Triple Click - Dispatch Sticks The Landing

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

Jason, Maddy, and Kirk have played through all of Dispatch, the new narrative superhero game from a crew of former Telltale directors, and there's a whole lot to discuss. They share their thoughts on the game, disclose whether they picked Invisigal or Blonde Blazer, and talk about what makes it all work so well. First section is spoiler-free, then they get into spoilers later on!One More Thing:Kirk: Oathbringer (Brandon Sanderson)Maddy: News TowerJason: Kingdoms of the DumpLINKS:One More Thing Timestamp: 57:55Dispatch episode one gameplay excerpts featuring Robert Robertson (Aaron Paul) and Blonde Blazer (Erin Yvette)Jason’s Bloomberg News interview with Dispatch director Nick HermanExcerpts from the Dispatch score, composed by Andrew Acradi“Kissing Someone Else” by Caroline KingsburyExcerpts from the News Tower score by Bart Van de Sande, Jack Van de Ven feat. New Cool CollectiveNews Tower: Behind the Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbPllfsoPG8Play Molleindustria’s New York Times Simulator: https://molleindustria.itch.io/the-new-york-times-simulatorPlay Lucas Pope’s The Republia Times: https://www.dukope.com/trt/play.htmlSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Some 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

With great power comes great responsibility, or maybe it's more like reprehensibility? Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we all played Dispatch, a hard R-rated workplace comedy about a team of supervillains trying to do good and get laid. There are narrative choices large and small, and we all made different ones. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shrier, and I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello. Hello.

We made it back. The Game Awards nominations came out this week, and we were actually nominated. Did you guys see this? We were nominated for Best Indy Game because that means nothing. Right. You have a podcast in there. Triple click on there. Wow.

Wow. Yeah, we were up there alongside a photograph from 1985. And the dishwasher. That's right. World Pool dishwasher. And like, I hate doing dishes by hand. What can I say? Best indie game is actually Timothy Shalame.

Congratulations. Wow, wild. Who knew? He just happened to be at the awards. How can be you forever? What is a video game? What is an indie game? We are just coming closer and closer to answering that question without ever quite

answering it. And if you want to hear more about us trying to figure out what a video game truly is, just kidding, we've never recorded an episode on that. But if you want to hear more of us, you could be getting our monthly bonus episodes. And how would you go about getting them? Well, you'd go to Max. Maximumfund.org slash join. You'd become a member and then you'd get them all.

You'd get the whole backlog. Because soon as the gates are opened, all of the triple click just comes rushing in at you. And they all appear for you, ready to be downloaded. And this coming month, we're going to record a very special bonus episode that I personally decided we should do. I just really had to convince Kirk and Jason of this one. They didn't want to do it. but I started watching this television show.

It's kind of obscure, because it's old, and so people might not have heard of it. It's called The Sopranos, and I just think it's really good. The Sopranos, Maddie? Yeah, there's kind of some dispute about pronunciation, because it's been talked about so little that there isn't really a canonical agreed upon one. So I started watching that, and I just think the first season is really good, and that maybe Kirk and Jason should check it out,

and that we could record a bonus episode about The Sopranos. So we're going to do that this month. Yeah, Maddie, you've been talking about this so much. I'm looking forward to finally watching it. It was totally off my radar. And then you started talking it up. And it sounds interesting. You know, I like mafia stuff.

So I guess I'll give it a watch. And Jason hates mafia stuff. That's true. So it's going to be tough for him. Renaud. I feel like a lot of this is like we're referencing conversations that the three of us have had off the air. where, so the joke, the joke doesn't play quite as well. Well, there's been some of it on the air.

Some of it's been on the air. For those of you who are not in the loop, I've spent years trying to convince Maddie to watch the Sopranos, my favorite show of all time and it's finally happening. So I'm very excited that we get to talk about it, which will be really soon. I think next week we're going to run this or within the next two weeks by the end of the month. Yeah.

And it's streaming. So hopefully people will enjoy rewatching it along with us, But hey, you probably remember it because I was joking before. It's one of the most famous TV shows of all time. But, hey, maybe you haven't seen it before. Maybe you're like me. Check it out. Pretty good.

Kirk, you have another quick note before we get to the meat of the show today. So go ahead. I do. So we actually have another little extra thing coming. And this is not just for members. This will be for everybody. But I wanted to give you all a heads up to keep an eye on the feed next week at the beginning of the week, especially if you're a fan of medieval history and video games related to such that I maybe have mentioned on the show recently.

Through a series of funny events, there will be a little extra something for everyone. This is, again, this is just totally like an extra thing in the main feed for everybody. That's just for fun kind of because I wanted to do it. So keep an eye on the feed, and you may get an extra episode next week. A Thanksgiving bonus. Yeah. Yeah. The bounty.

It's just the fall harvest coming through for triple-quic. The cornucopia of pods, the podocopia. That's right. That's right. Okay, let's get to it. So the three of us played a video game for this week called Dispatch. And let me just describe this game. So this is an episodic narrative game that takes place in a world of superheroes and villains.

It's a very blue comedy game with a lot of F-Bombie. in it. And also this game is the debut game from a developer and publisher ad hoc studios, but it doesn't quite feel like a debut game because some of the developers who made it used to work at a studio called Telltale Games. And anybody who's played a telltale game is probably familiar with the format. It's really similar here. It is a lot of cutscenes and then occasional narrative choices. There are also quick time events in this game that I chose to turn off. so I didn't experience them at all. The only, or the primary method of gameplay is making narrative choices on behalf of the

protagonist Robert Robertson, aka Mecca Man. He wears a big mech suit all the way up until it breaks. That's an episode one. Not a big spoiler. It's the premise of the game, I promise. He becomes a dispatcher, sort of like a 911 dispatcher for a superhero network, where he has to assign a rag-tag team of, former super villains to go out in the streets of Torrance,

which is a real place, apparently. I didn't know that, but it's a real city. And in this game, it's rife with other supervillains that you have to fight. So that's the other gamey part of the game is that occasionally you have to actually run dispatch shifts and put people on the job. So we all played it. I think I said it was episodic. There were four different chunks of episodes that came out over the past several weeks.

It's over now. We've all played it. and we're going to keep it spoiler-free for the first 30 minutes or so, and then we're going to get into spoilers for a little bit. But Kirk will warn all of you and tell you when to tune back in. I promise I'll remember to do it this time. Also, this game's a rom-com. There's a lot of little things to say about it,

but it's a rom-com as well. You have to pick a love interest out of two. So I'm really curious who you two chose and also what you thought about this game. Kirk, why don't you go first? Sure, I'll go first. I loved this game. game. I loved it from start to finish. If a game has me grinning as much as Dispatch did every time I was playing it, just laughing, and just delighted at pretty much every moment, then it is safe to say

that I love it. I love Dispatch. I think it is a wonderful game. I am thrilled to have read Jason's reporting on it and his discussions with the developers to know what an uphill battle it was to get it made only because it's such a tremendously entertaining and wonderful game, and it's been so successful. So it's a rare feel-good story as well. But yeah, I mean, I have a lot to say about this game, and in particular, I think the way that it sort of mechanizes, I guess, that it uses its various mechanics to reinforce the narrative of a team becoming a team. And I think that's something that games can do very well, and that no other superhero game aside from Marvel's Midnight Sons has done in the realm that they're doing it with dispatch. And I just, I really think

it's amazing what they've done. Like they are, it's very current. It feels very James Gunn inflected. I think they've learned a lot of lessons from how James Gunn approached Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad and Peacemaker. It's something he's done over and over with these Asurbit characters who come together to form a kind of found family. They did a great job of it. And I think the pacing is remarkable. The music, the acting. we'll get into all of that. But I really, I was like bowled over by this game. I'm head over heels for it. I loved it. Jason, what about you? I also loved it. And I expected to love it. Kirk, you mentioned the story I did. We'll link it in the show in it. So we can talk about that a little bit as we go. But one thing that I'll shout out is that this game was revealed at the Game Awards last December. And it was a cool splashy reveal where Aaron Paul and his co-star Laura Bailey, the prolific voice actor, who plays in Visigal.

The two of them took the stage, and they had this kind of weird moment where they, like, almost kissed each other. But then they introduced the game, and it was really cool, and we were raving about it on the show. We were like, that was one of the coolest things there. Like, we were all excited about it.

Yeah, the trailer looked amazing. If memory serves, it was the only thing at the whole show that made me sit up and say, what is that? I want to play that. Yeah. That made you really excited, right? Quite a feat. Which is, I mean, this was a show

where they announced Which are for, so that's really quite a feat. And at the time, I got a text message for someone at the studio who I've known for a really long time who was like, hey, our whole slack is buzzing about like you guys mentioning this and shouting it out on triple click. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. But what I didn't know at the time,

this person did not mention and I didn't know until this, until I had this interview with Nick Herman, one of the directors on the game, is that they didn't have funding at that point and were like scrambling. And like after the, at the game awards, like at the hotel bar, at the parties afterwards,

they were talking to people about potentially finding funding to finish the game. So that trailer and all the buzz around it, including possibly buzz on shows like this, I think helped them out when it came to ultimately securing that deal with critical role, the D&D podcasting network, to help fund and finish the game. So yeah, as for the game itself, I also loved it, just like you, Kirk. For people out there might not know if you just listen to Kirk and his congenial demeanor, you might not know how much he loves dick jokes and they are

in spades in this game. Yeah, some really good ones in this game. I don't know. Our Ball X Pitt references might show the listeners where all of our hearts truly lie on this sort of thing. But I don't know. No, I really like it. It's one of those games where you play it and you're like, man, there are a lot of cliches in this

but they're done so well that it kind of makes you realize that cliches don't matter. Its execution is the only thing that matters. And this is an extreme like phenomenally executed phenomenally executed phenomenally executed phenomenally video game it's like it is written by you can tell that the core of this game the four co-founders of this game and also the people around them are people who have been making games for two decades and not just

that but making games together for two decades you can really feel that in the way that it's written and the confidence that it's all created in and how it's shot and how it doesn't like um it never drags it is paced so well it feels uh like uh just an extremely well made tv show the entire time and the narrative choices some of them are like really hard to hard to actually choose which i think is a good uh just like a telling sign of like a game like this that has made really well is when you actually are sitting there and be like oh my god the timer is running out i don't know what to pick here um i really loved it the performances are incredible it looks really great i like everything

about it. I'm not a huge fan of the dispatching management sim part. And for a lot of those, I felt like I wished that I could just skip ahead to the story. But there's so much good dialogue in those that I just wound up enjoying it regardless. Yeah, I love everything about this game pretty much. Maddie, what did you think? Yeah, we can get to the dispatch mini game in a second because I do feel like that's worth diving into because it's pretty interesting when it does and doesn't affect the story and how clear it does and doesn't make that to you. I, I, I, I, I also really liked this game. I think it gets better as it goes along.

It's not to say it didn't like episodes one and two. I thought they were good, but I thought it kind of started it out. I've been comparing this to Brooklyn 9-9, but saying it's way more sex jokes than a network television show could ever have. But it's similar and that it's like, you know, the cops in working together, workplace comedy, but there's romance at the workplace as there is in Brooklyn 9-9, lots of sitcom vibes, like strange, goofy characters being thrown together and also the vibe of a pretty unprofessional workplace, but in service of humor. And you just put aside any feelings you may have about all the HR violations being committed in the game. But also these are super villains we're talking about

here. So what do we expect of them? Probably not much when it comes to that. So I, you know, I was having a good time and laughing at the game. But I feel like episode five is when it really becomes something stronger and more interesting. And that's around when the, the team, really gels and they become not just characters who seem to hate each other and Robert, the protagonist, but also like the found family aspect that Kirk was talking about. And it's easier to like them. The taco scene for people who played the game. The taco scene, but also the bar fight that precedes the taco scene was extremely entertaining as well. I feel like all of episode five pacing-wise, I was really impressed by. And then the rest of the game is a whirlwind

up until the climax in a positive way. I thought it really moved, really gets kicking after that. And like Jason, I also thought some of the choices were really difficult. I really struggled with these. I ended up romancing Blonde Blazer, but I went back and watched all the Invisigal scenes afterwards. Those are your two main love interests. And I think they're both really compelling romance arcs. And you could make an argument for either of them, although the game really puts a finger on the scale with Invisigal

by giving her a pretty graphic sex scene that's quite titillating. So I think the writers might have a favoritism thing for her when it comes to that. Blountblazer doesn't get one of those. I would say they put their finger on the scale by making her an actual character as opposed to just like a... Well, I mean, Blondeblazer, if you go on dates with her, there's like a little more to her. But yes, Invisigal gets way, way more scenes in total, I would say. So I'm kind of curious how you two feel about that. Did you both pick Invisigal?

I feel like she's a more obvious choice. Yeah, based on the percentages they show you, this game does the telltale thing at the end. Yeah, literally. I know I'm in the minority. Yeah, where it shows you the percentage of your choice and, you know, what percentage of people sided with you. Some of them seemed a little bit bugged when I played. There were times where it would say, like, you and you were better than all but one percent of people. And I'm like, I don't think that that's actually true.

But for the most part, you know, for the really big decisions, especially Vizzi versus Blazer, it kind of tells you. And yeah, Invisigal is clearly the more widely chosen pick. Some of it is Laura Bailey. I mean, she's great and she gives a lot of soul to the character. Not to, like, knock Aaron Yvette's performance as Blonde Blazer. She makes a very strong first impression. I mean, she's this, like, beautiful, tall, strong character.

She shows up and carries Aaron Paul. They're both hot. Well, and like their first interactions, like her interactions with Aaron Paul when he's at his lowest pointer, I should say, Robbie Robertson. I guess it's Robert Robertson. I always want to call him Robbie Robertson, because like the guy from the band is named Robbie Robertson. Anyway, they have a really wonderful rapport as well. Why are you holding drinks?

Nightcap? You're in trouble. Actually, according to the bartender, that's exactly what you are. What happened in there? A little flare-up with some guy, but it, you know, extinguished pretty quick. A flare-up. Yeah. Does that not?

Sound convincing enough? Hold these. I know a place. You're strong. It's a little out there. Easier if we fly. So I could see going with either. But yeah, I went with Invisigal.

It just seemed like that was where the story was going. And I was kind of following not like what do I think is the better choice here, but just what would make for a good episode of TV, what would make it for a good season of TV? That's a good way to play at this game, I think. And I think, yeah, there are some real branches. There are some really variable outcomes. and if you think of it as, well, if this were just a TV show that I watched, how would I feel about it?

I really think that all of the outcomes are pretty valid and interesting. Like they all could make for a good season of TV. So, yeah, that was my choice. Yeah, I also went with Invisigal. When we get into the spoiler section, I'll talk a little bit about my ending and how I felt about that. But yeah, to me, I mean, it felt like the more natural choice just because she starts off one place and winds up a totally different.

place, like her arc with you is just like, like, she's the little shit. She's like someone who you, uh, want to like boot off the team immediately because she won't listen to a single thing you say. And then, uh, by romancing her. Enemy so lovers. Yeah. I mean, that's, it's a more natural kind of arc than, um, where you start with blonde blazer, which is her just being chill and helpful and nice to you where it doesn't, doesn't

leave it a ton of places to go. Um, kind of like the, uh, I don't know, Kate and Jack for. as Kate and Sawyer. Like, it was always going to be Kate and Sawyer because they were at odds with each other and gradually grew to fall in love with another, as opposed to Kate and Jack. It just started in one place. They're not going to, like, end in the same place. So that always felt true to me.

Although I think Jack and Kate did wind up together at the end of it, sadly, and Sawyer wound up with Juliet. Which, real mistake there, not to get into Lost. Oh, I love Sawyer and Juliet. They were, like, my favorite couple lost. They were maybe my favorite thing about those later seasons have lost. They were cute. Yeah, they did have that moment at the end with the vending machine. And, yeah, there's some cute stuff.

And the actors just had chemistry, I think. You know, speaking of chemistry, to say a little bit more about the presentation, the acting, and the feel of this game, I think if you haven't played this, the way we've talked about it so far, we've made it sound like it's a comedy because it is a workplace comedy. There are lots of dicks. There's various nudity and, like, lots of six jokes, sex jokes. Pretty funny dick jokes. I would say actually in those terms, it does actually remind me of the legend of Vox Machina. I'm the only one of us who's watched that. This is the critical role, animated adaptation of their tabletop campaign.

Somewhat different, but similar characters, some same characters, all the same voice actors. It has a similar energy where it's like really blue, as you said, Maddie. There's a lot of dick jokes. It's very sexual. It's very silly. But also, it's very dramatic. There are incredible action sequences. You get really invested.

And then when there's a big showdown at the end of the season, it feels super excited and you're exciting and you can't wait to see what happens, which has how this felt as well. The thing I really want to underline about this is that this game also has a lot of heart. It is a story, as much as it is full of cliches, as you say, Jason, you know, Robert Robertson's story, the fact that he is the third in the line of basically, you know, Iron Man, though I guess he kind of, he like flies the Hulkbuster or the Iron Giant, like a bigger suit. But it's the same idea. He doesn't have any powers. but he uses this suit. He's inherited it. And his grandfather and his father both died in the suit.

And this is something that, like, informs his character, and he doesn't want to die in the suit, and he almost does at the very beginning. And this is so down to Aaron Paul, who, by the way, was snubbed at the Game Awards for best performance, which has to be a subject or a matter of timing that this game came so close to the awards. Because, like, his performance, it is so soulful and strong.

We know he's a good actor. He's a good voice actor. He's great on BoJack. But, man, I mean, as good as everyone, else is, his performance, like there's this soulfulness, this quality to his voice and his reeds that is exceptionally strong. Three times this happened? There was Grandpa Bobby, then my dad, who I called Dad, but everyone else called Robbie,

and then me, Robert, because I wanted to be taken seriously. Mm, family tradition. And more ways than one. Gramps was the first Mecca man. He died in the suit before I was born. and Dad was killed fighting Shroud. That's when I took over. There was a little inheritance and the life insurance money.

I'm so sorry. I didn't realize... Just your run-of-the-mill, sad superhero origin story. The family tradition, if there is one, is dying in that suit, which I guess I don't have to worry about it anymore. What is it? I'm not quite drunk enough to share my origin story just yet.

Remind me to tell you something. they? Definitely. And it kind of dovetails with the animation. The animation in this game is outrageous. There's a scene where he is like, he leans back and he's like, oh, and he does, you guys can see me. He like, rubs his hands over his eyes because he's tired and doesn't know what to do. And he's like, oh, and he does it for a while. And it's like, it's so amazing.

There's so much stuff like that, this body language, these little scenes, these little movements that are so. so believable and detailed and just bring you into the world. This game has total swagger. We haven't mentioned it yet that a lot of the people who worked on this made tales from the borderlands. The, I would say, probably in retrospect, my favorite of the telltale adventure games, and the one that also had a similar swagger, like with the music, the vibes, the editing. It just had this, like, confidence from the drop.

And for me, at least, from the very beginning of this game, it had that. And one other thing I want to shout out is Andrew Archer. I think that's how he pronounced his last name, the composer, or primary composer. There was additional composing by Skylar Bartow. The music in this game is fantastic. Everything from the like really chill beats that play during the dispatching to the like really dramatic music and especially all the like synth wave stuff that he writes in. It gives this almost cyberpunk feeling to some of the vistas as they're flying over the city.

It really manages the tone beautifully. And every time I started playing, the music just locked me in. So all that is to say, this is. game is like an aesthetic triumph across the board just in terms of all those non-gameplay type things. Yeah. And also because they have actual pop song needle drops, it can feel like a TV show in a complimentary way because I was pleasantly surprised by some of the needle drops. Yeah, something Tales from the Borderlands did exceptionally well as well. Yeah, I haven't played it, but that makes sense. I feel like in this, it makes the world feel more real because sometimes the music is

dietic, but also because it just feels more like you're watching a really highly produced piece of television or a movie or whatever that is a runaway to comedy and has those elements to it, but then also has the superhero climax stuff. I mean, it's hard to know when to use a powerful needle drop these days, I think, because it can be really corny, but I just, I thought they were extremely well done here. So I wanted to shout that out. I think the smartest decision that this game makes is that it has most of the cast be reformed villains

and like just barely reformed villains I was going to say like some of them are kind of still villains. This is the James Gunn thing right? Well yeah it's like yes or like what's it called the Thunderbolts last year worked really well

arguably also aping James Gunn Whenever you have kind of a bunch of like assholes who are trying to be good you always have good potential for drama. It also, I mean, you mentioned Tales from the Borderlands. The highlight of that game was, of course, Handsome Jack. And I think that, like, handsome, this is kind of like the archetype of like the, the villain, like, it feels like they have a lot of experience writing villainous characters. But really, I mean, I think the fact that they came up with this cast and some of them are

cliches. I mean, all of them are really cliches in some way or another. But it doesn't really matter because they're all executed so well. The voice acting is so good. Like everyone from Flambay, this ridiculous, like, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, asshole like human torch type. Really won me over by the end of the game. They're amazing character. They all do. Right?

They all do to like Sonar who's like a tech bro who talks about investing in crypto, but also his head is a bat. Like extremely inspired stuff. All of these characters were just like are just so, um, they're really put first in like front and center is just like the character development. And like it's almost like the story itself doesn't really matter in the way that with the best TV shows. You're just watching to hang out with these characters for an hour.

every week. It doesn't really matter what actually happens. And I think this, this game is, has kind of a similar vibe. Like you, you just want to hang out with these people, but because it doesn't wear out it's welcome and you don't have to have like endless like, um, just kind of like, uh, background conversations with these people. Um, they stay fresh throughout. Um, it's worth noting. I think that like, for some people, they might see this game as 30 bucks and be like, oh my God, like, it's only eight hours. But to me, this is like perfect, perfect length. Like I would not want it to be a second longer. It really is just like that sweet spot of like,

this is a perfect amount of time to play this game. I was really struck by the pacing. I think there's so much smart shorthand and so much. Like, I don't know whether this was luck or what, because I know with things like this, you're always cutting stuff, you never are really sure how it's all going to wind up. And they maybe weren't sure. Did we do enough development on this character or on this storyline

for it to feel satisfying in the payoff? And it does move fast, but I was struck over and over again by how smart they are about things. I think one example that comes to mind is Invisigal. So Envisigal is a typical bad girl. Her character design, if you just saw her, like the character design of this character just on Twitter or something, you would just think like, oh, that's kind of generic. It's like not to knock it exactly, but it's a little generic. Oh, and side note, if you get the collector's edition of this game, you get all these art books

and they show you iterations of the characters, which I all. almost never go through that kind of stuff, but I was having a great time going through these. And for Vizzy, they showed they, she was the first design. And then they had all these other shots at it that are all very different. And then they wound up just going back to the first design, which is kind of interesting. Makes sense, though. I get it. With her character design, if you look at her, you're like, okay, typical kind of bad girl, you know.

The long, spiky bangs. But then they make this one choice, I think. It's a single choice for her, where she's a chain smoker. She's kind of bad. But she also has an inhaler because she has asthma. And her power is like tied to holding her breath, too. So her breath winds up being like this part of her character. But it's all about the inhaler.

It's this little decision. But the minute you see that, it's this vulnerability. And you realize like that she's a person with a story. I don't know how else to put it. But by just doing that one thing, they've done it already. Like you look at her and you get it. You're like, okay, she's bad, but she's trying to be good. And she has a backstory that explains why she is the way she is.

And they do that kind of thing with the characters and with the story and with the story lines. They're very smart about making these little decisions. Flambay's karaoke song, for example. Other things that, like, it's just one choice, and it only takes a couple of minutes, but it gives you everything you need to, like, form an attachment and to get invested. Yeah. Let's talk about some of the gameier parts of the game, the dispatch part and the hacking segments. So, Jason, you've weighed in, not a fan.

But, Kirk, as I recall, you really enjoyed? I don't want to go that far. It's just like... Okay, fine. I enjoyed all the character development. Sometimes I would be playing and I would be like, okay, I want to get to the story already. Like, I don't need to be doing more of this. I wouldn't say, like, I dislike it or anything.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I think I liked it a little more than you, but there were definitely times when I was like, I feel like I've been doing a lot of dispatching and I want to get back to the main thrust of the game. But Kirk, as I recall, you were talking to our group chat about how you really dug this and you liked it a lot. Do you feel that way having completed all of the dispatch? Yeah, I would separate the hacking from the dispatch. The hacking is cool. I like the idea, and I think that it adds tension at some really key points to explain this to the listeners. Robbie at his dispatching console also has the ability to hack into things. So sometimes you do this hacking mini game that can be fun, but sometimes it feels like it's not explaining the rules to you or it's kind of trip you up in ways that are clever, but also kind of annoying. The main gameplay, though, I guess I should, let me explain the main dispatching gameplay and how it works. This is the bulk of of what you do at the desk. You know, you're looking at this overlay of the city

with exclamation points with timers on them. And you have to click on an exclamation point and then a little, you know, dialogue box pops up, and it's anything from there's an assault underway at the bank to the fans of this book signing are getting really rowdy and we don't know what to do, to there's a flood, to like, I need someone to walk my dog or I need somebody to get me coffee.

Like there's just all kinds of things. Anyone who calls SD in the superhero company. And then you look at, at whatever the scenario is, and it will give you a few facts about it. It will say, you need someone to calm the crowd and be ready to fight if things escalate. Or maybe it'll say you need someone to chase the train and catch it before it crashes and disarm the bomb, and it kind of highlights the verbs. And then that kind of tells you which of your superheroes you want to dispatch.

So the whole game you're kind of assembling mini teams from among your available superheroes, is, you know, Sonar is really smart and Golem is really tough. And so maybe you need someone who can withstand a lot of damage and also can be smart about figuring something out. Or like, you know, they're charismatic or whatever. And then throughout the game, you kind of level up your characters and you customize your build-out. That's to explain how this works.

That stuff, I think, is all really cool. I love what they're doing. I think the pacing is actually very good. It never wore out its welcome. and I think that it mechanized the team coming together in a way that worked really well narratively. At the beginning, it was fun reading Steam reviews for this game because when the first two episodes were out and then the first four,

it was kind of, it was on mostly positive or something, very positive. It was pretty good, but a lot of people were complaining, saying, oh, I want all the episodes, and a lot of people were saying, I want more dispatching. Like, I just want to play that forever. And then I think as the game went on, you can see reviews start to see what the game is, And now they're like overwhelmingly positive and there's way more of them because the game is over.

And I think people got a feeling for how the dispatching was like stretched out over the whole game. And once you played the whole game, you get what they're doing. You start out, everything's a mess. There are dispatch rounds where it's kind of a wash. It's supposed to be. Everyone's piss. Their stats are all reduced. You're losing all the time.

You're overwhelmed. There's too much to keep up with. It's all on purpose. Like each one is kind of a little set piece. And then toward the end, when you've really kind of got everyone cooking, they're all riffing. They're referring to past things that happen. They're friends. They're kicking ass because you've really maximized them and learned how to dispatch.

And it's this feeling of having as Robert coached this team into being a well-oiled machine that's incredibly satisfying and fits along with the story. It's a great example of, like, ludonarrative consonants or whatever you want to call it. So I loved all of that. And then the hacking, like I said, I have some quibbles with like the specifics. I didn't think it was great. It's fun to give you some variety and it added tension in some places. So I didn't hate it or anything.

There's one moment when something really tragic happens and then the entire dispatch mission afterwards is just silent, which is so striking at the time. Yeah. And it's very effective because they're usually talking your ear off the entire time and just being so distracting sometimes in a good way because they have so much character. There's, I think, a point at which everyone is hung over and they like don't or at least some characters will show up hungover. There's just a lot of kind of tie-ins to what's happening in the story outside. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you, Kirk. We're almost up to the point where I want us to start spoiling things, but any closing thoughts before we get to the spoiler section of the cast, I will say just overall, definitely recommend it.

I think maybe romance and visigal, even though I have Romance Blaser and in real life, she's probably the better choice, but for story reasons, go with the toxic enemies to lovers arc, I think. Any other thoughts? No, I really liked it. I guess last spoiler-free thought is that beef is maybe the best dog I've ever seen in a video. Oh, my God, yes. So cute. And I would die for him.

Let me kind of, before we get into the spoilers section, let me get into what we were alluding a little bit earlier, which is the kind of the crazy story behind the games making, which is, I'll give the short version. Again, people can click the article in the show notes. And even that story is kind of an abridged version of what is how, what happened, all the kind crazy twist and turns along the way from what I've heard. But basically, these guys all left Telltale. They went to Ubisoft for like a year or so.

They worked on a splinter cell game. That was kind of abandoned or mutated in ways they didn't like. Then they started their own thing. And they had this contract with this New York company to do like a live action interactive thing. And they wrote what would eventually become dispatch for them. And they were about to start shooting. And that was in March of 2020.

And then a pandemic. kit. And then they like had to scramble. They started working with Telltale on Wolf Among Us 2, which still has not come out. They parted ways. They had divorced to Telltale over that. They started working on another thing for a bit. That fell apart. And eventually they pulled dispatch back off the shelf. And they were like, hey, we should work on this. They signed with a publisher. That publisher, after like a year or a year and a half was like, man, market research shows that nobody wants these kind of games. Sorry, we're out. And they were scrambling. The founders didn't take paychecks for like six months as they were just like, oh my God, like how are we going to

pay for this thing? And this is an expensive production. They had like animation houses. They were paying Aaron Paul and all these other top notch voice actors, Jeffrey Wright, who we didn't even mention is in this. Yeah, Jeffrey Wright's in this. We haven't mentioned him yet. And he's fantastic. He's so good in it. And then the Game Ords announcement happened, like I mentioned. and then they were about to sign this deal that I think was pretty bad terms with another publisher until they talked to Critical Role

because Critical Role had them signed up to do a different project. They were going to make a game with Critical Role, which is their next thing on the docket. That's what's coming next. It's very exciting, honestly. Which is pretty cool. And Critical Role was like,

hey, why don't we just fund dispatch? And so that's what happened. And so they funded the rest of the game and led to the game getting finished in October. And there's a lot more along the way, including lots of conversations about whether it should be episodic or not. I think it was perfect for this because it was all each, each chunk of episode, each two episode release was only a week apart, which made people really excited and led to these humongous audience spikes every single week. I think episodic has gotten a bad rap because in the telltale days, they were so inconsistent and it would sometimes, like sometimes you would get a new episode after a month and sometimes you'd have to wait a year for a new episode.

So that was really frustrating for people. Nobody had any idea when they were going to come out. And they were sometimes underwhelming along the way. But yeah, this I think worked out really well. And then the game has sold a million copies in its first 10 days, probably many more since then. Been a huge hit. They're almost certainly going to make a new season after this.

And yeah, it's a feel-good story. The one thing I would say to that story, I think that's worth kind of thinking about and highlighting, is that this is an example of one group of creators who own their own product in this is critical role, who were so successful and successful by creating something on their own terms the way that they did. These are voice actors. You know, of course, Matt Mercer, who we know and came on the show and have talked to about this a little bit, just off the air when we were playing D&D with him.

But this is a group of people who are in so many games, who are all very high profile and very successful, who then basically stepped outside of it. of that and made their own thing in critical role that was wildly successful. And now they're able to take that success and use it to allow other people who are doing the same thing to become successful. This is a virtuous cycle and the kind of virtuous cycle that I think is really cool to see and that I kind of just want to highlight for people. Like there aren't that many feel good stories in the world of video games, but seeing one group of people go independent and help another group of people make something amazing and like dispatch is amazing, I just think that's really, really

cool and it just makes me very happy to see it. Yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah, same. All right. Let's go spoil this thing, shall we? Yeah, let's go spoilers. Okay, so I'm going to give you the warning. I swear I'm going to come back and put it in. And we won't like yell spoilers immediately either. So we'll give you a little bit of time after this. But if you want to just skip right to one more thing, go to this timestamp, 57 minutes, 55 seconds. That's 5755. I remembered. Okay, we're back. Let's talk about some of the choices we made and whether we felt like they were significant or not. There's some that I felt were great. But one that I wanted to mention that I didn't love is the choice between coupe and sonar because the game kind of tricks you here.

I mean, I understand this type of gameplay trickery. It kind of makes you feel like there's a really stressful dispatch call where you have to make careful decisions. And in my mind, I was like, oh, any hero could be at the bottom. I have to really think about who I'm going to send out. Any of my heroes could get cut. But as it turns out, there's actually only two heroes who can ever get cut, which is totally logical for gameplay and game development reasons. It's always going to be these two.

And it's going to be relatively simple choices at the end. I've watched all the endings of the game at this point, and they're pretty similar as to whether Sonor or Cupay showed up at the very end, too. And I get it, but it definitely made me, think about some of the other choices in the game as being meaningful or not. And I was wondering how you two felt about the choices in the game, that one and also some of the other ones that matter way more, like the romance are. I guess first of all, I want to know who did you cut.

I cut, I cut, I cut coupé. And that's because I just thought Sonar was really funny. Yeah, I think almost everybody. I don't really like her that much. So, bye. Yeah. Yeah, she's just less likable. And I think as a character design, just less.

interesting. I mean, one guy is like a bat finance bro and the other lady is sort of just throws knives and works and has wings. Yeah. She has, really, for me it was more of that. Though, I do think they do something clever in the gameplay in that I don't know if this happens for everybody, but for me,

Punch Up and Coupe formed the first synergy right before I cut her. And then that winds up, that wound up being like part of the story is that Punch Up and she were friends and he kept like, he was like apologizing to her later when you're fighting her in the boss fight. Yeah, that happens for everyone, I think. Okay, I assumed that happened for everybody. And I think that's clever, like, that they give you this synergy. And

they're almost like giving her a little more weight as like an acknowledgement that Sonar is just as a character design, so much more interesting that most people are probably going to stick with him. Yeah. Yeah. Although, I mean, whoever you don't pick, ultimately, like, winds up getting a little bit less time moving forward. And you can kind of tell because there's always, like, specific, like, a cut scene will just like cut to one shot where like sonar is in it and then there are other shots. They were filmed in a separate room. Yeah. Yeah.

It is one of those things. Like Arrested Development Season 4 where they're all different. Right. Right. Since we're doing spoilers, Maddie, so you romance Blonde Blazer and Jason and I both romance in Invisigal. And I really liked the arc that Blonde Blazer had in the Invisigal romance only because at the very end she gives her amulet to Chase.

and it allows him to be the last minute save. And then you see that she actually looks completely different and doesn't naturally have superpowers, which is a really sweet scene for me. And I partly liked it because, again, to think of this as a TV show that I'm watching, I actually would put her and Robbie Robertson together as more of a long-term thing. And that In Visigal seems like maybe this will be exciting

and eventually flame out because they have lots of chemistry, but also they're kind of both a little messed up and like maybe it won't work. Kate and Sire. And I really thought those final scenes were really nice, especially given that there are two people who don't have any any powers and that she's actually like much more down to earth

than she appears to be in all those early scenes. I gather when you date her, if you go out to dinner with her, you learn this earlier. Is that, that's the case? Yes, you learn it right away because I appreciate this. She doesn't want to lie to you

about who she really is. So she takes off the amulet right away for you and he makes a joke about how she looks almost exactly the same and is like absolutely beautiful. because she like really, really builds up to it. And she's like, you might not like me anymore. And she looks almost exactly the same.

And it's a really funny moment. It's like the Ready Player 1 thing. When you meet me in real life, I have a birth mark. Exactly. She looks gorgeous. And like, I think he says something like, okay, you're two inches shorter and you have brown hair. It's very funny.

It's good. And they have a really, they have a lot of chemistry as well. I mean, this is part of why I wish they had just like given blonde blazer one more a scene or two to kind of help make the decision more difficult because Invisigal is also so charming but in a completely different way. But also, I really liked the ending I got, even though from what I understand, it's the bad ending.

I don't know an ending you too got, and if you don't mind me spoiling mine. No, I know, because I talk to Jason about it. This is the ending where Invisigal turns villain. Yeah, but it's not, I don't quite read it that way. I would say it's very vague. I totally don't think it's a bad ending for what I said. Yeah. So what happens in my.

ending is I didn't get the opportunity to kill Shroud or spare Shroud, as Robert, as I gather other people do. And instead, Invisigal shows up and kills him for me very dramatically. And then she and Robert exchange a mysterious glance that I think, as it's credit to the animation in this game is that a lot of times you just see characters have facial expressions that you could interpret a lot of different ways. And she takes Shroud's mask with her, which you could take as like, oh, she's going to take over his gang or be a villain. And you have a conversation with Blonde Blazer afterwards where you ask her, like, or she asks you rather, what do you think? What do we think and Visigal meant by that? But I take it as just she isn't necessarily still a villain, but she is a loner. She's a lone wolf.

And I thought that that interpretation of her character made sense for the arc that I'd been playing. the entire time, which is a Robert who repeatedly rebuffs in Visigal's absurd sexual advances towards him. Her kind of not sticking with the team after that made sense for the arc that I had just played. And her necessarily not wanting to be a part of the group also made story sense. But obviously, if I'd romanced her or at least had a better relationship with her than I ended up having, I think it wouldn't have made sense. Yeah. So the way it works is there's like a mathematics, medical formula where you're getting points every time you select some options within Visigal and losing points every time you select others.

And that is kind of independent from whether you're romancing her. I'm not 100% sure if you can romance Blamblazer and then also get Invisigal like saved. I think you can. You can. Because you don't need to be romancing her. Yeah, that's what I thought. Because then I did the opposite. I got the worst of all worlds.

I was romancing Invisagal. And then also she did what she did with you, Maddie. Likely because I chose to cut her from the team because like, why would you leave her on when the rest of your team is threatening to revolt if you're going to keep her? And also she like almost got Chase killed. So like what the hell? She needs to see punishment for her actions. So I thought that was the most logical choice. But by doing so and not, not I guess sticking up for her, I got called a bad mentor by the games achievements.

Yeah, me too. So to me, that's the best of all worlds. I think that's the best media storyline, is that there's a flirtation and a romance between Robert and in Visigal, and then eventually she becomes, quote-unquote, turns evil. She kills Shrout at the end, and we're left with that cliffhanger at the end of the season. To me, if I were writing this show, that would be the season that I would write. It's good, yeah.

And I would leave Blazer and Robert, like, hanging out and talking, and, like, realizing that they have more in common than they thought. That sets up a great story. for season two. I think the one missed up the game makes is that achievement you mentioned Jason. I think it's the fact that when I got my ending, which was a romance ending with

Invisigal and a happy ending where I spared shroud, Envisigal took a bullet for Robbie and then she wound up like being a good guy and joining the team. The achievement said succeeded as a mentor and the one that you both got said failed as a mentor and I think that alone

it just puts like it kind of qualifies what you're doing and tells you did a bad job or it makes you feel like you got a bad job. And then you see everyone referring it to it as the good ending and the bad ending. But I honestly think the good ending in like narratively, the better ending is the one you just described Jason. And the one you described Maddie is cool too, where you're romancing Blazer. That's fine. The really like if it's a TV show, it's the one Jason got. I think that to me feels the most canonical. And the one that I got, it was great. It was nice. It was fun. They like kissed while she's being loaded onto the, into the ambulance. It's actually really corny. Like I watched it and it has

fireworks. I was like, wow, this is almost too neat. Like, everyone's a good guy now. Yeah, is that it was nice. I love these characters, but it was a little it was so positive. I was like, ah, if I were watching this show, I'd way rather that it ended the way that it did for Jason. Well, I wonder maybe your ending is like if they never got

a second season and my ending is like, okay, setting up for season too. That's a very good way of thinking of it. I'm really curious if they do get a second season. Because they have to pick one to be canon. Correct. Yeah, or maybe they don't. Although it's a heck of a lot of writing. It would be very difficult.

You'd have to have so many permutation. Like if the story... Well, we could, like, wrap it up in the first episode. Sure. I don't know. That might be... I think it would be interesting to have a story where, like, Invisigal is the bad guy the entire time.

I think that would be a fun season, too. But yeah, I mean, I, like, at the end of the day, I don't care that much because for me, the fun of it all was just hanging out with these characters and I'm excited to spend more time with them. At some point, I might replay the whole thing with different choices just to see it and just to spend time in that world again. And here, again, is where, like, the... The fact that it is so short, relatively short, compared to other games.

And I think the fact that it doesn't have the telltale style, like, walking around and picking up objects, just does so much, does it such a service. Like, it makes it so much better, so much more, quote-unquote, replayable, but so much more enjoyable and fun to go through. I totally agree. I want to replay this actually just on TV with Emily. I started it on my own, having previously thought maybe we could play. play through it together. And she would love this. I mean, this is something that anyone, people who don't play games, you could share this thing on the TV and just play through it together. Man, I mean, it's like what a game to welcome in people who maybe don't play games or, you know, spouses or siblings

or whoever, who just want to hang out. I mean, this is just a fun TV show to watch together. Yeah, it's on PlayStation 5 and PC. I kind of think of it as a PC game because that's where I played it, but I was actually thinking when the C-machine comes out, I'm going to set one of those up in my bedroom and play it with my wife because I think she'll really enjoy watching it. And the scene is a nice way to do that. Yeah, because I know you two played until dawn and it's kind of a similar, like you could make decisions together about how you want to proceed. It's funny because we keep referring to this as a TV show and something that I've kind of struggled with internally is like, would this have been better if it just were a TV show and if they had actually made the decisions?

And I don't think it would be. And having seen the multiple endings and having had my own emotional investment of making choices that ultimately I wish I'd made different ones, but I think that's really powerful and it's a good thing that I feel that way and a testament to the game being powerful and effective that I wanted to see what would happen if I had made the other choices and happily watched through them today and had a great time doing that too. So I do feel like it shows that it can be a game and have that still be really effective. I completely agree. I mean, it definitely would not have, I mean, it would have lost a lot without the interactive elements. And like I said, like I really liked the dispatch gameplay. And I think that's an essential part of the overall

experience. I think it makes it so much better. Even though I didn't like it as much as you, I agree, that it really adds to the story. And it's worth noting we've been talking about the major decisions, but there's so many little decisions you make along the way that don't really mean anything in the long run, but still are just so entertaining and fun and give you a little more agency over the story than you would if you were watching a show. You know, since we're doing spoilers, there's one that I'll call out is very early on, Ghalem knocks Robert over while you're going into a group meeting. And it's really careless and he's huge.

And Robert's really kind of skinny and small. And it's this moment of like, man, I guess neither of you have been classroom teachers. But when you're a classroom teacher, there's like kind of some prison rules to it, especially when you're starting and especially when you're a young teacher, which I was when I was a classroom teacher. I was like 24. And you walk in and like they will mess with you and you have. to establish your authority and it's very hard to do and there is always that kid in the class

who pushes you not physically probably but like in in some other way and you have to figure out how to do it it's like a very real thing and in this moment Robert has to establish his authority so for me I like kicked Gallum out of the meeting I was like you're out of here man and he was like kind of looked at me and I was like you got to go like it was it felt very true to the moment where like power struggle right you're standing there and you're just waiting and you just have to like stay strong because if you cave, it's over and you'll never have authority. And then he goes outside. And then over the whole course of the game, they work together, they form a rapport. Gollum becomes a very useful part of the team. Man, he's like a goat in the field. He has

like some really good superpower, like special powers. And then when Flambay, and for me anyways, I told the team that I was Mecca Man and Flambay tries to kill Robert and Gallum saves his life. And it was this great little thing that especially because of the way I played it, kind of illustrated an arc between the two characters and that column was totally there for him and he he saved his whole life or whatever it is that he says to him and i loved that i think like that's one of those smaller decisions that you were referring to jason yeah i also confess to being mechaman there and it's it's wild to me that you can choose not to do that and have flambay i think not know that you are i really like that i got to see that arc because i really liked it i don't know how it plays out

see this is the thing is that i actually don't know how every single small decision plays out in the game and that there are so many that are really interesting. I mean, you can also, I'm, like, there's also these tiny things, like, she's not to fist bump Roy at the urinal, and that which is what I did. And their fist bump between them becomes a whole thing. Right. And I chose not to, which is fun. Just seeing as he got mad and you're like, we're at the urinal, dude.

I'm not going to touch your hand. Here's a question that you both might not know. So can you add Phenama Man to the team instead of Waterboy? Does that actually? Yeah, that's what I did. And he really is on the team then for the rest of the game. That's so funny. I love Waterboy.

I had Waterboy. I had Waterboy. I just wasn't sure. Waterboy is great. I had Phenama Man. He's so funny. If you guys play it again, you should pick Phenomena. Waterboy levels up so quickly that you can like beef him up.

Yeah. So does Phenomen. I think probably by design. He's pretty beefy to start. He's already so powerful. And his lines are so funny. I truly recommend choosing him if you two play it a second time. Because his dynamic with the rest of the.

the team is great. He's such a deadpan, like, because he's an alien and doesn't understand people. And he's depressed. And that is an archetype that I really like. And he's depressed. So instead of going in resting mode, like the other heroes, he goes into depression mode, which is also very funny. Yeah. So I guess he joins the team at the very end. So you get a little bit of him. But yeah, I really, I just wasn't sure if that was a false choice. And then I chose Waterboy. And also, I was, I did not choose to admit that like I kissed blonde blaser. But I know that you can. And I, I haven't watched how that plays out. But that's a. another one of those, like, you know, in the broad scheme of things, not that consequential.

But it's kind of a major revelation. Like, I kissed your girlfriend or I did it. And I was like, I'm not telling this guy I kissed his girlfriend. I didn't tell him either. I don't know what I did. It's not, it's, it's kind of a small thing. Like, he gets sad anyway. Because he's pretty, he's pretty chill about human interactions in a way that's very comical. So I could see that being the case where he'd just be like, okay, I guess this is what. What is it? He says he's like, you might want to stand back. Like, my launch has been known to to damage humans or something. Yeah, it's great.

Man, what a funny game. I really do want to replay it. Well, it's funny. It's funny how that all plays out, because when you first see it, you think of him as, who's going to be the just, like, jocky douchebag who you have to, like,

like a Captain Hammer type. Who becomes your kind of your antagonist along the way. But no, it turns out he's just kind of a clueless alien dude and he means everything he says. And then they break up almost immediately, which is an interesting subversion. Because, like, I think,

I had thought that, like, romancing blonde blazer would have to involve like talking her out of him or something like that. Yeah, me too. And I was like, God, that's annoying. But instead they do subvert that by just having her immediately dump him and be like, that relationship was already not really anything at all. Of all the, of all the writing maybe missteps in this game, the one that I will really call out is that I don't think that these writers understand what a dad bod is. Oh my God. Right. Multiple times. Okay. Robert doesn't have a dad bod.

They refer to Robert as having a dad bod. When he is in fact totally shredded. He has a six-pack. Hello. As someone who increasingly has a dad-bod with every year I go into my 40s. That really bothered me. Yes. I was like, guys.

If they're listening, I need them to patch out that joke. It's been accurate. It could be they had a different character designed for Robert when they wrote that joke or something. Yeah, maybe. But he's shredded. I mean, he is very small. So I actually feel like there are probably other jokes you could put there to describe his diminutive stature compared to the other characters that make it clear that he

doesn't have the classic superhero body type and maybe not even a normative male video game protagonist body type. And I thought that was cool and interesting, by the way. But he doesn't have a dad bot. So thanks for calling that out. That was buggy me too. I thought it was important. It is important. And on that very important note, why don't we take a break and come back with one more thing. Hey, I'm Jake Heath Van Straten from GoFack Yourself. And I'm I'm here with Max Fun member of the month, Josh Mentor, who has been a maximum fund member since 2016. Hello, Josh. Hey, Jake, how are you doing today?

I'm so well, and thank you so much for being a listener and supporter of our show. What made you decide to support Max Fun in general and to support our show GoFact yourself? Jordan Morris on Jordan Jesse Go has a thing that he likes to say, which is, you know, you tip your bartender, a buck a beer, you tip your podcast or a buck a month. You know, I get way more use out of Max Fun podcast that I do like Disney Plus or Netflix. Well, it's something we very much appreciate. And by the way, when was the last time Netflix selected you as a member of the month? Exactly. Exactly.

Josh Mentor, congratulations, and thank you again for being the MaxFun member of the month. Thanks so much, guys. Become a MaxFun member now at Maximumfund.org slash join. Walking about is the podcast about walking. It's a walkiementary series where I, Alan McLeod, and a fun-friendly guest go for a walkabout. You'll learn about interesting people and places and have the kind of conversations you can only have on foot. We've got guests like Lauren Lapkis. I figured something out about this map.

Like how to read it. Betsy Sedaro. I had no key. That's awesome and nuts. John Gabris. This is like great first date for like broke 20 something, you know. And more. Check out walking about with Alan McLeod on Maximum Fun.

We are back. It's time for one more thing. Kirk, why don't you go first? All right. My one more thing is a book that I finally finished after reading it for many, many weeks. This is the latest in my Sandin Branderson Fantasy Odyssey, J.K. Brandon Sanderson, Fantasy, Odyssey. Odyssey. Wow, say that 10 times fast. This is Oathbringer, the third book in the Stormlight archive. I have, I believe, made the first two books, each their own one more thing as well.

And I have finished Oathbringer. And man, it is a hell of a book. And I mean that in like mostly positive way, but also in a kind of, wow, what a big book kind of way. So this book is a jillion pages long. It's like 1,200 pages or something. Something like that. More than a thousand pages. The next book, Rhythm of War, I believe, is even longer. I'm not sure. And I think that's the longest one. This is a fantasy series that is typical to Brandon Sanderson set in the Cosmere, which is his whole sort of broader universe of kind of, like vaguely connected different planets and kind of lore and, and magic systems and stuff. It's a long, long story that is basically about a war, a war between two peoples, humans and the Parshendi, I suppose you would call them, or the listeners.

They have a lot of different names, a sort of a different species of human-like people who both live on this continent on a planet in the Cosmere, and they're fighting one another for very complicated reasons that they will not explain. And what is remarkable about this series is that it was clearly mapped out in advance. and he is telling a story with pacing unlike I at least have ever read in a fantasy series. This is a story that is designed to be paced out over, I believe, 10 books, and it's two halves. So it's like two, five book halves. So this is like the halfway point of the first major arc. And unlike Mistborn, which I've mentioned before, which is another trilogy that he wrote,

it actually feels like it was mapped out in advance. Missedborn, the first Mistborn book, great book, really cool stories start to finish. then you read the second and the third one, and you're a little like the Matrix sequels, where it feels kind of like, oh, he decided to tell more stories, but he already kind of ended it, so he didn't quite know where to go, and it's not quite as satisfying. It's a little bit of a muddle. This does not feel that way. This is like, there are things that were set up in the very first book that are just now being explained, that I'm like, oh, wow, you really, you really did know what this was going to be. It is so long, it takes a very long time to read, and there are definitely points in the book where I felt like,

dude this is so long like I'm reading it on Kindle and I would just like bang away at it for an hour and the percentage would just not punch it was just that feeling of like Sisyphus pushing the narrative boulder up the hill and I'm like I want to read so many other books and like this is good this is fun but like my god dude so then comes the sanderlanch which is what his fans call the big explosion the climax of the story the ending where all the storylines come together,

and there's usually a massive battle and a huge showdown, and all of this stuff goes down. And the standard ranch is always worth it. It always has been, I've read a bunch of his books by now. You always get to the end, and when he just starts cooking at the end, you're like, dude, it was all worth it. Hell yeah, like, because he goes so over the top, and the fight scenes are so exciting,

and the new revelations, people channeling powers that they didn't know existed, you know, two guys having a sword fight flying in the air in front of, a hurricane, these unbelievable set pieces, and they're all intercut, his pacing is masterful. I mean, it's really well done. This book, because it's so huge, has the most gigantic Sanderlanch ever. It's like seven seasons of an anime, of like seven different anime shows, all ending at the same time and like simultaneously. And so you're cutting from person to person to person as like they increasingly are overwhelmed

and then somehow they are saved at the last minute or there's some DeiSX machina or they get some new power or, etc. It was really cool, but a little bit exhausting. But overall, I liked it. And I'd like to say, for starters, I have mentioned Sanderson, and he can be a polarizing person, or that's not quite the right word. People have very strong opinions about his books. In our Discord, a lot of people were talking about it when I was talking about the last book, Words of Radiance, which I really enjoyed, the last book in this series, saying, oh, well, Kirk and Joy, that's the last good one, and they all suck. Which, first off, don't do that to people.

This is just my advice. don't say that when someone is like in a, even if you think that that's true, don't tell someone that like the next book sucks because it just sort of bums them out. And it did bum me out. And it made me think, oh, well, maybe I won't read this. Then I kind of started it and was like, oh, this is pretty good. And I got halfway through and I was like, this is fine. This is just like his other books.

Like, it's totally good. And by the end, I was like, this was great. What is everyone talking about? So I no longer listen to people who say that, but I'm just saying if you said that, don't say that. And also you were wrong. I thought this book was pretty good. And my final thought is just, I'm ready to read some shorter books, so I'm going to take it off.

It'll happen at some point. But I actually like his shorter stories. He has some like novellas in this world that maybe I'll read at some point. No, I've already moved on to some like whodunnits and some books where I read and I move like 5% on the Kindle within an hour. King Sorrow, which I recommended last week is my one more thing. It's big, but it doesn't feel big. It moves at a breakneck pace. might be a good road for you to start soon.

Also it probably sounds like it's still shorter than Oathbringer is. Probably, yeah. But that is true that like depending on the style, it doesn't always feel long. And Sanderson's books do feel long. I don't know that that's exactly a bad thing. And I don't want to sound like I'm saying the length

is a problem exactly. Because the sheer scope of this series is like part of what makes it, at least for me, a unique experience. It's really cool. I mean, there's just so much time in this world. There are so many characters. it's so richly imagined, and that's very, very cool.

I think that's what people like about it. But yeah, you can write a long book that just, like, goes. Stephen King certainly has done this with some of his longest books. You read it. I mean, that's a long book, but you never feel like it's like dragging, or at least I certainly don't. So, yeah, it comes down to style, I think, a lot in the end. Anyway, Oathbringer, cool book.

I'll read Rhythm of War next year sometime, probably. Fair enough. Jason, what's your one more thing? My One Thing is a video game called Kingdoms of the Dump, and it is a Super Nintendo-style Earthbound-inspired RPG with turn-based combat that was made by two janitors, and they decided to make a game about trash. This is a really fascinating game. This was kick-started in 2019, but unlike many J-RP-style games that were kick-started years

ago. This one actually came out and it's out this week. It's very charming. It's clearly made by like an amateur RPG maker crowd because it's a little janky. There's some glitches here and there. A few things are pretty fiddly. But it is very charming and it's got a lot of heart and it's fun to play through and I'm really enjoying what I've played so far. I'm like, I don't know, five or six hours in. And I spoke to one of the janitors behind it and he's got a really interesting story. It's not going to be up when this episode airs, but it'll be up on Bloomberg and my newsletter on Friday. And it's a fun story. He's got it a really interesting story. He spent 13 years as a janitor. He really enjoyed the job. He was telling me about how he found it very kind of useful for to have

that kind of job while he was trying to be creative because he could just zone out and just be like cleaning things. And then like he could just pour it all out into creativity. afterwards. He was like, and the benefits are good, the people were good. The only bad thing was the pay, he told me, which sucks. But yeah, he is, so it was made by these two custodians who worked at schools

and it's a really interesting game. So it stars like a, it stars an anthropomorphic trash can and he gets a party of other kind of trash-related things and he explores this massive cherry-p-g-style kingdom

and he goes on all these adventures and fights bosses and explores different kind of areas, swamps and landfills. And there are different kingdoms, each of which are trash themed or animal themed. They're like bees and roaches and ants and a lot of different garbage jokes and fun little, just kind of like, it's very earthbound, right? It's very inspired by earthbound. So like every item has a funny description and a lot of the items are based around garbage. You're eating moldy like food, moldy sandwiches are whatever, and using jumper cables to revive your party members if they die. And you save at these kind of like porta-potties that are like all around the world. And yeah, again, it's, it's just cute.

It's like fun and funny and charming is the word that I keep using because that I think is the most apt one. If you liked Earthbound, you'll probably like this. Just like be prepared for like a little bit of amateur quality here and there. But it's fun. And the writing is fun. And It's like very cute and enjoyable and yeah, I'm really enjoying it. And I guess it's a clear-obscure rip-off because it's got timed attacks and defenses. So all these JRP's trying to rip off Clare-Oxcur. Well, it sounds like they maybe started working on it before that game ever. Oh, I thought Claire Obscure came up with timed time-button attacks.

No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, it's got the paper market. thing and yeah it's it's just very adorable i i'm enjoying it uh i'll probably play more it's been fun to play on my steam deck and fun to see the story through as our little a little hero uh trash can has his adventures through the kingdom of the dump the trailer for this is very very charming and very fun it is yeah it's just such a charming game it's one of those and and just knowing that it was made by these janitors is just a fun just such a fun story um uh when i first got i got an email from the guy, the lead guy who was like, hey, I'm a janitor and I made this game. I expected it to be

way more amateur than it is. Like it feels like a legitimate game. It's just got a little bit of jankiness to it, but it feels like a real game. It doesn't feel like the type of thing you would download like for free through RPG maker or something like that. It's definitely a legit game. And the music is really good too, I should say. Aesthetically, it's really interesting because like it combines these kind of like very displeasing like trash. visuals with this graphical style that if you grew up playing Super Nintendo, you'll really enjoy. But yeah, the music is really cool. Yeah, I'm digging. The art looks great. It looks beautiful. Yeah, this gameplay that I'm watching. That's awesome. What a cool story. I have also been playing a

game called News Tower that I think you two have played at least a little bit. Yeah. And I really, I really dig this game. So this game's a management sim that I'm playing on PC. And, And by that, I mean you're sort of placed into a kind of godlike zoomed out view where in this case, you're looking at a 1930s-era newspaper office. You arrange the desks. You build the walls and the floors. You put up the lighting. You decide how many houseplants each of your employees are allowed to have.

And that sort of thing contributes to whether they're happy, good reporters or not. And if you were to, say, for example, sell all of their houseplants for cash, as I did at one point, might find all of their reporting suddenly gets quite sloppy and poor. And then on top of that, you have to lay out your paper. It's a weekly paper in this game. So you have to charge up for a Sunday press. And then that actually means like deciding what stories will go on the front page and laying them out physically, which is really fun to do. Eventually you get more than one page and then more than two pages as the game goes along. What's really interesting about this game is that it's extremely devoted to historical accuracy. Every single headline that comes across your

desk or proposed story, I guess I should say, and they become true headlines in your paper, are real events that happened, and they happen in order on the days that they actually occurred. Like, the very first story you cover is the stock market crash, of course, and then, you know, eventually you're going to do, like, Al Capone getting arrested, and Babe Ruth's called shot, and all of that stuff, as it actually occurs on the day. and if you're me, you're going to be like, oh, these are really important stories, but also there's like some gamified bits

where it isn't quite accurate to how I might lay out a newspaper whereby you get extra points if you have an entire page full of sports stories on your front page, as opposed to having a more diverse front page, for example, but you have to actually pay attention to all of those numbers or else your newspaper will go out of business. What I thought was really interesting about this game is when you start it, so your dad owned the paper.

before you and he's dead, but he was in the pocket of the mob. And so now, so are you. And so at the outset of the game, you have to run stories according to what the mob wants you to run. And that means sometimes you have to print outright lies, which I really hate it, honestly. It's part of the game. It's part of the story of the game. And eventually, you run into these other three factions that you can bargain with. Actually, there's kind of more like mini factions, but there's four main ones that give you big rewards if you bargain with them, but there's other, like, people about town that have their own aims. And the other factions are the mayor and the military and wealthy socialites. And each of them have obviously either intense social influence or wealth or both. And they can pay you or

influence you to end up having more subscribers or just be more financially successful. And you actually have to participate in those schemes in order for your paper to succeed. And that was accurate to the time period. Like, that's how journalism worked in the 30s. But ideally it's not how it should work now. I do realize we live in a world where Jeff Bezos owns a newspaper, for example, and where wealthy people certainly pay off reporters to get what they want. They certainly have never paid me off.

But you have to really engage with those systems to make this, make your paper succeed in the game. And I think that's by design. But it is also kind of stressful in an interesting way that I found, tense, but also just kind of cool. Like, it's cool that they made a historically accurate game. I just, I also hope people know that that's not how every newspaper. They should make a sequel where you have to pivot to video and then private equity buys your company. Oh my God. I would play that. And it keeps changing and you have to figure out how to do e-commerce and like Amazon affiliate links. Yeah, the game, by the way, for people who have played

management sims back in the day, it's very reminiscent of like Sim Tower or like other kind of games of that elk. It reminds me of game dev story a little bit to that game. That was one that I believe. Yeah, if you've played or like there's a fallout management sim that I can't remember the name of that shelter. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot like that one if you played that.

There's, if you've played one management sim, you've kind of played them all, I suppose. But this one I think is interesting because it's actually got all the historical headlines and I thought that was really cool. And it has a great jazz soundtrack, although I will say the longer you play, the more you might wish that maybe there were just a couple more jazz songs. Right. Man, yeah. So I love this game and I love the music.

The music was recorded by this Dutch jazz group called The New Cool Collective, who are like real jazz musicians, like top level jazz musicians. They're really good. I've heard them independently. Like someone sent me their album forever ago. They have a bunch of albums out. They're really cool. Their albums run the gamut.

It's not all like old big band style jazz. But they can do that really well. there are times playing this game especially early on. Ah, the trumpet player in this group is killing it. These are real jazz players and as someone who just appreciates that kind of thing it was really nice to hear. A lot of games

will go for a jazzy thing. The root trees are dead comes to mind from earlier this year where they kind of got like musicians on Fiver who were fine and they'd play a tenor sax solo with a lot of reverb and it was kind of bluesy. But like these guys are players. This is like a

real band and that's very fun. I, even from the amount that I've played, Maddie, I can see that criticism that the downside of getting a real group in the studio, in the room together, there's actually a little YouTube video you can watch of them recording this music. The downside is you can, it's hard to create enough music to support, especially this kind of game. And they do a good job with what they have. They have these like stems and different versions of the songs that grow more and more elaborate over the course of the week as you get closer to your deadline. But they're, yeah, you kind of wish they could have a little bit more. That said, it's like an independent Dutch studio. You know, they only have so much money.

That's like one of my very few complaints. It's truly just that like after you've had enough Sunday papers, that specific music string, sting of the Sunday paper does eventually get you insane. I love that though. It's that like Gene Krupa, they're like, when you pull up a lever. Oh, it's great the first 300 times.

Yeah, I guess. I haven't gotten sick of it yet, but you've maybe played more than me. Yeah, I really like this game as well. Did I have you play New York Times? simulator, the Palo Petersini game? Oh man, I'll at least mention that as a like much more sharply satirical game that's about writing headlines for the New York Times and like obeying the dictates of the various perceived influences on the New York Times. It is a much toothier critique as you can maybe imagine the modern New York Times. But this game at times reminded me

of it. I mean, this is a much more gamified and sort of gentle version. But the two games are kind of have some things in common. So I'll shout that out if everyone wants to check that out. You can play it online. Bing! Kirk here, as I meant it in the episode, I know we've gone long. We just add a little bit more context here. New York Times Simulator was actually explicitly a reimagining of a Lucas Pope game,

one of his early games, called The Republica Times, which is a similar kind of an idea and kind of clear precursor to Papers Please. So that's just to put all of these newspaper games in a broader context, because I thought some of you might think that was interesting. Okay, bing. Yeah. So once again, this one is called News Tower. Just came out in a 1.0 release. It's been an early access for a while and already received good reviews then, but the 1.0 release is super polished and great and definitely recommendable. So yeah. Yeah. That's that. It's a good game.

Okay. We've done it again, folks. It's been another episode of Triple Click. Yeah. It sure has. It sure has. Many say that with such surprise. Like, oh, yeah, we did it again, guys. We recorded a podcast. We recorded our 280 first episode. Wow, we just keep putting them out. We finally figured out how to do it. Yeah, we should probably put out all those other ones.

I think they were pretty good, too. Yeah, you got to learn somehow. It's crazy how much longer we've been doing this for than split screen now at this point. Yeah, that is wild. That is wild. You know, it's because we finally decided to make it official as we established last week. Triple click is the marriage. And split screen was only the dating era.

Here's the 281 more. I'll see you both 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 maximum fun.org slash join email us at triple click at maximum fund.org and find links to our merch store and our discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows supported directly by you.