Triple Click - Nintendo Direct, Harry Potter, and More Gaming News

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

It's time for some news!!! Kirk, Maddy, and Jason pick some of the biggest stories in gaming this year, from Covid's effect on game production to the Harry Potter controversy, and break them all down. The gang also talks Google Stadia's woes, EA canceling Anthem Next, and all the hot Mario and Zelda news from the most recent Nintendo Direct.One More Thing:Kirk: Spider Man: Miles MoralesMaddy: “Britney Spears Was Never In Control” by Tavi GevinsonJason: Bravely Default 2 and video game challengeLinks:“Trans Inclusion Means More Than Just Adding Potential Gender Options To Hogwarts Legacy” by Riley MacLeod: https://kotaku.com/trans-inclusion-means-more-than-just-adding-potential-g-1846388481Tevis Thompson’s essay “Saving Zelda”: http://tevisthompson.com/saving-zelda/The Splitscreen Stadia interview with Phil Harrison: https://kotaku.com/google-stadia-boss-answers-and-dodges-our-questions-1833422137“Britney Spears Was Never In Control” by Tavi Gevinson: https://www.thecut.com/2021/02/tavi-gevinson-britney-spears-was-never-in-control.html“The Lies Hollywood Tells About Little Girls” by Mara Wilson: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/opinion/britney-spears-mara-wilson-hollywood.htmlSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin 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

The first Dragon Age game is set on a continent called Thetus, which was just a development acronym for The Dragon Age setting. There's no punchline. I just think that's cool. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. It's time for a gaming news roundup with our takes on COVID delays, Anthem Next cancellation, Harry Potter controversies, Google Stadius Troubles, and the latest Nintendo Direct. There's a lot to talk about, so let's get to it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shrier.

And hello again. Hello, party people. Hello, fellow Triple Click hosts. It is. I'm excited to talk about news today, but first, I'm going to break some news to the two of you. Are you ready? Are you ready for some breaking news? I'm so ready. I am always ready. Triple Click is a listener-supported show. Can you believe that? What? I know. I've got the scoop. I know, I know Jason, you usually have the scoops. This is an exclusive. This is an exclusive. We are totally listener-supported by a wonderful collection of maximum fund members who become members of Maximum Fund to help us make this.

show and also so that they can get cool bonus episodes of our show and many other maximum fun shows. And actually, we did a drive last year. We'll be doing another one at some point this year, and they sent out the pins and the rewards for those. And I got my pins. So people who became members during the drive got their maximum fun pins. And it's a pretty cool pin. I got to say, it's so cool to have a pin with our show's name on it. But there will be more pins next year. So there's so many good reasons to be a Max Fun member. There really are. So any, Anyways, you can go to Maximumfund.org slash join to become a member. Thank you so, so much to everybody who has become a member.

We really appreciate you, and you're making all of this happen. So, yeah, more news, though. There's some real news. And Jason, I think you're going to take us through some news, is that right? Yeah, so we know that our listeners like to hear us talk about the news that's happening in the video game world. We don't do this every week anymore like we used to on our old show. But once in a while, we'll do a big roundup and talk about all this.

the news. And since there has been so much news or the past few weeks and months, I think that it's a good time to talk about it. So we're going to pick a few big stories. Obviously, we're not going to be able to hit every single thing, but a few big stories that we wanted to discuss on this week's episode. So let's get to it, shall we? Let's do it. First of all, let's talk about COVID. I think that the impact that COVID has on the video game industry and all of our lives will be discussed and felt for years and years to come. But one thing that I have been noticing and hearing and talking about a lot is that everything is delayed.

And I think something that is interesting, like an interesting phenomenon that happened is that last year, a lot of stuff was able to get out on time or like relatively on time. And I think that was a lot of like front loading production and bringing people off of one project to help with another and doing some sort of short term or sacrifices for the short term and the sacrifices were in the form of 2021 projects. And this year, we are seeing it. We've already seen all sorts of delays from all sorts of games. We will almost certainly see more to come. And I think it's really interesting to look at and to wonder about and like to see what this year is going to look at it for the video game industry, especially when like games boomed so

much last year. So, Kirk, I'm actually, I'm curious to hear your thoughts as someone who is no longer like following the date or no longer part of the day-to-day operations of games. Do you feel like, like, let's say this year is super thin. Do you feel like it's going to be like bad news bears? Are you going to be like, oh, no, where all the games this year? Are you going to use it to catch up on your back lag? What are your kind of overall thoughts on this trend? It feels to me like it was actually surprising how little felt delayed last fall. and it feels like now we're kind of really seeing the other side of that. And I think partly about how hard it is to get a PlayStation 5.

There's a great article on Polygon about the sort of subculture, the whole world that has sort of sprung up this cottage industry of just people trying to get PlayStation 5s. And this is just one thing that's hard to get. It's also hard to get a new 30 series graphics card, for example. There are a lot of things that have become hard to get. I told my own story about getting a PlayStation 5, And I got to kind of dip my toe in that culture.

And I was following one of those Twitter accounts. It was really interesting to read an interview, like, one of the people who runs one of those accounts that's just like, it's when it's in stock. That's what I do. And how much work that takes, which the whole time I was following this. I think the person who made mine was like a student. Anyways, that's kind of a side topic. But a lot of people don't have PlayStation V's who want them. It's very hard to get the new consoles to play the new games.

even though there aren't really any games on them, that's kind of less of a big deal if not as many people even have the console as want one. So there's this kind of feeling that there was almost a mirage of things happening on time last fall and last summer, and that now it's become clear that there was way less, you know, at some point something had to give and something has given. And because of that, it's sort of, I guess I'm sort of okay with the delays because I am, just now catching up on PlayStation 5 games. And I don't have the graphics card that I would want to play if there were another game like Cyberpunk coming out another major video, like a graphics video card, hog.

GTA 6. So there's kind of a feeling at least with the hardware thing. This is just one thought, I guess, but it's that the hardware being delayed also makes the game delays feel like less of a big deal to me, I guess, because I'm okay waiting because I'm not even going to have the thing that I need to play them. Yeah, I feel very similarly.

Maddie, I'm so curious. So as someone who used to work for a video game website for many years, as did Kirk, speaking to you, the only person among us who does still work for a video game website. It's true. I remember every single year, it's true. Yeah, guilty is charged. I remember every single year at Kataku, it was like we would look up at the, we would look at the upcoming release calendar and be like, okay, like, this game's going to get us a lot of traffic. This is not. This is what we should be like.

And sometimes we would worry about like a really dry fall. We found other ways to get good stories. Like, we could still, it was not, this was not the only driving factor behind, like, what made the site successful. No, I know what you're talking about. But certainly a factor. Is this, like, a concern for you guys of Polygon? Oh, sure.

I mean, if I were answering this as a mere human who's enjoying playing Dark Souls for the first time in my life and actually enjoying it and not having other big releases that I super need to worry about right now, yeah, I think it's really cool. If I'm answering it as the senior games editor of Polygon.com, it's a huge challenge because we do not have big 10 poll releases right now that we can rely on. And a lot of the games that have come out in the past couple months, I put together a winter preview for Polygon that we had to do just as part of our editorial coverage.

And that meant that I had to put together and assign a whole bunch of stories about games in the winter. And there's pretty much Mario, folks. Like I got to commission a whole bunch of stories about games that honestly wouldn't ordinarily be covered at Polygon, which that's the kind of fun part, is that I got to commission a bunch of... the stories about indie games and stuff that you wouldn't normally see covered as intensively at

Polygon, which that's the good part about it. It means that games like this deduction game Notia that I just published a story about today from a freelancer, which again, it's a really obscure game that's coming out this week that I wouldn't have greenlit a story about, but I had plenty in my budget and in my editorial calendar to publish a story about a game that is not, it's not a cyberpunk. You know, it's not. not a guaranteed traffic driver. But it also means, though, that we've just had to change how we approach things at Polygon. I don't know how far in the weeds you want me to get in the answer to this, but it truly means that we've kind of created our own events. Like, we still cover Breath of the

Wild a lot and it still does quite well because a lot of people actually bought an Nintendo Switch this past November. That was the best-selling console of the year. And a lot of people are playing that game for the very first time, playing very old Switch games. So a lot of stories. So a lot of stories, that we have just about Switch games do very well, including super old games. Like a lot of just average people are in the same boat I am where they're playing Dark Souls again or they're checking out games. They always wanted to play but never had the chance to. They're still stuck inside. Maybe they just bought a new console, but they're just now getting back into video games or took a long break away from it or this is their first console ever and there's

a huge backlog on that console for them to check out. And that's kind of a fun way to approach. coverage in video games and talking about them that is new and super different from the way we normally operate as journalists. Yeah, it is cool. I should say, by the way, to an earlier point, Kirk, about how it feels like everything's coming to a head now. I think what happened was last year, a lot of the games that were slated for last year were kind of in the latter stages of production. So they were like in testing, bug fixing mode, polishing mode. And I think that is easier to do remotely and certainly was easier to do for people, then say, iterating on a feature.

And so you're all sitting in a room and playtesting and trying to figure out if it feels fun or if it looks cool or like getting feedback and blah, blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of challenges to the whole remote thing that I think come into play when you're like towards the middle of production rather than towards the end. And that's what we're seeing so much of that now.

Okay, let's talk about something else. this was in the headlines last week. Well, really, it's been in the headlines all month. At the beginning of the month, we reported at Bloomberg that EA was holding a meeting where they would review the latest build of Anthem Next, which is the revision, the planned revision of Anthem, that a team of about 30 people kind of fluctuated a little bit over the years, but about 30 people in Austin had been working on.

This is, of course, a overhaul of the much maligned Anthem, them, which came out a couple of years ago. EA had promised, this is not dead, this game's not dead. We're still working on it, still working on it, still working on it, still working on it. Then they had this review, and last week they announced, sorry, everybody, Empham next is canceled. Turns out, as part of the same review process, they also canceled a game called codename Gaia that was in the works at EA Motive, but like nobody has really heard of that or cares about it, so less interesting. But that was in development for like six years. So it is a little bit interesting. It's a game that, if you guys remember,

Executive Jade Raymond was hired to start making in like 2015. So this game had been through all sorts of development hell, fascinating stories behind the game. But less interesting to the greater public than Anthem. What do you guys think of this whole thing? Manny, I want to start with you. I want to hear your

take on the demise of Anthem. After all that, and after EA had kind of like let us all to believe that they would be giving this game a shot, giving this game a chance to redeem itself. Do you feel like they didn't give it a chance? I mean, I think they gave it a chance, but just not for long enough for it to survive.

I mean, to answer a question with a question. They didn't give it the resources it need. I mean, so a couple of things happened. A couple of kind of reasons here. First of all, EA blamed COVID, which is kind of a useful scapegoat for a lot of things. Like, for example, if you're, if you're Halo Infinite and your game is in serious trouble and you need to delay anyway, and you sit and you look at COVID. and you say, hey, guys, I don't we just say it's because of COVID. Hey, we're delaying because of

COVID. Oh, of course. But anyway, I think that it was a small team. 30 people is not nearly enough to like overhaul a game of the size. They had ambitious goals of like really overhauling the interfaces and like the everything about it. I actually asked someone, hey, is there a way you could like implement all this stuff into the game and just like not let your work go to waste, even if it's not completely finished, just let people play it. And they were like, no, because like we started a totally different build and we would have to integrate it with the new build and blah, blah, blah, blah, basically it would be impossible. It would take months of work. So, I mean, you could say, I guess, EA invested in it, but they didn't really invest it. It was like one of those, it's like a half

measure they did to answer your question. Yeah, that was what it seemed like to me, which explains this predictable outcome as sad as it is. I mean, I saw a lot of different sentiments on the internet where some people were really sad and they were like, wow, imagine spending all this work on a game that was sort of in this always online service game landscape, and that's a kind of game that's almost impossible to preserve in the long term, because how would you go back and revisit a game of that kind? If you're working on something like that, you're basically consigning it to irrelevance in a few years

or whenever the servers go offline. That's an inherently weird piece of art to be making. But the other half of that is that a lot of people who were excited about Anthem or wanted Anthem to be good are also, just accepting this and being like, this should have happened because I tried this game and I did not like it and there was no saving it. Like I feel like I really saw both sentiments, like the mourning of it, but also the sentiment of like put it out of its misery. You know what I mean? Like it's, it was not, it just couldn't come together and maybe with enough resources it would

have worked, but it did seem kind of like a sunk cost fallacy to me. I say this is a person who unlike you has not done extensive reporting and merely reads it all. I don't know if people felt that way. No, I think you're, I think you're spot on. Yeah. I think that like, like if you look at other historically successful games like this, well, No Man Sky had a smaller team than 30, but they really stuck with it for the long haul. And like they were all in on that game and didn't really have a choice.

But Final Fantasy 14, I think is the best comparison because with that game, they took it offline. They spent a year and a half like totally doing a total, basically starting from the ground floor and like building a brand new game from scratch. But that was like a team of like however many people. I mean, more of a AAA team. I don't know exactly. I don't want to make up a number, but like way more than 30.

Right. Plus they have the Final Fantasy IP to back them up. And you can just be like, this is a valuable property. Well, so that's one reason why they might justify that as opposed to something like anthem where it's like the IP is just shot. Like it doesn't have any value because people just hate it. Kirk, do you have any thoughts? You've been quite on this one?

No. I mean, it's similar to what we already talked about on our episode. about video game comeback stories. And I think it's just like what you were both getting at, where a game like No Man Sky, it had that central thing, that magic little thing, where you got in your ship and you flew into outer space. And it was like, it felt magic,

even though the rest of the game was missing all this stuff. And they could build on that. And then Final Fantasy, it had that thing of the Final Fantasy world, and they could build on that. And Anthem just, like, kind of didn't have that. I know people will say, well, it's fun to fly around and shoot stuff. I know that they'll say that, but come on, like, that's not enough.

You both, you played it like it. It didn't have it. It didn't have it. You know, that, like, I don't know what it is, but you've got it. I don't know what it is. That game didn't have it. So it, like, doesn't really surprise me. And, yeah, the sunk-cost thing feels true to me, too, Maddie. It's sad. I will say that I think that, like, the new, the kind of new or relatively new people in charge of EA and in charge of EA studios, specifically, Laura Meal, I think that's how

you pronounce her last name, for example. I think we want to listen to the players, and that's one of the reasons. Another big news story was the Dragon Age 4, once, as we reported on Kataku a couple of years ago, once planned to be a service game that has been derisively referred to as Anthem with Dragons has over the past year or so. I hadn't heard that. It's been pivoted. You didn't hear that one?

No, I hadn't heard that. That's funny. Yeah. No, that's what was described to me. It was like there were, the idea was like adventures with your friends. It was very much like the type of game. It's like the opposite of Skyrim with guns in every way. It was like, yeah.

God, yeah. It was very much not, like the original visions for it were very much not what people would have wanted to play. But anyway, this Laura Meal, a new executive at EA who's really running the show over there, has been going through and being like, this is what players want. Players want skate. Players want blah, blah, blah. We're going to cut bait on all these other big sunk costs, Anthemex, and Gaia. And Dragon Age 4 is now single player.

like the type of RPG that people want. Although I should say I think there's some resistance even within BioWare to making jackingage for that kind of game. I'll just say that I've definitely never heard of a game changing course drastically midstream and then having it be a problem. Like that never happens.

Yeah, it'll be fine. It seems like it'll be fine. Well, I guess we'll see what happens. I mean, we will. I mean, we will. And I don't play it. It's so sad because

Byron needs a success so badly after the last two games. I like Dragon Age, so I hope it's good. I know, yeah, me too. I really liked Inquisition. I want to replay that game. And just like the thought of like having to see another game that's just failed and like having to go back and do another friggin postmortem about why I failed is just like I do not want to do that.

I am tired people. I am tired of writing these articles. Don't make Jason report on your game. Stop. I want to report on a successful. I want to write the story on how Dragon Age 4. like beat the odds to kick ass and like is this awesome game. That would be a really great story too.

I would be so happy to tell that story. Anyway, let's move on. Okay, so speaking of games that might be beyond redemption. So in the past week, in the past week we learned that the new Harry Potter game of Hogwarts Legacy on top of everything else, J.K. Rowling, has a producer who is a Gamer Gator, or pro-Gamergate, maybe not, maybe didn't participate in GamerGate, but as expressed GamerGate's sympathetic views, among other, like, anti-social justice, anti-feminist stuff, follows and interacts with just like a lot of hardcore Gamer Gators on Twitter, the whole shebang.

Originally, it was reported that this guy was the lead designer. I think that's because his LinkedIn said lead designer, and he since changed it because he's actually just a producer. When this first came out, I actually heard from some people that, like, this guy isn't really a lead on the project. He doesn't have, like, creative say over things. He's, like, a producer, I believe, on Hogwarts, like, on the actual Hogwarts. That's, like, his section of the game.

So I don't think he's, like, someone who is making top creative decisions. But that, on top of, like, the JK Rolling stuff from last year and her transphobic comments led to a whole lot of just, like, shit show, resettero, one of the largest video game forums, decided to ban, like, all discussion and promotion of this game, which is a pretty drastic move. And then this week we reported at Bloomberg that the game will include trans-inclusive character customization. You can pick a body type and a voice and a, I guess, pronoun or gender type, witch or wizard, which affects which dormitory you wind up with since at Hogwarts, it's male and female dormitories. And you can kind of mix and match all of those.

So you don't have to do like in cyberpunk, your voice is tied to your gender in this game, at least in the current version of this game. that will not be the case. And by the way, this was a leak of developers to me. This was not an officially sanctioned. I saw some people theorizing that this is like a PR, a PR thing, which it was absolutely. I really wanted to ask you if you got that sense at all from the people who

talked to you that they personally were like, I just want to stand up for something I'm internally working on with regard to this if that was the sentiment of the people that you spoke to. Yeah. So the people that I spoke to are people who, yes. want the world to know that there are developers on that team who do not believe what the Gamer Gator does, who do not believe what J.K. Rowling does.

And in fact, I mean, I've been reporting on this for a while. In fact, last summer when J.K. Rowling first made those comments, I did a story on Bloomberg about how, like, there are people rattled by them within the company. And, like, it's really upsetting to be... You have to sympathize here, because a lot of these people signed up to work on this game years before J.K. Rowling was ever, like, super public.

And there have been signs that she was... she had kind of weird views on transgender people. Maddie, you've been following this former than I have. Oh, sure. But it's like you have to be very online and tapped into Twitter and like people's likes. And I am that person, but I do understand that not everyone follows every move of every Twitter drama. But most people didn't know about this. Yeah.

Most people didn't know about this until last June. And like, imagine spending two years of your life on this game that you're super proud of. And then suddenly the shit show hits. It is like devastating. I can't even imagine how mortifying it must be. And like suddenly this. game that might be like this creator of this of the series might have views that you that are like reviled to you that like discuss you and you're still working on this game and you're proud of it

and you're proud of the work you've done so it's a really crummy situation and I have no doubt that the three of us will be talking a lot more about this when we get closer to the game's launch and when it comes out and we'll discuss how we plan to cover this game because it's got some some tricky elements here but I just want to say and then I'll throw it to you guys for your thoughts that I think that the people who wanted this to be public wanted it to be public because they want to send a message. Well, actually, two reasons, I think. And this is me speculating. I don't know for sure.

But one reason is because they want the world to know, like, hey, we disagree with this. We're fighting for this game to, like, show our strengths. We want Maddie and Jason to get a point in the triple click predictions, Matt. I know. Thank goodness they are looking out for us. The other reason I think is because sometimes when sometimes people will leak things, developers will go rogue and link. things because they want it to be public so it can't be changed. And I think this is one of those things where there might have been some resistance, there might have been some internal arguments,

and they maybe thought that if it all went public, then the game would have to stick with it because otherwise they would look like assholes next year if the game comes out and it doesn't have this feature. But that's just my theorizing. Yeah, what do you guys, what do you guys think of this whole debacle? Park, any thoughts? Yeah, I read Riley's article Riley McLeod from Kataku, our former co-worker, who wrote, I thought, a good piece about just sort of how it's nice that the options that came out, the character creation options are a nice step, though they're not the whole story, and that, you know, living as trans in a binary world, especially one like Hogwarts, is its own complicated story that could be told by having, like, an actual trans character

and, like, creating that identity more actively in the game than just having this not in the character, right? Which I believe may be the case, by the way. Yes, which he said, he mentioned, I think he was linking to your story, that there are people pushing for that at least. And so, you know, a lot of this remains to be told. But I thought that was a good piece, so we can link it in show notes, and people should check that out. Because I always value Riley's perspective, and it was cool to read what he had to say. Agreed. Yeah, Riley's great.

I think part of the issue that Riley was getting at there, though, is that Harry Potter canonically is very binary as a story. Yes. Which, if you go back to... The sorting hat. Yeah, I mean, it's very much like people are who they are. They can't change. Morality is very black and white in those stories. There's no redemption arc for Tom Riddle, folks. Like there's some really concrete views that are expressed there, which there is Snape in terms of morality. Snape is complex. But is he though? I mean, they're children's stories. He kind of doesn't. I mean, I've talked about this podcast, The Shrieking Shack on this show before and I would recommend it again. It's these two people who are rereading all of the Harry Potter books is adults having been fans when they were younger like I was and they're like investigating what the messages really are in the books and like is Snape really as complex as he seemed when you were a child not so much as an adult is Draco really getting a redemption arc?

Not so much. And like the way that you remember it as a child looking back on it as adult you're like, oh what? What was J.K. Rowley really implying really implying here? And there are a lot of weird things about gender roles in those books as well, which I think is fascinating to look back on and really actually does fit with. her current views in a lot of ways, like to have this very binary houses and binary like the girls' dormitories and so on and so forth. But it's hard to then tell a queer story within

Harry Potter's world because Harry Potter is just not that way. I could go on a tangent about Doubledore being gay. I won't. I have a lot of Harry Potter thoughts. This is not a Harry Potter podcast. Yeah, I want to hear your thoughts on Hogwarts psychics. Yeah, I think it's really hard for these developers in this position. I'm not sure it can be done. I, that's a very, negative way for me to put this, but it is how I truly feel. I don't think you can make the game trans-inclusive fundamentally because the canon is not. There's no gender as a spectrum in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You could have a trans character who pushes back against that system, but that is the system that's depicted in the books. And in a larger structural sense,

this game is putting money in J.K. Relling's pockets, no matter how you slice it, J. K. Rowling is probably the most famous transphobic person in the world, as well as the most financially solvent transphobe in the world. And she backs causes publicly that harm trans people in the UK. And that is something you cannot divorce from this game until someday she passes away and perhaps the people who control her legacy decide to do something different with it. Like that's what's happened with Rald Dahl and his anti-Semitism and the work that's done with his estate. That's a very different situation. But right now, Jacob Rowling is alive. She has a lot of money and she hates trans people. So like it's, I don't know. It's an insolvable quagmire to me, you know? Yeah, it almost, it reminds me it kind of reminds me of the Minecraft situation where people who were working on Minecraft probably had no clue. The notch was who he was. And then he started saying things and acting in certain ways. And he became this kind of reviled figure for, for good reason. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's tough of being someone under that because like it's not like these people who were at,

or at Avalanche can suddenly quit their jobs in the middle of pandemic and be like, hey, I'm going to go find a job. So they're going to go to the job tree and find a game developer job. So it's a really tough situation. And it's also like they put so much work into this that like J.K. Rowling has very little to do with. Like I'm sure she has some, I don't know. I won't speculate because I don't know how much creative input she has into the game

or anything. But like they are probably doing most of their work with absolutely nothing to do with her. So yeah, it's all just a very sad situation. And, and yeah, it is just, it's tough. I just sympathize so much with the people who are working on it and just disagree vehemently with her, like feel just as strongly as you do, Maddie, as all of us do and just like, can't do anything about it. It feels like one of those big unsolvable problems where it's like, well, okay, what is

an ethical, huge company that you can work for? Like, I'm sure you can find, like, bigoted viewpoints at higher ups at other companies as well and be like, well, this. This is another example of someone who's spending their money on causes you don't agree with. Should we not support this or that? And I don't know. If you think about that, it's like the most or overwhelming thing in the world. Yeah.

I mean, there are people in game development. We tend to think of like this, this archetype of like the hardworking, talented game developer who's like putting their heart and soul in the game. And there are certainly people out there who think that way, but there are also people out there who think that way or who or who think that like, I'm just going to do my job as a concept artist or a designer or a program or whatever. and I don't really care about the final product. Like I remember, I've certainly talked to people who have worked on games that they're just like, oh, yeah, I'm not proud of this game at all. It's just like a paycheck and an item on my resume and like, I don't give a shit. But that tends to be, I think, to kind of generalize a little bit, I think that's more of like the people

who are just like doing less creative stuff and might just be able to like detach that part of your mind as opposed to people who are maybe like doing design for the Harry Potter game or narrative for the Harry Potter game, and they really have to sink their heart and soul into it and be like, man, I have to write a Harry Potter story now in 2021. Like within the world of Harry Potter, which was created by J.K. Rowling, no matter how you slice it. Like, that's the part of it that's different from Notch

in a sadder way because she's so inextricably involved in the world. Like, she is still alive and she made all the books. Like, she made every piece of lore. She has been involved in the marketing of it from the get-go. and therefore her views. Still adds lore to it constantly. Yes, of course.

I mean, to everyone's chagrin. Today, after I was reporting this, I remembered her thing on Twitter where someone asked her, were there any Jewish students in Hogwarts? And she responded, yes, Anthony Goldstein, Ravengla. Which is funny for so many reasons.

But the thing that I think may be funny about it is that there aren't a lot of Jews named Anthony. Like, Anthony is an Italian name and Goldstein is the most stereotypical Jewish name. I've never met a Jew named Anthony, and I've met a lot of Anthony's. So it's so funny that she decided Anthony Goldstein. Like maybe his mom was Italian and his dad was Jewish. It's funny for so many reasons that she decided, like,

I'm going to make this world really inclusive through Twitter posts afterwards, like declaring, as you mentioned, Doubledore being gay and all this. And yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. Let's move on to some more news stories. hey, let's talk about something more fun. Let's talk about Nintendo Direct.

Because a couple of weeks ago, we got the first Nintendo Direct in more than a year, which is pretty cool. I think some people found it a little underwhelming, but I didn't think it was too bad. I actually thought it was pretty cool. There was all sorts of stuff announced Mario Golf, a new Mario Golf Games, Splatoon 3, that's going to excite some people. Skyward Sword, HD.

I think they're saving Windwaker and Twilight Princess switch ports for later in the year. Project Triangle Strategy, which is like a... That's also on this list. It's a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics. Kirk, you're going to love this game. I play the demo. It's so cool. It's got triangles.

It's got strategy. What more do you be? Maybe the triangle is like the fire emblem. Like it's three factions, maybe. Maybe that's the triangle. Or maybe there's like a rock paper scissors strategy. I wonder if maybe it's there's like an earth triangle and a fire triangle and a water triangle and you need to get all the triangles.

And then you get the air triangle. I was going to say maybe it's the 1990s Chicago Bulls in 2000s. Las Angeles basketball joke there for you. But that game looks cool. Outer Wild is coming to Switch, which is awesome because I can get my wife to play it and like lots of people who haven't been able to play an amazing game

and be able to play it. Anything else? Did anything stand out for you guys with the Nintendo Direct? There was no Metroid news, so I just turned it off and locked myself in a closet and cried. I feel like When a direct is seen as being disappointing, it's just because there are known things, a new Metroid Prime. I know.

I'm kidding. For the record, I don't, I went in with no expectations of it. I am telling a joke about the idea of doing this. Oh, no, no, I know. Also, I maybe did it. But I think, but that's a real feeling. Like, I'm not saying that you necessarily feel that way. But I do think, I'm more reacting to Jason saying that it was seen as underwhelming, because I had the same feeling.

And then also, like, no Breath of the Wild 2 news. I mean, you come in with, like, these really high expectations. about all these absurd projects that you think will be announced, but then, of course, like, with COVID and so many other things affecting development right now, it's like, why would we expect Breath of the Wild, too, to be coming along swimmingly? There's any number of reasons why it might not be. But it's also, I am actually kind of psyched that Skyward Sword is going to get a port that doesn't involve the motion controls.

Did you two play Skyward Sword when it came out? Oh, yes. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I enjoyed it. It's become kind of... Didn't love it, but I would like to play it again without the motion. Ocean Controls. That is my thought on Skyward. It's become kind of like maligned because it's the,

it was the final game to follow the traditional Zelda formula that had just been repeated over and over again. But I think maybe people, maybe after breath of the while now that Zelda has like broken free from those restraints, I think maybe people will reappreciate Skyward's word because like the music is awesome and it's got some cool ideas and great dungeons and like like double hook shots. All sorts of cool stuff. Yeah. It has a cold following too. Like I had never. actually beat it, but I know there are people out there who are Skyward Sword defenders and are like, I actually really like it. And here are these characters that I think are great. And people were tweeting about that. And I was like, I don't know who these characters are. But maybe this time

around, I will meet them. And I will like them. I do think that you're onto something with being it being easier to meet the game on its own terms after Breath of the Wild. Because I remember Teva Thompson's epic Zelda critique basically used, he wrote this big thing about how Zelda has lost its way. and the feelings that he got playing the very first game of like mystery and the game sort of just feeling like this puzzle box that he could figure out on his own and then he used a lot of real-time data from Skyward Sword like how long that game makes you wait until you have any freedom at all like how many times it tells you what things do how long those things take

how you really spend just a very long time in that game walking around and having little pop-ups be like this is a rupee like it's worth this many things which I know all the games do, but it's pretty intense if you're looking for the other thing. And then, Breath of the Wild, there's this huge corrective, and of course, also one of the greatest games ever made, in my opinion. But I really like Skyward Sword. I really like the aesthetics of it. You mentioned the music. The music is incredible.

It's like new stuff from Koji Kondo with this full orchestra. There are these solo instruments that are associated with different characters. And it really sounds great. I mean, it sounds better than most video games. And it looks amazing as well. It looked really good on the Wii. It had that kind of pastel watercolor look. But I think in HD, it will look nice because I've seen those people will do those HD versions that they'll run on PC that I remember Luke Plunkett would like occasionally post about.

And I would just sort of see videos and be like, that looks pretty cool. So playing that on a switch with like proper controls sounds great. Like I do think that people will reappreciate that game in a sort of similar way to how they're re-appreciating Super Mario 3D. world. Yeah, definitely. Agreed. Yeah, and if you haven't played Skyward Sword, go and look up on YouTube Love Theme, which is one of the tracks that is incredible. I know that one. Yeah, it's very nice. Yeah, so any other thoughts on the Nintendo director? Should we jump into a couple other things? No, I think that when people play Outer Wilds on Switch, that they should still play it on as big of a screen as possible. Like, it's great that it'll be on Switch because it feels like a Nintendo game.

It has so much Nintendo in its DNA. But I think that that game really does benefit from, like, you've got to watch the solar system end on the biggest screen possible and really take in the visual beauty of that game. But it's so good. I'm excited that more people will get to play it because it's one of the best games ever. Yeah, extremely excited. Yeah. Also, Mario Golf looks cute. That's all.

It does. Yeah. I really like golf games. There's a game called Golf Story, though. It was pretty dope. Yeah, golf story is great. I really just like video game golf games. Turns out those are cool.

Yeah, they're fun. It is fun. Yeah, I think that, like, there's a good chance that Nintendo is, saving some, obviously COVID has affected everything, but I think COVID affected Nintendo a lot last year and maybe like, because it was a real drought of Nintendo stuff last year. I think there's a good chance that Nintendo is saving some stuff for like some big guns for like Switch Pro reveal and they'll maybe do a big thing that is like, here are all these games running at 4K on the Switch Pro. And whenever they do announce that, I imagine like them coming, here's a prediction.

This is not based on inside info or anything, but like imagine them coming out in like August and saying, hey, this September or this October, we're launching the Switch Pro, and alongside it, Breath of the Wild 2, and, like, Breath of the Wild 2 and 4K, and it looks incredible. And then they start showing some other new stuff, like a couple other things that maybe people have been expecting, like the Zelda, Wind Waker stuff, Twilight Princess, or maybe like other stuff. I don't know.

Just a theory. That would be great. Anyway. I hope that that comes true. Why not? A couple more things. Dragon Age 4 we discussed is going to be single player only, which is very good news. Final Fantasy 7 remake gets a PS5 version that just got announced at a state of play by Sony

that also had a bunch of cool indie games. And more importantly, Final Fantasy 7 PS5 remake or PS5 version comes with Ufi DLC, which is hilarious because it's like instead of just remaking the whole game, we're just going to have everyone come to Midgar. So they're like, now Yufi's coming to Midgar. Well, they've already got Midgar ready in a box. So they're just going to put Ufi in there and it's fine. Yep. So she comes to like Rob Shinra HQ.

It's really weird. And they have some tie-ins to like other Final Fantasy 7 games. They also announced after in the state of play, Square Enix is like also some mobile games. Final Fantasy 7 battle royal. Final Fantasy 7 entire game is being remade for mobile also in addition to the remake. They're redoing the entire thing with like mobile sprites and stuff, which is also incredible.

It really is one of those. You get one thing super right. and then a whole bunch of stuff that I'm not at all interested in. It's like, damn it, squaring it. But I will say, so something that's interesting about that is that this is like, so this is instead of Final Fantasy 7 remake, which is more of a brand new game. This is like straight up, taking a PS1 version,

porting it with mobile graphics and like some new combat, I guess, and like putting it on phones. But they also redid the script. So do you remember we were talking, the three of us were talking last year about how weird it is that there's no way to play the original version of the game with like a proper translation. This might be the first actual version

that is like the original game with a new script, which is pretty cool actually because that's something we've been hoping for. And like if there's some way they could take that script and apply it to other versions of the original game,

that would be amazing. So that'll be cool. Just because the translation of the original is so terrible. One more thing we should talk about, Google Stadia, the failed cloud service. Not quite RIP, but almost RIP.

It was, I believe it was exactly two years ago, Maddie, that you and I were at GDC in San Francisco. We were sitting in a little room. Oh, we were. You and I. We were probing Phil Harrison on Katakaku split screen. Phil Harrison, of course. People can go listen to that Phil Harrison interview if they want to. Yep, it's still up there.

He's the vice president of Google Stadium. All those promises that Phil made. He promised. We asked him multiple times, like, is this going to be, like, is Google going to shut this down? Are you really going to invest in this in the long term? because Google is notorious for not investing in things in the long term. Yep. And then it all went great.

And then it all went phenomenally. The game sold it. The stadia just did gangbusters. It's the only way all of us play games has changed everything. Yeah. So the news was basically Kotaku, Stephen Totel, our old boss at Kotaku broke the news that Google was shutting down Stadia's first party development. They closed studios in Los Angeles and Montreal and laid off some like,

I think he had reported 150, but I actually heard it might even be more than that. So a lot of people that got let go, Google is like trying to place them at other jobs within Google, but in all, like in reality, they're let go, laid off. And yeah, I mean, Google Stadium is essentially saying we're going third party now. And this is such a pivot from two years ago when they came out on stage at GDC and said, we are the future of gaming. We're going to take on the Xbox and PlayStation. Do you guys remember they have that like that power power?

my presentation that an image of stadia next to the Xbox and PlayStation was like the number of taraflops for each and it was like Stadia had 10 whatever and Xbox the PlayStation and way less. Yeah, they wanted to be their own platform with first party games that would be exclusive and that that would be why you would get Google Stacey. That's what they promised. They promised all these features, all these exclusive games. So you look at Phil Harrison and this is the guy who was at PlayStation when they announced

the $600 PS3, their worst console. ever, then moves to Microsoft just in time for the Xbox one and that debacle of an announcement and launch. So this guy doesn't have a great track record. He comes into Stadia and I don't know if it was just him or the team surrounded him. I do know that he hired a lot of people who were like old school console makers and they approached Stadia's launch as like an old school console launch. They were like, we're going to sell millions of units. We're going to package this thing as like a $130 product. You buy a controller and you get a Chromecast and you get the Stadia. And like they try to position it is like this is the future of gaming as opposed to just saying hey we're going to put

out a beta of this thing and like grow it over time and add exclusives to it and like maybe it'll kick ass one day and people will be like wow sadia is amazing like i just think with that approach we would have had we might be telling a completely different story now and that i kind of blame on marketing but it might be semantics it might just be the things surrounding the technology is is the way to think of it i i'll occasionally see people like in our discord or somewhere talking about playing games on Stadia. Like, there are people who use it, and I know that it works. It's just, it's hard to kind of fathom what it was that caused it to fail.

I guess that, like, if it really and truly fails and goes away, we can do a post-mortem then and get a better sense of it. Because at the moment, it's just a little hard to fully wrap my head around. So it must be noted that, like, something that is kind of meant for traveling, there was no traveling last year. So Stadia did not really have much of an opportunity to succeed on those terms. It wasn't just that, though. It was a huge scale marketing and branding issue where, like, who would it have ever appealed to?

I mean, this is what we all talked about back when it launched, was who was it for? And we didn't have a good answer way back on split screen then. And every now and then I check out the Stadia subreddit. I don't know if you all have ever checked it out, but it is just a wasteland. And then a few super dedicated people who love Stadia in just the most endearing way. And that was my first stop after I read the news from Stephen. I checked it out and there was this really long thread of people being like, this is the death now.

I'm so sad. I can't believe Stadia didn't catch on. Like there are some really strong defenders out there, but it's like 30 people. You know what I mean? Like it's not literally 30 people, but it's like it's not enough people and it's not even close to enough people. And that just, I guess that makes me think that in this,

in some fundamental way, this is a product problem. Like it's just not the right product. for the right time. For the right time, for the right market, anything. I don't know if there's a way they could have sold it that would have made it work now. And the thing you said, Jason, yeah, maybe where there's a beta and then they let it grow and it becomes good and through word of mouth, people start using it, which is, yeah, but for right now, it's just like it's not the big, splashy product because not enough people want that for it to be that. But that's the thing. I think

if we had thought of it on totally different terms, like if we hadn't thought of it as like Google is entering the games industry, they're going to conquer the console industry, which was like what a lot of people were saying and like what they were saying. Including Google. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like such a very not Google thing to do. Like Google, Google usually launches things in beta and like start small for a very long time. And then just surreptitiously kills them. Yeah. And then they kill them. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Granted Stadia could have very likely, no matter what, wound up on the giant list of things that Google kills. But I just don't think, like I think it, the framing for all of us in the first place was like Stadia is taking on the consoles and that came

mostly from Google. Remember that trailer? I'll never forget that trailer. The one with Reggie Watts, like the weird one. It was like the tubes of the internet. And it's this like unbelievably produced thing. It like looks like a Marvel movie. And I was like, what the fuck?

Like what is happening right now? Two fun facts before we move on. One is that these are things I learned while reporting for a stadia piece last week. One is that Google missed their sales targets and monthly active user targets, sales of controller and monthly active user targets, both by hundreds of thousands. They were so off on their controller targets that they produced way too many and had to give them away last year. They did like a literal giveaway of them. Second thing, and this is the most mind-boggling, is that Google actually paid tens of millions of dollars to big publishers to put their games on Stadia. like Ubisoft, they paid some $20 million or something like that.

Capcom, they paid $10 million. Rockstar, they paid, or Take 2, they paid $30 million. Some of, these are numbers that estimates are, but like they are about right, what they pay for these games. That's absurd. Like, they paid what some people like spend or like some actual AAA publishers spend on their games. Google spent to get games on CDEO, which is like shocking and mind-boggling.

Like, people were just shocked. Developers were shocked. They could have given me one of those millions of dollars. Just, you know, I would have done something pretty good with it, I think. Yeah. I heard afterwards that they, like, low-balled some Indies or, like, ghosted some Indies, too. So, like, their whole strategy, everything about Studio has just been a mess in so many ways. All right.

Why don't we take a little break? And then we will be back with one more thing. Maximum Fun is a network by and for cool, popular people. But did you know it also has an offering designed to appeal to nerd? A show for nerds? On maximum fun, the devil, you say. It's true. It's called The Greatest Generation, and they review episodes of a television program for nerds called Star Trek. They've reviewed TNG, DS9, and are now reviewing Voyager. Hey, Star Trek. My daughter enjoys that program.

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Let's get Tiny. And we are back. Kirk Maddie, it is time once again for one more thing. Maddie, start us off. Okay, so I wanted to talk about an article, a long read every now and then I do this. It's called Britney Spears was never in control and it's in the cut. And it's written by Tavi Gevinson, who was the editor at this magazine called The Rookie when she was a teenager or was just called Rookie, Notha. And what was cool about that magazine at the time was the idea that she was editing it while she was literally 15 years old. It was like before Teen Vogue became as cool as it is now. It was like before that era when the idea. of a literal teenager writing and managing a magazine was amazing and incredible to think about. And so she wrote this essay about this documentary that's called Framing Britney Spears. This documentary, I have not watched it because I'm boycotting it, which doesn't matter. But the reason I am is because this documentary didn't talk to Britney Spears at all about her life,

because that's impossible to do functionally right now because she's been under a conservatorship on the part of her father for so long. And as far as we know isn't in control of her own life, but that's all speculative. And this documentary is about the circumstances of her life, mental illness, how she once was theoretically in control of her own career in public image. And over time, got less and less control over it. And now we will never know what she wants to do with her public image. We can only speculate.

And just to sort of about the public's obsession with Britney Spears as a person and ownership of her and so on. And so Tommy Evanson had this interesting take on this as somebody who as a teenager thought that she had a lot of control over her own public image because as a teen girl, you want to believe that you do actually have full control over it. But looking back on it as an adult woman now, she's like, I really didn't. I was being taken advantage of by a lot of older men in my life. There's some really heavy stuff in the story where she talks about being raped, being sexually assaulted and pressured a lot by men in her life who were taking advantage of her. and how as a teen girl, she thought that that was something she was really choosing. But then looking back on it, she's like, actually, I was being taken advantage of by these other people in my life. And we can't really look at Britney Spears, even as a teenager, and be like, oh, she was in control of her career then and we took it away. It's more like, no, she probably never had functional control of any of those things.

And that's a really heavy thought. but I thought it was really cool to read what Tavi Gavinson thought of it as someone who wasn't in the same situation because no human ever has been, but wasn't an interesting situation just in the media world and being perceived in a certain way as a teen girl. So yeah, I recommend it a lot. Huh. I'll read it. That makes me think of Mara Wilson wrote a little essay for the New York Times. She was interesting as well. She was the child actress in the 90s. She was in like Mrs. Doubtfire for listeners and Matilda and a bunch of stuff. and is now just sort of this cool, thoughtful person. I know she's great on Twitter and just a very smart person who writes about how she kind of turned out okay because of her parents.

I mean, the subhead is, I'm looking at it, and it's like, it's very similar to what you're saying. It's like I learned the same lesson as Brinney Spears growing up when you're young and famous. There's no such thing as control. I've been thinking about it, but I haven't watched the documentary either, and I will totally read this article. I have a fun, Mario Wilson story. I went to NYU at the same time as her. she was in my graduating class. And one time Robin Williams, rest in peace, was filming a movie in Washington

Square Park. And so like a big crowd of students was gathering and hanging out. And Robin Williams, and somehow Mara Wilson winds up there and Robin Williams pulls her up. And he's like, my daughter. And they like gave each other a hug because she was his daughter in Mrs. Doubtfire. Aww. So fun sir. That was nice. Okay.

I'll do mine quick. And then throw it to you, Kirk. my one more thing is Bravely Default 2, which I talked about a little bit last week, so I won't get into it too much more here. But I have an interesting dilemma that I'm going through right now. So this game is really, really tough, and there's a lot of, like, it's really tricky to get through.

You have to do some grinding. The bosses can be really challenging. But now I got an early code from Nintendo, so I was playing it without the advice of the internet. But now, now that the game's gone public, the internet has discovered it and found out all this cool shit that I had no idea about, such as one of the jobs,

the Beastmaster is supposedly really, really overpowered and you can use it to break the game. So I'm sitting here and I'm like trying to decide this classic video game dilemma of like, do I use this job class that is super overpowered and like essentially break the game for myself just to get through it? Or do I just like enjoy the challenge and stick with it and grind and like probably spend many more hours than I would be doing otherwise? So it's essentially do I pick this cheat code to get through the game more quickly so to respect my own time and give myself more time to play other things, or do I, like, play the game normally and challenging and probably spend 20 more hours with it than I would otherwise? It's an interesting dilemma, right?

It is. Isn't the question kind of if you're having to ask that question to begin with, you know, that something is wrong? Like, if you have to, if the game isn't fun enough for you to want to play it, that you would want to bypass it? No, but it is fun. I am enjoying it. No, but it's like, no, it's more along the lines of like when you have that option available to you, it's so tempting to use it, even when you don't want to. I mean, it's sort of, it's like any game that has like an Uber powerful broken weapon or something, like in Demon Souls. When I play Demon Souls, I refuse to use magic because I know that magic is broken in this game and it lets you kill everything immediately. So I was like, I'm just going to play as a warrior and not even use magic.

That's more along the lines of what I'm talking about. It's just like different ways to play a game. The question part of that is, is there something else in the game that you find appealing enough that you would want to see and then use the overpowered ability to get to see it like the story for example maybe but the question is am i going to stick with it like the normal way and like would i enjoy it more would i feel more satisfied if i played through it than normally that's that's more along lines of what i'm getting at i'll be curious if you are because i i chelsea stark my co-worker did not care for bravely to fault too at all and that is what polygons review states from her so i will i'm wondering if you're going to continue to enjoy the game but of course you have

different tastes than she does. Yeah, I'm excited to read a review. I should go read review. Yeah, I don't know. I think if you said Chelsea a DM and you were like, should I just strong arm my way through the game? She'd be like, yes, because it will be more tolerable. But I don't know if that's the I do know it's super long. Anyway, Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is Spider-Man Miles Morales, which I've been playing now that I beat Demon Souls. Great video game. Yeah, it's really good. I'll, I don't have a ton of thoughts on it. I haven't finished it, but I'm pretty close. I've been just sort of planned through it. How far are you?

I'm into where there's like a whole bunch of, what are they called, the underground. There's like three underground bases I need to go to. And I just, I'm doing the side quest where I'm like helping people around Harlem. And I just met with Spitey's crush, who's wonderful. Like the scene where he's doing sign language with her is really great. Yeah, it's a just really charming game. I'm playing totally for the story. It's playing it after FF6 and Demon Souls.

It's striking how frictionless it is. like these Sony big budget games with like light RPG mechanics, but were mostly you just kind of glide through them. And they're just pleasant. I like playing it at 60 frames per second a lot. And the gameplay does feel better. The combat's a lot more fun. The cutscenes are weird,

and I don't think they look as good as they do at 30 frames per second. There are just things that I remember seeing when I was playing on PS4. Miles's friend Finn, her hair, and her sweater and his sweater, for that matter. There's some amazing knitwear in this game. And at 30 FPS, it looks better. It looks amazing. It looks like you could touch it.

Like these knit objects just look beautiful and substantial, and they're so well made. And at 60, it just looks more like their video game characters moving around. It just, it has that thing. So that is, I was, I know I was going to report back on that because I had said I was concerned about that when I was playing it on PS4, and that is the case. So they haven't quite solved that.

The game's kind of giving me RSI, like in my thumb. And this happens with Arkham Games, too. Games with this kind of combat where it's just a lot of button pressing, man. Like you're just attacking and triangle, flying around and punching. And it's just a lot of like, ooh, like, and the fights are these kind of drawn out, like really intense, really fun. It's a fun combat system. But I'm finding them just like, God, like compared to Demon Souls, which is so, you know, one attack, block. You're getting old, Kirk.

Your fingers aren't what they used to me. Well, also, yes, I am getting old and my body is falling apart. That's certainly part of it. But I've noticed this for the past five years, maybe, with this kind of game and with Arkham games, where I'm just like, Jesus. Like, there's a lot of just hitting the button with your thumb. So it goes, and, yeah, our bodies are horrible cages that decompose with us in them. And, yeah, I think that's a quote from Demon Souls.

It is, it is. That's the real, the real Demon Souls is being able to play Spider-Man Miles Morales, so that's your thumb falling up. And I've also gotten swinging down. That's my last thought is that it's actually fun to swing without always using the jump at the end of each swing to just let go of the trigger and to just kind of get into that like just like he would swing. Like you don't always have to launch yourself. And you can do the tricks. There's so many cool tricks you can do in the air.

Yeah, you do the backflips and stuff. The tricks are okay. I kind of just like you just swing the trigger and then let go of the trigger and then you grab it again. And it like you're kind of not in a rush. You know, you don't have to chase a car or anything. I know what you're talking about. It feels really good. Well, so that's the thing that is so impressive.

60 frames a second is when you're swinging around the city. That's like I could do that. Yeah, the gameplay is far, far better at 60. No question about it. It's a good game. I like it. I'm definitely going to finish it. I hear the ending is really good and I'm excited to see it. Yeah, I think I'm on the last mission, but never finish it, so I need to do that

at some point in the near future. Cool, well, that is it for this week's episode. Kirk, Maddie. See you both next time. All right, see you next time. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier Maddie Myers and me, Kirk Hamill. 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.

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