Triple Click - God of War, Ocarina of Time, And Other SGF Surprises

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

Summer Game Fest is over, and now it's time to soak in all the gaming news. Kirk, Jason, and Maddy talk about everything, from God of War Laufey to the Ocarina of Time remake, and plenty of indies along the way. One More Thing: Kirk: The RecklessBen/Bricks & Minifigs Fiasco Maddy: American Hustle (2013) Jason: Yesteryear (Caro Claire Burke) LINKS: Strong Songs Live! July 11, Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland. Livestream Tickets HERE Mike Masnick’s lengthy Techdirt breakdown of the RecklessBen vs. Bricks & Minifigs fiasco at TechDirt Leonard French’s legal explainer of same on his YouTube channel Lawful Masses Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member 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

It's not summer. There are multiple games and it's not really a fest. They should call it late spring video game event. Welcome to Tripoclick where we bring the games to you. This week we're talking about summer game fest. I just got back from Los Angeles where I played a bunch of games and there's a whole lot of news to get into. So let's do it. I'm Jason Trier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hello. Hello. Can you guys hear in my voice that I was at Summer Games Fest? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was just, I was watching your, your E3 explainer video on YouTube and hearing the, the very familiar sounds of Jason Schreger post convention. But husky, husky bent.

Yeah, post-JW bar. Sounds good. Sorry, post-airport Hilton. Yeah, that was a real tragedy, the JW wasn't there. Well, actually, there was like, there's like another bar at the JW that a lot of people were at. And then get this in the middle of Summer Games Fest, like day four that I was there, they reopened part of the JW bar.

So it worked out fine. Thank goodness. We're going to talk about Summer Game Fest, not the JW, but the more interesting stuff that was there. But first, I just want to point out that we are a listener-supported podcast and that you, as a listener, as someone who is hearing this right now, can also be a supporter of our podcast. Like going to maximumfund.org slash join. In addition to making this show possible, you will also get bonus episodes every single month, including one we just ran that is about, it's about two things.

One, it's about the TV show players, and two, it's about e-sports in general, and how watchable they are, how viable they are as a business, and lots of other interesting conversations. But you also get a backlog full of bonus episodes that we do for all of you fine subscribers. One other thing before we get started, Kirk. Yes, last week I mentioned, that the Strong Songs Live show is coming up in July. One thing I didn't mention, because it wasn't finalized, is that we are now selling live stream tickets for that show.

So if you are not in Portland and you want to watch, you can buy a live stream ticket at the same place that we're selling the other tickets. We also removed this really annoying restriction that was in place for, like, out-of-state credit cards that some people might have run into. Hopefully no one listening ran into that. It was very annoying, but it has now been lifted. So anyways, there's going to be a live stream. You'll be able to watch it after the fact, too.

have to watch it live, you know, if you're in a different time zone. So there's still a link for that in the show notes. And I hope some of you will tune in online. I will. It's good to be a lot of fun. Very cool. Very cool. I will certainly be tuning in. If not, right then and there, at least I will catch it. Yeah, it'll be a little bit late on the East Coast. Yeah, I think it'll be a sleepy time for me and Jason, but maybe I'll watch the beginning. I don't know. For us parents. Okay, cool. So let's talk about Summer Game Fest, which is, the annual extravaganza for all things video games. It's funny, whenever I tell people that I'm going to L.A.

for Summer Game Fest, I always have to be like, well, it used to be E3, but now it's this new thing that nobody's ever heard of except for like... Now you have a YouTube video you can refer them to. That's true. Why E3 died. I wonder how many more years of our lives we're going to have to preface it with that explanation before people are like, oh, yeah, summer game fest. I've heard of that.

Probably like another five at least. How long will we have to refer to X as? formerly Twitter. I guess it's kind of a similar way. Always, always. Right. So maybe the answer to this is also always. Well, the thing about Summer Game Fest is because it doesn't have the whole spectacle of the LA Convention Center and thousands of people and like news cameras there. Like TV cable stations, TV news would go to E3 and cover it. They're not covering Summer Game Fest. Like no one gives a shit about like the live streams except for hardcore enthusiasts gamers. Like us. But yeah, I mean, there was a lot of cool stuff. So if you miss it, we can kind of recap.

Just kind of I've, we don't have to go through every single showcase, but just to kind of refresh people's memory and maybe break the news to people who didn't catch up on every single press conference. There were four big ones. Essentially, Sony had a state of play last week where they talked about Wolverine and announced a new God of War games starring Faye, Grados's dead wife, who wakes up and it's like, what is this bullshit? There was the main summer game fest showcase last Friday night, which had the announcement of a Resident Evil Code Veronica remake, Final Fantasy 7, part three called Revelation, Tupac is back to life, apparently. I like how it sounded like maybe Final Fantasy 7 was going to be called Revelation Tupac for a second there. Well, Final Fantasy 7 is bringing one person back to life and then Stranger Than Heaven is bringing

back another. So true. There's an Xbox showcase, which had a new Spiro game, Persona 6, and Gears of War going exclusive, among other things. Console exclusive. There's a Nintendo Direct, which had Ocarina of Time getting remade, a bunch of release dates, a bunch of other random stuff. And then, like, a total, like, hodgepodge of other live streams, some of which had notable game releases. But yeah, let's get into all of it. I mean, first of all, let's start by, talking about like the stuff we thought was coolest. So Kirk, why don't you start off? What are kind of some of the announcements and games that you were most excited about? Well, there's a bunch of smaller games that we can maybe talk about later. I was excited to hear that Persona 6 exists, though I would have liked to see a little bit more of it.

It was really short. Yeah, I was going to say, didn't we, we knew it existed. That trailer was just such a waste of time. It was so pointless. Yeah, it's not totally clear. see shots of human standing and darkness. I don't even know if there were people. Heads and then it was like P-6.

Can I just say, I think in a world where everything leaks in advance, game publishers just should not do teaser trailers anymore. Because like when the, if the point of your trailer is just to say this game exists and it always leaks ahead of time, which all of the announcements this weekend leaked every single one. If you don't show gameplay, then there's no point, which is why the coolest announcement,

or like Final Medicine 7 Revelation, where it was like, here's a solid 15 minutes of the actual game, which was just so cool to see. So I feel like these kind of teaser trailers are just a waste of everybody's time. Yeah, I agree. And I guess I'll throw out there then. Let's just talk about God of War Laofé,

because I thought that was an incredible demo, and I'm really excited for that game. Yeah, you guys were jazzed on it? I thought it was really cool, too. I thought it looked great. I just, yeah, I thought it looked like a great game and was incredibly impressed by its visual fidelity. It just, like, was one of the few games.

where I really felt like, oh, man, this is a futuristic game. Like, if you'd shown this to me 15 years ago, I would have been like, damn, wow, video games have really gotten amazing looking. Yeah, it looks really fun to play as well, which I think is sometimes hard to convey in these really long gameplay demo showcases. But they showed so much of Faye fighting, and it just looked so kinetic and cool, and she was swinging that magical sword around, and that just looked like, I mean, I'm remembering how fun God of War is to play.

and I'm like, oh, I can kind of picture what kind of moves, what buttons I'll be hitting to do all this, and it's going to feel really good. And I don't know. That made me excited to see. I agree. I like that they emphasize the juggle, like Ariel stuff so much. It made it look a little bit different in a way that I could immediately kind of feel under my thumbs. Watching it, I was like, yeah, I know what this game is going to feel like to play. This looks great.

Yeah. And I think because you're playing as Faye, she's going to have magic and embrace magic in a way that Kratos doesn't. And I think that like what we saw is the first 20 minutes of the game or so, right? That's how it was presented at least. When she only awakens her magic toward the very end, right? The idea is, yeah, that she will develop that much more. Well, does she do? What do you mean she develops it at the very much?

There's that. She keeps trying to summon her magic with the right trigger in all the cutscenes, but it's kind of been muted because she's in the afterlife or whatever. Oh, at the end of this demo you mean. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, and then she finally pulls it off. Exactly. It seems very likely that it's going to be this sort of mix of magic attacks, sword attacks,

and like some enemies are vulnerable to some of the summer. You can imagine it having played some of these games. And maybe the magic will get stronger throughout the game via some sort of skill tree even. Perhaps. It's possible. Yeah. And so I got the sense that like even though that first 20 minutes

looked a little bit more akin to the god of war games that we've seen already, I feel like it's going to change a lot as you start juggling magic as part of that too. I've also heard that like the cube is going to do some stuff that it feels a little different than just like having a traus. like next to you. It already looked really different because one, it's a cube. There's a cube. There's a talking cube. A quade cube. Not just

any cube, but the cube voiced by Jack Quaid. By the way, reminded me of esoteric Ebb's gelatinous cube. Yeah. That's true. I mean, people have been speculating. I don't know if it's been confirmed that that's the quote unquote mythology that the cube is from is from Dungeons and Dragons.

I don't know if that's actually intended or not. Oh, so the idea is like maybe this is a like blended up afterlife for all different kinds of mythology. Correct, because you can already see there's like these ancient Egyptian gods in that trailer as well. Sure, and I guess Cratos is a Greek god. Right.

It totally makes sense. I hadn't even thought about that, but that would be really cool. Yeah, I'd also seen a different theory that it was like an ideal form like in, you know, Socratic platonic forms. You guys know what I'm talking about. Remember reading like a cube in college? Yeah, I don't know. Who knows what the cube is, but there's a talking cube and it cracks jokes and also does

cognitive behavioral therapy with Fay so that she can use her magic. And who wouldn't want that? I feel like it's going to turn out that it's like some cursed dude who's just like, now I'm stuck as a cube. I wish I wasn't. Yeah. And I would imagine a cube like that kind of unusual shaped NPC helper would be helpful in puzzles. And that's something we didn't really see in the demo,

but something I was reminding myself of as we watched Faye shred this dude and have this huge boss fight. These games always start with the epic spectacle boss fight. This seems like that seemed like they showed us that one. for this game. There will be a lot of puzzles. There will be a lot of kind of cool gameplay systems and stuff. I mean, a thing I had kind of, I don't always think about is how God of War Ragnarack added this Falhalla mode. They added like a lot of really cool. There were those mist, the like mist realm that you had to explore in the first, the 2018 God of War. They have a lot

of other cool stuff too. So not only will this be, you know, a narrative action game, they have a lot of cool ideas and a lot of puzzles and things that go outside of just the, the slashing in the stomping. Yeah, I think we were a little bit down on Ragnarag. But even despite that, I feel like, I feel like we were down on it because the bar for Sony's Anamonautica games is pretty damn high. And for narrative reasons. Yeah, for narrative reasons, it felt like they kind of crammed two games into one. Exactly. It wasn't really the combat. It was that the story was not that satisfying or just felt rushed. And it like really meandered to some weird places near the end, as I recall. Right, I guess rushing and meandering.

Yeah. The Metrovania stuff they did in both of those games is so cool. cool and like the action is so cool. The puzzles are so like these are great games. My only hope is that the cube doesn't spoil all the puzzles. I was thinking that too. But I feel like they probably include an option to turn that off because that's become such a common feature in the options menu for games now, which thank goodness where you can go in and be like, please if I'm staring at this puzzle for longer than five to 10 seconds, don't have the cube tell me it looks like I could go over there and do this. Yeah, this was actually something that James Bond, that 007 did a few times that really

annoyed me was that same thing where the character says, oh, you know what I should do is hack into that computer over there. It's like, screw you, I'm not going to do that. I was kind of glad in 007's case, because a lot of times I was like, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. So maybe that was more necessary. Yeah, I actually feel like they waited long enough in that game, typically before he would finally make a suggestion. I'd be like, you know what, James? I'll take your point. I will, in fact, try hacking into that computer. Anyway, Nafet looks great. So a couple more games to talk about.

So Resident Evil Co Veronica, I'm pretty excited for that. I got to see a little bit more in a presentation that the developers gave backstage at Summer Games says Playdays, which is the media event after all the kind of the live streams go up. And the developers, they said a couple of things. They wouldn't tell me. I asked them how many Resident Evil teams Capcom has. They said, that's a secret. But they told me that they, the Veronica team is the team that made RE2 remake Resident Evil teams. remake and Resident Evil 4 remake.

And their presentation was interesting. Basically, they framed it as like, Resident Evil 2 is kind of the basis for a lot of this. And then Leon's story continues with Resident Evil 4 and then Requiem, which came out this year. Whereas Claire's story continues with Code Veronica. And now we'll get to see that.

For people who didn't play Code Veronica, such as myself, we'll get to see that in this remake, which is pretty cool. And one of the things, remember the three of us were talking, when we played that remake for the pod and did the spoiler cast on it, we were talking about how the point of it is that Claire is looking for her brother, but that barely comes up. And then at the end, she still hasn't found her brother.

Presumably that story continues in Code Veronica. So, yeah, really excited to see that remake for sure. Yeah, that's how the trailer starts is with her looking for Chris. Exactly. Maddie. Have you played Code Veronica? No, I don't think so. Okay.

I haven't either. So none of us have played it. I am somewhat familiar with it, and I'm excited because I like Clara Redfield as a character and I'm looking forward to playing her. Did they say, Jason, whether it's going to be a combination first and third person or just first person? Just third person. Oh, just third person. The trailer was a fake out. The trailer was a fake out. That's like the beginning of our E3, I guess, is kind of that. But also they didn't want us to see Claire in that trailer. I get it. They wanted to not even have it be clear that it was a Resident Evil game at first, which, you know what? I like that kind of gimmicky theater.

That's what summer game fest is for. I will admit, I was very excited. I saw the letters come on screen. I was like, oh, sick, they're going to remake this Resident Evil game that I feel like I don't know what happens in it. But I'm not going to get to find out. That'll be fun. And that makes sense, given that, you know, RE2 and RE4 remake were both third person because the original game was third person. It would be a more radical change to take one of those games and make it first person.

I was curious if they were doing that, but that does make sense. It's only the newer ones that are first person, right? Yes, starting with seven, right? Post seven was the, yeah, first one. We also got to see, I was most excited about this, Final Fantasy 7 part three. It's called Revelation. It's coming out in the spring. It has a high wind that can go anywhere and your team parachutes off of it, Fortnite style.

And it says, where we drop in, boys, Midgar. And it has a job system, which is wild. And it looks friggin incredible. And I can't believe that they're releasing it three, just three years after Rebirth. Yeah. Man, I'm bummed that it's called Revelation, probably because that Nix is one of my predictions, and also because I think Revelation is a bad name.

Oh, Kirk, I asked, so I spoke to Nayoki Hamaguchi, the director, and he had said in the past that they were narrowing it down. They narrowed it down to two names, one of which being Revelation. So I was like, hey, what was the other name he narrated it down to? And he was like, I don't want to say right now, maybe later. And he offered to tell me off the record, but I was like, no, I don't want to know because I don't want to, like, slip up on the podcast or something.

down the road, I'll get him to tell me, or maybe he'll say publicly, what the other name was, and we can find out how close you were to getting your prediction right. I'm picturing it. He has Revelation and Return in a document, and then he's listening to our predictions episode, and then he just Xs out Return, but does a strike-through in real time. I don't think so. I think it might be resolved, because that was one of the words that they said on stage when they were describing. That would also be a bad name.

So I think Revelation is such a bad name. There are like three other games. It's such a common subtitle for games. And also so often, Resident Evil Revelations, Assassin's Creed revelations, there are no actual meaningful revelations in the game with Revelation in the title. I just think it's a totally overused name. Okay, but in this game, we do know there will be revelations because we played the 1997 version. Right.

It's not to say that there won't be any revelations, but that it's, I think, a very weak name. Like maybe this time it actually makes sense. I'm calling it that. Nah, but it's just overused. I think it's not a good name. But I don't want to dwell on that too long. The game actually looks great. It looks so good.

And just, I don't know, like after playing rebirth, I kind of cooled on that game just because there was so much of it. It was kind of exhausting. I finished it. We've talked about this. Like, it didn't make my top 10 list that year. I mean, it was still great. I liked it a lot.

But there were just other games I liked more. But then every time, they get me every time. I hear the music. I see Tifa and Barrett. And I'm like, hell yeah, I can't wait. Let's go. It's my friends. I'm going to hang out with my.

group of friends and we're going to save the world together. Yeah. I mean, this is like, okay, the last two games have been setting up all these weird changes and kind of dipping their toe in the water at the very least in timeline changes and alternate universes and whatnot. In this one, we finally will see how it all pays off, like how many years of setup finally pays off with Zach, with alternate versions of Araf. So even like from that, for the story alone, I'm excited to see what they do.

And I'll be disappointed if it's just like, psych, it's back to the original story. Yeah, I mean, a video game series has never spent many years setting up a huge grand finale only to blow it at the last minute. That's never happened. So it's good that we can know that it won't happen. Yeah, let's keep our hopes really high. And then we will definitely not be disappointed and it'll be fine. I mean, honestly, it is better to have high hopes. Like it looks exciting.

It's fun to have, I hope. Yeah. They did say on stage as well when they were talking about the trailers that it would be a big open world or some phrase like that. And that definitely gave me pause because I was like, that's actually the stuff in rebirth that I started to get a little bored by. But that's okay. You know, didn't need to play every single little game at the Golden Saucer. There was just a heck of a lot of stuff to do in that game. And that worried me slightly.

But hey, I'm sure I'm going to enjoy all the action. main line story stuff because that was also largely how I felt about rebirth. Hamaguchi has said fewer mini games. Good. Good. Notably, this game is also coming to PC and Xbox at the same time as PlayStation this time, which is cool. I will totally play this on PC.

And Switch. There's also Stranger Than Heaven, which I actually got to play, and it's a weird, weird feeling game. Got used to it. Is that like a Yakuza game? What is that game like? It does not control like a Yakuza game. And I did not get to play the parts with Tupac, but there was like a combat demo that I got to check out. And it's really weird.

You control your left hand with the left bumper and left trigger. And you control your right hand with the right bumper and right trigger. And you kind of like punch with both hands or use a weapon in one hand and punch with the other hand. And then to guard, you have to kind of like hold down the circle button or cancel button, whatever. B button, whatever it is. And then like whole. and then press one of those bumpers to guard with one hand. It feels kind of fighting game-ish.

It's very interesting. It took a little while to get the hang of, but once I did, it felt pretty good. It sounds strange. Would you say that it is stranger than heaven? No, not quite stranger than heaven, but definitely stranger than hell. Like somewhere between hell and heaven.

In terms of the strangest spectrum, which is one we're all familiar with. Yeah, I mean, the Tupac of it all, I feel like really stole the thunder of that announcement because I just saw so many people immediately reacting with discomfort. Walk me through this. What is going on exactly? I missed that part of the stream.

I saw the images later, but what does it mean that Tupac is in this, or a rendition of Tupac is in this game? We don't really know. I mean, essentially, they just said, hey, Tupac is in this game. They'd already said that Snoop Dog was in it. And then he took the stage to reveal that Tupac would also be in it.

We don't really know what that means. And it makes no sense because this game is set, like, way in the past. It's set in, it's set across, it's set across various, Tupac was still a lot. Well, yeah, I guess so. This means way in the past. No, I see what you're saying. Pre, the pre-Tupac era. Yeah, no, Maddie. I'm talking about like, it's set across five different decades. I don't remember exactly what they are, but it starts off in the like late 1800s slash early 1900s and goes up through the, who's to say, Tupac was not alive in the late 1800s. Well, if he's, if they can recreate him today, who said they couldn't recreate him for the 19th century.

I mean, the monks Maybe Tupac was always with us Had all kinds of technology In the ends in the 1960s When maybe Tupac was a baby So maybe we'll see baby Tupac Anyway, I don't know I don't want to dwell on that

But it's weird It is weird It is weird It is odd, yes Anything else from the Keeley Showcase That struck you guys There was a teenage mutant Ninja Turtles game

From Platinum Those announced Oh yeah, that was Akulees That's the last Ronan That is promising I'm actually pretty excited about that So there's an interesting story behind that I have not read

the comic series this is based on, but it was written fairly recently by Kevin Eastman, one of the creators of the Ninja Turtles. And it is like, it's a really cool story. I know the setup and some of the basics. I guess I won't get into them because it's kind of revealed to you over the course of the story, and I guess it will be in the game too. And some people probably haven't read the comics and don't know. But they're, it's really cool. It's this kind of gritty alternate Ninja Turtles universe. I think they call it the Ronanverse. So it's become its own whole thing. And there have been a number of failed adaptations. There was going to be a game made about it, made by a different studio that got canceled. There was like a cinematic adaptation.

So Paramount knows they've got something cool here, this kind of gritty world where only one of the Ninja Turtles survives. And I think it's Shredder's, you know, Sun or something is in charge of all of New York. And it's this like authoritarian thing where like the one turtle has to do like a true kind of ninja uprising to get revenge and has all the weapons of all the ninja which is then really suited to a platinum game where you can switch between, you know, the swords and the bow and the side and the nunchucks and like do all the different all the moves. And so yeah, but it's dark. It's, you know, dark in the way that's kind of true to the origins of Ninja Turtles. If anyone is familiar with that, I am definitely optimistic about that game even though they didn't show it at all. So I need to know more about it. But I'm cautiously optimistic. Sounds like it pretty much just started development. So it'll probably be in a minute. Yeah. A couple other. announcements that were there, Alien Isolation 2, which I played, not a fun video game.

I bet. Fun, not the word. Not the word. It's not really what they're going for. Yeah, not the watcher. Stellar Blade sequel. Guild Wars 3, Wolf Among Us 2 got kind of a re-reveal. Did either of you play Wolf Among Us?

Am I the only one who's playing? I haven't, but I do know that people who love it really love it. So I was excited sympathetically for those people. I saw that trailer. So they also announced a remake or remaster of the first one that's going to come out, I think, in December. It is... Which I don't understand. Why do you need to remaster that game?

Didn't it come out of... I don't know. Maybe to put it on new platforms. It still looks good. That's what I mean. What does it need to remaster for? Very strange. I don't know.

Maybe it like connects it to... Actually, maybe it's connected to the like the telltale thing where they have servers that keep track of your decisions. And they want to just reset all of that so that you're connecting to new servers. and you're getting new percentages based on the decisions. I will say that the Wolf Among Us is really cool. It's totally worth checking out. You two would like it. I don't know if either of you have read the comic series.

Well, Jason, you probably haven't. Maddie, have you read Fables? Any of those comics? I haven't. I'm not in on any of this. So it's because it's an adaptation of the Fables comic series, which I've actually read a lot of. They're very cool.

It's this kind of, the idea is that all of the fairy tale creatures, the Big Bad Wolf, Cinderella, etc. have had to come to New York and are now living incognito. And so they have their own little society with all these different rules. The Big Bad Wolf is kind of the sheriff. He's essentially this noir detective

who's in charge of everything. And he looks like a man most of the time, but then he can transform into a wolf. And it's really this kind of noir, gritty, storytelling, but with characters from the famous fairy tales. And it's a really cool series, especially the first few years of it.

I really like them a lot. And the game really is very true to the comics and is fantastic. It's one of the best games Tell Tale Made, I think. Great to the end, has a great finale, good storytelling. That entails from the Borderlands are probably my two favorites. So it's cool that it's being released and people can play it. And I'm hopeful about the sequel. I hope it's cool too.

So then Xbox had their showcase on Sunday. They announced a bunch of new stuff. I think the biggest news was that they announced that after two years of going almost fully multi-platform, they are now. going back to Xbox exclusives. And they said that Gears of War E-Day will be a console, Xbox console exclusive, as will Clockwork Revolution, which is coming next year. They also announced that they showed a little bit more fable.

They announced a few other things. They gave a release date for the Castlevania game from the Dead Cell People. They announced a new Spiro. They announced Prona 6, as we mentioned earlier. But the Kiers was definitely the biggest takeaway from that one. Yeah, it's interesting because. although they didn't mention this in the presentation, Gears on its pages still says it's going to be available on Windows,

which to me, I mean, it is exclusive. No, they did say that on the presentation. I feel like they were really hammering the Xbox of it all. They said specifically, gears and clockwork are both going to be Xbox console exclusives. They're still releasing everything on PC, which again, as we've said on this show several times, means that it's not really an exclusive, which means. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at.

But that's fine. I get how you're still allowed to say it's a console exclusive, even if it's also on Windows. The whole thing is just not a, it's almost, it's not a nothing burger, but it's very little. It just means a slight retreat from a initiative that was only just kind of beginning. You know, they've been releasing games on PC for a long time. That will continue. These games are still going to be on Steam. So the only thing that's changed is that they're not going to eventually release stuff on PlayStation,

which they'd only kind of just started doing. So it just seems like nowhere near as big of a move as it might have been. I don't know. It seems overblown to me. Yeah. I mean, they did put out the Gears of War remake on PlayStation 5 pretty famously. And when I was at the Xbox presentation in person last year, they had me play it on a PS5. And that was part of what they were marketing about that remake at that time was like,

wow, you can play gears of famous Xbox game on a PS5. So I guess in light of that, it's a little weird. But you're right, Kirk. It's like they took one. forward and they're like, okay, now we're back. But it is a big deal because a lot of the studios within the Xbox York have been given all these financial pressures over the last year. Part of the way that they make up for that or part of the way they hit their goals

is by releasing games to the 90 million plus PlayStation users. A lot of the games that they've released on PlayStation have actually sold pretty well. Indiana Jones did really well on PlayStation. Forza Horizon 5, not this one, but the last one did really well on PlayStation. So it is a significant deal if you're releasing a game. And in this case, Gears of War, they were preparing a PlayStation version of that game that they now suddenly have to cut out, which I imagine is the sort of thing you can only do if you're running the coalition and you are promised by Asha Sharma and Maputi

that you don't actually have to hit these crazy profit goals for this game. Because otherwise you are carving out like you were getting rid of millions of people. And then from a developer's perspective, you're also, even if you don't care about like sales, you're still depriving, you're losing a big chunk of your audience, which kind of sucks. Yeah, I don't want to say that it's actually nothing. Like, clearly there's something to it.

It partly remains to be seen, right? Like is Elder Scroll 6 really not going to come to PlayStation? That's the big one. That's a big question. And also, a lot of these games still are coming to PlayStation. So it just, I don't know. Yeah, like two games not coming to PlayStation. It's not nothing.

Obviously, it's something. And it matters to the developers, sure. It's just like trumpeting this as like Xbox returns to exclusivity. It's like, I mean, they were already not exclusive. They were already releasing everything on PC. Yes. I mean, what you're getting at really is that none of this makes any sense. It's not clear.

Right. And also it's like I've described it to a few people over the weekend as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic because there's very little that Xbox can do to really get that business to like the growth that they used to have. Yeah. sad. It's still a profitable business, but not a growing one, as far as I know. Anything else at the Xbox showcase? Catch you guys? I mean, EJ looked fun. It looked fun to play. The trailer for E. Day looked fun. I'll play it on an Xbox. Yeah, it looked like yours. It looked, it looked, the lights were very pretty. The lighting effects were impressive. You got a chainsaw.

Man, there's no series that I'm less interested in, but you guys, you guys enjoy it. I know, but I like those. I always start them and then sort of run out of steam, but they're, they liked the first few. I thought that fable was a little weird. I'm kind of weirded out by that game. I don't know what it is. I mean, I know what fable is. I literally liked the original fable games.

But the trailers for this thing just keep being these, you know, big budget movies, basically. This is Haley Atwell, an actress I really like, doing a great job. It just felt weird again. Like watching a bunch of stuff that looks sort of like a video game. But they've delayed it so many times. I just am not getting a great vibe from me. it as impressive and pretty as those trailer videos they show are. Bing!

Kirk here editing the episode, and I just wanted to mention there is a gameplay demo that Xbox posted to YouTube. I've watched some of it. It looks like a video game, so you can't actually see the game if they didn't show it at the press conference. And yeah, I mean, we'll see what this thing is when it comes out. Just wanted to mention that. Bing!

This game started development in 2017. Oh, yeah. That's almost 10 years ago. There was that one trailer a while back where they showed off the town and we're like, you can buy any building in this town. But yeah, I mean, it's been delayed many times. It was supposed to come out last year, slipped. And then slipped again to February of next year as a result of GTA.

They didn't want to be in November. Did they like you play it, Jason? No. Okay. I don't believe they had playable demos at the Xbox event. One other game that I liked was Viverium, which is the studio Ghibli-looking Lifesim. I just thought it was a nice change. So many of these streams were just like,

A soul's like set in like an Asian setting, fighting things with the sword, like where you're wearing that armor with the katana and you're fighting some demon. And they just all look like that. Or a first person shoot like it was just so, so samey. And then seeing this game, this hand-drawn looking beautiful life sim that takes place inside of a little domed world, I don't even know what it was. It was just really pretty. It looked like a studio jubly movie. And I thought it looked cool and I want to know more about it. It was a refreshing change of pace.

That art style is so close to Jibli that it kind of raises a little bit of it. One of the game that got announced, if you guys remember, is called Bad Magpie. It was like this little indie thing where you play as a bird and you're going around. It was a little thing. You guys might not have noticed it. Like a kind of Untitled Goose thing. Yeah, it was kind of Untitled Goose. Like I played it.

It's kind of like a less frustrating, untitled goose. It was really cute. It's like you go around and you just like cause a ruckus as this little bird. I love Untitled Goose. I didn't think it was frustrating, so that sounds fun. I love that game. Like a horrible bird games. It's a fun subgenre.

So, yeah, you're going around this little playground and you're just kind of like collecting these gems by like, you pick up a horn at one point and blow some music to shatter glass and then you go inside of it. You go inside of this like little school room and you're just causing all sorts of ruckus. You're like harassing mice. Man, I'm glad that a goose like really sounds like a goose like. It really is. It's very, very cute.

I really enjoyed it. But you're a magpie. So you're collecting shiny things. I love that. That's very magpie. I like shiny crystals as a magpie does. Next up we had Nintendo, which had a direct couple of things that I noted there. One was a Final Fantasy game, Final Fantasy Resonance, that is like an HD2D Final Fantasy

with turn-based combat, which is a unique one, a new one. And that's based on the mobile game, Final Fantasy Brave XVus, kind of like Octopath. Octopath did a similar thing. I think that's like a trend for Square now to take their mobile gotcha games and kind of revise them as console games, which I think is pretty cool. And then, of course, Akrona of Time, a year after we play it for our predictions bet, it gets a remake and true triple-goes. This is like the third time that's happened.

Not a bad thing, I would say. Also another example of an announcement trailer for something that had widely been rumored at the very least, and the trailer showed almost nothing. 100%. I think these PR, like, NCL, I mean, Nintendo, the way they operate is very strange, of course. We all know that. But like, you need to be a little more nimble than that and recognize that if a game has leaked pretty widely, a lot of people know it happened. Then again, I don't know.

I could be wrong. It could be just like in hardcore enthusiast circles it leaked. And like a lot of people out there who are Nintendo fans who would tune into this direct or are seeing the news on TikTok or something like that, they had no idea that it leaked. and so they're all pretty jazz. I don't know. I could be wrong. To me, it just seems like... And they could just see it.

They could see it as this gets people talking about it. It doesn't really matter. You know, then later they're going to show gameplay and then everyone will talk about that. I mean, maybe they see it that way. It is just kind of, it was a sort of frustrating teaser. And so I don't like feeling frustrated. So I kind of wish they had...

If it just ended just by showing Highroll Field or something, like just a little bit of the game. And it's weird because it's supposed to come out this year. So you would think they want to show a little more. Yeah. Yeah. That was strange to me. I feel like if something's coming out that soon, then they should show us a little more,

but maybe they didn't feel like they need to. Presumably they'll do a dedicated directs in a month or two or something. Yeah, they probably will. That's very Nintendo. Do you guys think they're going to go head to head with a GTA with all three. The two open world games of 26. The theory is that the original Aquarium of Time for N64 was released on November 21st. So the theory is that they would try to time that date.

GTA right now, I believe, is planned for November 19th. So that would be quite a quite a Oppenheimer, Barbenheimer situation. What would we call it? Akiritea. Yeah, Akirite. That doesn't really throw off the tug at all. Ocarina theft. Otto.

G.T.C. Grand theft, Aquinas. These are all fine. These are all great ideas. It's interesting. I mean, on one hand, GTA 6, as far as we know, is not coming to switch to on that date. On the other hand, Nintendo presumably wants the media attention and social media attention eyeballs that will be taken by GTA. So I don't know.

I don't know. It's interesting to think about. Or maybe Ocarina comes in September or October. Who knows? I'm just very curious what this game is going to be. I mean, this is a remake of one of the most important and beloved video games of all time. even listening to the music in that trailer, it's going to have a whole new score, re-recorded,

all of that amazing music is going to be reinterpreted. There's a lot of room for cool stuff to happen. There's also a lot of room for missteps. We did just play through the original. That was my first time playing all the way through it. And there's something very special about that game. So we'll see. But I'm at least very curious in how they're actually going to handle it.

Yeah, I mean, what is frustrating to your point earlier is that we don't know if this is going to be a remaster that it kind of like Links Awakening was where it's just a dedicated recreation one-to-one with modern graphics or a remake that actually changes things about the game. I would prefer the latter because I feel like we can just play the 3DS version if we want the original. They kind of did that already. But we don't know.

We don't know the answer to that yet. It'd be wild if they actually change the dungeons and I mean that would pull my mind, honestly. And I feel like it would be such an answer to all the people who are like, Modern Zelda doesn't have dungeons anymore. I miss Ocarina of Time. Like, what if they just put it out and it was Ocaryne of Time but with new dungeons? I mean, imagining a remade water temple that it could be really cool.

Oh, man. Yeah, it's pretty exciting. Anything else from the direct to stand out to you guys? I mean, Kingdom Hearts. I get why you are bringing it up, but, you know, they did put out another trailer for that. I will play it. The reason I'm not bringing it up, Maddie, is because they didn't give a release date or even a release window for it. So to me, it was just kind of like more footage.

that looks like Kingdom Hearts. It does. It looks cool. It looks great. It kind of doesn't look like Kingdom Hearts in ways that are weird. Like, Sora just has normal size shoes on. Like, they're not giving him big goofy clown shoes anymore. It's wearing a normal pair of sneakers.

What's up with that? That's going to have lore importance, people. That's going to be a big part of the story. Is he like in Tokyo now? Is that the deal? I don't know. I don't know where he is. I'm really excited about Fire Island Unfortunes.

We had not internalized that that is coming out in September. that's another one of these September games. Well, that was just announced, Kirk. You didn't internalize it because it just came out. Oh, okay, yeah. I missed the stream, so I didn't realize if it had been announced or not. So, man, another September game. One that I'm definitely going to play because I love three houses,

and this one looks a lot like three houses. But, man, one more on the pile of September and a meaty, you know, long tactics role-playing game at that. So that's making September seem even more daunting to me. Yeah, I'm definitely going to play that. I played a pretty significant chunk of Fire Emblem engaged, despite not really caring about the story at all, just because it was really fun to play that game. So I feel like even worst case scenario, I'm going to have a good time with the new Fire Emblem. And best case, it'll be Three Houses level of story and character. I think I saw in a preview that there are four different houses or sort of groups and you pick a protagonist from one of them. Like it has that three houses set up at the beginning where there are multiple stories so you can replay it. And man, I'm so there for this. I can't wait. Man, that is going to be a rough month.

Presumably some of those games are going to slip, but it is going to be... But they won't want to slip because of GTA, though, you know? Well, October. All in October is... It's true. They have one month grace period. Or you slip to December or something. Any other kind of games from like all of the various announcements that you guys saw that stood

out to you? Because I have a few games that I played on the show floor that I want to tell you guys about that were cool. but first I want to hear if there's anything you guys saw that really stood out to you. I'll mention a couple more that I liked. I think Threads of Time looks amazing. That Chrono Trigger-inspired JRP style game.

Holy cow. It was on my radar. I was aware that there was like a Chrono Trigger inspired game. But that demo that they showed during Day of the Devs was super cool. I think just like it looks beautiful. I really want to know more about it and play it. That looked very cool. I believe the developer of that listens to our show

because he came up to me at Dice. Oh, nice. Shoutouts. He came up to me at Dice in 2020. to just be like, hey, I made this game, you should check it out. I'm a fan, whatever. You should check out this game and showed it to me. And then, yeah, they just showcased it in Day of the Devs.

Tell us a few more, Dreadmore, the first person take on Dredge, which is kind of a horror fishing game. Just look neat, looked like kind of different, looked like something that might break through. That was also on the Day of the Dev stream. I don't know if this was on a stream, but they announced a sequel to El Paso elsewhere, the Strange Scaffold game. that's a kind of a Max Payne riff, like OG Max Payne 1, that I really liked that first game. Maybe that and I Am Your Beast,

my two favorite Strange Scaffold games. And I'm excited for a sequel to that. Like, flushing that out and adding some more, the original was kind of bare bones. Could be very cool, and it had a pretty cool story. So I want to know what happens next. And then the last one is another Paramount licensed game, Star Trek Shadow Frontier,

that I missed if it was on a stream and then watched the trailer later. This is like made by Team Bluber, who have gotten pretty good at making horror games. It looks like it's another space horror game, but it's starring Roe-Laron, and it's set in the Star Trek universe. And I've actually never been a while about Ro as a character, Ensign Ro.

I've really only watched Next Generation, so I didn't watch Deep Space Nine where she was more of a character, but she is a little bit of a question mark for me as a character, but a great pick for starring in this kind of game. And just watching the trailer, I was like, okay, I'm at least interested in this. I want to learn more about it. So that's another one that caught my eye.

Yeah, I'm interested in this. I like Deep Space Nine a lot. I will say, I don't know if horror is the genre I would have gone to as a Deep Space Nine fan. I might have just done like a social or like a dating sim. That's kind of more the vibe of that show. It's such a hangout show. But I can put on my big girl plans and play a Bluber team Star Trek horror game. They've definitely like Strange New Worlds has leaned more into horror.

There's kind of more horror stuff in that show. and they lean into, they're just like trapped on an alien planet or like horrible aliens are taken over the ship and it becomes a kind of survival horror situation. Yeah, and they do stuff like that on NextGen as well. You mention it. It's not out of the question. That's certainly what the game looked like. So we'll see.

The Star Trek and the Ninja Turtles game are both under Paramount, which is in an interesting place, having just been bought by David Ellison Skydance and will soon presumably be merged with Warner in some way. So that's really interesting and will be interesting to just kind of keep an eye on. Yeah, they've had a whole press, you know, press initiative or something. There's been a lot of interviews. Yeah, they just announced their new Paramount Games Division. That's why.

Right. And the main thing is, it just seems to me inevitable that we're going to start getting games out of the Sheridanverse, the Yellowstone world, because it's like the most popular TV series in the world. It's, I think all three of us don't watch those shows and aren't very aware of, like, aren't interested. But it's like they're massively popular. And there's a ton of different kinds of games they could make in that world. So that seems very likely to mean now that they're pushing. That's a good prediction. It's too bad you didn't put that in your predictions, Vick.

Maybe next year you should. I like that idea, but do you think the demographic of the Sheridanverse plays a lot of games? I guess I don't know, like, who watches those. Is it older people? So many people. There's so many that it's like. Those shows are incredibly popular. It seems like they'll at least give it a shot and see what happens.

Yeah, I mean, if you could, like, manage the Dutton Ranch and, like, get involved in all of these. whatever, like all the hijinks and the sort of intrigue of that show, like that seems like the kind of game that a large audience would want to play. Those seem like mobile games. Those seem like he should be mobile games. That feels like the best fit for Sheridanverse games. Okay, before we wrap this up and get into one more thing, I do want to tell you guys about some of the games I played.

I played a shitload of games at Play Days, Summer Games Fest, Playdays, which is like the media component of it. I won't list every single one. I'll just give you a few highlights. one is called slap out of it, which is a first person puzzler that I feel like all three of us are going to love. Basically, your arms can just like extend and slap things. And it's a very fun mechanic where you pull the triggers to like extend your arm and slap something. And then you just use that to solve like a bunch of kind of escape room style point and click puzzles.

And it's very charming and hilarious. The art looks a lot like bug snacks. Like these people who look like bug snacks people. Is it a first person game? First person. First person. So you got big long floaty arms like in the, okay. Yeah.

And the story behind the developer is really interesting. It's this developer called Turbo Button. And they made these VR games called Floor Plan. And this game is kind of based on those. You know those? They're like one of the only game developers that made money and was profitable in VR. And that's how they're funding this game. Those games are very highly regarded in a lot of people.

Yes. Yes, they make good games. I've known one of the guys behind it Holden. I've known him forever. And yeah, he's always, been just like navigating this VR world, which has been really interesting. This is their first non-VR game, which will be cool. Nice.

I also, I played some Anemusha. We'll talk about that more when it comes out, but it's cool. I played a game called Valor Mortis, which is a first person. Souls like game set in like this alternate fiction, Napoleon, like 1800s. It's the word of Napoleon. You play as part of Napoleon's army and everyone's coming back as zombies. It's super cool. And it feels really good.

That game, we got to keep an eye on this. That's good to hear because I actually thought that trailer looked kind of sick. It did. It looked to me like the first time I'd really seen understandable, just from a viewing perspective, understandable Souls Combat in first person. So this was made by a team that made that game Ghost Runner, which did really well. That's a great. I played the first one.

Great game. A lot of parkour, a lot of really cool parkour in that game. This takes that to it and adds this like really satisfying, crunchy, like sword combat. And it's really brutal and gore filled. but it's got some good stuff in it. I played that demo, really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed that demo. Also, like, a historical fiction time period that I feel like hasn't,

the depths haven't yet been plumbed. Like, I feel like I don't really see that much Napoleonic War historical fiction. And certainly not in games. So I definitely saw it and was like, oh, this is original and cool. Exactly. It's not like another friggin, like, oh, here's the soul's like in China. It's like a unique setting that we haven't seen before,

which I think is cool. No, no shade on the China games. but there are a lot of them. And a couple more games. I mentioned Bad MacPy. I play Tomb Raider Legacy of Atlantis, the remake. Pretty cool. That's going to be another one that I think we're all going to like and enjoy playing.

Those older Tomb Raider games are great. They are fun. The puzzles are very cool. They're mostly just puzzle games. They're really cool. So I'm looking forward to having a more modernized version. So it's funny you say that because the demo I played had some puzzles and some really cool climbing and fun puzzle solving

and Lara didn't just say the answers to the puzzles and then had a section where like you get chased by dinosaurs and have to shoot them. That part was a little less interesting than the puzzles. Yeah, that famously happens in the original team writer. Looks really good. It's also like pretty silly. Gorgeous looking game.

I played Escape Academy 2. Oh, that's awesome. I like the first one. I think I made it one more thing a while back. Love the first one. Yes, both of you enjoyed that. I really enjoyed that. enjoyed this one, some really cute, fun puzzles. I sat down and played them in co-op with a friend of the show, Billy Shibbley, who is a producer on that game. And we'd love to have come on. I was telling him, he should come on the show and talk about it because he was saying some really interesting stuff that I think would bring a lot to the show. We were talking a bit about some cool stuff. That would be great. And that's cool. You played it in split screen because that is the way to play the original. It's a really fun split screen game. Yes, yes. I mentioned Stranger Than Heaven. One more. Grave seasons.

I didn't get to play a ton of this, but I had seen it last year and was really impressed by it last year. This is a game that is like Sardu Valley with murder mysteries inside of it. And it seems really cool. Keep it on your radar as it's coming later this year. It's essentially just like, like I said, it's a farming game where there's a murder every month or so. And you can like pinpoint these clues and figure out who did it. And different playthrues have different murders. But it's not procedurally generated.

It's all handcrafted. Yeah. This is one of those Bloom House video games. It looks really cool. I'm really excited about it. The demo I played didn't really tell me much because it's not really an easily demoed game. But I really love the art style and I think it looks pretty damn cool. Nice.

But yeah, some of those, a lot of cool stuff coming, I would say. Yeah. Right on. A lot of cool games to look forward to. All right. Why don't we take a break? And then we'll be back for one more thing. Sunscreen companies calculate SPF by testing it on volunteers'

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and brand new episodes going out right now. So, if you want far, far, far too many podcasts, then look for Soundheap on Maximum Fun. Boop, Boop. And we are back. It's time for one more thing. Maddie, start us off. Sure.

I watched a movie from 2013 called American Hustle that I had never seen before. Why did I watch it? Because... I'm still listening to the Chasing Amy Adams podcast. And Amy Adams is in this movie. And she is freaking incredible in it. They actually did, they have completed the run that that podcast is done with Amy Adams.

They've watched all of her movies up to the present day. And they're doing Gwyneth Paltrow next, which is going to be really interesting. Because she's a much more, she's a much more divisive figure. And they're talked about that. So that'll be fun. Did they change the name of the podcast? They changed the name of the podcast. It's called Supporting Actresses Now.

It's like a pun on. the supporting actress award. Oh, that's good. That is good. I actually had to say that. That's a great. Great. Good job. It's actually, yeah, they're great. I really recommend this podcast. I've talked about it. Supporting actresses. I really like it. And when they did their American Hustle episode, I had kind of been like watching along with the podcast and I couldn't find it streaming anywhere when they did that app. But it is very briefly on Netflix right now. So if you're listening to this like very soon, it's leaving Netflix at the end of this month. So if you downloaded this right away and you want to watch this movie on.

Netflix, you can. They weren't so hot on this movie, in part because, I don't know if you two remember, but there was a lot of controversy surrounding this movie because it was directed by David O. Russell, and specifically Amy Adams talked after the fact about how his treatment of her on set was disturbing. And they talk about that a lot on the podcast and go into full detail about the allegations. And I think some people kind of are familiar largely with how Russell has been kind of alleged to be sort of a toxic director and kind of people can look into that on their own time. And the movie,

I do think is really good though and really worth watching. And if not only for her performance, which I think is haunting and incredible and just so understated at times, but also just because the plot is really cool and weird, it's like a highly fictionalized version of a real-life FBI operation that happened in the 70s and 80s. So it's a period piece, which is fun. Everybody gets sort of goofy costumes of the time. And the FBI operation was just completely wild. And reading about the real operation after the fact was also fun. It was called the ab scam operation. Basically, like an FBI handler hired a bunch of con artists to work with him in order to help defraud various politicians into just financial misdealing.

and how they pull off the con is it's fun. I mean, it's fun to watch con artistry, but also there's like some tragedy involved because the con artists, Amy Adams is one of the con artists, and she has kind of a tragic story at the heart of this movie. So yeah, really recommend it

and recommend the accompanying podcast so you kind of know the bittersweet story of the film. So yeah, that's American Hustle, came out in 2013. Still really interesting. Nice. This seems like when I would like more if I rewatched it. I remember I did not care for it when I watched it. I saw it in theaters when it came out and I thought it was a huge mess. It's such a mess. It's so weird. I wonder if I saw it again. If I would just think this is a more, this is a plenty interesting movie that was just fun to watch. I could kind of see that. Yeah. It's like meandering and weird and mostly just Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper and Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence just like playing unlikable characters for a couple hours. An unbelievable cast.

Yeah. So, top of all this. So many amazing actors in it. I remember being interested in it because of the cast, but then hearing what you just said. that was like a mess of a movie. Yeah, a lot of people don't like it, but I kind of enjoyed the ride of it. And I think it helped that I had really low expectations and was like, I know this movie is going to be a mess. But I think the performances are so interesting that it's still worth it. And the con is also interesting. So can't help but have some parts of it be good because of that.

Nice. Okay, Kirk, what's your one more thing? So my one more thing is going to be a very abridged recitation of a crucial recitation of a current event that I only just stumbled into that is like the most insane thing that I'm sure a lot of our listeners are very aware of or at least tangentially aware of. I was pretty not aware of it just because I guess it didn't puncture my internet bubbles. But this is the reckless Ben versus bricks and mini figs fiasco. The two of you are smiling. It looks like you're both aware of this. I have read some attempts to explain what happened. 404 Media has a really long article that I read that it summarized

Yeah, tangentially. I want to hear your kind of explanation of this. Yeah. So I'll tell just my story of experiencing it. I am not going to explain it because it would take forever. Like it really would take like an hour. And also it would be exhausting and I would get a ton of stuff wrong because it's so... Can you put a link in the show notes that like... Labyrinthine? That's what I'm going to do. Okay. Good idea. Yes. I guess I'll say at the very beginning, Mike Maznick at TechDirt has written a terrific 6,000 word breakdown of this. We will link to that. And that is also, I actually found that via the 404 article, which is paywall. 4-4 also has a great breakdown of this.

And things are happening very quickly in this story. There are current events that I don't know if they're in either of those stories, but there have been like, there are updates happening regularly. I first heard about it due to the, like, Jack Conti, Patreon element of this story that came up just fairly recently. And that just led, I think my YouTube algorithm just recommended me. one of these videos. And I just watched it with no context other than knowing there was a thing going on. So you're saying the YouTube algorithm is a great thing for humanity. And it's really

sometimes it's not too bad. So I watched part two, which is a 35 minute video mostly surrounding the police force in this Utah town that this YouTuber gets involved with. And it was like a crazy video and watching it. I just kept thinking, I can't believe this. What in the world? And I went back and started the video from the beginning and had even, I was even more just like drawn in by it. And it was so weird and wild. Can I just say something? There's a Wikipedia page called Bricks and Minnie Figs Reckless Ben Controversy that has 49 references, sources on it. Yes, I have read it.

So anyways, to say I don't want to spend too long without giving a nutshell for people. But I watched these videos and was really drawn in by Reckless Ben's YouTube videos. And then eventually, when I went and read about it, I kind of wished I had started by just reading a big article explaining what was going on. As entertaining as the YouTube videos are, now that I just have, I'm glad I have the whole story. And a little bit of this, like my takeaway from this is kind of start with the just full big picture journalism. Don't start with the really exciting, fun YouTube video that doesn't tell you everything that happened. So that would be my main advice to people is read Mike Maznix article and then go watch the videos because they are very. entertaining and kind of crazy, like, that they exist and are still up on the internet.

But, okay, let me give the really quick nutshell. Basically, this guy named Brian Mansell, his father is getting pretty old. He's in his 80s, and he owns this massive collection of Star Wars Lego sets. They've described it as the world's biggest collection. Who knows? They've said it's valued at like $200,000. It's worth a lot of money. And it's this huge collectible, you know, collection that he's had for a really long time.

And then they wanted to sell it. And so they give it on consignment. They're selling it through this local store in Salem, Oregon, called Bricks and Mini Figs, which is a franchise of like a big company that has like a whole bunch of different franchises in different locations. Then through a series of events, all of this alleged because it's not totally clear everything that happened, even though there's video evidence of some of this. Basically like the franchise closed, corporate came in and repossessed the contents of the store.

and it appears as though Mansell and his father were screwed out of some amount of the Lego sets they had consigned, that they had in consignment at the store. And the store is basically not giving them their money or giving them back the Legos. And there was kind of nothing he could do. Like they said to him, well, yeah, you can sue us, but it's just going to be a huge legal, like expensive legal headache. And, you know, it'll cost you more than you would even get back from us. So what are you going to even do? So this guy goes to YouTubers and he begins trying to tell people like, look, this happened. This sucks. This is like not fair. Some YouTubers like Star Wars or I sorry, Lego YouTubers

start posting about it. They start getting takedown notices from bricks and minifigs or at least saying that they did. And then he reaches out to this YouTuber called Reckless Ben, whose name is Ben Schneider. And Reckless Ben is described in the TechDirk article as T. Mooh Nathan Fielder, which I thought was a kind of a funny description. Maybe a little harsh. He's a young guy. He does kind of the Nathan Fielder thing of like really committing to incredibly elaborate bits that are far more elaborate than they need to be, and then just kind of acting nonpluss when they don't go as expected, even though he's like, well, why? I like did this whole crazy elaborate thing. What's wrong? So Ben Schneider gets a hold of it and he starts going after bricks and mini figs in a number of different ways, and he documents them in this video that it's like, this is over the course of many years, really. It's this long thing of trying to figure out where are the Legos? Can I get them back? Will you return them to this guy?

and kind of just like escalating and constantly like re-engaging and coming back again and again and again to bother these people and try to get them to return the Star Wars figures. It goes from there and I can't describe any more of it. But like at this point, Ben Schneider has gone to Mexico to escape what he says are charges that have been filed in Utah. There's a whole video about this Utah police force that are like that he alleges are in the pocket of the two guys who stole the Legos. He gets arrested multiple times. There's all this dash cam and body cam footage from the cops that they've gotten through like freedom of information that they're posting in the YouTube video. The videos are all redacted, but then people on Reddit are saying that they've released

the real audio. I could go on and on and on. I mean, it's like a thousand. It's an endless rabbit hole. This is going to be a great Netflix documentary. It's funny, actually, a bunch of the comments on YouTube are like, this should be a Netflix documentary. And then the responses will be like, whatever, this is the documentary.

Which I think points to a very interesting place that we're at right now. where YouTube is kind of the place you go to get this incredibly engaging content. I mean, I'm watching this video. I put it on for Emily, and we're just watching it, like, laughing and being like, what are we watching? This is totally wild. But at the same time, it's not a complete picture. As much as it seems likely a lot of the things that they're alleging about the owners of this store are true,

and it does seem really unfair what happened. They, at the very least, seem really shady in sending takedown notices to everybody. It's also like, I don't know, like watching the video does not feel like a complete picture. Certainly not after watching legal experts weigh in on this, reading this tech dirt article where he really breaks down, you know, the ins and outs and all the stuff in different court cases and filings that, you know, aren't included in the video. So I don't know. It is interesting to think there could be a documentary about this later that would not be as engaging as the original YouTube videos, but it would include much more information and tell the whole story. And that's kind of the most frustrating part of this or the least satisfying part is that there was going to be a third video that Reckless Ben was going to post that now he can't. He's been served in one of these many lawsuits.

And basically if he posts the video where it says anything else about bricks and mini figs, I think, he'll like lose. They did a go fund me. He'll lose all the money from the go fund me that he raised for this guy, Brian Mansell. He'll like his, they'll lose a lot of stuff. They could go to jail. Like all this bad stuff could happen. So he posted a short video just saying, all right, normally I would just say, fuck them and post it, but there's like too much on the line and I'm not going to post it.

So this is the last you're going to hear from me. I do not think this is the last we're going to hear about this story. This is, of course, ignited the internet. People are obsessed with it. I can totally see why. And if anyone out there has kind of heard about this a little bit, I would recommend the TechDirt article. And then in that article, he also recommends a video by Leonard French, who is a lawyer with a YouTube channel called Lawful Masses, who did a big video where he's just breaking down a lot of the legal aspects of this. And that is also very interesting.

Like, just the idea that if anybody involved in this had spoken to lawyers much sooner in the process, like, the whole thing wouldn't have happened. The content would not have been as tremendous, but a lot of, the whole disaster of this thing could have maybe been averted. So basically that that Darren Ravel tweet where he's like, I feel bad for America, but this is great content. That's what you're saying. It's very, that was my feeling repeatedly watching the video, the YouTube videos. It was like, well, my God, this content is incredible, even if I have incredibly conflicted feelings about this. And I was very glad I went and read about it.

So, yeah, mostly to recommend that tech-durn breakdown. And just to say, this is a wild story. Like, I can totally see why this has caught on and become as viral as it is. The balance between, like, a story that is quick but incomplete and a story that is thorough but takes a little longer is something that journalism has had to deal with for as long as it's been around, and it's interesting to see that happening in the YouTube era. This is that magnified, right, times a million. My one more thing, I'll go quick.

My more thing is also YouTube related in that it's a book called Yesterday Year by Carol Claire Book. Burke, have you guys heard of this book? It's pretty famous. I haven't. I haven't. It's one of those books that has gone viral because it's like every once in a while, maybe every year you get a couple of books that are like so buzzy that they get a film

adaptation before they even, or a film adaptation green lip before they even come out. That's how I heard about it. In the credits of it, there's like a thanks to Anne Hathaway because she was already working on the film adaptation before the book was even published. Wait until you hear the premise, Matt. The premise is wild. Yeah, Maddie, just wait for it. So the premise

of this book is that it's about a trad wife influencer based on, let me just make sure I have the name. Isn't it ballerina farm? Yes, ballerina farm. Which I have heard of. Okay. It's probably best known trad wife influencer. So this is a trad wife influencer.

This one is called yesteryear. And it's about a woman who lives on a farm and has five kids and lives a rustic life and gets like has farm animals and milkserone cows, yada, yada, yada, sell stuff on the internet. And has a YouTube channel, Instagram, et cetera, et cetera. She's an awful person that has made very clear from the get-go. She has staff who she tries to hide from the internet and they run things behind the scenes. She has a failing marriage. her kids, one of her kids clearly doesn't want to be on camera

it's the whole shabang. But the premise is that at a certain point she wakes up and finds that she is in the 1800s or at least it seems like she is and she is woken up on an actual version of a farm

and has to figure out like to live life that way. So it's like suddenly she doesn't have her electricity and cameras and staff and all this stuff she's a bit of a like revenge fantasy on the part of all of us who would watch such a thing I mean it's and it's so you remember that novel the plot where the guy comes into the you know failed author's office and gives him an idea for a plot that's so good that he seals it this is like that

kind of a plot idea like if you hear that idea you'd be like oh my god this is going to get optioned by anne hathaway to be made into a movie before I've even finished writing yeah you can see why it's been so Buzzy. And the book is pretty good. I don't know if I love the way it all comes together at the end, but I did love the process of reading it and found it extremely enjoyable to read through. If you don't mind, an extremely unlikeable protagonist. And who you definitely, I mean, the book does a good job of like helping you empathize with her and relate to her a little bit. And the problem she went through on her own childhood and like what made her choose this life. there's a lot of good history there, a lot about women and just like how they operate in the world and how do I have to operate.

So there's a lot of good stuff in there. The way it all comes together, I don't know, I have mixed feelings about it. Yeah, I mean, I can't really think of a good ending based on that plot. It's such a great premise, but it is like, well, how would you end that story satisfyingly? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to spoil what happens, but like I don't know if I really bought it or enjoyed it. That said, really recommend the book. it's a great read. Yeah, I want to read it just because everyone's talking about it,

and I'm sure I'll see the movie, and it seems like it's a pretty easy read as well. It's going to be a fantastic movie. Yeah, right on. Yeah, it's really enjoyable. You should both read it. You'll both really enjoy it. Once again, it's called Yesterday Year. You've probably seen it on the bookshelves because it's gone everywhere.

All right, that is it for this week's episode. It is. That'll do it. Kirk and Maddie. I'll 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 maximumfun.org slash join. Email us at Triple Click. at maximum fun.org and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes.

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