So, do you guys remember, I'm sure you've seen, and we talked about this a little bit last week, that statue that is teasing a big thing that's gonna be announced at the Game Awards. Tonight, I guess. This is going on Thursday, so it'll be tonight. So, I was going for a walk this morning in L.A. Live, like, right near my hotel, getting a Starbucks and stuff, and I see that the statue is now here. It has been moved from the desert to the front of the theater.

• 2:48Jason Schreier?

  It's now in front of the theater where the Game Awards are, which is very funny. And I'm trying to imagine, like, the way in which they did that, if they had, like, a crew of people having to lift up the statue, if Jeff Cutler was there, like, supervising as they lifted up the statue and transported it.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  I hope he was.

• 3:02Jason Schreier?

  It's very funny to imagine. There also is a fun, fun fact, there is a security guard who's just watching it the entire time.

• 3:09Kirk Hamilton?

  And his job is just statue.

• 3:11Speaker 00

  Statue guard? Is it, does it seem stealable? I mean, I've been assuming it's heavy, but maybe it's actually just light as a feather, and if you were to try to pick it up.

• 3:20Jason Schreier?

  I assume it's to prevent people from, like, jumping on it and climbing it, less than stealing it. It is humongous.

• 3:26Kirk Hamilton?

  It's hard when you make a meme reel, you know, you're gonna get some, some strange behavior.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great point. It is hard when you make a meme reel, which they have done. Can't wait.

• 3:35Kirk Hamilton?

  You gotta be careful.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  Find out what that statue is.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Alright, are we ready? So, we are here today to talk about a video game called...

• 3:45Kirk Hamilton?

  You're beloved. You're gathered here today.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  We're gathered here today to talk about my personal savior, the chosen one, Samus Aaron. I've prepared a statement, because Metroid Prime 4 is a long time coming. So, here we go, here we go. Alright, way back in August 2007, a game called Metroid Prime 3: Corruption came out on the Nintendo Wii, and 18 years later, Metroid Prime 4 Beyond is out on the Switch 1 and 2. In the intervening 18 years, Metroid's seen a pretty weird journey. There's been a couple of widely disliked games like Metroid: Other M in 2010 and Metroid: Prime Federation Force in 2016, but then it went from where so over to where so back with Metroid: Samus Returns in 2017 and Metroid: Dread in 2021, and then the Prime 1 remaster in 2023, which

• 4:32Speaker 00

  we'll remember those second two because we had triple plays about those on this very show and we liked them. But in the intervening time, Prime 4 was also having a rocky time. So the original Prime trilogy was made by Retro Studios in Austin, Texas, but when Prime 4 was first announced at E3 2017, it was actually going to be developed by Bandai Namco Studios in Japan and Singapore. But then, in 2019, Nintendo did this pretty surprising announcement where it said that it was actually going to scrap development of that entire version of Prime 4 because it wasn't up to their quality standards. And then Retro Studios got put back on Prime 4 at that point, that's 2019, and that's the game we all played.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  So technically, this game hasn't been in development for the entire time that we've been waiting. So, like the other Prime games, and unlike most Metroid games, Prime 4 is a first-person shooter, and it's a little like Prime 3 in the sense that it actually has a lot of Galactic Federation characters in it, and they all talk, but Samus does not talk. She stands there in silence and she nods. And it's also a little like Prime 2 because there's an alien race in it that is not the Cho'Zo, whose tech Samus can still use with her Cho'Zo power suit and tech. Just don't worry about it. And lastly, this game has a villain in it who is Silux, a rival bounty hunter who is obsessed with beating

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Samus, even though her relationship with him is more like when Cassian Andor met Cyril Karn and was like, "Who are you?" And players might feel that way too, because it's been 18 years since Prime 3 had a, it was actually a secret ending that teased his appearance, and even before that, he was a super minor character. So, we all played this game. I'm halfway through. It's 10 to 12 hours. I've played for six in part because I have really mixed feelings about it. I'm pretty hot and cold on it so far. But I'm, I've talked for a while. So Kirk, why don't you tell me what you think about this game? And how far you are?

• 6:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I am, yeah, maybe like four or five hours in. I'm in the third dungeon, I guess you would call it. And yeah, I'm liking the game. Okay. It's not blowing me away. And I was struck by a somewhat similar feeling, I think, playing the Prime remake. Where, you know, the Metroid formula of upgrading and unlocking a map and exploring does seem to work better for me in 2D. And it made me think actually of something, Jason, that you said about Ocarina of Time. When we were playing that game and comparing it to A Link to the Past where it's that same feeling where you're unlocking things, you're getting a new ability that you can then go use in another area.

• 7:12Kirk Hamilton?

  But because you're in a 3D world, it takes longer to get around. And so it's not quite as fun to jump around and feel like you're unlocking a map. And I've kind of had that feeling playing this game. I'm not that interested in the whole Metroid thing of going back and unlocking stuff. So instead I've just been playing kind of linearly. Going from place to place to place, doing a dungeon, you know, going in, turning on the power, having all the enemies come back. Killing all the enemies, fighting the boss, getting a new power up, and then just going on to the next dungeon. Which just feels like a different kind of game. So

• 7:45Kirk Hamilton?

  it's not bad at all, you know, I think the music is wonderful. I'll talk about it in a little bit. Like, I think that's actually the biggest appeal of the game to me is like, I think the, the audio experience is really, really cool. It's beautiful looking in a way that Nintendo games, you know, haven't really been able to be before on the Switch 2, I should say. It is really amazing looking. It's pleasant, but it's not, it's not really grabbing me.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Jason, what about you?

• 8:11Jason Schreier?

  I do not like this video game.

• 8:16Jason Schreier?

  I don't even find it that pleasant to play anymore. Maybe I did for a little bit. So I think I'm at the same place as you, Kirk. I'm like in the thick of the ice dungeon. And it's starting to feel so repetitive that I just don't want to play anymore. So yeah, a couple of thoughts about this game. One is that it really, it feels like a game that was made in 2007. Like this could have come out a year after Metroid Prime 3 and just felt like it was kind of a seamless transition. Because they really haven't changed much. The powers are still the same. There I haven't seen, and from what I can tell, there aren't any like new innovative powers that switch up the gameplay in some sort of interesting way. You have your, your double jump and your ball and your bombs and the ball and your grapple

• 9:00Jason Schreier?

  and everything else that you've played a million times before, if you've played any of these games.

• 9:03Kirk Hamilton?

  They're just psychic this time.

• 9:05Jason Schreier?

  This time they're psychic. Yeah, you got psychic boots.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  There's actually a psychic grapple, Jason, which is so different. And that's super new to this game.

• 9:14Jason Schreier?

  You have a bike and you have a desert, which is just an abomination of video game design. I can't believe that thing exists.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Do you want to explain the desert? Because we haven't yet. And that actually is a totally new thing for this game and not Metroid-y at all.

• 9:26Jason Schreier?

  The way the game is structured is there are what appears to be five dungeons. And they're all linked by this vast open world of a desert that has very little on it and mostly exists to get you to like bike from one place to another. Kind of reminds me of Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time in that it's kind of very vast and very empty. Except Ocarina of Time was released in 1998 and open worlds have changed a lot since then and gotten much better since then. This really is a game out of time. It's really interesting to see. And yeah, this desert really just has very little in it. There's a bunch of green crystals that you can collect. And apparently you have to collect over the course of the game if you want to actually make progress. And which is something I've seen complained about a lot.

• 10:12Jason Schreier?

  And then there are a couple of like little shrines here and there where you could get upgrades. But they're again, just not very interesting to get to because it's just the same stuff you've seen over and over again in these Metroid games. I was thinking a lot about Dread and how much better that. Is as a game in large part because it brings new things to the table. You have like a melee counter that you didn't have before. And that just changes up the gameplay. You have that that robot creature stalking you, which again just changes up the gameplay. The other thing that really strikes me about this and just makes it feel so repetitive is that like every single enemy is just the same thing over and over again. All you're doing is just shooting these same humanoid looking robots for waves at a time, occasionally broken up by a spider looking robot.

• 10:55Jason Schreier?

  And it's just so monotonous and repetitive, especially in this ice engine I'm in right now. I you get to this part and you have to find these little codes to unlock a door. And you have to find two of them and you get a little gauge on your screen that is like one out of two, two out of two, great, you found it, I can get to the next part. And I was shocked to get to the next part. And then suddenly it's like now you have to find four of them.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  Find four of them.

• 11:18Jason Schreier?

  I was just like, I don't want to play this game anymore.

• 11:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and the way that you find them is just scanning random objects in the environment. I really, yeah.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  It's so boring.

• 11:26Kirk Hamilton?

  It's so funny in that in that ice dungeon I was playing and kind of at first I was like, oh, I appreciate the pacing here that I'm just exploring this mysterious.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  It's methodical, it's slow.

• 11:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's quiet. And then I was I I I got stuck on one of those puzzle pieces because to explain to people who haven't played a Metroid game before, they're probably out there, in Metroid Prime, you scan a lot. So a big part of the game is switching your visor from combat visor to scanning visor. And then so many things in the environment are green and you hold the button over them for what I would say is about 20% too long.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Agreed.

• 11:59Kirk Hamilton?

  And after you have held down and filled up the two little circles, you get a scan pop up that tells you a little fun fact about them. Really cool thing in Prime, a neat way of sort of imparting lore and like xenobiology and just facts about the botany and the whatever, the planet. And also a good way of kind of easing you into puzzles. You know, you'll scan a door and it'll say it's powered down, so it doesn't work. And then you know, okay, so I'm gonna have to turn the power on. You know, it gives you some kind of hints. So as you're playing, you know, you're you're scanning things pretty regularly. But I would say there is. Probably 50% too much scanning in this game, at least for me. There came a point where I was like, "Okay, I mean, I like to scan as much as the next guy, but this is, this is a little much."

• 12:42Kirk Hamilton?

  And in this part of the game, there's no combat and you're just scanning. And then to solve these puzzles,

• 12:47Speaker 00

  You gotta scan.

• 12:48Kirk Hamilton?

  You have to scan and you have to scan everything. So I wound up having to look up a few of the things I needed to scan because it was like, "Oh, there's some tiny thing in the back corner of one of the rooms." And then when you scan it, you'll get part of the key that you need.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was in the same boat there.

• 13:02Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I've seen these dungeons compared to 3D Zelda dungeons. And I think that is really doing a disservice to 3D Zelda dungeons because those are so much more interesting.

• 13:10Kirk Hamilton?

  I totally agree with you. Go ahead.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, especially given we've all just played Ocarina too. So we're like, we've just seen even some of the old school 3D Zelda dungeons and what they were like and when they were hard. And when, like in the first dungeon in this game, you got to ride an elevator a lot. You got to do a lot of backtracking there. And that did kind of remind me of the water level in Ocarina of Time, the good and the bad about it. But yeah, I agree, Jason. As the game goes on, these dungeons are increasingly simplistic.

• 13:38Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. And I think that like, it is all very smooth. It looks beautiful. The fact that it runs at just this consistent 60 frames a second for me on handheld mode on the Switch 2 is really impressive. And it certainly feels good to shoot as Samus the way it did in Metroid Prime and its sequels back in the day. And I think all of that kind of masks the fact that the design of this game is just really not good and just has so many problems. And especially, man, Silk Song just came out and we were all raving about it. And we don't need to do that again right now. But one of the things that Silk Song is masterful at is just pacing out these upgrades for you. And then once you get them, you realize that you can play around with them to, they each have like multiple functions.

• 14:22Jason Schreier?

  They each allow you to do new things in combat and in exploration. And you can, suddenly you find that you have a harpoon. So not only can you like get to rings and like use those to propel yourself, you can also use it to attack enemies and see what that does and see how it interacts with the world. Or you get a needle in and you can open doors, but also you can get like songs out of every creature you meet. And they all have multiple functions. And in this game, it's kind of like, here's the lasso. You can use it to pull things off doors in kind of a finicky way. And that's about it. Or like, hey, here's this ability that you have now where you can create a bomb. And then you can turn it into a psychic energy and throw it at something. But the game will tell you every time you need to do that. So you don't actually need to think about it at all.

• 15:05Jason Schreier?

  It's just poor game design, I feel like. And it's kind of, that's kind of masked by the fact that it all looks good and feels slick to play.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  And sounds good. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. You describe it as repetitive because of Samus having the same abilities. And I get how you would feel that way based on what you just said. But I also feel like that's what's so impressive about something like Metroid Dread and some of the classic Metroid games. And I'll even include Prime One here, which I think is actually a pretty faithful example of adapting Samus's core abilities to a 3D environment. And finding interesting ways to make use of what are essentially the same abilities over and over and over again. And I think that works if you continue to think of different ways to apply those abilities. And to have those applications be exciting and surprising to the player each time, which I would say Dread consistently did.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  And also it iterated on Metroid lore in a way that was really fun and interesting. Like it took these pre-existing baddies from Fusion. It takes the Metroid, which is of course an enemy that's been in all these friggin' games. And we all know what it does. It has these vampiric powers that sucks out your life force. How many times can you really mess with that? But Dread actually did iterate on that lore and continue to build on, okay, what is Samus's story? Who is she? And how is she going to incorporate shows a technology that we already know she can use? And these pre-existing bad guys into her suit and take on their abilities as her own. Those were all things that seriously impressed me about that game.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  And set the bar really, really high, frankly, which meant that then in playing Metroid Prime Four. Kirk, you told a joke about the Chosen One thing. That was when I was like, I might be in trouble here because you're meeting this new alien race. Never heard of these guys. They are totally new for this game. It's not the first time a Metroid game has done this. Like I said, Prime 2 did this as well, but that was frankly, something I didn't like about Prime 2. I think it makes a ton of sense when Samus can find Chozo technology, including technology that maybe she isn't previously familiar with, but we're just gonna slap Chozo on it and have that be the case, and it works with her pre-existing power suit and abilities, and the developers have to find puzzles and ways to integrate that existing lore into what she's doing now. Anytime you're introducing a completely

• 17:21Speaker 00

  new alien race, but then somehow Samus still really matters to them for some reason, and Chosen One is such a cliche, that that's also tough for me. And all of those abilities integrate with her suit, but they're shockingly similar to pre-existing abilities with which we're all familiar. It's like, I don't really understand why we're even introducing these new aliens in the first place. And that's the story of this game. That combined with Sylax as the villain, it's like a guy I have real no emotional connection to. It's, that's another reason why I found it really tough to keep going. Because even if I was bored of scanning this ice level, if I was like, okay, but I'm learning really cool

• 18:05Speaker 00

  stuff about Samus, or I'm learning about these aliens that are interesting, or about this villain that I don't understand and I want to know more about him, that would help me. But none of this story stuff has grabbed me, and it has also felt really tacked on to me as compared to the pre-existing Metroid lore that I am familiar with and really enjoy.

• 18:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, as a Metroid player, I've never been someone who really cares about the story. It's, it's funny, it's not my usual mode. Usually I kind of get into the lore of these things, but when it comes to Metroid, I've just always... Cut it at arm's length, I think because I haven't played all the games and it is actually fairly dense. And I just start one and I'm like, alright, I don't know, whatever. Like, let's just go. You know, I know there are metroids, I know kind of what their deal is, but I just play. Which I think is how a lot of people play a lot of games. So it puts me in a kind of helpful headspace. And in this one, even as someone who doesn't pay a lot of attention to the lore, I'm clocking what you're talking about, Matty. Especially the fact that you are exploring this civilization. So these aliens on this planet have gone through various eras. It's sort of funny. It's like, this

• 19:12Kirk Hamilton?

  was built during our psychic era, and this was built during our, you know, during our technology era. And this is when we made the cool motorcycle that you get.

• 19:21Jason Schreier?

  It's the Taylor Swift aliens.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's the era tour of the Lamorns.

• 19:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, the folklore era, I'm sure, is coming up next. So, yeah, it's like, they're trying to kind of ground you in the world. But then, everything in their, in their factories is like powered by morph ball sized power conduits. And I'm sitting there thinking, why, why does everything just fit perfectly with Samus's suit? Like, with the Cho'Zo, who I do at least understand were like responsible for building her suit, and are kind of her...

• 19:52Speaker 00

  Yes, so it makes sense.

• 19:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, her like adoptive species or whatever, kind of, or something like that. Like I said, I really don't know. But it did at least sort of make sense.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  You get that, like, okay, everything in the Cho'Zo world is gonna be powered by her gun and her morph ball. That's logical, because that's what all the Cho'Zo were.

• 20:11Kirk Hamilton?

  And I don't care, because the video game just needs to make the suit be the thing that unlocks stuff in the world. Like, that's fine. It's just that now that we're doing it again, it does raise the question, why are we, why do we have a different species? And then also, if you're gonna have a different alien race to get to know, it would just be nice if they were a little more interesting. I mean, the first area that you explore is this really, I mean, fidelity wise, it's a really beautiful forest. It looks like the Avatar game that Ubisoft made. There's even a huge tree that looks like the tree from Avatar. But that's just the thing. It looks like the tree from Avatar. And I was like, oh, well, that just, this just looks like Avatar. And then, you're fighting these big, kind of cool, multi-armed monkey guys who throw acid at you.

• 20:55Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm thinking, okay, well, these guys are kind of cool looking at least. And then you go through a bunch of dungeons and I'm up to the ice dungeon that you're at, Jason. They do this kind of Gears of War thing. I think maybe Gears 2 does this. We're going through the research facility and there's pods with like, kind of obfuscated, like occluded creatures inside and you're reading notes from researchers about how they're doing these experiments. And you're thinking, oh no, this seems really like a really bad idea. And you're going deeper and deeper into the research facility, thinking, oh, I'm going to power this up. And all these fuckers are going to come to life and I'm going to have to fight my way out, which is what Gears did a great job of introducing a really terrifying and difficult new enemy type. And in this game, you get to the end and you power up the generator and the enemies come out.

• 21:38Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's like a blue version of those same guys from the first map. So that kind of stuff, like the fact that there's not a lot of imagination going on in the world or the enemies really lets me down.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's supposed to be a big moment where we're like, whoa, those enemies I was fighting at the beginning were actually mutated Lemorn aliens. And they were actually those guys from before and they used to be these intelligent life forms.

• 22:01Kirk Hamilton?

  That didn't even occur to me. I was just like, oh, it's the exact same enemy model. I don't care.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  This is why I agree with you that it's not an effective narrative moment. Because I had to put that together for you just now and I don't blame you for not understanding that. Because it's not, it's not super interesting. And, and we haven't even really gotten into what I would say is one of the biggest problems with this game, which is the sheer amount of handholding that it does to the player. A lot of which you can turn off, and I have done. You can turn off the tutorializing. You can lower the speech volume if you're tired of the characters talking to you.

• 22:35Kirk Hamilton?

  What does that mean to turn off the tutorializing?

• 22:37Speaker 00

  There's a setting, like a literal setting in the menus that just says, turn off tutorials. And it just basically just doesn't tell you, like, you know how sometimes there's kind of text on the screen, not characters speaking to you, but text that tells you.

• 22:50Jason Schreier?

  Like what I was talking about with the psychic balls where it's like, do this to create a psychic ball. And it tells you whenever you need to create a psychic ball.

• 22:57Kirk Hamilton?

  But it doesn't turn off the characters saying, hey, you might want to go turn the power on.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  It doesn't. And those instances are far more. Oppressive to me and how I feel playing a game where like, for example, like in the ice level, you're rolling in a ball around and at various points, this character on comms is like, whatever you're doing, Samus, keep it up. And I was like,

• 23:19Kirk Hamilton?

  That was a funny one.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  I can't believe this is happening.

• 23:24Kirk Hamilton?

  That some editor didn't just draw a line through that at some point.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  I don't think I've ever had that happen in a game. Like, we make fun a lot of like, the character who's on the comms, like the guy in the chair, as it were, who's like, okay, like, go here and then go here. And like, how sometimes it's already really obvious exactly what the character's supposed to do. But I don't think I've ever had somebody bother to call my character on the phone before just to say, hey, keep it up, man. Whatever you're doing out there.

• 23:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Sometimes Robert Robertson would just call and visit gal and just tell her she was doing a good job. But it was, it was really nice.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  Maybe I would have helped, actually, if he had called her.

• 23:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe if you have Aaron Paul voicing the character, it helps.

• 24:00Jason Schreier?

  Then you, then you get the good ending.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  You finally, finally give her positive feedback. Yeah. I, I feel like, um, the first character you meet who talks a lot, the Miles McKenzie character has like gotten a lot of guff for talking too much. And, and that's, that's fair. But I do think it's notable that pretty much every other Galactic Federation trooper you meet over the course of the game. I, I mean, I think your mileage may vary on their personalities and who is and isn't annoying, but all of them talk and Samus doesn't talk. And this strikes me as very strange. Like, heading into the game, I was like, I, I'm probably gonna be fine with this. Like, Samus shouldn't have to talk a lot. She's pretty laconic. You know, she's the tough gal. That's her character archetype. I don't need her to say much. But in practice, it's so weird.

• 24:49Jason Schreier?

  Well, because there's a difference between doesn't say much and is like, basically mute the entire game. Like, it's just, it's a difference between, hey, this character is like Kratos type, who just grunts and like acknowledges what you're saying. And someone who just appears to be ignoring or like playing, giving everybody the silent treatment because she's mad about what's going on or something. It just doesn't make any sense.

• 25:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it almost feels to me like they changed the script or something and then didn't have the voice lines they needed. Like, it almost feels like that level of an oversight, only because there's a version of this in Zelda that we have like, Kind of accepted into our video game imaginary where, you know, Link doesn't talk, but he is talking. And so he'll gesture and his mouth kind of moves and then the characters will say, oh, wow, really? Princess Zelda's missing? And they'll kind of, you know, Timmy's in the well. And you'll figure out that Link told them what was going on.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, and Link is barking. That would be great, actually, if he was like a collie.

• 25:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  Just a really intelligent barker.

• 25:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Link is kind of just a helpful, unusually intelligent border collie.

• 25:56Jason Schreier?

  Humanoid lassie.

• 25:58Kirk Hamilton?

  So they've kind of worked that out. The thing is that in Metroid, first off, I mean, yeah, Samus has talked in the past, like, sometimes too much, but she has talked. And it's always kind of cool when she says a couple lines, you know, even in Dredd, like her, the few lines that she has are cool.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  I know. That's like a huge moment in Dredd. When she does talk, it's great.

• 26:18Kirk Hamilton?

  So the fact that she's not talking is, in the series, a little odd. And then also, this doesn't, like, in Zelda, no one gets on the radio and says to Link, what is going on down there? And then just-

• 26:29Jason Schreier?

  But maybe they should.

• 26:29Kirk Hamilton?

  He doesn't respond. And you're like, I mean, maybe they should. But when someone, like, there are times where it just feels like Samus is being rude, which just makes me think this was like, kind of, this script was sort of cobbled together in a way that it just generally feels a little like, you know, there are lines, like you mentioned, where it kind of maybe could have been cut out. And to mention Miles briefly, I mean, the reason that people don't like Miles isn't just that he's telling you what to do. It is purely a tone thing. I think that's most of what people are responding to.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  I agree.

• 26:56Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like the, for, what's, what was the game called? I want to say Forsaken, but I think it was Forspoken.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Forspoken.

• 27:02Kirk Hamilton?

  It's the, like, Marvel dialogue. It's the They Fly Now, which I think we have joked about in the past. It's, what he says is, it's about to get real nerdy in here.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  He says, "Booyah" at one point.

• 27:12Kirk Hamilton?

  It's such a kid, it's like, he says to Samus, "I'm gonna stay here. Why don't you go off and like, and leave me behind?" And you think, thank God. And then he says, "It's about to get real nerdy in here." And you think, god damn it. Like, you couldn't just let me get away clean. You had to say the worst line of the game. So I think that is what people are complaining with, with Miles.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 27:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Which, to speak in the defense of the next, at least the next NPC that I've met, he's this kind of stoic sniper. He's fine. Like, he does not offend me at all.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Comparatively, yes.

• 27:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's fine.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  Because he has less personality.

• 27:45Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, to be fair, in Zelda, you do have Na'Vi and Phi and Minna constantly talking at you and like not saying anything.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  And people love that.

• 27:54Kirk Hamilton?

  There's a part where Miles is like, does that. He gives you this huge tutorial, then he's like, "Do you want to hear that again?"

• 27:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, he's the owl.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  Literally like the owl?

• 28:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's funny how like, how much of this game design like feels like it's Ocarina of Time-ish, except the dungeons aren't like, it can't hold a candle to Ocarina of Time, and that's what really made that game special. Um, yeah, the other thing about, um, Miles, I don't know, I could look past all of this story stuff, or I don't really care about this story stuff. It's just that the game design is just so poor, like with Miles, it's one of the first things you do after you get into the open world, even though it seems like you can go anywhere, really, you're supposed to go and find the flame upgrade, except it's not a flame upgrade, it's a chip that you then have to go back and bring back to Miles for no reason. There's no reason that you need to do this, other than to add padding time to the game, and, and make it feel like, or make you understand that there's a base camp that you can keep going back to.

• 28:48Jason Schreier?

  There's no fast travel, so you get this flame chip, you escape that area, and then you have to go back to Miles in the first dungeon of the game, and go like, give him the chip so you can then get your upgrade. And that keeps happening like as you go, and you get more of these chips, you have to bring them back to Miles and get the upgrade. I guess I understand they wanted you, they wanted to encourage you to go back and like check out the first dungeon and see if you can unlock anything else, like that little area that you can unlock right next to the base camp. But still, it's just so tedious and monotonous, and when I'm playing a video game, especially a video game made by Nintendo, um, feelings of tedium and monotony are uncommon, and that's something that I want to feel, and that's something that makes me want to keep playing.

• 29:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, the lack of fast travel is an interesting one, because there are times in some games where I like that, where I like that a game kind of forces you to move through the world, or limits fast travel in some way. But in this one, I, yeah, I find myself looking for a fast travel button, thinking, "Oh, can I just skip over this motorcycling across the desert thing, because this isn't doing anything for me?"

• 29:50Jason Schreier?

  That's the thing, it's because, because the desert is just so boring and poorly thought out. It's really just, you're, you're driving through just this nothingness. Um, it feels like they tried to turn a game that was not designed to be an open world game into an open world game for some reason. Um, and it's just a mess as a result.

• 30:10Kirk Hamilton?

  There are these little aesthetic touches that I do like. I mean, thinking about the fast travel, I like that you climb into this man cannon that launches you like from one cannon to the other. Like, there's little stuff like that that I think is cool. There are these flashes of ingenuity. And I should say, since we're being pretty hard on the game, like I said, I've generally found it to be like, pretty pleasant. It's fine. The main thing, it's, for me right now, is that it's up against all of these game of the year candidates that I'm playing through, because it's the end of the year and I'm working through just a bunch of amazing stuff from the year. And so it's like, not holding my attention compared to that. But there is stuff in this game that I like, and I mentioned it before, but Kenji Yamamoto, so he was the composer on Prime, he's a longtime Metroid composer. He's working with a composer, I'm less familiar with, another Nintendo composer named Minako

• 30:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Himano. The music in this game is amazing. I'm gonna play some of it now. It's so freaking cool. It's just Metroid Prime to a T.

• 31:22Kirk Hamilton?

  And it really underlines how this series has always had its own musical identity that's like, separate from Koji Kondo, from his big themes that he wrote, you know, for Zelda and Mario. It's just got this like, weird space chorus theremin, like, floaty, flippy, portamento synth thing.

• 31:49Kirk Hamilton?

  And man, the combat music is so cool. They do something with sound design that I've, I can't think of another game that's done it. It's an unusual move where, when a fight begins, they start this like, sound. And at first, I thought it was just in the jungle. It's this like like kind of synth music sound that starts playing whenever the monsters come out and start fighting you, but then it happens again on the ice planet, but it's a different kind of a sound. So there's almost an accompanying music cue that's almost more like this sonic disruption that begins playing when when a fight begins. And it's so neat. I mean, there's like, they're doing stuff with the music in this game that I think is like really adventurous. It's beautiful. It doesn't sound like any other game. It's musically experimental.

• 32:31Kirk Hamilton?

  And I really want to like shout that out. Honestly, like for me, I'm like, kind of in a big part, playing the game for the music because I'm enjoying it so much.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  I get it. I am with you there. The look of the areas and the music is carrying me through a ton of it in terms of enjoyment. And the fact that I can just kind of tune out some of the parts I don't like is helpful in the sense that I very literally did just turn the speech volume down to zero and now only read when characters talk to me.

• 33:03Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a, that would be a Kotaku post back when you were working. Here's one tip to improve Metroid.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  I did it pretty early on. And I recommend it. I, that and turning out the tutorializing has really helped. I haven't gone so far as to fully turn off the subtitles, but there are some posts on the Metroid subreddit of people who are like, I don't even have the subtitles on. I'm just figuring it out.

• 33:26Kirk Hamilton?

  So you don't even see, so you just see characters moving their mouths and you don't have any idea what they're saying?

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Or just articulating. And that's a, because some of them, you know, their mouths are occluded because they're wearing a costume or mask or whatever.

• 33:34Kirk Hamilton?

  This is like a version of Samus that just doesn't pay attention to anyone and doesn't care. Like their lips are moving, but she just doesn't even hear and is like, whatever. I'll go figure it out.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  But it's also kind of like a silent movie mode where it's like the characters are sort of talking to each other and we just have to imagine what they might be saying and put it together from context clues. And the game's story is simple enough that I think you can get away with that. I don't, I haven't played the entire game yet, so I can't speak to that. But I, I might turn off the subtitles after this podcast we're recording now, just to kind of experience the rest of the game like that and see what happens. Because as I've said, the story, if anything bothers me, I'm kind of like niggles at the Metroid lore knower in my head in a way that I I know is very distinctly a me problem. But I and I I mean, there's other people out there who really care about Metroid lore.

• 34:24Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  I'm not totally alone, but I think most people can overlook it. But if for me, at least I'm like, I need to not care about this. And I have multiple times been like, if this weren't a Metroid game, I might be enjoying it more. Actually, because it those aspects would bother me less.

• 34:41Jason Schreier?

  It's so funny that this series that was so renowned because of its vibes of isolation and solitary exploration just decide that the developers at Retro just decided they were just gonna stick in like a a whole troop of NPCs to just be talking in your ear the whole time. It's just baffling. It feels like they the people who just made that key decision on this game just didn't understand the appeal of the previous games, which I just don't understand because it is the same studio. And some of the some of the people who run that place, certainly the studio head, has been around since the beginning. So it's just kind of baffling to me.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  I mean, I agree with you, but I also think that Prime 3 included a kind of peek ahead at a lot of these design decisions that Prime 4 just turns up the dial on them. Like, two key things. One is Prime 3 introduces a lot of these Galactic Federation characters. They talk, Samus doesn't talk. That is established in Prime 3. People didn't like it at the time, though, is the thing. And I feel like that could have been an important clue to kind of look at the critical response to that at the time and be like, hey, maybe that shouldn't be something we lean harder into the next time around. And the other thing Prime 3 did was it had, it wasn't a big, open desert. It was the galaxy and Samus was, you know, flying her ship around planet by planet. And that kind of

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Split up structure of a game was sort of strange to people, struck people as strange at the time because it is different from just being in one place that has a labyrinthine maze, which is kind of a more typical Metroid structure, where you're like, I'm gonna be on one planet and I'm just gonna explore the heck out of it and get all of the resources and upgrades here and then fight bosses along the way, as opposed to, okay, now I'm gonna head back to my ship and then I'm gonna travel to a new planet and that planet's gonna have this stuff and then now I'm gonna get in my ship again. That part of, all that stuff in Prime 3 is similar to Prime 4, but again, these were things that people, or at least fans, criticized at the time as being not, not what they liked about Metroid and, and

• 36:50Speaker 00

  that's why I'm surprised to see them just really leaned into.

• 36:53Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, part of the appeal of Metroid has always been just like seeing those unexpected connections where you're like circle back and you find another passage and that's what Metroidvania is like so I'm gonna really get at. Um, yeah, Maddie, to your point, maybe, uh, cause I played Metroid Prime 3, maybe everybody was so distracted by using the Weemote to shoot things that they just didn't think about everything.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  I think so, cause that was actually pretty revolutionary at the time.

• 37:16Jason Schreier?

  No, it was, it 100% was and it felt great. I remember really enjoying that.

• 37:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure.

• 37:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's interesting. To me, this game definitely feels like a game where they didn't really know what they were making and they scrapped it and started over. Like, you can just kind of feel that in this game because it kind of lacks the courage of its convictions. It just doesn't feel like a typical Nintendo game where it's like incredibly bold. I mean, Kirby Air Riders, I've been playing that a little bit, that just came out. I know it's a completely different team, like different director, different everything, but like that game has the courage of its freaking convictions. Like that is a game with ideas all over the place and you start playing it and it's just like, whoa, like, okay, which most of the great Nintendo games do feel that way. You start them and they're like, okay, get ready, this isn't gonna be what you were expecting, but it's gonna be wild and it might be amazing. And like this game, it just kind of feels like another

• 38:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Metroid Prime and somewhat less inspired in a lot of ways. And it, for me, it really makes it clear, something that I think people have said for a long time, but I'm, you know, and that I've understood, but Haven't really experienced, which is just that these 3D Metroid games are on their own track. And it's interesting that 4 just, it sounds, Matty, from what you're saying, I never played Metroid Prime 3, but it sounds like it's really just on that same track, where then the 2D Metroid games are just their own thing, as evidenced by Metroid Dread, which was fantastic. I mean, that game was amazing. And playing this game, I mean, especially the Morph Ball sequences, which are very neat in this game, and really beautiful looking at the high frame rate when you're zooming around as the Morph Ball. And then they often go into 2D, and for just a moment, you'll be doing a 2D platformer,

• 38:49Kirk Hamilton?

  where you have to dodge electricity and blow up obstacles. And I'm like, playing it, looking at the nice looking 2D graphics and thinking, I should play Metroid Dread again, maybe. And so, even that is a reminder of how much I prefer that design mentality, and also that that design mentality is still alive and well. I mean, Metroid Dread wasn't that many years ago.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  And there's plenty of other really cool 2D side-scrolling exploration games.

• 39:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure. I'm also sated, I'm also quite sated on the 2D search-action game at the moment.

• 39:20Jason Schreier?

  It's funny you say that, Kirk, because the other big Switch 2 exclusive that has gotten a lot of attention this year is Donkey Kong Bonanza. And that game also has moments where you'll go into one of the challenge areas, and it'll turn into the 2D Donkey Kong Country style. And when I hit those, I had that same sort of thought, where I was like, oh, I enjoyed those games a lot more than I enjoy this. And I liked Bonanza a lot more than I liked Metroid Prime 4. But still, it's funny when these games kind of hearken back to the old days, and you realize that you actually kind of prefer the gameplay of the old days.

• 39:53Kirk Hamilton?

  It's actually a nice thing about Nintendo, I guess. So all of their series have transitioned to 3D, and then they all play with it in some way or another, you know, because obviously the Mario Odyssey team made Bonanza, and they did the same thing with Mario Odyssey. And like, the fact that they are keeping both of the development tracks going, like there are still 2D Mario games, is cool. It's nice that we kind of get both, and that they get to synthesize them. It's just, this is making me realize, I might actually go back and finish Prime 1, since I never have. That remake was really cool, and that game seemed like the neatest version of a 3D Metroid. But if this is where Prime is, oh, maybe I'm just not, this isn't really my thing. I'm not that interested in these games.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I don't mind Prime 2 and 3, but they're definitely on their own track, as you say. And they're kind of strange. I mean, I think it's... We've also kind of talked about how weird it is that Samus doesn't speak aloud in this game, and I think it's really worth highlighting the extent to which Metroid Other M kind of ruined Metroid quote unquote for a lot of people because Samus talks so much in that game, and the actress who plays her has talked about how she was directed to speak in a very flat affect. And that's something that comes out very odd in that game is that she's saying this highly emotional dialogue, but she's saying it in a very flat tone of voice. And I think even just that shows how many people who've written and

• 41:19Speaker 00

  developed for Samus have no idea what kind of voice she should have, and that that's a really big problem with probably every Metroid game, and that even games like Metroid Dread, which I think are great, they give her like one line. And it's, I'm sure they really thought about that line. And there's a reason why when she talks, she actually speaks in the chozo language they made up for that game and not English, because I just think people are really uncomfortable with the idea of her talking since she didn't talk for so long, or at least didn't speak aloud. And I find that really fascinating. And I'm not totally sure where I land on it, but I'll certainly acknowledge the challenge

• 42:00Speaker 00

  of it, like having a character who is alone for so many of these games, and therefore it would make no sense for her to be speaking. And like, thank goodness, we haven't introduced a version of Samus who's talking to herself everywhere she goes, like a classic video game protagonist, like they could have gone that direction.

• 42:18Jason Schreier?

  Better turn into a morph ball here.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  I think this door isn't going to be, isn't going to be capable of being opened with my current suite of abilities. I better look around.

• 42:28Jason Schreier?

  Why do they have to be zombies again?

• 42:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, so she doesn't do any of that stuff. But the alternative where she doesn't talk at all is also really odd. So I'm just acknowledging the difficulty. I'm not saying I have the perfect answer here, because I think that Other M really soured a lot of fans on the idea of Samus talking at all, and that after that game, anybody who wrote her was like, okay, fans hate it when she talks. So we can't have Never talk anymore, or scarcely. But this is too far in the other direction. And it's weird.

• 43:02Kirk Hamilton?

  No, that's an interesting problem. Like, there has been a character who hasn't spoken for so long. But now people are having to try to figure out how to imagine how she speaks. But that is a challenging and kind of a daunting task and a difficult one. And I mean, it's something that I think Link has presents as well. I think that if they make this Zelda movie and Link is gonna talk in the Zelda movie, that is gonna be like, it's a real challenge for whoever has to write that. Because while Link has spoken at times, you know, whatever, the animated series, like, there are times where Link has been a kind of speaking character. It's kind of similar to Other M.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, people don't like the animated series.

• 43:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. It's similar to Other M, where people kind of hate it and it doesn't really work. And so that is a real challenge. And I don't know, I don't know how you solve it.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I certainly don't envy the people who made this game and tried to solve it. And this is, this is what they came up with. And I think there probably were drafts of the script where Samus talked and didn't talk. And that that was, that must have been a debate. Because you can just tell from how many people talk to her and ask her direct questions that she does not answer, how odd the resulting game comes off.

• 44:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I just have to question the commitment to having these NPCs in the game. Because a version of this exact same game, where there just aren't the NPCs just aren't talking to you and you're just going and figuring stuff out. Like, it would still have a lot of the design shortcomings that we've described. But it would be, you know, it would also be just as playable as it's felt to me and pretty enjoyable. But it would just be, it would have removed a big part of the structure that I don't like and made the game feel a little less directed and a little more just chill out, explore, feel some energy, like, enjoy the music and like, see what you can solve. Like, that would be a nice game. And then it wouldn't feel as unnatural that she stands there silently while people like, have actual conversations with her, or try.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally agree. I'm gonna turn off the subtitles.

• 44:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'll be curious how that is.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  If I regret it or thought, who's to say? But hey, Metroid Prime 4, it did finally come out.

• 45:04Kirk Hamilton?

  It did.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  I'll give it that much. And I'm gonna check out that soundtrack. Probably gonna be a great soundtrack to listen to while working. I do love that music. So that's something. All right, let's take a break and we'll be back with one more thing.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  Hello, this is Alden Ford.

• 45:23Speaker 04

  And Mujan Zofagari.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  Two of the creators of Mission to Zyx, your favorite improvised, obsessively sound-designed sci-fi sitcom here on the Maximum Fun Network. And the news is...

• 45:33Speaker 04

  We're back! With an all-new mini-series set in the Zyx universe, The Young Old Durf Chronicles.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:39Speaker 04

  Will Durf find his own killer before it's too late?

• 45:42Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 45:42Speaker 04

  To find out how that question could possibly make sense, well, you just have to tune in.

• 45:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're so excited that Episode 1 is out right now in the Mission to Zyx feed. So if you are looking for a little break from your own galaxy, we would love for you to check it out.

• 45:55Speaker 04

  That's The Young Old Durf Chronicles. Search Mission to Zyx, Z-Y-X-X, in your podcast app.

• 46:00Speaker 03

  Or on MaximumFun.org.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  Keep up fresh.

• 46:07Speaker 05

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

• 46:10Speaker 06

  And I'm your wife host, Teresa McElroy.

• 46:12Speaker 05

  And this is a promo for Schmanners.

• 46:14Speaker 06

  It's extraordinary etiquette.

• 46:15Speaker 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.

• 46:25Speaker 06

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

• 46:34Speaker 05

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

• 46:40Speaker 06

  Manner Schmanners. Get it?

• 46:43Speaker 00

  We are back. It's time for one more thing. Kirk, why don't you go first?

• 46:48Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, I will go first. My one more thing is a Netflix limited series that I watched called Death by Lightning. And it was really freaking good. And I want to recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it. I think it's been getting a fair amount of buzz. Some of you out there have probably seen people talking about it. And you might be putting it off because it's like, ah, it's like a historical drama. I don't know. I kind of just want to watch something easy. I don't, I don't know. Look, just start it. If you just start it and watch the first like 20 minutes, you won't be able to stop, is my prediction. Because that is how it was for me and how I felt watching it. So what is Death by Lightning? Death by Lightning tells the story of the killing of James A. Garfield,

• 47:33Kirk Hamilton?

  the 20th President of the United States in 1881. He was elected Republican in 1880. This is shortly after the Civil War. The Republican Party was the party of Lincoln, but in a way that it like really felt honest, because Lincoln had just been the Republican president and of course had led America through the Civil War. So James Garfield was elected president and then was shot by a man named Charles Guttou, who was kind of this mentally ill charlatan, who was kind of obsessed with him and wanted to ingratiate himself to the party and like change the world and become, you know, a great man like he thought Garfield was. And he shot Garfield, but famously, Garfield did not die from the gunshot.

• 48:18Kirk Hamilton?

  And in fact, it is likely that Garfield would not have died at all if they had just left the bullet alone. But because an ignorant doctor, I think a doctor who was a lifetime friend of Garfield's, who ignored the advice of other doctors and like just pawed around in the wound with unsanitized fingers and used unsanitized tools, he gave him this horrible infection that spread through Garfield's body and slowly killed him over the course of like months. So he died from the doctor. Like the doctor killed the president. He was almost technically not assassinated. Like he was shot by a guy who is in many ways like the mode of a presidential assassin, but it wasn't the bullet that killed him. So this is a four-part series about that, but it's also about Garfield himself.

• 49:03Kirk Hamilton?

  It's about this period of time, which is a fascinating period of time. And it's also just about like legacy and what it means to have been on the cusp of doing something great and then just to have that vanish and to be forgotten. So really, a main reason to watch this is for Matthew McFadden. The cast of this is amazing, but Matthew McFadden, who of course, the two of you will know from Succession, I'll always think of him from the Keira Knightley part in Prejudice, which is so funny because he plays such a different character as Mr. Darcy in that. But of course, he's Tom Wambscamps in Succession, and that's where he became very famous and kind of showed his range and his ability to play this kind of stammering buffoon, which is very much Gatto.

• 49:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Gatto is like Tom Wambscamps dialed up to 50% and like a little scarier and less stable. And he is a fascinating character. He's a fascinating kind of guy. He's the kind of guy who's like smart and polite enough. You first see him and he looks kind of disheveled in a way that puts you on guard and you're like, what's this guy's deal? But then he's actually pretty well spoken and he's very flattering and he's a flatterer and he kind of ingratiates himself to you and you think, okay, and you start talking to him. And then he starts throwing up red flags everywhere and you start to realize like, oh no, this guy is like not okay. And he's so good at playing this role of this guy. And you kind of follow him over the course of this, I guess about a year of his life. And he's just like a charlatan, like a constant liar.

• 50:33Kirk Hamilton?

  He's kind of deluded. He doesn't seem to understand why he can't become who he thinks he should be and why the world doesn't accept him as he wants to be. And at the same time, Michael Shannon is playing James Garfield. Michael Shannon, another great actor who you'll know from a ton of things, doing a good job with like a less fun role because Garfield is kind of this like stoic guy. But it makes it very clear that James Garfield was a really pretty amazing guy. He had his flaws, they're not as explored in this series, but you know, he wasn't like perfect or anything, but he was a remarkable- He did Mondays. Yeah, he ate way too much lasagna. He was a really, a pretty amazing guy and he could have been a great president.

• 51:17Kirk Hamilton?

  He was a kind of anti-corruption president. At the time, Grant was president and this is when there was a kind of- A whole sect of the Republican Party who were controlled by New York and their whole thing was about like we it was it was all corrupt like it was just like taking allowances and you know assigning money to people just based on loyalty. It was almost like the mob. And Shay Wiggum is actually in this.

• 51:40Jason Schreier?

  It was Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed and isn't Gangs of New York cover some of that stuff, right?

• 51:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's a lot of this really, really corrupt. It's a very corrupt time, after the war especially. Shay Wiggum is in this, another great, hey, it's that guy, kind of like Michael Shannon. He's playing Roscoe Conkling, who's a senator I was not familiar with, who is a real piece of shit, but he's a great villain. And Shay Wiggum, especially with the hairstyle they've given him, which looks like Conkling's, he's great in this. Anyways, whatever, I'm getting too in the weeds on the details here. It's a very interesting historical story, partly because of all the ways that politics have changed and even that like the party structure and primaries and elections have changed since, you know, 1880. For example, when people are elected president, you can't just go and run into them on the lawn of the White House and start talking to them the way that you can or the

• 52:28Kirk Hamilton?

  way that you could in 1880. And that's something that comes up a lot. So anyways, I really thought this was amazing. Amazing performances throughout. Another one other performance I should mention is Nick Offerman plays Chester Arthur, who's vice president to Garfield and becomes president, a manifestly unfit man, a total disaster, who kind of rose to the task of becoming president. And Offerman is so good in this. And Betty Gilpin actually plays Michael Garfield's wife. And through the whole time, I'm like, man, I get like Betty Gilpin is great. She seems kind of wasted. And then in the final episode, she gets to like do her Betty Gilpin thing. And I was like, okay, that's why they cast her. It's so good. It's four episodes long. It's extremely worth watching and it ties into The Gilded Age, which is a show that I have been watching with Emily and is very fun

• 53:11Kirk Hamilton?

  and picks up just one year after this and is an incredibly different take on the same time period. But like, I feel like I've been awash in this time period, this like post-Civil War, Gilded Age, 1880s period in America, a fascinating and transformative time all across the country for a variety of reasons. And I just can't recommend this enough. So Death by Lightning, the title is from the quote. Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning, which was famously said by James Garfield. And I don't think he was, he was right on that one, but it is a great quote.

• 53:43Jason Schreier?

  So this is based on a book called Destiny of the Republic by Candace Miller that I loved. I talked about this on split screen way back in the day. After I read it, it's a phenomenal book and it dives into all of, everything you just talked about, Kirk, and also this concept that was gaining steam at the time called sterilization, which it's worth noting, like the doctors were told about and just ignored. There was this guy, James Lister, who would go around and tell people like, you have to wash your hands. Like you were getting germs. And the doctors, all, everybody who was involved in the medicine in the United States thought he was a quack and thought that germ theory was nonsense.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, little invisible guys on your hands? That's crazy.

• 54:21Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 54:21Kirk Hamilton?

  The, um, the scene in the show where, where this is happening, it was a black doctor who was attending to Garfield at the, as he was shot, who was trying to help. And then a white doctor comes in and ignores him as he's saying, you should sterilize your equipment. And as I was watching it, I was like, there's no way this didn't happen this way. And it did in fact happen that way. And I guess I should mention also Garfield was like a big, like, he was a pro voting equality in particular, but he was like big, a big like civil rights proponent in a really cool way. Like, which was just a really cool thing about him and was a for real thing about him as well. Oh, man. And also, Ramin Jawadi did the music for this. I didn't mention it, but like, it's a big part of what makes the show so good. Ramin Jawadi, the Game of Thrones composer.

• 55:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, part of the reason that the show has this great energy is that Ramin like did his Ramin thing and the music is, it's super propulsive. It's really good.

• 55:23Jason Schreier?

  Well, you know, it was produced by Benny Haff and, like, the Game of Thrones show.

• 55:27Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I didn't even catch that. That's so funny. Okay, that makes sense. And yeah, his, his whole music is, it's like built on a riff of like the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Oh, I can't believe I forgot to mention this, sorry. But like Battle Hymn of the Republic itself, a really interesting song with this like anti-racist message that was like, it was like kind of a civil rights anthem around the same time. And he's built this really cool motif, like the same way that he does with Game of Thrones. He picks the motif of Battle Hymn of the Republic and then builds it into this really amazing musical, musical soundtrack.

• 56:05Speaker 00

  Nice. That sounds awesome.

• 56:06Kirk Hamilton?

  It's great. Sorry. I know I've gone on long, but I really like it and I hope some people watch it.

• 56:10Speaker 00

  All right. I'll go next. We got more history, more of a history lesson here. So I watched the movie Metropolis, which is a silent film from 1927. And I started off trying to watch this. Like, I don't know that there is a true original version of this movie that has whatever music would have actually accompanied the film contemporaneously. But the version that I started watching, it's like streaming for free on a million services, but I think I was watching the 2B1. It just had a repetitive, just ragtime song just playing over and over and over under it. And I was like, I'm going to go insane if I continue watching this film. So what can I do about this? And I Googled around and I found out

• 56:51Speaker 00

  that, I think he's called the Disco King, Kirk, I feel like you would know this, Giorgio Moroder.

• 56:57Kirk Hamilton?

  I'll share some fun facts about Giorgio Moroder when you're done.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  He did a recut of Metropolis in 1984 and came up with an entire score for the movie. So I'll first describe the re-editing of the film because it's shorter in his version because he actually speeds up the frame rate at a few points and takes the silent movie interstitial cards, like there's a black screen and white text on it that says what a character's saying. He turns those into subtitles that are fit with where the character would actually be saying them. So all of that makes the movie about an hour and a half, which is much more livable. And by the way, the reason why I was even watching this movie, I feel like I should summarize the plot because it's actually really cool. So this is one of the first movies that had a fictional robot in it. It's a fictional female robot

• 57:41Speaker 00

  who's based on a guy's dead wife, which I think is really interesting that that is one of the first stories about that. And also-

• 57:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Sometimes described as the first sci-fi film.

• 57:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, sometimes described as the first sci-fi film. I think, I think anytime you're talking about firsts, like you can kind of argue about that. And I don't know if that's super interesting to do, but it's a really early example of a robot in fiction, an android in fiction. And another really cool thing about this movie, it was made by a husband and wife couple, Jewish husband and his wife.

• 58:10Speaker 00

  And he divorced later because she became a Nazi afterwards and he went way on the other end of that was approached by Goebbels because Goebbels really liked this film, wanted the guy to make Nazi propaganda. And instead he was like, nope, I'm going to flee Germany and not ever associate with you guys anymore at all. And Metropolis is a film has a really confused political message because of that. And that is super fascinating to watch because you can tell that like, the husband half's far left influences are there, but then also the far right influences are there at the same time. It's got this like weird communist message where the robot is leading this communist uprising and it's all about workers' rights. But then she goes evil and it's like

• 58:55Speaker 00

  really confusing as to why she would do that exactly. It's, it's, it's an incredible film and I really recommend it. But I do also recommend this 1984 recut because it was, okay, so this, this recut was widely painted at the time as being too corny and stupid, but I actually think it owns now and it should like be reappraised by 2025 audiences as something that actually rules because it has original songs with Freddie Mercury singing, Pat Benatar. I love their voices and it has like synth like goofy, you know, really propulsive synthesizers playing for all these cool robot moments. And that just really adds something to this film that makes it go down

• 59:39Speaker 00

  way, way easier as just an enjoyable plot to see play out in a way that at least to my 2025 sensibilities, I found the like original over two hour slow silent film version, just, just a little tough to hang with. This 1984 version though is great. It's very fun and you'll get to enjoy a pretty interesting political allegory that like just kind of shows the political leanings of this husband and wife duo and how they were really struggling. And it's just interesting. It's really, really cool film. So I recommend it. It's free on YouTube. This movie's really old. You can very easily find a ton of versions of it. But this 1984 version is really fun and cool. So yeah, I recommend it. Metropolis. Cool movie.

• 1:00:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. I've seen Metropolis, not the Giorgio Moroder version.

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  Oh, you should check it out.

• 1:00:24Kirk Hamilton?

  I think I've seen clips from it. Man, so a couple of fun facts to share really quick. One is that if you're a Metropolis fan, or anyone out there is a Metropolis fan, and maybe a Janelle Monae fan, there's a really cool crossover there. Her first EP was called Metropolis, I think it's called To Chase Sweet. And then Archandroid, her debut, still my favorite Janelle Monae album, is also like a continuation of that. And all the songs are like adapting and sort of commenting on and like reframing stuff from Metropolis. So if you've seen Metropolis, then you listen to the album and you start to see all these connections, it's very cool. And then my Giorgio Moroder fun fact, first off, he's an amazing musician, Italian disco composer, did a ton of stuff. He wrote the soundtrack to American Gigolo, the film.

• 1:01:07Kirk Hamilton?

  And he wrote Call Me for Blondie. Back in a couple of seasons ago in Strong Songs, I was thinking about making a Blondie episode. I wound up doing Heart of Glass, because that is like a complete Blondie song. But Call Me is, I was thinking about doing it because it's an awesome song.

• 1:01:28Kirk Hamilton?

  But then I realized like it wasn't written by Blondie, it was written by Giorgio Moroder. And actually, all the musicians from Blondie, like, I think they tried to record it and they weren't good enough. And so he like got rid of them all and replaced them with studio musicians. So it's just Debbie Harry singing and then all these studio musicians playing. Among them, Harold Faltermeyer, who wrote like Axl F, if you know the Axl F theme song. Harold Faltermeyer is like playing all the synth parts on that. I think he recorded a lot of Moroder's stuff. So it's like those like 70s and 80s synth LA.

• 1:01:56Speaker 00

  For all I know, he's on this movie soundtrack.

• 1:01:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Hollywood guys, yeah, he might be. Anyways, Giorgio Moroder is amazing, a musician well worth looking into and a great composer in his own right.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. The soundtrack is iconic. I really just, I can't recommend it enough. It was such a fun way to watch this movie.

• 1:02:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'll go watch it. That sounds really cool.

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  All right, Jason, it's your turn.

• 1:02:17Jason Schreier?

  My one thing is a book called Wellness by Nathan Hill. And I read this on the plane on the way to LA. And it's funny, I started, I was playing some Metroid Prime four and I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. And then I started reading this book and I was like, oh, this is all I want to do.

• 1:02:33Kirk Hamilton?

  I could be reading a book.

• 1:02:34Jason Schreier?

  This is a book, this book is so good that after I finished reading it, I placed, I looked on Barnes and Noble to see if this guy's other book called The Nix is in stock. So I could drive to Barnes and Noble, which I'm going to do this afternoon and go pick it up. And read it while I'm on this trip, maybe on the flight back home. So this is a book Wellness about a married couple. And it kind of zips back and forth between the past and the present to show how they met. And then also their kind of their current predicaments. And it's very much about the kind of malaise that can sink into a relationship. After the energy is gone and people have fallen into their ruts and maybe they discover things about each other

• 1:03:15Jason Schreier?

  or themselves that doesn't kind of fit with how they originally envisioned their relationship and their future. And it packs a whole lot of different things into this one book. The kind of one of the big themes is also the title of the book Wellness comes from the name of the laboratory where the woman in the marriage, the wife in the marriage works. And it is a laboratory that does experiments with the placebo effect. That essentially they prescribe medicines to people that do nothing. And tell them, tell these people that they do something and then find that they are effective in all sorts of ways.

• 1:03:59Jason Schreier?

  And that is a running theme throughout this book in various forms. This idea of placebo and how it affects people. But it also explores all sorts of other stuff. And it's really just a dense, layered, phenomenal, very readable story that I think a lot of people will find just at least, at least one interesting takeaway to come away from it with. It's got so much stuff in it. It's so funny. Got everything from like YouTube reaction culture to like polyamory to suburban wellness, or not wellness, suburban cults of like people who believe that they can manifest things with their thoughts.

• 1:04:40Jason Schreier?

  And that all bad things in the world, all bad things in the world happen through negative thinking. And all sorts of other good stuff, but really it's about marriage and like broken people and their flaws and what keeps them together and what drives them apart. And how oftentimes the something that you're kind of like inherited trauma and how that affects people. And also how you might be looking for something at one point in your life and then find it. And then it turns around and turns into something completely different. And it's fascinating. It's a hell of a book. I highly recommend it. It's called Wellness, Penny Fennhill. It's so good that I'm going to go check out his other book later today, The Nix. And yeah, can't recommend it highly enough.

• 1:05:24Speaker 00

  You're gonna read it during the Game Awards? You're gonna crack it open while you're in the audience?

• 1:05:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Just be sitting back there with earplugs.

• 1:05:29Jason Schreier?

  I should. I mean, better than those frigging commercials.

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  Hey.

• 1:05:33Kirk Hamilton?

  You mentioning going and grabbing an author is another book by the same author. Actually makes me wonder, have you read The Fireman by Joe Hill?

• 1:05:42Jason Schreier?

  No.

• 1:05:42Kirk Hamilton?

  His book called The Fireman?

• 1:05:43Jason Schreier?

  No, King Star was the only one I read of his.

• 1:05:46Kirk Hamilton?

  That's the only one. Okay, because you said it was so great. And then I have that on Libby and waiting for it from the library. But then I was watching Noah Caldwell Gervais, actually, the YouTube essay I mentioned just recently. He has a video about Alan Wake, which for starters is fantastic. It like is explaining so many things about Alan Wake. It's the whole series and it's great. And he's talking about Joe Hill since Stephen King and Alan Wake are in such conversation. And he mentions the book The Fireman, which is a little older and is kind of a post-apocalyptic sort of, he described it as Joe Hill's take on the stand, but it's better was how Noah put it. And I was like, oh, all right. So I put in for that too. And I was just wondering if you had read it.

• 1:06:22Jason Schreier?

  Very cool. Maybe I should get that too while I'm at the bookstore.

• 1:06:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm excited for reading some Joe Hill, even though he doesn't have as many books as King, but that's fine.

• 1:06:29Speaker 00

  Hey, give him some time.

• 1:06:31Kirk Hamilton?

  King has too many books. A few really good books is fine by me.

• 1:06:35Jason Schreier?

  Well, he notably took a lot. Break before releasing King's Heart, like he hadn't released a new book in a long time. Unlike his dad, who releases like four books a year.

• 1:06:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, he's such a machine.

• 1:06:44Jason Schreier?

  But yeah, Wellness, really enjoy it, highly recommend.

• 1:06:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Awesome.

• 1:06:46Jason Schreier?

  It's really a tremendous book and look at relationships and people and humanity, it just oozes, oozes humanity. Every page.

• 1:06:55Kirk Hamilton?

  I will put that in my, in my Libby queue as well.

• 1:06:57Jason Schreier?

  Add a tier to read list for sure.

• 1:07:00Speaker 00

  Cool, sounds neat. All right, this has been another episode and soon we're gonna find out who won our Game Awards predictions, but.

• 1:07:08Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true, Jason, you're gonna be there for Gaming's Biggest Night.

• 1:07:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, you'll be there.

• 1:07:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Gaming's Biggest Night 12, the Revenge or whatever.

• 1:07:15Jason Schreier?

  I'm not actually going to the show, I'm gonna watch from the hotel nearby.

• 1:07:19Speaker 00

  That's a good way to watch it. Watch it from the comfort of a chair.

• 1:07:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Kind of an easier way to keep track of everything.

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  Where it's not so loud that your ears feel like they're going to be damaged.

• 1:07:28Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  It's.

• 1:07:29Jason Schreier?

  By the way, we didn't even talk about like this insane news that happened last week, which is Netflix buying Warner Brothers.

• 1:07:34Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:07:35Jason Schreier?

  We can talk about that a little bit more next week.

• 1:07:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, now there's that hostile bid going on, so it's not even clear if it's gonna happen.

• 1:07:40Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, we should talk about that a little bit. We can, we can save that for next week.

• 1:07:43Kirk Hamilton?

  It's very much the Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard of the streaming world.

• 1:07:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, but it also affects games because Warner Brothers is a huge games division too, so.

• 1:07:51Kirk Hamilton?

  True.

• 1:07:51Jason Schreier?

  We'll unpack that a little bit more next week maybe, because I'm, I'm like trying to, a lot of people here in town in LA are talking about it, so I'm trying to have some conversations and see if anybody knows anything. I don't think anyone knows what this means for the games division at this point.

• 1:08:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Especially because it, we're not even sure what's gonna happen.

• 1:08:04Jason Schreier?

  Right, we don't even know if it's gonna happen, but even the CEOs of Netflix, I don't think have given much thought to what they're gonna do with the game.

• 1:08:10Kirk Hamilton?

  I did get the email from Netflix where they're like, we're so happy to be buying Warner Brothers. So I was like, easy guys, like, I'm not sure it's gonna happen.

• 1:08:18Jason Schreier?

  Chill, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it was a very confident email. I was like, hmm, maybe projecting a little bit.

• 1:08:23Speaker 00

  They're manifesting it.

• 1:08:23Jason Schreier?

  There's a popular conspiracy theory that they don't actually want Warner Brothers and that this is all just designed to like, put sand in the gears for Paramount and like block, block one of their rivals and that's a conspiracy theory, that's a little thing around. But let's, let's table this, we'll talk more about this next week.

• 1:08:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Talk about it next week.

• 1:08:39Speaker 00

  Well, maybe you'll get some more information and we can talk about it then. All right. Well, with that, we're gonna wrap it up and we'll reconvene next week for that and all the rest.

• 1:08:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we will see you all next week.

• 1:08:51Jason Schreier?

  See you next week.

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:08:56Kirk Hamilton?

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

• 1:09:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported. Directly. By you.