Triple Click - Metaphor, Dragon Age, and What Makes a Great RPG Party

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Triple Click gathers their party for a discussion of ensemble casts. They talk about Metaphor: ReFantazio, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and other RPGs this year to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each game's party. No, not that party. The other one.One More Thing:Kirk: Black Ops IIIIIIMaddy: Metaphor: ReFantazioJason: The Unseen World (Liz Moore)LINKS:Support 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

Okay, I've got balloons and streamers and Kirk is bringing drinks and Jason's got the cake. We're set for party time. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we talk about parties in role-playing games. Yeah, it's the other kind of party where there's an ensemble cast united by a common goal. Or maybe they're not united and they keep squabbling or dating or dating you? I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier.

And I'm Kirk Hamilton and hello. Hello. Hello, my friends. We're back. We're back. We are recording this on election day. By the time this goes out, maybe there will be some clarity on what has happened today. Maybe there won't.

We are recording this hours before polls close. So it's an interesting time over here. We don't know about it. We are in blissful ignorance. We're in the past right now. We've all voted, of course, or at least I hope so. I guess I just made a big assumption here. We all voted, right?

Everyone decided to vote? I did vote. Okay, good. I think that's a good idea. The vote in Portland. Pretty interesting this year. We got ranked choice. We got a whole bunch of people running. We like overhauled our government last year.

Oh, you got ranked choice. Oh, that's amazing. Massachusetts voted against ranked choice two years ago, and I'm still mad about it, but this year we had some pretty good ballot questions. But you know what? Nice. I don't need to get into that. You know what I do need to get into?

I'm going to talk about maximum fund.org slash join. I just think that's a cool URL to go to. And why do I think that? Because if you were to go there and if you were to become a, a member of maximum fun. You'd get access to all of our bonus episodes here at Triple Click. And we do one every month. And normally that's just like, you know, whatever. It's cool. Like we talk about spoilers for Final Fantasy 7 rebirth or, you know, Call of Duty Modern Warfare. We play video game. We talk about it. We watch die hard. We watch the live action

Mario movie. But also we do occasionally we play Dungeons and Dragons. And sure, sometimes. Sometimes we play Dungeons and Dragons. Sometimes we get Matthew Mercer to be our D.I. for Dungeons and Dragons. And we do a three-part series of episodes about that. So we've also, because that's so special and so cool, and we didn't want to just have the people who are members of Maximum Fun have access to it. We put out episode zero, which is kind of like us building our characters with Matthew, and then also episode one in the main feed. And part two is out in the bonus feed right now. So if you listen to part one and you're like, I don't want to wait anymore. I just want to know what happens next.

You could go to Maximum FunDorog slash join, and you could support the show and get those warm, fuzzy feelings, but you could also go ahead and listen to Part 2 of our Dungeons and Dragons campaign, which will be three parts. Part three will be coming, and you'd get to listen to that right away if you were already in the feed. Or you could just be super patient and wait. But I think you should become a member,

because then you're also supporting our ability to continue to do really cool projects like this one. come on. Why wouldn't you want to do that? Also, if you become a member, then we'll give you ranked choice voting. I don't know that we have the ability to do that. You can rank the three of us. We could do like a ranked choice vote for something. Yeah, that's true. We don't know. We could, if we did, we would we would do ranked choice. If we ever do invite the listeners to vote on something, only people who are members will get ranked choice and everyone else will just get regular voting. I don't know. We might workshop this idea off the air.

Jason came up with this. I'm just yes-anding it. But that's enough of that. That's enough talking about Maximumphon, dollar, slash join. You already know, you know the drill listeners. What are we going to talk about as our hot topic today, Kirk? We are going to talk about RPGs, about role-playing games, and more specifically about RPG parties,

and less specifically, kind of just about the RPGs of 2024. We are kind of in the midst of Dragon Age Vailgard discussion. We talked about it last week where the two of you had played, but I had not yet played. I now have the game and have been playing it. And I think we're going to do a dedicated episode just about that game and what we think of it and Dragon Age and all of that next week. But this week, we're kind of, I don't know, we're in a little bit of a middle ground. And it's this game and a lot of the games I've been playing lately have got me thinking about parties in particular, like the group of heroes that you assemble in a game and how they can be

used to tell stories and how they can make a game more interesting or more confusing, how they can kind of help or hinder a video game story. And this year, we've had so many amazing role-playing games and even beyond like the RPG category, we've just had so many games with great groups of characters all kind of working together through the story that I thought that that might be something fun to talk about, to look at the differences and the similarities and the way that all of these games are set up. My favorite RPG party is at the beginning of Fallout 3 when And it's your birthday and you get a cake and candles. Yeah, I was wondering if we were going to get into that.

I was going to specify that I think the best RPG party is the one at the end of Act 1 of Baldersgate 3. That's a very fun party. That's a good party too. Hook up maybe for the first time with a party member. Everybody gets very drunk and has a good time. It would have been good if the whole episode had been that bit. Like if we had just come prepared with a series of parties in RPGs. We could.

We could talk about Mass Effect Citadel. There's a really good party actually in the Dragon Age Trust. pass your DLC. Both of those DLCs have very memorable parties. So we could talk about them. And actually, that kind of a party is a good showcase for the party that you've built. Like both of those games, like those are both celebrations of more than anything else. They're celebrations of the party members and your relationships with them, since that's kind of the beating heart of both of those series. And, you know, we'll get into Vailgard as well, since there is a whole new party of adventures and heroes and anti-heroes in that game. So, yeah, I don't know, to list a few games,

that I'm thinking about here, there is, of course, Final Fantasy 7 rebirth. There's Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, which I've played. I don't think that the two of you have played, but has certainly one of the most interesting and endearing bands of miscreants ever assembled in a video game. There's Dragons Dogma 2, which I really loved. It takes a very different approach to MPC and party creation. There's Paper Mario, the Thousand Year Door, which Jason, I believe, is most familiar with, but also has a kind of interesting party.

There's Persona 3 Reload, which I only played a bit of, but I played almost all of Persona 3, and I'm very familiar with that kind of persona approach to party building, which is shared, of course, by Metaphor Refontasio, which we just played and talked about. And I believe, Jason, you're not quite done, but all three of us have almost finished that game. And then now there is Dragon Age the Veilgard, which yet again, another biower game with a big group of heroes. And then that's not to mention tactical breach wizards, which I actually think is like the best party-based game of the year and the best party story of the year. For sure. Yeah.

It's not a role-playing game and it's sort of a different approach. But I think it would be an interesting point of comparison. So all of these different games take a different approach to like ensemble-based storytelling. And I thought that could be kind of our road in. So I guess to start with, can I just say that I am enjoying Dragon Age the Veilgard? I think some people are probably curious about that. I was. Right.

Since I sat out last week's conversation. I think it's pretty fun. It's um... What are you... What class did you pick? Oh, I'm playing as a rogue. It's important question. I'm up to where I have every party member and it sort of finally feels like an

RPG like I'm just going out into the world and it's unlocking bigger and bigger parts of the map and I'm exploring and finding side quests and doing, you know, going on dates with people that kind of remind me of Marvel's Midnight Suns where you just hang out and you like go help someone train in a new magical power they've got and you get to like chat a little bit about their backstory or whatever. Why do you have to wait that long for it to become an RPG? Like I haven't gotten that far because I just don't want to play anymore because it's not an RPG. You know, I think I know why that it is.

I have a theory anyways. And I think it's because they consciously designed the game this way after Dragon Age Inquisition led so many people to get stuck in the hinterlands, just doing empty side quests. I think that they structured the game to deliberately kind of push you through like a series of canals. You just like ramp through the whole introductory act. And it's kind of a long time because it's a big game and there's a lot of characters. I think that I'm guessing that that was on purpose, that they wanted you to get to know everybody, to kind of see all the different regions that you're going to go explore, to meet all the factions, and then to start enticing you out into the world.

And they kind of even unlock different parts of the world, like more and more as you go, to keep from overwhelming you with like a huge open world space that you then spend the next 20 hours just wandering around doing kind of empty side quests. There's also the fact that the side quests are like much more structured and narrative in this game. As far as I can tell, all of them are, like, there's no quests that are just like, go collect four of these. There's always some little story or something. Connected usually to a specific NPC and what they want to do. Yeah, that's what I found too.

That's my sense of why it's structure that way. I think we'll probably talk more next week about whether that works. I could see playing it and thinking, oh, geez, this is just a totally linear, like, God of Warlike game. But now that I'm playing it, like, where I am, it actually feels a lot more like Inquisition. There's, like, big open areas. I'm exploring. I'm, like, solving environmental puzzles, finding. little exclamation points on the map

where I'm like oh someone's got a quest over there I'll go check it out. Classic one of those classic oh it just takes 10 hours before it gets good game. Hey it's not the only game on this list where that could arguably be. No and I wouldn't actually say that it takes that long to get good. I was having plenty of fun

in those first 10 hours. It just was I was like I don't think this is what this game is going to be like for its entire run and that turned out to be true. So anyways, yeah, let's look at all of these games. Let's zoom out of these games. Let's zoom out little bit on the year in RPGs. I'm just sort of curious if either of the two of you has any thoughts on this idea, on the groups of characters that you have accompanied on these

various adventures over the course of the year. Yeah, so I've been thinking a lot about metaphor, because that's the game I've been playing the most over the last few weeks, and I've been thinking about, like, what makes that games party cool? What makes it not cool? What makes the games party interesting? Is it like a specific chemistry with the characters? Is it, like, a specific chemistry with the characters, is it the individual characters themselves, are they kind of stronger together than like than the sum of their parts? And in this game's case, I think they are because none of the characters in metaphor on their own are particularly like, I don't know, memorable on the level of Barrett in Final Fantasy or whatever, some other kind of iconic video game character.

But that's not to say they're bad. I mean, Hayes-May is, is an Yeah, I was going to say, Heismay might be the one who. Hokenberg is also kind of a breakout. Just with her weird obsession with ugly food and stuff. I think that she has a fandom. It's cute. Yeah, I mean, some of the quirks are pretty fun. But I also, I think that together they work really well.

Part of it is visually. They just make such a, like, such a painting, such a kind of like vivid display of different sizes and looks and characterizations in a way that is really striking. Kind of a fun contrast of Final Fantasy 7 rebirth where the party looks really weird together because Barrett is not like this hulking

tight people. Yeah, and it's like it's so, everyone's so disproportionate and so off. They all, they look like, Barrett looks like he came from a different game than Cloud and Tifa. Whereas in metaphor, it really, it feels like you're looking at this beautiful striking painting every time you see the seven of them.

just kind of grouped together or in a portrait or whatever. And they play a lot with those still settings that you go to and you see all of their silhouettes and the imagery. And it's really, really cool, a lot of cool looks. But also, I think part of it is just seeing the banter between them. Like Hulkenberg's, that personality trait you mentioned Kirk about her, like, being in love with this nasty food, it is played off by the other characters really, real well. And so, like, someone like Stroll, who is otherwise just kind of,

like whatever, it doesn't really have too much of a personality. I think watching him interact with Tolkienberg is really fun, in the same way that watching Ryuzi and Persona 5 interact with some of the other characters is a lot more fun than just like dealing with Ryuzi on his own. The other thing is that metaphor is really good at creating not side quests, but like these kind of follower like sequences, story sequences, and telling each character's story in a really cool way through that, that actually because each of those, each of like the social links that you do with them is so much lower impact than doing a whole ass side quest would be, I think that it gives you a lot more story and a lot more chance to develop a relationship with them and learn their person, learn about their personalities, in more of a rapid fire, more of kind of a traditional storytelling way, the way you might see in a book or a movie where it's not broken up by like an hour of going hunting for monsters in between it all.

that helps develop the characters, I think, in a cool way. So yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's at least part of why I think metaphor's characters are really resonating with me. Yeah, I would agree, but I do think that some of these other examples are similar in the sense that I remember in the past when we were talking about Final Fantasy 7 rebirth. The main thing we talked about was the banter. And thinking back on this topic this week, I was really remembering that and how much I loved that part of the game, maybe more than any other. part of the game was just the hangout sensation of having a party of characters who are wandering around with you. And like having a character, like one of the questions that you, you have in our

outline, Kirk, is what are the different ways the game relates the party members to the main character? And in metaphor, I don't think the main character is particularly interesting. They're kind of a cipher and you don't really, I mean, I don't really have a big relationship with him as a person, but he's just a facilitator almost for all these other goofy dynamics that happen around him. And Cloud is very similar in part because he's just so traumatized and emotionally closed off that he's not going to engage willingly with almost any conversation. So you can just throw him into any social scenario and it'll automatically be funny or awkward or have tension or conflict just because you have this character who is closed off

and all these other people bouncing off of him. and trying to get him to react to things or figure out who he really is. And that, I think, just automatically creates an interesting story with a character who would otherwise be extremely boring. Like, if you were playing the entire game as Cloud or is the main character in metaphor, and you didn't have anybody with you, like, I can't even imagine how boring that would be. It would be like you would have so much trouble caring about that character's strength. It's called Dragon Quest and it rules. Okay, fair enough, I haven't played those games. So maybe it does rule, but it would definitely be a really different vibe and lonelier, I think, and maybe kind of sadder and not kind of the madcap hangout scenario that Final Fantasy 7 and metaphor both really have.

And then I'm hoping Dragon Age has as I go along. Yeah, it's an interesting thing with RPGs that have a main character. It's an issue that other types of ensemble storytelling don't have. And not all video games with ensemble casts have this problem because not all ensemble video games have a main character. True. That's actually something that I think is interesting about tactical breach wizards is there is not a main character of that game. You start playing as Zan and... What's her name?

Jen. Jen, thank you. You start playing as Zan and Jen. And they kind of feel like, you know, the closest thing to point of view characters. But really, everyone's an equal part protagonist. And you're just kind of controlling slightly the flow of conversation. and then in the end you get to have these nice little epilogues where you decide how everybody ends up.

And like that actually makes for a more organic kind of ensemble story because, you know, it's not the story of any one person. I've been, like I mentioned last week, I've been watching The Legend of Vox Machina, which is the Critical Role TV show. And that show is very similar to Dragon Age and also to Triple Quest, which I think we should also mention here as one of the RPGs of 2024. So true.

It is a game we play. Yes, it is. And it involved us coming up with a party. And it is also an ensemble story. And it's different from these video games because there is not a main character. I mean, arguably, Luther is the main character. I was going to say, there is one main character. But there's another version of that story that's just Luther's story that would be very entertaining.

The Rosencrantz and Gilded Stern of Triple Quest. But no one of us is the main character. And so it made for an, it's like easier to tell a story that kind of goes in a variety of different ways. And that's certainly true in something like a TV show like, you know, Game of Thrones or The Legend of Ox Machina, anything, like something with a big sprawling cast. There isn't really a main character. Like someone may get the focus for a given episode, but that just allows for a more dynamic

storytelling approach. And I find that video games really do run into the protagonist problem. As I've been thinking about this, I think that metaphor and FF7 and Persona 3 all have this similar issue where there are nice moments between cast members, like there's nice banter and there's a good sense of their community, like how they relate to one another, especially in FF7 Rebirth. I'm thinking specifically of Tifa and Ereth, kind of hanging out and becoming friends in the way that their relationship has been fleshed out. The best. Yeah, it's really nice. But for the most part, the games kind of do revolve around the main character. That's something that I really noticed with metaphor. Well, like,

characters have these surface level reactions to one another, but it isn't that. often that they're sitting down and really talking or getting to know one another in the way that they might be able to if they didn't always relate back to the main character. Like each of those vignettes, each of those character vignettes and metaphor is like you and that character. And so they're just like telling you their story and then reflecting and you kind of learn more about them and then you maybe say one or two things to them and then it moves on. But it's like they're all very kind of atomized. There's not really this sense of like everyone's sitting around and talking and while you know there are scenes like where you're having dinner after you go out and

adventure i really like that how you always go back and you sit around and have dinner i really wish there was a little more to those scenes there's always this like if you have like an unfinished quest or something it'll give you a dialogue topic option do you know what i'm talking about where you're at the table and every once in a blue moon you can like pick a thing and then you'll actually talk about it i wish there was kind of more of that there was just more color because in that game i do wish there was more of a sense of the community of characters and how they relate to one another. So, okay, let's talk about the protagonist for a second, because I think the games that we've been pinpointing, the two have the protagonists and not the ensemble cast, have this kind of

array of different types of protagonists. In metaphor, you have essentially a silent protagonist. I mean, technically he talks, but he's basically, like Maddie said, he's a cipher, so he doesn't like... I'd rather he was silent. I mean, it's basically, they only gave him a voice because it was awkward in Persona 5 that he didn't say anything. So now he has a voice. But it's basically the same character as your persona 5 character where it's not a character. He's a blankslee. So silent protagonist on one extreme.

And then Final Fantasy 7 rebirth, Cloud might be a little enigmatic, but he's a character straight up. He's a full-fledged character. And then in the middle you have Dragon Age, the Vailguard. And something that I don't like about Dragon Age, the Valgard is that I think, and I've seen a lot of people point this out, who have gotten much further in the game than I did. So I don't think this changes very much. You are kind of presented with this idea of this character who you shape his personality, the same as you do in other bioward games,

and you do that by picking dialogue options and choosing what kind of character you want your, going to quote, rook, that's your nickname, to be. And I think one of the problems in Veilgard is that all the options all just kind of lead to the same place, which is that they all just start kind of like positive leadership, like this dude who is just not really ruffling any feathers. He's really just kind of always saying the right thing, kind of Captain America ish in his dialogue. And I think that like if you're going to take that approach, I think that's the hardest approach to master much, much harder than silent protagonists and also much harder than full-fledged character protagonists, like a cloud or Kratos or whatever. If you're going to take the choose your own adventure, customize your protagonist, pick whatever way you want approach, you have to do it better than I think Valgaard does. And previous Biowork games did that.

They created. They allowed you to roleplay your character in all sorts of different ways. And Baldur's Gate 3, in contrast, which is unfortunately a contrast you have to make quite a lot when you're talking about the role-playing elements of Dragon Age 4, Beltersgate 3 lets you play around the character in so many different directions that can get. a little ridiculous how many different options you have. And I think that like when you're interacting with your party and when a good, when you're like, you want that banter and when you're kind of evaluating your emotional relationships with your characters and your party members, I think a big part of that when you do have that customizable hero is seeing what kind of like options you can explore and what kind of reactions you can get out of them. And yeah, I mean,

And it was unfortunate to kind of feel like Dragon Age wasn't giving you that many choices in that regard. Yeah. I don't know that I agree that other Dragon Age games nailed that either. But I totally agree about Baldur's Gate. Yeah. I didn't necessarily. No, I didn't say that necessarily. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it's a problem. Mass Effect was always much better at letting you play as the kind of the bad guy. And then even before that, I mean Baldersgate 2 and 1, which do not forget it. We're Bauer games. True. They both let you go full on evil, like to the point where you're making major decisions in really evil, nasty ways. Yeah. And I mean, I haven't played those, but Ballard's Gate 3.

I completely agree. Like, that's a new standard of protagonist customization. And, like, the entire Darkerge plotline existing is incredible and fascinating. And it's, like, an entirely different game within the game where, like, everything plays out differently. And the fact that there's so much content you don't see. I mean, we've talked about this before. But like when you introduce all these additional choices that actually change the sequence of events, you're creating things that many players won't see and that only certain players will.

And I would say Vailgard kind of follows in the footsteps of previous Dragon Age games in the sense that it doesn't change everything. Like you can make these slightly different personality based comments in conversation, but it's not like the plot is going to wildly change. However, I mean, I think there might be some bigger changes near the end of the game, but that just isn't really the style of the game. Yeah, and I'm not even necessarily talking about choices that change things. I'm talking about choices in how you can interact with your party. Because if you're going to create this system where the hero is this customizable version of yourself, you kind of expect to be able to have certain levels of chemistry or lack there of with your party. And I think it's, again, it's a tough thing to pull off. But in something like Ballard's Gate 3, where you can really, you could be making. choices, you can allow one of your party members to kill another. You can choose whether to, like,

let someone suck your blood every night and just kind of go about, I mean, making these choices is a big part of what makes a party cool or not cool is getting to interact with them and play around with them. And really, I mean, that's what distinguishes role-playing games from, I don't know, watching a movie about a, like a heist movie or something like that. Yeah, and they feel more like people. So leaving Vailgard aside a little bit, I'm not totally sure how the dynamics are going to play out other than I'm enjoying getting to know the characters and, you know, going on dates with them. I actually think that the inter-party banter is also cool. Like each character seems to have, you know, one sort of conversation path that they go down with each other potential party member.

And it's neat. They're all specific and you wouldn't necessarily see them all depending on the party that you're playing with. And I've enjoyed that. That's actually given me more insight into the party. listening to them talk to one another than any of the conversations I've had with them one-on-one, which you could argue is a failure of the writing, but it's also a success of the writing because listening to Nev talk to Tosh about prosthetics

because Tosh has a prosthetic horn and Nev has a prosthetic leg and Tosh is like giving Nev advice and it's cool. Like I think like that kind of banter is what I have always liked about bioware games. You know, I don't know that I totally like I'm thinking of where the protagonist

of Vailgard land. related to these other games. I don't actually think of Cloud as a very good main character or a very defined one. He doesn't really have much of a personality. And, you know, he's this kind of hapless, beautiful goon who these two much more, like, vibrant and interesting women are, like, obsessed with him. And that's the main, like, dynamic is, like, the Betty and Veronica and Archie vibe. Well, his personality is he's trying to repress his emotions.

Yeah. That comes out in different ways. Sure. I feel like that's a little bit of an easy. But I mean, that does tell a certain story, right? Yeah. I mean, it does let you project yourself onto a character. I don't know if I agree with you on that character.

No, I know you don't. But let me lay out how I think of it. I think of Cloud as like a less well-defined character, maybe because of conscious narrative decisions. But he is kind of a blank slate in a lot of ways than the, then rook in Vailgard. Because at least I'm playing with like the British lady accent, which by the way is a really interesting accent, it moves around from region to region. As I've, just, having just played metaphor, the two cat boys who sound like they're from Liverpool,

they sound like the freaking Beatles every time they talk. I love their voice acting. And they're very consistently liver puddlian, which I believe is how you say that. Yeah, yeah. It's funny, I'll hear a little bit of that in Rook's accent, but then sometimes I'll hear other accents from other regions and I'm not well versed enough to like, no. I saw someone say, basically Rooks sounds like someone who grew up in Liverpool and then moved, which is sort of a funny read on it. Anyways, I've been finding that character to be pretty well defined, like between her look, her voice, the way that she performs in some scenes. There's some actually, I think some really great animation in the game.

So I feel like she's a character, like, along with everybody else, that I'm just allowed to kind of imprint onto. But I want to mention Ichibon Kasuga, the protagonist of Like a Dragon and Like a Drankan Infinite wealth. This is the game that came out earlier this year because he is the most well-defined protagonist of all of these games and kind of belongs in this conversation about like how a protagonist and how a protagonist is written can change the way that a party feels because the entire success of that game. And it's a really successful game. I've gone back to it recently. I've been playing it again. It's so good. I like it as much or more than any of the other

RPGs that I just listed here, at least from what I've played of it. And it's all down to He is an incredible protagonist. He's a really well-defined character. He's really well-performed. And the whole game just orbits around him and his unstoppable charisma. He's basically a guy whose can-do spirit and belief in redemption and other people drives the entire engine. And everyone in your party, they're all a bunch of former criminals. Or sometimes there are people that you'll meet in the game who totally screw you over and lead you in an ambush and say really mean things to you.

and they're really horrible. But then you beat them in a fight, you know, and then you get to talking. Classic. And like they start being like, oh, man, it's just so hard. Ever since my brother got sick and you know, this and that. And then Ischabon is like, oh, well, I totally understand. And like they start talking.

And pretty soon the guy is in your party. And then pretty soon you're getting to know him even better. And you're realizing like, oh, this guy should have been my friend all along. And that's kind of the magic of that game and also a big narrative theme of it. So anyways, I think that that game deserves a place in this conversation because it shows how you can have a very strongly defined protagonist, the game would not work without him. But because he's so well written and because his personality is the thing that like centers the orbit of every other character, it works beautifully for that game and it defines the game's whole personality.

Yeah, I love that. It's so good. I want to play it now. So is that, is that game, are you just recruiting a ton of different characters or is there like a defined party of like a certain number of people? Like how does that? party system work exactly. It's like most RPGs where you start with just kind of one friend and then you meet another. You know, you meet up with Kyrieu in Hawaii and he's like, you know, the former protagonist of a bunch of the Yakuza games. And the game is kind of a lot about Kyriu.

You could argue that Kyriu is the protagonist in that he, it's revealed pretty early on in the game that he's sick and dying. And I don't know yet whether he dies or not. I'm still fairly early in the game. But that's like the big revelation is that this Titan of the Yakuza series. the protagonist of many of the games has cancer and like doesn't have long to live. And so he and Ichibon are friends and you play as Ichibon, but it's kind of Curie's story,

which is another kind of smart way of like giving a lot of emotional heft to a different character than your protagonist. But no, as you go through the game, you just kind of accumulate, you pick up guys or ladies, like you pick up different characters who just join your party. And it's a really long game. Like I don't have all the party members yet.

But it's structured like, I don't know, like metaphors. It's structured like a JRP where you just gradually get more and more party members. Yeah. It's so good, you guys. It's such an awesome game. I mean, you're kind of describing something that I really wish metaphor had done with its main character that doesn't happen, but that the characters keep telling you is happening. And I say this as someone who really enjoyed metaphor a lot.

Love the game. Absolutely one of my favorites of this year. However, the characters around the main characters continually say things like, wow, you're such a great leader. I'm so, I'm just naturally drawn to you. I just feel like I can't help but follow you and just love everything you stand for. And like, I, the player, I'm like, I don't know what this guy stands for. He has a no personality. I don't see why anyone would be naturally drawn to him in any way. And he doesn't say anything in meeting any of these characters that seems like it would convince them of that in the way that you're kind of describing the like a dragon

protagonist is doing when he's having a fight with someone or whatever the situation is whereby he's meeting the other party members and convincing them to join him. Like those sound like their actual scenes where the characters are convinced. Whereas in metaphor, it's more like that's happening all on the part of the party members. And like they all have complete stories and motivations to join you that are internally consistent and make sense for them and make them feel like more fully realized characters. And like you get why they would want to join somebody with the political. like it's explicitly like there's an election in the game it's political your character's running

to become king because there's a democracy now i don't know it's wild play metaphor i can't explain it but why would they back him as a candidate is kind of never explained other than that there's just sort of these unstated good feelings but he's representative of that would probably not work in real life yeah i mean there are there are worst motives i've seen worse motives for people are going to like well Well, what often happens, what I appreciate about metaphor, among other recent games, is that the entire party has a reason for sticking with you to the bitter end, even when you're going off and fighting, like, optional dragon bosses and grinding for experience or whatever, like I'm doing now.

As opposed to some party-based RPGs, where sometimes you'll get someone to join you, and you'll do that by helping them out with something, and they'll have some motivation, like, go and kill the wizard in the tower. And then after you kill the wizard in the tower, they'll be like, oh, you are going to save the world. Let me come. I also want to save the world. Suddenly, I'm convinced. Yeah, suddenly, I'm going to stick with you this entire for the rest of the game, no matter what you do. And I always, I always appreciate it when a party member has kind of a motivation for actually seeing things through to the end the way in Final Fantasy's everyone, seven, everyone has their own kind of personal reasons for going after Sephiroth or, I don't know,

there are a lot of games like that. And in metaphor, I agree. They all have their personal reasons for wanting to be there and overthrow the current system of power or question it. Like, they do all have. Or get revenge. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

I agree, though, that it feels a little like they're each doing it on their own because your main character isn't like meeting them halfway and giving them that extra nudge. Like, right, like, I would follow Ichibon into Mordor itself. Like, that guy is like a leader worth following. And I do think if you can. write a leader like that, it's really fun to watch a group of misfits arrange around him, especially because the characters themselves, you know, can be a little more reticent

or can seem a little more like unlikely heroes. But then you kind of believe it because you're like, well, if I met Ichibon Kasuga and he told me to come get in fights with people at the mall with him, I would do it. I would be at the mall punching people being like, I don't know why this is happening, but I'm with this guy. I'm doing whatever he says. Yeah, I mean, it's tough to write a character like that, which is why it's a silent protagonist so often. And you just have to kind of trust that when they're saying, I don't know, in persona five are like the Sweet Conan games. And they're like, oh, you, you're a born hero. You're a born leader of men. And they're just like staring at the other directors. You just have to kind of buy into the

illusion. Yes. It's definitely what makes that game special. And it's something that is very hard to do in general. It's like when you write a book about someone writing an amazing essay, you then have to write the amazing essay in the book. Oh my God, another problem metaphor has. Or like Phantom of the Opera, he's writing the greatest piece of music ever. You have to actually put it in there or rent. These are problems that everybody runs into. Well, that's why Tenacious D. just wrote a tribute to the greatest song.

Exactly. Of course. Or it's like that game. We saw this GF, right? That's called like a tribute to the greatest and like final boss of an RPG ever or something. I'm misremembering it. We'll Bing in here. But it was the same kind of idea.

Sounds about right. Bing. Kirk here from the future. just to tell you that the game is called the remake of the end of the greatest RPG of all time. And it doesn't have a release date yet, but it looks pretty cool.

You can watch a trailer for it on Steam or I'm sure it's on YouTube too. All right, back to the show. Bing! I do want to mention Dragon's Dogma 2 as one other approach, which is also fascinating and that's the pawn system.

So that game goes the entire opposite direction and they're basically like, you just make whatever mindless NPC person out of clay that you want to and broadcast them across the multiverse and then pick up other people's broadcast

and just make whatever party you want out of these weird interchangeable people, some of whom sound like Matt Barry from what we do in the shadows, and some of whom don't, and some of whom have like really, really strange voices

and look like cats. And like that game is kind of like also really successful in its way because it's not trying to have inter-party dynamics that are written in the way that Veilgard is. You're not going to hear your two pawns saying anything meaningful to one another. They're going to repeat those same weird lines of dialogue.

It's so annoying. It's so stupid. Oh, I love it, though, because, like, it's so particular to that game. And it works. It actually, I have, like, a real fondness for some of the pawns that I've had in my party, and even the relationships that I sort of imagine between them. Like, there's a lot of space for you in that game to just look at this weird character that somebody else made that you led into your game.

that sounds like Laslo and then just be like, okay, like, I really like this guy. What a character. And I think that's actually a really cool approach too. And it's actually, it's really interesting that a game with that approach came out this same year with all these other games that took all these different approaches. Yeah. And also it's a systems based approach. It's like you end up believing in and liking your party members based on how well they behave around you in battle. And it's pure systems. And then you can kind of project personalities onto them based on that or sort of they'll conjure and encourage good feelings in you because they're helping you in a specific way or working together in a specific way, which can be just as effective. Like Jason, you were mentioning last week when we were talking about Dragon Age about liking characters because they helped you in battle. And like that is such an important part of a party system in a game that we haven't really touched on yet.

And that I was thinking about going into this conversation where I was like just the fact that the party. members have and are often designed to have different abilities than you and are complementary to you is something else that just automatically endears you towards them, even if they are also written to be intentionally sort of annoying or acerbic. That is part of what will make you be like, but this is my friend's group. And like, that guy has this other thing he contributes. And we all put up with him because he shoots fire out of his hands or whatever it is. Yeah, well, he's super powerful. Yeah. There's a ton of characters in JRPGs. I see this a lot.

Like in Final Fantasy Tactics, there's his character who comes later in the game called Orlando, who is, like, ultra-powerful. Like, all these characters have these special skills, and he has, like, three different characters, special skills all in one. He's, like a broken character. And that's part of the reason he's so likable is because he just destroys everything. Or, like, in that brief period in Final Fantasy 7, when you play, you get Sephiroth in your party,

and you see how ultra-powerful he is. It really makes you appreciate him as a character. Yeah, that's something that we haven't talked about much, which is the way that gameplay plays into all this and the way that, yeah, you wind up finding your faves based on what they can do for you, how good they are. Although, yeah, I mean, the procedural generation stuff is just not for me.

I can never get into that game. What was that game called a while back? It was like procedurally narrative. I think it was called Wildermith, was that day? I could never get into that because, like, the characters that aren't actually written, I just can never get into. And I can never get into that kind of storytelling.

AI, generated games will never be for me as a result. But creating your own stories out of characters because they're super powerful or super useful, I think that can be a very effective technique to making you really love, fall in love with a character. Yeah, that's something that Tactical Breach Wizards does exceptionally well is tell it story through mechanics. Almost all of the game takes place, you know, in an isometric. view, technical strategy game.

But there are these kind of interstitial sequences where you talk and you see the characters talk to one another. Because there is no protagonist, the conversations can be any number of them talking to one another and you get to choose what different people say. But it's never clear who you're going to get to choose for. So you're really role-playing as all of them. So you just have a conversation with yourself all the whole time. Kind of.

But it doesn't feel like that. It feels like you're watching these different characters talk to one another, which is kind of like the magic of that game. And furthermore, I mean, to that game's endless benefit, it just has the best writing of any of the games we're talking about here. Yeah, it's probably the funniest, snappiest. It's so funny. It's so well written. It does more with like five lines of dialogue than a game like metaphor, which, again, I like as well, can do with like five hours of people talking to one.

And sometimes it somehow needs five hours to say one thing. It is a different, it's a different style of writing, but it really is remarkable. So it has that going for it as well. But I think that watching the characters do their thing in the game itself is a huge part of understanding them. And then there are even these like narrative sequences, usually dream sequences where characters will be having a dream with multiple copies of themselves, talking to the future version of themselves who has all of their abilities unlocked and they'll have to clear a room together. The future version of you will be like talking shit to your current self about how useless you are. And like they do, there's a lot of stuff like that as well. I think the XCOM games, XCOM 2 most recently, are also really great at the kind of mechanical party storytelling thing.

And encouraging you to project personalities onto things. Definitely. Like that one sniper who pulled you out of the shit three or four times and then died a hero, like you kind of build those stories. And that really works for me in a way that it is somewhat procedural, but it's also authored by me because I'm the one giving them the commands and playing through the mission. So it's not just like having a procedural version of it wouldn't be like having an AI tell me a story. It would be like taking a few things that are generated by algorithms and then using them to tell my own stories. And that's a kind of a worthwhile distinction, or at least that's why XCOM really works for me. Yeah, I agree.

I do think it's so different, though. I mean, it's almost kind of funny to think of XCOM as like an ensemble cast or like a party-based game. But it is. I mean, it is. And I like that way of thinking about it for sure. Yeah. Yeah, it's really kind of an RPG. I think I had that realization when the first one came out. And then, I mean, playing through Marvel's Midnight Suns, I actually think that Dragon Age the Vail Guard is very similar to Marvel's Midnight Suns in terms of tone, in terms of ensemble storytelling, the way the protagonist works. What was the protagonist's name in Marvel's Midnight Suns? What were you called? I really don't remember. Can we remember? That's how little they matter, honestly. Yeah, well, and it's very, it's kind of similar where they're like... But they are like a player character who kind of doesn't, is like very important to saving the world.

But like, it doesn't matter at all. Yeah. Son or daughter. Yeah. But you have a name anyways. And it's sort of similar to Rook or whatever where it's like kind of like could be anybody. But you're kind of there to watch other characters fall in love, get into fights and like have shenanigans. Like you're just also there for a fun story that's unfolding between all these other huge.

personalities, way huger than yours. And I think that can be really effective in a way that metaphor is, where it's like, you just kind of don't matter. And you're just going to fade into the background. The hunter. That's the name. Right. Yeah, not even an actual name. I can't believe we couldn't remember that. Wow. Yeah, I think that like the sort of middle of the road feeling that Root has in Veilgard is just reminds me of that. And it's not a bad thing for me. I'm because I did love that game. So maybe it's why it doesn't bug me because I just don't mind. Right. I really like Midnight Suns, and so I'm kind of fine with it. But yeah, it's a kind of particular flavor of this bio-ware inflected storytelling,

where now you kind of have this, you know, middle-of-the-road protagonist, who kind of cruises, has a good VA and, like, good acting, and kind of does exciting line reads, but isn't like wildly, you know, it's not Jade Empire, it's not those older bioward games where you can, like, literally exterminate humanity or save everyone. You know, you're not making decisions like that, really. And as a result, your character doesn't have that level of variability. And then as a result of that, your relationship with various party members doesn't shift quite as much because it's a little more about just hanging out with them.

I'm not sure whether that's worse or better. It does seem to be a little bit more of a modern phenomenon. Yeah. Something else I wanted to get to before we wrap is this question that you also have here in our outline, Kirk, which is, is conflict always necessary? and I've kind of realized that for me it is. I really like it when the party members don't get along. I think that ends up becoming one of my favorite parts of a party-based RPG, and it can overshadow any concerns I might have about the main character being boring or uninteresting.

And furthermore, I love kind of friends or enemies to friends or enemies to lovers, kind of an arc in a party. Like, it's part of why, like, the idea that Tief and Eareth could turn out. to be friends after all was something that I thought was so great in Final Fantasy 7 rebirth and so surprising to me heading into it, just sort of assuming that they would just be romantic rivals the entire time and then really surprising me with that arc over the course of the game that kind of plays out almost outside of Cloud's view or capacity to understand. It's almost a meta thing, right? Yeah, and I love that. And like just having the characters be at odds with each other for any reason

ends up allowing for so much more storytelling to happen. And if you don't have that, I mean, I cited this is one of my reasons why I think Dragon Age DeVail Guard starts too slow. I just think they should put in way more conflict up top and then that would help. And there is conflict later that I think really does help the game, just to have the party members be fighting with each other and have political disagreements. I mean, that's also what I think makes metaphor refantizio interesting, is that not all the characters agree on everything, but ultimately they're like, well, we're going to work together,

though, even though they do have some different political leanings and different, totally different backgrounds and classes and all these other things. And like, that's great. That I think makes for a well-rounded party story-wise as well. Yeah, that kind of conflict, like not liking one another and growing into friendship. It's an interesting part of FF7 rebirth because the, because Tifa and Aereth don't dislike each other and then grow to like one of another, we just sort of assume they didn't like each other because that was kind of the dynamic in the way that fans have always pitted them against one another. So they just treated that as kind of their first act. And then they just jumped right into it with this refreshing and surprising

friendship kind of right off the bat, which worked because of that meta layer in FF7 rebirth. In the original, they kind of, I don't know if they hourly dislike each other, but they definitely one of them asks, I think Tifa asks, so this aris, like are you two like a thing? Or like Aris asked about Tiva, like something like that. So it's kind of implied in the first game that they have some jealousy issues. And they can kind of build on that or answer the question that fans had filled in previously by just assuming they hated each other by just being like, well, it's not what you thought, which is fun. So I think that, I think that FS7 Rebirth also like kind of flubs a lot of character relationships. Like that one is an interesting one. Like they try to do

a whole thing with Barrett and Ufi where Barrett doesn't like Ufi, but then like they kind of get to like. I've just forgotten everything I didn't like. game kind of is memory hold for me to. But there's definitely stuff where I'm like, oh, are they trying to do a thing here? And it was never really clear. So I think they didn't nail every single one of those. But that is a really great dynamic to watch play out in a relationship as like, you know, enemies to friends or, you know, learning to respect one another or meet one another on your own terms. Or, yeah, even better fall in love. Yeah. Yeah, I really, I really like that kind of thing. Well, it's, yeah, I don't know. It's something that we're constantly engaging with,

these big groups of people, these ensemble dynamics, and I just thought it might be an interesting thing to talk about. We'll definitely get more into the Vail Guard next week, and I'm sure we'll reference this conversation and all those other games too. I'll keep thinking about it as I see more and more party dynamics playing out in Vailgard, for sure. Yeah, for sure. It is the capstone to a very interesting year in role-playing games. All right, well, let's take a break and then come back for one more thing.

You ever know what you'll learn more about on the Celebrity Trivia show, go fact to yourself. For over 150 episodes, we've welcomed guests like DJ Jazzy Jeff, Audie Cornish, and Andy Richter to tell us why they love what they love, and then get quizzed on it. And past quizzes have included some pretty unexpected topics like... Reverse painting. The perfect flip turn while swimming. Prince's House Party playlist from that one episode of New Girl.

And so much more. Plus, our guest meets surprise experts in their topics. Like the time we met an actual celebrity cow. So listen to GoFactor Self twice a month, every month on Maximum Fun. Do it for the cow! Hey, do you have a favorite episode of Star Trek? If you do, you should also have a favorite Star Trek podcast. Greatest Trek is about all the new streaming Star Trek shows,

and it's a great companion to The Greatest Generation, our hit show about Back Catalog Star Trek that you grew up with. It's a comedy podcast by two folks who used to be video produced, So it's a serious mix of comedy and insight that fits right into the Maximum Fun network of shows. And Greatest Trek is one of the most popular Star Trek podcasts in the world. So if you're following Lower Decks, Prodigy or Strange New Worlds, come hang out with us every Friday as we roast and review our favorite Star Trek shows. It's on maximum fun.org, YouTube or your podcatching app. And we are back for one more thing. We have two games and what looks like a book here.

here. So let's, let's do a game book sandwich. We're going to start with one of the games. Maddie, what is your one more thing? Game book sandwich. Delicious. I just wanted to say that I finished the main story of metaphor, refantasia, refantazio. I don't know. Tazio. I think I say Tazio. Refantre pronounce it however you want. I defeated the main story and I loved it and I just wanted to kind of put a cap on my feelings on this game without spoiling it. And just, say, I think this is the first time in my life that I've completed a turn-based RPG of my own volition without it having been the product of a bet. And I do think that's really notable.

And I kept thinking about that. Did you finish Baldur's Gate 3? I did. That's true. But I feel like it's a kind of a different type of thing than this. Like this metaphor is like the type of game that I feel like 20 years ago, Maddie couldn't have even imagined playing. And I feel like it's a JRP.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, but it's just not the kind of thing I normally play. And I feel like it speaks to how much the combat is really fascinating and challenging and like variable for me, but also how much my own tastes have changed and how I've kind of realized that I actually do like a lot of things about this genre, some of which I've learned by force thanks to Jason Trier. I do actually appreciate having to learn those historical things by Flanks we go into in Final

Fantasy 6. but I really love the story of metaphor. And I know I was a little hard on certain parts of it in the discussion that we just had about the party members. The main character does not have a personality. But I just, I really want to recommend this game just from a story vantage point because I think what it's doing is really fascinating and it's surprising. I loved all the different story twists that's kind of unfold.

There's like a series of different kinds of story twists that happen. They surprised me. I thought the development of the different tribes in the game and the like depictions. of bigotry and politics were really fascinating and nuance in ways that I just never would have expected to see. And I just, I don't know, I really can't recommend it enough. I just had so much more fun with it and was so much more compelled by it than I ever expected to be. So if you're a listener and you're like, this really isn't my type of game, I wouldn't, I don't think I would like this. Maybe think again, because I actually really ended up digging it. I know it starts a little

slow, but I just, I'm really glad I finished it and I really like the characters in it and I'm just, I don't know. I think it's rad. I think metaphor is a good video game. So that's what I have to say about that. Good video game. And we'll definitely, so I'm almost finished, Craig is finished. Yeah, I think we're going to do a spoiler cast. Yeah, a beans cast at some point. I think in a couple months. I think that'll be fun. I think it'll be fun to talk more in detail about some of the specific quests and just kind of NPC storylines that unfold as well. It's very cool. And there There's storylines with NPCs that aren't in your party, which I think is really neat as well, that you, like, can unlock like these kind of social bonds with people who are just kind of

on the outskirts of your life and interactions. I think that's a really cool touch as well. One minute, you're dog sitting for a lady next minute. Yeah. Yeah, that one wild. Good stuff. Cool. Yeah, that'll be a fun beans cast for sure.

All right. So that's the bread. Now we get to the literary meat. Jason. and what is your one more thing? Or the PD&J? Maybe it's a vegetarian sandwich. I don't know.

No vegetarian. It's, yeah, it's the turkey and ham. It's in one of those Italian subs with like, those are good with like toothpicks in it, hold it all together. Yeah, delicious. I'm reading a book called The Unseen World by Liz Moore. Liz Moore wrote God of the Woods, which is a popular book that came out earlier this year. And I talked about this as my one more.

thing a couple of months ago. And I'm reading this new book by her. And it's really, really good. It's really cool book. And so the story of the book is it's about this woman, Ada. Part of the time she's a woman, part of the time she's a 12-year-old girl. And it's about her relationship with her father, who is this quirky dude, this kind of AI researcher in the 1980s who homeschools her by bringing her to his lab every day and is kind of like socially bizarre and, you know, and, you is just kind of the strange dude. And it's about her relationship with him and how what happens to that

when he starts deteriorating mentally. And then she learns that he is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's. And then you kind of follow the progress of her life and it dips back and forth between the 1980s when she's 12 and the kind of late 2000s when she is in a grown-up in Silicon Valley because where else? And it also tells the story of the AI program that he was working on with her

and her kind of feeding it with conversations and stuff like that. And hey, as it turns out, and this is kind of like the inciting incident, so to speak, as he is deteriorating, it has revealed that his entire life was a sham, was a lie, and was not what it seemed. And she has to like simultaneously deal with like his Alzheimer's and her own kind of like life and like being raised and being placed in school suddenly for the first time ever at the

age of 12 while trying to figure out the secrets of his past and like why he lied about his past. And it's really fascinating and super compelling read. She's a phenomenal writer, Liz Moore. And I am really enjoying it. not quite finished yet, but almost there. And the twist and the turns along the way, I've been very fun.

Really enjoying it. Really good book. Cool. Nice. The unseen world, it's called. Yeah, man, there's a lot of dementia stories out there right now. And I find them hard and also kind of healing in a way that I'm sure a lot of listeners who have a parent with dementia can relate to.

Like, Slow Horses did it. Thursday Murder Club has a really, like, involved storyline with one of the characters' spouses has dementia. Yeah, man, it's kind of everywhere, or it feels like it's everywhere. But anyway, that sounds like a good story. And maybe we'll check it out. Yeah, it always resonates. Like, when you know someone or, like, have struggled with, like, a family member dealing with that sort of thing, it resonates.

Yeah, that experience in particular, it's a very particular experience. So to put some bread underneath all that delicious and tasty ham and salami, what was it? So we'll put some nice dry under there with some mustard on it. My slice of bread is a little slice of bread called Call of Duty Black Ops 6. That is which is bread holding like a bunch of machine guns. It's tactical bread, guys. It's tactical bread. It's got some Kevlar plating and it's ready for action.

Yeah, I've been playing this game because I saw enough people saying that it's pretty good that I thought I played. It's on Game Pass. You can just play it. I'm playing on Steam. And when I say I'm playing the game, I mean I'm playing the single player campaign. I've heard that's very good, incidentally. Yeah, I'm not one for multiplayer call of duty. So you'll need to listen to a different podcast to get opinions about whatever,

how the time to kill has been tweaked on the whatever, some machine gun. So, yeah, I've been playing through this game. It's really funny that this is the sixth Black Ops game. I don't remember the last one of these that I played. It's been a long time since I played any Call of Duty campaign. I skipped all those modern warfare reboots, didn't play. There was like, I don't know, Black Ops. that was in the future, if I recall correctly.

Most of the Black Ops games are about the past. They started, they were kind of Vietnam era, Cold War era, like spy, paranoid spy thrillers. And then at one point, there was a Black Ops game that took place in the future. I remember that. That was around when they did advanced warfare, which that was one with Kevin Spacey.

There was infinite warfare where they were on the moon with John Snow and a robot and shit. I played some of that one. But I remember, I think, bouncing off that one didn't really like it. This series is insane. I know. I know, I know, it's wild. It's just wild that we're on up to Black Ops sixth.

I can't remember four. Yeah, that's just what they're calling it. Because I think four had the four hash marks instead of the IV. Well, technically, Kirk, we're up to, like, modern warfare seven or eight. Oh, no, but no, I mean, right. Of course, there have been a million of the Call of Duty games in general. But, like, Black Ops as this, like, what used to be Traiarks's, like, signature series, I guess still is. Now is on the sixth game, which just time is moving along.

Anyways, yeah, I don't want to bury the lead any further. This game is really fun. It reminds me actually of Machine Games, Wolfenstein games. It has that same kind of rhythm and feeling. It's by far the most enjoyable and kind of just well put together call of duty campaign. I've tried in a long time, qualified by the fact that I skipped a lot of the recent ones. But there were a few in there, Infinite Warfare among them, where I'd start and I'd play a little bit. And then it would just be so railroady.

You're always in these shooting galleries. And it's just loud and, like, machine guns. And there'd be a big set piece and then another shooting gallery. And then a big set piece. And then you're just in a hallway. And there's, like, guys leaning out and then you shoot him. And I was like, this is boring. Time Crisis 2 style.

Right. Like, I like a, like, Far Cry style first person shooter. I love games like that where you're, like, circling around and, like, picking your, you know, your vantage point and, like, sneaking in and using stealth and, like, triggering alarms. And then sneaking back out and letting guys chase you. And, like, all of that stuff is really fun. And Call of Duty just typically doesn't really do much of that. However, Black Op. Six does do a fair amount of that.

And furthermore, it's just, at least from what I've played, I've played like four or five hours, I'm like five or six missions in. It's just a, it's a pretty fun and pretty dumb story that I'm having a good time playing through. So this is set in the 1990s during Operation Desert Storm during like the first Gulf War, which do not let you think that that is going to lead to any kind of a political statement or any criticism or even commentary on that. endeavor to have none in these games. No, they're not interested, and they have not been interested for a very long time. So, like, you know, that just kind of is what it is at this point. You show up, you're in the Gulf, and then, like, immediately the first bad guys that show up, they're like, it's Pantheon.

And Pantheon is, like, this private military, like, spy group that works for bad guys. And those are the guys you fight, like, the whole time. Occasionally, you'll go into Iraq. Oh, so you're not actually fighting, like, Iraqi? No, and I'm doing a mission right now, I guess, where I'm fighting, like, Saddam's soldiers. So he has mentioned, like, he has hired the, the, whatever, shadowy group to, like, give him weapons or something. So, like, it's in the background, but it's not like, you're not, like, a soldier on the ground. And it's not doing the thing that, like, modern warfare did,

for example, where you're popping between two different protagonists. So older Call of Duty games, you would be one guy in, like, the military front, like, you're just fully, like, a grunt next to a tank with a machine gun, just fighting armies. And then you're also, like, a British SAS agent, where you're sneaking. onto subs and doing covert operations. And they get to kind of modulate their pace by switching you between characters. In this case, you're just one person case.

You don't have a name or you don't speak. It's always the way, this way, in Call of Duty, like all the other characters talk. Kind of like the metaphor of Reifontasio main character. It's a real metaphor situation. But what's interesting is just the structure of the game and all of the variety that's put into it. So you're kind of like, you were working for the CIA,

but then it becomes clear. The CIA is compromised. So you have to go rogue. And it really feels like one of those new Mission Impossible movies. Like basically, like you were in the IMF, but now the IMF is compromised, so you're disavowed. There's a bull in CTO, and you have to figure out how to torture it. And so you're in this absolutely beautiful mansion. I mean, like natural wood trim, all original, dude.

Like, you would not, this place is... It's a beautiful age TV episode. Really, the vibes in this place are beautiful. It's like a 1970s mansion that's kind of a little decrepit, and now it's the 90s, and like no one's been there in a while, and you're exploring it, and there's like, you can use a UV light to find secrets and unlock more things. And then all your buddies hang out there. And as you play through missions, you recruit more buddies, and then you go and you, like, talk to them. So it's got that feeling of one of those machine games, Wolfenstein games, where part of the fun of the game is just you have this big, cool kind of ever-expanding hub that you're just walking through. And it's so beautiful looking and just kind of nice.

And then you talk to people and you like choose questions to ask them and they sort of answer your questions. and you have conversations with different characters, even though your character doesn't talk. And that part of it is just cool. And then the missions themselves are also pretty cool. Like there's a lot of sneaking. There's a pretty good stealth system. I'm doing a series of missions right now that's like kind of like Far Cry.

Like it's a big open map and you have a car and you drive around. You know, it's not like Far Cry. It's kind of like uncharted 4 where they give you those sort of open areas and you have a car. And it's like still, it's not a Ubisoft game. Like it's not a totally systemic, It's still kind of controlled, but it's open and allows for some flexibility with how you approach things. I think that's really cool. And I guess my last thought that I'll say is that I've been playing it at the same time as the Vale Guard.

And it's just taking me back to that kind of two-hander gaming that I haven't done in a long time because I haven't played a call of duty in a long time. But I used to really do this, especially when I was just kind of a gamer and wasn't writing about them in the kind of mid-2000s. I would play a Call of Duty campaign as a just mindless fun thing, and then also be playing some big RPG that had also come out in the fall. And the games have such different rhythms. They're so, like, you know, they just are totally different type of game that, depending on what I'm in the mood for, I just go to one or the other. And they've really been kind of pairing well together and making me very nostalgic for that.

So anyways, yeah, I really like it. I think if you like first person shooters and like single player campaigns at all and you have Game Pass, like check it out at the very last. least. Like, it's worth giving a spin. It's pretty cool. And so there, I'm just hung up on this point a little bit. So is their response to the criticism that has been made in the past about, like, called duty games, just having you shooting like Arabs and brown people just to have like a special ops like mercenary group? Is that their way of dealing with that? Yeah, this is what all of these, this is like what action movies have been doing. This is the top gun movies. It's always like some

mysterious private group that you're fighting. No, it's just. funny. Well, because it used to be like, oh, you go in and you shoot like, I don't know, like, Eastern Europeans. So like you, whatever, yeah, if you're in a Middle Eastern country, you just shoot. Yeah, it's just so, I mean, these games, the way they like, the, the way they bend over backwards to not be political in any way. It's just extremely funny. I guess, yeah. I mean, like, you're still shooting the Republican Guard. Like, you were shooting Iraqis in this game. And it's, you know, you're going to feel about that the way you'll feel about it. I mean, most of the game is this, like, Tom. Tom, you're going to feel about it. I mean, most of the game is this, like,

Cruz Mission Impossible movies, so it doesn't really feel like they're saying anything at all. They're very consciously trying not to. Yeah. I feel like that's kind of how they do it is by just introducing so many non-historical aspects to the historical fiction such that you're like, well, this isn't even based in reality anymore. So I don't know what it's saying. Like that's kind of their own way of dealing with it. In my opinion, that's it's for the best. Like, do we want them to say anything? I don't know. Probably that. Just let us just play through a dumb action movie, it's fine. Like, at least I'm, maybe I'm just exhausted at this point of, like, hoping for anything else. Like, I just, I'm like, cool, there's like a cool assassin lady and

she wants me to help her kill a bunch of, like, mafia guys somewhere in Eastern Europe. Great, like, this is fun. I've got a remote control car that kills people. Like, that's kind of what I'm here for, or at least what I'm enjoying about it. Anyways, pretty fun game. And, and, yeah, kind of a return to forum, at least for their single player campaigns. Raven Software, I believe, did the single player for this game. And they've made some pretty cool games in the past. I don't know how many people are still there or how much things have changed. But it's cool to see them getting to do another one.

All right. Well, that is a long episode. It's like we've been putting off dealing with something else in the world that might be making us anxious. We'd rather sit here and talking to our microphones about video games. That's the energy of this episode has. Maybe this moment can just last forever. I just want people to know it is 5.47 p.m. on the East Coast right now. Pulls close.

This pulse start to close in one hour and 13 minutes. And then the counting begins. Yes. And that could last. Deep breath. For a while. Deep breath, everyone. We're going to get through this together.

All right. Well, I will see. Come a hell or high water. I will see the two of you next week. So true. Louise one. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton.

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

Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at Maximum Fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.