The Ringer-Verse - ‘Doom: The Dark Ages’ Reactions and ‘Andor’ Writer Tom Bissell | Button Mash

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Ben, Matt, and Steve share their (non-spoiler-y) impressions of the new first-person shooter 'Doom: The Dark Ages,' focusing on the ever-evolving nature of the franchise, whether the series' latest experiments improve upon its tried-and-true formula, how they'd rank the three most recent 'Doom' games, and more. Then, Ben brings on video game writer and screenwriter Tom Bissell, who wrote the three-part finale of 'Andor,' to talk about the 'Andor' writers room; working within story constraints and established universes; tying the finale to 'Rogue One'; the future of 'Star Wars' and IP storytelling in the aftermath of 'Andor'; 'Andor' as a video game; the differences between writing for TV and video games; his work on 'Uncharted,' 'Gears of War,' 'What Remains of Edith Finch,' and 'Masters of Doom'; Hollywood's appetite for video game adaptations; and more. Intro (0:00)Reactions to 'Doom: The Dark Ages' (2:30)Interview with Tom Bissell (35:35)Outro (1:41:53) Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Steve Ahlman, Tom Bissell, and Matt JamesProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everyone? I'm Nora Princeotti. And I'm Nathan Hubbard. And we're coming in like a wrecking ball to announce a brand new series. That's right. It's every single album, Miley Cyrus. Deep dive with us into the career of one of our most creative and confounding pop stars. We're starting, of course, with the best of Hannah Montana. And ending with her brand new album, Something Beautiful, in June. And don't forget about Miley Cyrus and her dead pets.

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I am Beninberg, senior editor for the ringer and Button Mash podcast Slayer. I have opened a hell portal and summoned two guests for our first segment today. And I hope they'll be more talkative than Doom Guy. Senior audio producer Steve, audio guy, Alman. Hello, Steve. That's all I have to say. That was audio. And Deputy Art Lead Matt, Art Guy James.

Welcome Matt. Hey, thanks. Good to be here. Wow. Welcome Matt and welcome Matt. It works on multiple levels. All the episodes we've done, and I never realized that until now. Who says you can't teach an old pod, new tricks, or an old first-person shooter franchise

for that matter? And they don't come much older than Doom, which is one of our topics today. It is hard to find time for regular button mash pods while we're doing weekly The Last of Us Gamer Guides. But we squeezed one in today, and I am excited for this episode. Later, I will talk to the great Tom Bissell, who wrote the three-part finale of Andor. So we will talk about Andor and Star Wars, obviously, but we'll also talk about video games because Tom wrote a great book about games in addition to writing four many games you have heard of. So we'll also get into the differences between TV and video games and what each means.

Medium does well. But first, the three of us will be talking about Doom the Dark Ages, developed by ID Software, published last week by Bethesda for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. This is the follow-up to 2020's Doom Eternal, which was itself the sequel to the 2016 Doom reboot. This is a prequel and a bigger game in terms of scope and length, 22 levels. And the size of its environments, it also plays pretty differently, which will get into shortly, but it's been similarly well-received by the gaming press, and so I ask, has it been well-received by you two, Steve? It has.

I'd like to think of this third installment of the Doom franchise is what some are calling the Master Chief of Fication, the Doom Guy. And I will be calling him Doom Guy and not the Doom Slayer because that's his formal name, that's his birth name, and I would be acknowledging that as such. I greatly enjoyed this. I think that if I were to personally rank these new iterations of Doom, this while I still love it, still might be my least favorite, but I might get into why.

But overall, I think that there's a lot of great additions and a lot of really good meat on these bones for any fan of Doom or any real first-person shooter fan. Matt? I feel like I have a lot of nitpicks about this game, but that's what they are. They're nitpicks. I think overall this is a really enjoyable, fun entry into the game.

the Doom series. And I think my ranking would probably be the 2016 Doom and then this and then Eternal. But we'll get into this. Eternal just happened to not be for me in terms of play style, even though I do think that it may be a better design game than Doom the Dark Ages. Some things will probably dip into. But yeah, it's great. It's really enjoyable. It's fun. I can't really imagine anyone having a bad time unless they, for some reason, thought that that Doom series was maybe a puzzle game series or something. Yeah, though if you thought it was a story-based series, I've got good news because they're at least attempting to make it one.

But yeah, it does stand out to me that these games all have such distinct identities. And I think that's admirable at this point in the franchise because, I mean, you think of Doom as so foundational to the genre of first-person shooters. And yet it's so malleable, too. And maybe it's the fact that this almost surprised me just recapping the history. But this is only the eighth mainline Doom game. And the sixth developed by Id because there was the long gap between final Doom misnomer and the Doom 3 reboot.

And then a longer gap between Doom 3 and the 2016 Doom reboot. So there haven't been that many dooms, even though when you think of first person shooters, you might think of Doom first of all. And so there are certain hallmarks of the series. he's like, you're going to play as Doom guy. He might be named Doom Slayer and he might have a different outfit, but he's essentially the same guy. You're going to have a shotgun, if not two. You're going to go to hell and kill demons.

And you're going to find secrets and colored key cards. And that's about it. Everything else, you can kind of freestyle. And these games are so different, I think. And there really is something I think admirable about that because other shooters that have been around for a similar long time. Like Halo, for instance, I mean, certainly the gameplay, the world, is it open world, is it more linear, that changes, but the gunplay itself, Halo now feels more or less like original Halo, right? Like, it hasn't evolved that much, and that's something that people

like about it because it has that halo feeling. But it's hard to describe even what Doom is now. It's just been so many different incarnations of this. So since we're all sort of ranking, And I'd probably be with you, Matt, maybe 2016 reboot then this, then Eternal, but there are people who feel very strongly that Eternal is Tops and maybe you're one of them, Steve. Like, how would you guys distinguish between them? Steve, what would you say is kind of the core hook of each one? I think that the best kind of way to describe it is a bit more of a contrast to what I would describe, like, Valve or some of these other, like, prestige game houses that would have made games at the top of the, their form. I like to think of these first three Doom iterations since 2016 as,

lack of a better term, a trend perfecter, rather than a trend setter. They seem to be taking a lot of things that are hot button, like, trends and mechanics that are translated into a lot of first-person shooters and really kind of do the best possible version of that thing. In 2016, it was melee-based combat and movement, not like since we had seen since probably the first iteration of Doom because Doom 3 was in and of itself a brand new

thing that was very iterative of the time rather than being quote unquote Doom. Doom Eternal was kind of a momentum and acrobatic space thing. If you were to think about like the wall running trend in the mid 2000s with the Prince of Persia's Matrix, etc. This really refined the grapple hook mechanic. And in a first person shooter context, that could be really thrilling, but also. kind of not exactly what you might think of Doom. I still really like Doom Eternal quite a bit. It's a really good iteration on what that trend is. Now we have something that I really liked the Doom franchise to tackle,

which was Perry season. And Perry's really, to me, are like action game stuff. If we think of Devil May Cry, if we think of fighting games, if we think of lots of things that are movement and rhythm-based incorporated with a 3D first-person space, Doom the Dark Ages really plays with that in a sort of DMC space where there's a lot of color coding, there's a lot of reaction Simon says types of gameplay. And some people's mileage may vary about that

because at the end of the day, it's still Doom and it feels amazing, but it's still kind of following and perfecting those trends rather than setting them. Matt, what about you? Yeah, I mean, it's the year of the parry, right? We've got paris in Doom. We've got parries in your turn-based RPGs now. Yep.

I hope y'all like paring. Back in my day, there was run and gun and hack and slash. We didn't worry about defense. And we didn't need to worry about green color coding. Now it's just, I know there's a dismissive term. People call it parry slop, which, look, I like paring when it's done well. You better have good timing, though, if you're going to play any genre these days. Because you used to think, like, I don't have to be coordinated to play a turn-based RPG.

Well, I got bad news for you. Yeah. Well, I'm still waiting for the turn-based Doom RPG. We'll get that eventually, I'm sure. That actually, Doom Socom could go crazy. Oh, yeah. I do really appreciate, though, that they keep trying new things. Eternal, I think it was brilliant in the way that, you know,

you could kill enemies in different ways to sort of get different resources, whether it's health or ammo or armor or whatever. And that all was pretty, interesting. It didn't speak, it didn't like click with my play style, but I could still recognize that this is a really interesting take on Doom. And the speed demons who like playing like Rambo in first, person shooters, like I know a lot of them and they absolutely loved Eternal and they very much might not like Dark Ages as much because a lot of people are like calling Dark Ages like slow by comparison, but I feel like that's like, okay, maybe by comparison, but you don't feel slow in

dark ages. And I love that they put a parry mechanic in here. And by the way, if you're scared of parrying and that's kind of turning you off from Doom, on the default difficulty setting, and even one level higher, the parry window is wildly forgiving. If you just played Claire obscure and you were parrying at all in that, or even if you didn't, you're not really going have a problem like going into Doom and executing parries. It's really not a challenge to do these paris. In fact, I feel like most of the time you can just be slamming the parry button until the parry hits. All you have to do is not be attacking while hitting the parry button. It'll be fine. But I do think that the parry mechanic is a fun way of changing things up. And like,

ultimately the Doom 2016 feels a bit more, you know, in line with the legacy of the series. But this is a really interesting worthwhile take. And I think that a lot of people are really going to vibe with it and play the game and be like, how did everyone score this like somewhere in the 80s out of 100 or whatever? This is like one of my favorites of all, you know, I could see that. Yeah, I'm really liking it. And I do like that idea that. It's just kind of sneaking in all of these new trends under the guise of almost the oldest shooter there is.

And so you have this almost silent protagonist and you have these very consciously retro throwback aspects. I mentioned the colored key cards or the power-ups that are visible and that are just on the ground everywhere, very shiny. These things, you know, if you were doing a more realistic modern shooter, you wouldn't have those things. And yet it is constantly innovating what it is. Doom game can be, even if it's not innovating for the industry. It's just sort of following trends, but perfecting them, as you said, Steve. And so there's just so much to this combat system. And I love the idea that Doom guy is huge. Like he is. He's canonically, what, six foot nine or something and 500 pounds in his armor. And you feel like that because you're stomping around this world.

And it's just your boots are clomping. And so there's a weight to it. And yet it's also very very balletic. Like, I love the fact that, first of all, there's no fall damage. And when you jump down, you create a shockwave. Like, that's just how big. Yeah. It's really, really great. I love that.

And yet, you're leaping around. You're kind of, you know, you can block and then you can strafe, and then you can do this sort of shield charging mechanic, which is not the same as Eternal's grappling hook, but sort of, right? And you have this saw shield so that you can leap way across the map and just ramble. right into a guy. And then there's melee, like, to an even greater degree than Doom games have really had before. I know there was the arm blade and everything, but that's fairly new. And then there's just the standard shooting. There are times when I just forgot to shoot for a while, which seems strange to say about Doom, but it's like there are so many ways that I can deal death here that just shoddying someone

seems almost ineligant, not that Doom is about being elegant. In a weird way, I feel like this Doom might actually have the hardest learning curve ever for as simple as it may sound because it does throw a lot at you very quickly. And there are so many things that you can do with that shield that almost makes you kind of harken back for just the times when you can get away with constantly moving around the environment in order to successfully like navigate. But you're in such widespread areas that are much, much bigger and more like flattered. than any other environment that Doom has had to where you need to be covering so much distances.

You need to be like using your shield bass just to like get across the area to open up doors to bounce off and to like jump over gaps, as you said. I think the biggest thing that this Doom might have going against it is that I'm trying to figure out when I stopped being tutorialized and like having like pop-ups

that would like almost oppressively stop my game to make me read and do a thing. I don't know why that really irked me the most out of this. Again, this is the nitpickiest that I've been when it comes to a Doom game, because the biggest theme that I've ever had when I've played a Doom game

is that you never stop moving. You never stop your motion. And for some reason, this constantly made me like, take little tiny stops and steps to either learn a new thing about throwing the shield or putting me on a dragon, which we will get to.

I need to talk about that dragon. And I think that if you can adapt to it quickly and have a lot of fun with it, there's a lot of mileage to be had there. But for somebody who's kind of just like looking to run around and shoot stuff, you might want to go back to 2016s do. Yeah, that's a good point, Steve. And I think that, you know, there are a lot of like screens that pop up to teach you stuff because there are a lot of new mechanics to this one.

But I also think at the same time, everything about this game sort of like indicates to me that one of the objectives here was to reach as broad an audience as possible. Because the difficulty settings by default are way easier than you would imagine for a Doom game and them forcing you to kind of read everything before moving on. And the fact that, like, you know, okay, yeah, there are secrets in the game. But also if you open up your map, like, it shows you where those secrets are, right? And like, there's a lot of like handholding for a game about demons from hell. Yeah, right.

Yeah, people have complained that it's too easy. Now, I think by default, it is arguably if you're experienced. Yeah, there are six difficulty levels and you can customize various things. So you can make it harder if you want to. And you probably should, to be honest. I think it might be more fun, more challenging. Yes, and more exciting if you do do that. A couple other things I meant to mention about how they make.

Doom guy slash doom slayer more fearsome. I love that when you see NPC allies, they're just kind of cowering from you. They're just afraid of you. And also, you're just constantly breaking stuff. Like, if you just walk into a guardrail, it shatters. It doesn't even slow you down. There's not even like an invisible frame of like motion.

You're just like, you're just plowing through it like a do bulldozer. Bull in a china shop. Or people are whispering about you while you walk through a room like, oh, don't get in his way. Stay out of his way. Yeah. I love that they conveyed. That's right. And so, you know, that feels very doomy. And the tagline like on the PlayStation store, I think is like all caps, you are the super weapon in a medieval war against hell. And it's just, it's so metal, man. It's so doom. And then there's the story. Now, we can come back to the gameplay in a second. The story is, I think, more elaborate than you're used to seeing from Doom, certainly. And it does not do anything for me. I'm sorry to say. I never know how much to criticize something like this in a game like this because, A, no one's expecting a good story or plot from Doom and you can skip it.

They know that you may well want to and you can just skip the cutscenes. And so ultimately, if you hate it, it's not really that big an impediment. But they obviously put a lot of resources into this and really made an effort. And who knows what other corners were cut or features were sacrificed so that they could dedicate all that attention to. that there's no multiplayer in this game, which is odd to say about a Doom game. And doesn't matter that much to me personally, because I've just been a single player, Doom player for the last couple, but I can imagine some people saying, what is this? Where is my multiplayer in Doom? And who knows, whether that's because of the expanded scope of these other things. So I would have a really hard time

summarizing the plot or telling you anything about the characters. And I don't skip cut scenes. I watch them. And even so, I don't know that I could completely. coherently tell you what this game is about. It's supposed to be sort of an origin story, except it's not entirely because, like, there's clearly a prequel to this prequel that could be made, I guess, about where this guy came from. And when I'm reading about how it's medieval, it sort of is. And yet it's also super sci-fi and haloish, as you're saying, Steve.

It's this hybrid. There's some June vibes in my doom. Yeah. I like a mix of genres, but it just never feels. coherent to me. Here's the thing. I don't think that, obviously, we are not clamoring for

Shakespearean level storytelling when it comes to our Doom games. And I don't think anybody's, I don't think anybody's gonna be mad about that. Yeah. But I think to me that, like, what made Doom 2016 so special when it came to its story

is there's a level of self-awareness about how ridiculous Doom Guy is. Yeah. And there actually doesn't need, to be any sort of pretense as to why Doom Guy is around or Doom Guy is there. And I think that I kind of surrendered to myself with that a bit more when it came to Dark Ages. But the way that there aren't even really cut scenes in Doom 2016, you never leave the first person

perspective. It is entirely from your point of view. And anybody that you are either talking to and completely silent, Doom Guy just does with his fists and just kind of like shuts off a radio when he doesn't want to hear anybody or just like casually ignores somebody or plows through the environment. With this it's like and when I call the master chiefification of Doom Guy, it's the fact that the entire world around Doom Guy is just talking about him. Like he's Jason Bourne, like he's the right hand of God, like he's everything that ever needs to be. And I kind of don't need that because I already feel like

out when I'm playing the game. Yeah, it's self-evident. Right. And the game is so good at conveying that feeling of being just unstoppable, all-powerful juggernaut that, yeah, you don't need it reinforced. And it's just so full of MacGuffins, I mean, more so than even your standard video game-style story. So it can be skipped. I'm not saying this is a reason why you shouldn't get this game. I'm just saying it's an odd thing to devote this much of a resource to, I think, in a Doom game, and it doesn't enhance the experience for me. And yeah, there's a. There's no knowing, winking, like serious Sam or even original Doom. It's quite self-serious, all of that elaborate lore.

It's odd. I could use some humor in this. I could use a little bit of that, especially if you're going to put this much story in there. I don't mind if the story is not good. If it's not that good, just don't give me too much of it. And I think we're maybe flirting with that line of there being too much of it in here. I would love to see the next one have a more tongue-in-cheek tone to it,

have a more knowing sense of humor about things, right? Like, maybe the, I don't know, maybe the character could be so self-serious that everyone around, like maybe the people whispering aren't, like, afraid of him as much. There's something, like, there's a big opportunity for humor in this series. I would love Doom Guy to just, like,

plow through a wall, Kool-Aid man style and just like kind of plow through and in the cut scene just the innocent bystandard whose homes he just ruined just like man that guy's such an asshole like even a level of self-awareness but kind of just a level of if you're going to like acknowledge

Doom guy so much in this world I kind of don't want you to build him up like he's master chief I kind of want you to bring him down a little bit in a weird way but also on the same token I kind of miss that nowadays we don't have really a master chief or a big, like, dude, bro, buff, gears of war, like shooter man anymore, other than Doom Guy.

Those heroes are kind of lost in video game being culture. And if we lean into it like this, I guess we can kind of see it because those aren't that common anymore. It's true. Yeah. So you're saying games are too woke for you now, Steve. It sounds like you can't have fun in Doom games because of woke. That's why.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, so while that is going on, there's a lot of new stuff. that is actually excellent and is, again, expanding the palette here, broadening the scope of what a Doom game can be, and not just this shield and the flying shield with saw blades on it, of course, because it's Doom. But you mentioned the vehicle segments and sequences, you've got a giant mech. You've got a flying dragon.

It's panger dragoon in Doom, except not even on rails, like free-flying. So this, again, I think, was part of why there's no multiplayer. It's like we want to have a dragon to break up the shooting. And that's not what you come to Doom for either, but for me at least, those chapters, which tend to be shorter, not in all cases. But it's a nice break from the action. And I thought it controlled well.

I was able to get a handle on it pretty quickly. And it just felt like a good change of pace. I hated it. I hated it too. I hated all of it. I hated it. Every fucking second of it. Yes.

It's my biggest criticism of this game. Wow. I felt like whenever we, went into the mech or the dragon, the mechanics of this game, you know, we talked about all the ways that the combat in this game has, has all these interlocking parts that are really interesting. All of the mechanics of these dragon and mech segments could be lifted from like an early and 64 game.

They are basic. They are like three things each. And it's just kind of like, I appreciate the spectacle of, wow, this. This mech is bigger than people. Or buildings. Or buildings even. And this gun is as big as a building. And you can fly anywhere with this dragon and then get lost and not know where you're going

because the map system doesn't really accommodate for this at all. And it's a completely sparse world outside of what you're supposed to be doing while riding this dragon. I get that you might want to break up the pacing in a Doom game. I guess. I've never really felt like that. If I want to break up the pacing in a Doom game, I'll just stop playing for a few minutes, I guess.

Yeah. Like, I'm here for the Doom, man. Thank you so much, Matt. Thank you. That's exactly the point. Again, it's the game making you stop and do something slightly different than what you're doing,

or in the case of these dragon sequences and mech sequences, completely different. It doesn't feel the same. You don't feel nearly as fast, even though you're on a jet-powered dragon, okay, whatever. And the mere fact that these mechanics are so simple and so boiled down by comparison to the rest of this game, it feels like you're kind of just like playing in kindergarten

with your blocks and your shapes and colors. Like it doesn't really feel as advanced as the things that came before it. And I, oh my God, the amount of times that I had to be on that dragon just to like lock on do a thing and then play this weird game of directional Simon says to parry and blow something up and only that is the way that you blow something up on a dragon. I don't understand why.

It absolutely takes me out of this game to a degree that really, really feels like it's a knock against it. And I know that it's a bit more of a nickpick than me and Matt, but oh, man, I was not feeling that. You play a little rhythm game on your dragon to power up your gun for some reason, and then you can destroy the thing that's shooting the energy stuff at you. Why not just power up the gun?

to begin with. Why go through the rhythm game? That's my question. But I didn't mind it because it tends to be brief. And I thought, you know, it can get a little monotonous. And yeah, you could just play something else or play something different. But when I'm mainlining this game, you know, they kept it simple. They kept it accessible. It mostly didn't outstay. It's welcome for me. I definitely wouldn't want a game that was just the dragon flying from Doom or the mech action from Doom. And so in that sense, it is worse than what you're getting from the shooting, which is clearly the specialty of it. But I don't hate it as a way of just, you know, here's a little, it's like almost a mini game that we're throwing into this game, which is quite long.

I like when a game tells you how long it is, first of all, it's a pet peeve for me that I just never know how long I'm committing here. And so if you tell me 22 levels, all right, I know what I'm in for. In this true Tony Hawk's pro skater fashion, you know exactly where you're going. Yeah. And these levels, it varies and it depends on your play style. But you might end up playing an hour-ish for at least a lot of these levels. It's not a inconsiderable amount of time to sink into these things. And so I kind of enjoyed just to throw in for variety's sake every now and then. But I understand what you're saying.

It is fairly rudimentary, whereas the shooting and the traversal is just sort of the symphony, this perfected, finally honed game. And then there's like baby's first meck game kind of. I just don't understand why we feel like we need to break up the pacing of this particular thing. We don't like pause at halftime in FIFA to like play a completely unrelated minigame. Like why is, why do we need a doom change of pace? You know what you just reminded me of, Matt? Mini-game loading screens.

Oh, yeah. I really missed that. Pattented by Bandanamco. And that was a genius play. But we do have halftime shows, Matt. So you do have something to break up at least some of the sports action. That's what we're going to stop playing to rest. Well, that's because the athletes would die on the field.

You think the do? Doom is intense. He might not, but I do. Doom guys on the back of that dragon chugging Gatorade to recharge while we're on the dragon. Yeah. Anyway, it is a lot of fun. I think there's a little less nuance to the shooting than there was in Eternal. I didn't find myself changing guns nearly as much because in Eternal,

you'd have to sort of customize your approach and your weaponry to certain enemies, and you rarely have to do that in Doom the Darkness. It seems discouraged. Yeah, right. Like this weapon switching is kind of cumbersome and slow. Yes. Which is very surprising to me.

I ended up pretty much just using two weapons the entire time. Shotgun and Super Shotgun. That's what I was. I'd never use the shotgun once I got Super Shotgun. Don't sleep on the Cycuit. Super shotgun is OP. That thing, like, it's bananas. Oh, my God.

That's the most powerful shotgun in doom history, I think. I also like the skull crusher, which is where you just shred a skull and pulverize it. That's a fun design. Spit out of shrapnel. And it's kind of good for when there's a big wave of enemies to take them down at once. But it's weird that it doesn't really encourage you to change weapons that, like, you don't have time to put one away and pull another one out. Right, it doesn't pause. For the most part, it slows things down.

Which is so strange. But, yeah. Well, that's kind of the same, you know, flavor that they did in the prior games. But again, you don't find yourself immediately with the, like, ease of which Eternal and 2016 gave you. And with the amount of mechanics that you would need for interaction with, like, okay, you have the people with steel shields. So then you got to, like, shoot them long enough to get them heated up. and then you got to throw your shield at them, and then they explode into armor pieces.

But then if they got the plasma shields, you got to use the plasma rifles to just make them explode regular. And, like, that's already a lot to do and to know to switch within the same weapon, let alone a weapon wheel. Like, it's a lot to do. Yeah. And again, it's just those little tiny things

that add up to you just, like, kind of stopping and thinking rather than just ripping and tearing. Like, I'm sorry. I think it speaks to my thing about maybe this is designed. for a broad appeal because you're right. There's so many new mechanics that I feel like they didn't want to burden you with having to constantly switch weapons. Now, there are a few things like there are shields on enemies that if you hit it with a certain

weapon, they heat up. And then once they're glowing, you can toss a shield at it. But overall, like, it really, it would rather you focus on, okay, a gun being one of your one of your things to manage, your shield, right, your melee and your gun. And it doesn't really seem to want you to be thinking about switching all of your guns all the time because it wants you to focus more of your energy on the other things, I guess. But for me, it's so against what I've come to learn in first-person shooters is like your guns are your tools.

And you should be constantly switching most games. Yeah, this is probably part of the accessibility, but also a lot of the weapons just have this area of effect, even if it's not clear why exactly. Like, I'm shooting this guy over here and that other guy is blowing up for some reason. And it's just, it's part of just the symphony of destruction here. But I think it is kind of calibrated to, yeah, you can come in. If this is your first frag fest, then you will be fine. And it's also a little less vertical than Eternal was.

There's less platforming. There's still some, which I don't mind because, again, you don't think of nimbleness when you think of Doom Guy. So I'm okay with it, mostly being. shooter. But that's, I guess, all of what we're saying is why people have said it's slower, and it is, but it's not plotting. It is still quite fast, and it's doomy. And they're just big, open environments that contain a lot of secrets and also stuff to kill. And I just liked that we're still fighting in many cases, the same enemies, the same demons from the original

doom shooting their fireballs. And so there's this continuity to 30-plus-year-old games. And yet, everything under the hood, it's new and not always successful, but I'm glad that they're still experimenting. So I recommend it. And again, I recommend it too. I don't want to sound like I'm too down on it because, again, in a vacuum, all of these things feel great to do and play. It's just the tiny little add-up of things that did not make me feel as,

I guess, as fulfilled as an Eternal or a 2016. All of it's fun to be had. And I frankly still recommend it. It's well worth your time and money. But it's just not quite as up there with the best of them. It's like when your favorite musical artist has an album that is like a bit of a tangent. And as long as you go into that knowing that this is like a fun like experimental tangent, this isn't necessarily the direction that they're going for the rest of their career, right?

You can enjoy it. And that's what Dark Ages felt like to me. It's like, oh, we get this fun little side experiment that, you know, maybe there are elements, of this that continue into the next game, but I think it's most likely that this is just its own little weird side thing, and we should enjoy it while we have this, and it's great that they're trying new things. Yep, they're just riffing from game to game.

And it's great when you can do that with a franchise that has expectations from fans, from, you know, people who want a certain sales figure. And, yeah, because they have pinged around each of the last couple games, you can bet that they'll try something new next time. time too. And you don't have to get too mad about it. Though I know some Doom fans are mad about it. But this will be somebody's favorite Doom game, just like Eternal was, just like the reboot was. They're all worthy. As are you two. You're both my guys. Thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me, Ben. Thank you for having me, Ben. All right, programming notes.

Upcoming on our feed, fairly light week. The next podcast coming on the Ring ofverse feed is more button mash. Daniel Chin and I will be here with our Last of Us Season 2 episode 6 gamer guide. That'll be on Thursday, followed by Friday Mint Edition, Steve and Jomey covering the beginning of Murder Bot on Apple TV Plus, followed by the Midnight Boys on Sunday night with their Last of Us finale instant reactions. Daniel and I will have our takes next week, and the Midnight Boys, Pugh, Pugh, will be back next week as well with the Mission Impossible final reckoning reactions. And of course, Howsebar will be revisiting Rogue One,

later this week and doing their deep dive on the Last of Us finale on Monday. You can, of course, contact buttonmash at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. And now it's time for a nice substantial chat with video game and TV writer extraordinaire Tom Bissell. There will be some indoor spoilers in this conversation, though mostly of the, if you see in Rogue 1, you kind of know what's going to happen in Andor variety. But I don't want to spoil any Endor plot points for you. Of course, you should be watching Indoor regardless of whether you want to hear this next segment. But of course, you will want to hear it because you're a loyal button mash listener and because

Tom's a fascinating guy. So let's talk to him. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need Weather Tech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those WeatherTech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer.

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18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. This episode is brought to by Nass Energy. Introducing new Nass Energy Grand Prix Guava for those that want to be fueled up and fired up with a hundred-bound hour tropical tasting power. Ignite your taste, start your engine. Shift your flavor to high gear with new Nass Energy Grand Prix Guava. Hit the street, grab a can, and get after it. Well, I'm joined now by Tom Bissell, author of such works as a Slate article called I Can't Believe I spent $1,500 on Rock Band 3, a Grantland article called Press X for Beer Bottle on L.A. Noir, and relevant to our first segment today, an unreleased pilot for a TV adaptation of a book about ID software called Masters of Doom. He also, more recently and famously, wrote the three-part series finale of Andor. Tom, this is probably the first.

first time anyone has introduced you by highlighting those first three credits. So I'm sorry and thank you for being here. It is incredibly exciting to be here, big fan. And I have never publicly discussed the $11 million home movie I have on my computer that is the Masters of Doom Pilot. So we can talk about that here. Yeah. Yeah, this could be the day. ButtonMash exclusive, breaking, or you could just leak it, let the internet finally see the Masters of Doom Pilot. Maybe we'll get to. that. I could have said that you're the author of the book, The Disaster Artist, or that you co-developed the TV series, The Mosquito Coast, or any number of other credits that might have sounded more impressive to most people. But I wanted to establish your qualifications to appear on

this video game podcast by citing some 15-year-old blogs. You go back away. So you also wrote a book about video games, Extra Lives, Why Video Games Matter, and you have written for many games in many prominent franchises, including Gears of War and Uncharted and Battlefield and Batman. So we'll begin with Andor and then we will transition to video games. So you've explained elsewhere how you got the gig. You got a new agent who was also Tony Gilroy's agent. She put you in touch. One two-hour Zoom call later, you're in.

That is some excellent agenting. I can't imagine, though, a more exciting or intimidating professional opportunity. than this. And granted, the first season of Andor was not out yet. So you didn't know how acclaimed it would be. But still, you're going into a room with three other guys, Tony Gilroy, Dan Gilroy, Bo Wilman, who are either literal brothers or who have worked together for years, including on the first season of Andor. And you're an accomplished writer in your own right. But man, the imposter syndrome had to have been strong. So did you feel like this was the Gorman front talking to Cassia and Vell in Sinta?

No, and I'll explain why, because I'm a practitioner of stoicism. And one of the things Marcus Aurelius stresses is learning how to control your emotions and not let your emotions dictate your behavior. Also a Jedi philosophy, yeah. And did I walk into the Andor our writer's room thinking, holy shit, these guys are way better at this than I am. Of course I did. But at the same time, rather than allow myself to shut myself down and freak out,

and poop the bed. I decided to turn all the emotions I was feeling and instead of feeling intimidated, I willed myself to view it as an opportunity to learn. And that made me excited rather than scared. And, you know, learning little tricks like that you can do for yourself, whether it's through stoicism or cognitive behavioral therapy, whatever brand of self-health you want to slap it with, I've found, you know, especially since my Hollywood adventure began, learning ways to not psychics, yourself out and view every opportunity is a chance to learn something has been very helpful for me, and especially in a business where so many things happen that are beyond your control. Learning to just roll with the punch a bit has been helpful, and that's certainly something

that I had to talk myself off the ledge at first. It helped a lot, and I just went in there like, I was the junior partner, you know, and I remember after a few days of the writers room, I said to Tony, Tony, I'm I'm really worried like I'm not coming through for you right now. And because he is such a great leader and a good man and a good boss, he said, in so many words, I didn't hire you because I expected you to be as good at this as we are right now. You're doing great.

You're doing exactly what you're here for. And all the remnants of anxiety I felt just kind of gently left me. And it just shows you how, you know, smarty is and how good he is with people. And it's one of the reasons he's a great writer. Always nice when someone lowers the expectations for you. Takes a little bit of the pressure off. Not expecting you to be a great podcaster, Tom. So don't worry about it.

We'll see how it goes. Give me the rest of the hour and we'll be buttoned match with Tom Bissell after this. I don't have a co-host officially. So potentially the position is open. But it sounds like being in that room was an eye-opening experience. And I can't imagine that it wouldn't have been. I mean, I don't know whether Tony is ever going to do a master class. so that we can all partake in his wisdom.

I guess the masterclass is on Disney Plus streaming right now. But I know you've said elsewhere that the finale was assigned to you because there was just more set in stone story-wise for those episodes than some of the earlier ones, given their proximity to Rogue One. And of course, Tony is backstopping you. It's not like you're going to write something and it's just going to make it to air without anyone ever looking at it. But still, you're the new guy and you are charged with taking

this thing home. So given that you're a stoic, I guess that didn't face you whatsoever. But a normal person might potentially have been faced by that. I wasn't faced by it. The outlines were so good and the story was so good. And I was sketching throughout my tenure in New York, like scenes that were coming up. And very few of those scenes, as you say, wound up, like just going off to Steylon and Denise Goff and just being performed. But I felt pretty confident. I felt pretty good. Everyone, not everyone.

I've seen a few comments, you know, when I'm unwise enough to wait into them about how thin my screenwriting career has been. But I've been, you know, working in television for close to a decade at this point, and not everything has come out. But you get a lot of experience, selling shows and developing shows.

And I've written, you know, probably close to, a dozen pilots at this point. And so I didn't come into this like a babe in the woods. Like I've got my battle scars and I've been around the block. So even if my IMDB is not as obese as someone like Bose, I didn't come into this as like a total babe in the woods, I would say. When Tony brought you on, he described you as a very big Star Wars fan. And in another interview, you talked about how seeing Star Wars and theaters in 77 is literally your earliest memory. How did your, you're, Star Wars fandom developed from there. From the very beginning, oh God.

Well, let me just clarify one thing. Tony referred to me, I think, in the Hollywood Reporter, as quote, almost a kind of Star Wars nerd. Now, compared to Tony, I am a Star Wars nerd. Compared to a Star Wars nerd, I'm just like a normal person who's seen all the movies, you know, like, and who did once win a game of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit without missing a single question.

However, I digress. That was my, you know, I was a movie guy. Like, I played all the movies, played all the video games. I didn't really, I'd never played the role-playing game, you know, from the late 80s, early 90s, which so much of Andor's DNA comes out of... I just wrote about that, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I read your piece about that. That was great. I meant to forward that to Tony. I should have. I don't know if we saw, but I will. And played other games, watched other movies. So it was a constant sort of presence in my life. I think like most people, I was in my mid-20s when Phantom Menace came out and didn't care for that at all.

and did not love attack of the clones. And the light sort of on Star Wars went out for me for a little while. And, you know, my interest in it has waxed and waned. You know, there's a period in my life where Star Wars meant more to me than anything. I was a kid then. But it was my singular obsession as a kid. And growing older, I always maintained intense fondness for it. But right before we left the writer's room, I asked Tony for any last,

I gave him a very nice bottle of bourbon. he's a bourbon drinker out of my and i asked him for any last bits of advice and he just looked at me and he said forget it's star wars and it was the best advice he could have given me he's always telling actors don't play the costume and he was telling me forget it's star wars and i think what he meant by that was we're telling a story about our characters just remember that and it turned out to be excellent advice now had i been asked to work on season two of and or after the first season had come out and gotten all the acclaim. Like, what have I, would I have been so Aurelian or Stoic?

Possibly not. But the fact that the shows were, my drafts were written in the vacuum of the show's eventual rapturous reception, I mean, was very helpful because it cannot be overstated the degree to which no one knew what was going to happen to this show. Lucasfilm famously doesn't test stuff. They don't put anything before an audience until it's actually. revealed. It's very much a gut instinct kind of company. And I was biting my nails in the days leading up to it. Because I think you probably saw all the like Blandor, nobody asked for this.

And I just like to make a plea to all the fans out there. And the next time something comes up that you don't find instantly interesting, step back and remember like and or, you know, remember your initial reaction to this show about a spinoff character and a spinoff. And just remember like, things can care them any number of ways and, you know, calibrate your enthusiasm, as part of guys says, but also calibrate your suspicion, I think is a more helpful thing for fandom to hear. Like, just let things be and let them roll out and be open enough to willing that you don't know what something's going to be like. Yeah, I'm always willing to give something a chance and keep an open mind. I was not intrigued by the initial premise particularly either, but then I heard Tony Gilroy, and suddenly I thought, okay then. And then a trailer comes out and you see some footage,

and suddenly this is one of my most anticipated shows. And you had seen it. You'd read the scripts. You'd seen private screenings of the first season, not in their final form, and you didn't know how they would be received, but you knew it was great from having seen it. And so I wonder whether that made things easier for you, knowing what the show looked like, more or less, knowing who you were writing for and what the tone was and seeing it on the screen, would it have been much harder for you to come in in season one when all of that was still to be determined than it was for you to see sort of the template before you set finger to keyboard? It's an excellent question, and I'm not sure I know the answer.

I'd like to think that I've been lucky enough to be in season one, I could have hung with those guys, but I think season one was just such a radically different process and I don't think Tony knew what the tone of the show was yet I've heard him talk a couple times that it wasn't until daily started coming in that like and I think the first few I may have this wrong but I think they they basically shot for a week and then just started over have you read this like the first because the tone they didn't they didn't land on the tone

right away yet and it took, you know, a false start there to land on it properly. And you can't say this often enough. This is a totally suey-Generes thing for this franchise. And it's a totally suey-Generes thing for IP storytelling in general where you take a franchise that has the tone Star Wars is traditionally had, the trappings is traditionally had, and like just radically rethink and transform it. I mean, can you think of another example where someone has done a refurbishment this thoroughly. I can't personally. Gears 5. Flaught are you. We'll get to that. Yes. And so it all seems like a foregoing conclusion to us now.

Yeah. But I think we need to just recongraduate everyone at Lucas film who took the chance on this and Tony for seeing it through and that and that and Zana and everyone who worked on season one to make it what it is. Could I have thrived in that environment? I think frankly, I did not have the experience to have stepped into that particular situation and been able to maintain my stoic composure to the degree that I did in the second season. So I think it would have been much rougher seas and far more, the ship would have been far more capable steered by someone like, you know, by very experienced people like Tony and Bow and Dan on the writing side. I mean, we're not even mentioning the hundreds of other people that ship. And it is even more marvelous,

I think because of the narrative constraints, which has been somewhat frustrating for me at times as a Star Wars fan, just knowing that we're working within these narrow prescribed windows and this has to happen and that has to happen and it can't go too far off track. And this could have fallen prey to that even more than most because it's a prequel to a prequel.

And of course, we know what we're building up to Rogue One and particularly in your episodes where you did have to do a lot of groundwork laying to tie things together so that we could go seamlessly from episode 12 to Rogue One. What do you think was the key in Andor and your episodes specifically avoiding that trap of just feeling like, gosh, there's only so much we can actually do here because we know where this person has to be and we know that this can't happen. It's just rare, I think, for something to feel like its own thing. And better call Salas may be the best comp. in the sense that everyone thought,

do we really need this? Do we need a prequel, given that Breaking Bad was this masterpiece? And here we're taking this sort of ancillary supporting character, and you're telling me that this is going to be brilliant. And then, of course, it was to the point where it displaced. Yes, arguably even better.

And again, you take a Vince Gilligan or you take a Tony Gilroy, and maybe that's how the magic happens, and it's tough to repeat. I do want to ask you about that later. But what do you think the key was, at least for you, if you don't want to generalize about,

how can I make this interesting, given that we know roughly where it's ending up? The thing I learned from Tony and Dan and Bo, hearing them talk about character and narrative choices that you're making as the dramatist, is just truthfulness. And making the people behave in ways that feel real. And Tony said something,

he said this before in interviews, and I think he may have said it in the room, but something along the lines of, drama is the slow building towards something that is both surprising and inevitable. A lot of writers can do a surprising conclusion. A lot of writers can do an inevitable conclusion. But doing them both at the same time is the trick. Now, I was slightly boxed in because I had this whole puzzle box element to solve

of making it feel like it connected to a 10-year-old movie, but not in ways that felt miraculously convenient or discordant. And so I've said, you know, before that there was almost an element of math in pulling that trick. But whenever I got nervous about the mathy qualities of trying to line everything up, I just tried to remind myself, just make the people do truthful things. And if it was a thing that delighted and surprised me in the moment in the room when we were talking about it, and then when I was trying to transform it from our room outline to the first drafts of the scripts, I was always asking myself, does this feel truthful, number one?

Does this feel like these people? And am I honoring their intentions as fictional characters? And does this feel like, I didn't want like direct winks at Road 1. I more like wanted to build a slightly canted driveway up to the garage door of that movie opening up, you know? And there's a couple of things I got a little cute on that Tony sort of smacked me back down, None of which I can recall right now, which I probably shouldn't even brought it up. But I remember like a couple two overt winks at Rogue and Tony was like, you know, not doing that. So I learned, you know, early in the drafting that subtler the better, the more surprising the better.

And, you know, I've talked about this, Bo's idea to make Bail Organo the antagonist of the last episode, which is the only thing that allowed me to feel confident about beginning my draft. that episode, taking beloved bail and making him Cassian's antagonist. That felt interesting, just automatically interesting, because I think he's been

portrayed as this loving, decent man, but here he's in a new context, and he's going up against his rival spymaster, whom he really disliked, and I thought, okay, that's juicy, that's teeth, that feels surprising

and it feels inevitable. So that's a good illustration of the deeper digging you have to do to get past your sort of rough draft ideas of how to make something, quote, interesting. And you had this gift of in that first scene in Rogue One with Tivik, where Cassian gets the tip about the best star and Galen Erso. And he says, well, he doesn't hear Galen or so. He supplies the Galen. He says, Galen or so, is it? Which seems like such a throwaway line now in retrospect, but was so handy for you. because then it enables you to build in, oh, he's heard this information before. This is just confirming it.

The whole last arc on that. And the other thing is they're building a weapon. He's like, what kind of weapon? And just the way he says that also leads me to believe he knows it's some kind of, and the thing he says is a planet killer. He knows it's a super weapon, but a planet killer is new information. And Galen Erso is confirmation.

So those are the two things that I had. this this this stunned planet killer line that Diego has and his his recognition of the name urso and like i said the puzzle elements of it were really fun it's just it's how to do a prequel right not bending over backwards to to fillate and luxuriate in the thing you're prequelizing but just taking subtle cues from it and making it feel organic and that was you know that was really all we just tried to do Just make it feel real. And like many people, I went back and rewatched Rogue One, of course, after I finished Andor, and I wrote about that and some of the epiphanies and how it feels different now.

And it is somewhat jarring to go from Cassian and Andor to Jin being sort of the star, although not that jarring, as I noted, because it was always an ensemble series, even though it's called Andor, he's often not the focus. And in fact, in your first episode, he's not even in it. So it's not that different. But was that one of the things that you attempted to do before Tony smacked you down? Was there ever an effort to call out gin in some way? I mean, I think it works perfectly the way it is, and you would have had to show other things to make that make sense in sequence.

But I wonder whether there was ever an acknowledgement of gin in some form in a draft. We certainly talked about it. And I think I pitched in the room in the Wheel of Fate that ends as Draven sitting there looking at a holo of gin Erso's face. turning around, but there were costs to that. Tony didn't like it because it wasn't leading us. It wouldn't felt emotionally honest, you know, like was that frosting or would that have been protein? All of those wheel of fate spokes feel like logical summations of where these people wound up. Perrin drunk in the morning and a space limo, Dedra locked up. Clay is Mona Lisa's smile as she looks at what the rebels have built. Saw Guerrera sort of like looking out upon the foreboding.

of his own death. Krenick knowing that his secret is out and he's just waiting. All of those things are the show all rushing to its explosion point, right? And what was Jin Erso really going to give you other than the Leo DiCaprio meme of pointing at the screen? And I just felt it, I think Tony thought, and he convinced me, that it would have felt like pointless fan service rather than, um, augmenting stuff we were already working with.

It's funny that you refer to the frosting and the protein. Those are toniisms that it seems like even down. I have so many tonisms, though. I've so many tonisms. Listen to interviews with him, he's huge on the food metaphors, the protein versus sugar. I think he referred to the last episodes as a pizza delivery. He's talked about things as paprika. He has talked about being on the menu, how it's a great meal, but you don't want another steak on top of the steak you already ordered. It's just very food-centric.

The last time I was in New York, we went to Gramercy Tavern. So he knows his good restaurants, too. So I would say that my brain is mostly comprised now of Tonyisms when it comes to this stuff. I called the And our writer's room, Gilroy University. And, you know, I'm a happy half-graduate of that school. But the funny thing is that Tony's scripts don't really read like anybody else's. You pick up a Tony script and you know instantly it's his, it's his, script, even down to like just the syntax of them is just so him. And so I was trying, you know,

often when you're doing writing for someone with like that singular of a voice, you're trying to like ape it and mimic it a little bit. I even got it down to like double spacing after periods because Tony, God save him double spaces after periods. And I literally train myself to double space after periods just so he wouldn't have to do the find and replace thing, which he does everyone else's scripts. But what was so funny is that after I moved off Andor, like, all the, like, Tonyisms just crept into my writing in weird ways. And they've been shockingly hard to dislodge. So all style is a mixture of the first five or six writers you ever imitated, you know, basically. And I've stopped fighting a lot of the kind of the Gilroy syntax, not that I could ever do it as

well as he does it or, but just little ticks that he has have slowly infested my, own screenplay writing. Yeah. Not a bad guy to emulate. No, exactly. That fan servicey aspect that you mentioned and the temptation to resist that, I think other Star Wars, other franchises fall prey to, Tony's non-fandom has been credited in

the large part for that. He doesn't have that history with the franchise or reverence for it. And so bringing you on as a guy who did have a deeper attachment to Star Wars. Now, obviously, the Lucasfilm Story Group is, is as. his disposal and you can get any answer to any hardcore nerd question that you ever need. But was your fandom of help in the room or was it a hindrance at times or neither? A little bit of A, a little bit of B. I'll reveal for the first time publicly here that I argued at one point for an emperor appearance. Oh. In a hollow, just a face in a hollow and Tony shut it down so fast.

It was like I threw a horned toad onto the table in the Soho Grand's top floor suite. He just shut it down fast. And, you know, I came into this fairly Star Wars brain. And I remember when I first read the scripts, I wrote Tony a long email how much I loved them. But I also said, you know, one thing I just found myself longing for was a little bit more overt connection to the mothership. You know, like the mothership of the franchise. And he, you know, didn't, you know, in talking about it, he said, versions of this about actors who come in with reverence for the franchise. He says it's beautiful,

but it's not helpful. And that's, I think, the best thing you can say about this kind of reverence for a franchise. It can be beautiful, but when you're trying to make something, it's not always helpful. And, you know, I've loved a lot of Star Wars stuff made by super fans. Like, a lot of it's great. I think what we have to ask ourselves as fans of Star Wars, is it a saga or is it a world? And I think that's the question that is going to consume people working in this franchise for the next several years is like, is this a saga or is this a world? Andor suggests that it is a world and it's a rich one, but I don't want to lose the saga aspects either. I think Star Wars has to be something that is a vehicle to tell stories in rather than a genre. And that's what I think, Andor

maybe helped liberate it from a little bit. Star Wars is not a genre unto itself. It is the potential home for all sorts of genres. And that's exciting to me. I agree very strongly with that. And I've also lamented that some other Star Wars series that have been made by some superfans and some which I have quite enjoyed have not had writers' rooms. And it just seems to me that that can almost never hurt, that there's probably a version of Andor that's just a Tony Gilroy solo project. And he just does the whole thing soup to nuts and it might kill him, given all the admin

and all the other responsibilities. But he's doing final passes on the scripts. And so maybe there's just a solo, attour version of this. But I have to think that having other writers and other voices bringing their own ideas and their own perspectives can enhance something that even Tony Gilroy is starting with a very firm foundation on. And I guess it would be somewhat self-serving for you to say, yes, of course. It is very helpful to have Tom Bissell in the writer's room. But it does seem to me that just diversity of voices and thought and backgrounds and, and all the rest, no matter how brilliant, no matter how expert someone is,

it just has to help ultimately. I think so. But I think a writer's room is exactly as good as the people that are in it. I don't think writers' rooms are good in and of themselves. That's why it's so crucially important when you're in the position to put together a writer's room is you just have to really be judicious about the kinds of people you get in there. So I used to teach creative writing. I taught creative writing on and off throughout my late 20s and up to my mid-30s.

And I like in writers' rooms and games and TV shows, very similar to the writing workshop dynamic, where when you're in the position of power, if you're the professor, you're the showrunner, you can never be certain why people are saying things. Is it to impress you? Is it to curry favor? Is it to seem smarter than the – like, so there's – there can be a Vipers Den quality in certain kinds of writers' workshops or writers' rooms. And good rooms don't have that. Good rooms are like bracingly without ego. And the Andro writer's room was, there's some big egos in that room, but nobody, nobody lorded over anyone else, you know? Even like, I was shocked at how deferential is not the right word, but how accommodating they were to me, the least experienced, least acclaimed writer in that room within television. None of those guys that published books, God damn it. that quality of true exchange and true communication that seems to be about the work and doesn't have all this psychopolitical, you know, grossness wrapped up in it.

That to me is key to putting together a good writer's room. Are writers' rooms good because they're writers' rooms? No, writers' rooms are good and helpful because of the people you put into them. And they rise and fall on that quality alone, I believe. I'm imagining Tony joining a video game writer's room with you someday. Oh, my God. He would. I was out of that room.

Now I am the master. Yeah. How many video games has he written? How about that, Tony? But you wrote and edited these scripts, what, three years ago, right? So when did you see them in their final form? Or did you even before you just saw the episodes air? When did you actually experience this?

Tony sent me the final versions of them, I don't know, maybe a couple months before shooting started. And I never got to go to set for various reasons. I was very sad about that, but I was going to go when my episodes were going to shoot. There were some logistical stuff, couldn't go. Then I was going to go again. But then the writer's strike was looming,

and it was going to be like, I was going to be stuck in London with this, you know, unable, like maybe with three days of set visit and then the strike would have kicked off. So I never got to. to go to set. So it was like a couple months before shooting, and I read them, and I, you know, wrote Tony back, like, you know, he didn't need my stamp of approval, but I was just basically like, my God,

thank you. These are phenomenal. And then I didn't see them again until, oh gosh, three months before the show came out, I got screeners, and that was my first experience. And, you know, I only saw my episodes. First I saw my episodes, about six months for the show came out, and then I saw the whole series. about two months before the show came out. That was it.

But, you know, watching those three episodes without, you know, I never saw Tony's final drafts of the first nine episodes. So I was kind of going into them blind a little bit. I knew what the story roughly was, but I, you know, I'd read Bowes and Dan's drafts as they were coming in. But at a certain point, you're just, you're locked out of the machine. It was just a revelation.

It turned out even better than I could have possibly hoped. Ten is one of the episode 10, which I think is the one that has the most sort of, me left in it after Tony's re-write. That's one of the things I'm proudest of having ever worked on. And I do think it's kind of an all-time or episode of television, independent of anything I did, just as a whole. I'm going to be very happy with that at some point when I'm getting to the end of things

because I'm just, I was very emotional watching it for the first time. You know, I'm not going to lie. Yeah, overwhelming. I think even people who didn't write it were, which means that you did your job. And that was, of course, the Clea and Luthan episode and the flashbacks and the backstory and the incredibly tense hospital raid. And that was all amazingly well done. And I did have a question about that, which was the first time I watched the episode, I thought, oh, Claya is Cassian's sister. And I'm not the only person who had that reaction.

And then I realized, oh, no, she's not. It's a different young actor and this and that. and there are various reasons why. But I did wonder whether you were intending to evoke that, or I think it's satisfying that he never knows where his sister is or if she is. And we're kind of conditioned to expect neat resolutions to these things and or very resolutely resisted neat resolutions and expectations. And so I think it works in that way.

But the Canari backstory and the sister, It's something I've always just wondered. I know you weren't there in the season one writer's room, but the original plans for that, or was it expected to lead somewhere else, or was there a way that this was all going to tie together? So was that even something you were trying to suggest, or was it just, hey, they come from similar backgrounds

and they have found their way to each other? The echo was a total accident. The rescuing by a parental surrogate and from dire circumstances didn't occur to me. Whether to go to Tony, I don't know, possibly, but it certainly was not on my mind. And, you know, once I saw on, you know, because I've been lurking in the subreddit, the end or subreddit for a couple years now. And once I saw the people, wait, Cassie and his Clay, sister, I just thought to myself,

oh, like, just like K2 and who else knows? Oh, no. Right. It's like, oh, no. Yeah. Dude, I think they were completely insane for thinking that. Yes, but also no, because there were these weird accidental echoes. So I kind of get how you get there, but I also think that if you know anything about the show, like, it just wasn't a trick that was in our bag.

As for the sister thing, we talked about it. Tony presented one possible scenario, another bar, cast going in, talking to someone, sorry, don't know your sister, he walks out and some indication that, oh, that is his sister. That was one version that got pitched out, but as I said elsewhere, no option rose to the level of our collective interest. And Tony, I think we just kept asking ourselves,

like, is this what the show is about? No, it just wasn't. Cassie has a guy who's traumatized into action by collective injustice, and it moves him to care about other people He starts the show as someone with a quest to make some part of himself whole to find this person he lost. And he ends the show as someone who has not only found what he lost, but he's created this huge surrogate family that he'll now do anything.

He'll sacrifice anything to protect. Yeah. That is a far more interesting story than a guy who finally finds his long lost sister. Because what happens then? Right. Yeah, it's Star Wars. brain. I mean, we're conditioned for siblings to be significant in some way and for everyone to be descended from someone famous. And that's just not the case here. And even in other things outside

the Gilroy verse or the Andorverse, you know, you have characters like Din Jaran or Jinn or so for that matter who came from similar circumstances and are just sort of refugees buffeted by the winds of war. And so I think it's satisfying that they met up anyway. I did always wonder about canary and whether there was going to be more there, because if I had been in the writer's room, I think one thing that I would have pitched and that Tony almost certainly would have said no to was that there'd be some kind of Death Star connection to Canari even, that you'd have to finesse the timelines a little, but that whatever happened there, whatever mining explosion or whatever actually happened was in some way connected to the early history of the Death Star.

And so the Death Star would have kind of governed Cassian's life from cradle to grave in Narcena, in his birth, in his death, that it all just would have traced back to the Death Star. But I always wondered because what happens after that scene where we see Cassian leave with Marva? Does he at some point say, hey, we left my sister back there, by the way? When does that conversation happen? And then do they go back? Did they not go back? Is she gone already? Did the disaster already happen there?

So I've always kind of wondered about the timeline there. But my read is that Marba, you know, she couldn't communicate with this kid. So he's saying my sister, my sister. And she's like, you know, just shut up, kid, have some more train. Go to sleep. Yeah. But my read was that they eventually did go back, found evidence of like, you know, some retributive slaughter on behalf of, I think it was the proto-separatists that were arriving there. It was the separatists before they'd formally broken from the Republic, which is really

confusing, but that was the only kind of the timeline dictated. Yeah. I personally think Marba actually went back and scouted this place and found, and that's why she tells him, you know, there were no survivors. You don't say that to a kid looking for a sister unless you know. Yeah. Andor just was so adept at tying up loose ends or at least the important ones and not really leaving me wondering anything that vital about a character or a plot line.

That was one where I've just always wondered and will continue to wonder, but it's not particularly important. And I did wonder, I guess, about the future of Star Wars, really, and what the effect of Andor will be, not just for Star Wars, but across all of IP, as you were saying earlier, because my old pal Jason Concepcion, he used to say that when a creator would play in someone else's sandbox in one of these pre-established universes, it's like you pick up the action figures and you have some fun with them, and then you put them back on the shelf for someone else to play with. And I've heard you deploy yet another Gilroyism,

which is that you want to leave more of those action figures there than you found when you showed up. You want to create story, not just use it. And so I think that maybe the worst impulse would be Andor was great and boundary breaking. Let's just make more things like Andor because that's exactly the impulse that Andor kind of corrected. And as you said, big universe, there's room for all sorts of stories.

and all sorts of genres. And so I do wonder whether we will see more Andor-esque takes on things. And some universes are maybe more Andor-esque to begin with than Star Wars is. But do you think that there will be copycats, whether within Star Wars or outside of Star Wars, that look at this and say, it can be done. We can break the mold and let's break the mold, even if by breaking the mold we're really in the mold of Andor. I know more about this than I can probably discuss.

I'm optimistic about the future of Star Wars. That's what I'll say. I'm optimistic. I think there's excitement to make stuff that is just cool. I hope people are taking the right lessons. Like I'm not, you know, I don't have this like insider's view of things. But, you know, you hear about projects and the works that some announce some not. And I'm excited.

That's what I'd say. I'm excited. Very intriguing. Very intriguing. All right. I think sticking the landing is somewhat overrated, as I've written before. I think we put too much weight on the destination and not on the journey. I think if you had completely fumbled your finale, I would still say that Endor was a great show

because of the previous 21 episodes. But I think that you did stick the landing. And maybe if we can transition to video games and I reserve the right to return to Endor, we don't get many movie slash TV tie-in video games so much anymore. But this is a question you probably haven't been asked in an interview. But let's say and or we're adapted into a video game. Wouldn't work. How would that work?

All right. It wouldn't work. Next question. Wouldn't work. The tone of that show does not translate into a game. Maybe some sort of story-driven, visual novel type thing. Perhaps that could work. Or maybe like a strategy game of some sort.

Yeah, but like Andor is deliberative. The violence is calibrated. It's not kinetic enough to be adapted into a video game. Like could you do like a Red Dead Redemption style kind of game starring a Cassian or Cassian Andor-like figure? Sure. But to make a game like that, you need to literally have 20 years of experience making open world games. Like you don't get to. make Red Dead Red Dead redemption right out of the gate. And it literally takes 20 years of experience

to make a game that assured and that narratively and gameplay design likewise calibrated. So I don't think the Andor experience is replicable in a game. I just don't. I'm imagining some sort of like 2001 Obi-1 for Xbox version of Andor where it's just kind of a generic action game. A generic action game that I remember playing that game. Xbox with that big fat controller. And my friend and I had been smoking dupies. And he turned to me and he said,

wait, how does an elective monarchy even work? And I remember, like, I had to put the controller down and we just thought for like 20 minutes. Like, is it, if it's an elected, if it's your elected, are you a mona? I don't. Anyway, that's my memory of the Obi-Wan game. Well, that's a good prep for Andor probably,

because I know what attracted Tony to you was not your Star Wars fandom so much as your experience thinking about insurgencies and rebellions and governments and such. So it all came out of a high conversation while playing Obi-1. Or maybe in an earlier era, it's some sort of Super Star Wars-style side-scroller where you're just hopping around Aldani, who knows. I could imagine an Indiana Jones in the Great Circle style game that sort of spies and puzzles and explorations centered on, but it still wouldn't exactly be like the TV show.

or it's true. And that's kind of what I wanted to ask. Fifteen years ago, you wrote about a GTA-4 mission. GTA-4 was your favorite game. Maybe still is your favorite game. We're the most meaningful to you in some ways. One of them, sure. Yeah. And you wrote that this mission turns narrative into an active experience, which film is simply unable to do in the same way. And it is moments like this that remind me why I love video games and what they give me that nothing else can. So 15 years, later, having worked in film and television, do you still feel that way? And if so, what do you think are the strengths of the respective mediums or the advantages that each one has that the other doesn't? When I started writing about games, I got very excited about the narrative possibilities

of them, really excited. I thought it was transformative and it was going to change the way we thought about narrative. And part of me still does think that. But I also feel like games have this, as I called it earlier, is that this kinetic angle that can only kind of degrade narrative. Like some subtle ways, some less subtle ways. And I'm not saying that's bad. I'm not saying that's bad. Games are about doing, you know, games are about doing things. And I have found the games I've been most interested in for at least the last half decade, very few narrative games really get under my skin anymore. All the games that I love are like, you know,

C of Thieves is probably the game I played most since the pandemic. But kind of shared world experience games where you play with people and you have like unscripted moments that just sort of a ride on the mechanics of the gameplay. Yeah, that's to me the thing that games do that is really genuinely exciting and what I go to games for. And there's a period in my life where I really wanted

like better written games and tried and failed to do that on my own, you know, writing for games. And then I play things like Disco Elysium, which have very high literary standards and very high quality. And I find that as much as I admire Disco Elysium, I also just can't get on board with it because if I want that kind of experience, I'll read a book. I mean, it's just it. Like, I will read a book. If I want deep explorations of character and like something that is just so immersive and thinking about character choices for days after I watch it, I'm going to watch a great movie. I'm going to watch a great television show. If I want immersion in a world with things arising out of my choices and my decisions and what I choose to

poke and prod as a curious person, I'm going to turn to video games. Every medium has its strengths and every medium has its weaknesses. Novels are really bad at car chases. video games are really bad at love stories because so often in video games, because of this kinetic direct experience between action and reaction, what do games default do most often? They default to violence. And violence of any kind, whether it's a beat him up or a shooter or a hack and slash chopping and shopping sort of RPG, it's a phrase I've coined and it's never caught on. Then I, you know, instead of a hack and slash shopping and shopping and shopping, shopping and shopping,

that kind of constant kineticism and the constant presence of violence kind of winds up a nulling a lot of narrative ambitions games have in ways that are subtle and ways that are not. And again, I'm not saying this degrades games. I'm not saying games need to have this respectable approach to violence. I personally love violent games.

I think they're really interesting and fun. But I also think that that need for Connecticut, is always going to make them a pale cousin to more overtly, narratively, focused experiences like our legacy media friends, television, and film. So it's probably long-winded and elegant answer to it, but I still love games. I still play them, but my evangelism for them has dimmed, and I think that's probably from having worked in the salt mines of them for a decade and a half. I kind of saw what the limits were. The limits both technically, but also the limits just commercial culturally.

Like having been in enough boardrooms with marketing and having been in enough design meetings where you realize the people you're making this game with, in many cases, are the kind of subreddit people complaining about everything. I just have a vastly more tempered expectation of what I can reasonably, expect from where games are going and what they can do. I remember, I think, you writing about GTA4 and how you only played in certain ways to respect Nico's wishes at times, or that if you wanted to go on a rampage, you would then not save that play because he's trying to stay on the straight and narrow.

And it's just not really something that you can do while also wrecking up a five-star wanted level. So I know what you mean. And, you know, we just talked about the new Doom game in the preceding segment. And they really went for it. And there's an elaborate story with factions and cutscenes that an enormous amount of work must have gone into. And yet, I think probably the majority of people who play that game are thinking, are thinking, let me shoot stuff with my shotgun. And the cutscenes are skippable to enable you to do that if you want to.

And I'd imagine that must be a fairly thankless task as a. a writer for a game like that where you know that you want this to be the main event, but maybe it's window dressing. Maybe, if anything, it's an annoyance for people who want to just get to the next level. And you've written for action games, and you were the lead writer on Gears War IV and Gears 5, a game I liked very much. And I'm sure there are plenty of Gears players who say, hey, I just want to kill Locust. So how did you find that you're able to integrate those two desires?

or did you conclude that you're not, and that's why you're a TV writer now? Yeah, no, no, no. I always said to my colleagues, they would get on me because dialogue that we'd have for a level that if you held down Rody Run, every bit of in-game dialogue had to be able to fit if the player were just sprinting through the level.

And I pushed back and push back, and I said, I'm not writing the game for people determined to skip the narrative. Like, that's not who it's for. If they want to Rody run through it and cut off the relevant dialogue, that's fine. That is their choice. But I refuse to write for those people.

Like, I refuse to write a game for people that are skipping the cutscenes. I just took it as if there are people that care about this world and these characters enough, I'm going to do my best to ground the things they are doing in the fun parts of the game to try to give them more context and make you care more about the people during the static moments. because, you know, look, the dirty secret of video games is that oftentimes cutscenes are there as masked loading screens. It's just like in Shakespeare when a fool comes gambling out on stage, he is there so the leads can change their costumes backstage. Cut scenes in video games are oftentimes there to hide the load. Does that mean you should try to do nothing with the narrative things?

No, it means you should try to be as engaging in human as possible. And I always viewed my job and the games that I worked on was to bring some sparkle of humor or life or just something that didn't feel like typical video game bullshit. I had varying degrees of success doing that. I'm very proud of Gears 5. That is a game. I wrote 99% of it by myself.

No, like 95% of it. It almost killed me. It was the game that made me want to stop writing video games because, you know, it was a massive game that we made in two and a half years. and at the end of it, like, we were all just wrecked. I wound up in an ER, strapped through an EKG monitor with my daughter crying. I'm wondering if her dad was having a heart attack because I'd worked like five or six,

18-hour days in a row and basically collapsed. Wow. That was hard, and the game audience is, you toil all of, like, here's the thing about gears. Like, no matter how good of a job I did or didn't do, no matter how well I did, It wasn't going to matter because it was just gears. Like, I could have written one of the greatest game scripts of all time. I'm not saying I did.

In fact, I'm saying I didn't. I could have written, you know, the most sensitive, thoughtful script of all time, and it doesn't matter how well I would have done because it just would have been gears. And I have a really funny story about this. I've never told this publicly. I wrote a lot of the multiplayer stuff for Gears 4, like the in-game comments that they're saying.

I also wrote almost all of the multiplayer stuff for Uncharted 4. That was basically one of my big jobs in Uncharted 4 was, the multiplayer script, which is one of the funnest gigs I've ever had. I love the multiplayer in that game, and I love working on it. I remember when Gears 4 came out, some reviewer said something like Gears 4 tries to do the quippy, fun dialogue that something like Uncharted 4 has, but unfortunately, the coalition doesn't have the chops. And I was like, yeah, if only I were a good enough writer to work at Noddy Dog, you know, and that's, and that was sort of like a light bulb went off of my head at that moment is that the game audience is so, forgive me, myopic in many cases that they don't

understand, like, individual teams and people are making these things. And there's no such thing as a bi-aware game. There's no such thing as an EA game. There's no such thing as a naughty dog game. These companies change and churn and different people within them rise and fall. All the work you're ingesting is the accumulated product of a bunch of individuals working together. And like having this monolithic view of how things get made or how they receive, it kind of drove me crazy. And the game audience is way more prone to this thinking than most. Now, Star Wars has this problem too. I think it's a problem in nerd culture, for lack of a better phrase, generally.

And I find it, I confess, somewhat wearying, but I've also learned to tune most of it out. Yeah, I know what you mean. I've always objected to the idea that you have to turn your brain off to enjoy something, is something people have said about Star Wars, too. The whole, it's not that deep, bro. It's a story for kids. And it can be for kids. But that doesn't preclude it also having depth to it and layers to it, or at least to contain multitudes and contain Andor as well. And indoor was kind of the proof of that. Right. Exactly. And that's why kids responded to the original Star Wars because it was what it was. Right. Exactly. Now, you've also written for, I believe you worked on what remains of Edith Finch.

is that right? Which is one of my favorite games and one best narrative at the game awards. And so that's a game that people would probably point to and say, ah, here is the potential for narrative in video games. And yet you, someone who wrote for that is also still saying that the potential is limited in this medium. So what did you learn from that game? If you're someone like Ian Dallas, if you're someone like, if you're one of, like Davy-Reedon, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, there is the game. autore and they are making generally interesting stuff. Now, Ian is not the only person

who made that game, like a bunch of other people made that game too. But look, having been on the inside of Edith Finch and saw the struggles that that game had, and when I walked away from it, I walked away from that game thinking, this fucking thing is doomed. Really? It was a very difficult development process for

that game. And the fact that it turned out to be, A, so effective and B, it's a one-button game where the mechanic changes like basically every eight or ten minutes, and it has to be a mechanic that isn't too enough where you just grasp it instantly.

Like, that game is a triumph of design. And it's not, that game was, just trust me, it was not easy to make. It seems effortless, but it was an impossibly frustrating challengey game for the people that were making it. So this is where, you know, when you know where the bodies are buried,

this is what I meant about my enthusiasm for, where games could go and the potential of them, it's obviously very high. There are some incredibly cool experiences, but, I mean, man, the bloodletting to get there is spectacular, you know? And it's really hard. And games are, I mean, everything's impossible. Like the thing I learned about when I show ran Masters of Doom,

which we should probably talk about at some point before we go off here, but it was the first thing I was in charge of, right? And what I realized about the difference in making a game and making a TV show is when you have a crisis on a game, it's a big meeting. Everyone's there. We're cutting this level. And you're thinking of all the knock-on effects in your head. Oh, God. But it's always a problem that exists like three to seven months down the line.

So it's a crisis and it's going to have all sorts of reverberations, but like it's manageable within the context. When you're making a TV show and there's a crisis like that, you have to deal with it literally in minutes. It's like we just lost the location that we're going to be filming at, you know, it was 6 a.m. call time. We just lost location as 3 in the morning. You know, what the fuck do you do? You know, that's the kind of crisis you have on a TV show. And the stress of that was overwhelming.

And, you know, I almost wound up in the hospital on Gears 5, but had, you know, masses of doom gotten a go-ahead and a series order of COVID hadn't killed it. Like, I really don't know if I would have been able to handle the stress of that show in 2019. Yeah. Because I knew a lot less than than I do now. And working so hard on things that never see the light of day, that comes with the territory in video games and TV. Yes. You worked on Concord, is that right? Did you write for Concord a little bit? So that's another story. This is crazy. This is absolutely insane. So I was working for a narrative during the writer's strike. I was just trying to cobble together a living. And my dear friend, Pierre Charette, has a wonderful company that he,

you know, works for various developers on the narrative side. And I was working on something with him. And he's like, look, you know, you're expensive. And we have to throw some more of our contract work at you. There's this thing called Concord, and we want you to work some on it. And so I got all these design docs, and it sounded like I was reading them all. Like, the world building was incredible. And I'm reading it all. And I'm like, oh, is this some, like, some massive, mass effects style RPG? And they were like, no, it's a hero shooter. And I was like, what? Yeah.

So I wrote a bunch of lore for Concord, and I don't think a single word of what I did when I made it in. Exactly. Right. So that happens. These labors, just, you know, whether it's Masters of Doom or Concord or things that probably aren't even on your IMDB page because they didn't even get to that stage, people will never know about.

And that's got to be rough. And if you want to talk about Masters of Doom, you can. But just one place where video games are going, I guess, is the big screen via adaptations. So Hollywood can't get enough of that. And some have been acclaimed and some have been successful. And so I wonder, A, having written for both, do you think TV is a more natural home for video game adaptations than film? And also, how is games writing regarded by movie or TV writers? Do people look down their nose and say, oh, you wrote for games?

games now that you've been in both worlds. I think the game is, like, whether it's suitable to TV or film is entirely dependent on the project. I've been circling a favorite game franchise of mine for years now, multiple conversations about my adapting it. Some of them gotten pretty far, but then there's the pullback. Is this a show? Is this a movie?

Is it animated? Is it live action? So there's something that would be a real beloved arrow in my quiver if I were ever to finally land this thing. and a big part of the slowness is just trying to figure out where does it belong. And that's a conversation that happens way above my station. How are games regarded in Hollywood? I think people are genuinely pretty interested in it, you know, that I have this background.

Because look, I have a very strange career. I'm aware of that. All it suggests is that if someone is willing to pay me, I'm willing to write it. And luckily, I've never... really had to write anything. I've never written anything only for money, but, you know, I've written a lot of things for money, but never only for money. Luckily, I've been, you know, I've gotten to work on things that I'm genuinely interested in for the most part. I think people are very curious about it. When I tell people, like, the Gears of War Five script,

I think had to have been like 2,000 pages long. The entire two seasons of Andor was like 1,500 pages long. There's a sequence in Gears 5 where Kate Diaz, the heroine, walks through a, village and I wanted to fill that village with chatter and conversations and and and just just the chatter script for the village was a hundred pages long which is the length of a feature film script you know and and that just gives you a sense of just the scale that you have in game writing which is why if and when game writers unionize and I absolutely think they should the WGA rules about how often you can touch a script and all that stuff has to be radically rethought for how game writers can reasonably unionize because just the workflow is so incredibly different. You know, there's all sorts of WGA rules about

judging when you touch a script, how often you touch it, when you get paid. Like there's a point like where people are like, hey, can you do another pass at the script? And it's like, I can't. You know, I literally can't. It's like against union rules. You can't just go in and fix something. It's very complicated. And there's all. all sorts of reasons for this, and it's to protect us from being exploited. Any game company that had those kinds of rules about, like, writing and how it is treated would fall apart instantly because, like, the model of creation is radically different. I don't know why I'm talking about unionization and game writing right now,

but it's just illustrative of this, like, how the workflow is different, the way things are conceived are different. Like for a show, you write it, you find someone to direct it, you fill it out with crew, and then people go off and make it. With a game, you write a single proof of concept scene, come up with some story levels,

and then everyone goes off and starts making it, and then you write the game as it's being made. Turns out that's really hard to do. It's very hard to do that coherently. It's really hard to do that effectively. You're constantly looking at, into the future. You're constantly dealing with feature cuts and things that you based

entire segments and story turns on having the creative director come to you and saying, sorry, we can't do that. It's gone. And then just like, you know, I'm saying things that a million people who've done this have said before. It's just constantly reeling from uppercuts

and karate chops. Whereas on a TV show, you know, more or less people buy into a vision of something, whether because they genuinely like it or they desperately need a job, who knows, they're never going to tell you, then you go off and shoot the thing that is on the page. And you have a lot more power as a result of that as a writer, especially in TV, less so in feature

films. And in games, you as the writer are just another person wielding a hammer. You're all making a house and you have a hammer and you're neither less nor more important than anyone else on that team. And it only seems like you are because so much of your house is going to be outward-faced. to the public. So different expectation for how much you're supposed to produce, different pay scales, certainly make a lot less as a game writer than you do as a TV writer. And you, you know, arguably work a lot more, but I think the stress levels in TV is, I thought games were stressful, but the,

the stress I've had working in television, you know, thank God I'm a stoic, are extremely high, extremely high. Hopefully not emergency room level at least. But lastly, What are you playing these days or what have you played lately that you've liked or what are you looking forward to playing? Steve Thieves. The game that's taken over my and my friend Mitch Dyer's life for the last couple of years is Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the asymmetrical multiplayer horror game. I've played like 400 hours of it. I just love it. It's my favorite multiplayer game of all time.

I've really gotten into Kingdom Come deliverance, which I really hated it and thought it was frustrating and awful. And now I can't get enough of it. And I play it for a little bit every evening. It's one of the weirdest, most delightful, most absorbing games I've ever played. I don't understand how it was possible. I don't understand. Well, I do understand how it's possible because, you know, they're making it in Poland, I believe. And it's just a real...

In my family, we call it medieval peasant simulator. And my daughter is like, Dad, let's go play medieval peasant simulator. She likes to watch me play it. She loves fantasy RPGs. And I've been watching her play The Oblivion Remastered and watching her live like a it's 2006 again has been really incredible watching her experience that game. So, yeah, games still have, there's a lot of juice in that orange for me to squeeze anymore, but my early writing on them had the zeal of an evangelist.

And now I think I'm a bit more of an embittered, defrocked bishop. You're jaded. You've seen too much and written too much. Yeah. Well, I could talk to you for many hours more. We'll have to make you the co-host just so I can keep peppering you with questions. and so we can get into Masters of Doom in depth, but I enjoyed it. We didn't even get to talk about it.

I know. I guess it's symbolic of. Jesus Christ. I can't just leak it at some point. Yeah. Enough time is past. Now that you pronounce that you will. They'll have a smoking gun of me promising to leak it.

But it is really a drag that this thing. So many people work so hard on that I think is really quite good. I watched it for the first time in a while a couple weeks ago in years. Yeah. And I just thought, God damn, this is a really good pilot, you know? It's got of problems, but it's a story that needs to be told because the punk rockers of the 90s were game developers. And they created the world that we now live in. And I think that it was and is and should be a story that someone should tell.

I wrote something during the pandemic when people were running out of programming. I said, open up the vaults, release the pilots. We will watch it. And who knows, maybe some of them will be good and we'll end up picking them up years later. So I still stand by that. Let us see. We had the option to do that. We had the option and we did not take it because it was a question of the show needed X $100,000

to be colored and be scored properly and to finish the VFX. And they offered us a number much lower than that X number of hundred thousands of dollars. And so it could have gone on a streaming service in the dark days of COVID with no guarantee of like, what if a bunch of people watch it? Does that mean we're going to get a series? And it was like, I don't know. So it was putting on screen for people to watch something that would have not been our vision. And with no kind of calculus for future exploration of continuing the show, it seemed like a sucker's deal.

So we didn't do it. Well, I've read you for years. So it was a pleasure to talk to you here. You're an inspiration to me, not only because we share a lot of interest, but because I really value variety. in my work in terms of subject matter and medium, and very few writers have your range, as you alluded to earlier. So I can't wait to see what you make now that people hopefully come calling even more thanks to that shiny Andor finale on your resume. So thanks so much, Tom. Let me repay the compliment before we go. I've read your stuff for years too,

and your Andor recaps were, I think, the best anyone wrote. And I turned to you for insight in a show that I understood from the inside out. That is testament to your analytical skills and your wonderfulness as a writer. So back at you. Wow. Thanks so much. Okay, you can be co-hosts now. It's official.

You pass the audition. Thanks, Tom. Thank you. Well, unlike Luton, I have no desire to make it stop. But I think we used up all the perfect. Thanks to Tom for all his time. Could have talked to him a lot longer. Kind of glad Tony overruled him when it came to including Palpatine because I got a

whole article out of the fact that Andor didn't include Palpatine and why I thought that was a good thing, but Tom did justice to an extraordinary series, and I forgive him for killing Lonnie because he feels bad about it, too. People fail, Luton said. That's our curse, but no one failed in the Endor Writers' room. One thing I'm always struck by is how many happy accidents there are in the writing of a show. Cassian asking Cyril, who are you? And Crennick asking Jin, who are you in Rogue One? Sounds like something that would have had to be planned, but no, I've heard Gilroy say he didn't even make that connection. But if you produce enough protein, as Tony would say, then the viewers will be nourished one way or another.

They'll bring their own seasoning to the meal. And we'll be bringing you more podcasts. When Clea says, what a bitter ending, Cassian says nothing's ending. And neither is the Ringerverse or But Mash. We'll be back on Thursday with our Last of Us episode six gamer guide. You can contact us at Ringervis Gaming at gmail.com. Thanks to Devin Rinaldo for producing this episode. And thanks to Arjuna Ramgapal for his senior podcast management.

Thanks to you for listening. And as Luthan always used to say, know your way out before you go in. We always do. And to quote Cassian, get us out of here.