Triple Click - Diablo 4 Reborn, Assassin's Creed Racism, And Much More

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Kirk is back and there's much to discuss. This week, the gang does a lightning round of topics, from the fallout of the Xbox shutdowns to Assassin's Creed racism and Hades 2 and the plethora of other killer indie games that have come out this year.One More Thing:Kirk: Lois McMaster Bujold’s fantasy novels (The Curse of Chalion (2001), Paladin of Souls (2003), The Sharing Knife (2006-9))Maddy: Hades 1Jason: The Lost Shtetl (Max Gross)LINKS:Featuring an excerpt from “The Crossroads” by Darren Korb from Hades 2Triple Click LIVE in LA! Saturday, June 8, 6:30PM at the Teragram Ballroom: https://teragramballroom.com/tm-event/triple-click-podcast/Preorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/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

Look, sometimes in life you have to miss a couple weeks of your video game podcast, and then everyone goes and finishes animal well without you, and now you have to find the last few eggs on your own. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're talking about a grab bag of topics from further fallout, from Microsoft Studio Closures to Lorelei in the Laser Eyes, to some of my belated takes on the games I missed out on while I was gone. Let's get into it.

I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shire. Hello. Hey, hello. Hello. Hello. It's us.

Welcome back, Kirk Hamilton. I'm so glad to be back with my two favorite gamers. It's good to have the Triforce complete. Finally. And what a journey it was. I am so glad to be here with my two video game friends to talk about video games. And of course, you can support the creation of our show by going to maximum fun.org and becoming a member of Maximum Fun, which is our podcast network.

And that's the only way we make any money off of this show. So we are very thankful. for everybody's support. And speaking of that, and speaking of supporting us, you should come and see our live show, which is coming up pretty soon, Saturday, June 8th in Los Angeles. That's right.

In two weeks at the Terregram Ballroom, it's happening concurrent with Summer Games Fest, though not actually as part of that. But, you know, we'll be talking about it. We'll be hanging out, mixing it up. There'll probably be some folks who are at the fest at our show, and we're really excited. So you should get a ticket so that we know

you're coming, but you could also probably just show up, and that would be exciting, too. It's in two weeks, Saturday, June 8th, 630 p.m. At the Teragram Ballroom, there are links for that down in the show notes. So before we get started, I wanted to just explain to people where I've been since I told some people in various places, like on Instagram and stuff, but haven't mentioned it on the show, and I know I've been out for a little while, which is unusual for our show. So I thought I would just really quickly say what happened. It's kind of sad. So I'll warn people that it's sad. But it's It's okay because sometimes we can also talk about sad life stuff. So a couple of weeks ago, my dad died unexpectedly.

He had been kind of sick, so we sort of knew something was wrong, but we didn't know what. And then he died. He was in the hospital. It was fast. It could have been a lot worse, but it is still very sad. And he had been taking care of my mom for a long time, and my mom actually has pretty advanced dementia, which has been something that I and my sister and Emily and our spouses and everyone has been dealing with for many years has been incredibly difficult, as I'm sure anyone out there who has had a loved one or especially a parent with dementia knows.

It is just, it sucks and is very, very hard. So this was a real double whammy. We had to fly down to help take care of her because she can't live alone, find somewhere for her to live. So I have just been in a pretty intensely stressful and crappy situation for a couple of weeks. fortunately we did find somewhere for her to stay it's lovely everyone really came together it was like there is that sort of silver lining of a family crisis where if your family really comes together and they're kind of there for one another it's really nice a lot of my friends just people came through in all kinds of ways you both came through Russ Frustick showed up to hang out and basically tell everyone not to listen to you guys talk about animal

yeah classic Russ so you know there were there were plenty of um of um of of positive moments in the midst of what was otherwise very hard. And of course I heard from lots of listeners, both to this show and strong songs, who are just really nice. And it sucks. Anyone out there who's lost a parent knows it sucks. And anyone out there who's dealt with dementia knows it sucks. So it's been pretty rough. But I am excited to be back with it, back with the triple click flow and back with the two of you to talk about games.

So anyways, I just wanted to tell people that since I might talk about it in the future. And I don't know. It's just a crappy couple of things that happened. bad things happen sometimes and life goes on. So anyways, well, we are glad to have you back. Yeah, we missed you. And I'm glad you're back. I missed you both too. Says it should be. It is. Here we are. And yeah, I'm very excited to just like talk about video games and video game news. So yeah, Jason, what are we talking about this week? Yeah, let's get on with the show. So today is kind of a strange episode. We're doing a grab bag of topics. There's some stuff that Kirk didn't get to talk about over the last couple of weeks. There's some stuff that has happened. some newsy things, some games, lots of cool indie games out.

And I figured we would just talk about a bunch of different things, just rapid fire, lightning round style. So we're just going to go through some topics. And I'm going to rattle them off and we'll dive into them, shall we? Very exciting. Yay. Okay. First of all, let's talk a little bit about the Xbox kind of fallout of what happened a few weeks ago.

Kirk, while you were gone. But not related to the game fallout, just the fallout in general. No, the game fallout, which is owned by Xbox. that's a whole other thing. But it's not related to this. Kirk, you were gone, but I'm sure you saw the news that Xbox shuttered two game studios under the, or three game studios under the Zenimax label and made it like kind of folded a fourth one into another studio.

The three that folded are Tango GameWorks, the maker of Hi-Fi Rush, Arcane Austin, the maker of prey and Redfall, unfortunately. And Alpha Dog, which is a mobile game studio. the first two, of course, got the most attention, especially tango, which just made a big hit and then got rewarded for that by failing or by shutting down. Yeah, I mean, there's been a lot of talk over the last couple of weeks since then

about the future of Xbox, what Xbox looks like, a lot of just doom-saying and negative kind of sentiment surrounding Xbox to the point where the creators of Hellblade 2, which is a game that's out this week, another game from Xbox Team Ninja, put up a big block of text on their Twitter feed, and it was written in a way that made it seem like it was one of those studios shut down notices.

And it was like, oh, my God. But it was actually just them celebrating the launch of Hellboy 2. But everybody's talking about how, like, oh, is Microsoft going to shut down Ninja Theory after the release of this game? So, yeah, it's a lot of kind of confluence of issues. Kirk, since you didn't get to talk about it last time, I mean, do you have any thoughts on this whole thing and how it's played out? Yeah, you liked Hi-Fi Rush, right? I think it sucks. That's my

take, is that I think this sucks. I loved Hi-Fi Rush. That was one of my favorite games of last year. That game was remarkable because it was made by Tango, and yet it wasn't directed by Shinji Makami, who was the sort of big name behind Tango and who had left. It was directed by somebody else. And to me, that is indicative both of what, I don't know, a good steward of a studio like that should be doing, which is allowing talent to rise up and take a shot at directing a game that's really different. And then, I mean, hopefully celebrating that team and that leadership for making a game that was so remarkably cool and unlike anything I've ever played. And then the failure here, of course, is that now all of those people are cast to the wind.

And hopefully they'll find somewhere new that they can work. but I mean, that team just made a really great game, and now that's over and they're gone. So I'm bummed about all of it. I mean, I love prey. I love the first dishonored. I've always been fond of just sort of what Arcane does and to have them lose a bunch of talent as well.

I know some folks had already left because Redfall, I think, was kind of a mess in development. This has all been covered. No one needs to learn about this for me. But it is a huge bummer. It really does speak to the massive downside of this kind of consolidation. It's something we've seen in media. It's something we experienced in media. And it is true across any of a variety of different sort of worlds of media and art and

whatever else. Like this kind of consolidation just eventually leads to this kind of bloodletting. And it sucks to see it. Yeah. What's a real shame about that, and I think you make a good point about, hey, this is in the point of this whole thing to be like nurturing new talent and keeping them loyal to you and you can make a lot of money that way. A couple of things I've learned since we recorded that episode are that the game did well, even by Microsoft's internal metrics. Like, High Fire Rush was seen as a success internally. And they even went to Tingo and said, hey, yeah, they said, hey, we want you to pitch something else. Like pitch us a sequel. And there had been a pitch process and it was not yet green lit, but Tango was in the process of pitching that.

But there were other factors at play. One was that Shinji Makami, the founder of the studio and creator of Resident Evil, actually left last spring, I believe it was, like March 23 or February 23, something like that. And so that was a factor. I think because you have a studio that is kind of like built around one guy. And despite High FI Rush, it was kind of built around him with like making the evil within and the evil within two, which are like Resident Evil with the serial numbers scraped off. So that was a factor. The other, and I think the biggest factor is. is just bad timing. And I think it was a case where there was pressure from Microsoft, the Satya-Nandela level,

to make Xbox, improve their P&Ls, cut costs. And Xbox said to Zemex, hey, we're cutting costs. We need to streamline here. You guys are too bloated. We need to consolidate a little bit. And Zendamex chose to consolidate. And they picked two game studios that were not actively working on projects. So those, uh, if those projects were greenlit, that would mean spending money instead of cutting money. So they chose to cut money by cutting those studios. And so if you look at the portfolio there, it's very much like one of those short term moves where it's like, well, um, our other studios, machine games is working on an Indiana Jones game and that's in the middle of production. That's going to ship later this year. Uh, so we can't cut them. It has been in development on a new

tomb. So can't cut them. Like you look around and it's kind of like, Just musical chairs. It is terrible, right? It is terrible. Because they were, those two studios just shipped games. Like, shipping games is hard. And they had just done something very difficult successfully. And then this is how they're rewarded for it.

It's literally musical chairs. It's like these two studios didn't have games greenlit. Greenlighting them would mean putting more money on our P&Ls and we want to take money. Like, we want to spend less. So we're not going to greenlight these instead we'll, we'll shut down the studios. It's literally about like corporate like finance like calculation. That's what so much of. this is about. And like I said, there are other factors. There are always a lot of factors in

it comes to these decisions. But like that my understanding is that that was the biggest one. That is like just bad timing. Like you guys shipped a game when we were entering cost-cutting mode. Sorry, you're screwed. Can't get a new game out the door. And I've seen this happen before. What's interesting is that at some publishers, like a game studio might release a game and then have trouble getting their next thing greenlit. But the smart and savvy publisher will then use that studio is a support network. So maybe have all those people work on like other projects within the kind of overall corporation, which will like justify paying those salaries even when they don't have another project in development. But in this case, they decided to streamline instead.

So yeah, it all kind of sucks. And the thing that I think is really the long term ramification of this is I think we, the days of Xbox like pulling someone on stage, having Phil Spencer reveal on stage by like ripping off his blazer that he has bought a new studio like I think that's done and I think that like they've lost all trusts when it comes to consolidation. Yeah. It's basically here's the next studio we're going to probably close in the next five years. Yeah. Or just lay off so many people it won't be recognizable anymore or many projects there will

be shut down unceremoniously which is not good news. Yeah. It's it's going to be interesting to see what they do during their live stream at summer game because Goodwill is so lost for them right now. That's the biggest thing. It's going to take a long time for them to regain trust of the brand. And it makes you wonder what the brand looks like moving forward. It'll be interesting to see what happens in a couple of weeks when they do their big keynote thing.

Yeah. And yeah, I mean, Xbox is just a mess. We talked about that. We've talked about that a few times this year, how much of a mess Xbox is. The one last thing I'll say is that we're not done talking about this because my understanding is that they're not done. cutting costs yet. And in fact, even beyond these studio shutdowns, they had gone to a bunch of Xenamax employees and said, hey, do you want to take this voluntary severance package where you can get paid out for the rest of the year or something and you voluntarily step down, which whenever a company

does that, you know layoffs are not done quite yet. They are not done cutting costs. All right, let's move on. Let's talk about some games because there's some cool games that have come out recently. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. This is a new game from Simmel. Mogo. It's an adventure puzzle-solving game that has gotten quite a lot of buzz. Kirk, you popped up. I was playing Diablo on my Steam Deck last night, and I saw you pop up as playing Lorelei in the Lasers Eyes. What do you think? It's awesome from what I've played. I haven't played that much. My gaming brain is a little fried just over the last two weeks. It was actually sort of hard to focus on video games, not in general, but I guess the games that I was playing, which were mostly Animal Well

and Lorelei, both of which are... Yeah, they're very brain heavy. You have to do a lot of work in your own head. But I really dig what I've played of it. And actually, I've been playing it on the Steam deck. I was traveling. And so, of course, I

was. But I think this game might actually be better to play on a screen, like on my computer with a notebook next to me, because it is definitely a game that tells you to play with a notebook. It has a lot of fun fourth wall breaking that Smogo has done in their other games, where you like find the user

manual for the game early on, and then you're reading it and it's telling you how to play it. And I've been solving some of the sort of next level of puzzles. There's kind of an initial wave that's just really the introductory wave of the game and then you get into the building and start putting it all together. And yeah, I mean, I really, really like what they're doing. I love Simogo. I've liked a lot of their games. I've only truly loved, I suppose, one. I truly loved Scyonora Wild Hearts, which did something with music and video games that I've just never seen before since it's one of the most incredible But really, I've liked all their games.

This one, Lorelai actually reminds me of Device 6, which I believe is still only on iOS, is a kind of text-based puzzle game that has a similar vibe only in that it's a woman goes into this kind of funky puzzle area and you're not sure what's going on. And it's kind of mysterious and also a little menacing. And it has that same energy. And yeah, I like the Resident Evil feelings. I like just, I don't know, all the sound design. I really, really like their overall vibes.

So I'm going to keep playing this one for sure. Also, great name. Last thought. We talk a lot about bad names. We do. And there are plenty of bad names in video games. I've seen so many lately. But this one, and actually the next game, we're going to talk about both great names.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. Yes. Good job. They must have consulted a name consultant on that one because it's a very good name. It has a little rhyme almost, like Lorelei, Laser Eyes. Little rhyme, a semi-illiteration, killer rhythm. Great name. I have one problem with the name, and that is that Lorelei, it's hard to know hearing it if it's going to be an E-I at the end or an A-I at the end.

I'll give them a pass-up. I've misspelled it a lot because of Gilmore Girls, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, but that's fine. It's not a real problem. No, that's fine. I'm curious how much you guys have played, though, or what you think of it. I haven't played it. I played a little bit. It's a little clunky for me. The moving around, it feels very clunky, and I don't know. I was bouncing off of a little bit. I went directly from Animal Well to that. That's part of my problem too. Yeah. Animal Well,

I was like, I don't know if I can do another extremely brain-heavy puzzle game. I need to do something else with my brain for a little bit. But I think I'll play Lorelei a little later when I've had enough of a break. But it's just because I played so much Animal Well that I started losing my grip on reality. So I needed to do something else. Fair. Yeah, the puzzles are pretty different, but it is definitely,

They were both definitely very brain heavy in and I could see just being like, I want to play Hades too, for example. It's just a very different kind of experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I already love it. So this is, it's a short game. It's made by a company called.

called Happy Broccoli Games, a small developer. And it is extremely silly. It's kind of, it's like an Obra Dinn-like. It's like inspired very much by, by Case of the Golden Idol. But silly? The gameplay itself is like you're filling in Little Maloos, but it's a lot shorter and cuter and more cartoony and easier.

It's not like a hardcore, like, rack-your-brain type of game. And it's very silly. You play as this duck detective who, instead of your average noir detective might have an addiction of bourbon. Our duck detective has an addiction to toast. So toast crumbs everywhere in his apartment. And yeah, and basically you get to this office and you have to figure out who stole someone's lunch and is like why there's salami in a bag somewhere.

And I'll just leave it at that. But basically you're going around and you're talking to people and you're like looking at people's computers and investigating any clues and trying to piece together what happened in the same style as like Golden Idol where you have kind of the mad lips filling out the blanks. And it's fun. It only, it's like two hours, three hours long. So it's one of those kind of bite-sized games that is a really good like pallet cleanser between your your massive AAA experiences or your your massive like animal well. I'm just than hours trying to find all these bunnies type of games. Do you think this game is designed to play with kids or for kids to play, kind of for younger players? I think, yeah, I think a kid can enjoy it.

I don't think there's, I think there's some humor that, like, is more adult, but I think it would just go over the kid's head. So, yes, I do think that a kid would enjoy it. I think adults will still enjoy it, too. It's just very fun. It's just like a very good-hearted game and very enjoyable, and the writing is very silly and fun and I just enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the couple hours I spent with it. It's not like going to make my game of the year list or anything, but it was just fun. It was just like a fun little

experience. I do enjoy it. I love a case of the golden idol alike. There should be more case of the golden idol likes in my opinion. Especially for kids to kind of onboard people to that sort of game without throwing them in the deep end. Yeah, it sounds amazing. I love this. Yeah, it might be a little tough for kids. But yeah, I mean, I think a kid could get it to it. And there's like a good hint system. So yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a good one. All right, let's talk about another news story that I thought was interesting. I'm going to have kind of a devil's advocate take on this one. So this week, it was announced that Larian Studios, the company behind Baldersgate 3, is super successful. They opened a seventh office. They now have seven different offices.

This one in Warsaw, Poland. And also, they're working on two games at once, two ambitious RPGs, they say, and hiring more people. And I saw every single. single person on like social media and resett era and whatever is talking about how awesome this is and how exciting it is to see a company growing whenever everyone else is cutting and I just saw this and was like oh shit I think Kirk I think you know exactly why yeah I feel like we talked about this exact topic with regard to Larian and the idea of Kirk you had such an eloquent way of putting it like deciding what success means to you and maybe it doesn't have to be infinite growth I think about it all the time since you said

it actually. Yeah, I think that's basically what I said. Yeah. It was eloquent, wasn't it? Good for me. I really, nailed that one. Good job. You did it. You did it. Yeah, I just like, I see that and I'm just like, God, like, why do they need to open a seventh studio? Like, this is just the larger they grow, the higher their expectations are going to have to be, the bigger the financial pressures, the more likely they're going to have to do something drastic at some point, like if not shrink. sell, like take more investments. They already have a 30% investment from 10 cent. So, and the rest is owned by the CEO, Sven Vinkie and creative director. But like, what, what are things going to look like in the future for Larry? And I mean, we've seen this story play out so many times before where a company makes it big, releases a Fortnite or a World of Warcraft, and a Balderscape 3, grows exponentially and is never the same again. So I saw the

that and was just like alarm bells went off in my head despite all the excitement across the rest of the I hope that doesn't happen I just I hope maybe they stopped here they won't probably but it'd be nice as they were just like you know what seven offices is perfect for us that's just the right size as it happens I think just for my part I have enough larian games and I think the rate at which they release them is fine and so really yeah that's how I feel make another one and release it in I don't know however many years. Another five years. Okay. That's fine. I'll replay Baldersgate three at some point. I'll go finish Divinity Original Sin too. It's fine. Like they don't need to be releasing, like they don't need to be working on two games at once. I don't need a faster pace of releases,

just for me personally. So yeah, it's, I mean, it's cool they're doing well. That's nice. Like they're a very talented group of developers. They make great games and I'm happy they're doing well. But I don't know. Maddie, I think about something that you've said about, uh, how Vox Media has been run at times where they save money sometimes to help if times then, you know, take a turn. I sure am grateful for it these days. Yeah. So I just kind of wish I saw a little more of that of a studio loudly saying, hey, you know what?

We made a ton of money on Ballyersgate 3. Yeah. We're going to put that in a savings account. Yeah. Or, you know, invest it. Or just, you know, put it in a savings account. Yeah. We're going to be a five percent.

We're going to earn interest in a saving account these days. And we're just going to use that to, like, save as many jobs as we can the next saying there's an economic downturn. There's something to be said for that. I mean, I don't know. So few companies even operate that way. It's not to say everything Vox does is perfect by any means. That's not what this podcast is.

But it just has been very different for me working at Vox compared to the other companies we've both worked at where infinite growth is just seems like it's always the goal. Infinite page views, infinite everything. And that's the part of game development that I see that I can almost relate to in some level, where I'm like, God, it's impossible, though. You can't have infinite growth. You can't, there's not an infinite player base. There's not infinite people in the world.

And I guess we don't know that that's Larian's strategies to grow infinitely. Yeah, I hope it isn't. That's why I'm saying maybe, I hope it's not. I hope they're just like, they're expanding a little bit. And then they're like, we're good here. We're happy. The expend seems to have a good head on his shoulders in a lot of ways. He does.

But who knows? Like, yeah, anytime you see a studio that, or I see a studio that I really respect and whose games I love growing. these days it does make me nervous. Even the fact that they're saying they're making two games at once. I know. So many alarm bells ringing in my head. Yeah, the reason Larian is so successful is because their CEO and owner is also their creative director.

And that is such a rare combination. Having someone who's like, who makes the financial decisions, who is also the guy who makes the creative decisions. And that can have its drawbacks too, but it's the reason Balders Gate 3 is what it is. And I worry that too much growth will make something have to change there, like him have to pull some lever and make some decisions based on finances, which they haven't had to do on this game before. So, yeah, I don't know. Let's talk about more games. Kirk, you didn't get a chance to talk about two the games that Maddie and I talked about, Hades 2 and Animal Well. Do you want to kind of share some thoughts on either or both of those? Yeah, I have more thoughts on Animal Well

because I've played a ton of it. It would have been fun to take part in that episode. Though, I mean, I am kind of inclined to agree with Russ. I saw a lot of. listeners talking about this as well, just about this sort of paradox of the game that talking about animal well ruins animal well and that the joy of the game is playing it without having heard anything about it. I mean, there really was nothing like playing it before it was out where only a few people were playing it. And I was a little frustrated being just a little bit behind the curve. So I was watching, for example, Jason and Russ kind of getting to that third phase and getting into really wild stuff where I was still just trying to find eggs. And that

was fun, but it was always just, I was always in the position of asking for tips and never in the position of collaborating and brainstorming, which I think is very fun. And I don't really know how people are going to recreate that. But whatever, it's a brilliant piece of, piece of art. I mean, it's just an incredible creation, just on its own terms, irrespective of the experience that I had playing it, it is an unbelievable creation. Did you wind up collecting all the eggs? I almost have. I have a few left, but I haven't had a chance to play recently. But I'll finish it for sure. I have, I think I have like 57 or 58 eggs, so I'm pretty close. The one thing I want to point out that I think that the game has all three types of friction,

and it does all three types of friction really effectively. So this is the main thing I would have said on the Animal Well episode that I will now point out, is that I think that that's remarkable, and that there aren't that many games that do all three types of friction that well. To remind people, the three types of friction that we broke down recently when talking about Dragon's Dogma, too, were mechanical friction, logistical friction, and informational friction. And all three are really good in this game.

The mechanical friction, like the game feel, the way that the platforming feels in this game is very, very good. It strikes you immediately when you start playing it, and I think that's a really important thing about the game. Jason, you mentioned in Lorelei. The mechanical friction of that game is very different. Like, it's like clunky and kind of Resident Evil camera angles. They're going for something very different.

But in this game, it's so smooth in Animal Well. It's like, it feels like Super Meat Boy. You're this little blob. I don't know why Russ keeps calling it an egg to me. It's like a little meatwad or something. But anyways, you're this little ball, and it really feels like super meat boy. The after touch, the length of the jump, the way the platforming feels, there are some pretty gnarly platforming challenges that I've done,

and they feel really good. So I think that's just like a crashing success and a very hard thing to do. The logistical friction is really cool because the map isn't really that big, but you spend so much time figuring out how to get from point A to point B. And then the methods that you use to do that evolve and grow more complex as you go. but it's never just as simple as like fast travel unlocking or there just being some way that you can just warp around in the map

like you always have to think about where you're going so there's always some logistical friction and I like that and then of course the whole game is informational friction like that's the entire experience is just figuring out how to play it so it's kind of like this stacked whatever matroeska doll of frictions

that all just work beautifully together and it's incredible I mean I really I really think that it's a monumental achievement so I loved it. Yeah it's incredible I agree Hades 2. Hades 2 is great. I haven't played that much because I don't know.

It's wild how finished it is. But the fact that it's not fully finished just makes me want to wait. Like that there's some placeholder art, I guess. And I think the ending isn't done. And I'm like, well, I mean as well just play it when it's done. I think it'll be finished probably pretty quickly. They're already releasing patches and changing, like, tweaking the balance and stuff. Yeah, they've hinted that like probably next year, it'll be in one point now.

Oh, really? You think. So next year at 2025? Yes. they've essentially said like we're expecting to be in early access through the end of this year and then we'll see like what next year looks like yeah they're essentially said that and so it is I mean part of it is finished it seems like Maddie correct me if I'm wrong here but it seems like you can go down and you can go up to Olympus and the down part is all finished and the Olympus part isn't in yet right I mean we don't know if the down part is all finished but it feels pretty finished to me and that I can't quite figure out how many other characters or bosses there'd be there but I could envision that they would write more. You know what I'm saying? Sure.

Sure. But it feels, I mean, given that you fight chronos at the end of the down front, like that seems. But they could change it. They could add more stuff. Sure. Yeah. And they've kind of said, right, that the amount of the amount that is in the game now is actually larger than the entirety of Hades 1, which you just think this is going to be a much bigger

sequel. It's wild. There's going to be so much to do in this game that I don't really have a huge hesitation about it. It's just there's a lot of other things to play. And I know I'll play one. My main takeaway is just that Darren Corb rules that his music is such an essential part of these games. And the way that he, the way that he implements stems is so cool. So stems in music production are like

the bass, the drums, the percussion, the individual tracks. It's kind of like individual tracks, but like summed tracks. So like you'll just have like a vocal stem and that's all the vocal part. So it's not like a soloed part, but all the vocals. And they're really good. All of their games do this. Super Giants games are very good. good at fading stems in and out dynamically, which all video games do at this point. Like every game audio system uses these stem systems where they like blend in. It's like what I'm used was doing by hand, whatever, 30 years ago. And it was really crazy because they were having to mainly.

The Monkey Island effect. It was like the video game equivalent of like cutting tape in the studio and taping it together to make edits. But now it's totally seamless. But the way that he writes the music and the way they implement it in Hades in particular, it's so distinctive. I hadn't thought about it because I hadn't played Hades in a while. And then playing Hades too, the way that the stems layer, and they get more and more exciting,

and the fight is going, and it's kind of cooking. And then you beat the fight, and everything drops off at the base, and the base stem is just kind of, like, pulsing underneath the action. And you're, like, looking at the door and making the decision. Like, the way that that locks me into the rhythm of the game is so Hades. Like, it is just the exact identity of that game to me. And he already gets a ton of credit, but he deserves it all because he's, a great, great video game composers specifically,

like good songwriter, good musician, but great at writing music for games. So I'm psyched to play more of that. I probably won't at the moment, just because there are other things to play, but it's really, really cool. So speaking of action games that aren't finished yet, Diablo 4 got a massive new update

that just came out called Lute Reborn, and there's a whole season attached to it, season of Lute. It's really interesting. And it's so funny because there's a parallel here to what happened with Diablo 3, where Diablo 3 came out and then people complained about the end game and then Blizzard released a overhaul to the loot called Lute 2.0 and this is basically that all over again. I'm currently in the I'm currently reviewing the outline of Play Nice my new book like reviewing the outline reviewing

the page layout and I'm trying to find a way to stick in like a little bit about Lute Reborn because it's such a good parallel to Diablo 3 which of course you can read about it in the book but the loot reborn system. Have either replayed it? Because I played a bunch over the last couple nights. Okay. So Diablo 4, great on Steam Deck, by the way. I started a new character, a new whirlwind barbarian, which is a very fun build

to play around with. Just to check out this new lid system. And it's really interesting. It definitely feels like you're getting less loot and when you do get it. It feels more impactful. I'm definitely spending a lot less time clearing out my inventory than I was in the past. And that was kind of the idea.

It is fantastic to hear on its own. Yeah. And So with this, a lot of even having played a bunch of the game, reading about all of the changes is just incomprehensible to mean because it's all about proper nouns and all this different, like, people just talk about. Yeah. I read Diablo Four endgame and I read it Ali Welsh's article on Polygon and it was, it made it sound promising. And then it started getting into the particulars. And I was like, oh, sweet mother, I cannot read this. I can't do this. I can't do this.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I think Diablo four had the same problem than Diablo three did, which is that you play through it once. that's awesome. It's like a great experience. But then if you're an endgame player, if you're the type of person to spend hundreds of hours on it, then it kind of, it fell off after that. And this is designed in part to improve that end game. And they added a bunch of new stuff. They added the equivalent of Diablo 3's like greater rifts into Diablo 4. They added this this thing, Heltides, which is a cool new system. There's a lot of stuff in here that makes the game feel new,

and a lot of people are buzzing positively about it. I'm still in this new character. It's not like I've gotten to the end game. I'm still in Act 1, but I'm still enjoying it. I mean, it's just kind of a satisfying game to play through. It is just a very enjoyable game to play around with. And I really like playing around with the skill system and just finding dudes in it. And I don't know if I'll stick around till the end game this time around. But on the Steam deck, watching TV in bed, it's just a great, a great bedtime game, as I've said in the past. I'm probably going to do that. That sounds amazing.

I think I will play it. Like just a nice brain off. Yeah, it's cool, especially while you're waiting for Hades to you to come out for real. Right, exactly. Let's talk about a couple more news stories. This is another consolidation story that I think we should talk about because it's relevant to us and it's probably relevant to a lot of readers, which is that IGN entertainment owned by Zip Davis.

So essentially Zip Davis has bought up a bunch of game sites, including some ones that we have all heard of, Eurogamer, rock paper shotgun, Games industry.biz. Digital Foundry is part of this too. That's part of Eurogamer, right? Digital Foundry. A lot of the European sites that were owned by an events company called Reed Pop are now owned, are now part of the IGN machine. And there were, of course, layoffs as part of this acquisition.

So a bunch of people lost their jobs as a result. And it is just another consolidation in the video game world that has already, I was going to they could lead to bad things has already led to bad things. I mean, people lost their jobs just as part of this. We all have seen the media machine just chew people up, swallow them, spit them out as nothing but bones and gristle. We've seen our field just continually contract for the past couple of years. And Google hasn't even fully, like, released its AI summary thing that is going to take away millions of page views from countless websites. So, man, we're all screwed, is the short of it.

This is the kind of thing that I think about it, three in the morning, Jason, is this type of story. It's fine. I'm doing fine mentally. It's tough because you're a gamer and for me, especially rock paper shotgun, Kieran Gillen, Quins, like the rock paper shotgun of your back when they were just this really fun, funky PC gaming website that I loved to read because there was just an endless amount of creative pun writing and great criticism and just really high-level, weird, esoteric stuff.

And a lot of those writers have gone on to do amazing things. And I think they left a legacy that a lot of the writers there are upholding. I still go to Rock Paper Shotgun and find great writing. I find great writing at Eurogamer as well. Christian Donland, man, that guy is a great writer. And every time I see one of his reviews, I just, I love reading it. So there is this kind of ethos, and it is a somewhat European and English in print. particular, like, games writing ethos that I really enjoy being able to just seek out in my

web browser because I do still just read video game websites because I don't really use social media anymore. And, yeah, maybe IGN will just be hands off. I mean, they probably will be for a while, but come on. Like, what were we just talking about in the beginning of this episode? What have we been talking about forever? I mean, there were already layoffs, so... Yeah. There are already layoffs, so already people have lost their jobs, and it just seems like a matter of time because if you're IGN, I mean, how many video game websites do you need to own in order to feel like you have enough and you're making money? Well, all of them so that you can close some of them or something. Like, I hope that that doesn't happen, but, but it might and that would, that would

be a real bummer. I, I, I mean, I don't know who is making these calls, but like this is Zip Davis owns IGN. So it's not like this is IGN's like editorial team deciding we need more websites. Sure. When I say that, I mean, like the owners of IGN, and now also own two of their main competitors. Yeah. Or at least in Eurogamer, one of their main competitors. RPS is kind of its own thing. Yeah, Eurogamer is the biggest one.

Eurogamer is also a very good outlet for reporting and for doing adversarial reporting that game companies wouldn't necessarily want. And if it were to be debilitated in some way or shut down, that would be a big loss on that front as well, especially European reporting, reporting on European. and companies and game developers there. And Alex and Richard, I mean, what they're doing at Digital Foundry is really useful.

I mean, it's really good technical reporting. And I would imagine they'll be okay only because there's nobody else doing that at that level. And they could spin off and launch their own thing if need be. But I hope that they are able to keep doing what they're doing just because it is, no one else is doing it on that level. And I still reference their videos just when I'm curious about like, why does this game run so badly? and I could at least go and watch Alex, like, raging about it.

That's, yeah, that's the one, the one outlet I'm not concerned at all about is digital founding. Yeah, they'll be able to continue doing. That's one thing. They're so well known as a brand that I think they'll be able to continue doing what they're doing, even if they have to go independent or something like that. Yeah, and they have a niche, right? It's like they've definitely carved out a thing that they do that they're known for,

that they're better at. Yeah. They, more than any of those other outlets would have success with subscriptions, I think, as opposed to some of the biggest. I mean, I think they already have a subscription. description model. There's some sort of digital foundry thing where they like, they didn't spin off entirely, but there's something going on where you can subscribe to digital foundry on its own. And I think a lot of people do. One more news story. I think this is worth noting. I wasn't sure about this, but basically people are being racist about Assassin's Creed shadows, formerly called Assassin's Creed Red. And basically this game is set in feudal Japan and you can play with one of two characters. One is Yasuke, who is an African samurai, and the other is a Japanese female ninja. And people are being racist because, of course, they are, because, like, they, I don't know, they have strong feelings about a black samurai.

I was a little hesitant about bringing this up because it feels like amplifying just like the worst voices on the internet for no reason, but I've seen enough people talking about this and complaining about this and using the kind of that just kind of complete bad faith lens of, well, it's Japan, so they should have a Japanese man, whatever happened, a Japanese man representation, or even worse, the realism argument, which, of course, this is a series in which, in the previous game in the series, you played as a Norse god for half of the time. Plus, he's based on a real historical figure, too. Right, right, that's the other thing.

Although I saw some people, like, disputing whether he actually existed, which is just, like, even aside from that. But there are many sort of apocryphal historical figures in Assassins. Creed. So even that, like even a mythological, like, disputed historical figure is fair game for those games in my view. Right. And again, in the last game, like, you woke up, like, Basin wound up time traveling to the year to that, like, Basin who is the descendant of Loki. In any of those games. Yeah, it's all just nonsense. Any thoughts from you guys other than this is nonsense? Not on that. I mean, I mean, honestly, I just enjoyed reading some historical Japanese, Wikipedia,

articles about this black samurai who had never heard of. I think my hesitation with this game is related to that character, but it has nothing to do with his skin color. It's just that he's a samurai, and the other character is a Shinobi, is a ninja. And to me, at least, I would love to play an Assassin's Creed game set in Feudal Japan where you're just playing a ninja. Because to me, that's Assassin's Creed. I don't know.

I guess Assassin's Creed is kind of both things at this point. You played a Viking warrior in one of them. They've been leaning more in that direction. Yeah. More melee, less stealth. I'm not sure if you choose one or the other or if you play as both and you kind of alternate. Like in turns.

I think you do, but I mean, I think it's going to be similar to syndicate, but I think different in that you can take on any mission as either character. I believe that is how it works. It's more that like they're including samurai gameplay rather than going all in on making you play a really fast-moving stealth character

who can fight if she needs to but can, you know, vanish into the shadows like an assassin would. And I don't know, it's mostly that I've played so many. I've played Rise of the Ronan. I've played Ghost of Tsushima. I've been watching Shogun. I watched Blue Eye Samurai.

All of these pieces of media focus on samurai for the most part. And like samurai duels, which are cool. You stand face to face. One person pops the katana. You know, we've seen it a million times in so many different games. And it's iconic. But at the same time, like, I don't know, this was an interesting narrative tension in Ghosts of Tsushima, which is actually out on PC right now.

and people are probably playing it. I played a lot of that game. It's really cool. And an interesting conflict in that game is that your character is a samurai who is like, he's a lord, so he is a very, like, upright and honorable man. But due to the circumstances of the game

and the invasion and what's happening, he is forced to begin to act like a shinobi, which is very dishonorable. And he's sneaking through the reeds and he's stabbing guys. And especially in the early goings of that game, it's this interesting tension where it's like, he doesn't want to be doing this,

this is dishonorable. and it winds up being a character note that then kind of eventually, I mean, that game's a billion hours long and I never finished it, but it just kind of fades into the background and it's like, all right, well, whatever, because it's fun to do that stuff in video games. You want to sneak around, but then you also want to be able to fight. So that game kind of had it both ways, and it was sort of interesting, and that was fine. I just would like to play a game where you're just a ninja,

and it would be kind of cool to play an Assassin's Creed game where there's just one protagonist, and it's a lady, and that would be kind of cool. That said, this also looks cool. I'm totally interested in this guy's story. And, like, I'm, you know, I am going to play this game because I like Assassin's Creed. I'm cautiously optimistic about it. I mean, I will say after playing Assassin's Creed Mirage, which is a game that goes back to the old school ways of Assassin's Creed, I was like, you know, give me the new school. I'm ready for Assassin's Green Red.

Like, I'm so stoked for this game. I loved Valhalla and Odyssey. Yeah, I think it will be good. And I really like Syndicate as a dual protagonist game. So narratively, I think there's a lot that they can do with this. And actually, Shadow Tactics is another game set in Feudal Japan where you can play. There's a samurai character. There's also like a sniper, but there's totally a ninja, like the first character you play as.

And it's really fun to play them simultaneously. I don't think this game is going to do any of that, though maybe there will be like a finale mission or something where you play as both. They did some of that in syndicate where you played both E. And it was really cool because you're kind of bouncing back and forth between the two of them. So there's a lot of potential narratively. I mean, there's a lot cool that could happen here. I'm not even really saying I wish the game were different. I just, I'll probably play as the ninja just because that kind of gameplay seems cool.

And I bet it's going to be pretty fun in this game. Yeah. It did make me kind of psyched that like they didn't just do the thing where they're seemingly. They're just like sidelining the female character option. Like it, this is like a tough thing because I'm like, I'm so excited to have a black character in a game. But I also am like, this is a. that historically doesn't have any female characters in it. And so it's like, this is a dual fraught situation where I'm like, I want these characters

to have their time to shine. But also I like agree with you, Kirk, that like switching back and forth between the perspectives of the literal jobs that they have could result in a potentially boring game. I just hope they nail it because I'm like, this looks cool. Like it looks like it could be cool. But I don't really see if it's just purely optional, then I don't really see how that could work, you know? Like what you play the entire game as a ninja.

or you can play the entire game as a samurai. Like, how is that possible? I just, I feel like they have to make you switch back and forth. We'll find out in a couple of weeks. We're going to see more of it at Summer Games Best. Also, the next one after this, Assassin's Creed code name, Hex is set in, yeah, it's set in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. And like, I think you're going to play as a witch.

So if you want a female protagonist, maybe that'll be the one. Yeah, and just to be fair to Assassin's Creed, they have had a lot of great female protagonists over the years. have and I love, I mean, that's one of my favorite things about the games. And also, I talk about Bayek from Assassin's Creed all the time on this show. Like, they've had some great characters as the main character, too. It's a, it's a series where it's like hilarious for anyone to be like, what is Assassin's Creed going woke now? It's like, look at the rest of Assassin's Creed and like how much more they have tried to look at like lesser known historical figures who are marginalized

people. And like, that's the stuff about the games that I've always thought was really cool. So I'm just like, this is more of the stuff I like. about Assassin's Creed. Yeah. And that rules. The writer, the lead writer on the game tweeted her, like, how excited she was about the announcement and was just hit by a barrage of harassment. That's a lot of her account.

And it's just a sad seeing someone just so excited about the thing that they can finally talk about. They've been working on for years. And then, like, a bunch of Gamergate chuds just go after her, make her life miserable for a couple of days. That's a bummer. But let's take a break and it'll be less of a bummer when we come back. to talk about one more thing.

In 1979, singer Mickey Matsubara cut Stay With Me, a love song that hit big in her home country of Japan. The song has almost half a billion plays on streaming apps. But Mickey Matsubara didn't get to enjoy all that renewed interest. She died in 2004. In fact, she had burned

all of her music, and she literally asked everyone she knew to forget her. I'm Christian Duenas. I'm Yoske Kitazawa. On our new podcast Primer, we celebrate unforgettable music from outside the English-speaking world, starting with Japanese Citipop. We'll cover Miki's work and others in conversation with Devendra Banhart, Umi, Dame Funk, and more. Get Primer on Maximumfunn.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

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of admission. Every Tuesday on maximum fun.org or your favorite pod spot. And we are Kirk Maddie, it is good to have you both intact for one more thing. Yay! I'm going to go first real quick. I read a book that I think you both should read, that I think everyone should read. It's one of my favorite books that I've read in a long time. It's called The Lost Stettel by Max Gross. And the premise of this, tell me if you guys wouldn't want to read, just based on the premise alone. The premise of this is it's set inside a stettel,

a kind of a little village of Jews, religious Jews, who lived in these kind of little hamlets where some of them were blacksmiths and some of them were fiddlers on the roof and some of them were rabbis and they all just kind of lived together there in the 1900s at least until kind of the Holocaust in World War II.

Except this one is existing in 2024, 2020 whenever it came out because it turns out that this Stedel somehow survived, like it was totally off the radar from the rest of Poland during World War II, and so the Nazis missed it. And it just continued to exist, kind of in its own little isolated corner of the world in this forest, with the paths blocked off so nobody could actually reach it. It's like that M. Night Shyamalan movie. And so in the modern era, the Stettel is existing, and until one day, because basically a couple run off for reasons I won't get into. And then due to a various sequence of events, this shuttle is revealed to the world. So the end of the first chapter, a helicopter flies down and everyone is just totally shell-shocked

because they've never seen a helicopter before. And they're like, what the hell is that thing? And then we start to see what happens next. And they have to kind of reckon with whether their culture will be destroyed by leaving isolation and entering the modern world. And it is phenomenal. is so good. I really, really loved it. It is just such a good story and so well-structured and well-written and well-constructed it. I loved it to death. So highly recommend it, especially for people who are

fans of like Fiddler on the Roof and other kind of old Jewish culture stuff. It's really fascinating. It sounds cool. It's not based on any real thing that happened. It's just like, suppose it's a novel. It's a novel. It's a total fictional. Fictional book. But it's like adjacent to something you could almost imagine happening in some version of reality. That's what's fun about the premise is like you can you can kind of imagine. They do a good job of explaining exactly how this happened. Now I like things like that. Yeah. And then you see a lot of kind of fish out of water stuff as some of them like going to the real world and what that's like for them. It's really fascinating. Anyway, it's called The Lost Shuttle by Max Gross. I highly recommend it. Maddie, what's your one

thing. So my one more thing is Hades 1 because I played so much Hades 2 that I started getting kind of sick of it and I kind of started to notice some things about it that I can tell they're fixing. Like I won't get into it, but like there have been a few patches that have like substantially changed things. And I was just kind of like, I need to wait until this game is a little more ready because it's frustrating me in ways that aren't fair to a game that's in early access, if that makes sense. And I just remembered thinking, like, the opening to Hades One is so good. And I like Hades too. But the opening, it's all right. I think, I don't know. I don't know if they're going to rewrite like, like, 80s too. Opening, you mean the first level? The first like area. I mean the way that

they tell you the story and the way that they introduce each of the characters. And I was like, am I putting rose colored glasses onto this? Like, was Hades 1 that good? Folks, it's so good. I just started Hades 1 over from scratch. They do such a good job of introducing the characters. I don't know. It sounds like I'm saying I think Hades do is bad. I don't think that. But I do think Hades 1 is so incredibly good that it is striking.

And that if you go back and you just play those first few hours again, you will be struck by how well they introduce every plot point to you. And they really don't waste any time. They're really methodical and economical about what happens between each run, who is introduced when, when do you find out who Persephone is, and what is Achilles' deal, and so on and so forth. Like, it's just incredible. It's so well done. So I kind of was playing it and being like, you know, I think I'm going to wait to play some more Hades 2.

It was kind of my conclusion after playing a few hours of Hades 1. Hades 2, yeah, I noticed that too. We didn't talk about this last time, but Hades 2 definitely, like, overwhelms you a little bit with a number of characters and things you see. And I wonder if that'll be trickled out more when it's finally released for real. I don't know. Maybe they like it that way. And they're like, we're just going to kind of plunge you in

and be like, you're just going to get to know everybody all at once. And the story's really different. Hades two is a lot sadder. I talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago. It has a much more just kind of somber tone to it. The whole vibe is different because you're like working with these witch characters and you're sort of secretly working against Olympus potentially. Hades 1 just is really straightforward.

It benefits from that, honestly. And it works really well. So if people are listening and they're like, why I never even played Hades 1? You should check it out. It's a very good video game. And I recommend it. The three of us have been, well,

we've established our love for that. It's as good as I remembered it. And it's not just for his colored glasses. That's what I have to say about it. The positive things about Hades 2 are that it feels like Hades 1, which was a spectacular game. Not that it like fixes Hades 1 or anything. It's just like more Hades.

You can't just play Haiti. Yeah, I wonder if that'll work against it, like ultimately, because Haiti's one, like, it's hard to imagine spending as much time on Hades 2 because I spend so much time in Hades 1 and it's so similar. So, yeah, I don't know. I guess we'll see when it comes out for real. Kirk, I saved you for last because you have, like, three things here. What are your one more things?

Your three, one more things. Three more things. You missed two episodes, so. Yeah. Yeah, it felt appropriate to pull it, to try to fit as many things as I could. This really all fits under one umbrella, and that is the fantasy novels of Lois McMaster-Busjold, which I have read quite a few of over the last few weeks. I was a little tapped over the last few weeks for gaming energy, like I said,

but I was able to read these books, which are lovely and very fun to read. So McMaster Buzold is the author of the Miles Verkosigan books that I have talked about before, that I absolutely adore. I think since I last talked about those books, I finished the entire series. I've read every single book in that series, every novella in order. They're so good. I know some folks listening have read them. Everyone should read them.

I just love them so much. So that's like 15 books or something, a huge amount of writing. I mean, it's like half of this guy's life, a million characters. It's super epic. So that was really fun. And afterward, I was like, man, I want to keep reading her stuff. I had found that she has a very breezy way of writing. She is a very capable storyteller.

She just knows how to introduce a new situation, show you the characters and the important, you know, like what's going on and set the stage, and then just like, boom, the action ratchets up, something happens, the tension kicks in, and then you're into Act 2 and you're like, oh man, what's going to happen? And you're kind of burning through it. And it just always resolves in an interesting way. Each one tells a great story. I'm really, really impressed with her.

She has this rock-solid grasp of the mechanics of storytelling, and every story she tells is good. So she's written a bunch of fantasy as well. The Vork Posting Books are sci-fi. She's written fantasy books. So I read a few of her novels, and I just wanted to kind of recommend all. all of them. There are two kind of worlds that she's introduced. One is the world of the five gods, previously called Chalion. There's the Curse of Chalian and Paladin of Souls, both of which I read. Paladin of Souls is a sequel to Curse of Chalian, both really fun books,

set in a kind of pretty traditional fantasy world. Jason was just letting the proper announce wash over him right now. I'm watching his face. You had me previously called Shalian. That's a really... Well, so yeah, they were... She writes in a pretty cool way where she just kind of writes whatever she's feeling and doesn't plan everything out. And it works for her. I mean, it worked for Vokos again. My God, there's so many novellas and stories

and she really manages to tell a complete story. And with Chalien, I think she wrote The Curse of Chalien and then Paladin of Souls like picks up with characters from that book and tells more. And that's all set in the land of Chalien. It's like a nation with like bordering nations

and there's like whole like complex religious conflict between them and their neighbors. But then she went and wrote a bunch of novellas. that take place in a different timeline in the same world, but they're not in Chalian. So it's the kind of thing where, like, you know, they started out calling it, oh, it's the Chalian books, because it's set in this one nation. But soon they're not, so they needed a new name for it, so they changed it. So those are cool.

But actually, I've also read The Sharing Knife, which is one big long story that's broken into four novels, fully published. I'm halfway through the second novel. Those are really cool. They're actually pretty different. All of these books are a little bit more romances than the Vorkosugosigan books. There are a couple of Vercocan books that are really great romance stories as well when Miles is falling in love sort of a little later on in that series. She's really good at writing romance and at like giving you unusual pairings that you really root for in the midst of these great stories because she's like a great action writer, a great intrigue writer.

She's really good at all of that stuff. It's not like backgrounded so she can focus on the romance, but she does like to fit more romance into these fantasy novels, which I have found very sort of soothing and fun, especially during a kind of tough time. in my life. So the sharing knife is very cool. I won't get into all the like particulars of that world, but I would say if anyone's looking for a pretty cool, like, it might be post-apocalyptic. I'm not really sure. I think that it's set in a post-apocalyptic America. It's never really made clear, but it's a very cool kind of fantastical story about these horrible monsters and the people who fight them and an ordinary girl who falls in love with one of the guys who's like a lake walker who hunts the malices. It's very fun. So I've really been enjoying those books. Those are

the full title of those is the sharing knife. Each one has a different title and there's four of them. Reminds me of the golden compass. What is it? The subtle knife, right? The subtle knife, that's the second one. Oh man, don't get me started about those books. Holy crap.

Those are amazing. I love His Dark Materials. But anyways, yeah, this is just a recommendation for anyone looking for like a fun summer read and also who reads, who likes to read these kind of books that are quick reads and you can just burn through them all. Anything by Lois McMaster, Buzold. She's like, I just love her writing and she's great. So I really liked all those books.

I read them recently. So there you go. That's great. Paladin of Souls is also my favorite heavy metal band. Yeah. That would be a good, a good, like, maybe Christian, but like they're never, they're not like super obvious about it. You're never really sure. Yeah. They might have a relationship with our Lord. Or, or my favorite Eldon Ring boss fight.

You sure? Yeah. That probably is a, is a soul. Yeah. The sharing knife is surprisingly powerful in Elton Ring. Yeah. Well, if you, you have to use the sharing knife on the Paladin of Souls. Yeah, that's right. Sharing knife pretty powerful in the sharing knife as well. I can imagine. All right.

Well, it's good to have you back, Kirk. Thank you for joining us once again. And thank you to all of you for listening to another episode of Triple Click. We will see you next week. Yep. See you both 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. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at Maximum Fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes.

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