Triple Click - Diablo Immortal and Video Game Loot

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

Maddy, Kirk, and Jason are playing Blizzard's new game Diablo Immortal and wondering... what about this is fun? Is it really all that appealing to keep collecting shiny things and watching our bars go up? From there they start wondering about loot in video games. What is it about items that get players so excited? What makes a good loot system? A bad one? And is Diablo inherently corrupt?One More Thing: Kirk: Star Trek: Strange New WorldsMaddy: Moon KnightJason: The QuarryLinks:Maddy’s article about Diablo Immortal: https://www.polygon.com/23152323/diablo-immortal-mobile-free-to-play-microtransactions-addictiveNu-Splitscreen’s interview with David Brevik and Erich Schafer: https://kotaku.com/why-video-game-loot-is-so-addictive-according-to-the-c-1846695147Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin 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

Lute, leveling up, experience points, ability unlocks. It's easy to see all of those things as fundamental aspects of video games. But is that really true? Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we're talking about Diablo Immortal, and more specifically the questions it raises about loot and the many ways games manipulate us into playing just a little bit more. One more level and we can finally stop.

Let's get to it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Trier. Hello. Hey. Hello. Hey, hey you guys.

Hey, everybody, it's us. Hey, it's us. Triple click. Click in our way through some video games. Although the video game we're going to talk about today, you actually have to tap your way through. You don't even get to click. You don't get to click. That's true.

Even though the series that it was part of is like infamous for click, click, click, click, click, click, click. I know. This game is no longer about clicking, sadly. You know what they say? It was known for the clicks, but it's best with the sticks. Wow. That's what they say. They say that.

They say, who says that? I said that in a very sad update to our last conversation about this game, but we'll get into that. Okay. We'll get into that down the row. But, you know, anybody who's been listening to our show for a while probably knows what I'm talking about. And if you like triple clicks, you get those kinds of inside jokes. Sure. You're in the know.

That me and Jason don't even get? Those so inside jokes, yeah. There are jokes that are so far inside that not all of our hosts get them. You get them because you're a true, a true triple clicker. Sure. You're part of the triple-click-click. Yeah. Click.

Click. The click-click. You're a member of the click-click-click. You want to support our show, and that's perfectly understandable. We really appreciate that. If that's you and you want to do that, you can become a maximum-fund member and you can support our listener-supported show, which we would really appreciate. So if you want to do that, you go to maximum fun.org.org slash join.

You become a member. You support triple-click, and you also get bonus episodes of our show one per month. You also get access to all of the ones that we've done so far, which is quite a few at this point and any that we do in the future as long as you're a member. So maximum fun.org slash join. That's where you want to go to sign up. And thank you so much to everybody who's been a member who's supported us at any point over the last, I guess, two years and change. We really appreciate it. We like being listener supported and making this show for all of you.

We do. It's true. Anyway, back to clicks. We got to get back to it. So clicks, sticks. We're talking clicks. We're talking sticks and we're also talking taps because this is another Diablo episode. Although we're expanding the focus outward somewhat because I played Diablo Immortal.

Maddie you say this is another Diablo episode as if we do one every week or something like that. Guys, every week. We did fairly recently talk about Diablo. We have a problem. We can't stop talking about Diablo. We did do another episode. And in that episode, I talked about Diablo Immortal before it came out. This is a sequel.

I think it's worth noting that. And the reason why I talked about it is because when Diablo Immortal was first announced, it was very controversial to even fathom a Diablo game being on a mobile device. Because Diablo is a hardcore strategic role-playing game where numbers matter. Strategic role-playing game? Yeah, very strategic. Put a lot of thought into your character, their backstory. Very intense.

Cow level, nothing's ever been more serious than the secret cow level in Diablo 2. It was always 100% serious and we all know that. And fighting the devil in procedurally generated levels is something we all grew up doing. And we are unwilling to do that on a different format because that's morally wrong. So I, in playing Diablo 2 resurrected, I floated the theory that perhaps, perhaps it would actually be kind of fun to play Diablo on a phone because Diablo 2 is very simple game. There's not a lot going on in there. You're pretty much just clicking stuff and watching a number get bigger.

And I thought to myself, what if instead of just tiring out my little clicky finger by pressing that mouse button all the way down? Oh, I can just barely do it. A lot of effort at that. What if I was just gently, gently tapping on my iPhone 11 screen and watching these beautiful environments playing out as my little barbarian. was running through the woods and the wastes and clicking on little skeletons. Wouldn't that be cool? And it turns out, I hate it more than anything. And I think it's bad.

And I'm very upset by it. Well, okay, so we should say, so the last time we talked about Diablo last year, it was like around the time Diablo II remastered came out. Yes. Now Diablo Immortal has just come out. Just come out. Kind of an ignominious, ignominious, whatever, history. Yeah.

A polarizing game. A long history. It was announced to booze and confusion, largely because Blizzard didn't also announce Diablo 4 and it was made kind of the big showstopper ending of a BlizzCon in 2018. And so it's kind of had a bad, it's left a bad taste in people's mouths from the get-go. Also, it's developed in part by NetEase. It's co-developed, really, by Blizzard in Irvine, California and NetEase in China. So there's kind of a stigma among the standards for free to play and pay to win and what microtransactions are acceptable are very different in China than they are in here.

We'll be approaching this from an American gamer perspective. So we're not going to really talk a lot about the Chinese perspective because we don't have that. All that said, this is a game that has been mired in controversy. And it finally came out last year, or last week, so we can finally talk about it and how it actually plays and what it's actually like. Yeah. I don't like it. And I guess part of that is the pay-to-win mechanics, but I haven't spent anything on this game,

and I still don't like it, and it's not entirely because of the pay-to-win aspects of it. It's because when you limit the Diablo experience down in this specific way, and you streamline every aspect of it, it emphasizes to me how evil it feels. and how much like a slot machine it feels and how much it feels as though at the very least

it is robbing me of my time at the best. Like best case scenario, it is purely me pulling a lever over and over again to watch some pretty light sparkle. That's best case. And worst case is I'm also losing money actively while that's occurring. But that is not my scenario. And yet I still feel like the way that this game has smoothed out

every part of the friction of the Diablo experience into just tapping on stuff and they just things magically disappear. You can reconsolidate all your items in your inventory in this really smooth way. Somehow that's made it feel evil to me. I don't know. I may be overreacting. I want to know like you to think about Diablo Immortal. Jason, have you played it at all? What do you think of it? Yeah, I played a bunch, a couple hours of it and I thought it was just kind of harmless. And I don't know. It didn't do anything for me.

It didn't make me want to keep playing. And it's just like, okay, this is like Diablo 3 except on a phone and full of flashy mechanics and simplified stuff. And I don't know. It just didn't. I talked about this a little bit last year about how like revisiting Diablo games, I just cannot really recreate that enjoyment that I felt many years ago. And how like so many games have just taken the Diablo formula and done so many more

interesting things in it and better things with it, that it, that it feels like a really antiquated game to play in 2021 or 2022 now. So I personally just picked it up and played it for a bit and it drained on my battery and then I didn't care for it. And also it has my gripe with all these mobile games is that like you're on your phone and so you're naturally going to be multitasking because like you get a text message or you want to check your email or whatever. But every time you do you lose your connection and like lose your progress or whatever and you have to reload the game all over and over and over again. So there isn't really any space in my gaming rotation for a lot of mobile games because of that. But yeah, I don't know. I didn't really care.

That's how I felt. I was very indifferent to playing it. Kirk, what about you? Yeah, I agree with that, Jason, especially given that I'm such a Steam Deck convert and that having a portable device that I can sit around and play games on that's just for games is great. Because I'm, like you said, I'm really regularly on my phone. and it's nice to be able to switch between things. I had the same problem with Diablo

where I'd get a text message or I just want to look something up and then I'd realize I couldn't because I was using the same device, which is kind of a reason that I never play this kind of hardcore, you're like really involved game on my phone. That's why I only play three is literally. Right, I find the phone is very good for that kind of game.

And Apple Arcade has so many games like that. So I've seen a lot of very positive reaction to this game just, you know, the same old saw of, oh, wow, a real video game on a phone. And I'm kind of like, we did that already. And I don't really want that. Like, I want to play real games on other devices and not on my phone. But that's me. It's not everybody.

I will say, by the way, that's one of the reasons I'm actually kind of excited for Warcraft Rumble, which is the other mobile game that Blizzard has announced is that it looks more like, it's more of like a clash royale type, it looks more like a game that I would want to play on my phone because it seems like more of like a bite size, like you play it for a couple minutes and then you go do something else or you play it while watching TV or whatever as opposed to a Diablo like this is this is how you're spending your afternoon gamer um type of game yeah even being able to just suspend the game without losing your connection would be nice like i mean that that alone would make a big difference it's weird it's weird because i feel like the

part of diablo that i like that makes me not focus on the aspects of it that are soul draining is the multiplayer aspect and there's absolutely a multiplayer aspect and there's absolutely a multiplayer in Diablo Immortal. It's always online. Diablo 3 fans would be horrified at the future in which we live. This is an always online mobile Diablo game with microtransactions. Incredible stuff, folks. It's 2022. But it also includes multiplayer. I should say I didn't try the multiplayer, but that was the least of my problems with it because I was kind of like, I don't want to be playing a game with my friends and also not having the ability to talk to them because the fun of Diablo for me was being on a phone call where we were all also basically playing

boggle or something in the center of the room. Like it doesn't really matter that the thing at the center of the room was Diablo 2 or 3. That was kind of the least of my concerns in those moments. The point was to be on a phone call for hours with my friends. And we were just all clicking on something at the time. So I feel like that's part of why Diablo Immortal doesn't work. But the other reason it doesn't work for me is because it takes the worst. The worst conventions of what a mobile game can be and just slaps that on top of an already addictive system that Diablo is also built on. And that just, it turns me off, which I guess is lucky for my bank account, but it also makes me retroactively think to myself, do I like Diablo?

Like, what do I like about this? If this is the most streamlined possible version of this, then do I maybe hate this? Like the experience of collecting swords. Maddie, what made you feel this way? Like, what specifically mean you feel this like? There was something about, okay, so the way the inventory works here, we talked a lot about inventory management on the last Diablo episode because moving things around that physical space, the physical inventory,

it's like the resident evil briefcase. You can only fit so many guns and they have to be a certain size in that game. And Diablo, too, is the same way. everything has to be a certain size. You move your big staff around so that you can make room for like a little health potion and so on and so forth. It's very tactile feeling. It's like a little game of Tetris inside of the game.

And this game has streamlined that in the sense that you can just like when you go to the blacksmith to sell your weapons, you don't even have to drag and drop anything anymore. It's just you just tap on something. And it's a single tap. It's like you see the blacksmith in your periphery. in the UI and you're just tapping. And it's so, it's so much faster. And somehow the speed of that interaction and the lack of need for me to really worry about having too much stuff in my inventory made it feel worse in the sense that I, it's like purely the loot now. Does that make any sense?

Like it's not just, oh, this is my fun little collection of things. And slowly but surely I'll, I'll build up something cool and I'll just have to somehow get rid of some of these things. This is just everything is garbage and it will be garbage in the next two minutes and the coolest thing you could ever imagine finding is about to be garbage. And like the game has just showed me that garbage pipeline so instantaneously that I'm like, well then the game's kind of garbage isn't it? Like, why am I doing any of this? Because you're showing me that I'm throwing this directly in the trash immediately. You know?

Yeah, there's a distillation that this game performs that's kind of helpful in understanding some of these lute mechanics and some of these design tropes that originated with Diablo and have since gone in all these

different directions and all these different game series, but have kind of just remained in place in Diablo, and then this game really simplifies a lot of them to the point where you really just, you know, if you think of this

as a spice, this is, you know, progression systems can kind of be a spice to give you a little bit of extra incentive or to kind of manipulate your brain in a tricky way in the context of a cool story that you're, you know, playing your way through or a big world that you're having fun exploring. It's just also a little thing on the side that, hey, it might be a sword plus three over there and I only have a sword plus two. And that's just a spice that can be, you know, judiciously applied depending on the type of game. and when you're playing a game like this, it does start to feel as though it's just a big plate full of spice because it's just so much more of the experience, such a greater percentage,

is just that loot loop over and over again, and you start to see maybe the whole game is that. And it takes me back to the days of cow clicker and cookie clicker of like Ian Bogost and the sort of commentary games that were coming out where the whole game was almost a, you know, it was a sort of satirical commentary where you just click on a thing every hour and that's it. And then, you know, eventually you level up and the bar gets higher and higher. And there have been a lot of games.

It was a satire, a farmville at the time. Yes, which was right. Talking about the same kind of exploitation that was going on in social games. Now that's just as true in mobile games. And that's kind of true here too. And I do feel that playing this game, especially because it's tied to the Diablo tradition that I'm so familiar. with and that I'm increasingly aware, you know, or I'm increasingly of the opinion is, yeah, maybe just this kind of raw exploitation at its core. So, okay, so I think that what happened over the years is they just stripped all the decision making out of Diablo.

And Maddie, I think that's kind of what you're getting at with the loot because it's not just that, obviously the whole Tetris minigame-ish thing is kind of fun and a tactile way, but really what's interesting about Diablo 2's loot system is that you're making decisions. Like, do I want to keep this? Is this going to be more valuable for me later? Do I want to keep this sorcerer item that I can't use even though I'm a barbarian because it's really cool and I could give it to my sorcerer alt? Or do I want to get rid of it so I can pick up this shield that I could use now because it's marginally better than my current shield. Same with like skill trees.

You're making permanent decision and your stats and your skills and you can't get every skill or you can't max out every skill in one playthrough. All of that was kind of eliminated over time, and Diablo 3 really does not want you to make decisions. You can make micro decisions with your skills, but none of them are, they're all reversible. You can just kind of toggle back and forth between different variations on skills. With Lute, with Diablo 3 loot, you don't even have to think about it. You just see like an arrow in the corner of your screen that is like a green arrow pointing up, so you're like, oh, looks like it's better.

I'll just equip it. You don't even have to look at it. And that, a lot of that is just like, whereas with Diablo 2, you might be like, oh, do I want some plus magic find stuff or do I want some plus ice armor stuff? And like you have to kind of actually weigh over decisions. Diablo and Mordal just simplifies things even further. And as far as I can tell, I haven't played that much, but as far as I can tell, you're not making any real decisions in that game

other than just tapping and going pow, pow, pow, or making decisions about how much money you want to spend on goods in the game. Legendary gems, yeah. Don't you want a legendary gem? I want to talk. But Kirk, you have a thought. And then I want to get into the micro-transaction stuff. I do. I think that's a really important point about choices. So I've been playing a lot of

Divinity Original Sin too, which I went back and have been sort of playing back from the beginning. I'm so glad you're playing more of that. I'm going to finish it. I mean, I played 80 hours of it, so I've played a ton of it. But we were talking just amongst the three of us, we were talking about this system in Diablo where you get a piece of loot and it's unidentified. And so then you go and you identified. And Maddie, you wrote this, I thought really, really good, really interesting article about Diablo Immortal talking about this loot system and some of the points you're making here. It's a good article. We'll link it and show notes. People should go read it. And you talk about it in that article as well, about how it's just this blatantly exploitative move to give you what you know is

going to be a cool piece of loot and then be like, ah, but you don't know what it is yet. So then you go and you get excited, but then you get excited all over again. And while we were researching this topic, you sent us this article with, or this interview, I should say, with David Breivik and Eric Schaefer, two of the designers of Diablo and Diablo two, over at our former podcast, split screen from a few years ago, back when split screen still existed. And they talk a lot about this, and they even talk specifically about identify squirrels and how you have an unidentified loot. And Eric Schaefer is like, it was like giving you two slot machine pulls. I mean, he literally just says that. Literally. Yeah. They compare it to slot machines a couple times. And Nathan Grayson,

in his response points that out and is like, you guys just said slot machines. Is that like a concern at all? And it's wacky to. But hold on. Context here is that Brevick and Schaefer's game had no real money. Of course. Of course. Only your time.

Right, right. But they're, yes, but they were clearly aware that they were manipulating players to give them that double dopamine rush. They describe it as like having a present that you get to unwrap twice. And you get that feeling. Okay. So my point here, going all the way back to this. of the original sin too, is that that game has unidentified loot that you get. It does have loot.

The loot is kind of is randomized, so you never really know what you're going to get. And you get unidentified loot, and you have to have a lore master in your party who can then identify the loot. So you get that feeling. I'll get it where you pick up a thing. I'm like, ooh, an unidentified ring. And then I click on it, and I just click in my inventory. I don't even have to go anywhere.

And then I identify, and it's like, oh, it's really good, or it's not. And it's that feeling. But it's in the context of this game that's so. full of complexity and interesting decisions, that it just, like I said earlier, it really does wind up feeling like a spice. And I don't mind it at all in that context. Like it's totally cool because, you know, when I like, you know, uncloked that item and I get it, I'm really looking at the particulars. You know, I'm doing really specific builds for my party and Divinity too. And it's like, it's not just that I'm playing four different classes. I'm playing like

super specific types of subclasses that I've, you know, I've been kind of going off build guides off of the internet, but I've really learned the ins and outs of everything I'm doing. So I'm reading every single little thing. Okay, well, it's going to boost my magic armor, and it's going to boost my geomancy, which is good, because then I'll be able to cast that armor spell, and I need the armor spell, which means I can take off this, you know, necklace that was giving me the geomancy point, and then I can finally wear this other necklace that, like, boosts my, like, arrow-thirds skill.

And it's, like, so complex that there's just this little extra thing at the end, and it's not a big deal. I'm like, well, that's just kind of fun, and now I mean. maybe get a cool item compared to playing Diablo Immortal where it's just like total smooth brain. Just like no decisions at all. All you're getting is just like a little dopamine hit over and over again. And yeah, you start to feel like the rat pressing the button in the cage after a while. Yeah, which is I guess what people want from a mobile Diablo game. I mean, a lot of people are happy with that core.

Yeah, some people seem into it. And I mean, I will say, and I should say because people like it, that I've played some of it. And it's fun. I mean, it's like you walk around, you shoot it things. You're making a demon hunter. I don't know. It's definitely not the most interesting game I've ever played, but it's all right. Like, I can see why, I guess, why people would like it as a just kind of mindless thing to play.

Well, yeah, I mean, part of the fun of phone games is that they can be pretty mindless and you don't have to make a lot of tough decisions, although I would argue that the best phone games feel mindless, but you're actually making interesting decisions every step of the way. All that said, I think the microtransactions are an important element to get into here, because Diablo Immortal is full of them. And we don't even have time to get into the intricacies of how they all work and all the different currencies in this game. But most importantly is that they're not all cosmetic. A lot of them actually affect your loot chances to the point where there was this clip I saw from a streamer.

I think it was Asmon Gold who tweeted the difference between like he's doing the same riff, the same dungeon. He beats a boss. it drops like two shitty pieces of loot and then he beats a bus again using an item that boosts your chance an item you pay for with real money that boosts your chance of getting better loot and he drops like four like unique items and it's like a killer a killer sad. So this is clearly a game that is meant to take your money in as many malicious ways as possible and I think that is something that like can't really be unentangled from all of this stuff. It really just poisons the well and it's interesting that we're talking about this again with another, Diablo game after Diablo 3's auction house debacle, which really set the tone for many years of paid a pay-to-win activity.

Yeah, and was controversial at the time because people always saw Diablo as not being about pay-to-win. And Kirk, when you described- It was removed after two years for the Super of Souls. And Kirk, when you describe that element of choice and how it feels rewarding to you to be looking at all your different types of armor in divinity, I'm remembering feeling that way about my items in Diablo 2 is a much simpler decision, but it's, as Jason put it, where I would really think to myself, oh, which ones of these do I actually want to keep? I only have so much space. And even though that's not that complicated of a decision, and we sort of

laughed at the top of this episode about Diablo being strategic, it's a little strategic. You're making enough decisions that it does have some cost over time to your brain and your time, and that's what makes it compelling for you to continue playing. It also makes me one, if Diablo Immortal is even addictive enough to hold people's attention longer than a week. Because I did see people talk about it a lot for the first couple days. I haven't seen very many people talk about it since. It doesn't mean they won't update it and consider some of this and actually add some friction back in,

which might then ironically make the game more compelling because it's pretty frictionless right now to just have weapons that have a little green arrow on them and all you have to do is tap on them and you're like, this one's automatically better. It's got, it's green. instead of red. And that's all I need to know. And if it's more complicated than that, it's, I don't know, it's more exciting. Like part of why I played, I've talked about this so many times, how long I played Borderlands One, but part of why I did it for so long is because the weapons

are so complicated in that game. Like you could pick up a bunch of different kinds of guns and be like, well, this one has higher stats in terms of, you know, accuracy, but it has a much lower reload speed. How much does that really matter to me? Is it, is it a few seconds or micro seconds slower? And do I notice that in battle or not. And then you try it out. And then you really weigh the options and try out a bunch of different guns. And that's why it's fun. And it's also why you keep playing because you keep then getting more and more guns that

has ever so slightly different numbers on them. And those different numbers are fun because you're like, well, what are these going to do? And that's the shit for some reason. I don't know why, but that really gets me. That's the I just want to try them out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

love of shiny things. Yeah. Yeah, I think like, so a loot system is only a part of an overall game. And, you know, the more complex games. Well, it's also just a part of the game's design, right? The type of loot that you're getting, the functions that it performs, they all fit into the design of the combat and the design of the encounters, where in a game like Divinity, Lute just has a very different meaning

because each fight in that game is very challenging and super puts you up against the wall where you have to, you know, you always get through by the skin of your teeth. You're always pushed. You know, they really control leveling and power. So you're just, you're so engaged with it that you then care enough to really engage with the loot. Where in Diablo, it can just be, well, there's an arrow that's higher on this one, so I know it'll just kill things faster. And I, that's literally all the thought I need to put into it. Because it just doesn't matter. I'm just going to be plowing through enemies, firing off special abilities whenever they, the, you know, cool down is done. And then I just kill everything. Like, it's, it's a,

very different kind of game design. So the loot feels very different. Well, yeah, and the quantity of loot is much different. In Diablo game, you're getting new stuff with just about like every five seconds. They probably have mathematical formulas that are designed to make you get new stuff every X seconds. Whereas in a more tactical role-playing game, whether it's Divinity or really any of the D&D old RPGs, Baldr's Gate, you're getting loot a lot more sparingly and it matters a lot more. I guess that's true. Though in Divinity, there's loot all around. and you can break into houses and steal it and find it all kinds of places. So there's kind of, it's in more places.

There's a lot of loot in that game. It's got a different feel to it. You know to ignore a lot of the common rags and shit that you find, whereas if you find an identified rare item, you know, chances are it's going to be something interesting as opposed to just another thing that you'll wear for 20 seconds until you've got the next piece of rare item. But Diminity also isn't built around the loot system. Diablo is a game that is built around like that hunt for a little. loot and watching the numbers go up and collecting shiny things.

Although I wonder how much of that was true at the beginning where you could argue that the first two games really, that's a large part of what they're built around, but they're also built around making your character your own and kind of crafting your character and designing a character and kind of making a build. And one of the things that was always appealing to me about Tiaba, two back in the day, was being like, okay, this time I'm going to play an ice sorceress. And so I'm going to start from the beginning. I'm going to know I'm looking for all the items that, like, boost my ice skill.

I'm making decisions in the skill tree that will only, like, enhance my ice powers. And I think that is kind of fundamentally different than just thinking about the loot. And with something like Diablo Immortal and Diablo 3, I think because there are so fewer decisions and because so much of it has been streamlined to the point where you're really only getting gear that will make your character better, I think you just kind of lose a lot of what's interesting about the whole thing. Yeah. Although I think there's also a piece of loot-based games that is about getting rid of the loot,

which I think is true, even if you are creating specifically an ice sorceress, you're still getting rid of every piece of loot that doesn't involve that and cashing in every single time you're getting rid of it or using that material. to level up in some way, whatever, however the loot system works. And Diablo and Borderlands, which was advertised as Diablo with guns, both emphasize that you need to get rid of every single piece of loot that you are not going to use, not only because there's a limited amount of space, but because that's part of how you level up is by getting rid of that loot, the churn, essentially.

And I was thinking about this in the context of the fact that I sell basically everything in Eldon Ring, which people have been horrified by. It's fairly horrified. It is horrifying, but I think it's because I probably wrongfully see Eldon Ring as loot-based when it's really not. I mean, it's never intended to be that way. But there are many, many items in Eldon Ring that, to me, their only use is that they can be sold for runes. Maybe only five runes, but there's no point in my mind in holding on to like a bunch of ratty old shin guards or whatever. Like, I don't even know what those things are called.

You know what I'm talking about, though. There's like a million of those. and I don't see the purpose in holding out to those, but holding on to unique items, sure. But that is different. Like the fact that there are unique items and there are story items makes Eldon Ring in this in-between category in my mind

where it's like it's not all the way over like something like Metroid where you can't even, you can't sell your speed boots to get the morph ball that would be crazy and that would make absolutely no sense and break the entire game. Every single power-up you get in a Metroid game matters

or Zelda or, anything of that style. But in Eldon Ring, there's some items that are, in my opinion, kind of not useful, and then some that are, and you just have to figure it out. And then there's Diablo where everything is garbage eventually, everything, no matter how cool it was when you first got it. So it's worth separating out new abilities, things that give you new abilities or just new abilities that you unlock versus new equipment that you get. Even though those two things do overlap, like sometimes you'll get an item that gives you a new ability. There's also, they can be completely separate.

You can have character abilities that you're up, you know, you're sort of unlocking, like in Diablo, where those tend to be the most fun things to unlock for me when I'm playing Diablo. Like, when I start a new character, I'm excited as long as I'm getting new abilities, because that's actual new stuff I can do in the game. And those are kind of more fun than just, oh, a sword that does a little bit more damage. Right. Now you can shoot a laser beam.

But separating those two things out, and then thinking about the way those two things interact, is actually interesting because you get into the ways that loot or gear, you know, equipments and upgrades can kind of feed into the way that a game progresses the information that you're getting as a player because, so in a game like Eldon Ring, the loot is pretty flat. It's a pretty flat loot system because, you know, you get some armor at the beginning of the game that you could wear the whole game. It's fine. I mean, you get some kind of better stuff, I guess, if you go some places. But it's not like, you know, Divinity Original Sin 2 for an example, like the end-game armor in that game is super complex. It has a million different

things that's giving you way, way more complicated than the best armor you can wear at level one, just because that's how the loot in that game works. And as a result, in Divinity, you're kind of, you're gradually increasing the complexity of your build, and it's not overwhelming you with stuff. Like, you're not just getting super complicated armor with a million different things on it and all these different abilities that you have to sort out all at once, or it'd be overwhelming. So the game is kind of scaffolding things so that you gradually unlock new abilities, then you're tested in combat, you use them, you learn how they work, you learn your party synergy, you get some new, you start to like get some goals in mind. And it all works in a way that goes

beyond just lizard brain motivation. Like don't you want more stuff? Like that's part of it. But it's also just that the game is sort of pacing you with the amount of information in the complexity of your build as you go, which is less true in some other games. And then, you know, it kind of feels more like the loot system there and then it's just raw motivation they're just trying to pull you along and try to get you to get the next best thing yeah what do you think destiny is in terms of that because i'm always getting rid of my guns and destiny but i know some people have emotional attachments to their guns and well destiny is kind of a uh a mix of both in some way i mean the gear. It's a mix of both. With your non-gun gear, it's just kind of a route routine. It's just

tedium of having to like equip, oh, this is 652 instead of 650. Time to equip it and like slowly dismantle all the stuff that I'm not using because I can only carry nine boots at a time. So I got to get rid of all those old ones. Whereas the guns, especially when you get into the higher level guns, can actually be unique and do unique things. So you do have to give it some thought as to like, Do I want to use my telesto here and do some weird stuff with orbs or do I want to use just a cool hand cannon that has some sweet abilities? So there's a lot of thought in the guns in that game. The other gear requires much less thought and is actually kind of tedious. So for some armor in that game also, I remember thinking that there wasn't very much to it since there weren't that many builds at the beginning.

And the game has grown, this is Destiny 2, has grown significantly more complex over time. And now you can really build around a single piece of armor. You know, there will be like some gauntlets that give you a much better version of one grenade. And I remember I used to look at those and think, well, that sucks. And then I would realize there are PVP players who build their entire character around using those gauntlets because that one type of grenade allows for this very specific play style and then realize, oh, there's a lot of depth here if you're at that high level. The problem, or at least a problem that I ran into with Destiny, most famously with Yala

with the famous rocket launcher yallerhorn is that there are items in the game that you can build a whole strategy around. In the case of Yallerhorn, it's an incredible rocket launcher that in the early days of destiny, you would build a whole raid strategy around because it could do so much damage that if your whole team had them, you could beat the boss in a certain number of phases and do certain strategies, but everyone needed to have one. But then that item is still tied to a random drop. And so you wound up in this situation where I knew people who had every single piece of item in destiny multiple times over just a crazy amount of loot, but they'd never gotten Yallerhorn. And they were still playing, like, a ton of the game. And they were only playing in this empty way trying to get this one thing because the complexity of the game allowed for a sort of party strategy that used Yallerhorn. And if you didn't have one, you couldn't participate in that. So it was kind of this, you know, it was a really manipulative thing.

that I'm not even sure. I actually wonder how aware of that bungee was or how much they wanted to lean into that because I'm not even sure if the game still feels that way. It also invites the question of, oh, then if only you could buy it, which is, of course, the road to the darkest possible. The road to hell.

But it seems so innocent in that moment because it's like, well, is it really preferable to have it be completely randomized because isn't that also extremely punishing in a different way, and also rewards the player who can spend absurd amounts of time, or perhaps almost no time based entirely on luck on getting this weapon. That is, I don't even know how I feel about that, because who knows? Well, Destiny 2, I think, did a good job of, as opposed to Destiny 1, Destiny 2 get a good job

of having the special weapons be tied to quests, and so you were guaranteed to get one if you went through enough steps, jump through enough hoops. That might have changed. I'm talking about Destiny 2 when I played it, so that was a few years ago. Things that might have changed more recently, but that's what I remember. So it wasn't too much, quite as annoying as Destiny 1, where like Kirk didn't have a Yallerhorn for years. And I got one in like two seconds and Crohn's End.

It's so funny. I think it was, I think I got it. And then Zerrissol that not for real money, but for in-game money like the next week. One, then, and that there's an irony there, which is that by making it more, active when Bungee was like, okay, we're going to do a bunch of quests and now you can pursue what weapons you want. That was the thing that made me finally see the emptiness of the game for what it is. And that kind of thing makes me not want to play. Like when I installed the new expansion, I'm just looking at this laundry list of things, an amazing number of things that I can

pursue, but they're all so transparently just fill up this bar and then you're going to get another bar, then you're going to fill that bar. And I just, I'm like, I can't, I can't do that anymore. some of that is just being in a different place in my life, but some of it is just that it shows you, you kind of see the Matrix and you're like, well, nope, no thanks. Yeah, well, I mean, so two points to that. One is that it would be way less fun,

it would be way more fun to fill in those bars if you were using it the way Maddie used to use Diablo as a social platform, so it's not, it's just something to do, like, who cares. And Destiny as well, as I've said, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two, it does kind of show the kind of naked emperor wears no clothesness of these Luke games

in the first place, that you're always just filling up bars and watching numbers go up and waiting for shiny things to appear. And I think that, like, I'm glad you kept bringing up Divinity too, because that's such a perfect video game and it's such a good game in so many ways. And one of the reasons for that is because it uses loot as a way to augment this greater world and strategy and story and combat and all this other cool stuff and lots and lots of interesting decision making that I really think just makes it a way better game

in a lot of ways. Yeah, I've been thinking about this sort of spice metaphor, because I've been asking this question, Maddie, since reading your article about Diablo Immortal, of just basically did they open a Pandora's box that introduced the idea of these manipulative, sort of

brain-tricking mechanics to games that is just a fundamentally bad thing? Or is there a way that this can be good because I guess the more I think about it, the more I think that this, that stuff, the incentive stuff, the can you unlock this thing, play a little bit more and you'll get this thing, the randomized business, the casino nonsense that they're doing. Most of that has nothing to do with games. Like it's a separate thing that they're just, a lot of game designers

are just introducing because it fits kind of naturally with some aspects of game design, even like the thing that I said where you're scaffolding information. It actually kind of, you know, helps the game. It helps you process information at a good speed. But it's not really games. It doesn't really have anything to do with games. Because if you just play a game of root, like a really good tabletop game, that's just, you just play that. You sit down and you play it. There's no progression systems. It's just a game and you play it from beginning to end and then it ends. Or if you play a game like Outer Wilds, our beloved Outer Wilds, a game with no loot that is just this beautiful object that you explore and come to master. There are so many things like that, or there aren't

so many because they're hard to make, but there are examples of games that don't have any of that stuff and that still work. And then I guess the only argument that you could make that they're still kind of teasing you is that it's basically like a story with a cliffhanger. They're enticing you to want to know what happens next. And you could look at stories like, you know, that constantly have cliffhangers, you know, a sort of soap opera style storytelling. Or like the Tintin comics where every single page is with, you know. Tintin being like, oh. Or loss.

It's like a show where it's constantly revealed and blowing your mind at 24. 24. A new person betray it. Yeah, betrays the good guys. And eventually you kind of get numbed to it and you lose, you don't really care about the story anymore. You see the kind of mechanisms that work on you. That does feel a little similar. Well, you have to pay $10 for Jack Bauer to get a new SMG.

Can you imagine that? It feels a little similar, but then right, games introduce all this other stuff to it. But I've just been kind of chewing on this idea. Like, is it possible to put this stuff into a game without it? Like, does it ever enhance a game? Or is it just adding some sort of lizard brain titillation to something that doesn't really need it if all the other parts of the game were good enough? I actually take, I'm like, I disagree with your kind of notion that this isn't games because this sort of thing is, like, a core part of games going all the way back to the 70s, going back to the days of.

of arcade machines. There's always been that kind of designers wanting to compel you to keep playing and finding whatever tricks they can to like... So I think the important distinction is this has always been a part of games. Okay. But is it an essential part of the design of a game? Well, I don't think anything is the essential part of the design of a game. Wow. But I mean like the structures, the rules, the design of the game, the, you know, the... But there's nothing that's like essential. Is there? Like, what would be essential to the design? a game at its purest, what would that be? It could be anything. Like tennis, basketball? Yeah, it's probably tennis. I think we solved that one.

You know, like, I mean, like, but I'm kind of being serious. So, like, it's, you know, it's like a series of rules and a system within which you have to follow those rules and then you compete with yourself or you compete with somebody else. And, you know, you try to master the systems. We can't define a game. Guys, we can't define a video game. Well, okay, let's run with this for a second. If you're playing basketball, then there's a three-point. line and if you step behind it and you shoot a three point a three pointer then you got three points but there are arguments over whether that should be pushed back based on the evolving nature of the game there are

arguments that you should get four points if you shoot it from the half court line so there's no purity to that it's just kind of like making decisions on an arbitrary basis and to some extent like you could argue that that's its own sort of like progression system or loot system or whatever you want to call it I mean I just don't think there's any sort of purity to game design I think all of this stuff is just kind of like Like, a game is just such a blob of things that it can be anything. Yeah, I see what you're saying, though. I think there's, I don't totally buy that, like, games are just totally arbitrary in that way. But I do think that there's a distinction here that I think exists.

When I look at the games that I just talked about, Outer Wilds, you know, Return of the Oberodin, versus something like Diablo Immortal. There is a distinction there that feels meaningful to me, no matter how kind of abstract you want to get into the definition of, a game. I think the distinction that you're making is that one feels like it was created for art's sake and one feels like it was created to hook a player into just like continuously playing. Return of the Obrid Inn doesn't care if you're addicted. But there are games that are created for art's sake that also still use those same tactics. Right. Like the Assassin's Creed's of it all, where there's the dots on the map that I personally find myself compelled to follow even when

I'm having no fun at all doing it. Like that is there to compel me to play more of the game. For some reason, truly why I couldn't tell you. I agree with that. They're trying to ruin my life. But that's part of what I'm saying. Is that like I just don't think there's much of a distinction between. I mean, I guess my version of Kirk's question is, do games have to be addictive at all? Like what happens if they're not?

And can they be interesting enough on their own in some way without having mechanics that we can all agree are addictive? and we probably won't answer this on this podcast. Let's put a pin in this and revisit the question of addiction versus compulsion versus whatever else. And a future episode. Maybe later this month we can keep talking about this. An endlessly interesting topic. You're saying it's an addictive, you're saying it's a compulsive and addictive topic? It is, it is.

I always want to come back to it. Just one more point, one more point. But actually, I think maybe we should do one more thing. Let's take a little break first, shall we? Hi, I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalin. And the three of us host the Flop House.

It's a podcast where we watch a new bad movie and then we talk about it. Dan, you say it's hosted by the three of us. We've had a lot of great guest co-hosts like Gillian Flynn, Jumel Bui, John Hodgman, Jessica Williams, White Sannack, Joe Bob Briggs, Josh Gondleman, Roman Mars. Yeah, and you said new movies. But what about the time we did in Meatballs, too? Okay, okay, yeah, sometimes we do older movies and sometimes we have guests, but mostly it's about us talking about, like, recent bad movies.

Don't forget about the ones where I made you do a role-playing game where you played cartoon dogs. All right, yeah. Shouldn't a promo be a really simple explanation about what our show's about? So what's the show about, Dan? What's it about? It's about friendship, all right? It's about our friendship and how we love each other. The Flop House.

It's a podcast mostly about bad movies on Maximum Fun. Do you sometimes wonder whatever happened to the kids at your school who really loved Star Trek? You might remember a kid like me, the one who read the Star Trek novels and built Starship models. I also took music classes. to avoid taking gym classes that required showering after, but I don't see what that really has to do with... Or a kid like me. I introduced myself to kids at my summer camp one year as Wesley.

But when the school year started and some of those kids were in my new class, I actually had to explain to my friends that I had tried to take on the identity of my favorite Star Trek character. The shame haunts me to this day. I'm sure some of those Star Trek fans from your childhood grew up to have interesting and productive lives, but we ended up being podcasters. On the greatest discovery, you'll hear what happens to two lifelong Star Trek fans who didn't grow up to be great people. They just grew up to be people who love jokes as much as they love Trek. So listen to our new episodes every week on maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

And we are back for one more thing. Jason, why don't you go first? Because I know I want to hear about this. Yeah, I'm super excited. My one more thing is a video game called The Quarry. And that comes out this week. I believe it comes up Friday. is by Supermassive Games, a game studio in the UK.

And it is, you may have heard of Supermassive from one of their previous games Until Dawn, which is a game the three of us all enjoyed very much. So the quarry is kind of a spiritual successor to Until Dawn. And so both games have this large cast of characters who are played by really good actors who are motion capturing and face capturing. So they actually look themselves. In the quarry, we have David Arquette. and that woman from the social network

who plays Eduardo's girlfriend and like a few other recognizable actors and they are in some sort of situation that is befitting of a horror movie and you have to make decisions for them to keep them alive and decide what they're going to do so in the quarry the setting is a summer camp and you are there it is the last night of summer camp

or it's like right after the last night of summer camp all the kids are gone you were playing as this group of counselors who are there and the summer camp may or may not have a haunted backstory. There may be a carnival, a mysterious carnival involved. The, uh, the guy who's in charge, the like the guy who runs the summer camp might have his own dark secrets and mysterious pass. And so I played a couple hours of the game. It rules. It's really cool. It's just, just like until dawn, it's just so much fun watching, watching these teenagers interact and knowing how, how they're all just going to have these gruesome fates and trying to decide the best course of action to, like, make them avoid it.

And there are also some cool things you can do. You're constantly making interesting decisions. And like, you can look for these like tarot cards to give to this mysterious narrator. I don't know if you guys remember until Dawn had this like psychologist who would who would pop up in between each chapter. This game has like a tarot reader who pops up in between each chapter. and if you find enough tarot cards and give them to her, she'll like unlock stuff or do stuff for you or give you hints for how to keep people alive. And it's just a-

Remember, and until dawn, it was Peter Stormair. That was like the thing that initially won me over to that game is Peter Stormair stormairing it the hell up on screen from Minibu. Yeah, and Hayden Pantiieri was in that one, which is amazing. She was good, but you can't compete with Stormair. Yeah, and Rami Mollick, I think,

was what made me be like, I got to play whatever that is. Yeah, yeah. No, well, there are a lot of good cast members in this one. And it's just a perfect, like, cast of, like, teenage stereotypes and just, like, the jocks and the nerds and the guy who's, like, getting bullied and the chick who is just, like, one of the guys who has the foul mouth. And it's just a perfect package. And I'm just enjoying a hell out of it so far. I haven't actually played so Supermassive until Don came out a few years ago and then Supermassive released a few other games that were kind of part of this horror package that I didn't actually play. I played Man of Madon.

They're all much shorter, the games that have come out in the intervening years, and they don't all have B-list horror actors in them. They're all smaller experiences. Whereas the quarry is more like Untoldon, where it has a bunch of endings. And I hear from my coworkers who've beaten it for review at Polygon that it has a shitload of endings. I do not know the exact number, but it seems fair to say it is a shitload. That is how it's been described to me. So one of the things that happens, I haven't gotten there yet. Again, I've only played a few hours.

But at the end, once you get one ending, I believe you unlock an ability that lets you rewind death. So then when you're playing again and you make decisions and someone dies, you can rewind and try to make another decision. And you can do that a limited number of times. It's like Forza Horizon only for death. It's like braid, except in the horror movie. Or life is strange, I guess, where you can remind time in certain scenarios.

And so it's really fun. The summer camp of it all is also very fun for those of us who went to sleep away summer camp because there's a lot of like, you see a lot of what you would see if you went to summer camp, but also it's got the whole like 80s summer camp horror movie vibe going on. So, yeah, I'm just enjoying the heck out of it. I'm really having fun with it. And so far I've just played by myself. Like, I'm really looking forward to, I think I'm going to get it on PlayStation and then hook

it up to my TV so my wife and I can sit and like play together and watch it. And they even have in this game from the beginning, you can play in like movie mode or co-op mode, movie mode where you don't you just watch scenes or co-op mode where you pass the controller back and forth, which is really fun. So a lot of cool stuff in this game, really enjoying it. If you liked Until Dawn, you will like this one too. I was so excited to hear about movie mode. It sounds like they really understand the way that people began to play until dawn at parties and tried to create a mode that is for that exact purpose, which is really cool. So, Kirk, what's your one my thing?

Nice. Yeah, I want to play The Quarry, and I want to play Citizen Sleeper. These are the two games that I'm hearing a lot of good things about. But mine, one more thing is neither of those. It's not a game. It's a TV show that Emily and I started watching that's really good called Star Trek Strange New Worlds. It's the new Star Trek show. It's on Paramount TV Plus, which I know is probably a bummer for some people.

We were like, okay, we're just going to sign up for a temporary period of time just to watch this show because Emily had seen the first episode and really liked it. So we're big Star Trek fans in this household. and in particular were fans of Star Trek The Next Generation, which was the late 80s, mostly mid-90s, Star Trek follow-on from the original series. I'm not a huge Star Trek nerd. Like, I don't know everything about the original series.

I don't know all the lore. I don't watch Discovery, which is the newer one. It's pretty cool. It's, you know, yeah, I've heard, okay, I've heard mixed things about it, I guess. Yeah. But what's cool about Strange New Worlds is that it's kind of a return to form. It's a return to the episodic structure,

and that's kind of the big selling point of the show, which I just think is very interesting. So I did watch Picard, kind of medium on Picard, because it was like a serialized story. It was a season-long story with season one. I haven't watched season two yet. I gather Discovery is sort of similar, where it's all kind of like feels like Battlestar Galactica

changed everything, and now all of the Star Trek shows just have to do the thing where it's a season-long story, where the joy of watching the next generation, which over the last few years, Emily and I did, I watched the entire thing. Great thing to do, by the way. Highly recommend it. It's delightful.

It's that there are ongoing stories like data wants to become more like a human, and Picard has this ongoing stuff with the Borg and a few other storylines. Yeah, and he dates like six different women, and, you know, that's kind of an ongoing story. Yeah, there are things that call back and that they return to Wesley Crusher's whole storyline, basically. But it's mostly episodic, and so each episode, they just go to some planet and some thing is happening, and there's a crisis and they have to figure it out, and then they solve it. and sometimes it's a romantic comedy

and sometimes it's kind of like horror, cosmic horror, and sometimes it's completely absurd. Like Q turns up and it just turns into this completely bizarre thing. So you never know what you're going to get. And so even if you don't like an episode because there's plenty of stinkers, you might just get a great one next time and you can kind of just watch it

in this really relaxing way. And Strange New World, so far at least, we've watched a couple episodes. They are specifically going to do the same thing. It's set as actually a prequel. It's taking place before the original series. So Captain Pike is the captain of the Enterprise, and there are some young versions of characters from the original series.

Uhura, for example, is in the cast. They fleshed out some other characters who I gather were super. The nurse whose name I'm forgetting I know is like a completely underwritten character in the original series, and now she gets to be a whole character. So they fleshed a lot of stuff out. The idea is it's kind of a spinoff from Discovery, so I didn't even see any of that stuff. Like Pike was in an episode of Discovery, and you learned some more about Pike, and then I didn't really watch much the original series.

So this is my way of saying, I don't know all of that, and I just started watching this show. And it's great. It's super fun. It's just because within 20 minutes of the first episode, they do a little bit of setup. 20 minutes in, they're standing on the bridge. They're in a new planet. There's some stuff going on. They're like, you know, they're on the screen with some other ship.

They don't know what the problem is. They're having to, like, problem solve among themselves. And it just felt like a next generation episode. And so far, the show has really been like that. So it's funny to see a show going back to being episodic and finding success in that way. that these things always go in cycles, I guess. Yeah, that sounds so nice. It really is nice, and I really dig it.

So I recommend it. I'm really liking it so far. So that's Star Trek Strange New Worlds, and it's on Paramount TV Plus. Cool. My one more thing is in the same vein of things that you don't necessarily have to know a whole lot of lore in order to enjoy

because it's Moon Night on Disney Plus. So this is yet another Marvel television show, and I have started to feel a little exhausted of Marvel stuff. No idea what you're talking I still like X-Men stuff I still you know On the day you're saying this Like a new one

Miss Marvel is coming out Like today or tomorrow And I love Miss Marvel Wow really? I didn't even know Yeah I know It's so much It's a lot

And I actually waited quite a while To watch midnight It's been out And part of that was because Some of these shows I watch without Dina Because you know She's seen a couple of Marvel things

She doesn't, I try not to subject her to all of this, you know what I'm saying? But I kind of realized like, I'll probably never have time to really concentrate on Moon Night unless we watch it together. So I suggested it and she was like, sure, whatever. And we both ended up liking it so, so, so much more than I ever would have thought. I don't know if it's her favorite Marvel thing, but she really liked it and you don't need any Marvel knowledge at all to enjoy it. because it's entirely about ancient Egyptian gods as the impetus for superheroic powers. And the superhero characters aren't really like typical superheroes in that way. They are communing with gods.

And you don't need to know about like Hawkeye or like the Snap or who Thanos was or all the other things that I've tried to explain to Dina and which sound extremely stupid when you try to explain to somebody who doesn't know what the Snap is, what it is. It sounds really dumb. apologies to everyone who worked on that over at Marvel. But Moon Night doesn't, it doesn't even mention the snap. It's Oscar Isaac stars. He plays a character with disassociative identity disorder. I was kind of like, had no idea how they were going to handle that. Thought it was fascinating, really liked it.

I thought the finale was poignant in its portrayal of him and his seeing his own mind and what he thinks of himself. Wasn't expecting it to go there in terms of a portrayal of a character with any type of non-normative mental health thing. And just also, I liked that it felt really standalone and super weird and cool and not like a thing where it needed to slot into Spider-Man. It was kind of a relief to me. I don't know. I'd be fine with it if it ended here.

I don't feel like I need it to go on and on, but I would watch it if they brought it back again. And I recommend it. Moon Night, pretty good show. You don't need to be a Marvel person to like it. I promise. You can enjoy it on its own. Yeah, I really liked it too. And I will co-sign that recommendation.

I thought it was great. Mm-hmm. Really cool stuff. Oscar Isaac. Beautiful guy. Oh, and I also wanted to shout out his co-star, played by May Kalamawi. I thought she was incredibly good. And she ends up with a huge role by the end, which I didn't expect at all, wasn't coming into this thinking I would get an action lady. And I did get one. And I was really pleasantly surprised by her role and thought she was like a dark horse favorite. So does it not even tie into MCU stuff like even at the end?

No. No. No, it doesn't. That was the other thing that impressed me. Final episode, usually corny as hell because it's like, and now Spider-Man's here. Whatever. Final episode of Moon Night? Really good. Probably my favorite final episode of any MCU television show thus far. They're on its own terms, right? Like a bunch of teases and interesting new mysteries, but for this show.

Yeah. And like there is a really big fight scene at the end, but it's between the characters you know and it makes sense that that's how it's ending. You know what I'm saying? Like there's a big splashy effects thing. but like you get it. It's a little crowded. You know what I'm saying.

It's a crowded finale. It doesn't feel unerned in the way that say the end of Wanda Vision felt to me. I'm still disappointed. It's fine. Anyway, Moon Night. This has been another episode. It has been. A jumbo treasure chest of loot for all of you, wonderful fine folks.

We've done it again. We've done triple pink again. Speaking of episodic shows that vary from week to week and don't require continuity. It's true. We're really following the Star Trek model. here at triple-season. Yeah, although it's kind of a two-parter episode. Every week we fly your spaceship to a different destination.

Yeah, sure. You never know we're going to find. Next week, we'll be flying to not Los Angeles for not E3. Can't wait. Can't wait. I'll see you both then. Yep. See you next week.

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. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture.

Artist-owned. Audience-supported.