Triple Click - Baldur's Gate 3 And Multiple Endings

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

What's the deal with multiple endings? Does the gang save-scum and look up which ones they're going to get? Are multiple endings better than singular ones? And is this all just a thinly veiled excuse for Maddy, Kirk, and Jason to keep talking about Baldur's Gate 3?One More Thing:Kirk: The Vorkosigan Saga (Lois McMaster Bujold)Maddy: The Marvels (2023)Jason: Red Dead Redemption 2LINKS:A More Civilized Age plays Knights of the Old Republic: https://amorecivilizedage.netKirk’s review of Red Dead Redemption 2: https://kotaku.com/red-dead-redemption-2-the-kotaku-review-1829984369A great reading order for the Vorkosigan Saga: https://bookriot.com/vorkosigan-saga-reading-order/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Congratulations, you've finished Triple Click. Unfortunately, due to all the times you've fast-forwarded through the promos, we're ending the podcast forever. What the... That's not the ending that I wanted to... Hang on a second. I'm just going to reload my save here. All right.

Congratulations, you finished Triple Click. Thanks to your steady devotion to our show, we are going to keep making it for many hundreds more episodes. Welcome to Triple Click, and what a relief you finally got the good ending. We're talking about multiple endings in games this week and about interactive storytelling in general, so make sure you're staggering your save games, and let's go past the point of no return. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello. Hello. It's us. Welcome back. We made it back. Hello, my co-hosts. Just in time.

The triple click. We're clicking away out of screens, just in time. Yeah, we were all clicking feverishly. I can't believe that 2023 is almost over. That's kind of crazy. It is kind of crazy. It had so many games in it. It does seem like it just started. We barely managed to play them all. And then you look at like, so the Game Awards nominations just came out and they posted most anticipated games and that is a bleak list. You're like, you know, there's going to be a lot of time to catch up on your backlog next year. Did Hollenite Silk Song get nominated for that?

Well, so what the hell? Invalid category. Because that could still be out this year in theory, I guess. Still anticipated by me. What if the Game Awards, they announced it as a shadow drop at the Game Awards. Yeah, secret Christmas gift, just for Kirk Hamilton. That's probably not going to happen, but you never know. That would be wonderful.

You never know. Well, speaking of gifts just for Kirk Hamilton, actually not just for Kirk Hamilton, gifts for all three of us, you can become a member of Maximum Fund to support our show and make it possible for us each to buy gifts for the members of our family and loved people in our life. No, I mean, we'll probably be able to afford gifts even if you don't become a member, but we would still really appreciate you becoming a member of Maximum Fun and supporting the creation of this show, which is a totally listener-supported show. We do not sell ads. We do not have sponsors.

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We didn't really get into spoilers on our main feed episode, but we're going to get into spoilers. We're going to talk all about it and kind of about Spider-Man in general. We're kind of living in a couple decades dominated by the Spider-verse, and there's a lot to say. So that's going to be really fun. to be out at the end of the month, but there are also a ton of bonus episodes going back all the way to the beginning of this show. You can listen to just like so much

cool stuff. So become a member at maximum fund.org slash join. It's a great time to do it. And thank you so much to all of our members who support our show. Yeah, I really like spending money on buying things and getting things. And I also really like spending money to support people, whether it's like charity or supporting things I like. This is the best of both worlds. It's true. Both of those things. Yeah, you support us and you get a present from us every single month. It's better than that. So, Maddie, what are we talking about on this episode?

We are talking about multiple endings. Oh, man. Why? Because I'm playing Baldersgate 3. And I just wanted to talk about Balders Gate 3, but also about how stressed out I am about which ending I'm going to get in Baldur's Gate 3. And that is the ending for each of my individual best friends, my party members in Baldr's I love them all.

I want to protect them all. If one of them dies, I have to reload. And also if one of them gets some sort of unpleasant outcome in life or makes a decision that I'm not sure they really want to stick with. And maybe I think I could convince them to do something else than I reload. And I do that in equal measure with reloading in order to improve my battle conditions, probably even more often, actually. I'm saving just because I want to see what decisions I'm going to make or what I'm going to influence my party members to do. So I've been thinking a lot about games with multiple endings and about how Balderskate may be one of the best games with multiple endings that I've ever played.

Well, you haven't seen the endings yet. I haven't seen the end yet, but I've already seen multiple scenarios play out in multiple different ways, even though I'm, I believe, nearing the end of act two. I won't say specifics, but I'm pretty far in. I've played it for many, many hours. And I've watched multiple different kinds of conversations unfold. And I feel like I know the characters really well. And I kind of know what they do in different scenarios because of that,

even though I feel like I've experienced multiple alterals. reality with them that didn't play out in the reality that I've decided as canon and that I've enshrined as my save going forward. It's like I have this hidden arcane knowledge of decisions they would have made. Bing! Kirk here looking for an elegant place that I can just sneak in to put this Bing since I'm guessing that some of you out there are listening like, hmm, endings in games. What spoilers are they going to be in this episode? So don't worry, there aren't actually really any big specific spoilers for the endings of the games that we talk about on this episode. We talk broadly about games like Baldur's Gate 3, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Eldon Ring, Bloodborn.

We get into some specific stuff that happens in Act 2 of Baldur's Gate 3, but nothing really big or about the ending of that act, definitely not the ending of that game. I talk some about the structure of the ending of the game Dredge, but I don't get into specifics. So again, not really many specific spoilers in this episode. Aside from The Clue movie, we do spoil the final. ending of the Clue movie. But otherwise, you should be okay unless you're super sensitive about spoilers in any of those games. You just don't want to know anything about them for some reason, or you still really don't want to know anything that happens in Baldur's Gate 3. Other than that,

you should be fine. Okay, back to the show. Bing! So I've been thinking about multiple endings, and I wanted to ask you to, let's talk about Baldur's Gate for a second. Did you two reload a lot and did you Google for multiple endings, or did you just kind of let things lay where they lie? Let's start with you, Kirk, because you beat it ahead of any of us. So what was your approach emotionally? You don't have to spoil things, but just tell us your emotional approach to the multiple endings of Baldersgate 3.

I just want to say up front that I enjoy these kinds of episodes because they give this very transparent look behind the scenes where one of us is just playing Baldersgate 3. It is like, okay, look. I know we already talk. about Motherskates 3 a lot, but I want to talk about it some more. So what's a topic we could pick? Listen, it would be interesting.

That's how we roll here at triple-click. We talk about what we want. To Ballerskate 3, triple play again. It's a very, that's, it's very reminiscent of Kataka, where you're just like, you know, I'm just going to find ways to blog about whatever I'm playing and enjoying right now. Which I think is a very good way to make this kind of show because you talk about what you want to talk about. That's right.

You're not necessarily beholden to anyone else. Yeah, I thought about endings towards. the end of the game. But I would say, I think of Baldur's Gate 3 as a series of endings, and I know we're talking about multiple endings specifically on this episode, but I really think of act breaks and branching decisions in general as their own kind of endings, because I think that a lot of RPGs structure their narratives that way. Mass Effect 3 is a very famous game because there was this big choice at the ending that

kind of didn't take into account all the little choices you'd made over the course of the trilogy and that was very disappointing for a lot of people but when you look at the actual structure of the game it's like I don't know it's like a chain with a series of sort of bulges on it right and each bulge is a little narrative that you go through and then you kind of move through it and there's a series of different branches that you take and then it all reaches you know it kind of comes back together to the main thread at the end and then you move on and that's kind of how that game was structured. It's how a lot of RPGs are structured. And it's how Baldr's Gate 3 is structured pretty much, even though there are a variety of different endings that you can get

based on the decisions that you made over the course of the game. So I would say that it was when I started really getting into the mind flare stuff, which again, not going to get into specifics, but there are a few big decisions that you make about your main character and the mind flare parasite that they have in their brain that do feel like, okay, this is going to impact the ending. what exactly does this mean? How far can I push it? And I did look a few things up because it just gave me anxiety not knowing.

I went into the game thinking, oh, I really just want to let it ride, let it play. But then there were just a few times where I get little tips from people. For example, in Act 2, people would say, bring Shadow Heart with you. You really want Shadow Heart to be with you

during Act 2 of Baldur's Gate 3. And I was really glad that I did because she actually wasn't in my party. And it wasn't like I got a different ending exactly. it just was the whole story played out so differently with her there that I was really glad to have her there. So I do find myself looking up things like that in general and definitely did for Balders Gate 3.

Yeah, I find that actually, like, at least for me, multiple endings don't make a difference. Like, I don't really care about the ending of the game so much as I care about the things that I'm going to see throughout the game. And so I want to make the best decisions as I go to kind of maximize the number of surprising, delightful, interesting things that I can potentially find. And so, like, there's a decision.

I'll get into specifics because, like, we're far enough away from release, and this isn't a huge thing. But in act two, you get to this kind of enclave called the Last Light Inn. And as soon as you get there, you have to protect this lady from these attackers. And if they get her, then her spell that she uses to protect me in is dissipates. And the entire inn turns hostile. Like, everybody in it turns evil. This was the quest that actually motivated me.

to suggest this topic. Yeah, it's a good one because that my first outcome just kind of playing, like letting it ride, was she died. Yeah, that happened to me too. I played, by the way, I played most of the game, a good chunk of the game, like, either before it was coming out or too early for guides to be out. So I didn't actually, like, there was nobody I could talk to about this because I got an early copy. And they also nerfed that encounter a little later. That's true. Yeah, that's true. They made it easier. I played it when it was really hard to protect her. It was so hard.

And then I was like, I cannot believe how brutal the outcome of this is and had to really like finesse the encounter to get her through it. And I think that it is easier now. Yeah. So as that was happening when I got that outcome, I wasn't really thinking to myself like, oh, I wonder how this is going to affect the ending way down the road. Because that doesn't really matter to me like what different series of slides I see at the end of the game. It's more like, oh, this is going to suddenly my Carlac character quest is gone because the blacksmith went hostile. Suddenly, Jihira can't be recruited. it anymore. Like all these, all these consequences, that's what I want to avoid. And so I reloaded because of that. So yeah, I'm, I'm with you, Kirk, and I think you hit, you hit the note on the head by talking about it as more of a series of endings. But I really, I don't think that's a Baldur's Gate three specific thing. Whenever I play any sort of game. No, yeah, no, for sure. Choices and consequences, I personally am thinking a lot more about like, okay, what is going to be

most interesting up for the next 10, 20, whatever many hours I'm playing versus whatever like series of of slides, as I mentioned before, I'm going to see at the end, which I care way less about. Which actually, personally, I could not care less about, like, Mass Effect 3's ending being lame. I just cared more about the rest of it and the main experience. But, yeah, I'm also a weirdo in that, like, for my entire life, I've been, like, playing RPGs and, like, big games up until the final boss,

and then I, like, quit beforehand for some reason. I don't think that's that weird. I actually think that's pretty common in that a lot of people will relate to what you're saying. And I should have maybe said multiple. paths because we aren't just talking about endings here. I also agree there are multiple paths to take. And in Balders Gate 3, much like Mass Effect, there are kind of different paths you can take for each of your companions and you can choose to fulfill certain parts of their quest or not. You can ignore some of them entirely and not help them or even let them die if you just don't like them.

I try not to do that. I keep everybody alive even if they don't like me very much. I I'm a people pleaser in this game, apparently. And I'm trying to fulfill each person's loyalty quest, if you will, in the best way possible. But, yeah, I've already experienced some anxiety about that because I've run into multiple situations with various characters where I'll be doing a quest for them or with them. And then I'll make a decision they don't like. And one of my own companions will turn on me, which is kind of like a new. sensation for me and something I really like about Baldersgate 3. Like I would have loved if Dragon Age or Mass Effect did this.

I mean, maybe they did it. I just never triggered it. I don't think so. Dragon Age does a couple of times, but only at certain points. Where that's possible. The original, I mean, going back to Byerware's first few games, the original Baldersgate one and Baldur's Gate 2, both had kind of, you couldn't get every companion. Because if you tried to, the good and the evil ones would fight each other at some point and

like have at it. So you kind of had to go with a good playthrough or an evil play through. Balders Gai 3 is structured much differently. But, yeah, I mean, there's always been definitely, like, kind of choices in terms of, like, even Mass Effect 1, like, you have to pick, you have to pick, what is it, Caden and Ashley are the two choices? Yeah, that's for, like, plot contrivance reasons and not really because of a conflict between them. Yeah, that's true, that's true, a different sort of thing. But it's still the same idea where they wanted to present something early on in the 2010s in the case of Mass Effect,

where it would seem as though you were making this choice that would affect the entire outcome of multiple games. And that, I think, has a lot of appeal, even though there is also that tension whereby most people want to see every ending. And so I don't know if that's ever intended as like a trick to get people to play a game multiple times. I don't really interpret it that way.

And something like Baldur's Gate where I feel like it's used more effectively, I just see it as a way. for the game to actually fulfill what the Jasons of the world want, which is being able to get a fulfilling story no matter what you choose and having those choices be somewhat obfuscated or having some of the string pulling be somewhat obfuscated such that you can't always even tell, oh, this is clearly the choice I need to make in order to get the more interesting story or not even just the good ending, but the more fascinating ending or the more written out

version of this path. Like, I like it when I can't tell if that makes sense. Like, I like it when that magic is preserved. And I'm just making choices that I think will result in an interesting story. But I'm like, I don't actually know. And that's so exciting to me.

Like, that's, that's a, this is just where I say, Paulers Gate is a cool game. It's a really cool thing. It is. I think there's a, I think one distinction we can make for this conversation is the difference between a character ending and an overall narrative ending. I kind of weigh those differently.

Who is your party in Baldur's Gate, Maddie? Your main party? Yes. So right now it's Shadowheart, it's Asterian, and it's Carlac. Although Carlac, I'm already playing as a half-work barbarian character, so I don't really need Carlac, but I just like her so much. You can respect her for free. That's crazy.

Make her a cleric. Make her a wizard. I know it's crazy. I made Shadowheart a paladin, and she ruled. Oh, that's amazing. Shadowheart is basically a cleric for me. I also put Gail in the party sometimes because I just think his story in line is fascinating.

So I kind of like to hear from him now. Will, I just can't get him to work combat-wise. Competitively, I can't make well competitive. I think he's a cool guy. I just can't figure out how to get him in there. And Laiselle, I never met in the first place. And I can't find her. Oh, you didn't meet him?

I know, I don't have her. Oh, that's so funny. I know. Oh, wow. And she hasn't popped up at all. Not yet. That's interesting. Laisal's an interesting one because she has a really big conflict with Shadowheart early on in the story that can lead to one of them, I think killing the other one if you don't talk them out of it.

So that does kind of harken back. Much like Will and Carlack, which I did successfully get them to not hate each other. Yeah, I think that one's a little easier. Shadowheart and Laisel really have like a pretty serious conflict. But you can talk them through it and you can kind of say. save scum until you can get them through it. So you don't really, it's not like forcing you to lose one of them. That was the same party incidentally that I went through the whole game with and really liked it. And I found myself much more invested in the character endings than I was

in the overall story or even my main character and her decisions regarding mind flare stuff and like, you know, this whole kind of overarching story. And I really liked the ending that I got for Carlock in particular. I won't go into specifics. But it was a bit of sweet and kind of complicated ending that I thought was really cool. And I've realized, I think that I like bittersweet endings a lot more than I used to. So two CD project games, both of which have multiple endings, are The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. And now I've played through all of cyberpunk and I've gotten every single ending in that game and have kind of revisited the Witcher Three and just kind of thought about it some. And both of those games have some very bitter sweet

endings that I think are really good. The first ending that I got in cyberpunk 2077, again, no specifics, but there aren't really any happy endings for that game. You play the whole game, you have this virus in your brain, it's overriding your consciousness, there isn't really anything you can do about it.

I know, I know, we've drawn a comparison before. Yeah, it's similar. It's similar, though there are ways to get, you know, there's like, there's magic in the world of Baldur's Gate. It's a little more, there's more hopeful, you. Yeah.

Where in cyberpunk, it's very clear from the beginning of cyberpunk. Like, you're screwed and no one can do anything. And it would be like a big betrayal if you got to the end of the game. And someone was like, all right, actually, cool, I can just delete it for you. We got this. Just run into an elite hacker who's like, yeah, that's easy. Deleting Keanu Reeves from your brain, I can do that. Right.

And then you can just roll on and do side quests. And it also wouldn't quite work because the personality that's overriding you, Johnny Silverhand is Keanu Reese's character. And he's like written. to appear in so much content in the game that if you could keep playing after the ending and he was gone somehow. I don't even know how they could do that. It would just be really difficult from a development standpoint.

So there are all these different endings, but they do all have some level of bitter sweetness to them. They added a new one with the DLC. That's even more of a just like, it's a real mind fuck. It's a great ending that I think of as a kind of alternate universe ending because the first one that I got was so good. But I really did come down on there's some sadness. like with the romance that I chose in the first ending that I really liked in the end because it made sense for the characters.

And I think that is what I wind up really valuing in a good ending to one of these games is did it make sense for the story and the characters that I played alongside? And just to mention The Witcher 3 one more time really quickly, it used to be, there was an ending that I thought of as the good ending and an ending that I thought of as the bad ending. But I've really come around on what used to be the bad ending because there's a bittersweetness to it. but also it just feels truer to the overall story. And I think that if I read a book that ended with the quote unquote bad ending to The Witcher 3, I actually think that that was a pretty good ending. So I've come around and actually appreciate how it's bittersweet and leaves you feeling a little bit complicated.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. And sometimes a good ending feels almost fantastically good. I can't think of a good example right now. I don't know. I guess the dog ending in Silent Hill, too. We'll go with that. sometimes a silly ending or a good ending is just like, why is this even here? Like, is this just here to appeal to some part of me that wants to laugh at this and forget

how painful and intense the rest of this game was and just let me see the credits roll and feel good for a second? Like, that can sometimes feel almost like too neat or too pinned together in a way that is unsatisfying in the long term. I think some of the Eldon Ring endings feel that way, like where you become the golden Lord or whatever and you just are like sitting on a throne and it's like congratulations you win. You're like, what?

That doesn't make any sense. Everything should be burning right now. Yeah. I don't remember. Man, I have to look up exactly what I remember. All the Eldon Rings endings being kind of fucked up. I could be misremembering one that you're talking about. Yeah, I'm really wondering about that DLC.

This is at an episode where we talked about what we think the Eldon Ring DLC is going to be, but that does feel like an opportunity for them to kind of twist. some of what that world really could become and what could change about it, which I think is also like a fun way for games to make amended endings like Phantom Liberty, as we just talked about, is another example of sort of iterating on the idea of the endings in cyberpunk and like offering more options that are also bittersweet. The concept of multiple endings has always been kind of strange to me because on one hand it feels like, okay, well, these are games. Like they unlike linear storytelling

and give you the options in how the narrative is going to proceed and so of course there should be multiple endings but it also feels to me as a storyteller that like the ending is kind of the most important thing that you're writing to the entire time and if you're giving multiple options

how can you really have that coherent a story and I was thinking about I was just looking at Maddie you prepared this kind of this set of show notes and you talk a little bit about like there's one category you detail a couple of categories of multiple endings, and there's one category that's multiple endings

where you're supposed to see them all, like Undertale and Near Autumada and Outer Wilds, where in all of those games, you are playing through multiple times in one way or another, but the idea is that there is one complete ending at the end of all that. And that, to me, those stories are so much more powerful and impactful at the end of the day

as stories as opposed to kind of like character vignettes than the ones that are the bigger RPGs with like the multiple endings. And Kirk, to your point, I mean, I think those, the characters, that's where you can kind of get into really interesting narrative payoffs with multiple endings. But like very few of these games that are these big bulky RPGs with multiple different endings based on like even Witcher 3 have like endings where you're like, ah, yes, this is a great story that is leaving me teared up at the end because it's kind of like, oh, okay, that's one possible way this story could have ended, as opposed to this kind of like author narrative that is like,

yes, this is the story I am telling. Outer Wilds, this is a story about rebirth and the universe and what it all means. And if there were multiple endings in that game, in a traditional sense, not in the actual sense. If there were multiple endings to that game, it would not be nearly as effective. Same with Undertale, which is such a brilliant piece of art in large part because it's like, okay, these are the quote-unquote multiple endings, but this is the story we're telling. And once you get to that point, you know this is the story. And it's so much more meaningful and emotionally resonant because of that. As opposed to, I've never felt that way about like a Mass Effect game or any of these other games where it's like, well, you could have the A ending or the B ending or the C ending.

It's a good. Romance this person or that. Yeah. Well, that, well, no, the romance, this person, that's like the character vignettes. Those, those I think are more interesting. I'm talking about the overarching, overarching story. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that actually Cyberpunk and the Witcher 3 are the two exceptions to that, but there's like the exceptions that prove the rule. It's very, very hard to do that. I haven't finished either of them, granted, so I should say that.

That's my caveat. It's very hard to do what you're describing very well, and that's what makes those games special. I mean, I think the Witcher 3's ending is incredibly good, and I really, really liked the ending to Cyberpunk too. But those are, yeah, they're unusual, because it's super hard to do that with that big of a narrative, to wrestle it across the finish line

in a way that both feel satisfying and also winds up with the characters you got to know in the character that you played. And I think the ending, the thing that you're talking about where a game builds the idea of multiple endings into the story that it's telling,

that's a really important thing to put your finger on. And one of the strengths of that style of storytelling is that it can, it really lends itself to video games. It's not exclusive to video games, but it lends itself to games. I always think about the Clue movie.

which was written to have multiple endings. And initially they released it in theaters where depending on which theatrical showing you went to, you got a different ending. But then once you watch it on home video and that's really, I think, where that movie became a cult classic anyways when you watched it at home,

you would get all the endings one after another. Or on TV, I watched it on TV on Comedy Central. Sure. I love that movie so much. I love the endings. And these little title cards come up and they're like, well, that's how it could have ended in this funny xylophone music plays. And then like another, and finally at the end it says,

but this is what really happened. Yeah, they pick a true ending there. And the true ending is everybody did it. And it's also like a joke riff on, it's a riff on like murder on the Iron Express and like some of those stories. But also it's making fun of Clue itself, Clue the game.

Of course, this is a movie based on a game. And it's really cool that it is kind of playing with the fact that when you play Clue, Mr. Green could have done it or Mrs. Peacock could have done it. Ms. Scarlett could have done it like anybody could have done it. like anybody could have done it. So why should we have one ending? And then all the endings make sense with the story.

So looking at some of these games that you're talking about, Outer Wild is a great example where you can finish that game multiple times and have incomplete endings where you don't have all of the answers and then go back and find more and get another ending. And the more times you see it through to the ending, the more you get a sense of this cycle that the game is reflecting. I actually just played Dredge all the way to the end, which is a recent game from this year.

again, I won't say anything specific since it's pretty recent, but there's one ending that you'll get if you just kind of follow the objectives in that game. And it doesn't make a whole lot of sense because there are a lot of clues about things that are going on, but you get this one ending. And it's like, okay, wait, what? Like, what just happened? And it spits you back out right before that. So there's kind of a moment where you make the decision to go into the ending. And then it spits you right to before that. And then you can kind of look at the map and think, okay, so how can I figure out what's really going on?

And then if you follow a couple of like breadcrumb trails around, you sort of assemble the clues you need. And then there's this kind of like, oh, you realize what's really going on. You realize what that first ending meant. And then you see another ending that's very different and kind of puts the whole thing in context. And that's really cool. Like that's some really neat interactive storytelling. That's great storytelling. Okay.

So what you said is making me think, let's get back to Baldur's Gate 3 for a second. So the kind of purpose, I think we're kind of, there are a couple of. different, there are a lot of purposes for making a game and telling a story in a game, but to kind of distill this to two for a second here. There's like the, we are going to kind of play a game together and tell an interactive story together versus I am going to tell you the player a story. I, the author of this game or the director of this game or the writer of this game or we, the writers of this game. And I think Baldur's Gate 3 from the outset is very much like, we are the dungeon master and we are telling a story with you. And it's a

best, one of the reason it's so successful is because it's the best ever version of a video game to do that. A lot of games have tried, have tried to be the D&D style, everything from like the original Baldur's Gate to Skyrim to like D&D games way back in the 80s and 90s. And this game is the epitome of that. And so I don't think that it's like ultimately trying to tell a story that is really going to resonate with you. It's giving you characters that will go on different paths and you'll resonate with them in different ways, but it's not like trying to say something with the story. Whereas the games, it sounds like Dredge is one of these, the games that are more kind of author narratives, the undertales and near automata's of the world, or games with just a single ending that don't

do the multiple ending thing. I think those games are trying to say something, say something with capital letters, capital S, capital S. And I think that has always resonated more with me personally, because I've always just like preferred it when a game and author, a storyteller is being like, this is what I'm trying to say. That has always had more of an emotional impact on me. Not that I didn't love Baldur's Gate or anything, but just in terms of storytelling, I've always found that more impactful. Yeah, I agree in the sense that I really like when a game is presenting me with a character that I don't have total ownership of. So Baldur's Gate 3 isn't doing that much as I love it and it being the reason why we're here. But something like,

it's the reason we play video games. Holders is the game that brings us together today. Yeah, I'm thinking more of something like cyberpunk 27 where I would say that V, like, you can kind of change me's personality a bit, but there's a sense to who they are as a character. Yes, like Gerald is yet another example. Like Gereld is yet another example. Like I think cyberpunk and the witch are probably in a similar category here where there's some choices that you can make, but you're making them as V. And the endings need to make sense for this specific. person and who they are and they do to me. And that can be really satisfying just from a role playing standpoint for me. And in some ways, it's actually less stressful for me because I'm not thinking to myself like, okay, I'm completely inventing my whole character in Baldersgate and then I'm thinking about what she's going to do at every juncture, just whole cloth. I'm like,

okay, well, I've invented this whole person and what do they think about Shadow Heart? I don't even have to think about what I, Maddie think of it. I have to think about my freaking character. And, oh, my goodness. Whereas in cyberpunk, I can just be like, well, I kind of know V. I get a sense of what she's like. And I think I know how she would react to these scenarios and also what would make her happy in perhaps a bittersweet way, but at least a way I can understand. And I really like that feeling of having that chance to take on a role that's nothing like you. And also that you didn't try to come up with yourself at all either. Like, yeah, you get to design V's physical appearance, but you don't really get to pick their personality that much.

You kind of have to go with the flow. And I think that that is a really fascinating writing exercise just for somebody else to kind of put out into the world to be like, okay, I've designed this story. And I kind of wrote V. I guess I need to use the plural here to describe all the people who wrote V. Valdez's Game 3 has that too. If you play is one of the origin characters instead of your own character. I've been listening to a more civilized age. Play through Knights of the Old Republic, which has been really, really fun to revisit that game.

This is like a 2003, 2004 Xbox game made by BioWare, said in the Star Wars universe. One of the funny things about it is that Austin, the host, is obsessed with protecting his co-hosts who haven't played from spoilers. So he's just constantly like, don't look at anything on Wikipedia. Which is just funny if you've played the game. But listening to them go through it with a kind of modern eye is just really cool. I recommend listening to it. I'm sure a lot of our listeners already listen to them. What's so fun is how unsophisticated a lot of the choices that you make to define your character are.

It kind of is part and parcel with the light side, dark side dichotomy that is itself uninteresting until you get into Night Sisters in the gray areas and how the forces may be not as binary as we were told in 1977. The whole Star Wars conversation we've had a million times. And you can really see it in a way that also plays out in similar biore games of that era. Like Jade Empire has some stuff like this too, where some of the decisions you can make in Jade Empire are like full on like just apocalypse, fascist extermination, like killing just thousands and thousands of people. Like such pure evil. They call it the kick the dog choice, which I think is a common way of referring to it. It's just like, are you going to kick the dog? Are you going to save the dog?

And, like, video games used to think that was the height of sort of, you know, interesting, interactive choices. But I don't think anyone plays Cotaur and goes dark side just because, like... Hold on. Not all video games. There was Plainscape Torment in the same era. That's true. That's true. I suppose, BioWare games in particular. And also Bethesda, when they started getting into these sorts of choices. Like, I think Fallout does the same thing where you arrive at Megaton. This is something we talked about when we were talking about their games. Yeah, you just immediately explode the entire.

And it's like people always call back to that choice because it's so dramatic. But when you actually look at it, it's really silly and it's very childish. Like, do you nuke all these innocent people or do you not? Like, that's not actually a meaningful choice for your character. Yeah, I mean, it is kind of, it's funny, D&D had alignments back then so you were either good or evil. It kind of plays, it goes all the way back to those roots. And then D&D. And I was going to say, like, Baldur's Gate lets you make some absurdly homicidal choices too.

Like, I know we're kind of saying it gets away from it. But Baldersgate gives you gradients. Well, Baldersgate gives you a bunch of different gradients of how you can, like, even that first goblin versus druid, like, versus T-flings. Like, there are so many permutations there. But my point is more that just like those early video games are kind of drawing from the D&D roots of like, do you want to be good or do you want to be able? I mean, Cotor literally is D&D.

Exactly. Yeah. It is based on D&D. Byerwares, all of their games at that point after Baldersgate won, we're like kind of following that same model, which is why it lasted for so long into Mass Effect and Dragon Age. too, where it's kind of like, do you want to be good or do you want to be evil? You want to be a Paragon or a renegade? Yeah, right?

And you even get the icon letting you know. I'm going to stand up for Dragon Age because Dragon Age is different from Mass Effect in this way. Dragon Age does not assign morality to your choices. And in origins, there are a lot of times where you're stuck with a complicated choice. And it makes that world feel much more interesting and makes your ending feel much more interesting. No, yeah, you're right. You're right. I should say, yeah, it was Mass Effect more so than Dragon Age. No, you're 100% right.

Thinking back to those games, they were a lot more complicated. It's like a really illustrative difference, though, between those two series and the people who wrote them because not assigning morality to a choice winds up really helping the story. Oh, yeah. And that's the case for Baldur's Gate as well, which I think Fifth Edition just doesn't have alignment, if I'm remembering correctly. Right, that's what I was getting at, which is I think that like it kind of coincided with video game storytelling in RPGs getting more interesting and complex is that D&D got rid of alignments completely for Fifth Edition. Yeah. Yeah, so then Baldur's Gate 3 winds up putting you in these positions,

these conversations that you're having with people that all feel like they're informing your character and thus the ending that you would get and who they are. Are they power hungry? Are they sympathetic? Do they get along with this person or that person? And like each little decision, there are so many of them. And they're very subtle and nuanced. It's a lot of good prompt writing as well since your character doesn't speak.

It's just sort of there were very often, very often there would be an answer. that was along the lines of what I wanted to say. I think we talked about this when we were first talking about the game. You don't wind up in a position where you're like, I think you're wrong or I think you're totally right. Here's $5,000 and there's nothing else. There's one in the middle that's like, I need to hear more from you about this.

Please explain or something. Like the kind of thing that you would actually say in that situation. With the exception of romances where it's either like, I am madly in love with you or go kick rocks. I'm curious. Maddie, actually, how has romance been for you? because they've changed it significantly since I at least played two. They have.

They have. Man, I'm so excited to replay this game. I feel like I'm playing it in such a boring way that I'm not going to have a good answer because I've pretty much been romancing Shadow Heart from the very beginning. Not because I like be Maddie into Shadow Heart. I can't even imagine that. Why not? She's such a babe.

She is a babe, but I don't know. I guess I'm just not into chicks who have amnesia. Just call it my weird thing. But I guess I just thought, much like Jason, I was like, I think this will be an interesting story because this is a character who doesn't know anything about herself. And she's like really hard to trust and doesn't trust others and so on. So I think it'll be fascinating to try to romance her. So I've kind of been doing that throughout. And I just went through the whole gauntlet of Sharr passage with her and had to reload multiple times that I got to the end of that.

there are all these situations that happen where Shadow Heart tried to kill me because I said the wrong thing. But you know how relationships are? I guess what I'm saying is I am trying to romance Shadow Heart, but we haven't slept together yet. We're just, I mean, this is the funny thing about romancing somebody in a video game is that I'm like, in real life, we would have at least kissed by now. But I guess we're just really taking it slow.

And also we're getting real freaking deep with each other's religious views. Like we're skipping way on that. Well, it turns out, I mean, if you're significant other, like devoted to a god of murder and hatred and stuff. Yeah. You kind of have to have that talk. I have to have that conversation ahead of time. I'd be like, is this going to work out?

And like, I don't know. How do I talk her off of this? Our views compatible on this one? Well, you know, so sort of fitting this into our topic a little bit, I think that this was something they got wrong at first was that the romance storylines progressed much too fast. Oh, interesting. Okay. And so what I found in my playthrough anyways was I was like,

inundated with sexual interest from like every member of my party. That's amazing. That didn't happen. That's a very common, it was a very common, it was like a meme. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's came out that everyone is kind of coming up to you and be like, hey, you want to. That's changed. That's interesting.

Yeah, you want to go smash or what? And now it takes a little bit longer, which is cool. It is cool. It was so all over the place. Like, I think I had sex with Gail super randomly and then was like, actually, I don't know, man. Maybe I like Carlock and he got really sad about that. And then I wanted with not getting with anybody. Yeah.

But then it wound up being cool anyways because I had a long and interesting friendship with a lot of them. I still did most of the shadow heart romance because a lot of it was just a friendship. And you get to know her and she's like, you're so solid. I really appreciate you were there for me. And she has a really great story anyways. So I think it is a reflection of how a story really needs to be paced out at those crucial fulcrum points where you do make a decision. And also how hard it is to tell an ensemble story that's just about romance. interpersonal relationships because in Baldersgate 3, all the other people are aware of who

it is you're going off with during the Teafling party or whatever. And so they had to write so many contingencies into their script to allow for all these different possibilities. Like some characters don't care if you're sleeping with other party members and some really do. And it's just, it's so complicated and it all just completely fell apart for me. And I gather that it works better now. This seems like something they're probably still trying to tease out.

make work even better. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this in August and the game came out. Like, there's going to be a definitive edition next year at some point and it's going to be awesome because I'll play it. I'll play it again. I mean, I'm sure even Maddie, even the act three experience you have now. Because Kirk and I talked on the show before about how act three was pretty buggy and it had some issues specifically for me. For you it was. It was less for me. Yeah, less so for you. And it'll be the least so for me. I have like a quest that I got locked out of. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You'll have a totally different and better experience. So it'll be fun. And obviously we're going to do a beans cast on this game one day and like we're going to

dive more into it. But like this is game. And I kind of waited just by virtue of how many games came out this year. Like I feel like I'm having a great experience with Baldur's Gate, but it wasn't really planned in this way. I am really glad I circled back though. So hopefully I'll inspire more and then if they do DLC and more content, it would be super fun. So the one thing I'm, I'm going to do. And I mean, this is kind of getting at this is kind of getting at the multiple endings thing. I think the playing is the dark urge, you have a very different experience. And some people have pointed out that the dark urge almost feels like it should be the canon protagonist. I'm excited.

I've tried to avoid a ton of spoilers. Me too. I've a good idea of what the dark urge actually is. But other than that, like I'm excited to do another play through at some point, maybe next year, where I do the dark urge. And it seems like that's going to head you down a totally different path with a totally different interesting potential ending and stories. Yeah, like completely different. Looking forward to that. So Jason, do you want to just briefly explain with a darkerge?

courage is for people who have no idea? Sure. Yeah. I mean the, so when you are picking a character in Balders Gate 3, Dark Urge is kind of one of the origins you can select and origins being one of the characters. And it's the only one that doesn't actually correspond to an MPC that you meet in the game. So the only way to tell the Dark Urges story is to pick that. And the idea is you can kind of customize a character, but you wake up and you kind of have A, Amnesia, your favorite, Maddie, and be this like urge to murder things. And you can either give into it. You can either give into it or you can just kind of try to repress it

using dice rolls and tactics and stuff. And it makes for a really interesting story, but a very different story than the kind of standard path because you might wind up killing people. And then you'll learn things about yourself that are kind of connected to the main story in an interesting way. So yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what that's like at some point in the future. Here's one thought related to that.

I really like options like that that allow for a second play through to be very different. I also like the way that FromSoft games tackle this where you almost couldn't possibly get some of the things unlocked the first time through a game like Eldon Ring just because who could possibly know that you need to meet this one lady and get a talisman before you beat this boss because she'll be gone if you beat that boss. So you know about that stuff the second time through and then you can get some super crazy ending like I'm thinking of. But yeah, the embryos that you eat in Bloodbourne. That's a... Yes, in Bloodborn. To get the true ending is another great example of that. So I like those kinds of things because when I come back to the game for a second playthrough,

I'm kind of armed with more knowledge and can go for it. Though I do find with things like the dark urge, the longer time passes between my first playthru and my second one, the less likely I am to do something like that, because the more I'll want to just do it again. So if I, I think if I started Boulder's Gate 3 again right now, which I'm not going to do, I think I totally play Dark Urge. I do it. But if I wait until the definitive edition in a year or whatever, I feel like I worry that by then I'm going to be like, oh man, like, I don't want to like kill Carlac. I just want to hang out with Carlock and then do the exact same thing that I did the first time, the second time. Well, but that's a fun part about Dark Urge, I think, is that you can kind of, you can fight to repress those urges.

and like I wind up having a good play through. Maybe, but the broader point is that I tend to, the farther I get from my first playthrough, I tend to just repeat myself the second time through unless I'm going pretty shortly after. Because you just want to read the book again, as it were. Exactly. I just want to read the book again.

You say that, but you are also like, oh, yeah, I got all the cyberpunk ending. Yeah. Well, that's different. Because most of the cyberpunk endings aren't contingent on everything that you did up through the game. Oh, it's just at the end. Just right at the end.

Just at the end. Though there is one ending that's very cool, there's a super secret hidden ending that revolves around your relationship with Johnny. And it's actually substantively not that different from the other endings, but it is cool narratively. And it's just a little secret. And that one I looked up. And you do have to do a few things. You can kind of lock yourself out of that one. But even if you do, it's not a big deal.

And I like that approach generally to endings like that. Me too. I also feel like there's a lot more we could say about multiple endings. So maybe we'll have to play this hot topic again sometimes. If you downloaded this on an Android device, you're going to get a different last five minutes of this episode. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, it's different than Spotify. None of that is true. But maybe we will play this episode again at some point and do something different.

But for now, we're going to have to leave it here and take a break and be back with one more thing. Have you ever wanted to know the sad lore behind Chuck Echise's love of birthday parties? Or my Saturday mornings are reserved for cartoons? Or have you wanted to want to? to know how beloved virtual pet site NeoPets fell into the hands of Scientologists? Or how our former Mattel employee managed to grow Sega into a video game powerhouse. Join us, hosts Austin and Brenda, and learn all of these things and more. That's secret histories of nerd mysteries.

Now on Maximum Fun. I'm Yucky Jessica. I'm Chuck Krudzworth. And this is terrible. A podcast where we talk about things we hate that are awful. Today we're discussing wonderful. A podcast on the Maximum Fun Network? Hosts Rachel and Griffin McElroy, a real-life married couple.

Yuck! Discuss a wide range of topics, music, video games, poetry, snacks. But I hate all that stuff. I know you do, Yucky, Jessica. It comes out every Wednesday, the worst day of the week, wherever you download your podcasts. For our next topic, we're talking Fiona, the baby hippo from the Cincinnati Zoo. I hate this little hippo. And we are back. It's time for one more thing. Jason, why don't you go first?

Yeah. So my one more thing is a video game called Red Dead Redemption 2. I've heard of it. And so a little bit of back to your years. Last week, last Tuesday, after we recorded our podcast, I had a late night breaking the news that GTA 6 was going to be announced. They were going to say, hey, trailer in December. And then the next. stay after it happened. It got me kind of going back and looking at old rock star trailers, which, by the way, there's nobody better in this business at making trailers than Rockstar. Nope, they're the best. Every single one is just a banger. And from what I've heard, this one is going to be a banger too. But yeah, and it got me interesting. And I watched the Red Dead two trailers

and I was like, man, I kind of want to revisit that game. And so when I had a little bit of spare time, which I have not had a lot of recently trying to finish a book, but I had a little bit, I played the first couple hours of Red Dead 2, which is a really interesting game to replay. And then I reread Kirk's review at Kitaku, which is a fantastic piece of writing that I'll link in the show notes because I'll once you go read it. It's really, really compelling writing and really an interesting piece of criticism. And yeah, it's such an interesting game because it is so gorgeous and the writing is just so vivid and interesting and just intriguing in so many ways. yet it also feels so awful to play

and I think that's deliberate it kind of fits with the themes of the game but it's like you are really and Kirk points this out in his review you are really there is no sense of like it is entirely realism over just kind of like enjoyable moment to moment mechanics it's the opposite of the Nintendo approach

like you try to steer Arthur around and it takes like five seconds for him to like turn around and start walking the other direction But like, what if he ate a flower and then the whole level was different and everything was like music? Yeah, right, right? That would be a very fun. Red Dead Wonder. Red Dead Wonder.

But yeah, but it's a brilliant game. I just got to chapter two. So you get off the mountain. Maddie, did you ever play it or did you skip it? But I kind of feel like I should because I've been having the same feeling about rock star games. You should. Man, we should, this should be a game. We revisit and talk about on the show because it is so, there's so much to talk about.

there's so much the detail of it is just so mind-boggling like looking around the the way it looks i mean i'm playing it on pc on my new my new graphics card it looks incredible it runs fantastically it just is so just like mind-boggling in so many ways um and it makes me really excited for whatever they do next to the gda six um in in several ways i mean i hope they make it feel a little bit better to play than rediditude although the shooting i will say the the kind of the moment moment to moment shooting isn't bad in red to two. It's more the walking around and trying to interact with the world. It's more walking. But just like, man, like going around in camp and having this cast of characters that is like 20, 25 people strong, each of them has like so many different lines of dialogue and

responses to things and like, well, comment on the way you look and the way that you're acting and your beard and whether you're cleaned up and what you're saying to them, you can either greet or antagonize them. And there's just so much to dig into. Yeah, I, I, I, might wind up playing some more. I would love for us to like at some point next year, once we're getting to a slower period for these new releases, we should definitely revisit that game because it's so interesting and I feel like there's so much to talk about. But yeah, Red did too. I mean, we're only three weeks away now. So I like that, a few weeks away from the new GTA six, or the first GTA six trailer. And yeah, I'm excited for all of,

the thing about Rockstar is like they make the biggest games in the world, but they're also So they also make the games that are completely different from every other AAA game. And I think, I don't think they get enough credit for that because they're seen as like the, the kind of the ultimate example of like mainstreamness. But really their games are the total opposite of mainstream. It's like the anti-UBosoft. And that to me is so fascinating and compelling that I'm very much looking forward to seeing the next one.

But yeah, that's my one more thing. Red did too. Nice. Fair enough. Kirk, do you want to go next? Sure. I will return to a one more thing from a few months ago because I have gotten much, much farther in it, and that is the Verkosigan saga, a series of books by Lois McMaster, Buzold, that when I mentioned it on One More Thing a little while back, I'd read the first two books, and now I've read almost all of them.

I've read like 11 or 12 books in this series, just blasting through them. Wow. They're so good. How do you have time for that? I'm playing through every game. I'll tell you. I'll get into you. This is a safe space.

We don't accusatorially say, how do you have time for this? No, no, I'll get into that. No, it's not accusing. It's awe. I'm impressed. Being impressed. Fair enough.

Fair enough. Yeah. So that's part of my one more thing is how I read them all. So I got an AI that leads them into my brain. Right. I'm like Simon Illian. I got a memory chip. No,

that's a reference for anyone who has read the Vorkosican saga. Oh, there you go. These are a sci-fi series by Lois McMaster, Buzold, written from the late 80s through the 2000s. I think the most recent one is like in the 2010s. So she's been writing them for a long time. She's an extremely prolific writer. There are so many of these books.

They're a kind of sci-fi adventure slash just sort of personal saga focused on the character Miles Vorkosigan who is the son of royalty from this planet of Barriar, which is a human colony that

was cut off from all the other colonies for a whole period of time. And as a result has a kind of more militaristic and intensely kind of aristocratic society. And his father is a very powerful count. His mother, however, is a Baton who is from another planet from the Beta Colony. So she is this like intensely rationalistic woman. She meets his father later in life. She's a Beta.

She's a Beta Kek. She is not. She's a Beta. She's a Beta Alpha, really. Cordelia Verkosigan. So, or really Cordelia Nade Smith. So the first few books are the story. of her meeting Arlo Vorkoskin, who is Miles's father, and they're told from her point of view.

I talked about those already. They're really, really good. They're really interesting. I had not yet read any of the books about Miles, who, I'd say the kind of crucial thing about his character is that he's born with a number of really serious physical disabilities because of an assassination attempt on his parents when Cordelia is pregnant with him. And as a result, he has very brittle bones. He's very short.

And on Barrier, they're very prejudiced against people with mutations. because they were cut off from everyone, and there was enough inbreeding that some genetic mutations happened, and people got really scared about them. So it's been this thing that's hung over him his whole life where he's very privileged, but he has also looked down upon and prejudged,

even though he doesn't actually have any genetic mutations. He was just damaged in the womb. So that's Miles, and he is one of the best characters in any book I've ever read, now that I've read like 10 books starring him. He's so freaking cool. I love him so much. All I want is for him to finally marry this lady that he's in love with and is trying to get to marry him. I'm like obsessed with this romance that's playing out over the course of these final two books. Amazing. So the way I've read them to give an answer to that question is I've talked about this before, but I've just stopped reading the internet really most of the time, but especially in the mornings. I just take my book down with me when I'm having coffee and breakfast and I just read my book for like 30 minutes while I have oatmeal in the morning. Instead of looking at the the New York Times or whatever the hell.

And it really has just let me read this book. I mean, I love the books. They're so readable. They're so they just keep you going because each story is great. The characters are so great. The writing is so much fun that, of course, I want to keep going. But I just find myself, okay, it's lunchtime. I'm going to read my book.

I'm not looking at my phone. I'm not like on Instagram. I'm not just refreshing the New York Times. I'm just looking at my Kindle. So that has just, every day, I read some chunk of it, and then I read before bed, and I just burn through these books because, you know, it's not war in peace. It's pretty readable.

But it's really let me just make reading this big part of my life in a way that it hasn't been in so long. And I'm really grateful to these books for that. I'm grateful to Emily, my wife, who recommended them. I'd never heard of them. And I'm hoping some people out there are like me, and they've never heard of the Vorcosigan saga, because it sounds like some whatever, random nerd shit that you would never read. And it is, but it rules. It really does rule.

They're so much fun. They're just so thoughtful and interesting. They're ahead of their times in some ways. They're of their times in other ways, but really in a lot of the ways ahead of their times. And just very like in that way that genre written by women can be more interesting, like genre fiction written by women can be more interesting than some of the more famous examples written by men. I think that this also has that going for it.

And really, I mean, I love Miles Varkosigant. I think they should make a TV series out of this. I would watch the shit out of it and it could be so good. I think more people should read it and they would love it. So hopefully some folks out there think that sounds good. And I had linked this before, but I'll link it again. There's a very good recommended reading list or reading order for this series that I'll put in the show notes again because they were published in a kind of different order.

And there's a really good reading order that I've done and is fantastic. So huge recommendation. Thanks, Lois McMastery, Bichold, for like, all the many hours of joy that you've brought me. I love these books. Awesome. Okay. I'll go last. Mine is a movie called The Marvels.

I know. I know. I'm glad you saw this. So you can just talk it through with us and we don't have to see it. Yeah, go. Listen. I want to see it. I loved it.

You loved it? Oh, okay. It sounds fun. You're not going to get off the hook to me. Here's the thing. No, I'm so like Marvel fatigue. I get it. I get it, Jason.

And I am too. And that is why I'm really sad about the situation that we find ourselves in with Marvel stuff. Because I don't know if I should blame. give him Kevin Feige for this. I don't know if I need to blame just one person for this. Having read the book, it's Bob, Bob Chakbeck and Bob Iger are the guys. Okay, I'll blame the Bob's. I'm blaming the bobs for it.

And I'll throw in Pearl Mudder. I don't care. I'll blame him too. I don't like that guy. He's the villain, as we learned last week. Because we were in this situation a few years back where there were so many freaking Marvel movies and they were making a bajillion dollars every nanosecond. And yet all of these movies, like they just couldn't even be bothered to make movies

about marginalized people because, oh no, what if they wouldn't sell? What if we didn't make a billion dollars off of every movie? What if Black Panther wasn't one of the highest grossing films ever made? One of the best movies ever. Like still, sorry to the Marvels. I still like Black Panther the best out of any of them. I still think it's the best one. Black Panther made a jillion dollars.

I know. It was super successful, more to your point. I'll also say that I think I'mon Valani as Miss Marvel, the TV show, one of my favorite TV shows. It was so good. This young woman is so funny, so effortlessly charming and hilarious as Miss Marvel. Like reading the Kamala Khan comics, I loved them. I didn't think they'd ever make them into anything. But now here we are with Imman Volani playing this role.

And she's so freaking hilarious and great. And if you liked the show or if you even have a passing interest in this character, the Marvel's is actually her movie. It's not really Monica Rambo's movie. It's not really Brie Larson is Captain Marvel's movie. It's really a Miss Marvel movie. and I don't know that they really marketed it that way because I think they were worried

that not enough people watch the TV show but I will say we took another couple that we know who haven't seen Marvel movies in a while didn't watch the Miss Marvel TV show they didn't watch Captain Marvel like haven't seen anything and they loved it they were like we understood what was going on I know there's a lot of concerns about that

like I've already seen those reviews where people like if you haven't seen 16 TV shows you're not going to understand the marvels you'll be fine it's not that complicated secret invasion I didn't watch Secret Invasion. I didn't watch that. I didn't watch The Eternals.

I just want to say, if you think the idea of a Pakistani-American teenage girl getting superpowers and being adorable and hilarious, if that sounds appealing to you at all, you should go see this movie because it's really, really fun. I laughed the whole time, and I loved it. And I just, I don't know, I think I Man Valeni's great. And I'm really sad that it took the MCU basically, I don't know, a billion years to finally get around to depicting marginalized people because those are some of the coolest stories

of superheroes that there are for obvious reasons. Like there's tension, there's stakes, you're rooting for them. And instead we got a bunch of movies that burned everybody out and now these properties are just left there to languish.

So yeah, I don't know. If you want to see that, see a good movie, you could go see the Marvels. You don't need to be an ICU person. That's my pitch. It's unfortunate for so many reasons because, you know,

Captain Marvel was really successful movie. Yeah, it was. money. I'm sure that's why they marketed it on Brie Larson. Also, Nia da Costa, the director, is a really interesting director. And I watched the trailer for this where the premise of this movie is like when they use their powers, they swap places. I was like, I did not know that was the premise for this. That looks super fun. It's so fun. I mean, I don't, I probably won't see it in theaters, but I'll watch them to Z plus. Just because like Jason said, it's too much Marvel for me, even though the movie

does look fun. I get it. Man, it's just too much and it's so many different directions. I mean, the biggest problem with this like series, this kind of phase of Marvel is all the different like directions that's splitting. It's like, um, Kang on one side and aliens another side and multiverse on another side and like X-Men popping in and like fantastic four and all this shit and it's just like too much for me. I just want like a straightforward. It doesn't have to be straightforward.

I want a kind of something with stakes that aren't just going to be reversed every time there's a multiverse. I was looking up, okay, I was looking up what happens at the end of Loki season two. And people are saying, I haven't watched it yet. But it's just so stupid.

It's just like, I can't even imagine. It's just so stupid. It's kind of like, and now they're talking, there was an article the other day, but they're talking about how they might revive the original Avengers and make him into a thing.

And it's just like, the whole premise of the original thing was that there are stakes and they matter from movie to movie. And now those are all just out the window. So it's just so hard to recommit. But I hear you, Maddie. You made it sound interesting. And I loved Miss Marvel the show also.

So that is a good hook for me. Fair enough. All they need to do is bring back the X-Men and get it right. If they nail the X-Men, it'll be good, and I'll watch it. I didn't mean to open a cat of worms right before the episode ads, but I will say that I'm now approaching the MCU the same way I approach comic books, which is that I'm really only following the ones with the characters I like in them. And I think that's a good way to go.

Rather than trying to be like, okay, I need to watch every Marvel movie in order to see what happens with Thanos. Like, you're right, Jason. That's how it used to be. But I don't think that's how it is anymore. That was interesting. I agree. I think they're going to change.

That's not what it's going to be. Yeah. That's not what it is. Whether Marvel likes it or not. It just can be because there's too much. Right. Or they just cut down on stuff and make it more focus. So now I'm like,

I like Miss Marvel. I think Imman Volani's really talented and funny. So I'm going to watch whatever she's in. Yeah. The problem is she'll be in the next Avengers and you'll be like, now I have to catch up on like all this other stuff to know what's going on. Or I'll watch her scene on YouTube and I'll move on with my life. Right.

But I do. But I do think almost this whole movie is her. So if you like her, then I think it's worth seeing the movie for her. And I don't think they're marketing it that way because I don't think they think that will work. And I could see why. Whatever they did, it didn't work anyway. No, I know. It failed.

It failed for sure. I mean, we're recording this right after opening weekend where it had like a really bad opening. Yeah, the worst in Marvel's sister. Unbelievable bad. Like it bombed, which is very depressing. Which is very depressing. And maybe it means that word of mouth will kind of change the way that people talk about this movie. And they'll be like, it's not what you might think it is.

It's a Miss Marvel movie for one. And also it's funny and it's cute and silly. And it's got kind of a different vibe. It's its own thing. And I want that for more Marvel properties. I want them to split off and be a big, disparate, wacky web of different kinds of things. And then I just check out the stuff I like, which is Miss Marvel and X-Men stuff. So that's me.

Sounds like something I were watching my kids. in a few years and she's a little older. Yeah, definitely. It sounds perfect for that. All right, well, we did it again. We did another episode. I got to finish this up so I can go play some more Baldish Gate 3. When seam deck's on the couch, it's in hovered mode, suspend mode. I don't know what's called in the seam deck.

It's waiting for me right in the other room. So I've got something to do right after this. Good luck. Good luck finishing act too. And yeah, we'll see all next week, listeners. See you next week. Yeah, see you both next week. week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier,

Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the

Maximum Fun podcast network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple click pod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows.

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