Triple Click - Jedi Survivor and Star Wars Games

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

The Triple Click gang offers some early impressions on the new game Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, then dives into a brief history of Star Wars games. When were they good? When weren't they? And what makes for the best kind of Star Wars game these days? Plus: Jason played Tears of the Kingdom!One More Thing: Kirk: The Last House on Needless Street (Catriona Ward, 2021)Maddy: Blank Check podcast archivesJason: Zelda: Tears of the KingdomLinks: Jason’s 2015 story on the death of LucasArts: https://kotaku.com/how-lucasarts-fell-apart-1401731043Triple 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

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away. There was a pretty cool podcast. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about Star Wars, Star Wars video games, starting with Jedi Survivor, which we've all played. We give some impressions and talk about Star Wars games in general. I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

Hello. Hello. We're back. It's us. Here we are. And I have played The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. You're just opening with that. I'm not going to talk about it now.

Everything else you were going to talk about. Well, I just wanted to tease that that's coming later in the show. So people have to listen to the whole thing. Or you could just, you know, start hitting that fast forward buttons, skip 45 seconds a whole bunch of times. And you'll immediately hear. This is really mimicking the release of Star Wars Jedi Survivor in a lot of ways because it's like the listener, the gamers out there are already in their head wishing they could fast forward to Tears of the Kingdom. but they're really giving short shrift to a pretty cool Star Wars game. Yes.

And similarly, they would be giving short shrift to what I think will be a pretty cool episode. I agree. I hope so. Fingers crossed. Exactly. But we'll see you about that. Anyway, if you want to help us help support our show so we can keep talking about Star Wars and Zelda and all those other delicious things, please become a member of our network,

maximum fun. Go to maximum fun.org slash join. And in addition to being one of the very fun. listeners who helps us make this show possible, you will also get bonus content from Triple Click every single month. We do a bonus episode, including this month, which is a big deep dive into Persona 5. Royal. The classic one.

Not just any persona five. Yeah. And we're going to talk about Royal. We're going to talk about the new stuff they added. It'll be really fun. That will be available, what, Monday, Kirk? Soon. That will be available.

Yeah, I believe Monday, which is. technically May 1st, but it's our April bonus. That's fine. That's fine. April only has 30 days. So really it could be like... Yeah, it's April 301st. Exactly. April 31st. It'll be available on April 31st.

That's right. But of course, you have to be a member to check it out. So go to moximatefund.org slash join and help us make this show possible. Also, we are getting pretty close to selling out tickets to triple click live on May 18th, which is coming up very soon. It was only three weeks away.

So get your ticket now if you want to. I imagine that it will be sold out by like in the days before hand. So don't procrastinating on that one. From when you're listening to this right now, it's going to sell out. Yeah, exactly. You're going to be trying to check out and it'll be gone. But if you can't make it to New York, you can also buy a ticket and watch it digitally. So you can check that out too.

Link will be in the show notes. And I believe we're going to post that episode in the feed the following week. Yes. So you will get to hear it no matter what. But if you want the live energy, if you want to get to actually see it as it's happening and also see it rather than just listening to it, then you got to get a ticket. I believe that is it for our kind of pre-show stuff. So Kirk, take us away.

All right. Well, we're going to be talking about Star Wars this week. And that is, of course, due in large part to the... pending release of Star Wars Jedi Survivor, which is coming out, I believe, what, the day after you hear this episode? Yeah, the 28th. Okay. So it'll be imminently coming out when you listen to this.

And we've all been playing early release codes that we got from EA. And we're going to talk more about it next week when we've had more time to play a little bit more because it's a pretty big game. There's a lot going on. So we thought that for this week it would be fun to just talk a little more broadly about Star Wars and video games. and the two things separately and then also Star Wars video games

as a concept because they're kind of interesting as separate things. Of course we've done a lot of episodes about Star Wars, you know, about Star Wars shows and Star Wars movies, yes. That's true, a lot of those bonus episodes. But then there's also this whole interesting intersection between the world of video games

and the world of Star Wars. So we're going to talk about that some. I guess let's start with Jedi Survivor because we've all played some amount of it. Let's just talk a little bit about it what we think of it so far, how much we've played. So I believe, Maddie, because you've been catching up on persona, you've played a little bit

less than Jason. I think Jason's played a little bit more than me. So Jason, why don't you start? How much have you played? And what are you thinking of the new game? Yeah, I've actually played a good chunk of it now. I'm up to, I guess technically the third planet, but really the second major planet because the first planet is just kind of like an intro section to the game.

It starts on Correscent. Then you go to a big old planet called Copeland. which is like this big open world-y section of the game and then I am on the planet after that. Yeah, it rules. It's really, really good. And I'm not surprised that it's really, really good because Jedi Fall in Order was pretty good. But yeah, I'm just really enjoying it. It's got that kind of recipe that I'm really into between the kind of soul slash securo style lightsaber combat and the structure of having the meditation point slash campfires that that that let you save and that you can take shortcuts to and stuff that if you play jet

in Florida you're very familiar with that mixed with like really cool traversal stuff um and some really interesting just kind of like open world meaty goodness and Metroidvania uh teases as you go where it's like oh hey that thing i'm going to get something that lets me go there soon um yeah i really i'm really into it uh one i think really the smartest decision that the developers at respawn made when they were going into this game was saying, hey, instead of doing the whole classic like Samus thing where we reset your powers to zero at the beginning of the game, so you can go collect them again, you actually start off with all of the powers that you got in the first game, which is awesome for several reasons. One, because it doesn't feel like you're retreading your

steps and it's like, oh, well, this dungeon's going to have the boomerang again, got to do that. But two, I think this is the most important thing. It means you have double jump. from the first second of the game up until, well, I mean, presumably the end, unless it gets taken away at some point. But having double jump makes such a big difference. And I remember feeling this way in Jedi Fall in order that like getting the double jump really changed the nature of the game because you feel like you can do so much more. This is true of pretty much any game that has a double jump in it. And with this, because Survivor is built and designed to have double jump from the get go, there's a lot of cool traversal stuff you do, a lot of flipping from wall to wall. jumping between platforms and climbing. There's a ton of climbing in this game, even more so than the previous game. So, yeah, I'm really into it.

And double jump might be the number one reason why. Nice. Maddie, how much have you played and what are you thinking of it? I think I'm about six hours in. Oh, wow. Okay. I'm still on the second planet. Definitely got lost on Corrassant for most of the six hours, if I'm being honest.

That... Wait, you got lost on with Corrason? Yeah, of course. Couldn't figure out where to go. And this game, we don't need to get into it. It's fine. I'll be fine. But it took me a while.

Anyway, you get a grappling hook eventually. And after that, it's smooth sailing. But up until that moment, if you're someone who gets lost in games, good luck. I am also having a great time with it. Story isn't super grabbing me yet. But that isn't worrying me because I'm really enjoying the lightsaber fights. I remember feeling like the Perry felt kind of weird in Fallen Order. And there were like a few things about the.

combat that just weren't quite as tight as I wanted them to be. And this game has sanded off some of those issues. And I'm enjoying it a lot more. It's still not, I mean, I know you compare to Sekaro, Jason. It's still not like Dark Souls level in terms of feeling extremely precise in every movement that you make. Maybe they'll get there in the third one. But it's definitely an improvement. And the fact that you have multiple stances in this game is pretty fun. I know you unlock more right now. I only have a couple different ways. to wield lightsabers. I've got just the regular one and the double-bladed Darth Mall situation and then also just holding two lightsabers. I hope you guys don't see. This is a spoiler, but I've heard that you

get to do one lightsaber in one hand and a blaster in the other hand. And I'm really looking forward to that because then I'll feel like a cool pirate. That's full bloodbord. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I want pirate mode. So I'm just enjoying the combat a lot and hoping that the story slowly grabs me. I miss Marin, so I hope she comes back. She's the cool Knight Sister Forswitch from the first game, and she's only been in this game for like two seconds in a flashback. Yeah, I mean, there's a pretty clear getting the gang back together vibe going on in this game. I think it would be premature to say anything about the narrative based on how much the three of us have played.

This game is obviously going to be like this epic, massive thing with a huge cast of characters, and all the characters from the first game will be back. And yeah, similarly, I'm on the second planet, so the first real planet. And, you know, I met up with Grease, so one character from the first game. But, yeah, like, it just seems very clear. There's, I don't even really know the contours of what the narrative is going to be. And also, since the game is just now coming out, we won't even really get into it. So, yeah, definitely reserving judgment on the story.

But I will say, I think all three of us, I always hesitate to speak for all three of us. But we were all pleasantly surprised, right, by the narrative of Jedi Fallen Order, especially the last act of that game, which is a pretty common sentiment and an unusual thing in video. games where the last act is really interesting. And the final moments, I still think about that happened. Well, yes, there is a really incredible thing that I'm sure a lot of people know, but I still won't spoil since it's such a fun surprise. But also just it kind of interrogates the nature of the Jedi and the wisdom of reopening

a Jedi temple, which is Cal Kestis, the protagonist's goal throughout the first game. It kind of, they wind up not doing it. And at the beginning of this game, they are kind of in the aftermath of this decision where your quest for the whole first game was to, I don't even remember, get some Jedi McGuffin that'll let you open a new Jedi Academy. And I guess it's the list of the survivors. Right, you can locate the Jedi. Yes.

So it's a list. The destroyed holocron that they show you on your shelf when you first get your ship in this game. And you'll find that and you point out and you're like, there's my destroyed Holocron from the first game. Uh-huh. It's cool anytime a story, you know, gives you a goal and then has your characters undergo the growth required to understand that that goal is a mistake. And just because that's more interesting than just having a goal and then achieving it,

which is what a lot of video games do. So anyways, I thought that was cool, and I definitely give these writers the benefit of the doubt. And I want to see what's going to happen. Go ahead. One quick thought or one quick tip I should give you guys on Jedi Survivor. And Maddie, this might help you. Use the force. It's going to be about the little yellow things.

What? No, no. Because those tell you where to go. That was the tip I was going to do, but. Sure, you go ahead, Jason. You give you a tip and then I'll give my tip. That, you know, I should be opening the BAP and looking at it. And that I wasn't going to be able to just figure it out.

But Jason, back to you. One quick tip that might help you get to that soul slash securo level of combat that you're like for, Maddie, is to switch the attack button to R1 on your control. Oh, you know what? Yeah, that's a great idea. Because right now it's on one of the face buttons. But the classic Souls format. is R1.

Makes it feel so much better. I did that for Jedi Fall in Order. Way more enjoyable. Did it for this. Way more enjoyable. You have to do a little bit of finicking to figure out what else. Yeah, where you want to put everything else. Move things around because having square, square is where it kind of defaults to you on the PlayStation

controller and it makes it a little awkward when you have to do if you switch it with square because then there's like a square and circle thing you have to do, which is a little weird, but you can figure it out. Point, more importantly, having combat, having your main attack on R1, I think. really just changes the nature of the game and makes it feel so much better, at least for me. Yeah, no, I'm going to try that after this. I did that with God of War too, by the way. I do it with all action games these days. Yeah, God of War has a default, I believe combat setup that uses those, where this game doesn't...

It's a little bit tricky with this one because I'm not playing with the Xbox Elite. I'm playing on PC, but I've got the dual sense plugged into the PC, which means I don't have under buttons, which I usually would use for Dodge. And that's fine, but it is a little tricky the thing you say, Jason, where there are moves like the fourth Jedi mind trick, you hold down R1, and then you hit circle. I think it's kind of designed for that, plus force push and force puller on the triggers. And those do feel really good on the triggers,

and then you press both triggers to do a super pull. So there's some stuff where I do wish the combat had light and heavy on R1 and R2, but I don't know. I haven't switched yet, but I might experiment with it. Well, there isn't really a heavy. There's kind of like a default attack, and then there's the special attack that you can use. I mean, when your play, the triangle is like hold down to do a thrust.

Like that's very heavy attack. Sure, yeah. Well, I mean, I left that on triangle. I actually, maybe I will switch it to R2 because that might feel better too. And then maybe play around a little bit more with the force pull and push. But you're right. That does feel good on L2 and R2, the force pull and push. But having the attack on R1 for me has just has really made it feel much about.

better. Worth trying. All right. Well, this is something, this is a little in the weeds considering that the game isn't out. I think we'll all have kind of figured out the controls a little bit more next time. But I will say that the quick tip for anybody who's about to play the game that I think, that I was going to say to you, Maddie is this is the thing I kind of figured out at one point is when you look at the map, which is pretty useful but also has a lot of information.

It's a Metroid Prime style 3D map. I am sorry I've derailed us so much by talking about it, but keep going. Well, there are these yellow little yellow brackets. that'll go around basically where you're supposed to go. And there are times there's a point on Corrassant where there's like a little tiny corridor that Cal has to crawl through. That's super easy to miss.

And I did spend a little while just not sure where I was going to go or supposed to go. Then I looked at the map and it's highlighted in yellow and I was like, oh, okay, that's where I'm supposed to go. Yeah, that also happened to me. I know exactly what corridor you're talking about. So if you're ever sitting there, you're like, where am I supposed to go?

Don't be like me. Just click the map. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever been on Corrace? around going, aren't I supposed to be a Jedi? Can I just sense where to go? Do you remember when they were saying that because of the fast loading times on PS5, we weren't going to have to watch characters in third-person games like wriggle through

tight corridors? I'm going through tight corridors every other day on the PS5. And you know what it's fine? I'm not mad about it. I don't know why they told me I wasn't going to have to do that. The tight quarters are very well animated. So two thoughts. One is that the loading times, despite the solid state drive on the PlayStation 5 where I'm playing

this game. I still in the saloon on Kobo, I would be like standing in front of a door and it would take like a solid five or ten seconds before I could even be with. Well, we should say this is, there's a day zero patch. We're playing an unpatched game. I don't think we should go too into technical stuff until they're actually going to take out the corridors in the full release I think.

They're going to know about that. No, actually I have heard and seen discussion that the corridors can be like a deliberate design decision and it did not just like a loading screen mask. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're just cool.

And sometimes it's just like, well, it's cool. And also it's like a good way to funnel you to the next place and to make you realize you're going in the right direction or like realize that's the main path as opposed to an explorer like an optional. So there are reasons to have those beyond just the loading the loading screen trick. Sure. So anyways, back to some just general impressions of mine of this game. Yeah, I'm having a lot of fun. Yeah, the combat maybe is a little better than Fallen Order, but it is not on the level of a Sekiro. only because parries, to me at least, just aren't as readable.

Yeah. The combat in general is a little more organic. It looks kind of like a movie. And then it just there isn't that sense. Where in second row, it's just crystal clear when an attack is coming. There's that flash and the peri and it like hits and you get this super clear feedback. They're not quite doing that. But it's really fun.

I mean, I don't really mind. And the game is such an exploration game and a platformer. It's doing so many other things that so far the combat has been fine. And yeah, I also, I agree with you, Jason. I knew you would be happy about the double jump just being available from the start. And in general, I mean, there are so many little abilities that you unlocked in the first game,

like the ability to go down a cable, you know, to do a kind of zip line down a cable, but then also to go back up the cable. You had to unlock that in the first game where you could only go down for a while. In this game, you can just go both ways, right from the start. Like, it really does give you those abilities. Kyle goes both ways, right from the start.

Right from the start. You can actually, you can come. Customize him more too, which is nice. He's got a cool mohawk for me. Yeah, he's got a lot of different haircuts. You could make his lightsaber any color. You can make it a Barbie pink lightsaber, which I did, of course. Oh, yeah, I've got a purple one. You can unlock. The amount of customization is wild. You could change, like, the minor granular details of the lightsaber hilt. And it's really crazy how much they added in there. And you can change BD1, who's always been a really adorable droid. You can really change him around too. He's so cute. He's the best. Yeah, there's a lot of customization options Those aren't really

I mean I do like to customize things I like his Mohawk I like that I opened a chest And got a beard from the chest That's funny You will do many times in this game It's like you're exploring these Jedi ruins This temple that's been around

For thousands of years And has all sorts of mysteries This is how Jedi cut their hair Thousands of years ago Interesting Yeah and it's like Oh here is a chest with a beard in it What I like to tell myself

Is that Cal opens it inside the chest, some Jedi from long past from the High Republic has sort of scratched a portrait of himself. Right. That's what I'm picturing as well. With a really cool beard style that Cal just never thought of. And he's like, I'm going to try this. I could rock that. I think I would look good. So I do like that level of customization of making him look a little different because I always like dressing up my little dolls and video games. I'm not as into the, the lightsaber stuff is crazy. Like there's so much of it. But I know some people really love lightsabers. Yeah.

It's the whole thing with the amusement park where you can make your lightsaber from the amusement park. And that's cool. Like, I think some people will like that. Yeah, it's wild. I'm totally not into it. I have done that. I have a Darth Vader replica lightsaber from a frickin' Star Wars land. I'm not proud of this.

I'm saying it in the tone of voice that you say. You could be proud of it. It's fine. It's fine. It is fine. I look at it and I'm like, this is fine. But I have this. So a lot of big budget games have work benches in some capacity and have like a thing you see that you

can like do things on customize abilities customized weapons whatever this is the first time i've ever seen a game that has like this this ubiquitous workbench that is like around all the time that you find all the time that is only for aesthetic customization it's really wild i to me as someone who doesn't care about customization at all to me it's a little bit like okay this doesn't feel this feels like uh something i don't need in here but okay power to people who care about it i guess uh it It is just a little bit of a bummer to be like, oh, cool, I'm going to explore this side path. Oh, it's another friggin, like, hat I can put it in a picture. Yeah, why aren't there more hats?

So we're going to talk more about this game next week. So I think we're all pretty positive on it, early impressions. So I think this is a good pivot point and talking some about this aesthetic stuff and the tie-in with the amusement park and all of that is kind of a good way to zoom this out a little bit. and talk about its place in kind of Star Wars video gamedom. In the galaxy? Yes, in the galaxy far, far away. Because this series, it feels like we're in a kind of a new era of Star Wars games. And I've been playing Star Wars games since, honestly, since like 1995 or so.

I didn't really play X-Wing. That came out in 1993, but since the golden era of LucasArts Star Wars games. And I would say there have kind of been, let's say, four eras. The middle two are kind of a blur, but kind of four eras of Star Wars video games. There's the golden era of LucasArts games. That's kind of from 1993 to 2003. So about those 10 years, this is when LucasArts was making all kinds of amazing games like Dark Forces, Jedi Knight. Knights of the Old Republic came out in 2003 toward the end of that. There was Dark Forces and Ty Fighter, X-Wing versus Tie Fighter, some really great space, like sort of combat

simulators for the PC. then after that there was a little bit of a lingering hangover period from there where games like Republic Commando and Cotor Knights of the Old Republic 2 came out that was an 04 and 05 then there was a real dead period throughout the kind of Xbox 360 PS3 era we got like the force unleashed came out in 2008 which was kind of a dud I played a little bit of it but not very good game part two came out in 2010 that was I think really not good I never even played it that was Star Wars connect came out in 2012 there was a lot of just kind of bad stuff going on and this was due in part to

the fact that LucasArts itself, the studio making all these games, was falling apart as chronicled by Mr. Jason Schreier himself. So this is all kind of during this period and maybe we'll talk a little more about that later. Then Disney buys Star Wars. They close LucasArts entirely. Well and of course

Star Wars 1313, which is the kind of infamous canceling. Well so that was in development during this time and there could have been this, you know, there was look, people were like, we're ready for a new Star Wars game and that was 2012, Star Wars 1313 gets shown, which is for anyone who is too young to know that or wasn't paying attention then, was this very exciting-looking kind of uncharted Star Wars-type game that I would say is actually kind of like realized in these games, in Jedi Fallen Order and

now Jedi Survivor, that type of single-player exciting Star Wars game. But then of course, Disney buys LucasArts and Star Wars. They shut down LucasArts. 1313 is canceled along with First Assault, another big in-development project. This is all-crossed. chronicled by Mr. Jason Schreier. And then we're just in this kind of quiet period, which this is why I'm saying the second and third eras are kind of blurred together, because this is just when there were other games in development. Electronic Arts, the publisher had sort of gotten the deals and their studios are making

these games, but it takes a while to make games. And now we're in this kind of new era in which, I'd say, it kind of started with Battlefront 2, which came out in 2017, which was, you know, a multiplayer shooter for the most part, but had a story, was a little bit, you know, it was kind of better than people who had been expecting than Fallen Order in 2019. Squadrons, a game that I really liked, a sort of another one of those flight sim X-wing games. It was also really fun in virtual reality.

And now here we are with Jedi Survivors. So one important part of that is that EA actually signed a deal in 20, when Lucasar shut down, EA signed a deal to have a 10-year exclusive deal that only EA could make the Star Wars games. And now that deal is over. So now we're like, I guess, either in or about to enter an era, where a bunch more games can come out other than the ones you mentioned in squadrons in fall in order.

And so we might actually be about to get like total oversaturation the way we did with TV and movies. But we will see. Yeah, we will. And I think the first thing we should talk about in this broader conversation is what it is that makes for a good Star Wars game. My theory on this is that the best Star Wars games are the ones that tell their own stories that are just totally separate from the main story. storyline and the main trilogy.

And there was, I mean, I didn't even mention all the adaptations, like the Phantom Menace game that came out in whatever 2000. Yeah, why did you skip the pod racing game? That was going to be the one that I'd correct. Right. So those kinds of games, like those are the weakest games and that they're at their strongest when they're kind of totally charting their own course. And this was true back in the 90s as well and in the 2000s. So I don't know. Let's start there, I guess. Also true of superhero games and what we sound with Arkham Asylum, Rock Studies Arkham Asylum kind of broke that mold of like.

licensed superhero games by making this original stuff, and that was a trend that worked out really well. Yeah. Yeah, as I've been playing Jedi Survivor, I've been struck by how, in some ways, it feels kind of interchangeable with God of War Ragnarok, and even with other superhero games like Spider-Man, like it just, there's a sense that people have figured out

how to make this kind of game, and that it almost doesn't matter what the, say, magic or special powers are, or what the bad guys are, or what the government organizations or overseeing bodies are, or what the large conflict, you know, that's framing the action is, they all kind of operate in a very similar space. And in some ways, it makes me feel like, like, Star Wars has been homogenized a little bit. And it's just like, yeah, well, the magic in this is the force. And, you know, the different parties are whatever, separatists and the empire and the Jedi and whoever. I don't know. Like, it seems almost as though Star Wars identity is just is getting yeah genericized I guess somewhat well I mean to be fair the director

of Jedi Fallen Order and now Jedi for Jedi Survivor is St. August-Musen who before he was at Respawn was at Sony Santa Monica making like I believe the first three God of War games so this is a game that has a lot of God of War DNA in it which I think is one of the reasons it feels so similar to to Ragnarok there's also people who have worked on both games they're both made in Los Angeles So there are some common points there. Yeah, let me, I'm trying to tease this out because I threw that out there. It's kind of this big idea and that I'm not totally sure what I think about it. If you even believe it?

Well, it's a big idea. I mean, it's a big idea. I do. I have a thought. Hang on, I have a thought. Okay. So if I go back to the era where Star Wars games were really exciting, that's the 1990s. So for me, this was playing Thai fighter, playing Dark Forces.

And it was just a coincidence that you were like 12 then. That's, the games truly were better then and you're, you're personally interested in. Also that there were only three Star Wars movies then. No, I'm not going to say the games were better, but I think that that era is really important, irrespective of how old I was when I was playing those games. And that's because it was the longest time that had passed since a Star Wars movie had come out. And it was before the prequels were a thing, because the Phantom Menace came out in 99. It was a golden time to be a Star Wars fan.

It's true. Yeah. So it was exciting where we, as a kid, you know, I was in the 80s, I like grew up watching Star Wars. movies. And then technology, video game technology had come far enough that you could say, hear the John Williams music at the beginning of the game. And there was this feeling of like, oh my God, I'm in the world of Star Wars. And Dark Forces especially felt that way where you're playing this guy, Kyle Katarne, who's just a bounty hunter. You're not a Jedi, notably in the first game. And it has that same kind of feeling of the seedy underbelly of the Star Wars world, which was very exciting

because it had been so long since there had really been any Star Wars stuff. And that, era totally coincides with the, you know, they're not being any movies. And then when the prequels come out, that's right when the wheels start to come off the video game thing. I don't think that's totally a coincidence. Yeah, probably not. And it's probably not a coincidence that the wheels going back on the Star Wars franchise and really resetting them in 2016 is when Force Awakens comes out. And then 2017 is when you marked the next era of Star Wars games kind of figuring out the tone again and the aesthetic of Star Wars that people like. I mean, the movies are kind of inseparable from how people perceive the games,

whether we like it or not. And then I guess there's kind of a distinction between the era that we're in right now and that 1990s era. And that is that Disney now owns Star Wars. And Star Wars has kind of transformed into something more akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where there's a sense that it's just been, they've got it dialed in, they know what Star Wars is, there's all these different TV shows. And as a result, you kind of get a little less of the idiosyncrasies and the weirdness, you know, like a Dark Forces or a Thai fighter, a game where you're playing as like a jackbooted imperial tie fighter pilot who's taking orders from Darth Vader and killing rebels. Like, that was a game that came out in 1995. Now we get Jedi Survivor, a great game, a great

story, but it does feel like that kind of, I don't want to say MCUified because it is its own identity, and I don't like just comparing everything to Marvel, but it's like a more corporate and more controlled, a more like big picture idea of what Star Wars is, and it seems like we're going to get fewer of the kind of weird things, even though you never know, right? Like, Midnight Suns happened last year in the Marvel world, right? Like it could still happen. I think what you're describing is more the kind of like, I don't know, standardization of AAA games where it's like these games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make and so they can't take a lot of risks and so they wind up feeling very similar in that sense. I mean, good luck

like pitching a game these days without a skill tree attached in your action adventure, right? Yeah. And also like Calcestis. Yeah. Well, I mean, the the meditation points actually feel like a bit of an innovation because they're, dark soulsy, but yeah. Yeah. And usually a game wouldn't take that kind of risk, although Jedi Survivor kind of mitigates that by adding easy mode, which a souls game never would have. And fast travel, which Eldon Ring may have. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, but so I think that there might be room for that grittier Star Wars

that you might be looking for, Kirk or that quirkier Star Wars in lower budget projects. And maybe as we see Lucasfilm start to kind of spread the wealth with Star Wars games, it's given a bunch of different projects to a bunch of different people. Maybe we'll start to see a little bit different feels to that. I mean, even respawn alone, respawn, of course, the makers of these games is making, in addition to Jedi Survivor and

presumably its sequel, is making a first-person shooter set in Star Wars and overseeing a real-time strategy, or sorry, yes, term-based strategy game. Now, which was it? A strategy game based on Star Wars. So there's a lot, a lot cooking right now, and maybe one of those games

that isn't like a nine-figure budget, maybe that'll deliver more along the lines of what you're looking for a car. Makes sense. And it's kind of in line with the general flow of Star Wars at the moment where I actually just wrapped up Mandalorian season three, which I wasn't a huge

It was fine. It had its moments but that show has really become sort of franchise maintenance mode. It feels a little like live action clone wars at this point where what was exciting about it in the first season was that it was this kind of Xenob warrior princess one-off episode of the week thing about this

bounty hunter. And now of course it's just Jedi stuff right and left and mass of lore and tying in with all the stuff from Clone Wars. And then, of course, Andor also exists, right? And Andor is maybe the exception that proves the rule in that it's the only thing like that that will ever get out of Star Wars. But it is certainly an exception that was incredibly good and did happen like it was funded by Disney. Yeah, that's part of why I want to push back a little bit because I think what you've identified, Kirk, is that the enjoyable parts of Star Wars, the weird parts of Star Wars happen in between each trilogy, whether the trilogy itself is good or not. So, like,

in between the 1977 one and the prequels, we had like a huge amount of Star Wars novels that are all not canon anymore, but include a lot of really cool ideas and experimenting with the idea of the force and, like, new characters that people still really, really love and are attached to and still write fanfic about and so on and so forth. Like that's its own contained world. And it's also the, what you describe is the golden age of Star Wars games you really liked. But then we get after the prequels and we get the Clone Wars cartoons that I really like, which have inspired stuff like Andor and other sort of more rebellion stories that all of us really dig that are very on the ground level, like just humans surviving in the world of Star Wars and not necessarily being like the

superpowered beings like Obi-Wan and Darth Vader and just regular people, like those kinds of gritty stories are what we all seem to really dig. And there's a lot of that in between the prequels and the Force Awakens because people were like, well, the prequels were really bad. How can we fix this? Let's try a bunch of weird shit just to try to fix this stuff. And right now we're in this post-Force Force Awakens era where we've got a lot of different kinds of TV shows. And some of them are like corporate stuff like Obi-Wan, which I still haven't watched, and maybe never will. And some of them are rude or stuff, like Andor.

And the games are maybe about to enter that zone too. Like I remember feeling like Fallen Order had a lot of promise when it came to that, despite being a huge AAA product. It still ends with the characters feeling, like, kind of different from the hero's journey, as we've described here. Like, it's not necessarily a classic Star Wars story. And we haven't beaten this game yet, but I don't know that it's going to be a classic hero's journey thing either.

And I'm also, like Jason, very hopeful about the idea of all these other studios, having a chance to take a crack at big and small, weird Star Wars stories until we get another big series of movies and theaters that we all have to alter the gravitational pull of Star Wars thoughts to gear towards. Something that I think that is relevant to what we're talking about here is the Jedi factor. Yeah. And I think it's relevant to video games. in particular. Well, it's relevant to video games in particular because there is the narrative promise of a Star Wars story and then there is the power fantasy of the Star Wars story, which is, I think, also tied in with the hero's journey of it all. And if you're looking back at the original trilogy, which is Luke Skywalker follows the traditional path of a video

game protagonist. He starts out level one. He's just a kid going to get some moisture, What is he trying to get moisturizer, moisture vampirizer, something like that? Well, he wants to go to Tashi Station to pick up power converters. But you're right. He does have to work on a moisture farmer in the interim. So he's level zero. He just wants to get some power converters. And then he starts leveling up.

He gets a cool sword. He like levels up even more and gets some new abilities. He gets a new lightsaber that he makes himself. He gets even more powerful. He fights a series of bosses. He becomes all powerful. He basically does a video game level before video games even existed by defeating the Death Star in a very hyper-specific way, yes.

So you can map that progression onto a video game really smoothly. And to go back to my sort of old-school PC games that I used to play, this happened kind of fascinatingly from Dark Forces to Dark Forces to Jedi Knight. And the plot of that is that Kyle Katarn, the bounty hunter hero of Dark Forces, kind of anti-hero, becomes Kyle Katarne a Jedi in Jedi Knight, because I can't even remember narrative reasons. It turns out he's force-sensitive. So they basically realized, well, wouldn't it be cool, though, if you could, I mean, the force and Jedi powers really lend themselves to video game.

So let's make Kyle into a Jedi, and then you can get a lightsaber and you can unlock new powers and you can be light side or dark side. And we can do multiplayer, you know, PVP lightsaber battles and add all this cool stuff. Then Jedi Knight 2 comes out. That's a great game. Notably not Dark Forces 3 Jedi Night 2. It's just Jedi Night 2. Like the series basically morphed into a series about Jedi. So it would be like if in Andorra,

Season 2, Cassie and Andor, it turns out as a Jedi, and then it's all just Jedi stuff. And I think that that is a unique, or unique isn't the right word, but I think that it's not a problem, but it's a sort of, it can be narratively limiting to tell a Jedi story because we've heard so many Jedi stories and the Jedi thing. I think I at least feel that there's so much potential for storytelling outside of that in the World of Star Wars as we learned in Andor. And as we've learned in other series as well. The flip side of that is that probably the best Star Wars game is Star Wars Ninth of the Old Republic,

which is a Jedi story through and through, right? We haven't really gotten too much co-chor talk, but that game, I mean, that game, talk about subversive, the twist in that game is one of the best twists in video game history, and it's not something that a Star Wars, a traditional Star Wars thing would really include. Yeah, I don't know what I mean. Well, you mean a traditional Star Wars thing like a thing that wasn't about Jedi? Yeah, or yeah, a movie or kind of like, I don't know, it feels a little bit different in that way. It's like, oh, hey, you were, you committed genocide and stuff.

Well, I mean, I think that the benefit that that game, the thing that game had going for it was the old Republic part of it, that it was exploring a time period that I could explore something different. Yeah, I guess the point that I'm making is that a game can have its cake and needed to. It can be the fantasy of being a Jedi and also tell the. really interesting, unique story. And I think it's a credit to BioWare and the writers on that game that they were able to come up with that. And the Knights of the Old Republic, too, takes that even, like, in different ways and introduces all sorts of interesting nuance and ethical questions about the Jedi and the Force and the dark side and the light side. And so I think that there's room for exploring some interesting Jedi stories. Again, jury's still out on Survivor and what that

asks and does in a way that maybe isn't possible as much in the movies and TV shows or at least hasn't been done in the movies and TV shows. So to your point, Kirk, I think there's a way to play that power fantasy and also tell interesting stories, at least in games. Yes, and that's not, I want to be clear. That's not what I'm saying. Like, where I'm going with this is just that the, it's almost an irresistible idea, like telling a Jedi story for a video game. Because you grow up, well, these games are also made by people who grew up wanting to be Jedi's. in the 80s. Right. The Jedi are really cool. And like I'm saying, they lend themselves so well to a video game. And as we saw in Fallen Order and as we're seeing a Jedi Survivor, it's the same

thing where you unlock cool new powers. It totally makes sense as a magic system. So, right, I'm not saying that like you can't tell a good story about Jedi because of course you can. Night's the Old Republic is a great example. So is Jedi. I mean, so were Jedi Knight one and two and three. Also, a new hope is pretty good. Well, yeah. And Jedi Fallen Order. Like that game also, was like interesting in a similar way to, you know, I don't know, like I'm someone who really likes the Last Jedi, which also I think was an interesting Jedi story. Very cool Jedi story. But I do react a little bit to just, I'm always feeling a little Jedi fatigue.

And I think more and more video games coming out means more and more opportunities for someone to say, all right, we're going to take a chance here. This isn't going to be a story about Jedi. And I think that's cool, just because it immediately opens a whole bunch of new possibilities. Do you think it's more just hero's journey? fatigue because I feel like part of what we all liked about Fallen Order is that it's, it's more of the bioware vibe of like you get this rag tag group of friends. Some of them has force powers, but not all of them do.

And you're all on this journey together. Like that was the piece of it that I really liked. And learning about these different force users who aren't Jedi, like just having a more colorful cast automatically makes it a different story because it's an ensemble and it's not necessarily about one person, meeting an old guy, who died. and then they get a new weapon and then they destroy the Death Star. Yeah, I think it's also that it gets it out of the Skywalker realm. So it's not just about this one bloodline and this one family.

It's just about, you know, a whole religion and a sort of mystical way of life intersecting with a broader galaxy. Yeah, yeah. I like that too. Even though it does make these games kind of sad because I'm like, well, I guess all these characters have to die because none of them are in Star Wars, huh? I guess so. I think about that a lot when I'm like. Or maybe they're holed up somewhere. No, there's that.

I mean, I have to think about that while watching Andor for pretty much the whole dang time. Well, and Andor is made with that in mind. I mean, it's supposed to hang over Andor. We know that. Well, yeah. And I kind of have that sense in this game, too. I want a game on Corrassant where you play as a senator and you have to navigate politics. Like, I want a crusader kings of like, you know, if the heyday of Telltale games had

corresponded with this new era for video game development in Star Wars? Corresponded. Corrasoned. I think that that could definitely happen, and it still could happen. That's the kind of thing. I could see a game like that. And that's the kind of thing that, yeah, hopefully there will be room for and also an appetite for to make it so that more of those kinds of things get made. Because you never know. I mean, it seems pretty safe to say that Jedi Survivor is going to be successful. But then when you get into the smaller stuff, it's hard to say. Like Marvel's Midnight Suns apparently was not that successful, despite the fact. that that game rules and does have the

feeling of, it feels in that way that those 90s Star Wars games felt like just people having fun ideas and trying stuff. It had that feeling which feels even rarer today. So I do hope we get some of that in the Star Wars world in the years to come. I hope we get Star Wars Connect too. That too.

Another dancing game would be wonderful. You know. All right, well, we've got a little extra to talk about it one more thing due to, well, something that Jason already didn't just foreshadowed just told us about. So let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. Hi, I'm Jackie Cation. Hello, I'm Lori Kilmerton. We do a podcast called The Jackie and Lori Show and you could listen to it anytime you want it because there's

hundreds of episodes. Yeah, I mean, we've been doing comedy forever and we should both quit. So why don't you listen to about the game before we leave this not only terrible business, but this awful world. And find out why we can't. It's because we love it so. Jackie and Laurie Show. Every week, you're on maximum fun.org. I'm sure you've noticed how giant corporations are controlling more and more about what we consume, whether it's our food, our news, or even the shows we enjoy.

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You'll be doing your part in telling the Star Trek industrial complex that they can't control your mind. And we're back with one more thing, Jason Schreier. You played a really exciting video game. Why don't you tell us about it? My one more thing is The Legend of Zelda. tears of the kingdom. So here in New York, Nintendo had a preview event for that old video game,

which is kind of a fun thing. It's weird to have a preview of a game just like three weeks or four weeks before it comes out. But in this case, they've been so quiet about the game for so long and only just recently started the actual marketing process and like showing us what it is, that it actually works out nicely. So I went to this kind of like art gallery area that they rented out.

in Chelsea down in Manhattan. And I went up to this big room where they were doing demonstrations on like the 25th floor of this big building with big views. And they took us outside and they were like, you see that building? You can climb there. So what they did was it was a two hour session and basically they gave us a little hands-off presentation and then they showed us, they gave us time to just kind of like experiment with the controls and the new abilities, which in,

his fusability and his ultra-hand ability. I'll get into that in a second. And then they gave us like 60 minutes, 70 minutes to actually play the game. And they put us in front of this big fortress full of macablins and a tower and said, your goal is to get to that tower and then get into the sky from the tower to the sky islands. First caveat here is that they gave me a pro controller, which I'm not used to using. I'm used to playing the switch in a handheld mode or during the rare times when it's not in handle mode using just the joy icons on their own. And a pro controller feels a lot with like an Xbox controller, which I am used to using, except the A and B and X and Y buttons are all flipped. And so I stumbled so much trying to play this game because

it would be like, press A, press B, and I would just get it totally wrong. And so it was very difficult for me to preview this game. That said, it's really interesting because imagine Breath of the Wild and all of its physics capabilities ramped up because suddenly you, you you can build things and you can make airplanes and flying air balloons and rockets and attach rockets to different contraptions. And it adds a really interesting dimension. So like I mentioned before, there was that fortress. And so instead of kind of storming into the fortress and trying to use the weapons and stuff to take out these enemies who were there, I built this contraption and tried to get straight to the tower and skip all the fortress and just skip the whole thing, which I was able to do

the third time after a couple of hilarious mishaps involving like rockets that are misaligned and like setting my whole thing on fire. It was very, there's going to be a lot of good memes coming from this game, I will say. One thing that I will say is that so Link's main new ability, the big selling point in this game is the ultra hand ability, which is what you use in the wild to kind of hook things up together. So you want to hook up some wood and put a fan on it to create a little boat. That's what you use. you use ultra hand. It's a little bit finicky to use. And again, this is a game that is tough to demo because it's like you really need to take

a lot of time to get the hang of the controls. And like if you're attaching a rocket to something, you have to rotate it manually to figure out the right angle for it. And if you're even slightly off, the game's physics system will send it in that direction. So it's definitely going to take some getting adjusting to really master this game and the kind of mechanics of it. That said, the third time around, I was able to build this, like, hot air balloon

and just go straight to the tower and skip the whole thing, which is fun. And then the part in the sky islands was also pretty fun. Lots of stuff to do up there. It felt like exploring this whole new area of the game. I could kind of, I got a glimpse of, like, the Tears of the Kingdom map, which looks a lot like the Breath of the Wild map.

I saw, like, the Temple of Time in the background, something like that. And so I'm really interested to see it's not clear. It wasn't clear from my demo, like, how we're, where we are or when we are in relation to Breath of the Wild, if it's like a post-apocalyptic version or I guess post-apocalyptic version or whatever it is. Not clear on that. But yeah, so I got up into the sky. One thing that is worth noting here is that like one of the ways in which you build these contraptions is through these items that are called like Zonai items. So like there's a Zonai fan, a Zonai rocket, a Zonai. igniter for like a hot air balloon that just like shoots fire out of it. And then you these things are limited. So you can't just build an unlimited number of machines that you want to build. You have to you have to get them and you can find these items I guess called Zonai charges that you put into this like giant ball that looks like a big like, I don't know, like an arcade machine. A gumball machine. Yeah, a gumball machine that spits out those gumballs.

Polygons Michael already called it. It's a huge gumball machine. And you trade in the Zonai charges and you get like a random item, like a gotcha mechanic where you get like a random zone I item and then you can use those to build your contraption. So I was playing around with that. Corak seeds are back. Still corak puzzles everywhere. Found some of those. I found this wild looking boss that is like a bunch of blocks put together that you can like use your abilities on. And yeah, it seems like it's going to be the game that everybody hopes it is from what I glimpsed. I think, get to see any story or play any real story parts of the game, so no idea what we're in for there. And I also didn't get to see if there's like an underground component, but it sure seems like there

will be. A few new things that they showed off are like there's like a light system now, so you might be in a dark area and you have to light up a torch and see things that way. There's a lot of just kind of like rails and carts and all sorts of other stuff just like lying around everywhere. yeah there's a couple more things you can dive in the air while you're gliding there's like a button that pops up that it says dive and then you want to connect the opening moments of that trailer that came out you can actually go when you're on the island portions of the game you can dive straight down to the surface and like go straight down yeah like kitty pride you can like go through surfaces of any kind seemingly one important one other important thing is that um uh the dLC for breath of the wild added this ability where you can like set up a recall point and then fast travel to that point at any time. This lets you do that, which is important because if you're on the islands and you accidentally fall off and land on the ground on that surface, you might want to get back to where you are. So now you can just fast travel using those.

And yeah, man, it seems cool. It seems really interesting. One other important thing that's worth noting, the fusability that everybody was kind of meming all about, which lets you attach things to your sword and shield and stuff. You can only fuse one thing at a time. You can only fuse two objects together. So gone or any dreams of like creating a stick that is attached to a stick that is attached to another stick that just goes on forever, sadly. But I did play around a little bit with that, which is fun. I put a mushroom on my shield. Still not sure exactly what it did, but hey, I had a shield with the mushroom on it. One final thought is that the ability whale that I saw, the abilities that were shown off in the

Nintendo video a couple of months ago are really the only ones I saw there. So that is fuse, which I mentioned, Ultra Hand, which I mentioned. Recall, which lets you kind of set in things, rewind things in time. So, like, if an enemy throws something at you, you can send it back at them. Or if you screw up with, like, one of your rockets, you can hit recall and catch it in there and then send it back to you. So you can jump back on it. And then ascend, which lets you jump into you, and like if there's a rooftop above you, you can ascend straight into it and like pop out through it. I didn't see the magnesis or stasis or bombs or cryosis and these old abilities. I don't know if they're going to like play into it in some other way. For example, you can get

bombs, I believe are bomb flowers as objects now and you can like attach one to an arrow and shoot it at an enemy. So maybe that's maybe the those are all replaced by the other stuff. I'm not sure. But yeah, the new abilities, I mean, Ultra Hand, it's going to be, once we really get to like dig into it and like see the full capability of what you can actually build in this game, I think it's going to be pretty wild. I definitely left it wanting to play a whole lot more and especially wanting to play more that was not on a controller that felt like an Xbox controller. I feel like I'm going to be way, feel way more comfortable with it.

I'm going to feel like the controls are way less unwieldy. But yeah, even with that, even with normal controllers, I think the controls are still going to feel a little unwieldy. And there's no button remapping, much to my dismay. You have to do it on a system level. You can't go in the menu and remap your buttons. Yeah, that's about it. Tears of the Kingdom comes out in a few weeks.

We'll be talking about it much, much more. But yeah, having played it, I am excited. Nice. I'm excited also. Maddie, what's your one more thing? Okay. So we're going to talk about Star Wars again because I decided to go all the way back to the very beginning of the blank check podcast, which we have talked about before and which many people talk about because it's a very popular film criticism podcast that is occasionally also funny. And at its inception, it was not that. It was a comedy podcast about Star Wars. and it's so funny and I didn't know that this was how the show started and I just want to recommend that more people check it out.

I don't know why anyone came up with this idea, but Griffin and David, who were the host of that show, decided as a joke to pretend that the Phantom Menace was the only Star Wars movie that existed and to evaluate it as though it had no predecessors and no social context surrounding it whatsoever. And it's incredible, because the characters in that movie are not introduced or explained, nor is the world explained at all.

And so they like delve into the Phantom Menace for 10 episodes straight. Again, pretending as though they have absolutely no other context for who any of these characters are. And they're like, here's what we've learned about who the Jedi are and like how the force works based on this one movie. That's the only Star Wars movie that exists. And at the end of those 10 episodes, they pretend to discover that there is, in fact, a little known sequel to episode one, and they do 10 episodes about Attack of the Clones, which are just as hilarious. And it goes on and on like that. And I listened to all of it and laughed so hard and enjoyed it so much. And I really recommend it. And it really made

me think about Star Wars in a different way. And I know we say this all the time, because we talk about Star Wars freaking constantly. And like, I've watched so many Star Wars things and talked to YouTube about Star Wars so much that I realized I sound insane by telling two of you that I listen to some new Star Wars content. And guys, it really made me think about Star Wars differently. But it did because it's like crazy to evaluate the movies in that way. And I love it. Like I loved thinking about them in that way and kind of having that mind game and being and having like David and Griffin pretend in the episode three that it's a huge twist that Anakin becomes Darth Vader and that it's shocking that this is the three episode arc that the the main character of these movies becomes

evil and they're baffled by it. And like, how baffling would that be if that were a three, three movie arc would just be ending in the most horrifying thing ever? Like, it would be bizarre if that were an actual three movies that someone made. Anyway, I don't know, listen to it. The Blank Check guys are always joking that their first episodes are terrible. But honestly, I think they're really great. And I think people should check them out.

So just scroll all the way back in your podcast platform under Blank Check and listen to them. Different theme song, different intro. It's a different show, essentially. But it's in there. I have their first episode downloaded. It's quite good. Yeah, I started listening to it. And I think I started with a sort of later episode where they were still occasionally

referencing that bit. Yeah, that was why I finally went back. Because they kept joking about it. Because I've been listening to old blank check episodes anyway. And they kept joking about the Star Wars ones on the older episodes of the archives. And I was like, why do they keep making fun of themselves? Like, how bad could it be? And then I listened.

And I was like, this is amazing. Like, I don't know why no one talks about this. So yeah, if you like Star Wars. and you want to go insane with those two guys. You should check this out. Nice. Yeah, I think I will. All right. Well, I'll go last because, and I'll go briefly, because my one more thing is a book I read that I don't want to say too much about because part of the joy, or at least the amazing thing about this book, is the way that it reveals itself to you. So I finished a book called The Last House on Needless Street, which is written by an author named Catriana Ward.

It came out in 2021. It was recommended to me by a friend who kind of have similarly recommended it and said, it's a horror book, it's pretty scary, it's pretty intense, but just read it. I want to know what you think. So I started reading it, and the framing of the book is that it's kind of like serial killer, how scary there was a missing girl 20 years ago, is this guy the killer, her sister's looking for her. Fairy kind of Stephen Kingy. Stephen King endorses this book and like loved it. And so it starts there, and then it very quickly starts to peel away at its own reality in a way that you'll start to notice as a reader because you'll start to realize very quickly that all of the narrators, so it's narrated by this

man, Ted, it's narrated by this woman, D, it's narrated by Ted's cat Olivia, it's narrated by Ted's daughter, Lauren. They each get different chapters, and as you read their chapters, things start to not add up. And the book, Catriona Ward, really, the author, does such a good job of inhabiting these different voices and then keeping what's really going on occluded from you, but then revealing things in a way that only really an unreliable narrator can, where it's like the narrator sees the world and describe something or observe something, and you're like, oh, so wait, that must mean. And then you're like, but how does that square with?

And then you keep thinking and going, and it winds up being a really fascinating psychological portrait of a book, I thought. I will say, as a warning, it is pretty in, pretty intense. It has depictions of abuse and trauma. There's some pretty awful stuff that happens to characters in it that are central to the point of the story. But there is a lot of that stuff. So if you're not into that kind of story, steer clear, it is pretty intense in that way. But I really thought it was interesting. I think Catriana Ward, this is the first book of hers that I've read, just has a fascinating, writerly voice. And she came up with characters that I just thought were so interesting and kind of different. They expressed themselves differently from a lot of other books that I've read recently. So if that sounds like your cup of tea, a really twisty kind of psychological thriller that reveals itself to you over the course of the novel, I really do recommend it. It's a fascinating and I thought really good book. So that's the last house on Needless Street by Catriona Ward. And yeah, pretty cool stuff.

That seems like such my cup of tea that I opened a tab and added it to my cart on bookshop. Yeah, I'd love to talk to you. Yeah, both of you about it if you have a chance to read it. It's very, very interesting. And that's it. That's our show. We'll be back next week to talk even more about Star Wars, but more specifically about Jedi Survivor, which I'm like to play more of because it's a fun game.

It rules. It's really good. It really rules so far. So that'll be exciting. And yeah, until then, I will see the two of you next week. See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music.

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Comedy and culture. Artist-owned, audience-supported. Star Wars. Do you guys know that song? Let there be Star Wars. Jason, do you know what I'm... Nothing but Star Wars. I just watched that whole thing.

Do you know what that is? Yeah. It's so good. We've been linking it in Slack a lot. Oh, man, it's really, really good. He's like a loud singer. It's classic, like, old SNL. It's really good.

Ah, Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars. It is. It's like old, what is it? Is it Bill Murray that does it? It's Bill Murray. It's in like the first season. He wears like a lounge singer, like, sequin jacket. Yeah. And sings Star Wars to the tune of Star Wars.

Please let these Star Wars stay. That's fantastic. Yes, with lyrics that they made up. And that's the entire joke. That's the entire joke. That's really good. You didn't need more than that. No. is actually very funny.

It's great. It's great. It's perfect. Anyway. Yeah. All right. Let's make a show. I'm Jason Shire.

I'm Kirk Campbell for you.