Triple Click - Harry Potter and the Cursed Video Game

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Hogwarts Legacy is a brand new video game set in the Harry Potter universe, which would have been a lot more exciting five years ago! Today, however, we have to reckon with the fact that Harry Potter's creator is a bigot. So let's reckon with it, shall we? Jason, Maddy, and Kirk talk about their personal relationships with Harry Potter, their thoughts on the new game, and whether this franchise can ever really be saved. One More Thing: Kirk: Ultra Widescreen GamingMaddy: Below DeckJason: Octopath Traveler 2Links: Gita Jackson’s review of Hogwarts Legacy: https://www.polygon.com/reviews/23603142/hogwarts-legacy-review-harry-potter-jk-rowling-transphobic-ps5-pc-xboxThe Shrieking Shack podcast (it’s so good!): https://soundcloud.com/shriekingshackTriple Click LIVE IN BROOKLYN, May 18th: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/triple-click-live-tickets-513213584647Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

All right, folks, it's time for us to practice our spellcasting. Akio, franchise that isn't chainted by transphobia. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today, we are talking about a new video game called Hogwarts Legacy. There is a whole lot to unpack around this one and the Harry Potter franchise, so let's get into it. I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hello. It's us again. it's us here we are we are here for another episode

to talk about the cursed video game we are cursed video game of the year the unforgivable video game we're talking of course

about Metroid Prime what I wish yeah what if we just did another episode of Metro Surprise there's more to say we were yeah we got to talk

about the second half of Metroid Prime I mean it's true not enough video games to have more falls in them I feel like more games to let you like crush your skeleton into a ball.

Yeah. Just see what happens. Yeah, just see what goes down, you know? Well, there is transfiguration in the game we're going to about. That's true. That's true. But we'll get to that. By the way, did you guys know?

I just found this out today that Triple Click is a listener supported show with no ads. This changes everything. This is vaguely familiar to me. I don't remember where I heard it. I had totally forgotten about it. But today I learned that we're a listener-supported show. And we are able to make the show, possible because of all the members of our network maximum fun and you too can become a member by going

to maximum fund.org slash join. Help us make this show happen. And also you'll get access to our monthly bonus episodes, including one that we are about to put out for the end of February about Ryan Johnson mystery films and a show. So you're going to be talking about brick. We're going to be talking about knives out. We're going to be talking about glass onion and we'll be talking about what is aired so far of poker face. So we're very excited for that. That will air. It'll go up later this week or

Monday. Is that the plan? It'll go up on a day. It'll go up in late February. At some point. And if you become a supporter, you also get access to a giant backlog of bonus episodes. It's good stuff. More value every single month of this

becoming a member. And the price stays the same. Five dollars a month. It's incredible. And it becomes more valuable the more time goes on. we raise it because of inflation like eggs. But anyway, maximum fund.org slash join. Come join today. Also, one more thing, we are going to be, not one more thing, but another thing.

We're going to be playing Perfect Dark, which is Maddie's entry of the video game bet. We are going to be playing through the entire game, or at least as much of it as we can. for the episode that airs on March 16th. And I mention that because I know a lot of people like to play along with us and have in the past. So if you'd like to play along, your deadline for playing Perfect Dark is March 16th. This is the 2010 version of Perfect Dark. You can get it on Xbox right now. I don't think there's anywhere else to get it, right?

I don't think so. I mean, yeah, I also know from the Discord that some listeners are playing Perfect Dark Zero as well, which is like the extra credit assignment, another eight-hour perfect dark game, preferred by some. So if you play eight hours of this game and you just can't get enough of true and a dark. But we're cons of dreaming on perfect dark. Xbox and in rare replay, right? I think it's included in rare replay. And in rare replay, which is also on Xbox.

Okay, so we'll be playing that. And yeah, that's about it. Okay, onwards. Let's talk about the curse game. Today we were talking about Harry Potter and the cursed Hogwarts legacy. So it's interesting. That is actually what I call it. Even the Harry Potter isn't in this game.

Yeah, me too. The Harry Potter game. I'm like, I'm playing the Harry Potter game. There is a new, big budget, original story in the Harry Potter universe. And if you had told people that, I don't know, five years ago, they probably would have been pretty excited because it was an exciting prospect. There haven't really been a lot of just high quality Harry Potter games. Most of them have been movie tie.

There were a couple of Lego ones that people liked, but nothing quite like this, an open world, big budget Harry Potter game. And then JK Rowling became the JK Rolling that we all know today. In 2020, she began openly making comments that are pretty widely perceived to be transphobic, especially about transgender women. We won't litigate everything she's done here, but one important part of this is that she isn't just tweeting. She is also actively opposing legislation that was passed in Scotland to make it easier for people to change their agenda. So she is, again, widely perceived. A whole lot of people have seen her actions and her statements as transphobic and actively harmful to transgender people,

which has also made a lot of people reassess their relationships of the Harry Potter franchise over the past few years and cause a lot of people to give it another critical examination. I think Harry Potter, like anything that's as big as Jesus, has gotten a lot of criticism and kind of like scrutiny over the years. Yeah, sure, totally. For various reasons. But in the wake of Rowling's comments, there's been a lot of like looking at things. And also because the Harry Potter franchise is filled with kind of, let's say, attempts at diversity that are clumsy at best, looking at Rowling's comments

has made those seem a little less clumsy and a little bit more malicious in a lot of people's eyes. So what we're going to be doing today, we've all played Hogwarts Legacy. Hogwarts Legacy, it's worth noting, it's came out on February 10th. It's developed by Avalanche Software

based in Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. Not to be confused with Avalanche Studios, the company that made like Mad Max and just cause and stuff. This is the one that made the Cars 2 video game. It is. And Disney Infinity is probably the most relevant thing that they've made. A couple of things worth noting about that. One is that J.K. Rowling was not involved with the game, but her creative agency, the Blair Agency, the Blair Partnership was. So her people had some say in this whole thing. Another thing worth noting is that the game actually entered development in 2017. So really years before anyone could have had any notion about rolling.

I think people really first started seeing a few clues around 2018. with like tweets she was liking and stuff. But when this game entered development, there was really no public clue that she was. She had the beliefs that she has. And yeah, this game is set 100 years before Harry Potter, which is another kind of important distinction. In 1890.

So yeah, I mean, we're going to talk about this game, but as I've kind of been hinting and as we've all kind of felt, there's no way to approach this game the way we'd approach I don't know, Metroid Prime or any other game because of what the creator of this franchise has said and done. And it's worth noting that even though she wasn't directly involved with the game, she owns the license. She is an active owner and participant in it.

She actually equates support of her books and her franchise with support of her beliefs. So there's no way to separate the art from the artist in this case. And we won't be doing that or even trying to do that. Instead, we're going to talk about this game. with proper context. And so with that said, why don't we talk a little bit, I'm going to kind of float it around the three of us,

why don't we each talk a little bit about kind of our relationship with Harry Potter, how we feel about it today, and then also our kind of broad impressions of the game given that. Kirk, do you want to start us off? Sure. My, boy, my history with Harry Potter, it's hard to think back because I've spent the last few years kind of deprogramming that and challenging it and thinking about it,

listening to The Shrieking Shack, learning more and more about J.K. Relling. We're talking about the Shrieking Shack a lot on this episode, I think. And to explain that to anyone who doesn't know, they're a very good Harry Potter podcast that has read through the books. Harry Potter reread and reappraisal podcasts is usually how I describe it. So by listening to that show, it's helped me sort of re-appreciate or re-approach the books from when I read them. So they came out in what? The mid-late 90s, and I was just out of-190, 1986 is the first one.

So I didn't read them at first, and then when I was going off to school, so I was around 99, 2000, I listened to the first one on tape. I think a lot of people listen to these books on tape, read by the wonderful Jim Dale. And that was a pretty good way to experience the books because their children's books, the writing isn't, you know, incredibly deep or anything. They were just kind of these charming little kid stories full of wish fulfillment. silly magic, especially the first couple. And I listened to this honey-voiced British man read-me stories as I drove down to school in Miami, and

you know, it was great. I thought they were charming. And then, I think the fourth book was out by then, so at that point I started reading them when they came out. They were just so low-calorie. They came out, you read them in one day. It was fun. I wasn't really involved in any internet fandom or fan fiction writing or anything

like that. I just kind of read these books, talked about them briefly with my sister. And then, like, kind of over time grew exhausted by them because the books become kind of dark and dower and exhausting by the end, and they pretty much fully leave behind that lighthearted childish whimsy, and they become these stories of war and sacrifice. And it's just, you know, at the time, I don't think I could have told you that I, you know, that the world building didn't support that narrative shift, but the Shrieking Shack and also

just my own evolution as a critic, those things have kind of helped me understand. Oh, it was like a pretty flimsy foundation that worked fine for a children's story and then couldn't support the development of this idea into something more fleshed out. So that's kind of my original, I guess that's my relationship now with the books and with the stories. Then the movies are fine. They're cute. Some of them are okay. I haven't really seen the fantastic, I like the first Fantastic Beast movie was okay. And then at that point, all the stuff with Rowling started coming out and the series just started feeling increasingly poison. And then those movies. And also the stuff with Johnny Depp was coming out and Rowling backed him, which I feel like was

one of her early internet controversies that she waited into and then it's just been what it's been since then yeah those movies just seem pretty dire like no one even understands why they're being made i haven't seen the most recent ones and don't really care about them i don't know if they're still going to be made right it's an open question the last one bombs i think i'm not surprised i said i just read reviews that were like what the fuck basically yep so yeah that's that's me uh well so what about before we go to mattie what about thoughts on the game oh Yeah, how far are you? I just got to the part where you begin saving animals by sucking them into your safety bag.

Yeah, by poaching them. Eric is using scare quotes to describe this. The listener can't see that. Yeah, but I feel it's necessary to say this. It's one of so many examples of how this game, like, tries to have it both ways. You know, like, you do things and then they tell you that the thing you're doing is actually good. Because it's just not really... Well, which is also like Harry Potter in a nutshell.

That's what I'm saying. Harry does it, it's good. And what everybody else does it, it's bad. And that just is one example. But that's how far I am in the game. So I may be like six or seven hours. And it made a great first impression as a game. You know, I was really, I'm really impressed by the work that these developers did, building Hogwarts.

The art design is really impressive. Obviously, they had a template to go off of because it looks a lot like the films. But it's, I mean, you know, those opening hours, I totally understand why. especially people who aren't really plugged in or aware of the stuff with JK Rowling, that's probably harder to be these days. Well, I actually think it's not hard to be that. I think if you're not on Twitter and you don't really pay that much attention. I disagree.

The near time story was about rolling and the game. Like, everything, Reddit, it's everywhere. No, I think most people are aware to some extent. Not to get too into what other people think. Basically, like, I can play it and kind of see why this game sold a billion copies because it is like a very convincing Hogwarts. And then the game has just revealed itself to be a fairly tedious open world game.

And then at the point I'm at, I was like, I'm like, I don't care, man. There's so many other games I'd rather be playing. Like, this just feels like any other open world game with the Harry Potter layer on top. But there are goblin camps, you see. It's almost like a metaphor for something that seems pretty cool when you first see it.

First few hours, and then as time goes on. Collecting deathly hallows for some reason, or whatever the heck those are. The Deathly Hallows were planned from the beginning. No, they weren't. Listen to the freaking shack. No, they were not. I'm a shrieking shack truth are now.

They were not. Is it my turn? Yeah, sure. Anyone can go on. I'm acting like it's my turn. Maddie, go ahead. All right, sure. So I was 10 when the first book came out, my mom bought it for me.

I was Harry's age as I read all of them. This is the classic story. I was a total fanatic. Right, you're the exact right age. Wrote fan fiction, read fan fiction, was one of the people who was very alarmed and upset. when J.K. Relling didn't support fan fiction. I was a big serious remis shipper. This is one of my early queer ship. Wolf star, right? Still kind of a serious Ramos truther on some level. Still kind of feel like that's in there, even though both of them are seemingly straight in the books. Was very disappointed by

the epilogue at the end of book seven. And I think that that really sums up the rigid thinking with which JKR approaches her politics and also has approached her own books over time. She, really locked down, this is the canon. And anything outside of the canon that I personally create is false. And so pretty early on, even as a fan, I started being like, yeah, I'm going to ignore you. I'm going to ignore that. So although it was very upsetting to me when she started speaking publicly about her views on trans people. And I think I talked about it on this show because it was around when the Harry Potter mobile game by Niantic had come out. And Dina and I were playing it. together because we're both also Pokemon Go old timers.

And so we tried the new one and it's pretty fun. It's fine. It actually ended up getting canceled by Niantic or not canceled, but I don't think it can be downloaded anymore because it wasn't very popular. But I remember I stopped playing it because JKR was talking a lot more about her views on trans people and being bigoted in my view. So I just uninstalled it because it started to leave a sour taste in my mouth. That's when I started listening to the shrieking shack as well and really love that.

show. The host, Zisi and Liz, are excellent, and I just think everybody should listen if they want on program from Harry Potter fandom, especially if they were as deeply embedded as I was. Liz wrote a lot of Snape fanfic, and she's very humanizing about fanfic writers. And it's just really nice to hear two people who were both super into the books unpacking what doesn't work about them over time. And also, I would say their discussion of the first book is quite positive, because the first book is, I would agree with them the strongest in the series.

And from then on, it just, the world can't really be supported by its own weight. And so the game, I think, also betrays a lot of these same problems as well as some of the rigid thinking of J.K. Rowling, which we can get to as we talk about some of the ways that magic works in the game and so on. And also even the

portrayal of diversity in the game. And house selves. Oh, boy. Talk about a discomforting trope that she decided to include. But I'm 20 hours into the game. I've heard it's 30 hours. I don't intend to beat it because I'm extremely bored. And I probably won't play it anymore after this. But I am 20 hours in.

I believe I'm level 19. And my coworkers have said that you can beat the game around level 25. So I'm quite far. And I'm sure with another 10 hours, I could beat it. But I don't know that I'm going to. But Jason, how far? are you? I'd like to hear what you think of the game. And Harry Potter. Well, so, okay, so I'm, I was never really obsessed with Harry Potter, but I was an early adopter because my mom, uh, used to work for, uh, a book

publisher and she brought home the books early. And I got like a galley copy of the third book, which I wonder if it's worth something. I don't know if it's, I bet it is. I don't know if we still have it even, but whatever. Um, so I, I read them all as they came out. And in fact, I think I've talked about this on the show before, but I remember the, uh, I got, uh, like the seven book leaked early and I was a camp counselor at the time and I remember reading an early like a pirated PDF version before it came out and then using spoilers as a threat to get the kids to do what I wanted. I remember this Jason's story. It was amazing. I had like a week of just full control over every single camper. Wow. Incredible. What's funny is that I was actually the type of counselor to just let the kids do

what they wanted, but like sometimes you need to whip them into shape. But anyway, um, if you say so, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was the worst, well, I was the worst concert because they would be, it would be, like, all right, like, we have to wake up and do, it was Jewish camp, we had to do, to feel up prayers every morning. And I was just like, if you guys want to sleep through it, I don't care, just don't wake me up. Anyway. Anyway, um, so yeah, I, I always really liked him, but, um, didn't, it wasn't, like, obsessed or anything, just enjoyed. It was like a, a, an enjoyable thing that I had. And then the movies were fun.

Yeah, I didn't really care about the movies. I didn't say that. But yeah. Yeah, I mean, whatever. It was just a fun part of my life. And the idea of exploring Hogwarts seemed really cool to me. So when I started playing this game, I actually got really into it for a little while because Hogwarts in this game is incredibly impressive.

A few other things about this game are impressive. There's a lot of problems of this game. But Hogwarts itself is just designed meticulously. There's all sorts of cool stuff. little secrets everywhere, little fun little things you can interact with, little puzzles, one little math puzzle that I thought was going to be a lot more

interesting and fun that it actually was, because I thought it was going to be this big, like, castle-spending logic puzzle, but then it turns out, well, it turns out that you just find the answers like in a corner somewhere, like in a class or something. So something seems deep and interesting and then turns out to the finish out. It's a really deadly hell of situation in a lot of ways you might say.

There are a lot of problems. The combat is really repetitive and unwieldy because of all the spell wheel switching. There are a lot of spells that are just kind of pointless and redundant. And it's really, it's really not a good game in a lot of ways. But it also, it has like a hint at something cool and could have been something cool. I think maybe if it was like instead of trying to be this like traditional

AAA open world combat game, if it was trying to be like a school fun game with like persona quality or Bully. Bully. Those are the people I've been using. Where you're actually managing a schedule

and going to school. I think that could have worked pretty well for this. Which really, I mean, so there's this giant map and Hogwarts Castle is in the northmost tip

and there's like miles and miles of like Scottish countryside. And it all looks the same and it's the most boring just like classic medieval villages. And then you get a broom and you just fly over it.

You just fly around and you get a hippogriff and you fly around also but on a hippocryf you want. It's like, here is a game where you have this incredible recreation of Hogwarts so they could have gone even deeper on. And instead, it's like, you know, go off in the Scottish countryside. No, do goblin camps.

Yeah, do some loyalist evil goblins. Which is like it's Skyrim. It's also a lot of bugs. Like I had common encounters like to keep restarting because they would just like go all malfunctioning and stuff. Anyway, I think you're talking about bugs literally like all the spiders that you fight. Like I thought you're going to talk about the spiders. Yeah. There are a lot of bugs.

There are a lot of spiders. And it's interesting. I think the game really just like kind of touches out a lot of the problems that Harry Potter has in general. But it's also missing the biggest thing that made Harry Potter so successful, which is mystery. Every single Harry Potter book has at least three core mysteries that just like Harry and his buddies are trying to solve. And it doles out hints over the course of the book. And twists usually. And towards the end, you get like some.

Mysterious identity or something. and so isn't who you thought they were. That's the best part of those books. Yeah. And like halfway through the book, maybe you'll get the answer to one mystery and then a little bit later, another. And it's, for all of Rowling's fault,

she is an extremely competent mystery writer and she's very good in each of these books. It's setting up the mystery and letting it unfold and like pacing it really well. And that's part of what makes these books so appealing is that like you have these characters who are trying to juggle their schoolwork while also solve these mysteries.

There's nothing like that in the, this game. Instead, the plot of this game is like you are going on these quests with your, with your Dumbledore, whatever, his name is fig or something to figure out why there's ancient magic or something. It's never actually really made all that clear. And there's no mystery. There's no central question. There's no themes. There's just nothing interesting to keep you compelled. And when you combine that with all the other kind of boring, monotonous stuff, it just does not make for a very good game. And yeah, I mean, it really is. is just like, like we've still been saying, just this surface level of like, oh, cool,

Hogwarts. Oh, this is so much fun. Oh, wait. I've been playing for a couple hours. And now it's actually pretty boring. Yeah. I keep saying Deathly Hallows because actually the structure of this game really reminds me of the seventh book for a lot of reasons in just the same way that the seventh book reminds me

of a boring video game where Harry has to collect a certain number of mystical objects and destroy them before the final boss battle with Voldemort. And when you're reading the book, it feels that way. the Shrieking Shrek Rearie really reminded me of how tiresome that aspect of the book felt. And this game is very similar in the sense that instead of the Deathly Hallows, it's this concept of ancient magic, capital A, capital M, that suddenly introduced a concept that has never hitherto been in Harry Potter, just as the Deathly Hallows had never hitherto been there. But suddenly it's as though all the characters of, or at least certain characters at Hogwarts

have heard of this before. And it's sort of obscure, but it is known about. And you have to go around and discover these ancient magic sites and unlock. these trials from ancient magic wielders and you do a series of trials sort of like you're unlocking each of the Deathly Hallows and you're prepping for a boss battle that I'll never get to because there's just no urgency to it. Like they keep trying to tell me, oh, it's extremely urgent that you do these trials and understand how ancient magic really works before the evil goblin guy and the evil wizard who's working with him find it. But it's not clear why. And it just

doesn't work because I'm like, this isn't even from Harry Potter, for one, but that isn't even really my issue. Kirk, you look like you want to say something, so I'll throw it to you. Yeah, well, right. Like, I don't have an issue with the fact that they invent ancient magic or they're playing fast and loose with the continuity or the rules because Harry Potter's rules don't really make any sense and it's okay for them to just make shit up because that's how it's called from the beginning. Exactly. It doesn't matter. But the approach to characterization is a real issue for this game because there are no characters in this game. I mean, this game feels more like an amusement park At times a really beautifully rendered digital amusement park,

but more like an amusement park than like a story that you're actually experiencing. Like there aren't really characters in this game. I keep meeting other students and you kind of get a little sense of who they are, but they don't do anything. They don't really have arcs and change me. Maybe that changes after 10 hours or whatever I've played, but I don't really think so. I'm 20 hours in and I still feel like Sebastian and Natty are pretty one note each. And they're kind of your two buddies who you can get along with, right?

out. Sebastian's story goes to dark places. I'm sure it does. He changes. Yeah, I'm about to go visit his sister or something. He becomes evil. So regardless of them, the protagonist is not a character at all. Has no backstory.

Essentially exists as a tabular rasa who just appeared and has powers. And maybe something about your character is explained later, but it's very different from Harry Potter, who is both on the cover of the books. It is Harry Potter and the so-and-so. And also is the central... figure, like his backstory is central to the overarching story. And is the underdog story that hooks you in initially? Like, it's this child who's being mistreated and sleeping under the stairs.

It's such an evocative image. You instantly want to learn more about this kid's world. And you root for him when he finds out he's a wizard. Whereas in this game, I'm like, I don't even know who this is. Why is this so cool and surprising that at 15 years old, I'm suddenly being accepted to Hogwarts? That's what's so unusual about your character is that you're very old and they've suddenly discovered that you have magical abilities. But somehow that manages to be incurious and uninteresting.

It takes the whole thing as a given because it's just about the fantasy of going to Hogwarts. And you don't want to go to Hogwarts as a first year because then you don't get access to any cool spells or anything. So, you know, they have to put you in at level five. And you are a video game protagonist. And that I think is the thing that they've opted for in this world by making it like an amusement. Park, by creating it to just be a kind of flat, straight-up fantasy of being a Hogwarts student, they've removed any character from your protagonist and then removed any story, which is something that happened to the Harry Potter books over time, something that they reflect on a lot on

the Shrieking Shack and that I thought as well when I was, you know, kind of revisiting those stories, Harry becomes less of a well-defined character over the course of the books. He starts as actually, he's kind of got attitude. He's like this downtrodden, you know, kid who's, you know, really suffered a lot. A little sarcastic. Right. But he's also insecure. He gets so scared. He goes to Hogwarts. It's really engaging when you're kind of seeing Hogwarts from his point of view in the first book.

And then over time, he gradually becomes a video game character. This is something Liz and Zisi talk about a lot, is how he'll have conversations that are just straight up fallout three conversations where it's just like one piece of backstory and then he advances the quest and gets a piece of information. Yeah, or then he talks

to a new NPC who tells him one more piece of backstory and then he goes to the next one. So Ron and Hermione are both characters, though they both also are like written very inconsistently and sort of changed. But Harry really just, he gets hollowed out, especially in the middle books and toward the end, and he just becomes a kind of avatar for the story to continue. And that's totally what it felt like I was playing in this game as well. I just was, I had no connection to my character because she's just this kind of blanks, I mean, she can kind of be a little sassy or a little nice, depending on what I choose, but there's no there. There's no character. So as a

result, it just really feels artificial in a way that the books also, especially as they went on, began to feel artificial. It feels like I think part of that is the victim of a game that's trying to do too many things. A game like this could have benefited quite a bit from either a companion system where you actually get to know some of the students by taking them along on quest with you or a class, some sort of class system where you're actually like taking classes and learning things and getting to know the teachers and students. Or a party system like persona where you're like with your group of friends and you all get to know each other and go to class together.

But yeah, go on. The best part of this game is just walking around Hogwarts Castle and exploring. The worst part is pretty much everything else because it all feels so half baked because it's a game that is trying to do everything. It's trying to just like throw in combat and outposts and achievements and quests and flying and riding and poaching. And this entire like system based around the room of requirement where you. You have to, like, do the Sims thing, but, like, there's no one to show it to, and it just exists in your own little personal space. So there's no point to it at all. But I think that that's, like, that's one of the problems of this game.

And one of the reasons that you were feeling like there are no real characters in it is just because it's, like, instead of going in deep on a couple of things and doing them really well, it's just trying to scratch the surface of everything. It's notable to me that my characters, most of my characters' interactions are with teachers. and the teachers are like my friends. Like I'm kind of this weird kid who occasionally hangs out with other kids, but is mostly off meeting with this teacher and that teacher and this teacher. Harry Potter's kind of like that too. He is a little like that. Well, no, but Harry Potter has, but he has friends.

I mean, his two friends are like the finding relationships of the series. And I like, there's nothing like that for my little Hogwarts student. Right. Because you're introduced to the game through the lens of like he has BFFs with this guy, Professor Figg. And Professor Figg is like your big men. mentor companion and he'll go on all these big quests with you. And so you don't have like the perspective of the student who's just kind of trying to make his way through the school and deal with authority figures who are trying to.

Yeah, it just kind of messes up a school like a school child fantasy like going to a boarding school. You're supposed to be off getting in trouble and like playing with other kids, not off hanging out with teachers. Yeah. Well, there's no such thing. Every professor is just nice to you. There's no getting in trouble. There's no sense. You can't really get in trouble.

You can't even, you can even sneak around the entire. Castle a night, which like doesn't really fit with Harry Potter lore. Yeah, you can basically do whatever you want and get out of anything. I want to get at something else that I find really interesting about this game. This game is the most diverse thing that exists in the Harry Potter franchise. This is a game, well, I want to get to that in a second, but this is a game that has a gay couple, at least one gay couple, at least one transgender character. It has more black people with speaking roles, more black people speaking,

than any movie. More Asian, more South Asian characters. This is a game that's just extremely diverse and feels deliberately so in some ways. It feels almost like it's kind of like a thumb in the eyes her Rawlings' viewpoints and her very white worlds. But also it raises questions and Gita Jackson's excellent review on Polygon and Polligan asked some of these questions,

which are what the hell happened to all the ground people in Hogwarts over 100 years? Like, do they all disappear? or what? And that again, that gets at this central question to this game, which is that like, is Harry Potter as a franchise? Is that just forever tainted because of all the problems it has? Is it possible to ever like redeem this franchise and make something that feels like genuinely like good and diverse and meaningful and poignant out of the Harry Potter universe? Yeah. Well, I think part of the issue with that is just the intense hold that J.K. Rowling has had over her series as compared to other sort of comparable major storytellers of our time.

Like, okay, Stephen King's pretty persnickety about adaptations of his work, but he lets them happen. He lets other people adapt Stephen King things and people are allowed to come up with other ideas. And I was thinking about George Lucas and Mark Hamill has said, you know, to the people who interpret Luke Skywalker as a gay character. And there are many, especially because in the films now they've done away with all the jade marriage and the books. Those aren't canon anymore. So there's a lot of Luke is gay fans out there.

And Mark Campbell's explicitly said, like, that's great. You can interpret the character however you want, which again is the type of thing that J.K. Rowling has explicitly not done and has instead come out repeatedly and said, no, there's a canon to these characters and what you're saying is incorrect. It's worth noting that Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter, has actually come out and explicitly said the same thing that Mark Campbell said, which is very cool of him. Yes, which is very cool. I mean, some of the actors have kind of, and Daniel Ronecliffe, most notably perhaps,

although Emma Watson's also come forward to, you know, say she disagrees with things that Relling said. But they're in a different position than Mark Hamill where George Lucas, I mean, I have a lot of problems with that guy and some of the stuff that is in his work that I think is racist. But for better or worse, the guy has let go of Star Wars in a pretty major way. And there's a whole lot of other people who make Star Wars shit now that's very different from a new hope. And you could look at Andor and be like, wow, the Rebel Alliance is pretty freaking racially diverse. and ethnically and sexuality-wise, diverse on Andor, but then in a new hope, it's like three white people. That's kind of weird.

But it doesn't feel as strange because Star Wars is ever shifting, and it's also this fantastical world that, you know, times change. And George Lucas has seemingly let go of the idea of that. And J.K. Rowling just, she's still fucking there. It's like you can't get away from that. So my question is actually a little bit broader, is a little bit deeper than that because I don't think that, like, I'm wondering if the Harry Potter franchise is,

is even like something that can exist to support like this broader canon or if it just falls apart under scrutiny. I mean, Kirk, you were asking when we were all chatting a few days ago and you were like, so wait, are people in paintings just alive or what? That's the perfect question of like, of this lore, this Harry Potter lore where it's like, oh, who cares if someone died? Because you could just talk to them in their painting forever. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff. Can you redeem the house elf stuff? There's a lot of stuff in the Harry Potter franchise that just like doesn't hold up when you think about it too much.

The paintings being one of them. A lot of the spell lore being another. A lot of the fact that like a lot of problems should or could or in theory like should be able to just be solved with some of the spells that exist in this world. Like why isn't everyone just drinking the luck potion and just like saving the world constantly by doing everything perfectly? Like there's a lot of problems with the lore. And so I'm wondering, rolling aside, can this lore really support this big major universe? I think the two things are related. And I think we'll find out, I mean, given the sales of this and the enduring popularity of the world of Harry Potter, like, I think we're going to find out the answer to this question.

People are going to keep making stuff. Definitely, yeah. A sequel is almost certainly coming from this. This will be shocked if it wasn't. I do think you can't separate those two things out because Rowling's hold on the series. is reflected in the way the series hasn't really been able to flourish in the way that Star Wars,

which I think is a very good comparison, has been able to. It hasn't been as long, so that's part of the issue. But it's also that Rowling hasn't sold Harry Potter and George Lucas did sell Star Wars. There's kind of three phases to these things. If you look at those two, at least,

as being similar, like the first phase is the person, usually like the one person driving the thing, like makes it, and it's cool and very popular. So Star Wars, the original trilogy. And then there's the second phase, which is... Phase two, the prequels. Or Fantastic Beasts.

The same creator is involved and wants to make something in the world, but they already made the thing that everyone liked, so they make something totally different and no one likes it, which is the prequels because he didn't want to tell the same story. You know, all credit to him, he gave it a shot to do something different. And, you know, it wasn't as widely liked. And yeah, with rallying, it's like, well, what if we told the story about adults? And then it turns out, no, people are like, no, we want to go to Hogwarts.

We like Dog Wars. We weren't really that into the politics of America during whatever. Like, we want to go to school and, like, do school stuff. So then the third phase is totally, you know, new creators come in, breathe new life into it, remedy a lot of the issues that are there, you know, add modern sensibilities. The Clone Wars cartoons era, if you will. Well, and like with Star Wars, it's ongoing. I mean, ever since Lucas sold Star Wars, we just get a million different types of Star Wars.

And the expanded universe was kind of a first draft of this. too, where there were just people making all kinds of stuff. The closest thing to that is kind of the Harry Potter world of Harry Potter fan fiction, because both of those, you know, the extended universe is also not canon anymore and has been kind of erased, but of course still lives on in the hearts of the people who made and enjoyed it. So there's kind of this similar trajectory that you can see. And I can see, especially this game as being this kind of planting a flag for the third

phase of Harry Potter because it's like, okay, you want Hogwarts? Here's Hogwarts. This is the thing. This is the fantasy. This is what everyone wanted. But there's this big difference and that's that Rowling is still in charge. So first there's a kind of, you know, moral question of just my money is going to her and she's supporting these causes that I really don't agree with. So like that sucks. And there's also just that she's kind of maintaining creative control in some way where, because she won't let go. Which then also her unwillingness to let go has been an issue this whole time and is borne out in so many things about Harry Potter. Like, it feels like a world created by someone who doesn't want to let go of stuff, who is very, there's a lot of rigidity to it. Just in the weird, like, caste system of the world, the way that wizards are above goblins and have selves, the way that, like, everything is put in these little boxes and everyone's categorized and sorted. A person who created that world is also a person who won't let go of that world and will make it more difficult for to become the vast multinational, multi-billion-dollar entertainment conglomerate that it's so, so, so, badly wants to be. Well, it already is that. The question is more, my question is more can like really good, can an andor come of the Harry Potter universe. But look, but what you guys, I mean, Star Wars,

I actually don't think it's a great comparison because Star Wars, if you look at the original trilogy and even the prequels, the rules that it establishes are not very sweeping. They are not very specific. Like all into saying is this universe, here's this, this galaxy far, far away, where there are Jedi and there's the force and there's the spiritual concept and there's an empire crushing people and you can tell any story you want from that. This is so much more specific and it has so many more detailed rules from everything from like the way that the curses work to the spells to the paintings to have all this stuff mudbloods and house elves and everything you just described that makes it a lot more difficult for something to break out and become a story on its own. If you try to

tell an andor about in the harry potter world about like wizards living in the scottish countryside or something, you'd still have to follow all of J.K. Rowling's rules if you wanted it to be a proper canon Harry Potter's story because there's so much shit that you have to think about there. So what I'm saying is that kind of, I feel like the franchise is just like other than Harry Potter, which I mean cultural phenomenon, give it credit for that. It's a great story in a lot of ways. I don't think that you can really do much else with this franchise that is all that interesting. And I think Hogwarts Legacy is kind of a good example of that. So the similarities that I see are just in the broad movements of the vast IP.

That's what I'm talking about. The specifics of the universe. I get it. And I think that the differences in the specifics are instructive and very interesting. Of course, they're very, very different. And one of the main reasons for that is that George Lucas did not wholly write and control Star Wars. He came up with the concept. But from the very beginning, it was a collaborative effort.

You know, other people designed the characters. Other people wrote the film. Someone else directed the second movie. I mean, it was always collaborative. and it feels bigger than one person where the world of Harry Potter was straight up invented by one lady she invented all of it

and like it was all from her head so it feels really different it's more specific and it reflects I think her personality and her personality you know traits a little bit more directly but I don't know I mean I could I don't know if this will happen

I could very easily imagine a wonderful story being told in the world of Harry Potter where someone two wizards living in a you know, small town somewhere. And someone just tells a good story about good characters with a good backstory. And like, there's some magic, but who cares? It's not central. It's just a good story. I could see that happening.

Okay, but look at the, okay, the diversity in Hogwarts Legacy, I think, really is just one of the points that I'm trying to make here, right? Like, you have this game that, like, should be lauded and I think deserves to be, and it should be praised, and I think it's really cool that, like, it has this, one of your

companion options is this woman from Africa who like is a black woman who has a lot of speech like like a lot of lines a lot of screen time and she's represented in a way that we don't often see in these big budget video games the fact that there's a trans character the fact that there's like a gay relationship I think that's really cool but because of the harry potter franchise has established that hoggarts in 1999 or whatever is this like lily white place full of just like the the the most like i mean rolling's view of the world. Yeah. One Jewish student.

There's one Jewish student named Anthony Goldstein, who's in Ravenclaw. Is he allowed to celebrate Hanukkah? Because we all celebrate Christmas there. The funniest part about that is that I don't, I think he might be mentioned once in the books as like a one-liner. But other than that, he just exists. I need to know more.

He just exists in her tweets. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if he feels, I bet he feels really left out with like all of Hogwarts's Christmas themes. I know. All the freaking Yule celebrations? Oh, my God. I would be so annoyed.

But also, what exactly is Christmas there? I mean, these are the kinds of questions that the, But the book doesn't really want you to ask because you should ask. I mean, Jesus still exists. It's still like a normal world. Yeah, Jesus is a wizard. Well, I mean, Hitler is a wizard in this world, right?

So it's like, Jesus is a wizard. Anyway, point being that it's really hard to go, like, it's really easy to stay within the Star Wars canon and tell other stories. I think it's a lot harder with Harry Potter. But anyway, point being that, like, I think that this franchise for a lot of people has just kind of been irreversibly tainted. and I'm curious to hear what you guys think of that because for me at least it's really it's going to be difficult like I'm still I don't know I have to talk to my wife for a long time about like are we going to tell her like introduce our kids to the Harry Potter books to the Harry Potter films like is that a good thing for our kids to enjoy do we have to contextualize it in some way like for me the series have certainly been tainted in some ways even if I'm not like I will never touch anything Harry Potter again because I don't really think that way about anything it's still. feels like it has all this baggage attached. So I'm curious, do you guys feel like there's anything

in Harry Potter worth holding on to? Would you be like checking out this game if not for this podcast? Do you think that like that you'll like check out Harry Potter things in the future? I mean, well, for one thing, I agree with you that it's it's cool that the game is diverse because I do think a lot of just regular people will play it and won't necessarily be aware of JK Rowling's politics. I do think there are people out there like that. I don't know how big a percentage. And so for those people, I'm like, yeah, I would rather than play a more diverse version of Hogwarts. I would rather them have that because the books don't have that no matter how you slice it.

So in that sense, yes, I think it's a net good. Yeah, it is. But also for me personally, I can't divorce the baggage from Harry Potter. It is tainted for me. And that's just for me, even leaving aside the financial aspect of it, which also troubles me. And I certainly wouldn't have personally purchased this game. and other than getting a review copy and covering it for work and for this show. That's the only context in which I would play it.

But that's because for me, Harry Potter's been tainted by J.K. Rowling. And that's just where I'm at. But also, with regard to the diversity in the game, playing it was super weird for me because it reminded me of how much I felt like I wasn't represented in the original books and how old 13-year-old Maddie was shipping Sirius and Ramos. and, you know, I remember how I felt about it back then and then to just play this game where it's like, oh, there's these two lesbian teachers

and an interracial relationship in 1890? Like, first of all, the depiction of the wizarding world here is basically just as this radically significantly more progressive world than the actual real world in 1890, where, I mean, in most countries, slavery had only very recently, human slavery had only very recently been outlawed. And I kept thinking about that,

like there's this Jamaican guy from Jamaica, who sells tomes and scrolls, and he talks about being from Kingston, and, like, his family was bakers, and he decided to sell tombs and scrolls. And I'm like, well, I guess your family was all wizards because the other Jamaicans were enslaved in Jamaica until, like, 1850 or so.

Like, these are the kinds of things that I was thinking about. And I think that's such a fascinating thing to write about and to do a story about. And, like, the idea of transfiguration existing and, like, how do queer people feel about that? And like we have this trans witch in the game. And I would have loved if she had like gotten into it and been like, you know, medical science has made certain advancements for trans health care, but so has St. Mungos and like here's

how that works. Like that to me is fascinating. Like I don't want to get too far off track here, but I read this queer comic called El Gunas Shive, which is all about like trans characters and queer characters and dealing with transfiguration magic. And there's like wizards in that comic. And like what I love about that comic is that the author is like, yeah, this is like a thorny topic. Let's dive into it.

What would it be like if trans people? had access to magic. What would happen? And like J.K. Rowling just seems like such an incurious person to me that it's sad to me that the books or whatever, not the books, the whole world, the wizarding world can't navigate that and be like, what would the characters do with this level of magic? Because she hasn't been interested in that and she's still got a stranglehold on the franchise. So I don't know. I guess I'm just waiting for her to either sell it or pass away, which will happen someday because we're all only human. And then maybe somebody will tell an interesting story with these ideas. But until then, I just feel like it can't happen. It feels trapped.

It feels trapped in this weird box that she has it in. It's telling of her in curiosity that the one journalist character in the books is like the worst. The worst character. Any final thoughts? That also goes to her like using the books to pick personal bones, right, with the tabloids and things she didn't like. Yeah, no, I think, I mean, it'd be one thing if the Harry Potter books were better, but they're just not that good. There's so much other fiction for kids in this age range. Anamorphs. Sure.

Anamorphs. So the source material is had a certain spark and was very popular and retains a sort of cultural footprint that seems like the best argument for learning about this stuff is just that a lot of people are talking about it. Hold on one second. Sorry to interrupt you, Kirk. I just don't want to sell this too short because a lot of kids, into reading because of Harry Potter.

And it should, like, it does, for all of Rolling Sins, I think it deserves, like, it shouldn't, we shouldn't rewrite history to make it seem like Harry Potter, like, didn't have a positive impact on the line. No, I'm not. I'm sorry, this is, this is personal and specific. So, like, my nieces have read, my older niece read through those books with my sister. And the thing about those books is that they get kind of weird, like, especially, I don't know, like, people got older as they read them.

So they were older when the final book came out compared to when the first book came out. But there's just something off about the later books. Like they really kind of do lose the thread in a way that other series don't necessarily. So I really do kind of think like the books are not essential childhood reading. They're just not quite on the level of, you know, some of the other grades. But also like it's going to remain culturally ubiquitous. Like it's going to remain a really big thing because it's making a lot of money and that means there will be more of it. And I do think that it's going to come down to people, creative people, having the freedom

to move beyond simply, you know, telling their own story and including more diversity that's nice to see but also kind of shallow and really start to get into, you know, probing at the weird ambiguities and finding the spaces between the rules of the world, which Star Wars has done as well. I mean, we've said many, many times that we actually, there's actually a lot of rigidity in the light side and the dark side of the force and in the way that the Star Wars world was originally drawn. And we, at least the three of us, when we talk about Star Wars, tend to really get into the stories where they're like, yeah, but what about the space between? What about the people who aren't light or dark? The Dave Faloni stories. Exactly. So there's room for that kind of thing

in any fictional world, even the most rigid ones, I think, because I believe in the power of creative people. And it's going to take, there's going to be a moral question because I agree. Like, it's tainted for me right now, like playing Harry Potter. I just, she's out there doing her thing and I don't like being a part of that even so in from such a remove. Well, because yeah, she's so active about it. That's what I mean. After Hogwarts Legacy came out, she started doing this podcast like VR tour about exonerating. Barry Weiss's freaking publication. Yeah.

So like I'm, I just, to hell with all of it as far as I'm concerned. But I could see a point in the future where there's more distance. She's maybe sells the series. Some people take it over. People who grew up with it or even grew up, grew up with it like one generation removed. And they have something interesting to say. And because. Or they reboot it.

You know, the way that these fictional worlds are so. are so popular and profitable, it gives people an opportunity to paint on a big canvas the way that someone like Tony Gilroy can paint with Star Wars and tell an amazing story. So never say never, even though for me right now with Harry Potter, like this has been a just generally bummer, you know, like thing to engage with it. I'm totally done with it. Well, the good news is we don't have to engage with it again. I think to hell with it all is a good place to end this conversation. I agree. Let's do that. Harry Potter, it's the thing. Hogwarts Like I see, it's a thing.

It's a resounding, gets a resounding, eh, from all three of us. All right, why don't we take a break, and we'll be back with one more thing. Since the dawn of time, man has dreamed of bringing life back from the dead. From Orpheus and Eurydice to Frankenstein's monster, resurrection has long been merely the stuff of myth, fiction, and fairy tale. Until now. Actually, we still can't bring people back from the dead. That would be crazy, but the Dead Pilot Society podcast has found a way to resurrect great dead comedy pilots from Hollywood's finest writers. Every month, Dead Pilot Society brings you a reading of a comedy pilot that was sold and developed but never produced, performed by the funniest actors from film and television.

How does Dead Pilot Society achieve this miracle? The answer can only be found at maximum fun.org. Hello, Dreamers, this is Evelyn Denton, CEO of the only world-class, fully immersive theme resort, Steeplechase. You know, I've been seeing more and more reports on the blogs that our beloved park simply isn't safe anymore. Murder them? I'm gonna wreck it. They say they got mugged by Briggins in the fantasy kingdom of ephemera or hijacked by

space pirates and infanitemite. I mean, I could have a knife. My papa said that I needed to do a crime. Friends, I'm here to reassure you that it's all part of the show. These criminals were really just overzealous staff trying to make things a little more magical for our game. We're just as safe as we've always been. This is an accounting fair, dreamers.

This is Steeplechase. The Adventure Zone. Every Thursday at maximum fun.org. All right. We're back with one more thing. Kirk, Maddie. I want to go first because I want to do it about a game for a second or two.

You're going to rave about this game. That's exciting. Yeah, you guys might remember that like a few years ago. In 2018, we were at Kitaku, the three of us, and I wrote a review of the game Octopath Traveler, which was this beautiful JRP, like looks, like has that beautiful like HD2D graphics style that Square has been playing around with in recent years.

Amazing music, et cetera, et cetera, just was this super hyped game. And I was one of the very few reviewers to be like, well, this game has a lot of problems. Structurally, it's broken. It's super repetitive and tedious and got all these issues. So when Square Anex announced a sequel, Octopath Traveler 2, I was a little bit reluctant,

in. I was a little bit skeptical. I was like, man, I don't know. It seems like more of the same. My friends, I have been hooked on this game. I'm 31 hours in and can not stop playing it. I have been carrying around my switch all throughout the house. Not stop playing this game. It is so good because they have fixed the problems with the first game and they have improved upon it in a lot of ways and carry it on. I mean, the first game had a lot of really good stuff to it. The visuals, the sound, the combat. system was awesome. Yeah, the combat was cool.

Cool, puzzly combat system that makes every battle feel really fun because you spend a lot of time and we'll get into all the specifics, but basically you have to figure out enemy weak points based on like different weapon types and elements. And then you use those to kind of knock down and stun them for a turn to knock down their kind of shield points and stun them. And there's a ton of strategy because you can kind of manipulate the turn order to figure out who's going to break the enemy when. And can you max out one of your?

dudes by like giving them all this stuff in preparation for like when you have the enemy stunned and there's just a lot of cool stuff you can do and when you're playing these boss encounters you really have to think about it and if you're strategic and smart enough you can actually beat bosses that are like way over your level just with strategy alone so it's a really cool system what this game does in addition to just like adding new stuff to the combat system making that cool like it's more beautiful about like incredible graphics um really good soundtrack once again it changes up the structure so instead of every single chapter being exactly the same the way it was in the first game, where all 32 chapters, maybe one exception,

where just like you walk into a town, you use your like class action skill, whatever, a couple times, and then you walk through a dungeon and then fight the same boss over and over again. That's 31 times you have to do that. This time, it's a lot different. Some chapters don't have bosses at all. Some chapters don't have dungeons at all. It like switches up the flow in a way that kind of feels like,

obvious change, but just makes it feel like a completely different game. And you combine that with all the things that were really cool about the first game and you just have a winner. So this game is really, really good. I am loving it, loving it so far. It's my favorite game of this year by far so far. Cool. And the characters, another one of the complaints of the first game is that like the characters have kind of independent stories or eight characters each with their own stories. They don't really interact with one another. Yeah, that's the idea. Still true that they all have independent stories. and like there when you do one character's story you don't see the rest of your party they don't interact at all but they've added a lot more kind of party banter where the characters talk and they've

added a few of these kind of side chapters where you can actually do stories where two characters like combine and go on a quest together so it feels a lot more like you have a proper party and less just like eight independent characters who are like traveling together and never talking to one another. So it feels a lot better than the first game in just about every way. And I cannot compliment it enough. I think even the two of you, maybe Kirk more than Maddie, might enjoy playing this one. I like the first one. So it's cool to hear that this one remedies those issues. I love it. I love it. And there's so many like little mysteries to solve and little puzzles to solve. The side quest in this game, the first one did this too, but the side quest in this game, you go to, you see like a little orange dot on your

map and you go talk to someone. And they, instead of pointing you where to go, they will leave it up to your interpretation. Like your character might be like, I'm sick if only there was a healer here to help me. And instead of like most big budget games would be like, mark on your map where the healer is, go find the healer.

This game just relies on you to go talk to people and figure it out yourself. So you have to go around and kind of solve the puzzle for yourself. And it gets a lot more elaborate than that to the point where there's some puzzles or side quests that I still haven't figured out and I'm trying to figure out. But yeah, it's just a really good game.

I love it. I'll be talking about this more, I'm sure, as I continue to do it. The one kind of caveat here is that 31 hours in, I'm like still, I haven't even gotten to the final chapters for each of the characters yet. So there might be some grinding ahead of me the way there was in the first game. And I sure hope not. And I don't think so based on like the way the combat has worked so far because I've been doing stuff that is like the way over my level just with good equipment and good strategy. But grinding may be on the way, in which case I might be like in a couple weeks I might be like, God, I hate ActiveFet Tramble to. But right now, I love it.

Man, I'm super, super hooked on this game. All right, Maddie, what is your one more thing? Sure, I can be quick. So, Dina and I took a couple days off around the weekend and have just been going full gamer gremlin mode with like three screens in the living room

because she got a new gamer laptop, and so she's been playing the sequel to my time at Portia, my time at Sandrock. And it looks great. I'm not going to about that. It doesn't matter because the TV of choice that we're keeping on the main screen while we're playing our respective handhelds, Steam Deck and Switch in my case, is Below Deck, which is the greatest reality television show of all time. Not to be confused with lower decks,

the animated Star Trek show, different show. Below Deck, there's like 200 seasons of it and a thousand spinoffs. And there's a reason for that because it's fucking great. So here's the premise of Below Deck. Cruise ships, luxury cruise liners. Only a few people work on them, like three deck hands and three stewardesses, stews, as they're called on the show. And then there's a captain. And they have ridiculously, ludicrously rich clientele. And they pretty much live entirely off of tips. So the reality show revolves around the lives of the crew, who you get to know, and they're their own recurring characters across multiple seasons.

So they get into crazy relationships because everybody on the show is like ages 22 to 27. They're all super hot and buff. So they're all dating each other. So there's all kinds of drama recurring there. And then their guests are just the craziest rich people you can imagine with absurd demands. And so they'll just have to do silly things or do like theme shows or whatever. The current season we're watching now. And the guests agree to be filmed?

Yes. Yes. I'm sure they get a discount on their stay. But also some of the guests are like real housewives or like social media influencers or people who would like to be filmed or there's people who don't care. Is there private cruises? Not like a big cruise line. Yeah, it's small and it's like there's a jacuzzi on the boat and like a huge master breadroom, like nothing like a cruise I could ever afford.

And I don't know. It's the greatest combination of like working class young people who you root for and crazy rich people all thrown together into the same exact space where the working class young people are working 24 hours a day to cater to the rich people. And so naturally tensions arise. I don't know. It's like the perfect. recipe for a reality show that I've ever seen in my life. And I strongly recommend it as garbage to

throw on if you're trying to, you know, hang out with your girlfriend on the couch and play Metroid Prime. It's funny that you're talking about this as Party Down is coming back for a third season because it's kind of like Party Down. Okay. So if you like Party Down, which is a hilarious show, by the way, and everyone should watch it anyway. And it is coming back. But if you like the energy of Party Down, Below Deck is like that but the reality show version. And it's also hilarious. And I just want to say like Kate, the Stew, Kate, she's like my favorite reality show. character ever. She's freaking hilarious. So yeah. Maybe we'll watch. She's the best. So

sarcastic and so great. I can't think I've never, 10 seasons that I've never heard of this. Wow. It's a thousand. It has so many spinoffs too. It's really, really good. Anyway. Bravo. Okay. It's on peacock. You have it. You watch poker face. That's true. I do have peacock now. Kirk, what's your one more thing?

My one more thing is, well, I built a new PC after, at long last. Congratulations. Thanks. It's funny how time passes and then you realize your PC is kind of ancient. Yeah, that's happened to me. People listening to the show, know that I had been playing everything on Steam Deck over the last year, which continues to be the case, but I was kind of like, all right, there's some games coming out here.

I was playing Dead Space on Steam Deck. And I was like, this game looks so good. I'd love to see it done properly. Like it's just kind of missing something in Handhub. So I went back to play on my PC on my kind of 1440P monitor. And I was like, all right, this looks pretty good, but my PC kind of just couldn't keep up anymore. So it was one of the typical cycle of PC upgrading where you buy a new, you know, you GPU, I found one on eBay. There are finally some on eBay that aren't insanely expensive.

And you got that, put it in. And then I was like, well, now the rest of my PC is obviously garbage and is holding it back. So I had to upgrade everything. So when I did that, I got a new monitor. And that's my one more thing. I got an ultra-wide screen curved gaming monitor or just a curved monitor. They just make these for, I use it for work too. So it costs a grand, which is not cheap, but not as expensive as this kind of like high-end gaming stuff used to be. even just fairly recently. And there are these, like, quantum leaps that happen every so often in display technology, and then they eventually get cheap enough or they release a product that's, like, kind of got all the right things.

And in this case, it's HDR for PC gaming, which is high dynamic range lighting, and also the ultra-wide screen thing, which now just works. You know, like, it used to be you had to get a G-Sync monitor if you had an NVIDIA card, but then Freesink didn't work with NVIDIA. Now, like, I just got a free-sync monitor. It's fine. They all just work. So I got a monitor that's 34 inches.

It's basically a 1440P gaming monitor, which is the midpoint between 1080p and 4K. It's like 2K or it's like the mama bear porridge. It's the perfect like gaming resolution, I think, because it's not so high res that it requires you to have a crazy PC to run it. But it's high. It's pretty, it's nice and sharp. And it's just like that only it's just wider. Like it just goes out wider. I think it's 3,440.

pixels by 1440. So it's just like a big, wide, long rectangle. Doesn't that throw off all the dimensions of stuff? Yeah, games need to support it or it'll, you know, it'll do little black bars on the side. The thing about this monitor is, so for starters, this is the Alienware one.

It's a Q-O-L-ED monitor. And I now understand, Jason, why you were so psyched about the OLED switch. Because I've never really had an OLED gaming device. The thing about OLED screens is that, I don't fully understand the technology, but they can render black as true black, which an LCD screen can't. So you kind of get that gray black with like

light white behind it the way that you do on an LCD screen. With OLED playing dead space on this thing, especially with HDR, which is that high dynamic range lighting, it can just go a lot darker and a lot brighter. It's crazy looking. Like I totally wasn't prepared for how big of a difference HDR made. I thought it'd be like, I don't know, the frame rate or being able to turn on ray tracing. No, it's just HDR. The thing that doesn't, I don't think, cost anything and actually works on console games too probably on a lot of people's HD TVs if you play a PC game at like a higher res and then you know with the curved sort of ultra wide thing and HDR on it feels like I'm living in the future I was like not prepared for the

level of immersion and this thing like you put it in front of your face and then because it kind of curves and goes out to the sides it's like being in VR but you don't have to put on a helmet yeah you're in the metaverse man it kind it's really remarkable and I really it's kind of like This is a dispatch, I guess, from the current future of gaming, right? This kind of technology is going to gradually become, I think, easier to get. There will be more competitors with this one type of monitor. And it's really just super cool. Like, it's made, I've been playing a ton of different games on it.

It's been really fun to be back in that, like, marveling at the way things look. Cyberpunk on this thing looks ridiculous. Like, playing cyberpunk has been really fun. And it's just been fun to be, like, back in the, you know, world of games just looking amazing and being excited about how they look. So that's kind of, that's been my, my indulgence this past week has been playing around at this huge monitor

and enjoying all of these games on it. So yeah, it's a really, it's really something else. It's cooler than I expected. So you're saying that it's ultra-wide, curved for your pleasure. And with that, we take our leave. That'll do it.

It's been real, everyone. If you want more one-liner, zingers like that, become a maximum fun member today by going to Maximfund.org slash join. We've got episodes that are just dad jokes all the way down. Yep. That's a pretty sultry dad joke. All right.

On that note, it's time to say goodbye. You supporters will hear us again shortly in a bonus episode in the next few days. Otherwise, we'll see you next week. Yep. See you next time. 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.

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

Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Audience-supported.