Triple Play: Star Wars: Zero Company

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason dive into Star Wars: Zero Company, the wonderful new strategy game that's best described as a cross between Star Wars and XCOM. They talk about the strategy, the characters, and what a bummer it is that the development team was furloughed before launch. This episode has a 95% chance to hit!

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

• 0:04Jason Schreier?

  Focus L, Ganon's got the Triforce and you know what that means. Yeah, trouble. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week, we're not talking about the Ocarina of Time remake, but we are talking about Star Wars Zero Company, AKA ZCOM, a great new game.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:32Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:34Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello, hello, hello, hello to both of you.

• 0:38Jason Schreier?

  Hello to both of you. Did you guys see the trailer for the documentary that Nathan Fielder is making about Elizabeth Holmes? Because, oh my god.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  It looks like a horror movie.

• 0:47Jason Schreier?

  There's nothing I'm more excited for than this.

• 0:50Kirk Hamilton?

  So when I initially watched that, it was a Twitter link or I guess an X link, and there was no sound and I couldn't get it to play sound. So I just watched it like a couple of times with no sound. So it's just Elizabeth Holmes and Nathan Fielder just staring at each other for like a minute and a half.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  It's scarier with sound because the sound is so unsettling. It's like a pulsing reverberation.

• 1:14Jason Schreier?

  Oh, man, I cannot wait for that movie. I hope it is released far and wide and that we can see the theaters because, oh my god. And maybe we'll talk about it on a bonus episode. Speaking of which, if you want to hear our bonus episodes, including one we just recorded about The Sopranos, season four and season five, a mega one, it's like three hours long. So lots of, lots of stuff for you to listen to. You should become a Maximum Fun member and support this show. Go to maximumfun.org/jointripleclick and you can sign up directly to our show, make the show possible and get access to our massive backlog

• 1:58Jason Schreier?

  of bonus episodes, including that one, The Sopranos one, and then a new one we are going to record at the end of September where, that we're tentatively calling Triple Cuck. I mean, sorry, Triple Kiss, where we talk about romance and dating and maybe answer some listener questions about dating. We've gotten a ton of good ones so far, but just as a reminder, if you want to submit your own questions or stories or anything like that, advice requests, go send an email to [email protected] and make sure the title of that email is Triple Kiss and we'll consider it for inclusion in that bonus episode.

• 2:37Jason Schreier?

  So yeah, once again, to get access to our bonus stuff, go to maximumfun.org/jointripleclick and you too can become a Maximum Fun member. All right, Kirk, what are we talking about this week?

• 2:53Kirk Hamilton?

  We are talking about another video game as the mega video game September spectacular continues. We are still playing lots of games because they're all coming out this month. And the one we're talking about this week is a little game called Star Wars Zero Company, which is essentially Star Wars XCOM. That is how everyone describes it and that's because that's kind of what it is. It's a little bit Star Wars Midnight Suns, but a lot fewer people get that reference. So I'm going to stick with Star Wars XCOM. Jason, you use the term ZCOM since this is Zero Company and I found that very clever and haven't really seen that around. Is that a Jason Schreier original or are a lot of people calling it that?

• 3:34Jason Schreier?

  I don't know. I don't think I made it up. I think I must have heard someone say it.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like I've seen it in our Triple Click Discord at the very least, but that doesn't mean Jason didn't make it up, of course.

• 3:47Kirk Hamilton?

  That would be a place you would see it if he did.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  I've seen it.

• 3:51Jason Schreier?

  I definitely did not make it up. I think I may have first heard it from someone who was like working on the game or like involved in the game in some way.

• 3:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, that's funny.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  That's the origin of it. That actually would make sense as a shorthand.

• 4:02Kirk Hamilton?

  That would make sense. So this game is of course a overhead kind of isometric view tactical game. It's a turn-based game with a small squad where you play a group of soldiers and you take on a group of enemy soldiers with various abilities and utility items and weapons. You've got everyone ranging from Jedi to clone troopers to scoundrels with, you know, pistols and rifles and sniper rifles. There's all kinds of different tactical arrays that you can come up with on the battlefield. And that's the bulk of the gameplay. The story is actually pretty cool. It's set during the Clone Wars and that's a time period that I am actually not that familiar with in Star Wars.

• 4:42Kirk Hamilton?

  This is the rise of the Republic and Chancellor Palpatine, or maybe he's Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. He's in the midst of grabbing power and trying to unify the Republic into the Galactic Empire. So things are becoming kind of bad and the Republic is pretty shady seeming. Meanwhile, the Republic is in a war with separatist forces and a variety of sects just sort of all around the galaxy. And they're using their army of clone troopers who look, of course, like stormtroopers to engage in this war. And that's what this show, The Clone Wars, was all about. A show that I gather is quite variable. It has some really great arcs.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Ups and downs.

• 5:20Kirk Hamilton?

  It has a lot of downs and kind of like low, it has a lot of low lows and some high highs. I'd never watched that show, but this game is, it's a pretty interesting setting. And of course, then there's also the kind of meta story of Star Wars Zero Company, which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit as well. It's being published by EA. EA has just been, what, bought by the Saudi Royal Fund? Is that right? What's the, what are the specifics of that deal?

• 5:44Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, taken private in a leveraged buyout, which essentially means that the company is bought and then some of the debt used to buy the company is then put on the company itself. Kind of like, kind of like.

• 5:58Kirk Hamilton?

  This is a Toys R Us, right? Isn't this the Toys R Us?

• 6:01Jason Schreier?

  Barbarians at the Gate, that book is kind of the most famous story about, what's it called? JJ Nabisco. But yeah, essentially the Saudi fund bought EA, took it private and now owns the majority of EA.

• 6:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, which of course the Saudi government responsible for murdering journalists and all kinds of human rights abuses. And then there is also the fact that, as was reported by our good friend, Steven Totillo, our former boss, Steven Totillo, most, quote, "Most of the staff who worked on this game have been furloughed in the weeks leading up to its release due to what sounds like internal problems at the studio that led to there not being enough money to pay everybody." And so everyone has kind of been temporarily, question mark, laid off pending the success or failure of this game, which is just another thing kind of hanging over it. And all of this stuff, you know, it's kind of outside of the game itself, but it is all kind of unfortunate.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a dark cloud hanging over the game, at least for me, because all that stuff makes me sad.

• 7:06Kirk Hamilton?

  So let's talk about the game itself and I'm sure that those.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Which is good, it makes me happy.

• 7:10Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm sure, right, I'm sure that those, you know, those subjects will come up and they're worth mentioning at the start of the conversation because they are kind of on my mind as I play it. You know, it is this, I think, wonderful game that I'm having a great time with. And yet I'm most aware of the fact that a lot of the people who worked on it are not currently working on it. And that's something that I've definitely been aware of as I've played it since there are things. You know, normally I'd be playing a game like this and thinking, oh, you know, maybe they'll patch this or maybe they're going to change that or they can update this. And it's kind of a different thing to think about when you're aware that a lot of the people who worked on it might not be working at all. Bing, Kirk here. As I'm editing the episode, I am pleased to say that BitReactor has released their first patch for the game. It's just some bug fixes, but it's kind of a lot of bug fixes.

• 7:55Kirk Hamilton?

  And it does show that they've got some people working at the very least on patching bugs and hopefully on doing more. So just wanted to add that as an update since I mentioned it in the episode. Let's get back to it. Bing. But anyhow, let's get into the game itself for starters and just talk about it. I've played a bunch of this game. I really love it. I'm curious what the two of you think. Jason, I know that you're pretty into it. How much have you played and what are you thinking of Zero Company?

• 8:21Jason Schreier?

  I love it. I really, I'm enjoying it so much. The only thing I don't love about Star Wars Zero Company is that it doesn't run on my Steam Deck, so I can't play it portably. And especially since I'm about to go traveling for like almost two weeks. I really wish I could take it on the go. That said, I really, really love this game. The kind of, the bread and butter of the strategy, the turn-based strategy elements, of course, mastered with XCOM and this is no exception. It's got a lot of the same ideas, even Overwatch is, is kind of returning from the XCOM games. And so you have that great strategy aspect of it.

• 9:01Jason Schreier?

  But one of the reasons that I never really got super into any of the XCOM games is because I could never really care that much about the characters in a way that I know a lot of people do. A lot of people get into this idea of creating their own narratives with these systemic characters that then they then fall in love with just on their own. I, that never really worked for me. I was more, I was always more into strategy games where you have kind of characters that are authored by the game, such as Final Fantasy Tactics, where a lot of your characters are characters you can recruit and have personalities and stuff. So in this, I'm playing with mostly, I think, almost all characters who are authored characters by the game,

• 9:43Jason Schreier?

  like your main dudes, like Trick and, and what's this guy, what's his name? Cab, uppercut, and the princess, the Baroness and others. So like that I've really enjoyed and then I enjoy that I get to have conversations with them outside of battle. So for me, it's kind of like, it's the best of both worlds between XCOM strategy and combat and then Midnight Suns, character development and outside storylines and just ongoing getting to know these characters and build relationships with them, which I just absolutely love it. Because yeah, for me, Midnight Suns, the weaker part was the card-based strategy. And XCOM, the weaker part is the story. So it's really, it's for me, it's just, just win-win. So yeah, I absolutely love it.

• 10:27Jason Schreier?

  I think it's really cool and does a lot to cut into the Star Wars fatigue because it's such a good story and such a good cast of characters and such a good game in general.

• 10:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Matty, how about you? How much have you played and what are you thinking of Zero Company?

• 10:41Speaker 02

  I am also really loving this game. So this is gonna be a conversation where all three of us really love the game. We love that. Why not have that be the conversation? I did watch all the Clone Wars cartoon. And something that I really like about that cartoon is that it fleshes out things that happen in the prequels, the Star Wars prequels. And unfortunately, still don't make me like the Star Wars prequels, but they kinda make that setting richer and add in more character motivations for some of the clone troopers, for example. Those characters all have unique personalities on that show. And I thought that was really fascinating and really commendable. And by the way, all those characters on Clone Wars are voiced by Dee Bradley Baker,

• 11:25Speaker 02

  who returns to voice all the clones in Star Wars Zero Company. And I heard that and I was like, is that, is that the same voice actor? And it is. And so this is, this is very much a game that's in conversation with the Clone Wars cartoons in a fun way. And that was very pleasing to me because I think when that cartoon is strong, it's very strong. And that-

• 11:44Jason Schreier?

  Are there, are there characters in this game from the Clone Wars cartoons?

• 11:47Speaker 02

  There's one other, but I won't say who, because I'm not sure. We are going to spoil anything.

• 11:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Jason has not gotten that far yet.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Jason hasn't yet gotten that far.

• 11:55Jason Schreier?

  Oh, well, I know. And I mean, they've advertised that Anakin is in the game.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  All right, fair enough. Anakin is also voiced by the same guy who is in the Clone Wars cartoon. And that version of Anakin is a lot more interesting, unfortunately, than Hayden Christensen's version. But we don't need to get into that today. My point is, this is a setting that I already really love. I think there's so much cool storytelling that can happen here. And I also really like strategy games. So there was almost no way that I wouldn't have really loved Star Wars Zero Company. They would have needed to seriously whiff it, but-

• 12:28Jason Schreier?

  Well, to be fair, to be fair, they had a 95% chance of hitting, so they whiffed it.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was a 5% chance that they weren't gonna make it into my heart. And they made it. Don't worry, they made it. I also think this game's quite funny. I think that the characters, especially Runa, who's like this libertarian character who's on your base.

• 12:48Kirk Hamilton?

  We love her.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  I don't think she ever actually comes with you on any missions, but she's like this hardcore libertarian who's constantly talking about finances and being just a real hard ass. She's hilarious as a character and I just enjoy her so much.

• 13:02Jason Schreier?

  The conversations between her and Hawks at the mission select screen are ridiculous.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  They're so funny. And I, I just love all the sparkling personalities of all the characters. It's really wonderful. It's like all the best parts of what I like about Star Wars, which is kinda stories about everyman, characters, and like kinda the behind the scenes of the grand sweeping epics. Like, that's the Clone Wars cartoon at its best, and this game is really selling those stories.

• 13:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Dee Bradley Baker, fun fact, also the voice of Appa on Avatar, The Last Airbender.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 13:36Kirk Hamilton?

  I think he does the voice of a lot of the Sky Bison on that cartoon. And of course, Appa, the namesake of my dog. So I've always thought fondly of Dee Bradley Baker. And yeah, it's very cool that he's in this, that they got some of the actors from the Clone Wars. And yeah, I like Runa. I mean, Runa's a funny character. It's fun to have this like six foot five econ babe who kind of sasses you all the time on staff.

• 13:57Jason Schreier?

  Kirk's ideal wife.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  No, I don't know if you two would agree politically enough to ever get married, but-

• 14:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, Emily, not that, not that tall, but, but yeah, some, some similarities. A fun thing about Runa, though, is not just that she's sassy and funny, but that she's kind of a separatist sympathizer. And I think that's something that makes the cast, and really just the, the whole of Zero Company, interesting in the narrative framework of this game. So you play as a character named Hawks, named Tesh Hawks. I love Tesh. That's a first name. Makes me think of John Tesh. It's a little softer than I would have thought. And Tesh Hawks is a customizable character, right? So you can make Hawks look like anything. I'm curious, actually, let's talk about Hawks and then I can get back to my thought on Zero Company. Or let's talk about each of our Hawkses. Cause I'm just playing the default guy Hawks, who is fantastic.

• 14:47Kirk Hamilton?

  And I think a lot of people go with that choice. The character design of that guy really matches with the voice actor who's doing this kind of cowboy, like a little bit Nathan Fillion from Firefly, like this kinda like troublemaker. He's got a drawl. And it really, really fits with the little white, you know, polywalnuts wings on his hair. He just feels like he looks kinda right, based on how he sounds.

• 15:10Jason Schreier?

  Got a little Sawyer from Lost in his-

• 15:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, a little bit of, a little bit of-

• 15:15Jason Schreier?

  And so funny, I expected you to be like, I spent an hour carefully customizing my perfect character, because I'm the one who's usually like, I don't give a shit about any of the aesthetics, I'm just gonna do default, which is what I did here.

• 15:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's been working. So Matty, tell me about your Hawks.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm playing as a female version of Hawks, and I just looked this up. She's voiced by Erica Latrell, who does a fantastic job as almost like kinda bringing a sort of female Commander Shepard type of a sarcasm to the role. And that is kind of the energy that I think Hawks has. There is still a cowboy energy as well, though, like a, I don't give a shit what happens, except I also kinda do care about all of my guys. Split in this character that is, I think is necessary for somebody like this. She has some, some Han Solo coding at times. I actually designed her as a Twi'lek character. So she's green and she's got goggles. And I just like, I never do this in games, but I was like, I'm in Star Wars.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Like, why, why don't I just go ahead and like really think about like a different kind of person that I could be in Star Wars? And maybe I'll be an alien. And I went with that and it's been really cool. I also have really enjoyed how much they've allowed her facial construction to still emote in cutscenes, because obviously I designed her face and I've been pretty impressed with that, too. So, good job for load staffers who did that work.

• 16:40Jason Schreier?

  So my, my Hawks, who's the default one, I made him a sharpshooter, which is also really great. It's so much fun to play as a sniper with this like cowboy sniper dude who's like, like has this ability with a sharpshooter kind of class. You have this ability, I forget what it's called, but it's like basically you stay stationary and you plant yourself. And if you move, you lose a perk, but if you stay still, you get this perk.

• 17:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I believe it's called Zero In.

• 17:03Jason Schreier?

  Zero In, that's it, yep. You get a perk of upping your critical chance and other, upping your, upping other stats and planting him and just sniping enemies from afar. And then if you get other, every turn, you get, one of your characters gets this ability to call for assistance from another character. And so if I, when I have other characters call for assistance from him, he like snipes them from afar. It's a really good, really good kit combo I found and matches his look.

• 17:27Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm playing Hawks as a medic slash gunslinger, because now I've unlocked multi-classing. Gunslinger is pretty fun, because if you, it has an ability where if you kill an enemy with your shot, you get your action point back. And it's great for those little droids, those, those little guys who almost always go down in one hit, because you can just clear a whole bunch of them out, which is pretty fun. But I've got Jay as a sniper, because snipers are incredibly good. And Jay has that execution ability where she'll kill a guy if you get him to low enough health. And she'll just like murk guys from across the board constantly, now that I've leveled her up so much.

• 17:58Jason Schreier?

  That ability is incredible. Are you staying with Jay like the whole time? Cause I'm very tempted to.

• 18:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, yeah, well, I'm very stuck in my load up. We'll talk about that in a little. I wanna get back to Zero Company just a little bit to talk a bit more about the story and the writing, because we can stay on that and then I think start to get into the nitty gritty of the tactics a little later. Yeah, so in terms of Zero Company's like political makeup, I just find that interesting, like that Runa was working with separatist sympathizers. She's certainly not a fan of the Republic. You've got Trick, who is a clone soldier who then was discharged, I believe for medical reasons, and is joined up with Zero Company. And he and Hawks served together in the Republic Army. And the idea is that Hawks was also in the Republic Army and was part of this like disastrous

• 18:48Kirk Hamilton?

  campaign where a whole bunch of people died and kinda took the blame for it. I was listening to A More Civilized Age, our friends, the, the Star Wars podcast, and they talked some about this game. And they, of course, have done really deep dives on the Clone Wars. They know all this stuff really well. And they were saying that that campaign, that Hawks was a part of, is something that's in the Clone Wars. And that this is like, if you really know this stuff, you actually know, there's a lot of content, there's a lot that the context suggests that maybe Hawks was not the problem and took the fall and really was probably doing a good job. And so- That comes across, I think, even so. Like, if you don't know that, you still kind of get it, that Hawks is a good leader and just kind of got screwed over by the system.

• 19:31Kirk Hamilton?

  But I think that's like, it's interesting that that's the person in charge. And then you have these people from just like all across the spectrum in terms of what they think of separatists, what they think of the Republic, where they are politically. And I think that ambiguity makes for just a really cool setting because in between each mission, you just go around and talk to everybody and you get all these different kind of perspectives on what's going on. There's a Mandalorian character who like, doesn't give a shit about anything and is just all about, you know, the bounties that she's hunting.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Results. That's all she cares about, yeah.

• 20:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. There's a droid who is clearly just like, kind of focused on the science that he's trying to figure out. There's an ex, what is he? He's like, kind of runs your commissary. He kind of procures all your stuff. And he's tied in with organized crime. And he's always telling Hawks like, "Yeah, you know, you're becoming more and more of a criminal and I really like it." Like, I think that's pretty cool.

• 20:19Jason Schreier?

  It's very Mass Effect. It's like this gang of this, this ship full of a motley crew. Everybody has their own incentive.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Of the aliens, no less.

• 20:25Kirk Hamilton?

  It's very Mass Effect at its best. And yeah, just the moment to moment dialogue is very strong. There's a great line that you're working with this Republic intelligence officer, who's actually a pretty cool guy. I kind of thought he was going to be maybe the most forgettable character at the beginning. But then it turns out, he's, he's great. Like, I like to go talk to him because he just, he has an interesting backstory. He's kind of, you know, you learn a lot more about him. There's a great line where, there's this running joke where the commissary, the guy in charge of the commissary, like, the rations that everyone's eating are just terrible and everyone is always complaining about them. And there's this line where the operative says to Hawks, he's like, "Are you ever going to tell me how old these rations are?" And Hawks says, "I could tell you, but then you'd know." And I was like, "That's a funny line of dialogue."

• 21:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, that's good writing. And there's a lot of writing. They have a whole conversation, then there's even like a callback joke to that a little later. Clearly whoever wrote this had a lot of fun and put a lot of thought into just, not just making the characters believable, but like, having fun with the writing and making jokes and like, delighting the player over and over. And I think that really helps this game stand out.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. I also like that, the little alien character, I'm sorry, I don't know all the Star Wars Alien races, but the one who's like, his job is to kind of clean up the ship. He's sort of like a janitor character and he's into this sort of like-

• 21:40Kirk Hamilton?

  I love it. Isn't he like Clem or something like that?

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Clem, I think. And like, he's in this ongoing fight with like, a space rat that got onto the ship at the outset of the game. And he keeps being like, "When I find it, I'm gonna eat it." And Hawks is like, "I really don't want to know that. Like, I'm not interested in what's going on with this." It's, but you, the player, are rewarded by continuing to talk to these characters. And like, I often feel compelled to like, go around and talk to all the characters in any game where I can do that. And then I'll be disappointed if everything they have to say is, is boring. And, because I, I can't help but click on them if I see that I can talk to them. And in this game, I, I'm almost never bored and I'm always like, "Oh, great, I actually learned something else interesting about this character." Or I got rewarded with a little joke about what they're up to.

• 22:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. The conversations, kind of, they're like tiers of conversations. Sometimes you just talk to them without zooming in at all and you just get like, one line. Sometimes you just overhear them talking to someone else. Sometimes you zoom in and you get a kind of back and forth, Mass Effect style conversation. And sometimes in those conversations, usually like, after you've done a side quest for that character, you even get to make a little choice where at the end of the conversation, you'll say, "It's not a big deal." Or, "I totally feel, you know, I feel you and I agree." Like, you'll kind of get a little choice that gives you a kind of feeling of control.

• 22:53Jason Schreier?

  Although sometimes he goes like, full on, like, Shepard screaming at someone, like, when totally unintentionally, at least.

• 23:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, really? That hasn't happened to me.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Oh, my god.

• 23:03Jason Schreier?

  I had one time where like, I picked an action and like, did not expect him to like, go all out. Like, I, I forgot what it was. It must've been Trick or something like that. And basically, I picked the option that was like, "Oh, it's not a big deal." And he like, flipped a shit and like, our, my bonding level went down. It was really, yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 23:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. And I think a lot of those, yeah, they either lead to a bond that climbs or a bond that lowers. And bonds, of course, unlock kind of upgrades for your characters. Like, the more they fight together, the better they do. A little bit like Fire Emblem in that way. So I think that's all just paced really well. Like, at the start of, at the end of each mission, you start over in your office. There's always a lot of really funny, like, starting animations.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're usually asleep.

• 23:43Jason Schreier?

  Feet on the desk.

• 23:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, Hawks will be asleep on his couch. Yeah. Or, he's just with his head back in his chair. That's maybe my favorite one.

• 23:49Jason Schreier?

  Just contemplating.

• 23:50Kirk Hamilton?

  And then you press a button and he gets up and kind of walks. And then there's just this gauntlet where you walk past everybody. And so you just have a little chance to stop off on your way to the hollow table to plan your next mission. I'm curious about the custom characters and whether either of you use many of them. Because we're talking about all of these written, kind of bespoke, story characters. But you can also just fully kit out your whole team with custom characters that you hire through this, you know, staff computer. And those, you can then go fully customize the same as you can customize Hawks. They have distinct backstories and they even like, turn up, I have one custom character that I just hired, I think at the beginning of the game during the tutorial. And she's just like, talks about stuff, you know, she has her own perspective.

• 24:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, she is a character, but she's not as written as all of these characters that we're talking about. But given that this game does by default have permadeath and all of these characters can be killed, that means you could like, lose Trick and Jay and Clyde and like, all of the written characters and have a whole staff of just custom characters and play the game that way, which is interesting. And I would guess not what many people do. I'm assuming that's not what either of you are doing either. But have you experimented with the custom characters at all?

• 24:59Jason Schreier?

  They can join Aurelio in the, in the Hall of the Deceased.

• 25:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, right. We got the one guy who died in the tutorial and we really remember him every time.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  The only one who I intend to have die. I, I have-

• 25:12Kirk Hamilton?

  I bet that's really common.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:14Kirk Hamilton?

  He's the only one in the memorial.

• 25:15Jason Schreier?

  I bet there's a mod that lets you save Aurelio.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  I don't know. I, I don't think they wrote any more dialogue for Aurelio.

• 25:22Kirk Hamilton?

  I would want a mod that changes the memorial to be like, the Aurelio memorial. Like, it has his name because he's the only one in it ever. Because I never let anyone die.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I never let anyone else die. And I'm like, I guess if I wanted to, I could turn off permadeath, but I'm enjoying the challenge, so I, that seems silly. And I like trying to save everyone.

• 25:37Kirk Hamilton?

  That's how I play all these games.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's like, I, I have to save everyone. But I, I guess none of us are far enough to know if there's going to be some Mass Effect or Fire Emblem style choice where eventually, characters have to die or you take a side.

• 25:50Kirk Hamilton?

  I would be shocked. I am not far enough to know, but that would hugely surprise me. I don't think that that's going to be the case.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. So hopefully, we'll just get to save everyone and have a happy question mark ending with our Zero Company pals. I, like you, Kirk, I have one character, right?

• 26:03Jason Schreier?

  Well, we know the Jedi all do great. All, all of them.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, we all know it's gonna work out for Anakin. He's gonna be fine, I think. He's wearing black because he's doing well, mentally and emotionally. I do have one generated character and she's fine. I, I mean, like, she does seem a little thinner than the written characters because of course she is. She's, she, she's like, the same race as Darth Maul and she's a scoundrel. So, you know, I brought her into combat a couple times just to see how it is to like, have another character there. And I haven't really felt the need to generate that many other reinforcements, even though that is a key piece of the game, seemingly, is that you can continue to recruit more and more and more characters. And I'm like, "But I, I already have all my guys."

• 26:48Speaker 02

  So this is another flaw, perhaps, with only being 15 hours into the game, is that maybe later, I'll be like, "Oh, my god, I need way more reinforcements. I need to really diversify my team."

• 26:56Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know. I mean, I've played 24 hours or something and I'm probably two thirds of the way through this story. And like, I have a pretty set squad and I'm pretty attached to them. I like swapping in Clyde and Cobb and, you know, the other story characters. But I mostly just roll with Jay and Trick and the Astromech, who is basically the R2D2 robot. Do either of you play with the Astromech?

• 27:19Speaker 02

  I do sometimes, yeah. He's very cute.

• 27:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, my god. So, this is an interesting thing. Okay, so I mentioned at the beginning, this whole thing about how a lot of the workers are furloughed and there's this sense, it's hard to shake the sense that like, this game isn't going to be getting balanced patches, at least for a while. And it might, it might be that there are people working on it, but it just hasn't seemed like, there's this really active and responsive dialogue between players and the developers. And I wouldn't be surprised if the, you know, situation behind the scenes is part of why. Because there are things like the Astromech and Clyde, the Mandalorian bounty hunter, for that matter, which are a little, seem a little bit broken, or at least are so dominant that once you start using them, you kind of just can't stop. So, yeah, let's get into the, the tactics of it all now.

• 28:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Because, so, the thing about the Astromech, and this is what, I have not been able to quit the Astromech because of this. So, you bring the Astromech with and it is not capable of just a regular attack. Like, you don't give it a gun. It would be funny if you did, if you like, taped a little blaster to it and it rolled around.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. R2D2 should have a gun. And that is, that is something missing from Zero Company.

• 28:25Kirk Hamilton?

  That would be funny. But no, it doesn't have its own weapon, but it can carry extra of all the utility munitions. So, from the beginning of the game, it's very powerful because you can have two grenades and like, two healing items, which is more than anybody else can carry at the beginning. So already, it's this little mobile artillery unit that can just like, fire grenades off. And grenades are very, very useful in this game, both because they can one-hit so many droids and they blow up cover. So if you use grenades properly at the start of a turn, you can like, totally expose enemies. The droid also can scan the battlefield, which is a very useful ability that like, dramatically lowers the cover percentage, like, the, you know, the percent to hit benefit from cover that enemies have. So it becomes much easier to hit enemies.

• 29:07Kirk Hamilton?

  But what the droid can really do, and the reason that it's so powerful, is it can give your other characters more action points. So, let me see. Can I explain the action economy in this game? Because it's crucial to understanding the whole, the, all of the strategies about movement and the action economy. Really more than it is about like, doing damage or hitting any given shot. It's about maximizing the number of turns and actions that you take per turn. So you have four characters on your team. The opposing force can be anywhere from four to like 12. It can be a lot of different makeups. It can be a lot of different enemies. You have four. And every character can have a maximum of three action points, which are called AP, I guess. But you have three action points and you can spend those to like take an attack or move

• 29:52Kirk Hamilton?

  a certain distance. And you spend all three action points if you want to move super far or use a utility item like a healing kit or throw a grenade or activate a special ability. That's the basics. So, you know, three is enough to maybe move and shoot or to shoot and go into Overwatch, as you mentioned, Jason, where you're kind of covering an area. So if the enemy moves in that area during their turn, you get to attack them and cancel their movement potentially. So you're kind of gauging all of this and trying to think how you spend your points. What the Astromech allows is that you can use its action points to basically transfer them over to other characters. So suddenly your sniper can like take a shot and then take another shot and then go into

• 30:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Overwatch and then, because Hawks also has an ability that grants an extra action point, take another shot. Then on top of all of that, there's what's called the advantage system, which is a whole separate system that gives you even more abilities. So as you successfully land shots and use your, and heal people and do whatever like class abilities you're doing, you're like gaining more and more advantage points. And the more you play the game, the more you realize the special abilities, like the unique abilities that everyone has, tend to be tied to advantage. So pretty soon, you can put together a team, at least this is my team, with a sniper, a kind of, you know, soldier, heavy scout healer and this Astromech. We can just go and go and go and go for one turn.

• 31:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Like I can just feed Jay my sniper action points to the point where she just like murders like five guys like on her turn. And I'm so hooked now on that, on the ability to like move and shoot, but then be like, well, do I want her to move and shoot again? I can have her do that because I have the Astromech.

• 31:33Jason Schreier?

  So I'm playing on hard, which is a nice way to kind of add challenge to it because yes, I felt the same way about the Astromech. But playing on hard, I think makes it a good balance. And also makes it so you can't use the BAFTA tanks, which I believe heal. How do those work? I started.

• 31:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Wait, BAFTA? The BAFTA tanks would be award-winning British tanks.

• 31:55Jason Schreier?

  Yes, you win an award. You get dunked underwater and you win an award.

• 31:59Kirk Hamilton?

  The BAFTA award-winning BAFTA tanks.

• 32:01Jason Schreier?

  What are the BAFTA tanks? How do they work? Cause I haven't actually used them because I was playing on hard the whole time.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's two forms of healing. There's like the overnight one that like takes an entire cycle to run. And there's another one that is instant. Which one can't you use, Jason?

• 32:17Jason Schreier?

  Oh, that's the BAFTA tank. So the instant one you can't use.

• 32:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, so you're talking about healing injuries?

• 32:21Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Back at home base.

• 32:23Kirk Hamilton?

  A little different. That's not healing like when you're on the battlefield. Injuries are kind of a different thing.

• 32:26Jason Schreier?

  I'm talking about the BAFTA, yeah, playing.

• 32:28Kirk Hamilton?

  We should maybe explain how injuries work because we haven't explained that.

• 32:31Jason Schreier?

  Playing on hard makes it so you can't, I mean, basically every time a character is downed, for the most part, they'll get an injury and then three injuries and then they're permanently dead. So that gives you a lot of leeway and flexibility when it comes to your characters kind of quote unquote dying, because losing all their hit points isn't going to kill them, which makes it pretty forgiving. And yeah, I found that playing on hard is, is the way to go, at least for me, because of what you just said, Kirk. It feels like your characters get a lot of advantages and that playing well and playing strategically and thinking about your turn order, such as what you just said, where you're blowing up cover before you start attacking or other things that you can kind of do in an optimal way.

• 33:12Jason Schreier?

  I think playing on hard helps keep that challenging, even though your squad is just like a total death machine.

• 33:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I switched from medium to hard and have been finding hard is, is pretty good. Matty, what difficulty have you been playing?

• 33:26Speaker 02

  I'm still on normal, but I certainly have considered changing it over. Although I will say, to circle back on a point that Jason made at the beginning of this discussion, I have been playing on my Steam Deck by streaming it through Moonlight, which I set up on my Steam Deck a long time ago. Basically means my computer is playing the game, but it's streaming to my deck. And that means that sometimes Deena's watching something on TV while I play. And in that scenario, I like to maybe watch a little bit. And playing on normal is like kind of nice in that case. And maybe I'm like, you know, I'm paying attention to the game, but I'm maybe not at my peak form. But yeah, there certainly have been some battles where I'm like, okay, yeah, that was kind of a snap and maybe I could be playing this on hard.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  But I think for the sake of the listeners, that might be nice for them to hear, especially if they're intimidated by strategy games. This one I think is really forgiving. The different types of characters are super simple to understand and I think that's refreshing because I don't mind like getting down and dirty with the strategy game and really having to read a bunch of UI screens and understand what's going on. But that's not for everyone. And I think this game is quite accessible even for a newcomer to this world who might want to be like, I don't even know if I like this kind of game. Let me try it and see.

• 34:43Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, to your point, Matty, there's definitely some fiddliness. The UI, I think, could have used some improvement. I mean, Kirk, to your point, it's something that hopefully one day we'll, we'll get some sort of patch for a little bit more usability. But yeah, I mean, you kind of, you have to go through a bunch of different screens just like between every mission.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  That part is the top part.

• 35:07Jason Schreier?

  If you want to optimize everything. Yeah. So it's like every time a mission ends and you get into a rhythm of it. It's not the end of the world or anything, but it's a little fiddly. You have to go to your med bay and put any injuries in there. Then you have to go to your kind of base construction and like pick a new thing to build. And then you, if you want to go to recruit personnel, you do that. Then you go to the armor, you go to the black market, et cetera, et cetera. And then even between loadouts, once you pick your, your squad, you probably want to check and make sure they're all geared up properly. So you have to go through the gear screen and then you have to go through all of this kind of tedious like bonding point upgrading where it'll cycle through like six different people have upgraded their bonds and you just cycle through them all. And it's the type of thing that maybe could have been streamlined, smoothed over a little

• 35:51Jason Schreier?

  bit, but I guess it wouldn't be an XCOM game without a lot of fiddly menus that you have to play around in.

• 35:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, there are certainly some things that I would love to see added. I agree, Matty, about normal difficulty, that I, I've played most of the game on normal and it's fun. It's a good challenge and like, I don't know, I don't really play these games to have like a really stiff challenge because I like making it through the fight with everybody. And I find it really engaging to just like optimally destroy my enemies. Like I find that really fun and the story's cool. So like I'm having a good time. There's not really much more that I want. I was curious about hard and switched over and you can switch difficulty at any point if you want.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Which I love.

• 36:31Kirk Hamilton?

  And I found hard is cool. Like it's harder for sure, but not crazy. And like, I'm at least engaging with the injury system now because it's possible for someone to get injured. Then again, I switched over. I'm far enough in that like, for example, Trick, my clone trooper can just get downed and then he just gets back up with full health because he's so leveled up and he doesn't even suffer an injury. So he's also my tank, so I just run him forward and everyone attacks him. And even on hard, I mean, Jay is murdering everybody. Trick can, is essentially unkillable because like even getting downed once doesn't usually happen. So I'm still like pretty powerful, but it does balance things out. One thing I wish this game had, if we're going to complain about a few things, one is just an undo button for whatever you just did, just to undo the last thing.

• 37:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Cause I'm playing with a controller and it's really easy to accidentally like just move your guy to out of cover when you meant to move him into cover. Like it's just really easy to accidentally do the wrong thing. It doesn't happen all the time or anything, but it happens maybe once per fight. And I always have that thought of just like, man, sometimes I remember to like save at the beginning of the round because you can quick save and I'll reload just to, because it's frustrating. On normal difficulty, that's not a big deal.

• 37:40Jason Schreier?

  Are you talking about moves specifically? Is that the thing you want to undo? Cause it'd be ridiculous if you could undo an attack after seeing if it hit or not. Like that would be.

• 37:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh yeah, no, no, no. Well, I mean, I think, I guess you could counter that by just saying it's going to be the same percentage every time. It's not actually.

• 37:53Jason Schreier?

  No, but then you wouldn't do it if you knew it was going to have this.

• 37:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh yeah, no. I think undo a move, I suppose. Yeah, maybe that's the way to balance it.

• 37:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, move. Yeah, that makes sense. And like in Final Fantasy Tactics, I think that's a good example of this. You can't undo once you do an attack, but you can undo if you move somewhere and you're still on that guy's turn and you're like, oh, I clicked the wrong thing.

• 38:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, really like, I guess, there was someone in the Discord saying I talk about tactical breach wizards all the time, which I don't really, but I am about to talk about tactical breach wizards. Something cool about that game is built into the lore, this one character is able to see the future. So every turn that you do, you're able to fully undo and you actually can just figure them all out. That wouldn't work for a game like this. To be clear, Jason, I can see you getting ready to tell me I'm wrong. I'm not saying that would work for a game like this.

• 38:34Jason Schreier?

  You're saying you saw the future and you anticipated what I was going to say?

• 38:37Kirk Hamilton?

  I did, I did.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Kirk also has that ability.

• 38:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Of course, that wouldn't work for a game like this because for the reasons we've already said, you have to commit to your moves because that's the type of game that they're making. But it is a nice feeling to be able to undo accidental inputs, for God's sake. Like it's not, you shouldn't be able to rebuild your whole strategy around saves coming unless you like really like doing that. But it's kind of a pain and it's not how the game is designed.

• 39:00Jason Schreier?

  It's a hive of saves coming and villainy.

• 39:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Really someone that's made that trip.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. I will say, I think that is a particular problem with playing on the Steam Deck. I don't really have that issue of accidentally moving to the wrong spot when I'm playing on my real monitor, but on the Steam Deck, because the screen is smaller every now and then, I'm like, that's not actually quite where I wanted to go. But since I'm playing the game as it is not intended to be played, I'm much more forgiving of that. And I'm like, Maddie, you should just be saving more because you've made a decision to play the game in a way that it is not intended to be played on a smaller screen.

• 39:37Jason Schreier?

  Can I just say shout out to this game running on the Steam controller? Because the Steam, I wouldn't think that a game like this would do so well with the controller. But on the Steam controller, it's fantastic. I've been playing the Steam controller on my desktop, too. And it feels great.

• 39:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I liked playing XCOM with a controller, actually, even though this game is certainly great with a mouse and keyboard, and I think has been primarily designed to be played that way. And I didn't know this, you can actually change the interface so that it's not a radial, and instead, it's like a hotbar, like a PC game.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't know that. That's cool.

• 40:08Kirk Hamilton?

  That's one of the settings that you can change if you're playing with a mouse and keyboard.

• 40:10Jason Schreier?

  You can also go into like mouse and, what's it called, focus mode or something?

• 40:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 40:14Jason Schreier?

  And move the cursor like with your joystick, kind of like it's a mouse.

• 40:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I never think to do that, but it's cool.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I almost prefer the controller version, which I'm so, I was so surprised to find that to be the case, because I just assumed that this kind of game would be better with a mouse, where you can just click on things really specifically. But I actually, I agree. I think controller is really, really good, really good design for this game.

• 40:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, yeah, it works. There's a couple of other things. You know, there's visual bugs that are pretty weird. I've been running into more and more of them, I think, the further I get. There are just times where all, like, a whole action will play out while the camera is just looking somewhere else. And it's getting pretty common to where I'm like, no, but what's happening? Like, it's okay that there's a bug, but I do kind of want to know what's happening right now. You know, a new squad of enemies will come in, and my team will murder them with Overwatch, but I won't even get to see it, because like, the camera's pointed in the wrong direction.

• 41:06Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, sometimes I'll get a glitch where it'll be like, and Hawks is assisting when he will not be assisting, because it'll, it's like, actually, the previous guy, he was assisting. So, yeah, a lot of weird visual stuff like that, for sure.

• 41:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, almost like this game, the team behind it ran out of money and had to release it a little bit unpolished.

• 41:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, there's that feeling. And there is also, like, in a version of this, like, the perfect version of this game, I think there would also be more for those side characters to do in cutscenes. This is something I've also been noticing the further I get into the game, that like, the big cutscenes that play out during story missions, they kind of only have Hawks and what's his name, the like, intelligence operative guy, and maybe Runa is in one, like, the characters who can't die, because, obviously, like, everyone could just be dead, like we've said. And so, even missions that like, should involve Jay and have Jay, who is, to explain who she is, she's like, this Baroness from this ore-mining planet, and she's been kicked out of her home by the bad guys, who are this cult called

• 42:12Kirk Hamilton?

  The Coil. We haven't even mentioned them. It's not that important. There's like, a group of bad guys.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I would say, like, the villain of this game might be one of the weaker parts of it. We haven't really gotten into that.

• 42:22Kirk Hamilton?

  What's her name? Fathom?

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, Fathom.

• 42:24Kirk Hamilton?

  The Fathom Menace.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  The Fathom Menace joke. It may be still too soon to make Phantom Menace jokes. It's been, it's been 20 years, and it's still too soon.

• 42:32Kirk Hamilton?

  I feel like it was time to make Phantom Menace jokes immediately after the Phantom Menace came out. It's my counterargument.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Those are the two interpretations of what we can do with the Phantom Menace.

• 42:40Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, Fathom is funny, because it just so happens that Fathom looks exactly like my protagonist from Marvel's Midnight Suns.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  It's like she's coming to kill you.

• 42:48Kirk Hamilton?

  My Marvel's Midnight Suns character came over from the other game and is dead-set on destroying the galaxy. Anyways, not that important. I mean, that, it's fine, but whatever. It's not the, your teammates are the fun part. And I'm definitely finding, like, there was a storyline that should have had Jay in the cutscenes, like, talking to Hawks, and like, it was a thing that would mean a lot to her, and she was just kind of absent, because she could be dead. And that's definitely noticeable, like, at this point in the game, that just, it's mostly Hawks talking to Fathom, and Hawks talking to Anakin or whatever, Hawks talking to the Republic guy, instead of like, everyone being around and bickering and talking, which is something that I hope, in a theoretical sequel for this game, hopefully, if Pit Reactor gets kind of back on their feet and is able to make it, I hope that's something that they

• 43:33Kirk Hamilton?

  will add. I can't imagine, like, the writers who wrote this game are very good. It would be shocking to me if they weren't aware of this, and that they didn't wish there could be more of that. They've built even dynamics, and we're like, sometimes you'll make choices in these little text-based, like, you know, side quests that you do at the holotable, and you'll have to make a choice, like, do we help these refugees, or do we charge them for our services? And like, different members of your crew will like or dislike, you know, different choices, and nothing pleases everyone, which is, again, very BioWare, very Dragon Age, or Mass Effect. And that's really cool, and like, that dynamic, the idea of everyone around the holotable arguing about tactics and the choices you should make, with all of these colorful characters from all over the political spectrum, like, that's such

• 44:17Kirk Hamilton?

  a rich setup. And then, in truth, like, the game kind of only gestures at it a lot of the time, and they weren't able to really add it in substantively, which I would imagine is something that the writers also find frustrating. And so, I would hope that they're able to take another crack and like, make another one of these, because they've already done such a good job. And with a little more time, and you know, all the lessons that they've learned making this one, I can only imagine how much, you know, how much they could do. They could do a Mass Effect, too. Like, they could really, they could really blow it out.

• 44:46Jason Schreier?

  But how do you do that in a game where the characters could all be dead? How do you account for that?

• 44:52Speaker 02

  You just have it be optional, right? Like, you create scenes that only play if Jay is still alive. And like, that's the kind of thing that you need the money to pay your writers to write all of these, okay, if this, then that, if this, then that, and, oh, this scene might not play, and we still need it to work. I mean, it's, it's precisely a money problem, right? I assume.

• 45:10Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess that's it. I mean, there are also, like, there are other ways you can write that. You can have the characters not die, but just be like, permanently injured and taken out of rotation.

• 45:19Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, maybe that's the answer.

• 45:20Kirk Hamilton?

  So they still turn up.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, you could do that.

• 45:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, there's a lot of solutions. It's just, it does require kind of more flexibility. And then having a little bit more flexibility as well, like, you know, having some things that you only see if everybody makes it, or whatever, like, that's also just kind of a fun, special thing, you know? Something that was true of Blood of Dawnwalker. Like, that's what made that game cool, is there's so much stuff you don't see. They were able to kind of scope for that and plan for it. It's doable. Like, you don't have to make a ton of content that's all going to be optional and most people won't see. Like, I do think there's a solution, and it just feels like, with a lot of things with this game, they were like, we have to ship this thing, because like, we are like, falling apart at the seams, and we just got to get it out and start making money on it. So they just had to ship it when they shipped it.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  I mean, it's really excellent, considering what the studio went through. I was pretty surprised reading Stephen's reporting, because I think the game is so wonderful, that I was like, wow, they've shipped something that's still, is excellent, in my view.

• 46:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Totally agree. And yeah, I hope that it's, I hope it's successful enough to, that they can, you know, pay everybody what they owe them, and get all the workers back, and start updating the game, and really work on this beautiful, wonderful thing that they made. I can only imagine, my heart really goes out to the developers, like, what an awful feeling it would be to make something that you know is good, that you're, they must be confident in this, because it's so good. It's a great game. To have that feeling, you know, I know this is good, but oh my god, like, we're just kind of on a knife's edge, whether we're going to be able to keep, to keep making it and keep working together. So, we can only really hope.

• 46:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, we don't have, uh, sales figures for the game. They haven't released any, but the Steam concurrence are pretty impressive. It had a peak, uh, a couple, uh, the weekend that it came out, so like, Sunday, August 30th, had a peak of 77,889 concurrent players. Not, not the best metric, but still the only one we have, and that's a pretty impressive number, I would say, for a game like this.

• 47:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it feels like a game that would have a long tail. Like, it's just so well-made, and it's so rich. And it's like a tactics game. Like, people love these when they get them. And a good one of these can, you know, it'll be good in a year, it'll be good a long time from now. Though, obviously, the initial sales are very important for this kind of thing. But yeah, hopefully, hopefully, it's enough, and they're able to bounce back. Well, that is, I was about to say Marvel's Midnight Suns, but that's not, that's not what it is.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  In a way, it is.

• 47:40Kirk Hamilton?

  That is Star Wars Zero Company, a game that has some things in common with Marvel's Midnight Suns. And one of those things that it has in common with that game is that we all really like it. It's a great game. I am looking forward to finishing it. Let's take a break and come back for one more thing.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  Well, gang, it's that time of year again.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  That's right. Labor Day is here, which means you can't wear white anymore.

• 48:04Speaker 05

  No. Well, yes, but no, it's Great British Bake Off season.

• 48:09Speaker 04

  Oh, right. And that means it's time to draft your teams and play along.

• 48:13Speaker 03

  There's a new judge in town, but the game's the same. Draft your bakers, score points like it's fantasy football, and talk smack in your group chats.

• 48:20Speaker 05

  I wonder what Nigella Lawson would think about the scribble double.

• 48:23Speaker 04

  So, listen to TV Chef Fantasy League with me, Mike Cabalon.

• 48:27Speaker 03

  If you want it way.

• 48:28Speaker 05

  And Sierra Cotto.

• 48:29Speaker 04

  New episodes every week at MaximumFun.org, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 48:37Speaker 06

  What's more action-packed than prestige television?

• 48:41Speaker 07

  With more continuity than comic books?

• 48:43Speaker 05

  And more reality than reality television?

• 48:49Speaker 06

  It's professional wrestling.

• 48:57Speaker 06

  And to better understand wrestling is the ultimate form of entertainment, you need the Tights and Fights podcast.

• 49:03Speaker 07

  This is the perfect wrestling show with a lot of love, a lack of toxic masculinity.

• 49:08Speaker 05

  And just the right amount of butts, cats, and spandex.

• 49:13Speaker 07

  Listen to Tights and Fights every Saturday on Maximum Fun.

• 49:19Kirk Hamilton?

  And we are back for one more thing. Maddie, how about you kick us off? What's your one more thing?

• 49:24Speaker 02

  My one more thing is an update on a game called On Together that was my one more thing a few weeks ago, and which I think I said I would give an update about as to whether or not it was working for me. And so I'll just describe what this game is so that people can remember. So this is a co-working game, and it has some mini-games inside it enough that I would still potentially call it a game. Although, the purpose of On Together is that you log into it and you get work done. You design a character who looks like you or doesn't. Mine does look like me, and I have a little profile card that says I'm editing and writing and that I work in EST hours. And you sit at a desk in the game,

• 50:08Speaker 02

  or you go to the library in the game, or sit on the boardwalk in the game. There's all kinds of beautiful places that you can sit and work. And it's multiplayer. There are a bunch of other people who can join various servers in this game that usually list their operating hours and what the server is going to do or focus on. And I have been playing it a bunch. I don't play it every day, but it has become sort of an informal thing in the paid subscriber Discord for mothership.blog that every day, somebody will post a server link for On Together, and people in the Discord will join. And Jason, I remember-

• 50:48Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a great idea.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. And Jason, I remember you asked way back when I described playing this. You were like, are you gonna get to know strangers in this game? And I will say that hasn't really happened. I have joined some servers with strangers, but because the game is big enough, I haven't really run into the same person twice in any of those contexts.

• 51:07Jason Schreier?

  Mark Zuckerberg would be so disappointed.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  I know, I know. He would be. But the mothership Discord version of this, I think, is probably the best of both worlds when it comes to that. There's certainly people that I would consider strangers in that Discord, even though they're supporting my website. But, you know, there's, in any Discord, there's kind of names that pop up again and again. You kind of feel like you're getting to know people. And then when you see them in On Together, it's kind of fun. And you hear what their jobs are, and you learn about them, and you talk to them in the little chat. The best part of On Together is still the Pomodoro Timer, which I described to you two. It's just like a classic Pomodoro Timer. There's a ton of these on the internet. I've used some. I really like this one, in part because it has such an unobtrusive, gentle ding when it goes off. It doesn't like

• 51:53Speaker 02

  irritate you. And also, it's kind of like a vibe where you're like, okay, I hear it ding. I could take a break now if I want, but maybe I want to continue. And what I like about that is also that you can change how long it lasts, how long the breaks are, and how many times it cycles through. There's also some to-do list mechanics in the game that I still just haven't really gotten into. So mostly, I log in, I use the Pomodoro, I take breaks, and I chat with people in the game. I might walk around and play basketball. There's a fishing mini-game that's pretty fun. It's like a fun way to take a break and hang out with people on the internet. So yeah, this is just a re-up of On Together, and I've actually ended up playing it quite a bit and really enjoying it. So if it sounded

• 52:35Speaker 02

  good to you before, I had only played like three days before. Now, this is like a more full-throated recommendation for an experience that can be pretty fun, especially if you have friends that you might like to co-work with. So yeah, I'm digging it.

• 52:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. That's cool. That is a great update. Well, my one more thing is also kind of an update. It's an update on a show that we have actually talked about on TripleClick in a bonus episode, a show called Silo that's on Apple TV Plus, and that just wrapped up its third season. And I just wanted to say, the third season of this show was really good. Like, really, really good. I was so surprised, kind of, and impressed by how much fun it was. So Silo is a post-apocalyptic show. As I said, we talked about it in a bonus episode. It's about, guess what? A silo. It's about a bunch of people that live in a huge silo underground. The silo is governed by a lot of arcane rules and strange logistical challenges. For example, there are no elevators, and everybody has to communicate from the

• 53:35Kirk Hamilton?

  very bottom level to the top level just by sending runners that take a really long time, because there are 10,000 people in the silo. And of course, this winds up being one of those stories where Juliet, the main character, is, I think, at the, she becomes the sheriff. She kind of has a lot of different roles, but she begins to uncover the truth behind the silo and what is going on. And in the process, angers the powers that be, notably, Tim Robbins, the head of IT, and winds up going outside the silo. She, in season two, goes to another silo next door. She meets Steve Zahn and a few other survivors-

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Amazing role by Steve Zahn in season two.

• 54:11Kirk Hamilton?

  -of like a horrible rebellion in that silo that led to everyone going outside and dying in the poison air. And, you know, it kind of did the thing you would sort of expect of a show like this. Or at least, there was a point in season two where Juliet is over in the other silo, and there's like a lot of machinations happening in the first silo. And I was kind of like, man, I don't know. This is fine. I'm sort of going through the motions of watching this. It's cool. It's a good show. I like Rebecca Ferguson. I think she's a really cool actress. And at the same time, I was sort of just like, not that excited. It just felt like, okay, this is all kind of arbitrary. Why is this stupid silo the way that it is? I'm sort of over it. Season three began. Emily and I just started watching it because there's kind of nothing on streaming right now. Do either of you feel this way? Like, there's like nothing to watch?

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, because we're in that weird time period where the fall shows haven't come out yet, so.

• 55:01Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess there's lots of sopranos. There's always more sopranos to watch.

• 55:04Jason Schreier?

  I feel like I have a backlog of stuff. Like, I want to start Lanterns. I have a lot of stuff I want to watch.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  I do want to start Lanterns. I'm waiting until it's over.

• 55:11Kirk Hamilton?

  I've been watching Lanterns. Lanterns is okay. It's okay. Yeah, we'll see how it ends. Anyhow, I guess we've been watching that, but there hasn't been a ton. So we're like, all right, we'll start it. We started it up, and I won't spoil anything for season three, but like, it starts, it's like, oh yeah, right, okay, Rebecca Ferguson. Okay, this is cool. I kind of like this. And it begins with a kind of amnesia storyline. And I was like, oh, man, an amnesia storyline, really? I hate those.

• 55:35Speaker 07

  What is this, the beginning of a video game? Am I right, folks?

• 55:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, like, really? So that's just gonna slow everything down because like, this person doesn't remember really important things that they should be telling everyone. Ugh. And like, then, kind of quickly, Emily and I, like, we finished the first episode, and we're like, well, is there another one? I kind of want to watch the next one. I want to know what happens. And then we watched the second episode, and we're both like, man, all right, I really kind of want to know what happens next. And by the third or fourth episode, we were really getting excited for each new episode of this season. And now, the ending, oh my gosh, like, the last two episodes of this season were killer. It really feels kind of like lost, I gotta say. It has a bit of lost energy, especially the finale. And anyone who has seen this will kind of know what I'm talking about.

• 56:21Kirk Hamilton?

  There's just this, like, that great feeling of like, your eyes being open to really exciting things that are really, you know, really big and overwhelming a little bit. And you're kind of having your mind blown by things you didn't realize could possibly be true. Like, it really is doing that in a really, I mean, in a really impressive way, I think. This series is based on a series of books. My friend Sam, actually, my Definitely Fiction co-host, Sam, has read all of them. And he said that his memory is that the third book is also really strong, the one that this season is based on. And I think there's one more book, or at least there's going to be one more season. But they're heading toward the finale. I'm totally gonna be watching. Like, this show very much like found its groove again and got me very interested in it. And I was really thrilled by the finale.

• 57:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, I can't wait for the next season, which I was totally not expecting. So this is my one more thing to just say. A show that was losing me a little bit, and if you're like me, maybe you're getting, you were getting lost a little bit by season two, give season three a shot. Don't let it just kind of slide off, because I thought it was really just pretty smashing television, very fun to watch. So, that's Silo, season three. It just concluded. It is on Apple TV Plus. Maddie, you're gonna watch it, right?

• 57:29Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure. We're excited to get caught up. We were waiting for all the eps to be out, and now they are. So-

• 57:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  It's our next, our next all-in-a-row. The next time, we have several days in a row that we're like, this is when we're gonna do this. We will get through it all.

• 57:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think. I think you're gonna have a good time. All right. Well, last but certainly not least, Jason, what is your one more thing?

• 57:49Jason Schreier?

  My one more thing is also an update. I finished a video game called Big Walk. Have you guys-

• 57:55Speaker 02

  Oh, so did I.

• 57:56Jason Schreier?

  Have you guys played through?

• 57:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I finished it too.

• 57:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I finished it too, actually.

• 57:58Jason Schreier?

  What a coincidence. We all finished Big Walk. Last week, last Friday night, the three of us completed the, our Big Walk, both literally and figuratively, and finished the game. And my goodness, I still can't stop thinking about that ending and, and what we all did together. So first, I'm gonna, I'm gonna offer some kind of broad thoughts, and then we'll get a little bit spoilery. But I'll give everybody a warning, so you can just kind of shut off the episode ahead of the spoilers. But big picture, man, one of my favorite games of the year. Incredible experience. Playing it together with you two is just such a joy. Every time we did it, we did it over the course of like, four

• 58:43Jason Schreier?

  or five sessions, something like that, and completed the game. And the ending is just truly incredible. Just an emotional experience. I was just sitting at my desk, just being like, holy shit, like, this is incredible.

• 58:58Jason Schreier?

  And yeah, to get a little bit more specific, okay, here's your opportunity spoiler warning. This will be the last thing we talk about today. So

• 59:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, go ahead and just stop listening.

• 59:08Jason Schreier?

  If you have not played Big Walk.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  You should play it.

• 59:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Don't listen like, and don't get spoiled if you can help it. Like if you haven't played the game, like do, stop listening and go finish it. It's really good.

• 59:17Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, find some, and you know what? If you don't have people who you can play with, check out the triple click Discord where I'm sure you can find some folks to, to get a group going with. So yeah, last, last chance, go turn, turn off this episode if you haven't finished Big Walk, because I want to get into the ending. Okay, so for, just as a quick refresher, and hopefully if you're, if you're still listening, hopefully you've been through this already, but essentially this is game that just teaches you about all these different puzzles and teaches you and your team to work together through all sorts of different communication skills. And then at the end, in the end sequence, it takes away your ability to communicate and requires you to just kind of non-verbally talk to each other and also makes it so you can't distinguish who each other are. And the three of us went through all these puzzles and really, I gotta say, just nailed it.

• 1:00:02Jason Schreier?

  Figuring out the shorthand that we had all used and knew how to communicate with one another, our, our kind of weirdo emotes that we figured out are just like one, two, three, four, five, kind of jumps and nods and arm raises. At one point, there was an amazing moment where, at one point, we got to this room where it had all the different shapes and you had to kind of communicate the, the different shapes to each person. And one of us was like, went up to them and was like, this one's one, this one's two, this one's three, this one's four. And then I remember going up to them and be like, no, no, no, no, no. I was trying to get their attention without talking. I was like, whichever of the two of you it was, I was like, no, no, no, no, no. And then I went to them and I was like, no, this one should be this emote. This one should be, be raising my hand.

• 1:00:46Kirk Hamilton?

  The shapes in the other room.

• 1:00:47Jason Schreier?

  The shapes, yeah, the shapes in the other room. And just having that experience of like bonding and communicating without using words was so cool, so much better than could possibly, like if you had explained the concept of this game to me and then said that to me without me having experienced it, I would be like, oh, okay, sounds like whatever, I don't care. But like going through it was such a special experience, that whole ending. And then the way it ends, the way it actually ends and goes to the, where you sit and watch the credits and then you say goodbye to each other, just a phenomenal experience overall. And I'm going to make my case right now, which I've already been kind of hinting to you guys at Discord, that we should really go back and try to a hundred percent it. When, when, maybe when we're done, when I'm done with my traveling for this month, maybe

• 1:01:32Jason Schreier?

  we can find some time because everything that I've heard and seen online, I haven't seen anything about what you do or anything, other than it's just like more advanced puzzles and stuff, the hardboard stuff, the purple, like for the purple gourds, like we, we found one of them, I think. But other than that, I don't know what it is. All I know is that like people say that it's worth doing and there's another ending that is just even more cathartic and satisfying. And I'm going to make the case that we should do it.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm very proud of us. I, I thought we did an amazing job and it was surprisingly moving at the end to have all of us doing it together wordlessly and then walking off into the, into the white door at the very end of the game.

• 1:02:15Jason Schreier?

  So cool, so cool.

• 1:02:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I was playing this, sitting next to Emily and she was just on the couch and I was like losing my mind. Like I was trying to explain to her what was happening. I was like, you don't even understand how cool this is. Like, and she could see and was, I think, actually did understand how cool it was. There were so many moments, like we haven't really gone through and debriefed about each of those puzzles because, and I, I kind of hope we never do. There are these times where I was like, I was the one who cracked this and explained it. And I almost like, I, part of me like wants to take credit, like the part of me that likes getting credit for things.

• 1:02:46Jason Schreier?

  Please do.

• 1:02:46Kirk Hamilton?

  And then I'm like, no, it doesn't matter. No, I'm like not going to. I think we shouldn't because it was, it's so much cooler not knowing who was doing what. And there was one, there was one moment in the, so in the ending, there was a moment where we walked up to, it was basically like a checkered line that looked a little like a starting line. And then there were three, like separated, you know, kind of like bowling alley, you know, lanes that went all the way down to a button. And like, we each just looked at each other and I just like started running forward. And I was running down this lane and I couldn't see you. And I was like, they're definitely running at the exact same time as me and we're all going to press our buttons at the exact same time. And then we did. And it was this, it was so amazing, the fact that over the course of these many nights

• 1:03:30Kirk Hamilton?

  playing this game, we had leveled up our, our communication to where wordlessly, without even pausing really, we just looked and we just went and we did it exactly right, was amazing. Like, and it's just that feeling over and over. And then, yeah, you get that, the good place ending where you say goodbye to one another. It's so thoughtful and just, man, it really does make it clear that these developers who also made Untitled Goose Game know how to end things. Like Untitled Goose Game, it's a much more humble game in general than Big Walk. It's not going for like genuinely like moving an amazing whatever, like treatise on human communication. Like it's just a really beautiful, lovely, tidy little way to tie the whole game together at the end. And you finish it and you're like, wow, that was lovely.

• 1:04:14Kirk Hamilton?

  And you can just see that they have that, they understand how important a conclusion is and how important it is to get an ending that like ties it all together. And then they just did that writ large, like on this much bigger scale. And the other puzzle that I want to mention while we're talking about spoilers, there was and remains my favorite puzzle in the game, is the puzzle where you just go into a room and you sit together for five minutes.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  Which was not part of the end game. It's just a regular puzzle. So.

• 1:04:40Kirk Hamilton?

  This is just a regular puzzle in the game. You know, every puzzle or challenge, I guess, as the developers call it, is different. There's one where you open up a room and then, and you go inside.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  And there's like a couch.

• 1:04:50Kirk Hamilton?

  The door. And there's a nice couch and a couple of chairs and there's a big TV screen. And when you close the door, a timer starts counting down. And one of the gourds you're trying to unlock is right there. So you're like, okay, well, what does the timer mean? And for a little while, we're talking, we're like, okay, what does it mean? It's counting down. We have to do something before the countdown.

• 1:05:06Jason Schreier?

  We thought it was like an escape room, right?

• 1:05:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, or like, maybe we have to solve some puzzle, but there's really nothing to do in the room. And at some point, Jason, I think it was you, but I might be remembering wrong.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  I think Jason was like, we just have to wait.

• 1:05:17Kirk Hamilton?

  You're like, I think we just have to wait. And so then we have to wait. And five minutes is just the perfect amount of time. It's long enough that you are kind of like, all right, well, how you guys been? Just hanging out. And what was so funny was we solved it, no problem. Like we just sat down and talked. And what I especially appreciated about that puzzle was that we spend time talking every week. Like we are constantly talking to, it's like what we do for money. And so we're very good at just sitting there and talking. So it was maybe the easiest puzzle for us to solve of any of the puzzles, but so clever and so totally Big Walk that the whole time, half of what we were talking about is just, how funny is it that this is this puzzle? That we just have to sit here for five minutes?

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  It was so, it was so great when that turned out to be the ending, like when we got to the end of the five minutes and it does that like bow thing where it like shoots out the confetti. It was great. It was very satisfying. We, we truly won.

• 1:06:07Kirk Hamilton?

  God, what a game, what a game. What an amazing, amazing game. I hope everyone listening to this gets to play it.

• 1:06:12Jason Schreier?

  Going through that same thing, except silently and just knowing that all three of us are just kind of cheering to ourselves every time we do it. That was so cool. And just seeing the progress bar light up and seeing us nail it and execute it. I remember having some real nervous moments where I was like, God, am I going to fuck this up for everybody and not even be able to say anything? And God, it was so good.

• 1:06:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And you're afraid of like, and making a mistake when you can't talk is scary because it's like, oh no, will I be able to explain that this was just an execution error and we can start over and it's gonna be fine?

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  It's funny. I didn't worry about it that much because I felt like we got so, or were so patient with each other. I didn't even want to say God, because I actually feel like we were always pretty good at that. Like anytime there was something where the entire green bar would go away right before the end and like the whole thing would be gone, we would all be like, okay, it's, it's all good. We're, here we go. We're doing it again. Now we know how to do it. And like, it doesn't take away the stress of seeing the green bar filling up, filling up. And especially if you're the person that has to do the thing. But it did give me some comfort when that person was me. Or we each had moments where we had to like be the star and like be the one that was getting something correct. Multiple moments like that we each had.

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  And it was very nice knowing that you two like never got mad at me. And I, I hope you two both felt the same way. Like I felt like we all were really supportive about it. If the green bar would all disappear and we were just like, all right, let's do this again. We got this. We got this. That was, that was great.

• 1:07:40Jason Schreier?

  I don't think it's a game. It kind of like works in contrast to Destiny's Raid, where sometimes I would feel frustrated if someone was fucking up. This like instills the opposite opinion because it really feels like we're all in it together. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because there's no real adversary. You can't like die. You don't die. You don't see a game over screen. It's just like, okay, well, we just have to start that one over. I don't know, something about the way that this design, this game is designed, just feels like it, it doesn't really, it encourages patience in, in general. Like it encourages giving people another shot and, and like not feeling frustrated about that. So no, I don't, I don't think I ever once felt frustrated at all while playing this game.

• 1:08:21Jason Schreier?

  Because even, there's so much, there's so much levity and humor to it that like even when you fuck something up, the one, the one time I was like, oh my God, did I just fuck this up for everybody? Was when the most recent session, we were doing that giant obstacle course where you have to work, you have to throw the thing up all the way down each tunnel. And that one, one time I missed the throw and I was like, oh my God, is that going to go all the way to the bottom? But it did not. And so we were, we were saved. It only fell like one floor lower.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  We were all so, I was nervous as we were getting closer and closer and closer to the top. And even at that point, I was like saying to you guys, I think I was like, if it goes to the bottom, we're fine. It's fine.

• 1:08:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, totally fine.

• 1:09:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Maddie, you and I were just like, it's going to happen and it's going to be fine.

• 1:09:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:04Kirk Hamilton?

  But it's funny, I think, and Jason, right, the fact that that one kick missed and it dropped a little bit, then it was clear, oh, actually it can't drop all the way to the bottom because of the way this challenge is designed. Something is probably going to catch it. So you won't lose that much progress. And that I think speaks to what you're saying, where there's a feeling in this game overall that just, it's okay, man. Like the designers have got your back and they're not trying to make you feel frustrated. They're trying to make failure a funny part of the game, which is wonderful and a really great way to design something like this. And totally agree. I never felt frustrated a single time, the entire time playing the game. It was just, I was having a great time with my friends solving puzzles. That was it. And then all the way to the end, it was the same.

• 1:09:44Jason Schreier?

  Maddie, even when you fell off the mountain, Kirk and I were like, god damn it.

• 1:09:48Kirk Hamilton?

  It was so funny.

• 1:09:48Jason Schreier?

  We were just like, this is hilarious. Like Maddie fell off the mountain. Like this is so silly.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  That was a crazy night because I, I think that was also the last night we played, right? And I like fell off multiple large.

• 1:09:58Kirk Hamilton?

  It was how we kicked off the session.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  Large, tall items.

• 1:10:02Jason Schreier?

  We were, we had this plan in place. We were like, we're gonna go this way. And then suddenly it's like, see ya.

• 1:10:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Or not.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  I was the one that had the plan. Like I logged in and I was like, guys, we need to make a plan tonight. And we need to just stick to the plan. And then like I fell off the mountain and was like a million miles away from you guys. And I was like, all right, that's fine.

• 1:10:20Jason Schreier?

  So good.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  All the best laid plans in Big Walk are for naught. It's not, not how the game works.

• 1:10:25Kirk Hamilton?

  And when someone falls off the mountain.

• 1:10:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, what a game.

• 1:10:29Jason Schreier?

  I wonder if in Destiny, it's because you, everybody sees like a you died screen and that just builds up frustration.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Well, it's time based.

• 1:10:35Kirk Hamilton?

  And the violence of it, like the feeling of like, you're not playing well enough.

• 1:10:40Jason Schreier?

  Everything about those raids, it feels like if someone isn't pulling their weight, you just get really annoyed with them.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  You can tell.

• 1:10:45Jason Schreier?

  In this, I don't think I, I really, I legitimately did not feel a single moment of annoyance at all while playing this game. It was just pure delight.

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  Well, I also think each puzzle like does take advantage of different skills. And if you happen to have, I feel like we're each good at different kinds of puzzles too. And there are certainly puzzles that all three of us are good at. And we would just be like, okay, like Kirk's just going to be in charge of this and Maddie and Jason are going to follow, or whatever the case may be. But then there were other times where we're like, okay, like so and so is going to do this one or that one because they can clearly figure it out.

• 1:11:17Kirk Hamilton?

  And one of the best examples of that, sorry, Maddie, but one is that you and I, there was a music puzzle where Maddie, you had to sing melodies to me and then I like remember them and go find, that was so much fun.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  Jason would just vibe.

• 1:11:28Jason Schreier?

  And I was just like, all right, see you guys.

• 1:11:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Jason was like, this was for Maddie.

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  He was just like, I'm just chilling right now.

• 1:11:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And then of course, and we totally crushed it, which was very validating. That was such a fun puzzle and a very fun puzzle to do with you.

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  Jason also like did the headphones puzzle where I still am like, I have no idea how he was doing that.

• 1:11:43Kirk Hamilton?

  That one was, that was crazy.

• 1:11:45Jason Schreier?

  That was wild.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  We each had our moments to shine.

• 1:11:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  I don't know where I was going with that. Oh, I guess I was saying like, because each of the puzzles has so much variation, you can do that and you can feel like anyone in theory could have their moment. And so it's not like, oh, one person's dragging us all down. Whereas in Destiny, it's like, people are going to notice you can't do something, which is tough.

• 1:12:06Jason Schreier?

  It's true, because you have to be good at Destiny specifically. Yeah, that's true.

• 1:12:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And more often, like if you're the weak link on a raid in Destiny, you're going to be the weak link on every single thing. And so by the fourth boss you're losing to, you're like, yeah, I know I suck. I'm sorry, everybody.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  It's just a bad vibe. And like Big Walk doesn't have that vibe at all because you can't even really quote unquote, be good at Big Walk, I would say.

• 1:12:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Not really.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  Like it's not that kind of game.

• 1:12:30Jason Schreier?

  No, it's just so, man, okay, we gotta play again. After we're back, late September, and then back from traveling.

• 1:12:37Kirk Hamilton?

  We'll figure it out.

• 1:12:37Jason Schreier?

  We're going to play some, some Big Walk advanced mode. We're going to 100% this game.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  We gotta get to the real ending, I would say.

• 1:12:44Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, we gotta get that true ending.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  If there is one, I don't know.

• 1:12:46Jason Schreier?

  I just want to play more Big Walk. It's so much, so delightful.

• 1:12:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Like a Nick Fury Big Walk character comes out and is like, I'm recruiting for the bigger walk. We're starting a new initiative.

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  The Goose, from Untitled Goose game comes out and he has an eye patch on and he's like, honk.

• 1:13:03Jason Schreier?

  All right.

• 1:13:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, God. All right.

• 1:13:05Jason Schreier?

  That's my one more thing.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  Good pick.

• 1:13:08Kirk Hamilton?

  What a game. What a, what a good one more thing.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, good job. Good job.

• 1:13:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, that is another episode of Triple Click. In the books, a fun, a fun time as always. Another really fun game to talk about. We'll be back talking about more games and, and maybe answering some of your questions and continuing on through what looks to be a video game fall for the record books.

• 1:13:30Jason Schreier?

  For real. And remember to send us triple kiss questions. We've gotten a lot, a lot of them are kind of like about games and stuff. I would love to see a few that are about just kind of specific situations. I won't, I won't like say that we're the most qualified people in the world to be giving romantic advice, but I think the three of us all have pretty healthy relationships. So maybe we can, we can offer a little bit of a.

• 1:13:55Kirk Hamilton?

  At the very least, we'll offer some, some interesting perspectives.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  We'll do it, we can.

• 1:13:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, our perspectives, that's all we can offer.

• 1:14:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Send those in and in the meantime, I will see the two of you next week.

• 1:14:04Jason Schreier?

  See you next week.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:14:09Kirk 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.

• 1:15:07Kirk Hamilton?

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