Triple Click - God of War and Video Game Side Quests

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

Forget about that deadly meteor that's coming to kill us all — it's time to raise some farm animals! Inspired by God of War Ragnarok's plethora of optional content, this week the Triple Click gang talks side quests. What makes a good side quest? What are our favorites? And have we really come up with another taxonomy? Yes, yes we have. One More Thing: Kirk: Reservation Dogs S2Maddy: New TV (LG OLED C1 Series 48” 4k Smart TV)Jason: Tactics Ogre RebornLinks:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/Some Sidequest Types:The Arena - A combat area that remixes enemy types from the broader gameThe Racetrack - A racing arena where you race. Cars, horses, ATVs, footrace, etc.The Tournament - A tournament for the in-game game. Gwent, Pazaak, etc.The Loyalty Mission - Basically a story mission focused on one of your party members/NPCs. Can have an impact on the story or the ending. The Collect-A-Thon - A sidequest you get early in a game that has you collecting a certain number of things. Collection can also mean destruction. Lots of subvarieties of thisBoss-a-Thon - A series of optional boss fights culminating in one very hard fight or maybe a rush against all of themThe Secret Sidequest - A quest that you didn’t even realize you were doing, but that eventually unlocks actual story material or alternate endingsHarder Puzzles, Please - Optional puzzles set right near the ones you had to do for the story, which are much more complicatedTreasure Map - Find this location, with this clue.Animal Farm - Basically chocobo breeding but I know there are other games that do thisMerchandise Spotlight - Master the ins and outs of a store or trading network with rotating items so that you can get all the itemsIt’s A Mystery - Solve a mystery of varying complexity, either by gathering clues or talking with witnesses. It is often possible to solve the mystery incorrectly The Ancient Dungeon - a big optional dungeon, often with 100 randomly generated floors, that exists just to let you spend more hours playingThe Fetch Quest - bring object A to person B, rinse, repeat. Can be a one-off or can gradually expand 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

Excuse me, my good lady, if I may humbly request that you seek out the candy basket of San Fernando or else my child will die? Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we talk about side quests in God of War Ragnarok and every other game that has them. Why do NPCs need us to deliver their mail? And why is it sometimes kind of fun to do that? I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton and hello.

Hello. It's us again. Clickety clack, click, clock. That's almost it, Jason. Do you want to try that again? Or do you feel like we shouldn't give the people what they want or we should? I think we should leave it at that. So it was click, click, click, click, click.

Clickety clack, click. Clickety clack, clack, clock. Sure. How many clicks are there? If you're somebody who knows the answer to that question as to how many there are, and we won't. We won't tell you. No.

We'll refuse if asked. You have to know. If you already know. If you know, you know. I thought it was just three. Jason. We're not telling people. We're making them know.

Oh, it's a secret. Stop spoiling it for people. If you want that kind of information, or if you already have it and you just want it reinforced emotionally, then I think you should be a maximum member, which is the podcast network we're on. And if you were to do that, you would go to maximum fund.org slash join and then you would become a member for $5 a month. and then you would find out how many clicks there are.

That's the first thing. But then the other thing is that you would get monthly bonus episodes from us. And this month, that is going to be us spilling the beans, talking spoilers about God of War Ragnarok, a video game that I beat and then I think Jason beat

and that Kirk might beat in time. Kirk is definitely going to be. Kirk is like two hours from beating. Are there any magic beans in this game. I know there are giants. Is there a magic, are there any, is there reference to magic beans? There's like a tree. Do you want me to answer that? This is the kind of thing that would only be in the beans cast, Kirk. And I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't answer that. Don't tell me. I can't tell you that information. And I won't tell you that information. Okay, I appreciate that.

No, no, but. I'll discover the beans on my own. Kirk, if you want to get into cryptocurrency, I could sell you some magic beans. Hmm, true. Why hasn't anyone made that? No one should do that. I take, I take back everything I said. Anyway, go to Maximumfund.org slash join. Become a member. You would not only get the god of war, Ragnarok, Beans cast, but so many other Beans casts from us and also Beans talks where we just shoot the shit about our lives and answer deep questions, all kinds of things. There's a whole backlog in there. But I got to take a big digression today because we're talking digressions. We're getting off the beaten path. We're taking the road less travel. This entire podcast has already just been a digression.

No. Up to now, it's been on the rails. It's been linear. Let's go on an adventure. Let's go exploring before we go save the world from Odin and Crook. That's right. Like the meteor is coming closer and closer and closer to Earth. But right before it strikes, let's just take a little break.

Let's like clean everything up. Let's see what's going on in the villages. So Kirk, why don't you be the NPC who tells me and Jason? in what we're supposed to do. Well, the thing is, if you want to get the platinum triple-click trophy, you're going to need to do some side quests, and that's what we're talking about today. We've all been playing God of War, and that game has a lot of side quests. I've been doing a lot of the side-quest.

That's why I haven't finished. I've been sort of reveling in being in the side-quest-y middle, because that's a place I really like to be in a game like this. And we kind of wanted to talk a little more about God of War, but also to just talk about this type of game design, because it's become so much. kind of richer and more complex over the last 10 or 15 years. The whole idea of a sidequest has really evolved. So that's our hot topic for today.

We're talking about side quests, about what we like and we don't like about them, et cetera. I guess, first of all, do either of you have any favorite side quests that come to mind before we get into specific types of side quests that we might be talking about? I feel like I've said mine before. But what is friendship, if not just telling the same stories over and over again? Assassin's Creed Origins. Heard of it. Anyway, it's a good game with some great side quests.

I feel like when I was at Kotaku, every time I, like, covered a vacation day. I would just take that opportunity to write about Assassin's Creed Origins again because it wasn't timely and no one could stop me. Like, it was Memorial Day or whatever and I was the only person there. So I was like, time to write about all the best side quests in Assassin's Creed Origins. There are some really, really great ones in that game. There are also some extremely boring ones. but there are a couple that I remember. I know early on there's one, which I think is,

I don't know if it's actually labeled as a side quest, but there's one that's called like ambush at the temple where Bayek, the main character gets ambushed, quote, unquote, by a bunch of children who want to play hide and seek with him. There are many side quest involving children because Bayek's son is dead and he's grieving that, but also he has this very hopeful, optimistic attitude and is really caring towards every child he meets.

And similarly, I know there's another side quest I really loved where you help some children rescue a dog that they have, a pet dog who's also kind of their caretaker in life, like some sort of street urchins who ask you for help finding this mysterious warrior who protects them and it turns out to be a dog. I remember really enjoying that quest as well. I just love that game and I feel like the side quests really make the game. I don't know if I would go so far as to say the side quests are better than the main game, but to me they're a part of the rich tapestry of AC origins and definitely something I recommend about the game. Nice. Jason, do you have any favorite side quests? Yeah, I have a whole boatload. I'll just pick one. Okay, the one that always comes to mind is in SkyRib, which is a game that has tons of great sidequests because the main quest is just like whatever.

So the whole point in that game is to do side quests. And people who played Skyrim will probably remember this where you wake up after having a few too many drinks. You wake up in a mysterious location and you have no idea what you did and you have to go around and retrace your path. And then there are shenanigans afoot. It's like the hangover set inside the world of Sky.

Man, there's a Witcher 2 quests like that where you go drinking with your friends. I think this is totally a side quest and you wake up naked and have to find all your stuff and you have this tattoo on your neck. Girl has a tattoo on his neck. And if you play that and carry your save over to The Witcher 3,

he still has a tattoo on his neck. And I think there might be a way to finally get it taken off, but there might not be. It might be that you do a whole quest to get it taken off. And then they're like, psych, no, you can't get rid of it.

You have it forever. And you just still have it. Those quests actually inspired Disco Elysium's entire main story. it turns out. Right, which is, right, how a side quest can become a main quest. Yeah, I guess mine is probably one of the, maybe, or one that comes to mind is the Thane loyalty mission from Mass Effect II. Do you remember this one?

Vaguely. It's cool because Thane was one of my favorite characters. He's this assassin, this Drell Assassin, who is a new species that you interact with in Mass Effect II. And he's just very cool because, I don't know, that he's like a well-written character and has a very interesting sort of backstory. The lore of the Drell is very interesting. interesting. And his son is trying to be an assassin like him. And the loyalty mission involves this like kind of detective mission on the citadel where you track down his son and then eventually try to stop his son from doing an assassination. So you're kind of following his target and trying

to spot where this assassin might be. So you're up in the like rafters up above the sort of shopping area of the citadel. And it's very tense and very cool. There's a few things like that in Mass Effect too that are really good. We'll get into those. So our All right, so we're going to talk about just generally what makes for a good side quest and also maybe what doesn't the general sidequestification of video games. I wrote down a list of side quest types. You'll be surprised to hear the two of you contributed some to this as well. Another taxonomy.

Hey, imagine that. I'm going to go through these really fast so then we can just talk sort of broadly and refer back to this list. So here we go, really quickly. There is the arena, a combat arena that remixes enemy types from the broader game. There is the racetrack, a racing arena where you race, cars, horses, ATVs, foot race, whatever. The tournament, a tournament for the in-game game.

Blast, Gwent, Pazac, whatever. Like, there's a tournament for that game. The loyalty mission, this is basically a story mission, focused on one of your party members that basically feels like a story mission and it can have an impact on the story of the ending, but it is technically a side mission. There's the collectathon where you're off collecting things,

and that can look a lot of different ways. It can, we'll talk about it. There's a bunch of different types of collectathons. The Bossathon, a series of, optional boss fights, culminating usually in one very hard boss fight. There's the secret side quest, which isn't labeled in your journal, but is something you maybe didn't even realize you were doing or not doing, depending on if you did it or didn't do it. There's harder puzzles, please, where there's basically just more puzzles. So whatever puzzles you're doing in the game, you're going to be doing

harder versions of those puzzles. There's the treasure map, which has become more and more popular in games. That's where you're given a clue, maybe a map, maybe some bit of text, and there's treasure is somewhere out in the world and you need to go find it. I wrote this one down as Animal Farm and I describe it as basically Chocobo breeding, but I know there are other games to do this. Anything where you're like combining things into more things and doing formulas to try to create the ultimate thing, but I think of breeding a gold chocobo and FF7. Merchandise Spotlight.

This is Master the Inns and Outs of a Store or Trading Network to try to get all the things. There's It's a Mystery, which I do think deserves its own category. This is when you have to solve a mystery. Talk to NPCs. you gather clues, usually you can get the mystery wrong. There is the ancient dungeon, this was a Jason edition, I believe. This is a good one. A big optional dungeon, usually with procedurally generated floors or something that exists

to just let you spend more and more time playing. And then there's the fetch quest, of course, a very important one to mention, where you just have to bring object A to person B. And sometimes you just do that. Sometimes it kind of expands and gets more complex over the course of the game. So those are just some types. We'll refer back to that list. But yeah, I guess the thing I think we can get at is how SideQuest have evolved over the last 10 or 15 years

and how they've become such a standardized part of video games. And I guess that's the God of War of it all. A certain type of video game. Right. A game with RPG elements. The AAA, like the Sony style game, which God of War is really making me realize how kind of homogenous that's become. I don't mean that in the bad way that it necessarily sounds. I think it feels like there's been a lot of these because Horizon Forbidden West also came out.

But playing them in close proximity, it's striking how similar they are, and especially in terms of the quest design, and there's so much side content, and it's sort of categorized very similarly. Well, it just happened that in the PS4 era, four different studios that were all kind of like either struggling or couldn't really figure out an identity for themselves. They all came out with these blockbuster games, and that would be Sony's Animatico with a God of War reboot, Gorilla Games with Horizon, Zero Dawn. Sucker Punch with Ghost of Tsushima and then Insomniac with Spider-Man. And those are four very similar games in a lot of ways. I wanted to say that I think something that struck me about God of War Ragnarok's side quest and something that I really enjoyed about them is that a lot of them are thematically tied to the game, which I think is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Oftentimes games will have side quests that are just like go off and do this funny thing or this weird thing or whatever and that's all well and good. But what is cool about this is, so for example, there's this really cool sidequest in Alphheim, where you have to free these giant jellyfish. And at the end of it, you learn spoilers, I suppose, but you learn that the jellyfish, I guess, like thematic spoilers. You learn that in order to reproduce, these jellyfish have to sacrifice themselves. And so, of course, you get into this whole conversation between Cratos and Atreus about like, what parents would do for their children and the sacrifice they make,

which is an ongoing theme in the whole story and really this whole series since the reboot, which I think is a cool, almost literary way to approach these side quests. And I think it kind of adds to the, I don't know, feeling of worthiness, feeling that these side quests are really just like

worth spending your time on as opposed to going around and just like, collecting things for no reason. I definitely have noticed that that's true lately, that there is more of a thematic, you know, unification between those sorts of quests, especially in God of War, that's true, but that's true in Horizon Forbidden West as well,

and true in more of these games. There's a sense that there's a sort of, you know, writings are, I guess that's the creative director who's overseeing the way that these things all fit together and saying there needs to be a theme, or at least a series of themes. I'd say Ragnarack has a series of themes like we talked about last week.

but one of the pleasures sometimes for me of this kind of side quest is when it allows the game to just do something completely different, which can also be nice. Like not everything needs to be part of a unified hole. And I'd actually say sometimes with God of War, it's so all part of a unified hole that at times I'm like, the hole is too big. I want a little more of just the freestanding stuff, of which there's plenty, but it's not quite as narratively juicy. You know, like you're just going and fighting bosses or doing puzzles. Mm-hmm. Something else that God of War Ragnar does that I think is a trend that I would say I first started noticing in the first Dragon Age, but I'm sure it goes back beyond that is characters gilting me into doing their sidequist. And this is now so common that I've had to, like, steal myself emotionally into it because I'm very susceptible to this kind of thing with fictional characters telling me about how meaningful it will be if I, like, go collect all the pieces of their necklace or something. And I'm like, I think that sounds really boring. Maddie, why haven't you got me the orb yet? Go get my orb. Come on, get my orb.

If I don't get the orb, like, if you go back to that character who asks you to get an orb and you give them just some of the other things they asked for, they will be like, but what about that orb, though? The orb thing is a funny joke, I got to say. Well, but, okay, here's a more serious example. So one of the very first side quest in God of War Ragnar is that Mimir asks you to help shut down some mining rigs that he set up with Odin. and if you don't do it, he will really get on your case about it. Like, I briefly tried to like sail somewhere else, and I was like going to do the mining rigs. I feel the need to clarify. Like, I was going to do it.

Amir? You're not a bad person. I'm not a bad person. I was going to take down the mining rigs. I believe climate change is a problem and I agree with Mamir on that. And I need to stop the pollution. Even during Fimble Winter, climate change is still a problem. Climate change is especially a problem during Fimble Winter.

hello, that's literally what it is. Anyway, I, like, briefly changed my quest, like, main demarcation to something else. And Mimir had a line where he was, like, by the way, I still really hope we can get around of those mining rigs. And I was like, dude, I'm literally just changing the compass so I can go get something else briefly. And I, like, I wish there was, like, an option for me to say that to him and be like, I'm getting to it, my friend.

But, like, I do remember Dragon Age where some of the first game. where I started experiencing, like, real guilt when I would run into NPCs and they'd be like, oh, my God, like, hero, I need your help so bad. And I'd be like, what if I don't help this person? And now it's so common that it's just, it's everything. It's just a part of the fabric of every game I play that's of this type of RPG. Yeah, the side stuff in God of War is, I mean, those early quests with Mamir are so tied in with the story.

I mean, it really does feel like the game would feel incomplete. this was something, if you didn't do them. This is something I thought about Horizon Forbidden West as well, where there's a lot of optional dialogue in that game, and we talked about this quite a bit when we talked about that game, but you really do have to be pretty patient with it, just going and talking to these people and really hearing what's going on with them.

But then if you do, you do get these nice additional chapters where you learn all about the characters, and then that makes it much more impactful later on when everyone's working together or making sacrifices or whatever else happens in that story. And it's a similar deal in God of War where there's like a CliffsNotes version of the story and then there's a version of the story

with all the other chapters with the supporting cast. And it's pretty interesting to see these games have to create both versions of the story because that is kind of a new standard. It used to be more, the story is the story, the side stuff is the side stuff. That's just other stuff that you're doing.

And it maybe kind of impacts it, but it doesn't feel quite as essential to the main story. I'm thinking of Assassin's Creed 2. This was a collectathon, actually. That was the purest kind of a collectathon where you had to collect the feathers to the two of you remember this quest

in Assassin's Creed 2. Oh. So, Etzio has to collect these feathers. And the first two, he's collecting them for his little brother, but then his little brother gets killed at the very beginning of the game. And that's like his origin story,

like his motivation is that his, I can't remember who else. But basically, a lot of people die. It is an Assassin's Creek game. So, yeah, a lot of people die. It is. Well, that didn't really happen in the first Assassin's Creed game. It was just you were this random guy.

This was much more like, now we're going to do an origin story. And that's kind of what was a big deal about Assassin's Creed, too. It was much more character-driven in a kind of traditional superhero way. So you've got this, you're like paying tribute to your sibling over the course of the game. I think you're bringing the feathers back to somebody. And then if you get them all, you get a nice little cutscene. Like it is tied in with the story. So it's kind of an early version of that.

But now it's like they're much more involved. You're getting so much, so much richer text if you do all of those main sort of loyalty mission style side quests. Sounds a lot like Sweetodon, where if you want the real ending, you got to collect all the characters. Well, I mean, Sweetodon was a template for that, right? I mean, those were all pretty shallow, but when you take them as a whole, it is this amazing feeling. Excuse me. No, they were all really deep, and I remember every single character's name. Right.

Thank you. Right. To this day. And I always will. Yeah, Kirk, what you're describing, that could be an addition to the taxonomy, which is non-optional side quests you might want to call it, like mandatory, like quote-unquote mandatory side quests could be. That's the thing, though.

They are quote-unquote mandatory because loyalty missions in Mass Effect 2 famously affect the ending. If you have everybody really happy, you go into the final mission and you can get through it without anyone dying, which has essentially become the mandatory way of playing the game. I wonder if there's anyone out there who's, you know, played Mass Effect 2 in the legendary edition was like, all right, yolo, like, I'm just going to go in and we're going to lose some people and just role play it

because I feel like that it is possible to do all the side quests and play it through just makes it feel like, well, this is the only way to play the game, and it becomes quote-unquote mandatory, even though it's technically not. I mean, it's sort of like Breath of the Wild just going straight to Yanin, like, you could do that too. Technically, all of Breath of Wild

the Side Quest, other than the plateau of the again. I mean, I would even argue, shockingly, that Sweet Coden 2 encourages you to get every single person. Because otherwise, what are you doing there? I mean, it's kind of a template for the Mass Effect ensemble cast style where you're rewarded in Mass Effect more, I would say, because you get those ensemble cast bits of dialogue because it's a smaller cast, so that's possible. I also feel like, I mean, it's funny that we're picking so many ensemble cast games because that's something that when I was playing Ragnarok, I was thinking was a new trend, but I'm now realizing it's really not.

And that a lot of these games rely on having an ensemble cast that all comes together in some type of like fireside chat situation or like the Citadel or whatever it is. And that that is a big part of how these games work. You have a party like any RPG. Right. And it's like a great avenue into making side content because you have all these different characters, especially in this kind of ensemble cast

where it's different people from different kingdoms or different parts of the world. And then they each bring their own little flavor and you go visit their homeland with each of them and do a quest. And so you get this nice variety pack of experiences along the way to do your main story where, you know, a game like Alan Wake comes to mind

is a game with just very, very shallow side stuff. Do you remember the thermuses in Alan Wake where there were just thermuses that you had to pick up? No, but I'm sure that I picked up one. I like the face that Jason is making. He wasn't expecting me to say the word thermases. You know how writers just leave thermuses around and like swamps and stuff? And you got to go get them all.

It's like a Twin Peaks reference kind of like a damn good cup of coffee. I think there's an achievement tied to it. Isn't thermos like the name of the brand like Band-Aid? Yeah, it's been generic. It's been the subject of a generiside, which is a word I learned from Emily. It's a wonderful word. You can actually lose access to your copyright when that happens, by the way. And they're definitely legal implications.

I learned that recently. The Velcro's been fighting against that. That's what keeps happening to us when Apple says you can triple click on your iPhone. We're like, oh, God, now what are we going to do? We definitely came up with that first question mark. Who's to say? Let's not look it up. Look forward to our legal battle against Apple.

So there are these coffee containers, warmers. I'm going to try not to use the word thermos. They're thermosists. And they're just lying around and they're kind of glowing and you just pick them up. And if you, there's like a hundred in the game. They're like the corox seeds or whatever. Yeah. No, they're not like the corsoids.

Okay. My bad. They're nothing like the corotuses. How dare you, Matthew? It's a great thing to mention actually because I want to talk about the corox seeds. But no, they're way shallower than the corox seeds because they're just around. And so you know, Alan Wake is kind of linear, but you'll go out into a sort of open area. And then you poke around and then over by the outhouse, they'll just find a thermos.

So anywhere you go in that game, it kind of trains you just through your stupid lizard brain gets trained because you want to collect the things. He never acknowledges that he's picking up thermuses. You don't see that in his coat is getting bigger and bigger as he's like stuffing thermos. It would be great if he had a bunch of lines where he was like, oh, great, another thermos. More coffee. I love coffee. I'm a writer. What if he said like one of those tweets, he like did one of those like banal tweets every time.

Like, oh. It's impossible to drink too much coffee? I love coffee. Have my coffee. Writer life. That's going to be in the remastered version, right? So it winds up training the player to play in a kind of a unfortunate way, I think. I think the idea was to get you to explain.

the areas and find stuff. But what it winds up being, I mean, there are chase sequences in that game where a monster, this thing is like destroying a bridge and you have to get off the bridge. And then you're like, but there's a thermos over there. I got to get it. And then you're like running over to pick up the thermos and dying, which is just totally silly and killing the, you know, the flow of the game. And compared to corox seeds, it's actually like, it's a great comparison because

corox seeds, I think, are actually a really cool kind of collectathon because each one is a unique little challenge or puzzle. And so, you know, you're never just like walking around and then, oh, I got to go get that corox seed. It's more you're walking around and you notice the bushes in this clearing are in a kind of interesting shape. And then you start thinking, well, I wonder if I could figure out how to, and then you move them around and then you get that little pleasing reaction, which I at least really like and do see that as a little bit different than just sort of knowing that there are a hundred things strewn around in corners that I have to go fine. What do you think about Ragnarok's proclivity towards including NPC dial? when you go and pick things up because that definitely happens. We were talking about how it was chatty last week.

Man, it's chatty. And it really, I've seen a lot of people talking about the way that they solve puzzles for you in this game, which is out of hand. It's a whole other conversation. I'm more just referring to how if you like dug into a little cave and pick something up, sometimes Mimir or Atreus or somebody will be like, oh, wow, I didn't even see that over there or like some other. Or somebody will like get annoyed at you and be like, oh, I guess you're going to take everything

around here and I'm like I'm a video game character man what do you what do you want for me it's here for me it's fun to a point there are times where I'm like okay yeah you got me I'm playing the game and picking up the glowing thing I like how the mirror always tells you when you're on fire just yeah he does like well and then he says not that I need to tell you that because you can probably tell me he's like you're on fire I mean you probably already know that that's a sign that you could maybe delete your dialogue bark is that the dialogue bark itself cannot just It's a character saying you probably already know this. Right, right.

Classic. Classic move. Yeah, no, I mean, I like some of that style of stuff in Ragnarok. I think I really like is those little dudes. They're like the little wormy dudes that you can only attack from behind. That feels a little like a corox seed to explain this in God of War. This is a new enemy. This is totally a new thing for the sequel.

But you'll just see these little guys. And they make a certain sound. They're a little like the Odin's Ravens. And you hear that sound and you're like, oh, there's one of those little guys, and it's this little sort of wormy dragon creature. And if you throw your axe at it, it just goes loop into the ground and then it comes back up and keeps making its chirping sound. But if you can get behind it, you can kill it and then it drops a bunch of upgrade materials. Those are fun because there are little puzzles. And it's just a little environmental puzzle.

You have to figure them out. It's kind of like Riddler trophies. I have to mention the Arkham Games in this conversation. Those are amazing. And those run the gamut from little kinds of prospective puzzles like that to full of. on, like unbelievably complicated environmental puzzles that you're solving. And they're all entirely optional and they're just around and they're very clearly signposted because there's green riddler shit all over everything.

But I do like the ones that require something of you where you can just take a second to do a little puzzle. I'm a fan in general of that kind of thing. So I want to give a shout out to an old game called Balders Gate 2, which came out in 2000, I believe. and it's got like some of those intricate side quests, some of the wildest side quests of any game. Like it feels like very much like a prototype

for like the Witcher 3 model, which itself inspired God of War Ragnarok, I think, in terms of just like it's just packful of these like in-depth side quests that have multi-steps and multiple complications and like might wind up with you like learning more about one of your side characters or it might wind up with you like owning a new house somewhere. and it actually does something really clever, which is at a certain point, I think it's like in chapter two or chapter three,

to move forward with the story, you need to collect 20,000 gold. And gold is pretty hard to come by. So in order to collect that much gold, you have to go out and do side quest. So you're kind of like, you hit this gate where you have to do side quests, which is something that we've seen in a few games,

try to do this in different ways. And so it gives you a bunch of freedom to go explore the world. And what's cool about it is that you can get, you get a chance to do all these side quests and you know that you're also making progress towards the main story. So it doesn't feel like you're off wasting your time for some reason when you go and like try to solve some murder mystery in the slums or like figure out like how to remove a curse from one of your party members and stuff like that.

So yeah, that's a really good example of a game that I think does side quests really, really well in a lot of different ways. Both big and small. I think a good game, a good, a well, a good handling of side. Quest has a good balance of big, intricate ones, and then also little ones where it's just like, okay, got that done with really quickly. Totally. Yeah, it's why it's confusing when they try to demarcate one from the other.

God of War can be confusing in this way. Like, it's trying to tell you. Horizon did that too. There were like errands and all the other names. Right. There's these different. Well, it's confusing because in God of War it's favors, which would make you think that it's like a little thing you're doing, as opposed to quests.

And favors include. everything from find an ingredient in each of the realms for something, or do a side quest with a major character where they're going to really reveal a whole lot about their backstory and their relationship with Odin and all this stuff to you

and you're going to be a huge boss fight and all kinds of dialogue. So they're still all kind of sorted together. And you can sort of tell. It pops up sometimes. You know, it's happening in the world. And NPC is like, hey, over there, we should go check that out. You know, the game tries to push you in those directions. But then again, part of it is because

that game is pushing you around so much that's always telling you where you should go and kind of weighing in. It never wants you to just feel indecisive, which I get where they're coming from, but there are times where I'm like I'm not actually sure what the best thing to go do is. And yeah, that can be a little overwhelming.

Well, Mamir's got an opinion, so you could just wait for him to weigh in on whatever it is. He usually does. Well, I do like that the game we've been trashing the talking, all the talking, a little bit and yes, I do think that the chattingness has its down, has its low moments. But I do actually like it when the game is like, okay, now you can go exploring and they make it very clear.

The clarity is very important to go exploring, which I appreciate. Me too. Just having that distinction between the story quest. Yeah, that's something that I actually really value when games are clear about whether you are at a point where you can do this stuff. And also whether you're about to cross a threshold and no longer be able to do that stuff. This has always been something I've certainly talked about this on the show before, but the moment when the world changes, when the game goes into fifth gear and it's endgame time and stuff that's going to blow up and you're not going to be able to go back to where you were

and it's all going to end. Like, when you go into that unprepared, it can be a very frustrating feeling, especially because you have so much narrative momentum. You do want to, like, usually when I get into that kind of thing, I'm like, well, yeah, I want to see what's going to happen, but I sort of wish I had known that it was my last opportunity to do this or that. That happens very quickly actually in Mass Effect too. So hold on. So now we have to talk about the exact opposite approach, which is, of course, Eldon Ring.

I have the exact same thought, Jason. Yes. That game should be included in this conversation. So it's so interesting. Alden Ring has like, I guess you could call them side quests. They're almost like main missions. I don't even know what to call it. It blurs the lines.

Yeah, a bunch of little dungeons that give you middling to cool rewards. Would we call that a side quest? I guess. Well, no. What I'm talking about is like the radiance. technically optional. So there's this entire quest line for Ronnie, for example, that unlocks the different ending

and that feels like a main quest, but it's also kind of a side quest. Anyway, Eldon Ring, more so than other Dark Soul games is actually pretty clear about like the steps you need to take. All you have to do is like, check your inventory and look at an item and it'll be like, you should go here. But still, you could like unlock yourself out of these things without even

knowing it. You can make too much progress in the story and it'll be like, oh, did you just destroy this tree? Well, okay, now it's all over, sorry. Yeah, it's an really interesting counterpoint to God of War, because they're both, they're designed just with a very different audience expectation. And then maybe that's because from knows at this point that most of the people who like From games are kind of attuned to this sort of thing.

But the amount, I mean, yeah, like you said, almost everything in Eldon Ring is essentially optional. I mean, I think I said this when we were talking about the game. But, well, actually, video games are just optional. You can stop playing at any point. Yeah, including playing Eldon Ring, it turns out. But actually, all other games aren't. It's like Breath of the Wild.

You only need two ruins, and then you go to the Capitol. Yeah, exactly. Like, there's a lot of stuff that is optional, and that means the game has been designed in an actually pretty different way overall than previous from games. But they don't signposts a lot of that stuff. There is no Mimir telling you that you should go here or there. Actually, like, there's that gold path,

the little thing that goes out of the bonfires. But it's weird and doesn't actually tell you anything, and it's very confusing. So, like, even that is not that helpful. Versus God of War, where it's very concerned with helping you along. And there's an audience for that. I mean, as much as, you know, like, I wish they were maybe adjustable, like, you could turn that stuff down a little bit. There are certainly people who just get stuck and are like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do next. I don't know how to beat this puzzle.

I'm never going to finish this game. And those people probably wouldn't enjoy Eldon Ring. Or actually, maybe they would. I mean, maybe they just play Eldon Ring and sort of wander around. on and do stuff because it's a little more, it's just a more open-ended game in general. Yeah, I don't think there's a, I don't even know it. It's that different audiences. I think it's just appealing to different parts of your brain. Like if you want this like big, grandiose, explosive story, you play God of War Ragnarck. If you want something that's a little more subtle and where the story is like

kind of relegated to item descriptions, whereas the game itself is more about exploring and discovering than you're playing, like God of War Ragnarck. You're not really playing it to discover things. You're just kind of like finding things and they're cool and it's not quite the same. It's just very different like appeals to different parts of your brain. Yeah, the narrative is structured completely differently. And as a result, side content works very differently because if you have a diffuse, discovered narrative that's basically just, you know, little bits of stone at the bottom of a dark well that you slowly shine light on in whatever order. Like that's kind of one story versus someone reading you a book, which is God of War. It's just a story.

It's very different. So then side, like what it even means for something to be side. You see, to really understand the plot, you have to kill the third guardsman in Surmdale and check the helmet that he's wearing. If you read the item description, it makes it all clear. Yeah, it's really funny to imagine Mimir and Elton Ring, though. I feel like that should be a mod that somebody should make. I know people made the joke pictures of Eldon Ring when it came out. That's what I was thinking of.

Oh, imagine if it had all the side quest markers. go over here. That's kind of one thing, but it's also funny to imagine if you had like an NPC who accompanied you through the entirety of that game, which is so silent and creepy at times. But they're just like constantly telling you stories and like making you laugh and just goofing off. Like it would be just a completely different game. And that alone makes Ragnar like feel really different, not just from like the

SideQuest perspective, but just everything about it feels totally different. I do want to say. I think we'll get into this more on the beans cast when we really dive into. God of War Ragnar, but I think it's worth noting that, like, despite Mamiere being a little too chatty sometimes, he's a great character. I don't mean by that for what it's worth. I meant it is a nice thing about it. No one's trying to character assassinate Mamiere.

Okay. Well, he's gone through or not, he's already, but assassinated. I know. He's ahead. I think, I think this game could, it would be really easy to screw up a game with this much talking, but I think, to the credit, despite the, a little bit of bloat here and there, I don't need him to tell me when I'm in fire. It's to the credit that the writing team of that game that there's so much good stuff in there. And like his stories are captivating.

Like I always want to listen to him telling the stories and his voice actor is incredible. So there's a lot of good stuff in there. Yeah, this is Beanscast stuff. We don't need to go too deep on the ups and downs of God of War. But that's in part because of the SideQuest. And like the SideQuest, I think in God of War, I think a lot of games,

side quests are kind of defined by their writing. And then a lot of them are defined by their gameplay. and I think God of Wars are very much defined by their writing because the gameplay of the sidewalks is not doing anything super different from the rest of the game. But it depends on the kind of side quests. Like the drocker holes or whatever they're called.

Okay, sure. I was thinking about the big ones rather than the bosses. But yeah, the bosses are cool. I mean, like, Musfulheim is a whole realm that's just built around these crazy arena challenges that are really hard. Did either of you get anywhere in those? No, I couldn't get past the first one. I couldn't either. I played a lot of them in the first game.

I loved, also I love Nivelheim in the first one where you have to run through the timed, like procedurally generated dungeon. I guess, yeah, it's worth budgeting your time for after, like, you're towards the end. There's budget some more time for playing. Yeah, well, and I'm already finding so. Well, I found there's like a whole, basically side quest area, which is a different thing that isn't quite in this list, but where there's just an area that is essentially optional, it's all optional stuff,

and it's all going to tell you new cool things about the, story, but it's really just designed to give you more to play in without being main storyline. So I assume you're talking about the thing in Vanaheim, right? Because that is like the type of area that feels like it should be banditory. There's enough stuff in there that it feels like it should be part of the main story. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. But really, I'm talking about Musselheim and that kind of stacked challenge. I mean, that's basically an arena.

That's the arena type. And they're really, really difficult. And it's designed for people who are super good. And that kind of stuff in this game, also those berserker boss fights. I loved the Valkyrie fights in the first game. I don't know if I have time to do 10 more Reserker fights because they're hard and they take a lot of time.

But that kind of stuff is just raw gameplay. You like this game. We built these systems. Here it is again in a sort of tiered way. Yeah, the point I was making is more that it doesn't, it's not going to drop everything and have you do. Kratos puts on his detective hat and like suddenly starts in L.A. noir-style investigation,

the way some games do where they like actually switch up the gameplay, put you in a racing game for Chocobo Racing. Yeah, no. I was saying my point was more that it's the writing that really makes the sidequest in this game stand out, I think. Yeah, I mean, it's just interesting that in this game, because there are so many written side quests, you don't really need that much writing to be on, you know, on like a berserker fight, wherein in some other games, I actually really like when they add some writing to that kind of thing. The Gwent tournament in Witcher 3 is a great example of this, where you play Gwent,

and it's got its own little sort of built-in narrative because you have to go beat all of the Gwent champions at each town you go to, and each one is a little fun interaction, and the cards themselves that you're collecting, you know, becomes a sort of a story as you build your deck, but then you go do this tournament that winds up having all of this fun sort of behind the seeds. You know, it's like that movie Maverick or whatever, or Casino Real, where they're in the front, everybody's having a straight up game, and in the back there's a lot of dark dealings going on. And that kind of thing can be really fun when there's a story built into it. Some of the training grounds and Horizon feel this way, where there's a little narrative

to each one. It's not just, okay, now beat the next hardest thing and the next hardest thing. And I guess I haven't finished enough of the stuff in Godavore. Like, I don't know if in Musselheim by the time you're on like the sixth rank or something, a story does begin to emerge. It seems like that's become a little bit more than norm. And I do appreciate it when they spring a little bit of narrative framework on top of the just, okay, raw mechanics. Here's the game more and more and more and more. Mm-hmm. There should be a racetrack, though, in Goddivore, Ragnarack. There should be Chocobo racing specifically. It should be chocobos.

Or should like a dog sled race. Dog sled race. I'm kind of surprised there isn't. I would. Who would you race against? I can think of so many people, but they're all spoilers. It's. Oh, you have to pick out of your...

So Atreus takes the wolves from Midgard and Kratos takes the dog things from Alphine and they'll race each other. Exactly. It's a father's son race. It's like edible. It's like, you know, you fight your own dad and everything. Sure. Cretus and Atreus versus...

Odin and Thor, like in a father's son. Yes. In a saccharis. Yeah, saccharis. Like a three-legged, three-legged competition. That is a great idea. That is DLC on the table. That's a free one, Sony, San Monica.

If you're listening. These are the side quests we want to see. All right, well, this is a fun conversation. I'm sure there's more to talk about, but that will be in a future side quest on triple click. For now, let's take a break. And then we'll be back with one more thing. I'm sure you've noticed how giant corporations are controlling more and more about what we consume,

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You'll be doing your part in telling the Star Trek Industrial Complex that they can't control your mind. Hi, it's Kevin for MaxFun HQ. This year for Giving Tuesday, we're inviting you to a super fun taro event. It's got some of your favorite Max Fun host, and it's for a great cause. Join Depression Mode's John Moe, Carrie Poppy of Ono Rosson-Rosson-Carrie, Stuart Wellington from the Flop House, Tom Lum from Let's Learn Everything, and Ellen Weatherford of just the zoo of us.

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So mine is a piece of hardware. It is a new television. This is a huge deal because my last television, I believe I got in 2007. And it was 1080p 40 inches diagonal. And the new television. You've been, wait, hold on. You've been using a 1080P TV for this long. It's really upsetting.

It's really upsetting. I only just got a 4K TV like a year ago. I was using 1080P as well. That's me as well. So it's a smart TV. But also I would say it's a huge difference to go from 1080p to 4K because I have instantly noticed the difference. So it comes in.

We set it up. Everything on the TV just looks real now. And my cat, Warren, got very upset by the new TV because he thought that the people. because he thought that the people on it were real. And it was extremely funny because he kept like taking a really wide berth around the TV while it was like on or playing anything and like with his tail between his legs

looking at it like this is so messed up. Like there's a window in here now and it's got people on it. He has never reacted to the TV in that way. I feel like he's never even acknowledged it before. But for the whole first 24 hours, he was like, they put a window in the living room. And I don't know why.

And it's crazy. Anyway, I really recommend Get it before you turn off motions moving. If you have motion swimming on, that might throw them off. We did. We did. Yeah, I should see if Warren has any opinion on the motion's moving and like see what settings. So, Appa hates 60 frames per second.

Yeah, it would look different. When I first plugged, it was we don't watch anything at 60 FPS and I don't usually play games on the TV in the living room, but when I plug my switch in and was playing, I don't know what it was, maybe Mario or something that was running at 60 frames per second, When she was a puppy, she lost her mind. Just, I think, seeing things moving so much closer to the actual speed of life made her think it was real in a way.

So Warren might not like motion smithing. It felt similar. Like, he had such a strong reaction to it that I was, like, really shocked. I was just like, I mean, I can tell a huge difference, but I wasn't expecting my cat to notice. Anyway, it's freaking incredible every day we look at the TV and we're like, it's the greatest TV ever. We've made an excellent decision with our lives. And now I'm a real gamer. Before now, everything I did was fake.

Now it's all real, at last. Maddie, I remember when I first moved from like a 480P TV to an HD TV. And I was like, suddenly I can actually see the text on the games that I'm like. Yeah, it's like updating your glasses prescription. It feels that way. It feels that way with games, but also just like regular TV shows. I'm like, wow, looks really good. No, it's funny.

I mean, so yeah, we got, like I said, a 4K TV, I think a year ago with HDR. And HDR is pretty sweet, too. It was a thing that for so long was there was no standard. Yeah. So there was HDR in some PS4 games from, you know, that console generation. But now, now I just plug my PS5 in. Like I said last week, I played most of God of War on this TV. And I've never really played PlayStation games with HDR on.

And it really looks wild. I mean, when the light, there was, I was talking to a character who looked at me and there was light behind him. and the light was shining through his hair. Wow. And it just looked great. Like it looked, you know. It had that sort of the HDR thing where you were like, I'm seeing something here that I normally wouldn't see. So yeah, TVs, man.

Yeah. They finally standardized it. So we've got the 4K HDR thing is pretty standard. Now it's, of course, they're like, get an 8K TV with whatever. I'm not getting 8K. What's really cool about TVs now is how much cheaper they are than they were a few years ago. Like, you can get a great TV. Like a few years ago, 10 years ago, you have to drive.

drop two grand to get like a good TV. Now it's like 500 bucks and bam, you got a great TV. Especially this time of year for better or worse. There's sales going on. Well, Jason, you're doing a game. I'll go quick. Mine is quick. So over the weekend, I watched a sequel that is all about,

it's really a really moving sequel about a large cast of characters dealing with a death that they're all kind of dealing with. And it's very concerned with grieving and moving on. and I am talking not about Black Panther Wiconda Forever. I am talking about Reservation Dogs Season 2. I watched both of those things, and I like Black Panther, but I'll talk about that with the two of you, maybe, when you've seen it. But I was actually struck by the fact that finishing Reservation Dog Season 2,

it's about some of the same things. And it was so good. And no one out there needs me to tell them to watch Black Panther, but Reservation Dog Season 2 is incredible, and everyone should watch it. So I talked about Reservation Dogs, the first season of this show, show back when it aired, I guess, like a year ago. And Maddie, I know you had watched season one, but I think you haven't seen season two yet, is that right?

Yeah. So season two really picks up where season one left off and winds up completing the story. So I'll say that recommendation right off the bat. I think a lot of people probably maybe saw that there was a season two of this show and haven't come back to it. So you should watch it. So this is a show about a group of teens living on a Native American reservation in Oklahoma. It's very concerned with that story, with the story of Native Americans in modern America.

And also just, I mean, it's entirely made by an all-indigenous cast. Sterling Harjo, the guy who runs the show, is amazing. Oh, my God. Like, so much more amazing than I even realized. Because season two, it's still a comedy. It's still funny. But it really branches out emotionally. And also expands the cast.

There are stories about the previous generation, the sort of parents of the kids that it focused on in season one and we get to see the ways that the kids are repeating some of the patterns of the parents. It's, man, the cast is amazing and it really just winds up being this, really, this just wonderful moving story about all these different people, this just whole group of people. I mean, it's, I can't say enough good about it. So I really just want to kind of throw that out there for anyone who saw the first season of Reservation Dogs and hasn't watched the second season. It's amazing. It's so good. It's one of the best things I've seen on TV in a long time. So that's my one more thing. Reservation Dogs, Season 2, it's incredible.

And Black Panther was good, too. I'm going to watch Reservation Dogs as well. I'll get back to you. Jason, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is, once again, tactics ogre, reborn. This one more thing is reborn once again. So I talked about this game a little bit before, but I haven't really sunk into it as much as I have now.

I've been playing this game on my switch in between feeds, like in the middle of the night, and between feeding my baby a bottle in the middle of the night, and also just like whenever I can sneak off some time, It is incredible, you guys. So this is a remake of a game that was released way back in the day on the Super Nintendo, re-released for the PlayStation, re-release for the PSP, with a big remake that was popular. And now coming, once again, to modern platforms. It's totally remade.

They've changed a whole bunch of stuff that I won't get into. But essentially, it's a grid-based strategy RPG, sort of in the main of Fire emblem or this year's triangle strategy. But really, the closest comparison is Final Fantasy Tactics, which I know a lot of people love. and have played and really adored over the years. This game is essentially a prototype of Final Fantasy Tactics. Same team, same director, Yassimu But Suno. A lot of the same people worked on the game. And this is, it's essentially like playing another version of that.

So if you haven't played it, but you love Final Fantasy Tactics, like what the heck are you waiting for, aka Kirk Hamilton? I have played it. How many times have I told you that I've played Tactics Oger? No, I've played it. I'm talking about the remake. Oh, I've played the remake too. I have it on my team deck and have been playing.

Oh, good. Oh, good. So Tactic Soger Reborn, a couple of big differences between this and and Vodemone's T tactics. One is that instead of having kind of like a small focus team of five people, you actually control this bigger team of like 10 to 12 people. And there are a bunch of different classes and skills that you can experiment with. So there's a little more room for just like playing around and getting a little crunchier.

There's a lot of stats and skills and charms. and crafting and all sorts of things that you can mess around with. It's a very like systems heavy game that gives you a lot of room to experiment. And it's also just like really just you're constantly making really fun, interesting decisions, including like some grander story decisions. At one point in the beginning of the game or in the first chapter of the game, you have to make a decision that like sets you off on a route, either the lawful route or the chaos route.

And each of them have totally different stories and characters to recruit and all sorts of stuff. So you can literally choose chaos at the beginning of this game. You can choose chaos. And what's also really fun and just kind of like an interesting twist on a game like this is that, so it's really challenging. The battles can be really difficult and you can wind up in these situations where like, oh man, half of your, half of your dudes are getting, have gotten killed and like there's perma death.

So they can eventually, if they're like little, they have a little tick that goes down when they die. and if the tick goes to zero, they die for good. So you're like getting nervous. You're like, what am I going to do? But pretty much every battle in the game, the goal isn't to kill everybody on the opposing side. The goal is to kill one person.

So if you might have been in this situation where you're like half your team is dead, what you can do and what is a viable strategy is you can bum rush that one person with all your strongest dudes, and you just throw them at the boss at the target, and you can potentially win that way, which is really cool

and just like adds another interesting wrinkle. And what you sacrifice there is you don't get as much experience or as much loot because you haven't killed all the other guys to drop the loot and experience. But still, it makes it so you don't have to just be like, oh, I'm going to reset now. You can also rewind time. So if you screw up, you can like go back in time and pick from an earlier turn and try to make different decisions that way. And there are just so many like little, both little and big decisions you're constantly making along the way. There are a whole bunch of characters to recruit, which is always really fun. there's a really good story involving

political machinations. And as I mentioned the other day, when I was talking about this, so many proper nouns, so many frigging like names that you get lost in. It throws you into the deep end from the beginning. It really does. I still don't.

I'm like, I'm a third chapter. I'm like 10 hours in and I still don't know half of what the people are talking about. But that said, the story is really good. Aside from that,

because the characters are good. There's some like really interesting. They do a good job with context clues. You can kind of tell what's going. Exactly. you can figure it out. It could use like triangle strategy. One of the things that game has that's really smart is it has like

explainers for like who's talking and what and like this game could use stuff like that or like a highlighting words to like remind you of what they are, that sort of thing. But regardless man, I love this game. Highly, highly recommend it. People should check it out. I feel like it's going under the radar but it's really, really good.

And it will be like it's like such a perfect appetizer for the Final Fantasy Tactics remaster which is probably going to come out next year and that's just going to blow everyone away. I love describing a game this big as an appetizer. It's like a 7,000-hour game.

Here's your appetizer and it's a porterhouse steak. I have a feeling I wouldn't finish it in 20, 25 hours or so, just guessing, but we'll see. Nice. Yeah, Tactics Ogre Reborn. Everyone should go check it out. It's really good. Yeah, I started it. I'll definitely play it probably a little later than now since I've already

played it. They played lettuce. What's it called? Let us. Let us cling together. I love that it starts. It's like ogre battle chapter seven, tactics, 11. It begins with just the most confusing text and stuff. I think there was like, so it's part of this like ongoing series. And one of them was called March of the Black Queen, which is based on a queen song. I think these are all based on queen songs. Wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah, Let Us Clean together is based on Teotoy. Toriade Let us cling together It's a queen song

So yeah These are all named after queen songs That's what you should be listening to While you play I guess Yeah Playable Freddie Mercury Hopefully soon Nice

Well all right We did it We did another episode A Triple Click Look at us We recorded a podcast Like professionals It's like we do this every week

We did it again We did it We did it All right Well I'm gonna go and finish God of War Ragnarock We're gonna see if if Ragnamarck really happens or not.

And then we're going to talk about that on the Beanscast that we record next week. And yeah, until then, I'll see the two of you next week. See guys next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton.

I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us

by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpods, send email the triple click at maximumfund.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience. Audience. Audience supported.