Triple Click - Final Fantasy Tactics: It's Still Good

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason are all playing the new remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, which is widely considered to be one of the greatest games ever made. The gang talks about how the 1998 classic holds up today, the complexity of its systems, and all of the new features that Square Enix added for this version, like voice acting. Plus: Hades 2!One More Thing:Kirk: Hades 2Maddy: Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong (Christopher Ferguson and Patrick M. Markey)Jason: Rise of the Golden IdolLINKS:Jason and Kirk published their entire text conversation about Final Fantasy Tactics’ Dorter Slums: https://kotaku.com/man-final-fantasy-tactics-sure-had-a-steep-learning-cu-5974665Kirk talks to game developers about why they love Final Fantasy Tactics: https://kotaku.com/why-everybody-loves-final-fantasy-tactics-59731962013 Jason on Video Game Violence: https://kotaku.com/from-halo-to-hot-sauce-what-25-years-of-violent-video-5976733Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinAll-New 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

Here at Squarionix, we've come up with a new game. It's Final Fantasy, but it's also a tactics game. I think we'll call it Tactopath Traveler. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about the new remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, one of my favorite games of all time. And somehow, I've convinced Kirk and Maddie to play it too. I'm Jason Shrier.

I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hello. Nice to see you both. Shanatova, Kirk and Mani, and Shanatova to everybody. Happy New Year. Yeah. Happy New Year.

Happy Russia, Shauna. Happy Russia Shauna. It's funny, my daughter asked me today, because we went to synagogue, we're celebrating the holidays. My daughter asked me, why is the new year, like, the most important Jewish holiday? And I was like, that's a good question to ask someone at the synagogue. Amazing. answer. Perfect answer. Perfect bit of dad jujitsu. I mean the other

Oh jujitsu, good one. The other one. Redirecting, redirecting the question. Well, J.E.J.E. J.E.J.A.J. Totally unintentional pun. It was good though. The other, well, the classic Jewish way to respond is to say, why do you think it's the most

important holiday? Like, you know, I always answer a question with the question. And if you want to hear us answer questions with answers, you should become a member of maximum fun, because we our listener-supported podcast, you two can help us be supported. You can be one of those listeners in the listener hyphen supported. You can be a part of that hyphenated adjective by joining the Maximum Fun Network. And signing up today, go to maximum fun.org

slash join. In addition to making this show possible, you also get a whole bunch of bonus episodes, including our most recent one, which was an extremely fun conversation about the legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. Really enjoyed that one. And we will soon. be putting out a new bonus episode as we do every single month about the video game Hollow Night Silk Song, which is a game that we're all obsessing over and we've all, we're going to play until pretty close to completion and just talk about the whole thing, like in-depth, spoiler, without any like spoiler warnings or anything, we're going to spoil the whole thing. So that'll be fun and lots more, dozens of other bonus episodes are in the

backlog for you if you've never become a member. So go and do that. But today we're talking about another game. Today we are talking about a classic JRP from the 1990s, which means that I have won our yearly predictions set. Honestly, if you had chosen this for a bet, I mean, I guess it's too late. We already played it, but great game. It would have been on my list. No, I get a freebie because Square Enix says release a remaster

of the classic game, Final Fantasy Tactics. released in Japan in 1997 and in the U.S., North America in 1998. And then there was a PSP version released in 2007, an iOS version. And now there is yet another modern version. This is a faithful, nearly one-to-one recreation of the original game with a few changes. Some spruced up graphics, some UI improvements, a few quote-unquote quality of life fixes that we we'll get into shortly. And of course, Final Fantasy Tactics is a strategy role-playing game set in a medieval world called Ivalise. And it takes place amongst a war that is heavily inspired by

the real-life War of the Roses. This one is called The War of the Lions. And it is a beloved video game that is now remastered for modern platforms. We've all been playing it. We're going to talk about it. I actually finished the entire game. Oh my God. Somehow. We'll get into that. But first, Maddie, so Maddie, you were playing for the first time. Kirk and I have played this before. Kirk and I have played this before.

Yeah, we'll get into that. Kirk and I have played this before. Maddie, this is your first time ever playing Final Fantasy tactics. What do you think? Loved it. And how much have you actually played? I, well, I have not played the entire thing. I am still playing a lot of Silk Song these days, I will admit.

But that's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about Final Fantasy Tactics. I am into Chapter 2. I've played a few maps in Chapter 2. That's as far as I am story-wise. And really like the story. I actually didn't realize it was inspired by War of the Roses, but that makes a lot of sense.

Isn't that also what Game of Thrones is kind of inspired by? Yes. Yes. So many people probably have said before I was playing this game and being like, getting some Game of Thrones vibes from this, which I guess is like a boss baby-esque comparison in the sense that I'm like, how many other medieval fantasy books have I read? Not that many. It's not usually my genre. But nonetheless, getting some Game of Thrones vibes from this one, parentheses, complimentary. Really,

really like the story. Yeah. For context here, for context here, A Game of Thrones, the first book in the series came out August of 1996, so about a year before tactics. Oh, so tactics is a total rip-off of the first Game of Thrones novel. Just shamelessly recreate. No, not really. It's a little simpler so far anyway, although I can certainly see some twists and turns already being built up even as far as I am now. Really like the characters wasn't expecting the story to be so in depth. But also, this is a strategy game. I love strategy games. And I know we talk about a lot of turn-based games on this show. And usually, I don't like them. That's because I just sometimes don't personally find them interesting. But a turn-based

strategy game tends to be the exception for me. I tend to really enjoy a turn-based strategy game of this exact type where you're moving tiles around and it's like a puzzle that you're putting together, where you start a battle in a very specific formation. You get to decide your party. That really matters and how you've outfitted that party matters. There are certainly battles that I restarted from the beginning and chose a different party because I realized that I was ill-equipped, and that is also really fun and stimulating to me. I enjoyed every minute of that. I will say that Jason's suggestions and tips about how to play this game were indispensable to me in getting as far as I did the game, even the remake version that I'm playing, really doesn't hold your hand when it comes

to telling you what to do. And I'm sure we're going to get into that and perhaps relay some of those tips for anybody else who's like me and hasn't played this before because there are definitely some difficulty spikes that I really enjoyed, but only because I felt like I do what I was doing thanks to Jason Trier. Kirk, this is your, not your first time playing, but I'm curious to hear what you think of it revisiting in 2025. I like it a lot. Yeah, I played this game for the first time back when you and I were working together at Kataku and we published some fun articles. There's a few that we'll link in the show notes. There's one where Jason talks me through the daughter of slums. And I basically copied an entire unredacted text message conversation between us and the article.

And it's very funny. It's just that we would publish anything, man, in 2013. It's a good conversation, though. It's good and funny. Yes, it is a good conversation. It's very funny. And it feels really like you're actually reading a conversation between two friends where, one really knows this game well and the other one doesn't and because the game is so complex, you know, you kind of explain it in a way that just feels very relatable and believable, half remembering things, trying to communicate like various particular, you know, job titles. And also, in fact, referring to things by names that are not even in the game, which was something that struck me about this remaster, is that some of the names are different.

And I don't have like a super strong memory of everything, but there are just characters where I'm pretty sure they have different names or at least like things just sort of change over time. Did you play the PlayStation 1 version or the PSP version? I could not tell you which version I played. So what happened was the PlayStation 1 version has kind of an infamously bad English translation and a lot of the names were totally skewered and like totally wrong. And then a lot of those were changed for the PSP version 2007, which and then those newer names became the official ones. and are used in this new version as well. I'm remembering also you talking about, I think, a priest where we were talking about a white mage and a priest,

where there are just these terms that are different. It's priest in the PS1 version and it's white mage now. But unless it's white mage. Yeah. Right. So there's just kind of a sense of kind of a lack of a definitive version of this game, even though it sounds like there kind of is one, and now maybe this is the definitive version. I was really struck by the writing actually playing this.

I think it's really well written. and the sort of old English that they use in the script is really enjoyable. But I've really been liking it. It's a very complicated game. I think there's a lot to talk about. It's really interesting and clearly was very influential, and I have enjoyed my time with it. Yeah, it's interesting.

So this new version, you would think it would be the definitive version, but it's a little hard to say that because actually what it does, it takes the script from the PSP version in 2000. but it does not take any of the new content that they added for that version, which included one or two new classes and included a bunch of new side quests and included a couple of new characters you could get. Balfier from Final Fantasy 12 you could get in that PSP version. In this one, there's still some side characters, so I won't spoil because I think it'll be a delightful surprise for you, Maddie, if you play that far. But that new stuff that was

out of her. The PSP version is not in here for some reason. The producers and the developers, they said like they just didn't want to do it. I don't know. They give some excuse, but it wasn't really something that held up. So it's hard to say if this is the quote unquote definitive version, but it's certainly the version you can play now. There are a lot of big changes. We'll get to that in a minute. But actually, let's talk about the fundamentals first. So this is a game about building an army, a small army, but an army nonetheless. And, and kind of creating, forging your characters and customizing them in whatever way you want.

And there are a lot of really cool possibilities, and there's a lot of really interesting things you can do because each character can become one of a dozen or so jobs classes, ranging from squires and chemists, the kind of lowest level classes to all the way up through super powerful summoners and ninjas and so on and so forth. And what you can do, which is really cool, unique to this game, or at least was at the time, is you can take abilities from each of those

classes and just kind of blend them together. And there are five slots you can use. One is your kind of your main ability. Then the second one is your secondary ability. So like whatever combat abilities you want to use from another class, so let's say you're a white maid. You can take black magic and use that as your secondary ability. And then there are three others, which are your support abilities, which are all your passive abilities. And so there's a reaction, there's a kind of like boost, and then there's a movement. And then there's a movement. And those three, you can really, you can mix and match from all of the different character classes and do some really cool things and kind of break the game and find all sorts of fun ways to play around with that.

Maddie, coming in for the first time, did you, like, have an idea of like how all this worked? Did you have to read through the tutorials? What was that like for you? Because it's really interesting. And I think that like, I mean, I've played this game a dozen times in the past, but like, I find that instinctively I'm thinking about like, okay, how am I going to plan out each character in the long term as I go from battle to battle. And so instead of just thinking like, okay, I want to make a night, I'm thinking, okay,

I'm going to keep him as a night for five job levels and then I'll be able to go to bunk and so on and so forth. So what was that like for you coming into this for the first time? Yeah. I mean, I can't do that long term thinking because in my mind I don't yet know what all those additional classes are going to be. but I will say that the indispensable advice you gave for what's the name of that early battle, like the Dalton slums or whatever. The daughter slums.

That one is where I also paused the game and was like, this must be the moment where I need to consider what I am doing. Yeah, that's your first big skill check. Yeah. And this is a very spiky game often to, or not often, but occasionally to an unfair extent, which I'll talk about a little bit later. But yeah, go on. Yeah.

So that's the moment at which. All my characters are Squires and Chemists still, or those are the terms that are used in this version of the game, which is to say the chemist is like capable of throwing healing potions at people and the Squire can like bonk people on the head. And those are two pretty simple jobs. And up to this point in the game, you're getting through just fine with those guys. But in this battle, you're really going to need a white mage, for example, or maybe an archer or an actual knight. A squire can become a knight. So I had really never even clicked on, there's like a jobs tab in the character select screen.

I'd just not even really been looking at that stuff at all up to that point. And you can really get away with not doing that for a time if you just kind of play cleverly and just pay attention. But at this point, I was like, all right, it's time to look at the job screen. Once you actually do that, which the game does not tell you to do, I think it's fairly intuitive, actually. Like, I leveled up, quote, unquote, each of the character's jobs and then saw what Jason is describing, which is that you can actually select different abilities. And like, once you

select a job, there's like this big learn abilities button that's tantalizing and easy to press and looks fun and sparkly. And that's fun and became something that in between every battle, I was like, oh, I bet I have enough points to learn some more abilities. And it also shows you how much each of the abilities cost in terms of these kind of experience points you're accruing. And so I would see one and be like, ooh, that one's actually 400 points. I'm going to not spend my 200 yet. I'm going to save it up and get that special ability later on. But, oh, this other character has a pretty good ability that's only 200 points. I'm going to go ahead and grab that one and add it.

All of that I actually found really easy and fun and in between battles. That was simple enough for me to do. There's shops where you can buy equipment. There's money that you're earning all the time in this game. I found all of that pretty intuitive for what it's worth. I may regret saying this at some future point. I would like to continue playing this game and see what happens. And I'll definitely let you know if it gets to another difficulty spike.

and I'll return to you, Jason, and be like, what am I doing wrong? But all I really needed to know, and what the game doesn't tell you, is that you really need to be leveling up those jobs. And it's kind of surprising to me that the game just doesn't say that to you. You would have no way of knowing that you're supposed to even open that tab. This was an era when a lot of the tutorials were just kind of buried. And you can open up the whatever it's called. There's a whole screen with like a UI that's like the state of the realm

and like all the events that have happened, if you want to go over and it has an encyclopedia, which is actually very helpful for, if you forget who characters are, you can look up with description. It's really well made. And that's all, a lot of that stuff is revamped for,

for this version. There was always like some sort of encyclopedia, but back in the, the PS1 translation was such a disaster that it was like misleading. This one's good. This one is really good. It's inspired by like Final Fantasy 16's like state of the realm stuff.

But anyway, that section has tutorials also and it walks you through like, painstakingly, like in granular detail, exactly how everything works. There's some things you'll never need to think about. Like, there's a brave and a faith stat that, like, you really don't need to worry about. There's some stuff you only really need to min-max. Are you playing on the...

Which difficulty setting are you playing on? That's a new thing for this game. The normal one. Yeah, but there's an easy and a heart. They call... Yeah, you can always make it easier if you need to. Yeah, that's nice. Kirk, what's your experience that's been like with your...

with kind of the gameplay of this game in 20s? 2025, having not played it in 12 years or 13 years or whatever it was. I think it's cool. It definitely feels older and much more complicated than a lot of the turn-based games that sort of came out of it. I know X-com actually came out right around the same time, the first X-com. So that's kind of a parallel evolution, I guess. But playing a modern X-com and then, of course, playing something like Midnight Suns or Tactical Breach Wizards, all of these tactical games, these sort of turn-based positional games that I really like, a lot of them owe something to Final Fantasy Tactics as well.

And what's so interesting about tactics is that a lot of the game is spent building your characters. I mean, this stuff that we're talking about here, this job system, where you're in these menus, that I agree are intuitive enough, but the process is still pretty fiddly, and you have to be down for a lot of micromanagement. That's a lot of the game. And a lot of your success is going to hinge on whether you've done a good job of building out your jobs, giving everybody the right jobs. And I agree. I am kind of surprised, I don't really know how they would do it. And I guess this is a faithful remake, so whatever.

But it does feel as though there's an opportunity for this game to walk you through your initial job distribution before that daughter's slum's difficulty spike. Because even before that, I just had kind of forgotten all of this. And then I went back and read that article and kind of remembered and even texted with you some, Jason, and remembered things like JP boost, which is a boost to your job points gained that everybody can get if they reach a certain number of points in Squire, which you get, I think, only by being a squire. I believe that's how it works. But that's all not totally clearly explained. Yeah, Jason, even is, actually, what does that mean? You're giving me a kind of sort of.

So the main way to get JP is by doing actions as that class. But there's also this kind of this spillover JP where like if another person is a squire and they do squire moves, then other characters will get a little bit of spillover JP too. Okay. I was wondering how I was getting. Right. Just like learning stuff in real life where you get all the spill over JP. Exactly. You watch someone else do it and you get the spillover. By the way, the kind of the granddaddy of all.

all this, I believe, is the original Fire Emblem, which is 1990. And I think Shining Force was another just kind of like just child from that tree. But yeah, that was 1990. XCOM came out in 1994. And like a lot of these strategy games did

different things. And then Final Fantasy Tactics is kind of a direct successor to Tactics Oger, which was also grid-based strategy game, whack each other a bunch of times. And Sakamoto and Iwara. composed the music for Tactics Oger. That is actually something that I love about Final Fantasy Tactics.

The music is so remarkable. This is Hitoshi Sakamoto and Masaharu Iwata are the two composers for this game, who work together on a lot of different projects, including what, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, that was actually the first tactics game that I played, Final Fantasy 12, beautiful soundtrack for that game, and Tactics Oger. And I really think the music for this game, I mean, more than anything else, every time I play it, I'm struck by how beautiful it is. There's this motif that plays a bunch of times.

It's so unusual. Really cool stuff. So it's an aesthetically distinct game. Even now, like it doesn't actually feel like a lot of games picked up the aesthetics other than, of course, the subsequent tactics games. So, yeah, you can kind of see that DNA from Tactics Oger carrying over. So, yeah, I mean, I think that the appeal for me about this game or the kind of the gameplay side of things and the appeal of that has always been twofold. One is just kind of the battle by battle level, just playing out the strategy and figuring out how to take out dudes.

The harder things get, the more the trickier it can be and the more you have to really plan things out. Or at the very least, bum rush, like whoever the bosses and just take it out. Sometimes. Yeah. You just kill the person who has objective. over their head. You can just end the scene. Once I figured that out, I was like, some of these are fine. Yeah, exactly. And then actually, over the years, like, people have, like, created challenges for themselves because they're like, you know what, Final Fantasy tactics is too easy. I'm going to do,

the most popular one was always this thing called single class challenge. And the idea was, you have to make a party that is only archers. You have to make a party that is only dragoons, like whatever it is, which is another fun way to go about this game. Some of those classes are easier than others, as you might imagine, very hard to win with a party that's only white magey. Have you ever tried one of those challenges? I have not, no.

I feel like I would get too bored after play. Just doing nothing but aim plus three. I mean, that gets to what I was saying, which is part of the appeal for me has always been that like in addition to doing these battles and just kind of planning your strategy and stuff, you also have in the back

of your head this kind of endorphin rush of like planning things out and chasing those big job skills or like the high-end jobs that require you to mix and match from job levels from a bunch of different ones. And you guys will see as you keep playing some of the higher-end jobs. So the easier, the kind of the first-tier jobs are like, okay, Squire goes directly to night, which goes directly to Monk, which goes directly to Dragoon, right? Or GM answer, whichever one it was, I forget.

But then as you get a little more complicated, it's like, okay, for this to unlock this job, you need to have five levels of archer, four levels of monk, two levels of geomancer, and then you have to really mix and match because you'll have to go play around all over the tree. The highest end job, which I don't think is worth it, I believe it's called Mime, and it requires you to have like level eight squire, level eight chemists, level four, like a whole bunch of them. And so I think that there's a certain appeal to that kind of that chase that is always going on in the back of your head as you're playing, like, okay, I'm every, every action

I do is not only contributing to the smaller goal of beating this one battle, it is also contributing to the longer goal of getting my character to where I want it to be or unlocking that special skill that takes 1,300 JP and so on and so forth. And sometimes it's worth it to have your characters bonk each other over the head or like waste potions for no reason just to get that extra JP because every action gives you JP in terms of that like it, because it helps you for the long-term chase, which is something I've always enjoyed about this game, is just kind of that balancing of the short-term and the long-term. That was something that was fun about metaphor re-fantazia, right?

I mean, like, that game had a sort of similar feeling where you're thinking, okay, I don't really need to be a dark mage or whatever, but if I get to a certain rank in this job, I'll finally be able to unlock this super-crazy one that I've been working to the whole game. Yeah, God, I want to replay that game. Yeah, it also had a similar structure, tactics in the sense that you had to plan out a battle, like an individual battle from a short-term and long-term perspective as well, because you can see how long moves take to perform, and some of

them are not instantaneous, and that's also part of the strategy. I mean, this is, you were mentioning Midnight Suns, and I was remembering, like, oh, right, part of why I'm enjoying tactics is because I spent so much time in Midnight Suns just on my card deck, and, like, I would just spend hours just being like, these are just the moves that I want my character to be able to do. I'm not even going to battle today. I'm just going to think about what could happen in a battle. And then even when you're in a battle, you're like, okay, each of these moves is going to take a certain amount of time. So I have to look at in this game, it's on the left side, like how the attacks are delineated in the future and the past and also how the enemy's attacks are delineated and how long it takes them to do things. It's just,

it's just a form of planning that is extremely satisfying, especially when you get it right, because you can just sit back and be like, it's all coming together. Like, there's just nothing like that in a game where your fine plans all come together. And there is also nothing worse than casting a spell and having it just RNG you and randomly fail. And you're just like, okay, great, I hate everything now. I don't, I don't know why this is like this. But it's part of why it's fun. It's because there's a little bit of RNG. Natty, you're describing sort of on the left side of the screen, there is a turn order, which, am I right that this is a new thing, Jason? This is added? to this version of the game? It's fantastic.

It's a great addition. In the original game, you could see the turn order. You just had to like navigate a bunch of many screens. Now it's just always there for you. It's just a very convenient thing. I want to talk a little bit about the new stuff in this game because I think a lot of people who play the original will be wondering what's what's actually new in this remaster. Is it worth 50 bucks? I can't answer if it's worth 50 bucks. I think it's one of the greatest games of all time. So to me, of course it's worth 50 bucks. We all got it for free by the way. We're playing on an early code from Square Enix. The game isn't out yet. We'll be out

next week from when we're recording this. So some of the new features are, well, actually, I'll explain you how I've beaten the game already, which shocked you to. So the original version of this game took maybe, I don't know, 40 hours to beat. I beat it in like 20 hours. And there are two reasons for that.

Number one is there's a fast forward button, which you can just kind of hold down the right bumper and it'll fast forward through everything. Animations, battles. And your whole party is dead and you're like, wait a minute. Yeah, if anything. Sometimes I was accidentally fast-forwarding stuff. It needs to be a rewind button.

Yeah, that would be nice to have a rewind button. Yeah, that actually would have helped me. But yeah, if you know the game like Jason, you know when to stop pressing the right button. Yeah, that's true. Yes, maybe don't press it so much if you're new to the game. Yeah, I, yeah. The other important new feature, this is the biggest one,

is that random encounters are no longer forced. They are now optional. So in the original game and also the PSP version, when you landed, you could land on like a battlefield after you had already, like, if you're walking around the map after you've already done those battles and you're like going across the map to another city or like to another location or whatever, you could sometimes get in these random encounters with random battles, random groups of enemies as you went in hostile territory. Now it gives you the option of whether to fight or flee and flee is 100% chance. So you can just avoid those the entire time, which is very important in terms of like reducing the length of the game and also in terms of being able to do the games kind of missions that are called Aryans or jobs or whatever they're called the side mission things that you can get. I believe they're called errands. Yeah, I think they're called Aaron's. Yeah, I think they're called At Taverns. And you can send your characters out and get them a bunch of JP and get a bunch of gold. And those are super helpful.

In the original version, you had to either find like an area that was safe because it was just two cities and you could just walk back and forth between the two cities or you had to risk getting into encounters if you're going to do these errands. Because the way the Aaron is, work is that they take a certain number of days and days only pass when you're walking from place to place on the screen. So this makes that much easier. And not having random encounters makes it much quicker. And that's how I was able to beat the game super fast. It's also, I believe that the kind of the normal difficulty setting, there are three, easy, medium hard. That's another new thing for this remaster. I believe the medium one is easier than the original game. I could

be wrong. I'm not 100% sure. Still, the difficulty spikes that are infamous in the original are still there. But it seemed a little bit easier. I don't know. I could be wrong about that, but I played at the medium difficulty setting. The other important big difference is that I don't think you do have gotten there yet on this play through, but as you go into, like towards the end of chapter two and then in chapter three and four as well, four is the last one.

Four is also much longer than the other three. you get into these kind of consecutive battle areas. And so, like, you'll get to a castle and it'll force you to fight three battles in a row, one in the outside gates, and then one inside the castle, and then one in the depths of the treasury or whatever. And in the original game, you could get stuck there because you weren't allowed to leave once you got past the first battle and, like, we're into subsequent ones. And there's one particularly infamous fight that I'll talk about in a second

that would just completely soft-lock peak-bolt. because they wouldn't be able to do anything and they wouldn't be able to make any progress, especially if they had like saved over their original file. You had to kind of keep an extra save just in case. Now you can save between the battles and then you can also leave at any time. So if you find yourself running into a wall after like the second of three consecutive battles, you can just peace out and go to the world map and you won't get any of the progress. You'll have to like restart from the beginning of the consecutive fights,

but you can live to fight another day and like go change your party or get new equipment. or whatever. Let's talk about Wegraph. Kirk, do you remember this? Did you get far enough in the original to do the infamous Weagraph Wegraph fight? You mean when he like the fight before the end of Act 1? No. Act 3. No. When you fight him in Act 3. Oh, no. Okay. Because he, you're not when you first fight him. You're talking about something later in the game. Later in the game. Yeah. So I won't spoil too much, but just kind of the, the broad overview here is that there's an infamous fight with Wegraph that has become very infamous among players of this game because it forces you into a one-on-one battle with this guy and you have absolutely no indication that it's coming.

And if you are not set up with the exact right composition for Ramza, your main character, you will just lose immediately because he can just destroy you with like two attacks. Right. So like if, for example, if Ramsa was a white mage for whatever reason, you'd just be screwed here. would just die. Yeah, unless you know what to expect and like equip Rams with like anti-holy equipment or whatever else. Like you, if you rig him just right, then you're fine. Otherwise, the only way to beat this one battle is like to cheese it essentially or to like know what you're doing in advance and like make him a ninja who can just take out Wegreaf in one hit or something. It is the worst part of the original game by far. And unfortunately, it has not been touched in this game. It remains the same.

The only difference is that now you can't get soft locked on it. You can just. leave and go reset up Ramso with like a new build. But when you guys get to that, if you get to that, and if you stick with a game and you get to that, you will see why it has driven many a player mad over the years. And yeah, to people wondering, it has not been touched or changed at all in this remake. I definitely get the sense that Final Fantasy Tactics is a game that really rewards your time and attention. It's a game that the more you put into it, the more you love it. I wrote this article for Kotaku interviewing game developers about why they love Final Fantasy tactics. And a lot of what people said to me was a long, sentiments along those lines.

Basically, this game is kind of broken. It's really weird. You can do all these crazy builds because of all the synergies that they unlock, because of all the cross-classing, you can come up with really crazy, you know, setups for your squad that are just totally unstoppable. And also there are these crazy fights that people hate. There are these bizarre decisions in really challenging roadblocks that you learn to overcome. And the whole thing is like this big, complicated mess that you learn to untangle. And then in the process, you live in the mess, and it becomes your mess and you love it.

And it does make me wonder if this version of the game, which is still largely very true to that, is really designed or is a great, you know, starting. point for people. It kind of feels to me like Final Fantasy Tactics is something that Final Fantasy Tactics Sickos will always love, and there is now a new version of it that is really nice and nice looking and runs on modern systems and will let people continue to enjoy and experience it. But I do have to wonder, given how far tactics RPGs have come in the, you know, almost 30 years since this came out, and also just how much more approachable and understandable a lot of them if this is really the one for someone who's never played it before.

Well, that's a perfect segue because I think we should talk about the story of this game. And that is one thing that I think playing through the whole thing again has really held up quite well. And I think that even though you're right, Kirk, that the gameplay of tactics, RPG, strategy RPGs has evolved in so many different directions and explored a lot of different things over the years. I don't, there aren't a lot of stories that are as interesting and as complicated and twisty and as deep as Final Fantasy tactics is today. And there are lines of dialogue that you read today and you're like, holy crap, I can't believe. Like people came up with this in the 90s when it feels so prescient or it feels so relevant today. Questions about class war and the nobility and the largesse and people just kind of like. I mean there was class conflict in the 90s too.

That's true. No, that's true. No, you're right. When is it there in class more? Obviously, history echoes throughout time. But yeah, no, it's just interesting to play through that. And I think that might be the reason to revisit Final Fantasy tactics today is because the story is really good. But I'm curious, I mean, what do you two make of it?

Maddie, you're playing for the first time. When do you make of the story playing it today? I mean, I really like it. I think it definitely does that thing that I think of as like a 2010's video game thing. which is making you question really early on, like, are we the baddies? Am I the bad guy? Am I playing for the wrong side? And it does that pretty quickly and pretty effectively.

I mean, it's like a story that you could certainly understand. If you're 11 years old, I'm not going to say it's like so complex. Right. Does it make you question it or does it show you very obviously that the guy on your side is a huge asshole and you are definitely on the wrong side? So when you're 11 years old reading this broken English, it's a little bit harder to talk. Yeah, like the harder part is the kind of like pseudo-Shakespearean English for sure, but that's part of what probably makes you feel like. No, no, I'm talking about, no, that English is great. I'm talking about the PS1 translation. It's just very difficult to parse.

I am getting to experience the pseudo-Shakespearean version as opposed to simply a bad translation. But yes, at 11, I'm sure I would have thought I was extremely intelligent playing this game. But that I think is kind of fun. And I appreciated that it's like a late 90s version of that storyline. line, but to also kind of answer what Kirk was saying before, I am kind of a strategy game sicko in the sense that I do kind of enjoy the fiddly bits of these games. So I'm willing to be very patient, even with a much older version of the genre. Like, I spent over 100 hours and Midnight Suns just messing around and having a wonderful time. If that's not you, then yeah,

this is going to be a tough hang just because it's like, that's the genre, no matter what. Like in order to see the rest of the story, I would guess even on easy mode, you're going to have to do some fiddling to get there. And is it worth it hard to say? But for me, having a really fun story to go along with a strategy game that I think is pretty fun as well is absolutely washing it down. I'm enjoying that. And I can also see it for what it is, which is it's made in the late 90s. And it's something that's formative. And I also tend to enjoy just kind of like appreciating capital C.

canon works in that way, like going back and watching old movies and seeing, oh, okay, this is what so many other things were inspired by. That's just something I really enjoy, too. And I think from that vantage point, it's valuable and it's worth revisiting. And also hearing about all the quality of life changes, I'm really glad this is the version that I'm playing, because I do like that fast forward button. And I also really like that on the left hand side of the screen, I can see the turn order. I didn't even know that wasn't there in the original. And that sounds annoying. So, like, I am also experiencing a version of the game that is just, it's going down easier for me. So if you're like me and you like this kind of game, then I think you would enjoy it.

And I think you would get something out of it and see what it influenced. Yeah. The story is very, there's a lot of Game of Thrones in there. If you're a fan of Game of Thrones to make the most modern comparison, there's a lot of just kind of great medieval politicking and banner Lord's and kings and betrayals and twists and bloodlines and all sorts of good stuff. There's a lot of, I actually found it striking, especially on this playthrough, how similar this is to, the story is to another game released in 1998, which is Sweetcoed in two in that it is a story of two best friends, one who is the kind of goody two shoes, who rallies

in the army and fights for the side of good, and the other who goes off and has his own machinations and potentially devious schemes because he believes he is doing what's right, or at least he seems to believe he's doing what's right, and trying to stop the war from the inside by, like, being callous and playing politics and betraying people along the way. A lot of similarities, especially as you keep playing through the story, and I think you two will be very intrigued to see what happens with the story because it goes in some kind of unexpected directions.

There's some darkness that comes about. How far, Maddie, are you in Act 2, did you say? Not that far, but I'm going to keep going. I want to know what happens. So don't, no one would hear this following on it. I won't get more specific. But the way this game treats religion specifically, I think I'm very curious to hear what you guys think as you keep playing.

It's cool. Classic Final Fantasy topic. So makes sense it being here. I think that the addition of voice acting to this is actually transformative, or at least it has been for me, I really appreciate the voice acting. I think the actors are doing a good job. And it also grounds the story in a way that I find very good. I think that it really enhances the feeling of it

because there's something about the art style in this game that I've always found a little bit peculiar. It's not bad, but it's a little disconnected. This is a really grounded story. They throw you into the deep end. I mean, really into the deep end. This begins just like, boom, you've got 50 names to keep track of. One guy's a bastard.

Two guys are brothers. But they treat him like a brother. but this guy's common-born and this guy, I don't even know, is the Duke of something, and there's a kingdom, but you're not actually sure who the king is or who's in charge. There's a princess. She's kidnapped, but she's not actually the princess we're going to talk about for the rest of the first act. Like, it gets really confusing and you have to keep up. So it's expecting you to kind of pay attention and get invested in a lot of complexity

at the sort of more bureaucratic level of a feudal system, basically, the Dukes and the Marquies and those kinds of titles, the kings and the princes and princesses, which are easier to keep track of. So that's all happening. It's very, it feels pretty grounded. The characters all don't have noses and look like they're 15 years old. And it's kind of a strange thing. And they also all kind of look the same, like there's only a few portraits and character models.

And then their names are all pretty strange. You know, I don't know, they're not like easy to keep track of. You don't get a John Snow. You don't have Arias Stark. These are not names that are just like, okay, cool, Lannister, Stark, I can keep track of that. These are much more, you know, Argath and what, Meluda and Weigraf and Golgaras. And they're like, the brothers or names are really long and you're like, okay. But when you can hear people speaking suddenly, you have these adult voices ringing out these really

wonderfully performed lines of really well-written dialogue. And suddenly it's like, okay, there's something I can hold on to. And it actually mixes with the music, which I think is also. more low-key. It's a little bit more Baroque, I would say, and its influences, than Uwimatsu, who is, of course, the most famous Final Fantasy composer, and wrote much more like Prague Rock, you know, like his soundtracks are much more synthesizers and polyrhythms and electric guitar solos. This is a lot more like chamber music, the way that these motifs evolve, and it kind of grounds things, and that was always, you know, I've always said that music stood in for voice

acting back in the 90s when there wasn't voice acting in these games, you would have these strong melodies that would kind of almost become the voice of the game. And you'd be reading the dialogue and hearing the music and the two things would kind of merge in your head. Now we actually have the dialogue. And while sometimes that can distract from the music, I think in this case, the dialogue, the spoken dialogue really fits aesthetically with the writing and the music and all of it like and kind of offsets that visual design of the characters, which I've always just found a little bit strange where it just feels like I'm watching a bunch of little blonde children pretending to be like dukes and kings, but then they're killing each other. And like, so I like,

a lot of the story is taking place in my head. So I'm actually finding that that enhances the story for me. And it is a really, a really cool story and a really interesting one. It's funny to say that, because on top of everything, on top of what you just laid out, there's also the contrast between, like, the grounded story and the kings and dukes and them fighting each other with swords and stuff with the fact that on the battlefield, you can create a summoner who, like, conjures these giant hulking beast to, like, lay down meteors on the battlefield. And it raises the question that is never really that relevant for something like Game of Thrones, which is why doesn't, why doesn't Rams simply bring on a summoner to destroy the castle

with just, like, a wave of her hand or something like that? But so there is a certain level of suspension of disbelief required with some of this stuff, including the question of why they don't have noses. I'm not sure if that's ever quite answered. It would be helpful if they did. Right. And there's kind of a separation between what happens on the battlefield and what happens in the cutscenes.

At least, I don't know if that happens to the whole game, but at least in the first act it feels as though, you know, the combat is a representation of whatever battles has happened. And then they get on with the story in the cutscene and that's much more ground. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff like that. There's also mentioned a few times of like, oh, they have 200,000 men.

Yet somehow every battlefield is like five, versus five, yeah. So they're representative of the 200,000 men, I suppose. This is something that I think Fire Emblem actually does really well. I like how Fire Emblem will begin zoomed out. And then when fights happen, the camera swoops, and especially in the modern ones. And you see this actual, you know, like, you know, different sides of the conflict, like playing out. And then it zooms back out to the kind of more abstract view, which Suikodan, too, did as well.

So it's kind of something each of these games tackles differently. Tactics is just like, no, whatever. It's 6V6. You get it. It's representative of a larger. Just a few guys. Just a few guys on a battlefield. What's unfortunate about this game, though, is unless you're going to set limitations on yourself

and be like, I am only going to use the party members I create or something like that, what winds up happening is that later on, as you get through chapters two and three and four, you get these characters who are predetermined and have special classes. And so, like, you guys have both met Agrius, and you've seen her skill set. Her skill set is so much more powerful than pretty much anybody else's, because she has, like, this holy sword ability that is essentially a magic spell, except it's instant and costs no magic points. So she's so rigged, and then by the time you get to chapter four, you get this guy named Orlando, who is, like, the most powerful, just a game-breaking character.

And since you can only use five characters in most battles, you wind up feeling like a chump if you're not using Agrius and Orlando, do and then maybe a couple others. And then it gets to the point where like you don't need to think about building your characters anymore because you're just using these dudes. And the game gets so hard that it kind of, it feels like it's designed that for you to have those dudes. And then also one other thing this remaster adds to the game is that it adds new dialogue. It used to be back in the original version and also the PSP version, once you recruited a character like Agrius, which you guys will get to, at a certain point, she stops becoming a guest character and you actually can recruit her to your party. Once that happens, it's as if she

doesn't exist anymore because the game is not, there's no, the game is not built to say like, oh, Agrius is in the party now. Here's what we can do with her. She might not be in your party. She might be dead. You might have dismissed her, whatever. But in this new version, they actually have added dialogue for each of those special characters in a whole bunch of the game's battles later on, which means that you are incentivized both gameplay, and story-wise to have these special characters in your party like Orlando and Agrius and you kind of again you feel like a chump if you don't have them which I think ruins some of the effectiveness of of the party building composition and that fun of it. Classic RPG problem like Boulder's Gate.

You want to and Baldur's Gate 3 you want to have the party members. You can make your own party if you want but why would you not have? Yeah. Yeah, all these great characters. Although at least in that you can kind of customize them. that solves the problem and make it so you can just like make any character your own. And this is more like if you're not using Orlando's special skills, you're just kind of like making it harder for yourself,

which some like experts in the game do like deliberately. They're like, I'm not going to use Orlando because it makes the game too easy. But that's kind of a restriction you have to place on yourself. And if you find yourself just struggling against a tough boss, you might be like, why am I not using Orlando? Oh man, this sucks. All right. That's it for now.

Hopefully we'll talk more about this game. in the future because I think there's still a lot to unpack, especially as you to see more of the story. So I look forward to you both playing more. In the meantime, we're going to take a break and we'll be back with one more thing. I'm Alexis. I'm one of the co-host of Comfort Creatures, and I'm here with River Jew, who has been a member since 2019. Thank you so much for being a listener and a supporter of our show. Yeah, I can't believe it's been that long. Yeah, right? As the Max Fund member of the month. Can I ask what sort of made you decide to be a member? I used to work in a library, so I just used to listen to podcasts while I reshelfed all the books. Really helped with

doing at work. So I just wanted to give back to what's been helping me. Yeah. It feels good to be part of that. As the member of the month, you will be getting a $25 gift card to the maximum fund store, a member of the month bumper sticker, and you also, if you're ever in Los Angeles, you can get a parking spot at the MaxFun HQ just for you. Yay. I'm actually going to L.A. in September, so I'll get to use the parking. Yes. Thank you so much, River, for doing this. This has been an absolute blast.

Yeah, of course. I've been so glad to be able to talk to you, too, and I'm so excited to be a member of the month. Yay! Become a MaxFund member now at Maximumfund.org slash join. everybody, I'm Jeremy. I'm Oscar. I'm Dimitra. And we are the Eurovangelists. Or a weekly podcast spreading the word of the Eurovision song contest, the most important music competition in the world. Maybe you already heard Glenn Weldon of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour talk up our coverage of this year's contest. But what do we talk about in the offseason?

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It's that easy. Oh, okay. Cool. And we are back, Kirk. Maddie. It is time for one more thing. Kirk, what you got for us? I've been playing Hades 2 this week,

an early version of the 1.0 build of the game, which is coming out. I believe on the day that everyone is listening to this on September 20. This is a long in-development sequel to Hades 1 made by Super Giant Games, their first sequel, starring a different character, Melanoe, the daughter of Hades and sister of Zagrius, the protagonist of the first game. We have talked about this game before on the show. We played it, I think, when it first entered Early Access. It launched in Early Access with a lot of stuff in it. I think at one point, very early on at least, it was bigger than Hades 1 already.

And I have been waiting. I just played a little bit. I think I don't even know if I got past the first boss. I think I maybe got to her and fought her a couple of times. Then I was like, okay, I get it. I can talk about this on the show. I'm going to stop. So I just totally stopped.

And we talked about this a little bit last week that I've been very excited for Hades 2 because I stopped. And it's been, I don't know, a year or two since I played Hades 2. And, man, this game is great. I'm loving it. It's been a really great change of pace from Silk Song, actually. And it's reminded me why this kind of action game, specifically a rogue-like, rogue-light run-based action game, is so much fun and can be so freeing and so just engaging in a really distinct way. So I've been playing a ton of Silk Song. Obviously, I'm like working my way through Act 3.

It's brutal. It's so hard. And there is a lot of side stuff in that game, but there does come a point where your options begin to kind of narrow. and you just got to go do the thing. You know, you've got to make your way through the gauntlet. You've got to beat the boss because you've got to gotten all the mask upgrades you can get. You've gotten all the damage upgrades you can get. You just kind of got to get good and beat the boss.

And so because Silk Song is, you know, a Metroidvania, you know, an adventure exploration game where you get a certain number of upgrades and you have a certain number of possibilities, and then you just try again and again and again. It's one type of struggle. You know, like all video games, I suppose, with difficulty are a struggle. And Silksong is a very particular type of one where you basically have a set number of parameters and then you just struggle and you try to use those to overcome whatever obstacle. Hades is so different because in Hades, too, you have a different set of options and a different set of abilities every single run.

And so there's this random element added to it, which I think some people really don't like. And I think is definitely very different from a game like Silkson. But I am finding it very refreshing and really fun, especially because I'm kind of playing the two games side by side. So I'm just really enjoying the feeling of starting a new run and seeing what kinds of boons that I get from the gods and how my character improves. I think we'll talk about this game more in the future. I'm wondering if I should explain how this game works to people who've never played a Hades game. But basically, I guess I'll give a very quick version. It's an isometric action game.

I wouldn't really call it an action RPG, even though it looks kind of like Diablo or something. You run around, top-down view, you clear a room of enemies, you get a new upgrade, you pick which upgrade you want to chase in the next room, you go to the next room, you fight a bunch of enemies, you get another upgrade. The whole game you're meeting with the gods, you're kind of getting boons from all of the different Greek gods, so you never really know if you're going to have like Demeter and Apollo

and whoever else there are some really cool new ones in this game. And you'll wind up with like a fire attack and lightning of Zeus on your dodge. And you'll freeze everybody every time you cast a spell because Demeter gave you an ice power. And then soon you start to unlock these strange synergies between different abilities. And then every now and then you'll get a build that's just like unbelievable. And you got some, you know, like super major attack where your attack goes across the whole room and does crazy amounts of damage. And you wind up, you know, specking around like your range.

DETAC, for example, suddenly becomes really good, so you're doing nothing but ranged attacks for a whole run, and you get way farther than you've ever gotten because you happen to get a good build. So it's really improvisational. It feels like you're constantly adapting to whatever the game is giving you and seeing if you can figure out a gameplay style that works with it, which I think is just something really fun and something that Super Giant has been experimenting with for a long time. I mean, even back to transistor where you would take damage and some of your abilities would get damaged along with the hit point, loss, and then you'd have to change your build because you've damaged some of your skills and you have to adapt. Like, they really like forcing the player to adapt. And I just think that that is

really cool and has been a really refreshing change for me. So I'm loving it. I'm going to keep playing it. It's got all those Hades rhythms. It's got that killer Darren Corde music. You know, the fight begins and the beat drops and the acoustic guitar riffs start. And it's like, oh yeah, I love this. And it's also doing a similar narrative structure to the first Hades, where it just is, you know, introducing new characters. Each time you die, you get maybe a little cutscene or maybe someone new turns up at the hub and you're talking to more and more people.

You're finding out the backstory of like, why Melanoe and Hekete want to kill Kronos and what's going on and what Kronos did to her family. And it's all being explained in a kind of piecemeal way that layers really well with the rest of the game. So I'm super digging it. We might talk about it more down the road just because it's a pretty major release.

And it seems really great. and I'm just excited to see what is in the 1.0 version, since, of course, I don't really know. How far have you gotten? I'm in the second biome, I guess. So, like... Yeah, so I've gotten to the third biomes boss, and I've also played a little bit of this

or a few hours of Hades do's 1.0 version. And the thing I keep running into is that it's just so much like Hades. Like, it doesn't really feel like a significant amount of change, which is definitely a good thing in a lot of ways. but I also feel I spent so much time in that first game, then I'm starting to feel a little burnt out on like, okay, I feel like I've done this before.

So I am curious, and maybe the three of us, yeah, can play more and talk about it more in the future because I'm curious if it, like, if it winds up showing other kind of traits or, there are definitely some differences. I mean, there's like a lot of Melanois abilities are different. The weapons are all very different, but the rhythms of it are so similar to Hades

that I do feel a little bit of burnout coming on. Yeah, I mean, I mean, if you feel burned out, I would say we don't have to talk about it. But it, you know, I definitely want to talk about it. Oh, well, I mean, it's definitely like all the things that Hades did well, the rhythms, the combat, the feel, the vibe. They're all the same. And then the differences are just, it makes it feel like a different game, different protagonists, different story, different structure. And I'm sure, like, as you go, I mean, each of the bosses is different.

Like, it definitely, like, you know, has different challenges. There are different types of enemies. But it is still Hades, Hades, too. Yeah. So I'm really. into that and I guess I'm not feeling burnout only because I haven't played Hades in years and I'm very excited

I'm kind of ready. It would be if I had played a ton of Holo Night and then was playing Silksong and was like oh my God I can't do this again. I played enough Holo Night to get excited for Slick Song but then don't feel burned out by Silksong so it's kind of that. It's funny you say it's different bosses because the last boss of the third bio is actually somebody you've fought before

which just adds even more to the sense of what I'm feeling but yeah I want to Let's talk more about this because, yeah, I'm definitely going to play more. I'm going to play it again. And I played it a bunch in Early Access, so I'm really curious what they changed. So that'll be how that is for me. So all that notwithstanding, I suppose, I'm just, for me, it has been a really cool experience to play a game that is so different from Silksong and to remember why a rogue-like action game

specifically is so much fun. Obviously, we all played Blueprints. That was great, and the randomness of that game was something that I really liked about it. But it's been a while since I've played a randomly, you know, a pretty much. procedurally generated action game, where I'm like, it is my skill on the line, and I am having to, like, play in this twitchy way, but I'm also having to improvise and adapt because I never quite know how I'm going to be playing on a given run. And I just am finding that very refreshing, and it leads to a very cool gameplay groove. Yeah, that endorphin rush of like, oh, man, just got this Demeter ability that is really going to rip through enemies. Oh, man, just got this, like, sprint wave push that is really going to take. dudes out. Watching your build kind of come together in a way that you couldn't have predicted. It's very cool. Yeah, that was, I mean, yeah, this is bringing me back to 2020 of just

playing a shitload of Hades one, which we all just really dug into. Maddie, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a book that I read this week that's called Moral Combat Why the War on Violent Video Games is wrong. It's from 2017, and it's by two researchers, scientific researchers named Christopher Ferguson and Patrick M. Markey, and they're both gamers, both Gen Xers, and they really have a political axe to grind with this book. It's like extremely explicitly political in a way that was really hit or miss for me. So I don't know if I recommend it because there were some chapters that I thought were really well done in the sense that they reflect that there's not a lot of particularly good research about whether video games affect

like aggression, for example. There's a lot of studies on this. And many of the authors of those studies, at least according to Ferguson and Markey, have their own political aims that influence the outcomes of the studies. And I think they do a really good job of explaining that, whereby if you go into a study and you want to see a certain result, then you might be inclined to see it or find it, and you can also manipulate data pretty successfully in order to incur a certain result. And because it's so hard to measure something like quote-unquote aggression, as compared to, say, just somebody playing a video game and getting frustrated with it, if it's difficult, like, what's the difference between those two things? And is that actually

measurable in the short time period that a scientific study takes place in? I think they really do a great job of casting a lot of doubt on those studies. There are some that, indicate that, like, violence and games doesn't really matter, but, like, a competitive game, for example, is, like, the defining factor there. I think those studies are really fascinating for obvious reasons. I love competitive games, and I've always been kind of curious, like, does playing competitive games for my entire life? Has that changed my personality? Or how has that impacted me? So it's part of why I gravitated towards this book. But I think because Ferguson and Markey, and they've been, like, interviewed on news programs about violent games, they're often, like,

the first port of call if like CNN or what have you is like was this school shooter into doom, etc. Like we've all seen like very misleading news programs about this kind of thing with. Well, and the helldiver's reference. Of course. Yeah. Part of why I was thinking about this topic this past week. I feel like it's a recent, yeah.

Precisely. So these guys have been on the news and have been often kind of guys that have been cited as good examples of people who can kind of lay out the research really clearly. And this book does that well. But I think because they have such a really specific political project, they neglect to get into some of the specific reasons why this is even a debate. Like I was kind of shocked that at no point in this book did they talk about like gun lobbyists, for example, and like the fact that so much of the American government and like senators and so on will focus on video games and not, for example, talk about like gun proliferation in America and just how popular guns are here and how easy they are to get. like for some reason that isn't a topic of conversation but video games are there's no chapter in this book about that for example i think i'm not sure why that is but also there's other parts of the book that really gloss over some of the things about video games that i think we can agree are concerning like there's a huge part of the book about addiction that was like weirdly facile in my opinion and kind of dismissed a lot of the claims about it and it might be because the book came out in 2017 and i was kind of like oh maybe like gotcha games and loot boxes and battle passes and all those things weren't quite as popular then, but they definitely existed. And I think that because these authors were

so focused on defending games from what they perceive as, like, a true attack on them and, like, a lot of misinformation about them that the three of us are really familiar with, they just really were hesitant to include any nuance in the book. Do you know what I mean? Like, they just really were, like, we're only going to include these super ironclad arguments, and we're going to just make them and leave. And I don't know, that disappointed me a little bit, but I also think some of the chapters were pretty good. So I've mixed feelings about it. It definitely made me think, and I appreciated the chapters about how the video game aggression studies aren't always that great. But it also made me feel like maybe it's worth writing more about this topic, which maybe I'll do someday. It's part of

why I read this book was because I was interested in it. And I just think it's a fascinating topic, and we're learning more about it all the time. You know, speaking of Katak. in 2013, I'm remembering a story that Jason wrote called from Halo to Hot Sauce what 25 years of violent video game research looks like. Jason, can you talk about that article a little bit? Yeah,

I did a big story back in the day and I found that there are these kind of two schools of thought and Christopher Ferguson is in one of them and then there are other people in the other, like Brad Bushman is a good example and on Ferguson's side is very much video games do not

cause aggression, video games do not cause violence, all the data is inconclusive, yada, yada, yada. So essentially you were reading, like, one side of an argument. And the other side is this guy, Brad Bushman and some others who are, like, we found in our studies that video games do, in fact, cause aggression. And some of their methods for testing this stuff is kind of strange. Like, one of their studies was, like, having people play games and then, like, write the ending to a short story.

Another was the hot sauce test, which is one of the most bizarre things. Yeah, Ferguson describes this in the book. Go ahead. it's very funny. Which is you have someone play video games and then they decide how hot, how spicy to the hot sauce that they are forced to give to a partner as a way of punishing them should be. And all of this is very strange.

And the conclusion that I came to in the story is that like there isn't nearly enough research and studying on this subject. But Chris Ferguson, I mean, one of the reasons he's brought out a lot is because he's like staking, he's put a stake in the ground. He's like video games do not cause aggression, do not cause violence. Well, really, I mean, another thing I found in that 2013 story is that, like, nobody out there, nobody serious is saying video games lead to violence. The question is more to video games lead to aggression.

As you said, aggression studies is the big question here. And I think anyone who's played a video game might have, like, knows the feeling of, like, frustration afterwards. And it probably wonders, like, am I feeling more aggressive, especially a competitive multiplayer game? Are you feeling more aggressive in the context of that? And so I think that's a really interesting question. And yeah, it's always too bad when you read the work of like a scientist who is just kind of like putting their thumb on the scale really, really hard. Yeah, there were some moments in this book where I was like, I agree with you. And yet I feel like you are putting the thumb

too far on the scale and making me question some of the things you're saying. But I think that can be kind of interesting to like read a book that you think you're going to agree with and then be like, do I though? Like sometimes that can be kind of a good mental exercise. Yeah. It is kind of like that time period was much more focused on violence. And I think you're right to notice the lack of depth in some of the discussion of addiction because I do think that addiction and in particular the rise of gambling everywhere. There are a lot of books about that, about how to design addictive games, about how to design casinos and how casinos work. So there is a large body of scholars. about that. And I think that is really relevant and honestly like a bigger concern in some ways. And at least for me, that's something I'm more interested in these days is, is that subject is like, because I think that that effect, the effect of video games, you know, channeling using the tricks of casinos and tricking people into gambling and actually like literally having people gamble. Like that seems to me just a much larger and more easily studied

and easily understood issue. And it's, and I guess more. more clearly a problem. And easily identifiable as a problem for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Neither of you are big sports fans, but over the last like three years, it has become impossible to watch sports without just being like completely barraged with gambling.

Those ads are everywhere. It's not even in sports. It's everywhere. Yeah. I mean, I'm well aware of it. We aren't escaping them either. But it's not, no, but it's not even just the ads. It's like during the broadcast, you'll have the lines.

You'll have like odds for who will score a touchdown. Like someone will score and I'll be like this person Here's the section presented by Fandul This person was plus 600 to score touchdown It's really crazy. Maybe bad. Maybe bad. We should talk about this more

Future episode topic gambling. The way that it affects people The gamification of gambling and so on and so forth. Gambling in games. Gambling everywhere. My one more thing is also a video game called Rise of the Golden Idol

a game that came out last year and has kind of quietly been getting DLC all of this year. I've talked about this a couple times before, but this week, the fourth and final DLC for Reza the Golden Idol came out, and it is spectacular. And like, taken with all of the others, it's basically a whole new Golden Idol game. I cannot recommend it highly enough. So for those people who are not aware, the Golden Idol series, which we've talked a lot

before, is a deductive mystery game where, like, you are given this kind of screen or set of screens and this omniscient view. You have a bunch of people and some crazy stuff is going on, and you have to poke around and click on people's inventory, see what they're holding, see what they're saying, and try to figure out what happened. It is a really cool series. I really love it. I could play these things forever. And Rise of the Golden Idol was the second game in the series. Case of the Golden Idol was the first.

And then Rise of the Golden Idol has gotten these huge substantial DLC packs. This most recent one is incredibly fun and fantastic. a very cool way to end this kind of season of DLC on. You guys will both appreciate that one of the kind of scenarios in it, I think there are four scenarios in it, one of them takes place on a pirate ship in the 1700s or early 1800s, late 1700s, and you have to kind of figure out jobs of different people in true Obridin style. This game is heavily inspired by Return of the Obridon. And this is like very much a homage to that.

You had to figure out who the rigors are and who the the helmsman are and so on and so forth. Really cool game. Really cool scenario. And yeah, this DLC just rules. All the DLC this year. I mean, now if you've been waiting, if you're a fan of these games and you've been waiting or if you're not a fan of these games and you want to try them, Rise of Gluten Idol now has just so much stuff to it if you include all this DLC.

I friggin't love it. I don't even want to talk about what's in this year. or how it links to the main game, but I will say that this new, this new DLC that came out for Rise has a connection to the case of the Golden Idol that kind of like concludes some character fates and it's, it's really cool to see it play out. All of the DLCs for Rise have like been connected in some way to the overarching story and the world in which this is said and it's super cool. Sadly, though, there's no more. And I think the, um, the developers at color gray games,

which is primarily these two brothers, the Cleven's brothers. I believe they are moving on to work on something else entirely. Like they're experimenting with other ideas entirely. That's exciting too, though. So they're not going to make more environmental games. It is, but I also feel like they might just do

like totally different genres and just like I feel like I will not be pleased unless I get more of these. But I guess the good news is that like these games, I think have inspired a lot of other detective games and there will be other cool stuff come. But yeah, it's kind of a, it's a bittersweet end, but a phenomenal one. And this new DLC is really, really good. Highly recommend it. Nice. Cool. I've been waiting for them all to be

out to play them. And I mean, the timing couldn't be better because I have nothing else to play. That's the thing, right? September, yeah, particularly slow. Why did they do this? Yeah, every time their PR person emails me and is like, hey, I got a code for you for the CLDLC and I'll be like, God damn it. Well, that's my entire day now. It's like, um, I'm like, um, I'm, I'm, Imagine me is that meme of like the cheerleader dancing while crying with like tears smudged at her face, but she's still doing her cheerleading dance. That's me being like, finishing Final Fantasy tactics with one hand. Yeah. Well, no, it's me crying, dropping everything I'm doing to just play three hours and finish the rise of the Golden Idol DLC.

But yeah, really good. Highly recommend it. I highly recommend all the DLCs and all of these games. All the games. Yeah. I wish I could wipe my mind clean so I could just like replay them all from the beginning. And if you have not had an opportunity to do that, you're in for a treat. All right, that is that for this week's episode.

We will be back next week with the main episode and then also soon a beans cast on Hollow Night Silk Song where we spoil the heck out of that. So become a member and you'll get that. Otherwise, see you both next week. Yeah, see you both next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music,

Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at Maximum Fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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