Triple Click - Can Dreamhaven Recreate The Blizzard Magic?

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

Can the magic of old-school Blizzard ever be recreated? Dreamhaven, a company started by Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime and a whole bunch of other Blizzard veterans, seems to be trying to make it happen. Jason, Maddy, and Kirk talk about Dreamhaven's first two games, Sunderfolk and Wildgate, and whether it's possible to recreate those old Blizzard feelings in 2025.One More Thing:Kirk: SinnersMaddy: Doom: The Dark AgesJason: Thunderbolts* (2025)LINKS:Triple Click LIVE in Portland, July 11: https://albertarosetheatre.com/event/triple-click-live/alberta-rose-theatre/portland-oregon/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

Everyone knows a blizzard is when a winter storm meet certain criteria for wind speed and visibility. But when is a blizzard not a blizzard when it's a Dreamhaven? Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we're talking about two new games from Dreamhaven, a new company with a very blizzard-like approach to game design, led by some very ex-Blizzard-type developers. There's a lot to talk about, so let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shire.

Hello. Hello. Hello, it's us again. Hi, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of Triple Click. Did you guys see the news that Giant Bomb has bought itself? Yeah. I sure did.

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There's going to be music. There's going to be all kinds of fun, special stuff that we're figuring out. And we're very excited about it. So Doors at 7, show at 8. That's July 11th at the Alberta Rose Theater. And there's a link to buy tickets in the show notes. For the blueprints thing, we should specify we're going to be really spoiling everything about the game. So if people want to catch up and play through it all so they can listen to that bonus.

Now is your chance. We're going to run that, what, at the end of May? Is that the plan? Yeah, that is the plan. Oh, yeah. And that is a good thing to keep in mind. I've seen in our Discord, which I've mentioned before related to Blueprints, because there are a lot of people in the Blueprints channel on our Discord, helping one another through the end game stuff.

and there are a lot of people right now going through this final couple mega puzzles. Oh, good. So you can kind of join in there if you're far enough along in that game. And yeah, I mean, it would be fun to finish it before the conversation as well, especially if you're close. But also, if you just want to know what the game's about and you burned out at some point, you just want to hear us talk about all the cool plot stuff that happens at the end. You could also just listen for that reason. Yes, well, that's where I started.

I think Jason was adding that this will also have some details. All perspectives are valid. You do you. Listen to the app if you want. That's true. No pressure. All right, Jason, what are we talking about this week? Today we're talking about a company called Dream Haven. And if you haven't heard of Dream Haven, you should know that it's a company started by some people who also started Blizzard. Most notably Mike Moorheim, the co-founder and longtime CEO of Blizzard.

Dreamhaven is an interesting company, and it's one that we're talking about now because it has two games that are. in some form or another out. First game is out for real. Second game is having regular play tests, and the three of us played one this weekend. So we're going to get into those games and talk about the studio as well. So I want to set the scene a little bit. Dreamhaven was founded about five years ago in 2020, about a year and a half after Mike Moorheim left Blizzard. And if you want to know why Mike Morheim left Blizzard, you should read a book called Play Nice, the Rise, the Rise, Fault, and future of Blizzard Entertainment. But short version, he wanted to get away from Bobby Codick.

And he started a new company in part because, well, another thing that happened along the way. So he left in the fall of 2018. And then in the summer of 2019, two games got canceled. Also detailed in the book. But those are games called Aries and Orion. And Aries was a shooter. And Orion was kind of like a tabletop-y campaign like D&D asynchronous like phone game.

And those two games getting canceled. led to a lot of those people then leaving, and those people got together and said, hey, maybe we should start a new company and they got together with Moorheim, and they all decided to start Dreamhaven. And a thing that's really interesting about Dreamhaven is that unlike a lot of companies that claim to be like, hey, we're ex-Blizzard employees, we're ex-Ryriot employees. And it turned out they like work there for two years, like doing like an associate art internship or something. This company is really created by some of the people who were in the highest levels at Blizzard on some of the biggest games. So there are people there like Shane DeBerry, who was a producer

on the original Wow. And his brother Alan DeBerry, who was there like back in the Warcraft 2 days. And Dustin Browder, directed StarCraft 2. And like Paul Delibita, who co-created Bliscon, Chris Cigody, who was like the executive producer on StarCraft. And Jason Chase was like a producer on the original Harthstone. So there are all these people, Omar Gonzalez, who like did the prototype that became Wow Classic. So a lot of people who like really played integral roles. in creating Blizzard. And what they're doing with Dreamhaven, they haven't outwardly said this. So this is kind of my interpretation, but it seems like you're trying to recreate a lot of the magic that made Blizzard special. Well, at the same time, building a culture that is more inclusive, has more

women, women in leadership, especially than Blizzard ever did. So they're trying to do something that I think is very ambitious and interesting to watch. Their most recent game is called Sunderfall. Kirk talked about it as a one more thing. couple of months ago, and we'll get into that in a sec. They also are running playtest for this newly announced game called Wildgate, that is this kind of like space shooter that the three of us played, and we'll get into a little bit later. Let's start with a big question before we even get into the specifics of the games, or we can even talk about the games as we go and try to tackle this question, which is Blizzard obviously played a special role in the history of the

games industry and a lot of people's lives. Can that kind of magic be recreated today? And what would that look like? And is there a place for that? Like, how does that fit into the modern games industry? A bit of a kind of a lofty question, but it's one that I think is worth discussing. What do you two think? Man, I mean, I think that the easy answer is that no, Blizzard can't be recreated today, only because I have read your book and I know how many different circumstances led to the creation of Blizzard and to Blizzard becoming what it was. And just, I mean, all of those different circumstances couldn't happen again. It just isn't possible. Like it's just too different of a time period now.

The whole world is different. The industry is different. And it just doesn't feel as though a company could follow that completely bizarre multi-decade path from there to here. But that's an easy answer. Like, of course that's true. But I think what you're asking more broadly is, well, kind of is, is Dream Haven going to work? Is that really the goal? And are they going to pull that off?

Or can you channel what, I mean, okay, so one of the things that made Blizzard special and one of the reasons that it lasted until, still last today, one of the reasons that kind of had that longevity is that it was run by people who really understood games, who understood that and make great games, who, like, would take the time and polish these games until they were ready to go out, in contrast to a lot of other companies, and just was able to kind of capture lightning in a bottle, create this formula that really worked for them, that just led to a lot of special franchises and special games that came out.

I guess is it possible to kind of start a new company that, like, emulates that mold, if isn't necessarily going to, I don't know, be the titan of the 90s that Blizzard was? Is that a goal that is even, like, possible? today? I think it might be healthier if they just said no. I again, I have no inside. This is, I should say this is my interpretation. This is not something they're coming out and saying they want to do. Yeah, no, I know. And I'm saying it's mine too. My suggestion of them if they're listening for some reason would be to say, we're just going to do something different. Because I

actually think that baggage, even though it's positive baggage in this case, is it's going to lead to almost this sense of weight on all their shoulders of like, okay, we need to recreate Blizzard and it needs to be exactly the same as it was. And by having all these people who were there on the ground floor or were part of really significant, really profitable projects, that's so much pressure that I actually am hoping that internally they're like, let's do something that is nothing like Blizzard at all. They probably aren't. But like, if I were them, I'd be like, how do we fully reset mentally and not even just not recreate the toxic systems, but also just do something that feels different enough to us that mentally we can even handle the pressure that we're under.

Yeah. One difference that I've noticed is that they have named their sub-studios that are making these two games. So moonshot games, they're making Wildgate, is that right? And Secret Door is making Sunderfolk. And so that's something, that's already a difference because at Blizzard, there were these teams, and it was almost like there were studios within, you know, Blizzard, but they didn't have names, they didn't have separate identities. And for a while, I was even a little confused about this because I just, you know, I didn't know all the details of how they were set up. And I wasn't sure whether Dreamhaven was a sort of indie publisher.

And then Moonshot and Secret Door were actual indie studios that maybe had separate offices. But that is not the case. Is that correct, Jason? Yeah, at Blizzard, they had team names, but they were team one, team two, team three, two, It's so romantic. They should have had cool names like Moonshot and Secret For real. Those are way cooler names.

Nowadays, I think it's kind of like the Diablo team, the Overwatch team, etc. Sure. It's a little bit more like the structure is a little different than it was back then because it's more based on these franchises. But anyway, yeah, Dream Haven, so it's all, a lot of them are remote, but they have one office in Irvine

and they have a small publishing department that publishes games as well. They're publishing a game called linked banner of the spark. And then within that, they also have the two studios that work in the same office and are part of it. Essentially, it's everybody's part of dream of them. But yes, you have these subsidiaries under it that are kind of trying to do their own thing. And I imagine in some ways have their own culture because they're kind of independent teams

within the overall structure. And yeah, I mean, I think that like maybe the question isn't like, are you trying to recreate Blizzard as a possible to recreate Blizzard? Maybe the question is like, what values do you take out of Blizzard and what lessons you learn from Blizzard and what values do you say, oh, God, we don't want anything to do with that anymore. And one obviously, obvious one, I guess there are two obvious ones. One is you want to hire women. Blizzard barely at any women. Glad we're saying that's obvious.

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like, it's one of those things that wasn't obvious to these students in the 90s who are making games and like, oh, games are for dudes. And nowadays it's a little more like, oh, okay, we're starting a new company. We have an opportunity to kind of, from the very beginning, create a culture that doesn't facilitate the sort of toxicity that eventually would lead to a lawsuit that, like, put a giant scandal on our name. That's what, number one. Number two is crunch, which was also a huge, huge feature of early Blizzard, trying to avoid the type of crunch that I don't think any real serious game studio does these. days where it's like a year of sleeping in the office. Like not a lot of game companies are doing that sort of thing these days.

But yeah, DreamHivin is definitely definitely not, definitely trying to avoid that sort of thing too. And those to me, like if I were starting a new game company today, especially inspired by Blizzard, I would be like, okay, these are two things we want to flag in big red letters right here. There's also working from home, which you mentioned that a lot of these employees work from home. That seems to me like a fairly modern-minded approach to, you know, to your office. Yeah, definitely. That's like being remote first or digital, like being a digital operation is something that a lot of kind of progressive-minded companies are doing these days, although gradually I'm hearing a lot of even the ones that have made a show of like doing remote friendly or starting to claw that back and be like, all right, time to go back to the office. So we'll see how much longer that lasts.

The other thing that I think is really important that I noticed a lot from just talking to people at Dreamhaven and going. and visiting them a few months ago is just the value of ample playtesting, nonstop playtesting your game from the very beginning, like getting a playable version up and running as quickly as possible, and then just getting more and more people to just try it out. And once it's like once people can't stop playing it, then you know it's fun, which is very much like a Blizzard ethos from way back in the day

that I think helped contribute to what made all their games great. And I think they're trying to carry them out for Sunderfalk and Wildgate. as well. So let's look at how that's working out for them, since we know all this stuff about how they've set it up, but we've also played both of the games that they're either in the process of getting ready to release or have released. I talked about Sunderfolk a couple of weeks ago. I can kind of reiterate some of that here. And then also the three of us played Wildgate over the weekend. Tell us about Sunderfell because Manny and I haven't had a chance to play it yet. Sure. So yeah, this was my one more thing, just a little while back. And I can just go back over

that for anyone who didn't hear that. So Sunderfolk is a very, very cool game. It is not really like anything I've played before, which is always kind of exciting to say about a game. It's a tabletop style strategy role-playing game. It's a cooperative game designed for up to four players. And you play it on a console or on a PC, but you control it with your phone. And each player has their own character, you know, a tank or a rogue or a DPS, like, ranged mage. And you're each, you're in this kind of animal kingdom underground and you're fighting against this ogre invasion and trying to protect the magic tree. And, you know, it's that kind of fun fantasy setup. And you control everything with your phone. And it's incredibly slick. It's very well made.

The phone integration works really well. As far as I can tell, the phone is actually connecting via Wi-Fi to the system itself. I played on PC. and had a couple of friends over people that I play tabletop games with. They came over to just do this a couple of nights a few, like a month ago. And, you know, it's a hex-based co-op tactics game with these kind of instance battles that take place on these kind of smaller battlefields. It's very reminiscent of Gloomhaven. I believe it was inspired by Gloomhaven,

which is a very popular tabletop game that my tabletop group has played quite a bit of, both Gloomhaven and Frost Haven its sequel. It borrows from it, but it also builds on it. And I think that's actually a very interestingly blizzard-y thing about this game, is that it does something that, Jason, you talked about many times in your book, that Blizzard was very good at seeing a game and saying, oh, that's an interesting idea. We could do something like that, but we could make it better and smoother

and make it a little easier to play, and then they would release their own version that would become a huge hit. And this feels kind of like taking Gloomhaven, and then just making some changes that are just, you know, it's just easier to play. Obviously, it's a video game, so you don't have to set up the six billion pieces that Gloomhaven requires. You have a deck just like in Gloomhaven, like a character-specific card deck, but it's

much easier to manage because it's all on your phone. And just the whole interacting with it and playing it is much easier. But then also, if you're a real Gloomhaven player, like you're really into that game, there are just lots of little things, I don't know. I'll say one example here. In Gloomhaven, you have an attack deck. Whenever you attack in Gloomhaven, you draw off of your attack deck and you get a plus one or a minus two or a miss on your attack.

And that kind of can make a really big difference depending on what you draw because you're maybe really need a plus two to kill an enemy. And as you level up, your deck just keeps getting better. And most of the characters in Gloomhaven, you wind up just having a deck that's like super unstoppable by the end

where it's all just plus one, plus two, plus one, plus one, and maybe a couple plus zeros. In Sunderfolk, it's interesting. They've changed it so that there are lots of cards that give you a negative damage outcome, like negative one, but they give you some kind of a boost, like you get a shield,

or they give you some cool area of effect thing, or like you get an automatic rage on your character. So they've balanced it in a different way where you have a lot more interesting decisions to make. That's just one example, but that's the kind of thing that they're doing where they've taken Gloom Haven and just kind of elaborated on it

and added some of their own ideas. It's a very cool game. I really, really like it. Yeah, it's that classic Blizzard kind of. We're all playing EverQuest, but we have all these complaints about it. We're going to make our own version. Right.

It kind of fixes all of those complaints. Yeah, that's definitely a classic part of it. And the thing I would say, the last observation, and I think that will be kind of relevant for this broader conversation, is that I would say the weakest point of Sunderfolk is actually the narrative and the world building. And that that is the thing that, you know,

we played a few sessions. We got a few hours in. They have a fun setup where there's one voice actor and she's the DM, so she does all the voices of all the characters. She's doing a good job, but the writing is just a little bit unremarkable. I can't even remember the names of things, but it's just like the glow tree, and that's the life tree. Or maybe it's even called the life tree. And you're being attacked by these ogres.

And it's all a little bit generic. And I felt like so much of the game felt like a Blizzard game. It had that slickness. It worked really well. It was so smooth. And the UI was really good. But the narrative didn't. There were no characters that were just immediately jumping out as iconic.

And that struck me as maybe the biggest. weakness that the game has. Interesting. Okay. Let's talk about Wildgate because the three of us made that over the weekend. Together. Yeah, the three of us got a chance to play. Yeah, we squatted up. Let me kind of describe Wildgate a little bit and then we can get into the experiences of playing it. So Wildgate is a new game. I don't believe there's a release date, but it's currently in like beta and they've been doing all these playtests with it. It just got announced last month. Oh, it is coming later this year, I believe. Yeah, it's coming later this year for Steam, PS5.

It feels about right based on how it seemed really funny. And Xbox. Yeah, it feels very complete. Pretty done. And it is essentially, it's kind of like a cross between Overwatch and Sea of Thieves. And so the way it works is that like it takes place in its match base, kind of like Overwatch. You team up with, on a team of four.

So you and three other players. And you're playing against four other teams of four. So a total of 20 people in a match. And you are on a spaceship that has a steering wheel and some weapons and some probes that you could send out to scout. And each player can be responsible for each one of these things at any given time. You're kind of like manning the ship as if you were like piloting a sea of thieves ship where like different people have to be responsible for different duties on it. And your goal is to go around and kind of hunt for this artifact. that is buried inside one of these little randomly generated dungeon sort of things.

You go into the dungeon, you look for the artifact and or treasure and loot that can make your ship better. You fight off computer-controlled enemies, and then you take the loot or the artifact back to your ship. And then if you get the artifact, your goal is to escape the galaxy by going through what's called a wild gate with the artifact. Steer your ship into the wild gate and get out of there. But the catch is that every other player is trying to do the same thing, and they can all fight you as well. and if they destroy your ship, then you lose. So it's kind of a PVPVE thing. It's very frantic.

It feels very good to play. It's very polished. Yeah, what, Maddie, what did you think of our experiences playing Wildgate? I thought it was really fun. And I should say we'd never want a match. So I feel like it's a good sign that we had a good time despite that we didn't win, which I feel like is a really important thing for any multiplayer competitive game. Is it fun?

And do you feel like you're still learning? from it when you lose. And I felt like we learned something every time we lost and we got better as we went along, which was also great. I've never played Sea of Thieves, but this actually made me want to try it too, because the whole experience of being on a ship and each of us having our own roles was really fun. We were playing with a fourth person who we couldn't talk to on voice chat because it was just a randomly selected other person. But we had kind of like somebody. It would be funny if they were, although how would they know? Anyway, maybe you played with us. Well, my handle is like Jay Shrider. Mine is Kirkhammer or something. That's true. You guys

have very distinctive handles, but I don't. I'm a mystery. Regardless, I felt like we all kind of like would pick up on what each other was doing even with the fourth person. Like the first person we had, we were like, we don't know what this person's doing. But then we got a person later who seemed way better and we were all working together and like there's a ping system so you can show each other where to go, all that good multiplayer stuff. But also, whenever we got into ship-on-ship combat, that energy was so electric and fun. Like, there's, like, a part of the game where you have to put out fires. Like, you switch to what is basically, like, just a water gun, and you're just, like,

frantically shooting fires. The multi-tool. And I had, like, deputized myself to put out fires. And, like, they were spreading faster than I could ever have possibly done it. But it was really fun to try. And we were all, like, shouting excitedly at each other, like, oh, there's a guy over there. He's got our ship. He's on our ship.

I don't know. all that stuff was really, really exciting and fun. And to me said, like, okay, this game might have the juice. Like, we're having a good time, yelling in a positive way, like, having, like, fun, memorable experiences. Those are, like, the things that made Overwatch fun in the early days. And the things that I would expect make Sea of Thieves fun. So I have some hope for this game. I think it could work.

Kirk, what did you think? I had a great time. It was, yeah, I think it's really well designed. I think it's really well balanced. it plays really smoothly. You described it as feeling like Overwatch, which is accurate, but that's no small thing. You know, when you're in the lobby, the first time playing as your character, just jumping around, the feel of it, the way it animates, the smoothness and responsiveness. We were all playing on PC.

I was very impressed. It just felt, again, like a Blizzard game just in terms of the interface and getting around. And then, yeah, once we got our head around how it worked, it's just a very seamless and fun experience. when one person is piloting the ship, and I believe Steve Thieves also works this way, you can't really see what's going on. Like, flying is a kind of miserable experience because you can only look straight forward,

and the ship is pretty big, and it doesn't handle very well. It's not like a jet fighter. It's a big old rig. And so at least one other player has to be in a probe floating around outside. The probe controls more like you would, you know, in a single-player game, you would expect the ship to handle where you can just look with the mouse

and kind of flit and fly all around. And then you're like tagging things and doing scans and dropping waypoints for the pilot. So there's some nice built-in communication. You have to be communicating in order to fly effectively. And then, yeah, the basic combat feels good. The shooting is fun. I mean, it just really has a nice, snappy feel to it. And then we never really got to the point where I felt as though the PVP fights,

like you described many of these electric fights where we'd suddenly be set upon by an enemy ship. we got crushed in almost every fight. It was very hard to even know what to do because it's all fairly complicated. So there was this feeling of, oh, okay, this is a pretty complicated game. There will be some meta. There will be a variety of strategies. But when you've spent 10 minutes upgrading your ship, so you have an anti-personnel warning system and mines that you can trigger and each gun does some really crazy unique thing that you've upgraded

and then suddenly you're in a fight. I had no idea what to ever do. I was like, I don't know what to do. and then we just blew up and died. So I can't really say how fun that is. It seems as though all the systems are in place for it to be fun. And the fact that we were getting worked so hard makes me think that we were probably up against people

who'd been playing a lot longer than us and knew what to do. So that is a little harder to judge. That's true. Something I'll say is that, so I used to play in all the Blizzard games betas back in the day. So like in the Warcraft 3 beta, I played in the StarCraft 2 beta, et cetera. And when you played in those betas,

you would get matched up against players of, any possible, like, skill level. One time I was playing in a Starcraft 2 beta. I think this is like Heart of the Storm, the second expansion, and the first expansion, the second entry. And I got matched up against someone named Artosis. Are you guys familiar with Artosis? He's like a legendary StarCraft player and commentary.

And I just messaged as soon as the game started. I was like, are you the real Artosis? He was like, yeah. And then I just got immediately destroyed in like a second. Like while you were typing that he was killing you? Yeah. Yeah. And so like that's the sort of thing.

that happens in betas, I imagine, I don't know for sure, maybe they've said this, I'm not 100% sure, but I imagine there will be some sort of ranking system where, like, you get matched up against players with your same level of skill and or experience, like with StarCraft, when the beta stopped and the game started, you got ranked and you could be like bronze level playing against other newcomers, or you could be gold level playing against decent players or diamond level playing against killer players. So, like, that's, there's always a ranking system in these competitive games from Blizzard and hopefully Wildgate has the same thing. So one thing I'm curious about with Wildgate is related to what I was talking about with

Sunderfolk and that's the world and the narrative and those hooks. There were some really great character designs. We're playing on early, like a beta, so it's hard to tell with the story. But there were some cool character designs. I didn't have many characters unlocked, but there's one, one of our teammates for a while was playing as this character where it's kind of a crank situation. if anyone out there remembers Crang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where it's like a big, it's like a fish tank with an exosuit around it

and then in the fish tank I think is kind of a fish and the fish is the actual character. And it was really sick. The art was great. Yeah, it was really good and cute. And cute and well designed and the kind of thing I could see people doing fan art of. And that is really the thing that I haven't seen yet from a Dreamhaven game is when Overwatch launched, of course they had that big trailer

and they did this whole Marvel. It was like peak Marvel, you know, mania in the world. And it really felt like this excitement of a superhero team. The world needs heroes or whatever. But then it was like Tracer or Widowmaker, like all these characters with these like incredible designs who were so recognizable. And people were just wild about them from the start. And that is a big part of Blizzard's appeal and kind of always has been. And that's, I would think, the hardest thing to recreate.

And it's a little weird because if you're a game designer, obviously they're playing their game a ton. like you said, Jason, they're testing it. These games are both really, really good. I mean, Sunderfolk is a very well-designed tactics game. Wildgate, the shooting, the whole way that it's designed is really good. Those things all seem to have been polished to find a mirror shine. But I'm wondering about the narrative stuff and whether, like, how they're thinking of that or how they're approaching character design and world building.

Yeah, it's so interesting because that is the one thing that can't really be polished and iterated upon. Like a story is so much messier. more subjective. And one of the things that Blizzard always had going for it was Chris Metzen. And Chris Metzen, his storytelling has been talked upon for many, many years, and many people have different opinions on it, some positive, some negative. But one thing that was undeniable is that he wrote stories that, like, reached people and stuck with people in some way or another, and he helped create characters that reach people and stuck with people. And so games like Diablo and StarCraft and Warcraft, you kind of left those remembering the stories.

And yes, Chris Metson is not at Dreamhaven. He's actually back at Buzzard these days. I don't know if they have similarly like a writer on that caliber or a writer who has his own, his or her own kind of skills and abilities on that level. But yes, that is a tougher thing to kind of master because you can't just like stick a story in front of a ton of people and be like, all right, what should we tweak here? Should we move these levers? Should we like pull this?

That's called awful like design by focus test. It never worked. Yeah. I mean, I agree, though, Kirk. It does kind of seem like those character designs could work if there's something behind it. Like, they are visually distinctive. Like, those are some of the things that you can design for and have it work and tweak where you can just, you can show a focus group. Like, here's what these characters look like. Who stands out to you visually? At least you can do that. But, yeah, are we going to get tired of all of their combat one liners? Or feel like all of them are actually the same? guy at the end of the day. Like those are the things that are hard to know in a beta because the lines are very minimal and we don't really know why these characters are there? Or like what is the wild game? And we had like two characters unlocked, right?

Yeah, not too. So here, but here's the thing. Wildgate also, it isn't quite as character focused. It's not a hero shooter. You are not getting characters with like sets of abilities that you need to really master and use to counter one another. And you're not really thinking about the characters quite as much as you're thinking about like the ships and the tactics and the getting new weapons and

when to go and repair your ship versus when to take out the tractor beam and use that on the enemy ship. So I'm not sure the character design will be quite as important as it is in a game like Overwatch. And that's another way of almost saying the same thing, because the characters are all different and they are all saying their own voice lines. And if they're not as important, it's because that element of the game is kind of backburnered to the game itself. If those characters were like popping off the screen and you had characters like Overwatch's characters that were just grabbing you immediately, then it's just that part of the game

would begin to feel more important because it would just be more present. So I don't know. Like I just said, we didn't really unlock that many characters. And it's also like I don't really have a sense of the narrative framework, why we're all here, you know, what we're trying to do.

You're in the wild game. You're in the reach. We're in the reach. You're in the reach, man. I mean, sure. But like, why don't you get this, Kirk? Why do I really care? We're in the reach.

What are you not getting? It's funny too because, you know, Overwatch had this whole story where there's a robot war, and then that happened a long time ago, and now Overwatch is disbanded, but now they're getting back together. But then when you actually play the game, I don't know that any of that really was mattered. Right, like it just didn't matter.

And it's funny that they managed to have their cake and eat a separate cake, I guess. I don't know what the metaphor is there. Well, okay, so what Overwatch had going for it is that it had the entire Blizzard cinematic team, which is like as good as like having Pixar in some. of your company and they built all these like short films based on the Overwatch universe which drew people in even if they didn't care about playing a shooter so a lot of people were into the story in world of Overwatch and then as a result like the game got a lot of a lot more attention

because of that and that was that was kind of the big selling point because yes in the game there was no story until much much later and even then it was kind of given up on so yeah this the story was kind of it was like that that um What's the term transmedia that everyone's always talking about? Overwatch was the one game that actually made that work in a substantial way. It's a good counterfactual to imagine Overwatch, the exact game Overwatch, coming out without any of those cinematics. I know.

Same characters, same catchy lines and great voice acting. What would the impact have been like? Yeah. Probably not the same at all. Not as much. Yeah. I mean, those cinematics, those were aired on television. There was a whole kind of marketing plan, like imagined in the couple of months.

leading into that game's release and the shorts were a big part of that and like players would be like like blizzard would be like new short coming the same and like players would like be waiting in anticipation they were so excited about that and then there were also like comics and like other kind of tie-in stuff and as part of that they never made they they were they were talking about making a Netflix series but it did not happen um maybe one day to pivot slightly from that I feel like since they're not doing that that we know of. I think instead what Wildgate is relying on is you, the players, being the characters, in the way that you are in a multiplayer team-based game, where you are filling the roles.

In Sea of Thieves, you're taking your roles on the ship and you're like maybe role playing a little bit in that fun way that you do with your friends where you're not in character per se, but you're like, I'm playing this role on the ship and we're all doing what we're supposed to do. Like this game still has that quote unquote story of a match where you're like, oh, you know, we found the artifact really early. And now we're going to have to like dodge everybody for the entire rest of the game. And like that's our story for the match this time. Or, oh, where's the artifact? Where's the artifact?

It's been ages. And who even has it? No one? Are we just all fighting now? Like those are kind of like the emergent types of storytelling I can picture already where I'm like, this is the part of it that could be really fun. I don't know long term if that's going to work. but I think that if it does work, those are the stories that they should focus on,

because then you don't need a writer. You just need really good systems, and that's enough. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's funny that it's true that the systems are designed for good in-game narrative, like good storytelling, especially compared to something like Overwatch, which is much more straightforward kind of match. Yeah, get on the point or don't. And this is something that Sunderfolk does very creatively.

One really fun thing that this game does is Sunderfolk, that is, is it gives you these opportunities to name things and to put your own mark on the game. So at various points, you'll just be going into a match and one character, I think chosen at random, a prompt will just come up on your phone saying, okay, what is this enemy unit type called? And in our game, there were these ranged ogres, and my friend Sam named them flingums, F-L-I-N-G-E-M-S, because they fling them. And so then we laughed about that some, and then a little bit later, I accidentally called them flingems, because I was just reading off the screen.

And then we have this inside joke about Flynn gems, and then we call them that for the rest of the game. And that enemy type keeps coming back, and then it's doing that over and over again. And that, compared with the written narrative, was actually much more sticky and wound up being really charming and fun because it was unique to us.

So that was really well done, and is the same kind of, you know, user-generated story idea. And there's like the randomly generated ship names in Wildgate that all of us had a good laugh over. Like, we didn't get to name our ship, but the randomly-jointed, generated names were really funny.

And, like, those have been what I've remembered. I've been, like, we were in a ship called Big Barrel. And one of the other ships was called Trying Our Best, which I still think is an amazing name for a ship. Like, those things have stuck with me. And, I mean, maybe they're not randomly generated. Maybe they wrote a bunch of ship names that they thought would be funny. And they were like, we're just going to have these be the names.

I think that's the case. Yeah. Which works great. Which works great. Which is directly. Right. Precisely. Which is effective as well. Yeah.

And I think the beta we played, some of the mechanics are pretty straightforward. I'm not sure what the final game is going to look like, but I imagine there will be some more wrinkles to the systems involved as well. So I'm pretty curious to see that. There's also a progression system in place, so you unlock characters, and it looks like you unlock other stuff. I'm not sure if it's gameplay stuff. If it's all cosmetics, I'm not sure exactly what it looks like. And I'm also not sure what the microtransactions are going to be like if there are any. I'm not 100% sure what it looks like. But it does feel, I mean, I'm going to get on something you said earlier, Kirk, which is, that both of these seem to feel like Blizzard games. And I wonder if that's something, is that something you feel like you're saying because of the pedigree of the studio and because of the history of the studio? Is that something where like,

if you took these out of context of Dreamhaven and just played them without knowing who created them, would you still say this feels like a Blizzard game? Like, is there some special, like something that feels blizzard-y? Yes. Yeah. I would say that. And it's some specific things.

It's been interesting to think about why that is. It's the art style partly. It's a sort of not incredibly high-res, stylized art style. It's something to do with the engine, and I'm not totally sure what game engine they're using, but it feels, it moves, it animates, it looks like a Blizzard game in that same way, where it's kind of very colorful, very, like, easy to identify things. It moves really fast. I mean, Sunderfolk looks like, you know, StarCraft or Warcraft.

It just has that, it just looks the same. like the size of the characters, the way that they're animated, the way, the scale of them relative to the things around them, the way the grid looks, the user interface, the way that it's arranged on the screen, and then just the way that everything moves, it all has a kind of continuity. There's a cohesiveness to it that just anytime I play a Blizzard game, I have that same feeling, where it just feels like everything from the, you know, little buttons animating on the screen to the characters in the game itself. They're all kind of moving according to this very smooth, very coherent style of, I don't even, it's not animation, it's kind of just

the way that the whole game moves. And yeah, I really do think that it's a particular thing. And I'm guessing a lot of people out there listening. Like, you know, you guys, I think the two of you probably know what I'm talking about. If you've played Blizzard games, there is this just sort of particular tactile thing. And these two games both do have that, in my opinion, anyway. Yeah, I think you're right about the R style. I think the polish is a big part of it. Like it doesn't feel, it feels like all of the rough edges have been sanded off. It's smooth. Yeah.

It's all just very smooth. It's very seamless. You don't feel like you can just like break something if you like accidentally walk the wrong way. The way, sometimes when I'm playing like a Ubisoft game, I'll sometimes tread carefully because I don't want like a dialogue script to be broken or something because I looked in the wrong direction. With a blizzard game, you don't really have to think about that sort of thing. Right. Like seeing polygons going through one another or having frame pacing issues or stutter.

or these things that a lot of other games have where it just, the whole thing feels a little bit rickety at times. Even if you're not paying attention, it kind of tells your brain something. And Blizzard games and these two games both just, that's not there. And so it feels like this much more direct and smooth experience. Similar to Nintendo games, I would say. Yeah, yep.

Yeah, there's also some just literal visual similarities. Like, I can only speak to Wildgate, but there's a reason why we played it and we were like, oh, this is like Overwatch. Like, let's say I had no idea. anybody that actually worked at Blizzard worked on Wildgate, I would have played it and been like, boy, there's some big Overwatch fans.

Like, really loved Overwatch, whoever made this game. And some of that is like just the screen layout. And there's a whole lot of visual information on the screen, but pretty soon you realize all of it actually matters. And it feels a little overwhelming at first in the way that Overwatch does when you very, very first time are loading into the game. And you're like, oh, my God, there's so much going on. Like, what am I supposed to look at?

Like, Wildgate has a little of that sensation, too. but then over time you're like, okay, I actually understand what each of the things on the screen mean and why all of them are here. I'm going to focus on each of them at one time and learn it. And then once I get it, I get it. And also just even the typefaces looked kind of similar to Overwatch to me. Like they even kept some of the typefaces the same, which is fine. No judgment. They're easy to read.

I'm looking at Overwatch and I'm remembering there's the like even they lay everything out. So every button prompt and every input that you can give is actually on the screen. And both games do that. And that is actually, that is a bit of an unusual approach. It's not something that every game does. And these games do both do that. Where each piece of information, there's a lot of information, but it's all relevant. And it's kind of all the information and it's available to you at any given moment.

Right. Like in the Overwatch, you press Q and it pops up on the screen to do your ultimate. And like, even if you've only played a little bit, you remember like, oh, a cue is on my screen. I guess I'll press it. And like, Wildgate has that similar sense of like, okay, there's a letter on my screen. I guess I'll see what happens. And like that is just an inherent user-friendly thing to design in that way. Ironically, the people who are leading Moonshot and Wildgate did not work on Nover watch.

I believe it. I still think there's some similarities in design. It's Justin Chays and Dustin Browder and Ben Thompson, all of. And also to kind of put a button on something I said earlier, so those canceled games that I mentioned at Blizzard, Arise was this big Starcraft shooter directed by Dustin Browder. who then went on to direct Wildgate, which is not a StarCraft shooter, but it is a shooter. Orion was kind of like a D&D style tabletop game, essentially, a little bit different than what would become Sunderfolk. But that was directed by a guy named Eric Dodds, who would then go on to direct Sunderfulk.

He actually left, like, after a couple of years of directing that game, and it was replaced by a woman named Aaron Merrick. But still, those two games kind of served as the bones for what would become the Dreamhaven games. they kind of emerge from cancel blizzard projects. One other thing I'll say, I just look this up is that we didn't really get a feel for this because we played just a few matches of the beta, but there are these different ship traits so you can kind of get different kinds of ships, like faster ships and ships with more health and that sort of thing.

And the classes do have different abilities. So like one of them is a border so he can like damage ship parts with his melee attacks. And then another one is like can turn in vivid. visible. Another one is an engineer so he can use his multi-tool to kind of bounce around and hit multiple targets at once. So there are a lot of kind of mechanics that we haven't gotten a chance to explore that if we wind up playing more of this game when it comes out, we might be able to delve more into the kind of the depth of the mechanics. Also, fun fact, if a game, if a match gets to 60 minutes.

It's like a tie. The reach wins. The environment wins. 60 minutes is the most time, which makes sense. I mean, our matches were like 20 minutes max. They were way shorter than that. Not long.

So I guess one big question that looms over this is what does success look like for Dreamhaven? That's something that we've talked about a lot with the idea of starting a new company and having that meeting where you sit down and you define success. And then you actually try to stick to that instead of just saying, I don't know, sell the most games possible and make the line go up forever, instead say, no, we're going to operate according to this very specific budget with this very specific, you know, whatever target for how much revenue we're going to make.

And I really wonder what that looks like. I haven't gotten the sense that Sunderfolk has lit the world on fire in terms of sales. I would imagine there's probably a fairly large group of people who are, like, wanted that exact kind of game, who are very excited about it. But it's kind of a niche thing, and I don't really know what they're aiming for. Wildgate seems a little bit more broad. like something that could be a little bigger, but at the same time, it's a really crowded field for extraction, co-op extraction shooters.

Like, you know, you're up against Fortnite, so that's serious competition. So, again, I wonder what they're actually hoping for, and also what they need. Like, how successful do they need their games to be? It's a great question. I mean, the problem with leaving an institution like Blizzard, and a lot of people have run into this over the years, is that, like, you can no longer just release a game and then the world will pay attention. Like, suddenly you have to really put a lot more effort into, like,

even getting people to learn about your game, getting it in front of people. I saw some like advertisements for Sunderfolk on Reddit, and I was wondering how many people that would reach. And with Sunderfolk, they also, I think they hired some like tabletop players to like play it on YouTube. I'm not sure about Sunderfolk.

That seems like the type of game that needs to reach like a very specific audience that is kind of outside the realm of like the gaming enthusiast audience that the three of us pay a lot more attention to. Wildgate, I feel like, could crack more of like the heart. the Twitch streamers and the hardcore resetter and Reddit players and stuff like that. So I'll be very curious to see if they do reach people. And yeah, Kirk, to your point, I mean, Dream of it, I believe is 100 or fewer people.

So their measure for success or profitability is definitely much, much different than Blizzards. Their threshold, like when you don't have thousands of employees, you don't have to have a billion dollar game. So, yeah, I'm not sure. It's smart that they're aiming for different audiences with both games I hadn't really thought about it until you laid that out But it you know they're the two audiences are fairly different Yeah I would say very different Dunderfolk is really I mean it could be played by so many people who don't play games like Wildgate at all

And that actually seems wise that they're not releasing two games that are actually very similar Are going to be competing for attention Yeah I'll be very curious to see what happens with both of these games and Yeah it'll be we'll have to check back in with the Dream Haven down the road and see if these games hit their, like, their expectations and, like, if they're able to keep going and keep kind of creating new franchises and keep trying to recreate that magic. All right, why do we take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing?

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on maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Night night. And we are back. Kirk Maddie. It is time for one more thing. Maddie, start us off. So I've been playing a video game called Doom the Dark Ages, which is out today as we release this episode. So you, the listener, can play it.

And I think you should because I think this game is extremely fun. And really stupid and so, like stupid. parentheses complimentary. I just, it was really, really hitting the spot for me this past week, just destroying demon after demon and hearing their bones crunch. So I played the first doom when I was a child. And then I didn't play any other dooms at all for years. Oh, this is your first since the 90s.

I mean, I checked out some other ones because I was writing this one up. So I was like, let me just make sure I kind of have the lay of the land here. Like I had meant to try Doom 2016. I know it got raves at the time. I just kind of missed it and Doom Eternal. Same deal. It's not like I intentionally ignored them or something. I just, you know, other things were out and I was like, I'll get to it.

And I never did. But wow, these games are really fun. And I feel upset that I didn't play them. So if you're like me and you play Doom as a child and you're like, yeah, sure, whatever, I think I know what that is. I don't know if you do because it's way more fun and ridiculous now. And like they've turned everything up to 11. There's like absurd guitar licks every time you do every time.

everything and there's so much like just crunching bones. Like if you're just like, I just want to destroy something. Like you guys know rage rooms where like people rent a room and they're like, I'm just going to like use a chainsaw and destroy a bunch of stuff. That's kind of what doom the dark ages feels like to be where you just enter a rage room and you're like, I'm the doom slayer now. Nothing matters. I'm just out here just ripping and tearing and slaying things.

But I should also note, and I mean, No surprise. This game has some melee and parry mechanics, and I love a good melee and a peri mechanic. I talk about that on this show all the time. And so that's apparently something that these other Doom games haven't really had. And that this game has, there's a shield with, like, razors all around it. So you're basically flinging this, like, Captain America's circular shield around the battlefield. But it's a buzzsaw. So you're just, like, buzzsawing guys everywhere. It's so satisfying and good. So, yeah. Doom the Dark Gage is really, really fun, stupid game. There's a plot. Who cares? I've been ignoring it entirely. I don't know what's happening. No, you're not enjoying watching Skeletor and Evil Lynn monologue for a couple minutes in between.

If it was Skeletor and Evilin, I would actually be like, oh, that's interesting. This is a cool He-Man crossover that we're doing here. Instead, it's like knock off Skeletor and Evelyn and I can't be bothered. But the actual fighting and flinging the shield around, very fun. Wasn't it, Maddie? It was John Carmack, of course, the co-create. of the original Doom who said that story in video games is like story in a porn movie. I mean, I think that ethos has pretty much stayed through every Doom game in the sense that

it doesn't seem like a big priority for those games, and it doesn't have to be. Not every game has to be. Claire obscure. Yeah, they keep adding stories. I mean, yeah, what kind of story can you really just like. I mean, they're trying it. You know, there's a lot of cut scenes in this game. And they like tried to put lore into, was Doom Eternal, the one where they tried to add a bunch of lore?

Yeah, I don't think people like that. Maybe I'm speaking for Doom fans too much here, and I'm a late comer or like an early comer and then popping back in later. I've very rarely seen people say, oh, I love the story. Almost everyone says, why is there so much story? I just want to blow stuff up. Let's just blow up the freaking demons, man. This is why we're here.

But ironically, machine games adding story to Wolfenstein actually made it really great. See, I'm not saying that across the board you shouldn't add story to games. Good story is what we want. on good story. I'm just saying that adding story to one of those old school in games that wasn't about story can work. If you do a good job, it can be great. Yes, it turns out that good things are good and bad things are bad.

We've learned something important today. That's what we say here on triple click, which is if it's good, keep it. And if it's not good, cut it out. And if you're playing a game with Kirk, don't die. That's right. That's so important. I'm playing this as well, but we're going to talk more about Doom next week. So I'll keep my powder dry until then.

What's your one more thing, Kirk? My one more thing is Sinners, the new Ryan Cougler movie, which I went and saw at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Oregon. Last week, it was a sold-out crowd at my favorite local theater. Super fun way to see this movie. And it was wild, man. I think my audience didn't totally know what to make of it because it is a real wild movie.

I wasn't sure what to expect going in and just kind of walked out a little bit gobsmacked and sort of spinning. I spent a while thinking about it afterwards. So this movie, of course, Ryan Coogler, the director of the Black Panther films and the Creed films. This is kind of his blank check movie a little bit after all these franchise movies that made so much money. He now gets to write and direct his own big,

mega-budget, totally wild movie. This is a movie that is both about black American music and the blues in the south in the 1930, and also about vampires. And so, you know, it's kind of got both of those things. I actually compare it to from dusk till dawn. Have either of you seen from dusk till dawn? No.

So this is a Quentin Tarantino Robert Rodriguez movie from the 90s that I saw when I was, I guess, in high school. And it's a movie that starts as a Quentin Tarantino crime movie. And I was really into those because I loved Pulp Fiction and I had just seen Reservoir Dogs. And I was into that. And I'm like, okay, cool. I'm going to go see this. So the first half of the movie is just Quentin Tarantino and then they're like doing crime and it's bad dudes and they've got cool suits and pistols. And then halfway through they get to this rest stop, truck stop kind of area that seems a little weird.

And then Selma Hayek does a sexy dance and then she's a vampire and then it becomes a Robert Rodriguez movie. And then the second half of the movie is like everyone is getting killed and there's blood and like severed limbs everywhere and like vampires are running around and it's totally crazy. I didn't realize. Wait, that sounds like Grindhouse. which is like a double feature of Quentin Tarasino and Rubber. Well, and that was their, not enough if that was their first collaboration, but I believe that it was, and that led to Grindhouse and led to them. I had no idea.

Wow. Okay, cool. Yeah, it's great. I mean, from Dust Till Dawn is a classic and a very strange movie and really clearly feels like a Frankenstein, like two different directors, Frankenstein together, the things that they do well. This kind of feels the same, the same. It's like this really interesting period piece, laced with lots of dread, really great music. This film stars Michael B. Jordan as identical twins, which I actually didn't even know that.

I knew nothing about this going in. And he plays two brothers named Smoke and Stack. And they've kind of come back from Chicago, back down to their home on the Mississippi Delta, and they're going to take their ill-gotten gains and open a juke joint. So, yeah, they like buy an old piece of land from this kind of shady white guy, and they have money and no one really knows where they got it from, and then they're going to open up a nightclub. And so then they go and find their cousin, Sammy, who's played by Miles Katten, who is like a guitar prodigy.

And he is wonderful. I believe he's really playing and singing, and it's so cool. I mean, he, like, does the Delta Blues and just nails it. And so he's going to be their kind of performing act. They wind up getting Delroy Lindo, who's like a harmonica player and another like old blues man to join up. And they're kind of go around the town, reconnecting with all these people that they knew when they were younger before they kind of both blew town. And so it's like smoke and stack are back. They're opening up a club.

You know, like all this stuff is going to happen. And then halfway through they open the club. They have this like amazing. They're having this great performances, this great time. There's this kind of mystical energy going on where Sammy's guitar can kind of pierce the veil of time. So there starts being this interesting, it's like represented in a number of different ways. And I don't want to spoil anything because there's some kind of wild stuff that happens. But anyways, his guitar,

The idea is that, like, through the power of his guitar, he's this, like, one of the chosen few whose music is, like, almost shamanistic and it can, like, connect to some greater truths that's, like, outside of space and time. So that attracts this Irish vampire who is leading a, like, bluegrass group, and they come to the club and they're, like, we want into the club because we want this kid because he can connect us to our music. And so that's, like, at the halfway point. And then, like, everything just goes totally crazy. and it becomes five different things. It all is really fun. It's like, you know, Coogler is a great director. Michael B. Jordan is amazing.

I mean, the whole cast is so good. It's really fun to watch it all happening. There's a lot going on. It's saying a lot about black music, about, I don't even know, like, on the alienation of American culture and what was going on during Jim Crow and, like, all this other stuff. So it's all very, very interesting. There are a ton of great think pieces about it. It is a bold, ambitious movie.

There's stuff that. like doesn't quite work in the moment, or at least didn't work for me. There are just a couple of sequences where I was like, wait, hang on. I'm like, why are we doing this? But by and large, I had a great time and it was really fun to see it in a room full of people. And I walked out with just a million thoughts. And, you know, my friend that I saw it with, we've been kind of texting me like, oh, man, well, actually, if you think about it this way, like, that's really what this guy wanted, you know, the vampire was actually trying to get this and this is why he was saying that and whatever. And there's a ton of great performances. And it is remarkable watching Michael B. Jordan

play two very different twins. That's fun. And just he's so good at it. I mean, he really like, they seem like different guys. That's incredible. Bing! Kirk here editing the episode, I didn't mention Ludwig Geronson's score. Guess what?

It's really good. The music in that movie is incredibly great. Some super cool guitar stuff. He brought in all of these guest musicians. The soundtrack is amazing. Of course it is. I figured I should at least mention it, though, since it's such a big part of the movie. Okay.

Bing! So, I mean, I recommend it. I feel like everyone's probably. already seen it. I know the movie's doing really well. And just cool to see someone like Kugler get to get out of Franchiseville and just make a weird, ambitious, exciting movie like this. So generally, I really liked it and look forward to watching it again, I think. And it does seem like a movie that the second time I watch it, I'm going to get a lot more out of it and sort of be more prepared for all the different, you know, left and right turns that it takes

throughout its runtime. Cool. So speaking of Franchiseville, my one more thing is a movie called Thunderbolts that is the latest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I watched it last weekend. And it's really good. It is a good strong Marvel film that is actually about something and has a very compelling cast of characters who aren't just the kind of classic, typical Marvel heroes. They even make John Walker kind of likable.

He, of course, was the villain or one of villains. Captain America and the Falcon, yeah, kind of a very punchable face. But you definitely, you grow to feel for him in this movie. He's Wyatt Russell, right? That's Kurt Russell's kid. He's kid. He's Wyatt Russell. It's funny, Kurt Russell's kid is in this, and then Bill Pullman's kid is also in this.

Also plays a key role. He plays a character named Bob, who plays an important role in the story. You know that Wyatt Russell and Kurt Russell played different versions of the same guy in that Apple TV Godzilla show? they're like the young version of Kurt Russell's character is played by Wyatt Russell. I like it when they do that with actors kids. And then in the modern day timeline, like the old version of him is played by Kurt Russell. That is fun.

Anyways, continue. It was pretty cool. That show was mid, but that was neat. So Thunderbolts is, it's a team of kind of like semi-villains or I guess reformed villains kind of in the mold of suicide squad. But it's really good. It's a movie that actually has things to say. And not too much to say, but it's about depression in a really interesting way.

I mean, I say that because it's like there's only so much you could say about something in the confines of a Marvel movie that also has to fit in a billion connections and like references and oh, hey, remember this? Remember when the Avengers were here? But it does feel like it's saying something interesting. It's exploring depression and kind of redemption and interesting ways. The main character is essentially Yelena, who is the Florence Pew character who was introduced in. Black Widow as the sister of Natasha Romanov, Black Widow. And she's a really interesting, funny character, got a great kind of Russian sense of humor.

David Harbour's character steals all his scenes. He's hilarious and does a fantastic job with his ridiculous red guardian character. And yeah, it's just, it's a really enjoyable movie to watch in a way that a lot of movie, a lot of Marvel movies have not been because it feels substantial. It feels like it's not only just kind of flashy like action sequences and references to other superhero movies

that are coming, but also really wants to just kind of convey something about depression that I thought was really interesting. So what you're saying is it's helpful to make a movie that's about something. It is. Like a plot. Character motivation. It's a wild idea.

They should do that again for like another movie after this. Well, the thing is, I mean, when you're exploring like reform villains, there's a lot of different directions you can go in. And in this one, they chose what I think is the most interesting one, which is not them trying to redeem themselves or just kind of like trying to forget about their past or whatever. It's really them just kind of like coming to terms with what it's like to live in the world now and deal with the kind of the depression that you feel of like, in Yelena's case, growing up as a child soldier and doing all these horrible things and then just like

feeling like you're newly in the world and don't even know what to do with yourself and are just kind of constantly depressed and trying to figure out what to do with those feelings. And it's explored in an interesting way through the character of Bob, who it's kind of like it becomes a metaphorical thing. And I don't want to spoil anything. So I'll just leave it at that. Fun fact, it is directed by a guy named Jake Shrier, who as far as I know is not related to me. But I will have to look into this further. However, no one has ever seen Jake Schreier and Jason Schreier together in the same room. That is true. And Jason's been really busy, just constantly flying out to soundstages in Georgia. First he had a secret baby, now he has a secret franchise film.

That would be, could you imagine if that was my next prank? You were like, oh, and by the way, that will, Maddie. It's Maddie starting to do a prank. I know. It's my turn to direct a Marvel movie. Call me, Kevin Fiji. Well, I mean, X-Men is coming up. You could secretly direct that. It is. And what have I been spending my time doing? Maybe that?

Maybe I'm making a career pivot to that? I don't know. We did both go to NYU, Jake Schreier and I, so you never know. But as far as I know. Not at the same time? I don't think so. I think he's a little older than I am. He also directed and was like a key part of beef.

He directed most of those episodes. Oh, cool. Okay. Wow. Beef rules. So that's a good thing. Yes, and some of those people that he worked with on that came aboard for Thunderbolts. Oh, okay.

Wow. That makes a lot of sense, actually, given how you describe the movie. Yes. The other thing that's interesting about Thunderbolts is, I won't spoil anything, but there are some tantalizing threads about where phase six of Marvel is going to go after that, after this. And it makes me very curious to see the next movie, which is Fantastic Four. And then it's all leading into like the new, the next Avengers. movie, which is going to be next spring.

Wow. You're actually on the hook, Jason? Like you actually care? This is actually shocking. This is the most shocking reveal. No, from you specifically, Jason, because after end game, you were like, I'm out. I'm out. No, it wasn't after end game.

It was after all the multiverse stuff. Remember, that's what I was way out on. And this is nothing to do with the multiverse as far as I can tell. That's good news. When they fired Jonathan Majors, it feels like they kind of gave up on some of that stuff, or at least the concept of like Kang taking over all these universes. So it does feel a little bit more focused. But also it's kind of, it's hard to say get into this without spoilers.

But like what they did at the end with these heroes is interesting and a whole new way that I think that I'm very curious to see what happens next. And also Julia Louise Dreyfus is now a part of the Marvel universe and she's a great character. And she's very fun to watch on screen. She's like a kind of like a. a like amped up version of Selena Meyer from Veep in that she's now this like conniving politician type and that's fun to watch. When Wendell Pierce from The Wire plays a role in this. He's like a congressman. Wendell Pierce is a working dude. I see that on every TV show that Emily is watching when I look over. I feel like Wendell Pierce is there as often as that playing out.

He makes a lot of appearances. Yeah. And yeah, it was really cool. The one thing that did didn't work for me was the character of Ghost who is like an Ant Man villain who for some reason is in this movie. From a pretty bad Ant Man movie sorry to that character woof, I was surprised they brought they brought us back. She's also in a

cast of pretty good performances I really like Wyatt Russell, I really like Florence Pugh, David Harbour again stole the show. She is kind of a weak link, the character ghost and also her character, they have no idea what to do with her character like, okay, she can teleport through things.

and she doesn't have any sort of arc whatsoever. But the others I really enjoyed. And yeah, I mean, it's just a good movie. It's good in a way that a lot of... I mean, I enjoyed Deadpool last year, but that was good in a different way. This felt good in a way that kind of the older Marvel movies were good in. And it's like, I wouldn't say it's as good as like Winter Soldier, but it feels good in the same way. And that it's like, okay, this is like, this is a substantial.

movie that happens to be in the Marvel universe as opposed to just kind of like tacking together a bunch of Marvel cliches and quippy one-liners and calling it a day. And it helps that it's like, it always helps when there's a good villain and there's a good villain, a good couple of villains and this one, good cast of characters. It makes me excited to see more of Yelena and Florence Pugh and some of these characters and to see where they're going with all this stuff. It also helps that the Fantastic Four trailer, which played before this movie, is really, cool and looks really good too.

So yeah, it's, it's, I think, uh, some, some reasons for optimism in the MCU again. We'll see. Well, hopefully those underdogs are going to pull it out. Yeah, right? They really, they deserve a win after all this. Yeah, they've worked so hard and things have been really against them. So hopefully Disney and Marvel are going to get a much deserved win.

Yeah, they just need a win. It's so funny because like, it's only been three months since Captain America, which was widely panned and like apparently sucked. I mean, jokes aside, they actually are doing terribly. So it is good to hear that they are like, should we do character drama? Okay, let's do that. That is kind of a relief. Yeah, put your vast resources toward making better movies.

Tell a story. Put a story in there. Good idea. Yes, yes, yes. All right, that is that for this week's episode. Kirk, Maddie. See you both next time. Yeah, see you next 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 Maximumfund.org slash join.

Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at Maximumfund.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. Supported directly by you.