Triple Click - Mystery Video Games

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

MYSTERIES: what are they? Who are they? WHO DID THEM??? This week, the Triple Click gang talks about mysteries in video games, from Return of the Obra Dinn to Elden Ring. What makes a good detective mechanic? What kind of mysteries can only be explored in games? And why is The Case of the Golden Idol so damn good?One More Thing: Kirk: SignalisMaddy: Interview with the Vampire (2022 AMC+ TV series)Jason: The Legend of Mike WhiteLinks: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

And so, after considering all the evidence, weighing all the witness accounts, and chronicling the sort of truths we've learned about the victim, we can only conclude that the perpetrator was video games. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the mysteries to you. This week we're talking about just that mysteries and games, how they work, why we love them, and all of the different ways that games can spice things up with a dash of the unknown. Grab your magnifying glass and let's go gather some clues. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Schre. Hello, my friends.

It's us again. Hey, it's us again. Clicking our way into your heart for another week. Recording in the pitch darkness of winter. It's so dark. It's so cold. It's raining here in Portland. It's awful.

Yeah, I just want to sit inside and play video games. Yeah, it's kind of what I've been doing. It's been fine. Yeah, it's good weather for gaming. And playing games by candlelight, you know? Or maybe lighting some candles and listening to your favorite video game podcast. Right.

And if Triple Click is your favorite video game podcast, you know what? You can help us keep making this show by becoming a member. Or if it's not, you can also support that. Even if it's like second favorite or third. We don't want to hear about it. But you can still know. No, we support ranked choice voting here at Triple Flicks. We do.

If you want to rank a second or third, that's fine. Or anywhere up there, if we get any part of your vote, you can support us. As long as we're top, top 10. That's a whole top 10. Right. Unless you listen to a lot of video game podcast. In which case, you know, I mean, it's all relative. Anyways, however you feel about us, if you want to support us, that's just fine.

Some people do because some people have jobs so they can listen to podcasts. Right. I'm going to load up on every video game podcast. And you know what else? I'm going to say it. If you listen to the show and you hate it, like it's actually your least favorite podcast, you could still do what Kirk is about to describe. You can still become a supporter.

I think you should. I think you should because we're entertaining you in a different way. Yeah, if you're going to hate this, and you might as well hate support us. It's true. Your money is still green. So yes, become a member at maximum fun.org slash join. Become a member of Maximum Fun, our podcast network, and support the creation of Triple Click, which we really appreciate.

Thanks to all of our members. We just released a God of War Ragnarok Beanscast where we talked all about the story and our lingering questions and things we liked, things we didn't like. It was a very fun conversation, and that just went out. And then in December, we're going to be doing a Beanscast about Star Wars and Or. Yeah. Which I'm extremely excited about because all I was, want to do is talk to different people about Andor. That's just, anyone who knows me knows that I just

show up now and I just yell Andor and then I just start monologing for like 10 minutes to get it out of my system. So it'll be nice to do it with the two of you and talk about that show. I like to call Cassie and Andor Mr. Andor because nobody would ever call him that. And it. And it's funny to call him that. That's his last name. Mr. Andor is having a real tough time. You can kind of say it in Agent Smith voice. Mr. Andor. Mr. Andor. You hope your grandmother take out her garbage. I feel like Cassian is kind of that kind of guy.

He kind of does have that relationship with some of the Empire characters on the show. That's a super cut that can happen. I enjoyed seeing, I saw a tweet the other day that was like, I haven't finished Andor yet, but I saw a tweet that was like, Andor was this show about like resistance and politics and like fascism and rebellion.

And it's also a show where Jar Jar Jha Banks could show up at any moment. Yes, that's definitely one of the jokes. that Jar Jar Jarvings is currently a senator in the world of Andor, which the more you walk to the show, the more it's like, what? But we're not talking about Andor yet. That's for members. That's reserved. So if you want to hear that in December.

Secret Jar Jar Jar Bean. Along with, yeah, so many other, so many other beans casts from the years that we've been making the show, maximum fun.org slash join. Another way that you can support our show. So Madie and Jason, I'm going to show you something. Whoa. What am I wearing? Oh, Chip-Man.

T-shirt. Oh. Is that a new one? Pretty good, right? That's the old one. I think it's a new color. Oh, sick. Oh, what color is that?

What color is that triple click t-shirt you're wearing? It's like a dark teal. It's very nice. And there are a couple different options. Oh, I should have brought it in. Emily got one in a lighter, a lighter colors. There are a few different options. They're pretty cool looking.

And then also I have here, what you see? A triple-click coffee mug more than. As soon as we stop recording, I am going to order a triple-click mic. Some triple-stick stickers. Curt did all three, folks. I bought all the merch. He's a triple, triple, triple, triple, triple, triple, triple, triple, triple, triple, triple, triple threat, triple click fan. So anyways, there is, there is new merch. We mentioned it last week. It's still there. There's a link in the show notes. You should go buy some merch because it's pretty cool. And we'll be adding some new stuff to the store as well. I think at some point in the future and we're excited about it. All right. So let's get into our topic for this week. Miriam Webster defines a mystery as something not understood or beyond understanding. And the triple click video game podcast defines a

mystery as a really cool thing in a video game that we all really like. Great. And between those two definitions lies the truth. The taxonomy has come full circle here. We're reading Merriam Webster. That's what you've got to do. I guess it is. That's how all the pros begin in their podcast episodes is with a definition.

Yeah. In this paper, I will write. I will attempt to define it. In this podcast episode, we will explain why mysteries are cool and different games that contain them. No, we've been talking about mysteries a lot. mystery factors in to a lot of different aspects of video games that we like in terms of opaque world design and lingering things that come with us out of the game that we spend time trying to figure out and all of these different things.

And so we thought it would just be fun to talk about mystery in video games just as a kind of broad, hot topic. And I think we can start by talking a little bit more about the case of the Golden Idol, since I think all three of us have made that game are one more thing, which means that in total we've actually dedicated a significant amount of time to the game, but not really in a kind of focused discussion. And I think it's actually a really good way in to talk about different games that do mysteries in different ways because it's a fantastic mystery game. It's also a very straightforward type of mystery. Yeah. So, okay, I have many, many thoughts on the case of the Golden Idol,

and I will take the credit for introducing you both to that game, which is now one of our favorites, I think, of the year. So I think video games have tried to do. like, so there are different types of mystery, right? But to talk about the type of video game that is like a detective story where the main purpose of the game is solving a mystery, games have been trying to do this in all sorts of ways for years and years and years going all the way back to like text-based adventure games where you have to solve a mystery. One of the most recent kind of like grand experimental failure examples of this is L.A. Nour, a fascinating game for all sorts of reasons, but a game that, like, really the detective part amounts to just, like,

picking up objects when you see the X button appear on screen and then kind of, like, yelling at, during interrogations, yelling at people that they're lying. Case of the Golden Idol is, like, really the closest that I've seen a game come to the feeling of, like, actually intuiting a puzzle and a mystery and solving it for yourself, because the design is just so smart. And just to describe it for a second for people who aren't familiar, basically the game requires you to go around and just like you're seeing these kind of like still portrayals of events. Someone just died and you're watching all the people surrounding the body talking about what just happened.

And you have to go around and kind of like peek into their pockets and see what they're holding and see what kind of letters they're writing and see what kind of objects are surrounding them. And try to piece together what happened. And it's part of a grander ongoing story. that is unfolded into a bunch of different smaller chapters and smaller mysteries. And a lot of it is just kind of like figuring out logic puzzle style exactly what happened. And it's really, really clever in a way that I think like not a lot of games have done. And I think that's really elegant. And I want to hear your thoughts on like why it works so well.

But one immediate thought I had was that a lot of it just doesn't, it expects you to use your brain to figure. it out as opposed to kind of holding your hand along a path and just having you kind of interact with objects. And the way that it is able to do that is by not by doing this clever kind of fill in the blank sort of interface where you have to, where you are presented with a bunch of words, a bunch of verbs or a bunch of nouns and you have to put them into these like descriptions of what happened. And you just can't do that by brute force and you can't do it by letting the the game guide you along the way. So you really just have to sit there and stare at a scene stare at a tableau and stare at people's pockets until you figure out what happened. But yeah,

I'm curious to hear, I know you both love this game as much as I do. I'm curious to hear what makes you guys feel like the mystery and the detective work specifically work so well. Something that I have realized I love about Case of the Golden Idol since playing a different mystery game called Pentamette that we'll probably also talk about in a few minutes is I really like that case of the golden idol lets you be right or wrong and you really know when you're wrong and you can't proceed until you've completed the mystery perfectly, which is a very, it's a platonic ideal of a detective. This isn't how detective work actually functions. Usually you never have all the pieces and you just have your best guess and you're really hoping based on a lot of evidence that you're

drawing the right conclusion. But in case of the Golden Idol, and in many video games with a mystery, there is a right answer that you can come to. If you collect all the clues, maybe the game will just tell you if it's not very well designed. Or in the case of this game, have to put the clues together yourself and then make the guess that itself can be confirmed by the game as correct or incorrect. And that is so satisfying to me. I mean, we've also talked about, you know, the music, the bizarre art style. I love those aspects too. But just in terms of playing a mystery game, I realized I really like it when there is a correct answer. And when I am capable of finding that out and then feeling like Sherlock Holmes a super genius but an iconoc

because Pentiment doesn't have one right? Pettlement doesn't give you it doesn't so Pentiment I don't know how far you two are in Pentiment I am not very quite far I there are multiple mysteries in Pentiment I think that's not a spoiler I won't go into more detail but maybe can you give us like a one sentence summary just because we haven't talked about Pentiment on the show yet and people might not know what yeah so Pentiment is so Pentiment is is almost entirely like reading a book, for one. If you like reading books, you might like this. There's a heck of a lot of reading. And that is the main way that you interface with the world. And there's some dialogue selection and some selection of which characters you get to talk to.

But reading is the name of the day. So it isn't an adventure game, but it's not really like clicking on items to find out what goes on. It's more like walking around a town and discovering what it goes on. It's set in a, I think it's a late medieval. is how the developers have described you. I think it's 1518, I believe, is the year it's sent. And it is designed to look like an illuminated manuscript in terms of font selection, and they did a ton of actual research. There's a really cool story at Polygon that Nicole Carpenter did about all the research they did on the book aspect of it if people are interested in that. And so it just looks freaking gorgeous, but also you're solving a murder mystery at the Abbey where you work as an illuminated manuscript artist.

That's the very first mystery you solved. There are a couple others later in the game. but I'll just focus on the first one for now because I'm completed that one, and I'm playing the second one currently. And from what I gather, they work the same way. So when you have a limited time to gather clues in this game. So you can go around and talk to people and you can talk to people during a meal or between meals, and there are different activities available according to what time of day you have these interactions. And you will run out of time.

Quick question about that. Before you need to make a judgment. Go on. Kirk? Yes, you? Anyone listening? When you say a limited amount of time, is it persona style where you choose what to do with this block of time? That's correct.

That's correct. It is a ticking clock. It is persona style. Okay, okay. Where you, in theory, have an infinite amount of time to walk around. To choose what you're going to do. And choose what you're going to do. But once you select an activity, usually the character will make it clear to you.

Like, this will take a couple hours. Are you sure you have the time for this? And you'll be like, yes, I agree not to speak to any other characters until dinner time. And then you either learn more about that character. or get another clue. But in this game, there are multiple murder suspects. And as far as I know, you never get to find out who really did it. You can make some educated guesses. And I believe, and this is purely my own conjecture because I don't know how this game was built, I believe that according to however many clues you collect, like if you happen to collect a lot of clues on one

person and then make that accusation, I think the game then decides retroactively almost that that is the person who did it, if that makes sense. Yeah, it sounds completely unsatisfying. It's very odd. Well, it's more like having a game master in like a D&D kind of a thing, where they can change the story to fit. But I also could be wrong about that because I haven't beaten it yet. And I think the whole point of the game is that it's about your perspective and your choices

that you make and your own sense of people as you talk to them. And I've already completed the first mystery. And I don't feel great about who. I accused and how it shook out. And I'm now seeing the aftermath of it as I'm solving the second one, which is fascinating. And I really like that as like a mystery game concept to have the detective character be like, I don't really know what I'm doing, guys. Like that's fascinating. But it's a very different kind of game than something like either Oprah Din or Outer Wilds or many of the other examples on this list, Case of the Golden Idol, where you really know if you got it

right or not. And I think Pentaman is a reflection that we're kind of moving forward in mystery games and what they could do, you know, by having them be more experimental. It's hard for me to really draw conclusions in Pendham because I haven't played enough of it to tell. But I think there's something, part of the appeal of mysteries is that last moment when, when, what's his name, Benoit in, in, in, uh, in, uh, hacu Poirot. Yeah, Pooh. Yes, of course, of course. Miss Marple. Or Jessica Fletcher. Or Sherlock Holmes or whomever connects all the dots and is like one more thing. The parlor scene, it's called.

Gathers everybody in the parlor and says, this is who it was. But wait, there's more. And whatever that looks like, or it could just look like that's satisfying, like, ping of like everything on your screen turning green because you filled it in correctly, right? So that, not having that in a mystery game seems like it would take away from it, at least just from what I've heard from you. You two should play more and see what you think.

as it is now though, I think Pentaman is almost outside of what I think we're describing here and is more of a story game that has mystery solving in it as opposed to just a mystery game where the purpose of the game is to solve mysteries as opposed to learning something about the people around you and yourself and your own preconceived biases. If only you could turn, I'm going to play when they add an option to turn off that quill pen sound in the line of dialogue because you can't turn it off. Wow. I think when you asked us about that, I started noticing it.

It is noticeable. Yeah, that's an interesting one with Pentiment because it is just sort of doing something different. Like, it's not really trying to be the same type of mystery game as these other ones we're talking about. Going back, though, to the case of the Golden Idol. Yeah. So a thing that I really like about it is how much of the game

lives outside of the game. So I wrote down three distinctions for the types of mysteries in games that we solved, just in the way that I was thinking about them and how to categorize different mysteries. And one of them is in the game versus outside of the game. And that's basically how much of the mystery is taking place in the game.

Like how much of the content, I guess, the clues, the interviews, the performances, like vocal performances, like in L.A. Noir, the interviews. Or, you know, I mean, there are a ton of those Sherlock Holmes games. I don't know if either of you've ever played those, but I've been playing those forever on and enough. And they're very similar where you gather clues and you talk to people and you look for contradictions and their stories. And then typically when Assassin's Creed does this, there's that great Evie, is that her name?

The DLC for Syndicate, there's a lot of murder mysteries in that. I think Valhalla has a mystery, The Witcher does one, where you talk to people, and then you look for the contradictions, and then you get to make an accusation, and because it's a side quest, you can get it right or wrong, doesn't really matter. So a lot of that is very in the game, where a game like Case of the Golden Idol, or Oberdin, for that matter, a lot of it happens outside of the game, because they're very quiet games in the moment, because especially those two games are frozen in time. You're just looking at this freeze frame and then going around and just observing things and taking note of stuff and then thinking about it.

And so much of the mystery takes place in your own head to the point where you basically have to write out your own understanding. You write the story yourself. And I think that's what makes the story so much fun. And what makes any good mystery story fun is how much time we spend writing the story ourselves as we try to guess what's going to happen. And then there's this moment of reconciliation during the parlor scene or whatever. where we reconcile the version that we wrote with whatever surprises remain in the version that the authors wrote and that process is really fun I think. Yeah.

Well, and I think with the game, it's all the more satisfying when you do that because when you do that when you're like kind of consuming something passively like a book or a movie, it can be fun. But ultimately someone else is figuring out the mystery in a game just like this, just by nature, you have to figure it out yourself. and the game will kind of guide you a little bit, but that just makes it all the more satisfying. So a thing I actually really like about Golden Idol

is the way that the game guides you toward the solution because I actually think this is a very clever thing about it that distinguishes it from the curse of the Oberiden. No, return of the Oberlin. Curse of the Golden Idol. It's not a curse of the Golden Idol at all. The case of the Golden Idol. It's the curse of Monkey Island.

Which we're not talking about. Right. So I think there's a big distinction. between those two games. The biggest distinction is the process of filling in your notebook in Golden Idol. And that's the moment where the game goes from in your head. It goes from outside and it goes inside. And they kind of funnel it out of your brain and into the game in a way that I always found really cool. Because Emily and I played through this game together in each little tableau, we would look at it and we'd be like, okay, so this guy's here, like this works this way. Okay, so that's maybe this person, but they're wearing a mask. Oh, and that was like the same guy. guy from over here. So we'd start to put it together and get a sense of what was going on. And then finally we'd go into the notebook, which is where you finally see, here's what we actually need to know. We need to know who's these six people, what are their names, and we need to know this little summary. So so-and-so went to the house, and then they ate dinner with so-and-so

and tried to poison so-and-so because of such-and-such, and this person died. And so they give you a framework to like filter all of your thoughts and observations, which is really helpful because in the process of filling that out, it's, it's almost scaffolded in a way. So there's three or four things that you have to complete and then it turns green. So you start with the easiest one, which is usually who is everybody? And so you start being like, well, I know that guy and I know that guy, I know her, and I know him. That leaves these three people, so who are they? And then once you know them, it's like, ding, complete. And you're like, okay, and so now you have some ammunition to move forward. And you're kind of, it's giving structure to your thoughts. It's letting you,

it's letting you organize your thoughts in a way that you would if you were a master investigator. But I think for most of us, we would get all these clues and find ourselves a little bit like, okay, I've learned all this stuff, but I don't quite know how it all fits together. And that's a really clever way, I think of sort of funneling you toward the eureka moment and getting it out of your head and onto the page. Yeah, I think that's a really salient point. And I think that it almost, it never quite feels like it's giving you more information than you would be able to deduce otherwise, but like it kind of is, right?

Like by giving you things in sentences. Well, I wonder, I was thinking about this. Like, would you be able to solve Golden Idol's mysteries like every single chapter in the game without having that kind of guide at the end? And I don't know if you could. I think it would be really difficult. That's like the hardest difficulty setting is there's no notebook. Well, the reason why I think maybe you could though is because Kirk and I have both played

the hunt-a-killer board games, which really just give you all the clues and don't give you any fill-in-the-blank framework. Like, you just read all the paperwork, look at photographs of murder tabloes or whatever it is. And then you are like, okay, who's the killer? And there's only one question at the end of that game. But that's designed specifically that way. Of course. This is a lot more complicated.

I think, though, that those are, well, I think the one we played, I think those can be designed with a similar trick where there's a locked box. And the only way you're going to get the box open is by finding the clue or the code. the only way you find the code is by at least learning a few things, so they do scaffold it a little bit. But yeah, they are much more open. Right. And they try to lead you down a specific path where it's like, well, let me look for codes, which is similar. Yeah. I think it's really important. I think that kind of the Madlib section, for lack of a better name for it, I think it's really important to the overall design of the game because it would

be super frustrating if there was no gating like that because you wouldn't, the way that the story works is it's kind of like brick upon brick upon brick. And you, need to know to the point where the last chapter, like you, it gives you like a nice little tab section where you can go back to all the old chapters and look for for other clues or like remind yourself of what happened there. It all just like gradually turns into this big story piece by piece. And if you manage to get past any of the chapters without actually figuring out what happened because it wasn't gated like this, then you would kind of screw yourself for the later sections and you'd be like, wait, what? Like I missed out on that pivotal piece of information.

So it needs to be there. Like it needs, the game needs to make sure that you know exactly what happened in this chapter. And then in this chapter and then in this chapter. And so the MadLibs, I think, is such a clever, elegant way of, like, first of all, ensuring that you have all the information, but second of all, giving you just enough context and just enough, like, clues that you can piece it together on your own without feeling like the game is giving you stuff. But it is.

It's giving you guidance in that sense. I think it's an interesting distinction with Return of the Oberiden, because Oberdin does that much less, and you are filling out a notebook in that game, but you're really kind of figuring it out yourself. And then the narrative part of it of where you just sort of deduce what happened on this cursed ship is also really in your head. It's really up to you. And that's the magic of the game, you know, similar with Outer Wilds, two games we kind of compare a lot, that the magic of the game is that so much of it lives in your head and you have to come up with your own language, your own way of describing people. They don't even, I mean, they have names, but like, I don't remember any of their names. I just remember deep V because he had a deep V on his shirt. I remember the nicknames that we gave to each of the people and the crew based on the picture of them.

And that is a cool kind of mystery, but I would imagine that more people would get farther in the case of the Golden Idol because it helps you along, and it's scaffolded so much more clearly and develops its mysteries so much more, where Oberdin is a lot more just like, okay, here's what we're doing this. If you're not up for it, you might just be a little bit lost for a while. Well, the Obriden, I kind of disagree with that because Obridon does its own type of scaffolding, which is the chapters. And each chapter is kind of like, like you can see where it unfolds in the greater scheme of the story. So you can look at the book and get a lot of information just from looking at the book that you don't have to piece together yourself.

Yes. And yeah, I mean, I think even framing it that way isn't what I meant to do. Like I don't, I'm not really trying to say one game is easier to play than the other. just they do kind of approach information differently. And I could see one working better for someone than another, especially, I guess, there's a point at Obrideon where the game has opened up significantly and you're kind of walking all around the ship to different places. And it can feel overwhelming. And I know there are people who get overwhelmed by it.

And I like that because I like when a game really makes me do the work and throws it all out into the world with me and I'm sitting there filling out my notebook and trying to remember where I saw this and where I saw that guy. But, you know, that is, it is asking more and more and more of the player, the more you do that. Quick random digression, but I just want to talk about Eldon Ring really quick because this made me think of Eldon Ring. No, mention it.

It's on the list here and it relates to all of this. So go ahead. There's a point in Eldon Ring. I mean, we're talking about a scale here of like how much information do you trust the player to figure out themselves, right? Like I was mentioning before how like because of these Mad Libs in case of the Golden Idol, you're kind of gated from proceeding until you have the information. The game wants you to know exactly who killed two, why they do.

like what, what happened here, why they did it, etc., etc. Meanwhile, on Eldon Ring, there's a massive twist in the game, and it just says, blank, like, this person, this name is this name. And you can get to that twist and see it and be like, wait, who? Who are either of these people? Because Eldon Ring is so unconcerned. It's like the total opposite approach. It's so unconcerned with like what you understood or what you didn't understand

when it came to the game's overarching story and mystery, that it's just the complete opposite. opposite effect. And that, I think, does two things. One is it will make most players just say, oh, okay, I don't care about this. Back to Dragon Slaying. But it will also, for the 1% of players who, like, reads all the item descriptions and understands the story somehow without watching a YouTube video, maybe 0.01%, really, that will make it all the more rewarding. Because I think it's kind of like you have this inverse relationship between the amount of handholding and then like the amount of satisfaction that you as a player get. out of figuring something out for yourself. And so that, I think, is a really interesting tension that any game designer has to think about. How much do you, how many breadcrumbs do you leave? How much do you, like, rely on the player to figure out themselves? And how much do you gate the game so that the player has to figure things out in order to

proceed? That's the question. And that's a really important one is, do you have to figure this out in order to proceed? How essential to the plot is the solution to this mystery? and it is a really interesting distinction because in a game like Eldon Ring, which is a great example, there are all these mysteries

and many of them are out in the world with you. I mean, they're just things you have to kind of figure out and hunt down and read an item description and maybe you figure out who's who. And if you don't, crucially in that game, it doesn't really matter because like you said, you just go back to fighting dragons with your sword and it's cool.

I mean, it's just a fun game to play. Where a game like immortality to use another type of very different type of mystery game, that game, it doesn't tell you very much about what's going on. It's really a confusing story where you're piecing together these out-of-sequence video clips of movies. We've talked about this before. I'll kind of describe it as I describe how it works. This is a really cool game where you're piecing together different film clips from different movies from an actress's career.

And then you're finding hidden stuff in the clips as well that's telling a separate but related story. And it's super confusing. I mean, just because it's non-linear, it's all. also like purposefully vague and open to interpretation. And that's the, that's it. That's the whole experience. So the mechanical part of the game, which in Eldon Ring is getting a better sword and fighting dragons, in Immortality, it's just, have you got all the video clips? Which is sort of whatever, neither here nor there. It's not very satisfying. That's not why you play the game. The narrative part is really difficult to track down and it makes the game, I mean, it's a rich and cool experience,

but it leaves you kind of, you know, if you don't figure out what's going on or go on message boards and talk with a bunch of people and try to figure it out, you just will never really know what happened. And then your whole experience of the game will be kind of a big question mark. Like, I guess I don't really know what happened. It was weird. And now I'm moving on. Yeah.

You can see credits on immortality without understanding anything that happened. Sure. Either by accident or purposefully, although seeing the credits purposefully and immortality feels like an impossible thing. I'm not sure what triggers them, but I do have one coworker who saw them within 40 minutes and was like, wait, what? And I think like that was maybe not ideal.

But, Kirk, you've played San Barlow's previous two games, Her Story and Telling Lies. Those two games, from my understanding, have a more concrete resolution to the mysteries, right? They do. You learn what's going on. And I actually find them, I think immortality is his strongest game. And we should say the studio that made that as well,

half mermaid, I think they're called. Like, I think it's the best version of it because of the ambiguity. I think that makes it really fun and also the sort of horror, supernatural elements of it. It's just got a cool vibe and I like that about it. But yeah, I mean, with her story, I never quite felt like I was piecing together what's going on. Her story is video clips of interview footage with a woman. It's at a police station, so something happened. Yeah, it's an interrogation, yeah, about a crime.

Right. And you're figuring out both who she is, who you are, why you care. And it's cool. It's like a narrative story, but I didn't feel that mystery pull. what is the deal here? Like, what is going on? Where with immortality, I definitely did. Okay, wait, what? And there's a point in that game where you're being gentle with spoilers, but you say that.

And then it's this question of like, okay, so what's really going on? And I really became invested in that question. I became invested and then I watched more and then became kind of sad that it seemed as though maybe the point was to never fully have all the questions answered because it turns out I'm realizing this about myself. I need to have all the questions answered. This is with that in penitimate. What is the meaning of life?

I need somebody to tell me because I'm freaking out over here. I can't be out here not knowing what really happened to people. It's not going to work you have. It's a different kind of mystery. My one more thing, which I'll talk about more during one more thing, is a game Signalis, which is this very abstract horror game that I loved and played all the way through last week, just out of nowhere. And that game is super weird.

I mean, it's Silent Hill style. Very abstract horror. Stuff happens like you fully are through the looking glass. There's a cutscene suddenly you're in a new place. Everything is symbolic. Nothing is explained. There's weird text across the screen. And you figure out what's going on in a way.

It's a little out of focus. And then there's lots of theories and theorizing. And that kind of mystery, it's cool in a way. But it's not satisfying in the way that these other mysteries we're talking about where you're actually doing detective work and solving a mystery. Yeah, as opposed to just living in a mysterious world. I call that a vibes game. I don't know if I would even call it a mystery game.

I feel like immortality is definitely a vibes game. And if you like the vibe, you're going to like the game. And Signalis sounds like it's similar. So two thoughts. First of all, half mermaid is a fantastic name for a video game. I agree. Second of all, I wonder if, I don't know if you guys have thoughts on this, but I'm with Maddie. Like, I feel like I need to know the answers.

And I'm always very often, I shouldn't say always, often very unsatisfied when a game that presents a mystery doesn't satisfactorily explain that mystery. And here's a bit of a random example. Not super random, but random. There's a game called Fimbleweed Park that was created by Monkey Island designer, director, Ron Gilbert, and his team, a terrible toy box. And that game I really enjoyed. It's like this old school point-and-click adventure, Twin Peak style mystery, where it starts off of the dead body and two FBI agents, and you have to slowly figure out what happened and unravel this mystery in this weird town full of quirky characters. and just kind of weird stuff.

There's a diner, there's all sorts of interesting, weird Twin Peaksy stuff. But the resolution of that mystery without really, I'll try not to spoil here, is just kind of like a Ron Gilbert style, fourth wall breaking,

just kind of nonsense ending. And that I found really unsatisfying and it came close to kind of ruining the whole game experience for me because it was a game that promised this setup of a mystery and then didn't really deliver. When I feel like,

like there's a certain kind of promise, I use the word promise, because I feel like there's, that's what a mystery makes to you. And it's kind of, as part of that promise, uh, there needs to be some sort of like coherent, satisfying explanation that you will eventually solve over time. And it always feels very unsatisfying when, I don't know, you're watching the TV show lost and there are 4,000 mysteries and only a few of them get actually addressed and answered. Like there's, there's something really, it feels like you're being betrayed by the creator of the mystery. When, when that mystery either goes unresolved or is not really handled in a satisfactory way, it feels like they kind of tease you and set you up for something that they didn't then deliver on.

And that can be a frustrating experience. Yeah, the best of both worlds is when you kind of get, you get both of those things. You get moment-to-moment mysteries that are just fun to engage with, like Twin Peaks was very good at this. Even the amount of Thimblebead Park that I played with this, where you're meeting weird characters and learning fun things about them, and it's just a cool thing. But then when the broader mystery also comes through

and winds up being interesting, disco elisium is a good example of that. I actually really like the solution to the murder in that game, which I won't spoil, but is cool and thematically relevant. But it does have a solution. And it is also a game where each of the characters may not be to your liking, but they're so weird and interesting

and like talking to all the suspects and talking to the person who it turns out to be is just a fascinating conversation. And that's its own reward. That's your parlor moment is not just that you're solving the mystery, but also that you're like, what's up with this weird person? You know, like that's what's great about that game. Yes, that right, that it reveals a lot about the world. But then also it does reveal a lot about Harry about your character because the ultimate killer, again, not spoiling anything, but is like metaphorically, I think, very intertwined with Harry and they have a lot in common.

And there's a moment at the moment of the parlor scene of Disco Elysium, if you can call it that, is this totally freaky, unexpected thing that happens where there's also this moment. We've talked about this on our Disco Elysium spoiler cast, but that part is optional, which is crazy to me. But again, we're not spoiling anything, so no one knows what we're talking. Because it's one aspect, I suppose, of what you would call the parlor scene of the denouement of that story, which is all really just character-related. It's really, like I've said before, the true mystery of disco- Elysium is who are you? Yeah. And that is a mystery that you actively get to write this solution to

because you create who Harry is and who he wants to be. Which is very pentament. Yeah. And I think that's part of why, I mean, I'm sure pentament took inspiration from disco Elysium. And it's also why I don't want to make it sound like I don't like it because I actually think it's really cool and doing some fascinating stuff with how a mystery could be solved. And I am excited to beat it and see how it shakes out. But it is definitely a game that has reminded me like, oh, I need to enter into this with a different mindset where I'm not Sherlock Holmes. I'm just like a guy bumbling around. I'm more of a hairy from disco. I'm more just learning poignant stories about other people's circumstances. It's a character drama as opposed to I need to wham-bam, boom, figure out every single last clue

and then tick off all the boxes and leave town because I never have to think about these people again. It's definitely, it's another element of a mystery that I don't always think about, especially with a game like Case of the Golden Idol, is how does the mystery intersect with character? And that is like, it's such a... And repercussions? Well, yeah, sure, that too. But even just so looking at L.A. Noir for a second, the cool thing about that game, or what that game was trying to do, the cool thing about what that game was trying to do was that it was very, very concerned with character, which is both, I think, true generally, probably, to investigative work in that if you're going to solve a mystery, you're probably going to solve it by talking to people until someone tells you what happened, you know, one way or another. Having some

emotional intelligence, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's going to be part of it. And also just that that is a very interesting thing. It's a great idea that you gather evidence and then you go just talk to people. And then that's where the mystery solving happens because you look at their reactions. And the Sherlock Holmes games work this way too. A lot of other games work this way, where you talk to people, get a sense of them, this guy seems kind of shifty. Then, of course, it turns out usually the shifty one isn't the one who did it. Also, what you're describing is also my job. That's true.

I mean, sometimes you've got to shifty people. In journalism, too, yeah. Taking a lot of notes. No, that's true. I mean, investigative journalism is just detective work. So anyways, like that part of mystery, like of a mystery story is interesting and also very hard to do well. And that's why, I mean, there are characters in the case of the Golden Idol. There are characters in Return of the Obridin.

But both of those games really backburner character, where it's just frozen scenes. And you get to know people. We talked some about, is his name Philip? My favorite character. Peter. From the case of the golden idol, thanks Peter. Peter, just the ultimate character. And you do get to know him through his five lines of dialogue and his ridiculous face.

And letters. There's more stuff than that. Yes, letters. There's more than just a dialogue. There's some Mizan Sen. We get to see his gambling receipts every time we run into it. But compared with the really characterful kind of stuff, you know, just conversations, interviews, you know, lying, watching people lie.

The digital alesiums of the world. And the pentaments of the world, yeah. Games that are really dialogue heavy and you get to know every single person in the town super well. It's a very different kind of mystery and a little cleaner, I guess, because it doesn't involve so much humanity, so many expressive people and so much lying, which lying is a whole part of a mystery. But when you start to kind of remove the lies, it can sort of mechanically simplify the mystery itself.

So, you know, it's interesting. I think what you're describing also goes in hand, goes hand in hand with who you play as. For a game to be driven by characters, you need to play as a real character. In the games we just described, Pentman, Elinois, Noir, disco Elysium.

Disco Elysium. You're playing as a very specific character with a very specific personality. Oftentimes you choose, you make choices. that affects their personality, but it's still very specific. Whereas Obrideon and Golden Idol, both games you do not play as a character. You play as an omniscient presence.

I guess in Obridin, technically, you're a character, but you're using this plot device that makes you omniscience. And you don't say anything, so you're not really a character. You're kind of a cipher. Yeah. And in case of the Golden Idol, you're literally just an omniscient being who is watching,

who can look in people's pockets and see what they're holding at any even time to figure out what happened. So I think those are just different types of, And I think you kind of need, you can't have one without the other, right? Like to have the character-driven game, you also need to be an interesting character. That's a very good point. What's another thing that goes hand in hand with that is that I don't think a game,

the type of mystery that isn't character-driven that is more like the kind of plot-driven or almost like, I don't know, mystery-driven, would you call it? That can't really happen in any other medium, which is one of the reasons that I think Oberdyn and Golden Idol are so special, is that you could not have those stories in anything else. Disco Elysium would make a great novel. L.A. Noir would make a great TV show like crime series. Oberdin and Golden Idol cannot be anything except for video games.

And that's because so much of their appeal on their storytelling is just about interactive entertainment. And I think that's really interesting. And I don't know if I have a preference of one over the other, but I'm always more impressed by games that do you think. things that only games can do. Yeah, and that does intersect with the character thing that I was talking about earlier as well, where by removing or pushing the character stuff to the back a little bit, you bring the mechanics to the front.

And you get, I mean, another similar games to those too are the Hunter Killers, the unlocks, the sort of escape room style mysteries. Because those also are pure mechanics. In the way that tabletop games are all pure mechanics, there's a lot less character. In theory, anybody could get into an escape room and then get out. I wonder where Phoenix Wright falls on this scale because it is so much like a procedural mystery show and yet it's also very mechanical to an extent that is finicky and sometimes bothers me. So I'm sort of torn about it because I love it so much, but also playing Phoenix Wright has

made me extremely annoyed in ways that almost no other game on this list has because sometimes you're like, I know this is the right clue. And I'm clicking on it and I'm clicking on it. I'm presenting it or whatever, and the thing is not happening that I need to happen in this court case. And I just, I already know I'm right and I'm just fighting with the game to get it to acknowledge my correctness. And that, that is a problem that many of these games have solved, luckily. I think actually this gives a helpful distinction for me anyways between a visual novel and interactive fiction because Phoenix Wright and Dangan Rompah, which is also on this list, those games are more visual novelty. And obviously everything fits, you know, that,

Nothing is any one thing. But they're more just, you're being told a story of a mystery. And yes, you're doing some work to have the little eureka moment. So that's what happened. But a lot of times, like you said, Maddie, you solving the mystery will get in the way of Phoenix solving the mystery because he needs to get to it in his own path, which is very different from something like Pentiment, which actually, from what I've played of it, reminds me a little bit of Emily Shorts interactive fiction games. Have either of you played any of her games? I don't know. She's a really amazing interactive fiction writer.

She wrote this game called Blood and Laurels, where they made this platform called Versu, which is an interactive fiction platform. So it's like a book. It kind of feels like 80 days or something where you're picking lines of dialogue and the book is sort of writing itself as you play. I don't think it's playable right now,

which really sucks. A lot of her games, like it was on iPhones and stuff. Anyways, that game, it feels sort of similar. It's a period piece. And it's very much an interactive story where you're choosing your way through it, but the story is changing and reacting to your decisions and it just feels like you're kind of helping tell the story.

And at least for me, that kind of mystery is way more interesting. And the way you describe Pentamette sounds super interesting, even if not as a mystery. Oh, I'm going to beat it for sure. I think I just needed to recalibrate what kind of game I was playing. Because it was described to me as a mystery. And I don't, I would say it's more of adventure game. It's a story game. And that's right, too.

Yeah, even seeing the trailer for it. Yes. Oh, yeah. But I was. way into reading about religious history. I was raised Unitarian Universalist, which is kind of like confessing to the deepest possible religious nerdery that can exist. So in college, I thought it was like fun to read about the kinds of things that Pentiment

refers to. So, yeah, the game is reminding me how annoying I used to be. And it's also, it's funny that this game. In a good way. It's funny that this game about the Holy Roman Empire just came out. And also the new Assassin, one of the new Assassin's Greek games just got announced. And it's also. in the Holy Roman Empire.

So we're getting a trend. Just like we got all that Norse mythology stuff. Now we're entering the Holy Roman Empire era. I'm for it. Pentamint's entire world is really cool to hang out in. I mean, I wouldn't want to live in it, but it's cool to play a game in it. Yeah, it is. It's interesting.

Well, I'm definitely going to play more Pentiment. God, it's beautiful looking as well. Holy, holy crap. So a very cool game that we'll probably talk about more on this show. But that's it, I think, for our discussion of Mr. Let's take a break, and then we'll be back for one more thing. Hey, I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington.

And I'm Elliot Kalin. Listen, you like podcasts, right? Sure you do. Don't try and lie to me. You're listening to one right now, so why not try a different one called R1, the flop house? Uh-huh. And on the flop house, we watch a movie and talk about it. And then sometimes we also do other stuff.

It's all meant to be funny and fun, and we think you'll have a good time. And just to be clear, the name of the podcast is not our one, the flop house. It's just called The Flop House. I do a lot of correcting Dan. The Flop House. A lot of correcting Dan. Hey, it's John Moe, inviting you to listen to Depresh Mode with John Moe, where I talk about mental health and the lives we live with all kinds of people. Famous writers.

David Sedaris, welcome to DePresh Mode. Thanks so much for having me. Movie stars. Jamie Lee Curtis, welcome to DePresh Mode. I am happy to be here. Musicians. I am in St. Paul, Minnesota. I'm talking to Amy Mann.

Great to talk to you. and song Exploders. Rishi Kesh Hereway, welcome to Depression Mode. Thanks so much for having me. Everyone's opening up on Depresh Mode on Maximum Fun. And we're back for one more thing. I'm going to go first because I played a video game all the way through from start to finish in the past week,

which I haven't done in a long time. And that's because I really liked it, and I want to tell people about it. This is a game called Signalis. The two of you, I'm sure, are at least aware of it or have seen it around. I had seen it, but hadn't played it. It's made by a very small.

indie studio called Rose Engine. Essentially two people are the sort of heads of this that did the writing, and one guy did a lot of the programming and sort of design. And then they were, of course, supported by a few more people. It's published by Humble, so it's like a very indie thing. It's a, I would describe it as Resident Evil gameplay and Silent Hill vibes. It's a horror game, a third-person isometric fixed-view horror game with a deliberately low-fi aesthetic. It's really degraded looking, so it's kind of pixelated, beautiful-looking game. I mean, horrifying, and so it's a lot of horrible rooms full of blood, but they're really nice-looking in that way.

You know in that way that modern, retro, that look where the lighting effects are 3D and there are shadows on everything, but it's degraded and pixelated. You play as an android named Elster, I believe, is her name. L-S-T-R as the type of Android that you are. You're a replica. and you're working for, or you're a member of this totalitarian government that just sends people out into space. So we're kind of in the future. The solar system you live in has been colonized.

There's a kind of the backdrop of war and conquest. But this is all, you can learn about this stuff through text logs. And the world building is actually really cool in this game and also very vague. So a lot of it is left to your imagination. But you are essentially a robot technician who is looking for her co-pilot. who is a human called, I believe, a Gestalt. So one Gestalt, one replica. You're trying to find her,

and you're going into the depths of this horrifying mining facility out on one of the remote planets. And that's the setup. Like I mentioned in the main part of this episode, it's a very abstract game. I haven't played something this abstract in so long. It's very influenced by Silent Hill, like I said, but also, I mean, anime that I have watched and not watched Ghost in the Shell.

It's got a lot of Ghost in the Shell. It's got a lot of Avon, Gallia. And it just, you'll walk, I mean, a thing that will happen in this game is you are walking through scary rooms. There's malfunctioning other androids who are all scary and chasing you in different rooms. You walk into one, you solve a puzzle. The puzzle is a photograph. You look at the photograph. The photograph is of the beach. It zooms in on the photograph. Then you're on the beach. The beach is this horrifying, weird night beach with a red sky. You're in first person now. You walk down the beach. There's pieces of paper on the beach, and you read them. There's strange

poetry with some of the poetry cut out about, you know, very lovecraftian stuff. This is very silent hill. Things have crawled that should not have walked, right? You keep walking, and then on the beach you see a key card, and you pick it up, and you now have a key card, and then it cuts back to you, and you're standing somewhere new, and you're like, okay, well, where am I now? I got a key card, though. It does that kind of thing.

It's constantly, like, you're not clear if these are memories or dreams. You're not of actual human, but you have some memories of when you were human that sort of overlap on things. So it's this a very abstract, very cool game that I just found to be beautiful and very sad and really fun just because I like that Resident Evil groove of like, you find the safe room, you gradually

start to worm your way into the level, you figure out how, you know, you have to run by almost every enemy because there's not a lot of ammo, you find the best paths, you know where you need to go to get that lock. There's a lot of locks with weird. You know, you need these tarot cards to open this locks to wear all the tarot cards and you're going around through the thing. And then it fits

in with the world building and the storytelling in a really, really well-done way, where by the end, I couldn't tell you every single thing that happened or didn't happen, but I can tell you a lot about the characters and about the world, this horrible government that they're all, like, this system that they're all part of. And it's like just really cool, amazing music, amazing looking. It took me about 10 hours to finish, which is a great length for this kind of game. Honestly, I really, really liked it. And also, it's on Game Pass.

So there you go. Anyone listening to this, if you have Game Pass, you can just check it out. and you'll know, I think, pretty soon, whether it's your thing. Though I will say the story really unfolds in a really amazing way. So that's called Signalis. It's on, I think, PC consoles on the main things. And it's a really cool game, and I loved it. So I think people should play it.

Cool. Maddie, I have watched one episode of Your One More Thing just last night, so I'm excited to hear about it. Tell us about it. So my thing is interview with the vampire. It's a live action adaptation. And no, it is not the Brad Pitt Tom Cruise vehicle from the 90s in which Tom Cruise famously said he would not play Listott as gay, despite that the source material pretty clearly makes that a thing. So that movie's really gay anyway, despite Tom Cruise's best efforts. But AMC Plus, a platform that Dean and I did not have access to and pretty much got for this show because I kept hearing about it.

AMC Plus has made a TV series adaptation of Anne Rice's book, Interview with the Vampire, which is part of a series. And it's so gay, but also it is a totally different story because they have cast a black man, Jacob Anderson, who is fantastic, by the way, as Lewis, who's the main character who gets interviewed. He's the vampire who gets interviewed. He's the interviewe. And his entire life story growing up, in New Orleans, becoming transformed into a vampire by Lestat, ending up in a very toxic, toxic, toxic relationship with Lestat, who is still a white man.

And that aspect of their relationship is now a part of the story because it's different. This is just one of the only examples of a TV show that I've seen, in recent memory, that did the whole, it's 2022, let's make some of these characters not white. And then actually rewrote the entire story to accommodate that and was like, okay, historically, what would it be like if this guy was transformed into a vampire a hundred years ago? What was his life like a hundred years ago? And then what was his life like in the 20s, in the 30s? And what was his romantic relationship with a rich white man like? And how did that go? And it's fascinating. It's quite violent. It's very sexy. It's a fun watch.

They go for it. They really go for it. And I just, I really love the look of it, the vibe of it. I've read the book before and enjoyed it, but this is a super different take on it. And I highly recommend it. I'm kind of sad. It's on AMC Plus, but I hope people subscribe for like a week so they can watch this. It's only seven episodes for the first season, but it has been renewed. Interview with The Vampire. It's so freaking good.

Yeah, I'm psyched about it. Eric Begosian is the journalist. That's what I was going to call out the guy from Succession. Oh, my God. He's so great as the journalist. He's great. He's freaking hilarious as the journalist Daniel Malloy. He is so fed up.

I mean, the portrayal of journalism on this show alone makes it worth watching. Like, he like name drops 8chan at one point. I was like, this show is modern as hell, and I love it. It's great. It's great. The very beginning of the show, we watched it last night. In the very beginning, there's this ad for his masterclass that he's doing about how to be a journalist.

And it's those, you know, those sort of self-congratulatory. You can learn the basics of journalism. And, oh, my God, I thought it was an ad for, I was like, isn't this AMC Plus? We paid for this. There shouldn't be an ad. And then I realized, no, that's that guy from Succession. This is not actually that.

It was so convincing. And I want to rewatch it because there's all these bullet points. It's like ethics, like interviews. It's just like words are coming up really fast and it's very funny. It's wonderful. Yeah, we loved the first episode and we'll watch more. And yeah, I am very interested. It's much more interesting than the source material, even though.

Oh, yeah. I remember thinking the source material is pretty interesting. I would say the original book is a really fun, read if you've never read it before and you're listening and you want to read a fun old tiny from like the 80s I want to say uh interview with the vampire and then this as a building upon something that was written 40 years ago is just delightful and everyone isn't the framing even sorry not to sidetrack us that the framing is that basically he gave the original interview and now he's back and they're doing a new interview so it's even kind of built into the story that

we're telling the story again it's commenting on the idea that 40 years ago, we did this interview and now we're back to do it again. But of course, it's not as though. It's Brad Pitt again. It's a whole different guy. Right. The story has changed. Anyways, yeah, I'm psyched to watch more. Jason, what's your one more thing? Okay. Oh, man. Well, so, as you guys may remember, a few weeks ago, I talked about how the New York football jets were doing better than expected this season. It might even be a playoff team. And then I listened to your intro from last week's episode of Triple Quake. So, okay, so usually in the NFL, if a team is doing really well, they probably have a good quarterback or at the very least a competent quarterback.

But occasionally, you'll get a team that wins games despite their quarterback. And this is the case of the New York Jets. New York Jets have had a really good defense this season and they've had a really good running game this season. They have not had a really good quarterback. They've had a quarterback who, like, they win in spite of, who will sometimes try to throw away games and sometimes actually throw away games as he did last week. but never but but but they're winning anyway despite him last week he'd had like an all-time worst performance against the new england patriots he had a total of 77 yards of offense which was atrocious he was like there's this low light reel of him just like missing wide open

throws like just absolutely just bombing just atrocious performance um and then afterwards uh a reporter asked him during a press conference like hey do you think you let the defense down because the defense had played really well, kept them in the game, held the Patriots only three points. And he just goes, no, no. And this is like an all-time worst quarterback performances. He's just like, no. Needless to say, he got benched. Now, so a little bit of context on this guy.

This guy's named Zach Wilson. He was the number two overall pick last year. So he has all this amazing pedigree. He looks, if you look at a picture of him, he looks like the villain in like an 80s teen comedy where like the, the lovable nerds have to like get, he challenges them to a ski race or else he's going to destroy their like their frat house if, if he, if they don't beat him in a ski race. He's like literally like this teen villain. And he was like granted the starting quarterback job. He didn't even have to earn it. He was just like handed it on a silver potter. Enter Mike White. Mike White is this guy

who has struggled his entire career. He was cut from multiple teams. teams, multiple practice squads, just like bouncing around. He was a fifth round pick, not a number two pick, a fifth round pick. He was picked on day three of the draft. That's how, that's how low his pedigree is. Mike White had a flash of brilliance last year, but eventually came down to Earth, so I won't get into that too much. Anyway, so the, the just decide to bench Zach Wilson. They say, we're going to give this guy a reset. And Mike White comes in. Mike White leads his team to a 31 to 10 victory. He throws for more than 300 yards. He got more, he got about as many yards on the first possession of the game as

Zach Wilson did during all of last weeks before, like the entire game last week. Mike White is the future of this NFL franchise. Maybe not. Maybe he's just kind of a mediocre guy. But this is like literally, I've talked to the, when I've told NFL stories on this podcast before, it's often like backup quarterbacks, like these great sports underdog stories. And this is one of them. one, it like happened in real time where this guy out of nowhere is just like performing really

well and beating out this teen villain like number two high pedigree draft pick. And it's very entertaining to watch. And I hope that the Jets keep this guy as their quarterback because he's playing so well. And I hope he stays at this kind of high performing level. Because it's just so fun to not only watch your own team have success, but watch your own team have success just like by this guy who had to earn everything who wasn't just like handed the job who hasn't performed terribly who didn't like take zero remorse in when given the opportunity to like fall on the sword and be like yeah I screwed up like I could have done better and so it's just a great story and I hope it goes well and I hope they finally make the playoffs and it would just be so

much more fun it's so much more fun to watch this team come together especially because there's so much talent all around him behind this guy as opposed to this fucking like comic book villain on the other side of things. Anyway, that's life in the NFL. Well, I rely on you, Jason, to tell me who to root for guilt-free if I should care to watch the Super Bowl. So when that comes around, you can let me know who I can care about. We'll discuss when we get there.

But in the meantime, I'm hoping the New York Jets make it, because this team is just a blast to watch. Mike White, doing well in the NFL. And I hear the new season of the White Lotus is also really good. So it's all coming up good for Mike White's of the world. anything. I feel like his his nickname should be White Lotus. Like, wouldn't that be a great nickname for this quarterback, Mike White, White Lotus?

I mean, I guess. How much does his career have to do with rich people being extremely embarrassing to watch, but also enthralling as they screw up their lives? Is that, is that anything to do with what he does on the field? Kind of. That's Zach Wilson, the guy he's replacing. Yeah, I guess that's true. I guess that's true. Yeah. And also, the White Lotus was created by a guy named Mike White. Yeah, that's a, that's a.

Just to spell that out for anyone listening. The other thing, one more quick thing is that kind of from a broader perspective, I think what is really cool about this story also is that like some teams might just kind of like, what's the name of the fallacy, like sunk cost fallacy be like, we picked him number two, got to stick with him, got to keep writing him out. And the Jets may still do that. But I actually think it's like a really useful life lesson to be like, no, like you go with who's performing, not who.

Like even if you wasted a second, a number two pick on this guy last year, even if you feel like you're so committed because of that. You paid him this money. He's, he's like supposed to be the face of the franchise. No, you go with who's performing. And I feel like that's actually a really useful lesson for both life and the NFL. I agree. And the NFL. That's my one more thing. The legend of Mike White. Nice. All right. Well, we did it. We made another episode of Triple Click. Look at us.

We did. And when will be we back? It's going to be a mystery. We don't know. No. Just kidding. We'll be back next to me. We'll be back on the same thing. Yeah. And don't miss people who may have missed it. Don't miss it. Don't miss the God of our Ragnarok Beanskast. Yeah, check it out. Just went up. Hope you all enjoy it. Thanks again to everyone who's a member.

And yeah, we will see all of you, and I will see both 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. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes.

Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org slash join. 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. Maximumfund.org.

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