Triple Click - Physics, Dungeons, And Yes, More Zelda

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Hope you're not too sick of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom yet, because it's all we can play. Kirk, Jason, and Maddy take another deep dive into Hyrule, talking about physics engines (and what makes them tick), dungeons, and tales from their adventures through one of this year's finest games.One More Thing: Kirk: Silo (Apple TV+)Maddy: Missing (2023)Jason: Final Fantasy XVILINKS: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

Baby, there ain't no mountain high enough. Ain't no valley low enough. Ain't no river wide enough to keep me from building a bridge over it. Welcome to Triple Quick, where we bring the games to you. This week we are still talking about the legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, but specifically the physics and building mechanics. I'm going to use a long bridge to defeat Gannendorf. Just bonk him right on the head with it, probably.

I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton and hello. Hello. Hello, it's us again. We are back. After a brief sojourn in New York, we are back from our respective homes. That's right. Thank goodness. Back on a video call.

Back on our microphones. Hundreds of miles apart from one another, as it should be. This is how it's supposed to be. Social distancing. It was weird when we were close together and we had to separate again. We did. Each of the pieces of the Triforce. That was so fun, though.

It was fun. That was so fun. I had a great time. Yeah, you guys got to sleep at my house. We did. Yeah, that happened. Yeah, we went to New York, but mostly we got to sleep in Jason's house. Yeah. You got to hang out with my kids. We did. We did. You get to meet the extended Shrier claim. You got to investigate. Yes, that's true. You get to see this office that I'm sitting in. You get to see all the angles instead of the angle instead of you can see right now from my Skype camera. We did. We just published the bonus episode that we recorded in that very office. Oh, and wait a minute. How do how does one get said bonus episode? Yeah, what are bonus episodes all the matter? Yeah, what? Yeah. Yeah. So I like how I said, what, but I'm going to answer it. That was just the trick I played on you guys, just to see if you would remember that it's me who answers that question today. So the way you'd get the bonus episode, listen carefully.

It's not complicated. I just don't want people to mess this up because it's so important. It's very easy, though. So maximum fun.org slash join. That's a URL. You're going to put that in the address bar. And then when you get there, you're going to become a member of Max Fun. And that means you are part of an elite group of lowercase B gamers who support a triple click.

And you get access to our monthly bonus feed, which means that you get to listen to us playing a board game called debatable, where we debate each other in various, would you rather questions. That's what we did this past month. We did it in person. It was a little chaotic and also pretty organized when we were actually doing the debates. So people should definitely tune in for that. The last question has some audience participation. So only maximum members get to vote on who won the final debate of the episode. So yeah, definitely listen to that.

But we do one every month. And this month we're going to do one about the TV show Succession. Hell yeah. Which we have all been watching all along. And we just got to talk about Wastear Royko. What happens to it? Who inherits it? We sure do.

So we're going to do a spill in the beans. cast about Succession. But yeah, Maximumfund.org slash join, join up and listen to cool episodes about video games and then also TV shows we like sometimes. There's like a better call Saul one in there. There's yellow jackets one in there. But yeah, we're going to do Succession this month. All right. Let's get to it. Let's get to the episode. What are we talking about today? Jason, what do you think we should talk about today? Well, with apologies to people who are sick of hearing us talk about Zelda. What thinly veiled excuse

do we have this week? I mean, I don't even, there's no veil here. What unveiled excuse? We were going to talk about other games, but between the three of us, I mean, we're not playing anything else. I checked my play timer before this, and I'm at like

at least, like, 75 hours plus. So I don't really think. I'm close to there. I haven't looked at it in a few days. Oh, man. I'm so I'm jealous of both of you. But I do. I actually, I think this conversation might be interesting even if you're not playing Zelda.

Because there's a couple of things I want to talk about that we haven't really discussed yet. And then we can we can kind of branch the conversation. Believe it or not, there are things we haven't discussed yet. So many things. So I want to tell you guys about an interesting interview I had last week. So you might have seen on Twitter. I guess Kirk, you wouldn't have seen it. But maybe you saw it shared somewhere else.

This is helpful. You can tell me for all our listeners who are not on Twitter. What's Twitter? Which is most of them because most people aren't on Twitter. Let's hope that. Hey, I mean, there's,

Blue Sky seems like a really valuable alternative. I'm on there. We're all three on there. Yeah, I'm on Blue Sky as well. But it's not open to the public yet. You need an in. No, I know, I know. But maybe someone's listening to this later. But just like, I mean, that was true of Facebook at first too.

And then it opened. Well, I guess it was only open if you had a college email address and then it opened. Whereas Blue Sky's only open. if you're friends with a game journalist. Right, sure. Anyway, so, okay, so on Twitter, there was this tweet, and it was, like, the ultimate, like, game programming flex, and it showed a gift from Zelda with a car that kind of a rope bridge was attached to,

and the car moved, and the rope bridge got extended, and, like, you could see it realistically extending out, and then getting tightening out. Yeah, it became this, like, suspension bridge. And then it worked. It all worked perfectly. And so the guy who tweeted this, Will Armstrong is a long-time programmer. He's worked for companies like 2K. Mervin and Unity.

He worked on Firewatch. I think he did a rope on Firewatch. So he has experience with this. Good ropes and FireWatch. Good Roaps and FireWatch. And so I called him up and I was like, hey, can you explain to me to the novice, to the non-programmers of the world? Why is this so impressive? And we had this really interesting conversation where, I mean, I'm not going to get into all the granular details because I'm way too smart.

and can't, no, because I didn't understand. I'm not going to get into the details because I didn't understand any of them, but my understanding is that a lot of it is kind of like how it would work in real life in the sense that all of these objects have their own mass and force and actual physics behind them.

And so when they interact together, there are a lot of things that go awry. So like when two objects slam together in a game, oftentimes the force like does all sorts of crazy, unpredictable things where like they'll both go to, jittering and sent off in totally opposite directions, like go crazy, like super far away from each other. Or like if someone tried to program this bridge, this rope bridge in unity or something like

that, the car would just start vibrating uncontrollably. Or like the little pieces of the road bridge would all just like fly all over the place. And Will, he told me a little bit about how in a lot of physics engines, because they're based on a certain type of integer called floating points and the numbers are based on floating points, there are kind of minor, minor mathematical changes that happen in that every floating point might be like a tiny bit, like a few decimals off from another one. And so like doing this sort of thing, you can run into actual math problems and then they have really unpredictable effects.

And anyway, essentially he was saying that like this requires a lot of time, a lot of polish, a lot of thought, a lot of bug testing, and just like incredible amounts of, of, um, of, um, like resources and talent and programming power. And it was really impressive. It was really cool to hear him talk about that. And it made me think a lot about physics engines and games because this game has a physics engine that not only works perfectly, like you can attach things to each other, but it also works exactly the way that you would expect it to.

There are never any just kind of what we would call, what layman would call jankiness. There's never any jankiness in that, like, I don't know, you're playing some physics game and like you're playing, I don't know, portal or whatever, and like some block goes flying out of bounds or something. Gary's mod, I think, is one of the ultimate, like, physics examples where things can go a little bit funky. But really anything, I mean, you're playing a lot of these games and the physics can get pretty weird.

In this game, it's like, holy crap, like everything seems to work in this polished, like, way that I would expect it to, which I think is part of the reason that this game has been so successful. So I wanted to talk a little bit about physics in, video games and what we've kind of like enjoyed about them. I guess we should start with Zelda and then work from there. What have you guys made of this weird crazy sandbox that Zelda provides you with from a physics perspective? Well, so first of all, Jason, have you played the shrine with

the suspension bridge in it yet? Because I played it after seeing the viral tweet and after reading a story on Polygon about just other developers talking about that specific bridge. And then I played it and could not get the suspension bridge to come out nearly as beautifully as it does in that tweet. But that doesn't mean it wasn't still operating according to physics. I just couldn't get the angle right. So the bridge just kept doing other dumb things. But while that was happening, like it kept sort of folding in on itself and then being like, do you want me to attach myself to myself? And I'd be like, no, I want the slats to like perfectly line up.

But I could tell that I was the one doing something wrong as that was all unfolding, which I think is a really important. part of what makes this game feel so great is that when something goes wrong, you know it's you. You can also generally see how to fix it and just move forward. And that is so satisfying, so much more so than a game where there's a bunch of complex stuff that you need to build. Or like the classic like 3D platforming puzzle where you're like, okay, I know where I'm supposed to jump to. I'm clearly making the jump, but the game thinks I'm not. I don't know. Maybe that's just me.

I feel like I've. No, you don't know. There's something more frustrating than playing a game where it feels like the game is wrong. And in this game, you always feel like when there's something goes awry, it's user error 100% of the time. And it doesn't break the game, quote unquote, when you build something that's too long of a bridge, which thank goodness, because again, that's how I solved every problem. Could there possibly be too long of a bridge? That's impossible.

The longer the bridge, the better I'd say. Yeah, I think this kind of puzzle, like a physics puzzle, is cool because it's working within parameters that you sort of intuitively understand as a, physical being in the world versus kind of logic that you've had to learn from the game. Jedi Survivor is a good counterpart where, or a good comparison point, where there are puzzles in that game that you just solve by figuring out the order in which you're supposed to do things. Oh, okay, so I need to press that lever so this little bar comes down so I can reach the bar when I jump.

And then if I go up here, it'll be just long enough on the wall run to jump to make the thing. And then you kind of figure out what you're supposed to do, which then can really lead you to those weird situations that you were describing Jason where you're like, now the game is like, I'm supposed to be able to do this clearly, but for some reason I can't and it's just what's going on. You very rarely have that feeling in a game that's physics based, definitely not in Zelda because it's much more like, well, what's maybe going to work here?

And then for me at least, the uglier my solution, the happier I am. Oh, yeah. You know, even going outside of shrines, there is, I had to get across a lake. Recently I had to carry, it was one of those. Long bridge. I didn't make a long bridge. I couldn't make a bridge at that. Maybe I could, but it was really a lake.

And this is one of the shrine puzzles where you have to get the little glowing rock to the end point in order to open up the shrine. Which then I really like the shrines where you just go in and it's like, congratulations, you did it. I love that. You opened the shrine. You had a hard enough time getting here. I think it's always called like Raru's blessing. It is. It always looks the same.

You get the blessing. Like sick. I'm going to get a big zone icon. Yes. So anyways, I had to get this thing across the lake, and I made a boat to do it. And I don't have, like, steering sticks yet because I'm actually, I haven't played as much as the two of you. I haven't unlocked all the cool little tools. So I'm still early enough that I'm doing some pretty funky, clugi solutions. So I kind of glue together some logs, and I put some fans on there.

And then it's kind of hitting, you know, when you have to hit the fan to make it go, but then you go off course, so you hit the fan again. and try to rotate it. And it was just so messy, and I'm kind of floating sideways. And then I wound up, like, beaching the ship halfway there, and then getting out and finding a place I could stand and, like, pulling the thing I needed off with my ultra hand and carrying it over, but then I got it there. And it was such a great feeling because it was so ugly,

but that's because all of these systems make ugliness possible. And when an ugly solution is possible, a very creative solution is also possible. That reminds me of my wife was playing a shrine. And she's also been playing the game alongside me. And we were both playing in Ben. And she was like, do you remember how you beat this one? And I looked over and I was like, the way I beat this one was so embarrassing that I'm not even going to tell you. It was like, I like physically dragged.

Like the developers would just be groaning if they saw the way that I beat this one. It was so ugly and clunky like me just painstakingly dragging this ball across a river like one pixel at a time. Right. But yeah, that's part of the fun is you can. do it the elegant way or you could do it the ugliest possible way. I saw a great GIF on Twitter, another Twitter thing, but hey, that's been a good place to share moments in this game. It's true. There's this one shrine where you have to, essentially you have to like swing a lever, like a baseball bat to knock a ball to hit like a target, like a big switch that the ball is going

to activate. And the gift was like, somehow I solve this puzzle anyway. And they basically, they built a big stick and the stick like totally whipped on the. the ball, but then the stick itself got detached while it was swinging, and the stick hit the big target. It was ridiculous. I was recently doing one of those where you have to, right, there's like a switch that turns, then you have to attach an arm to it, that have the ball fall into the arm, and it's basically a pinball machine, like a pinball paddle, that you then have to adjust the angle to get it

right, so that the ball rolls. There are so many puzzles like that. Oh, maybe it was the same one. Those kinds of puzzles are just fascinating to think about in terms of like this topic when you said we were going to talk about this, compared to other kinds of puzzles that you solve like something in a game like Baba is you, where there are a lot of possibilities, but they're defined very differently and you don't solve them in the same kind of intuitive way. It's not like in this game where I'm trying to make Addison's sign stand up. Okay. I love those puzzles so much. I love them as well. because every time it looks horrible.

And I'm so satisfied. There have been, sometimes, I don't know if you've done the ones, there's somewhere there's a brace on it that's the exact size of a board or a tree. Some of them, well, each of the signs are slightly different. I don't know if you've noticed that yet because you may not have played long enough. But there are clear ways that are perhaps the way you're intended to set up out as a sign. Sometimes. And then there are other times where I'm like, I don't know.

And I just keep adding on more and more objects until it doesn't fall over. And the end result is a work of beautiful art. Right. That worked. What's cool about my mindset when I'm trying to solve those is that I really am thinking in terms of, well, how would this work? You know, I need to brace this board. So I need a brace to be at this certain angle, but it needs to be long enough that it's touching the ground. And I really like to try to get it to the first time that I tell him.

Yes, of course. To let go that it doesn't fall. It's so upset when it falls. He doesn't. I don't want him to be that upset. He's so mad. And he starts screaming and like, yeah, it's very sad. But it's so cute when you do it right.

He's always so incredulous. that you've achieved it. He's like, he's standing. Like he says it quietly at first and then he like screams it. Uh-huh. Yeah, he's standing. I do add his puzzles every time. Yeah, me too.

And it's good rewards. Yes. So I guess to, to zoom out a little bit to this broader subject of physics, we're zooming out, I think this kind of problem solving is really fun because it encourages creativity and experimentation. Oh, yeah. Going all the way back to, you know, Half Life 2, which we all played through last year, they give you this gravity gun and a big part of that game in what was

so cool about it was that they had this physics engine that simulated all these different materials. They then have turned that into something called Gary's Mod that's this just free sandbox with all the stuff from Half-Life and a bunch of other things that you can just play with. And then people build incredible stuff. So they just took that same creativity that you can use when solving a puzzle. And they just turned it into its own little thing and we're like, go nuts. And that kind of thinking, I find it really fun when I'm trying to solve a puzzle because it leads you to solve the puzzle in these horrible ways or to just try something until you get there, which is a very different experience than something like The Witness is a good example, where with the Witnesses puzzles, this isn't to

say they're bad or anything, but they make you feel stuck in a different way. And I think Jonathan Blow is actually really interested in that experience, in the kind of stuckness, that kind of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance thing, where you have to just sit there and not know the answer and stare at it. But you really, it's very passive. You're kind of just like, um, You can try some things, but there's not that same feeling of, okay, well, what if I just, I don't know, stick more crap onto it and make the bridge even longer and drag it over here and then get off halfway and see if I can just drag it over and maybe if I try this or try that kind of active problem solving. So, okay, so that is actually an interesting segue into something I wanted to talk about that we touched on a little bit in our live episode, but didn't really go in depth on, which is done. We were just too excited to go in depth on anything. Yeah, we were all buzzing.

thing. Yes. Buzzing on those $40 hamburgers we ate before the show, we were like, Bandshoush kosher burger. So, yeah, so,

Zelda Dungeons used to have that kind of passive problem solving where you walk into a room and you assess everything. You're like, okay, there's a, yeah, well, there's a metal ball over here and there's a chain over here

and I have the arrows in this dungeon, so that's probably involved. And how am I going to get this over here? And you kind of look at it and you assess it and you work from there. And I was really enjoyed that. And that is actually something that I feel like is missing from this game. I've now beaten two of the game's dungeons. I assume there are four. Maybe there's another one. I don't know,

but at least four are dungeons in this game based on the regional phenomena. I've done two. They're both structured the exact same way. Or at least, no, I shouldn't say that. Scratch that. They're both structured in similar ways in that there are five different kind of goals and you can do them in any order. And that, as I mentioned in a live show, has been a little bit disappointing for maybe because you're missing the kind of like linear feeling of just like gradually unlocking this big puzzle box. But really it's the passive aspect of solving the puzzles that I kind of miss. And I do think that the active, the kind of like imaginative, like experimental sandboxy style

is really cool in this game as we've been discussing. I mean, hey, so 75 plus hours in like two weeks. But I do miss that. I actually really love that sensation, that feeling of like staring at something. something really hard and waiting for it to click and then it eventually clicking or like playing around with levers in different ways. And that's why I love The Witness and Baba is you and a lot of the kind of classic puzzle games.

The game that we've all been, we were all obsessed with last year, Case of the Golden Idol also has elements of that. Yeah, I just had, I was just going to bring that up. That's another game where you just have to sit there and stare at it or God knows I did, especially in the final puzzle of that game. And I think that's actually part of why I haven't opened up the DLC yet because it's such a different mode of thinking that I just haven't been in the mood for because I've been enjoying Zelda so much. And I was like not even realizing until this moment how different the puzzle

solving is. And my other comparison was going to be portal, which we mentioned a little bit, but is also a game that I would say there is one right answer to each puzzle. Yes, you can brute force sometimes, but there's always an intended correct answer for every portal room that you enter. And that is super different than this game, but it's a lot more like Breath of the Wild shrines. And it's also kind of similar to this game in the sense that I can't remember who at Polygon said it,

but somebody referred to thinking with portals when they were talking about when to use ascend in the game. It might have been our guides writer Julia Lee. That's something she would say. But like I was like, wow, yeah, I really do feel like I'm thinking with portals when I'm using the abilities effectively in Tears of the Kingdom. but I also really super don't because of so often I'm just gluing things together and just cobbling something weird that still works. And sometimes it's not ugly.

Sometimes it's still like I actually think this was a solution that was within the realm of what people were expected to do here. But it's still like a weird solution that just doesn't feel the same clean way that solving a portal puzzle feels. Or even case of the Golden Idol where it's like there's only one answer. And you can do a variety of things to figure out what it is. is and then you have that very satisfying click. Yeah, I got it. On to the next puzzle. Next screen opens up.

Yeah, and there is something weird about like solving something and being like the designers didn't intend for me to solve it. Right. It did anyway. And I think there's both good and bad to that kind of feeling. I think there are some negative. Like a lot of people love that sensation of like, oh, yeah, I unsmarted this game and it's great. But also at the same time, you're kind of like, at least for me, I'm always kind of like,

oh, I kind of wanted to experience with the designers, want of me to. experience. So I do have kind of conflicted feelings about that. Thinking with portals is a really useful sentence, a useful phrase. Because, because of what it captures, it captures when you've been able to take your understanding of the actual world and how that works, in this case, the way it's been represented in the game. So the physics system, the geometry of the world, and then you've been able to successfully in your mind, kind of cognitively link that with whatever magical or super scientific, you know, super scientific, thing that the game has introduced to you, and now you're able to twist and kind of warp your

sense of reality to fit what the game needs you to do. So in the case of portal, what's so cool when you start thinking with portals, you take your understanding of the world. Okay, what if I could just bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, as Jason would say, what if I could just freely bounce and jump around, and I needed to get this box up to that platform? And then once your brain just is intuitively able to say, well, I put the orange portal down there and the blue portal up there, and boom, I'm good. And then you start thinking more and more beyond that. Well, if I can throw it through, then it can get more momentum and it can come through and bounce through the thing. And it's inertia. We'll do this and that.

Exactly. Now you're thinking with portals. So that means that you've taken your understanding of the world and how the world works, throwing a box, and you've just begun to think of it with this new thing added in. And what's so cool about Tears of the Kingdom is that it gives you all these new things. It's not just one. Like what was kind of focused about portal was it was really just the portals. And then they introduced external things.

in Portal 2 as well. Goor or lasers or springy, whatever, like all these different things. Where in Tears of the Kingdom, they give you all these different abilities, and they're kind of intrinsic to you. So you have to think in terms of ascend. You have to think in terms of alter hand. You don't really think in terms of, what's it called, when you fuse. Combine two things, fuse.

That's not really used for solving puzzles, so that's maybe not one. It can be. But I definitely am thinking in terms of ascend and ultrahand. at all times. And rewind as well. And rewind for sure. Well, there's some shrines that make you rely on fuse, but yes. And also you can like, not in shrines, but in the outside world, you can fuse a rocket to your shield and use that to something. That's true. I suppose you can build physics objects. So anyways, there are a couple things. Yeah. The point is, though, just it's cool the way that you start to intuitively think of each of these abilities. I would say in a much more elaborate and interlocking way than you do, or than I did in Breath of the World. Wild. Breath of the Wild, it always just feels like a lock and a key to me. When I went back to play Breath of the Wild, it's that feeling of, what am I supposed to do

hear? Oh, right, this is a magnesium ball. So, like, Magnesis is going to pick up this ball, and then I'm going to move it around and put it somewhere. Or, oh, there's water here, so I need to use the freeze effect to build a little cryosis to build a platform, et cetera. Here, it's more interlocking. I suppose the way that stasis and magnesium would sometimes interlock, or they would work

on the same objects in Breath of the Wild? But sometimes they wouldn't. And that was always weird to me, that sometimes you would like highlight a ball and be like, okay, magnesium doesn't work. Let me try my other abilities. And that always kind of irritated me. But I guess it's because I saw all those abilities as being excessively proprietary sometimes, like kind of locking you into a really specific way of solving a puzzle.

And anytime I could be a little creative and be like, well, there's actually a different way to bounce the ball in, I would feel like a genius. and Tears of the Kingdom is tapping into that sensation of, well, you need to be a mad genius to get through this. Well, okay. And then it takes it one step further because in addition to solving puzzles, you're also using all these abilities for combat in really cool ways.

And so, like, I found that when I'm playing, I'm sometimes tempted to, like, get into a monster camp and just, like, attack everybody and, like, use my sword and just tear through everybody, which is one way to play it. But I've started thinking more and more about, like, okay, I have an entire inventory full of, like, 20 of each kind of zone I device. What can I build here? What kind of like death machine can I build

to solve this combat encounter in an interesting way that is like beyond the puzzle stuff? Or can I use recall in a cool way to like blow people up to send that spike ball hurling back up at the at the fortress from which they threw it? Can I use Ascend to sneak in and attack from behind? Like get to the enemy's bomb canisters and throw that at people. Can I use fuse in some cool ways here? So I think that it, the game becomes a lot more fun when, first of all, the games becomes a lot more fun when you do that stuff. But second of all, the fact that these abilities are so synergistic in such cool ways that you can use them, not just to solve puzzles in a whole bunch of experimental methods. You can also use them for the common encounter. So I think that's incredible. Yeah, I think that's crucial. I think the way

that everything is synergistic. That's the word in this game is the thing that makes it a transformative experience compared to Breath of the Wild. proprietary. That's also a word, Natty, that you use, that's also very true of Breath of the Wild's puzzles. They feel much more proprietary. They feel kind of like, okay, you're supposed to be using this ability and that ability. And all of the objects that you can move around with ultra hand, you can also combine them with one another with ultra hand, which is a huge difference. Then you can manipulate them with recall. Yeah, sometimes you can ascend through them. I kind of view ascend as like a really crucial part of this game's overall stew, but it's more about repositioning yourself and

just making it a lot easier to get around. But in terms of those two abilities, especially those creative uses of recall. And then you mentioned the zonide devices, but those devices, which then add physical elements and other properties to the things that you're working with, those are crucial as well. I mean, you can add rocket, you know, like a rocket to make something fly up into the air. You can add air to make it generate wind. You can add fire. You can add batteries to make things run without you. You can add laser beans that target enemies. Right. You can add crazy amounts of things. There's some really wild ones. It gets amazing.

So that just, it opens up the amount of, like the number of possibilities for any given situation. Forget puzzles. Like, we started out talking about puzzles, but yeah, then Jason, you started talking about combat, or just traversal, or just scring around, like, just trying to make a funny video or just see if you can

kind of do one or another funny thing. Like, those things are all possible now, and it's because of the way that all those things interlock. That is a really different experience. I mean, the longer I play this game, and I bet this is true for a lot of people listening, the more aware I am of what a transformed experience this is. And it's all due to that synergy. It's the way that all these abilities have been designed to work with one another. And it's

a kind of exponential thing. Like each possibility that those synergies make possible opens up more possibilities and they start like expanding and expanding and expanding exponentially until you're like, I could just do anything in this game. You could play this forever and never run out of things to play with. So there's a fifth ability. that we haven't talked about, but actually has a couple of uses beyond what you would expect, and that ability is auto build,

which is what lets you build a template and, like, rebuild anything that you built before really quickly without having to adjust things manually. Or without having parts, I think, which is important. I didn't realize that about auto build. You can spend chunks of zonite and just build the things. So you can just be like, I want a plane.

Boom, you have a plane, as long as you're carrying enough materials. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it costs even less if you have some of the parts, so it works really smartly. But one other thing it does that you guys will have a lot of fun experimenting with once I tell you this is it actually moves things into that position. So you can set up an auto build for just about anything in the world and then take advantage of that fact. So I saw a gif of somebody use an auto build as an Apple collector.

So they used an auto build template that just has a bunch of apples on a platform. And then they took that platform and used it with auto build to move and moving the cursor essentially around a bunch of trees. trees, which then brought all the apples into it, and then they let go, and bam, all the apples fell on the floor. So it's just like, here's my apple picking device. And it uses automil to get things in position so you can then collect them. I also found, and this is getting a little bit in the weeds, but still worth noting, in UltraHan as kind of like a limited verticality. You can only really use Ultraman on things that are on your vertical plane. If you try, if you want to get something that's like way above you, it's really difficult.

Like you have to get up higher to use ultra hand on it unless you use auto build. If you use auto build, you can bring it down to you. And so actually like, and I think this is very intentional the way that they're playing around with this too. You can use it in all sorts of creative ways, which again, just the amount of experimentation you can do in this game is just beyond, beyond anything I've ever seen before. So I'm thinking about something from the Psychonauts 2 documentary where one of the Amnesia Fortnite games that they make is this kind of really clever idea about these little sort of sprites with no actual physical powers

that then occupy these clay. They're basically golems. Yeah, kiln is the name of the game, that's right. These clay kind of golems that they then drive around and the golems can attack one another and they have to carry water over to the enemy's base and it's a little like a moba. You're kind of trying to destroy the enemy's base.

or put out their flame with the water you're carrying in the pot that you made, but then you crack open the pot and the water spills everywhere, and you have to go get more. And something that happens when they're testing it is they're testing the physics. And there's this physics, I guess it's a glitch. It's an unintended consequence of interaction of like a collision, like you were talking about at the beginning, Jason, where if you punch someone, sometimes they just go flying into space,

into the stratosphere, which I've actually had happened in my fair share of games. This used to happen, if I'm remembering correctly, in Halo. I think this happened in Halo Combat Evolved, where there would be a physics glitch. Sometimes you would blow up and your guy would just go flying instead of 100 feet through the air. He'd fly like a thousand feet through the air. But it's definitely happened in various games where like occasionally, for whatever reason, the physics engine will decide that you are just like getting flicked up thousands of feet into the air. And it's always really funny. You go out of the world or, you know, just kind of breaks the game.

Or whatever, yeah. So I guess I think that's like a funny part of video game. too, is that you learn what to expect and how to work with them, and that's important, especially for puzzle solving. But some of the joy of them is when they don't behave the way that physics behave in the real world and unexpected or hilarious or weird things happen. I think that's part of why the glue, the ultrahand glue is so hilarious is because it doesn't actually behave the way real glue ever could. It's like significantly stronger to a magical degree. And also, it doesn't matter the weight or size of any object that's connecting any other

objects. So you just end up with this like really weird long stick. All I'm talking about is long bridges, really. But you guys get what I'm saying. Like it's just hilarious that that would be the case. But of course, the game wouldn't be fun or wouldn't even be the same at all if it, if every object's weight mattered. And if some of them could break through the glue or if you had to factor in like, oh, like a chest is this width. And so therefore you can't glue the chest to this kind of rock or whatever.

That would be so much more complicated. So it's like almost by simplifying it, they've made the game way funnier. Yeah. In terms of like the physics, like the Halo thing you were just talking about, like kind of inadvertent like ridiculousness, I think that would take away from the magic of this game. And I can see how it could be fun in something like Halo where it doesn't really matter how far a dude goes flying. But I think part of what is like so just, I don't know, so what makes this game so transformative or feels so transcendent to play is the fact that everything works the way it's supposed to. And there's never anything that taking you out of that.

And I think even if like, I don't know, one out of a 10,000 times something didn't work quite right, there was some sort of physics glitch. I think that would ruin the magic in some ways and make you kind of not trust the game quite as much. Right, and to be clear, I'm not saying I wish the game had more unpredictable physics or something. But I do think, I think, Maddie, you're talking about kind of what I'm talking about, that any game physics system is going to have these sorts of shortcuts, these goofiness, these things that are done in the name of making the game fun, that you then learn to kind of intuitively understand the same way that you understand the rest of it.

It's the playing with portals part of it. It's where you learn, you know, Tears of the Kingdom's physics, which are just a little bit different than, you know, the real world's physics, or even than the physics in another game, like in Fantastic Contraption or something, another kind of similar physics-based puzzle game. And then as you learn them, it kind of makes the world just seem a little sillier, a little more bent in a certain way, which then makes it even more fun to interact with,

just because it's fun to watch that stuff lock into place. I mean, are there aspects of it that you've found or, like, silly that you've, like... I mean, the whole game's silly. That's true. But what, I mean, Kirk, what specifically, is that where you were talking about? Is the glue that Mattie mentioned or is there something specific? Oh, I mean, okay, so there's one zonai device called, what's it called? It's the stabilizer. Is that what it's called? Yeah. Yeah. So this thing has the ability to like instantly become super dense, basically, and go from weighing nothing to weighing so much that it can flip a giant plank of, you know, sheet rock or whatever of like concrete straight up and turn it into a catapult. So it different. ifies physics in a way. You have to learn how it works, right? It's not like most things where you move it around. You let go of it. It drops to the ground according to the gravity of the game. It's a thing where when you hit it, it makes no sense. Like, it's able to act way outside of what kind of a fulcrum point it should be able to be. But once you learn how it works, you realize,

like, oh, I can, so I can, like, launch myself and an entire vehicle 100 yards with this thing just by, you know, just because that's how it works. And so, like, that's the kind of thing that makes the game so much funnier, so much more delightful, is each of the interactions that a given object has, like, it all, they all go according to their own kind of weird, slightly bent physics logic. Right, right, right. The game has these rule sets that you have to gradually understand. Yeah, totally.

With the zone eye devices especially, I mean, I think that the kind of the rocks and the trees of the world kind of function the way you would expect them to, but the zone eye devices play by their own rules. I also feel like death is way funnier in this game. like a very dark souls way that wasn't the case in breath of the wild like almost anytime I died in breath of the wild I was annoyed and I was like that wasn't what's supposed to happen and like not in a fun way and whatever and now I have to go back and like do it the right way which is of course also true in dark souls but it's different because I don't know like there's

just more of a jackassery happening in this game that's very from softesque where you're just like let me just try something and like all my weapons are going to break anyway everything is impermanent in this hell world. Like nothing matters. I'm just going to freaking jump off this cliff and like see if I can recall this plane underneath me in time that I can manage to leap onto it and then like fly to this place that I'm probably not supposed to get to yet. And like maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

I feel like I've seen so many hilarious clips of people building some absurd thing. And then it like explodes and falls on them like as they turn it on. And it's like that game over screen is so funny in those moments. And it's like it is why the game over screen is often funny in Dark Souls as well. It's like because it can be the comedy stinger on well, you tried it. Like you really thought that was going to work. Okay. Well, again, it's like it's your fault.

You know it's your fault. And that's always funny. And also because you were trying something dumb, not because the game was hard and you just like entered into an area with like a really ridiculous construct or, you know, any number of other totally illogical ways I died in Breath of the Wild where I was just like, well, I'm underprepared for this, I guess. But this game just doesn't operate that way. It's both of those things. It is the fact that you're constantly in this experimental mindset, that then I feel so much more willing to just try stupid crap like you mentioned. And just to see if I can pull it off and then almost always find myself thinking, oh my God, I'm pulling this off. I was recently in the depths and came across a kind of terrifying boss that I just went ahead and fought and had that same feeling of I think the one time the boss hit me, it was a one-shot kill. But I had a fairy with me. So the fairy reversed.

I was like, okay, and I almost thought, I'm just, I'm just going to load a save out of this and come back later. And then I thought, well, no, whatever, who cares? Like, I'm just going to see how this goes. And I wound up winning the fight just because I was kind of experimenting and throwing things out of it and figuring it up. Yeah, well, because you're so good a game. Also, because I'm an extremely elite gamer.

But it was definitely like, my mindset is much more experimental and willing to just try things in this game, even than Breath of the Wild because of that, because of what we're talking about. Yeah, for sure. I do think, not to digress too much, but I think this game has a lot, a lot of improvements over Breath of the Wild that you don't even notice until you played a lot. I mean, even just the quest system, it just is so much more elaborate and mysterious and... Yeah, the narrative design of the quests, yeah, is really strong. There's this big compelling mystery surrounding the whole game, and also there's quests that are like,

I mean, even the newspaper quest alone, that makes you excited to see a stable because you're like, oh, there'll be some cool little story that I can find. and like the hunt for Princess Zelda and what's going on? Why is so many people talking about seeing her? But also there's a sense of mystery that I don't think was in Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild definitely had mysterious moments. You get to a labyrinth and like you don't know what's going on and you're like, this is wild.

That part is cool. Or you get to even Tide Island. But then again, I got to a labyrinth than this game and it's way cooler and it's even crazier. Or like I'm doing a quest right now that's in Goran City or Death Mountain. And it's just like it gives you a little bit of a riddle and you just have to figure out what the deal is. And that's really cool, very from soft inspired also. I do think this is something we've talked about before, but that is an important distinction narratively between what happened here and what's happening here.

And I think Thiers of the Kingdom is so much more often having you ask the question, what's happening here? And that is a kind of just more, it's a pretty engaging question to ask, and I'm constantly asking it in a lot of different ways. Uh-huh, uh-huh. It definitely feels like a lot more active storytelling. And like present timeline. And there's just a lot more quests, I think.

and it gives you a lot more incentive to be going around and exploring and doing things and it's incredible because like we all were obsessed with Breath of the Wild for a long time. We all loved it. We all thought it was a fantastic game and the fact that this game... I mean, I still think it's a fantastic game. It sucks now. It's amazing. We hate it now.

The fact that this game is elevated it's so much more. I mean, it's just like who would have possibly thought? It just still boggles the mind what they did here. It's pretty great and it makes me feel like more games to just do this. I don't know how... No kidding. agree.

Hey, why are more games like tears of the kids? It sounds like one of those jokingly straightforward sentences, but no, there's something to it. I know what you mean. It is true, though, that a lot of times, like a sequel, I mean, we've certainly talked about this before, like a sequel that directly builds on the previous game, especially if it's capable of staying within the same engine, which this game does, and just building upon the exact same systems. In this case, it's a lot of the same characters.

And I don't just mean, like, the main trio. I mean, like, dozens and dozens and dozens of townspeople. in every town and you can go back, they'll remember you. And that is so rad. Like, I'd sort of forgotten that sequel feeling. I can't even think of the last time I played a game that had this much repetition between the characters where I'm like, oh, that person who's making the wreaths in

Cagraiga Village, she's like, she was a little kid and I like helped her cook the recipes before. And now she's like a little older. She's like, you know, 12 or 13. And like that is so freaking cool. I don't know. It just, it's like a, it feels like a living world. Yeah, yeah.

Well, so to your point about the engine, I mean, something that game developers, we've talked about this a lot in previous episodes, but something game developers talk a lot about is how a game really only coalesces in the last few months. And that's when you really start to see the builds you've been playing as a programmer or artists or whatever, finally have the sound and the VFX implemented and the levels are no longer full of big white boxes or whatever, orange boxes now that you can actually see what you're playing. And once everything is online, you're like, oh, man, I wish we had this knowledge months and months ago. And so that's why a lot of times people are really excited about DLC, you see a lot of cool ideas in expansions and stuff like that.

And this is essentially one big expansion in the non-derogatory sense, like in the sense that they had all this time with this game already. And so they knew what they were building on. And they knew what the world looked like in like a lot of the animations and sound effects and stuff like that. And the fact that they could spend six years just iterating on that and making it even better is so, so. impressive and rare in the video game industry because even when someone makes a sequel, a lot of the times they're trying to push new things. They're trying to do totally new tools, totally new tech, totally new animations, like whatever they're trying to do. They want it to feel. They don't want the big YouTube comments being like, oh, what is this deal C for the last game? But yeah, in this case,

it's just really impressive what they were able to do. Yeah, maybe developers shouldn't be afraid of that response because now that's out, no one's saying that anymore. Yeah, I mean, so the flip side of this that we all talked last year about how God of War Ragnarok felt a little samey, a little bit more of the same. That game, I think, had a couple of issues that we, that beside, aside from that, or like Horizon, which we all enjoy, but it wasn't like a game we were all raving about, and those games, I think. So I do think there's more to it.

And the abilities in this game, as we've talked about, really make you feel like a different game. That's a crucial difference, I think. When you're expanding on base ideas, like on an existing sort of world and characters and setting, if you have that level of freedom, if your abilities are so based on empowering the player to try crazy stuff and build things and be creative, like an expansion means so much more when you're expanding the possibilities as much as this game does, right?

Because the tools they give the player allows for so many new things, where an expansion to a game like Horizon, I really, I really liked the sequel to that game, but it did feel more of the same as God of War did because it's like you're doing a lot of the same stuff. Like, okay, you have a bow and arrow. You're fighting dinosaurs.

Like, it isn't like, okay, now we're going to give you, you know, the ability to rewind time or climb up through the ceiling or combine different physics objects into huge vehicles that you can fly around. Like, they don't have abilities like that. So expanding on what was already there just doesn't feel the same. It's just kind of more stuff, like more of the same things you're already doing. Yeah, you're 100% right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really cool how even the story, which I won't go into.

detail about how, I'll just say structurally, the story also expands upon a premise set forth in Breath of the Wild, which is, okay, Link is regaining his memories. He finds different objects around the world. He gets a new memory every time. Pretty flat, in my opinion, not a super engaging way to receive his story. It's all set in the past. And when I heard, yeah, and when I heard that this game would also have essentially a memory system, it's called something different, but I was like, oh, great, I'm going to go around collecting cutscenes again. Okay, fine. I was disappointed, though. I was like, that's not going to be very interesting. But in practice, They've iterated upon that concept further.

Yeah, it's so cool. It's great. Okay, we had that idea and now we are going to change it and have it be totally different from what you thought it would be. And it's so cool. Like to even iterate on the idea of telling a story, I don't know. I feel like a lot of games don't do that for the sequel either. Yeah, no, it's fantastic. And like having seen a few of those cutscenes, they're amazing.

They're like so much better. And so much more interesting because there's this. fundamental mystery. Yeah. And I think in Breath of the Wild, one of the problems is that like after you finish the plateau, you essentially knew the whole story and the rest of you just like filling in the details. Like how did Zelda get there and how did everyone get killed? Like how did it?

Yeah. Yeah. And then you could have beat the game without getting any of those memories. Yeah. Oh yeah. Which I essentially did. I think I got like one. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that, Kirk, I think that point is the most important one here, which is like the game when a game that like is going to be an iterative sequel set in the same. sort of world. If it doesn't give you totally new tools, it's just going to feel like more of the same. And the fact that this game is really giving you a completely new tool set to play around with is just so cool. And I think that that is a useful lesson for a lot of game developers to learn, which is that like you can get away with setting a game in the same sort of world with a lot of the same, a lot of kind of reused art assets and animations and sound and stuff. But if you give them

freedom to just totally experiment with it in a brand new way. Yeah, just be like a freaking genius. Just be like a genius. It's like, okay. So like that coolest possible design for abilities, story. And it just be, you know. In Breath of the Wild, you can chop down a tree and create a log and then like push that log down a river and ride it down a river.

And it was like, okay, how many times am I really going to do this in this game? In Tears of the Kingdom, you can chop down a log and then fuse it together with other logs and build herself a giant wooden robot. and then put a control stick on it and some fans and then bam you got like a big meck like that alone is just like this encapsulation of like why this game is so transcendent and takes all these things that were built upon and that's why i don't really think kirk you you said the other day when i mentioned that like reviewers were calling breath of the wild a rough draft for this game you said that was hyperbo hyperbo which i don't really feel that way i don't think it is to me it really

feels like the last game was a rough draft for this game and not even in a bad way way, like a rough draft that was pretty polished, a pretty strong rough draft. But this feels like what they really wanted to do. This is something that I, we don't have time to get into this, but I just think using the word rough draft is needlessly internety in a certain way. I don't think there's any reason to denigrate Breath of the Wild when talking about how great tears of the kingdom is. First draft.

I think first draft is what people said. I'm going to call it a sequel. That's the crazy word I came up with just now. It feels like a sequel. Yeah. Turns out, man, triple click. Podcasts. Tears of the Kingdom feels like a sequel to Breath of the Live. Bam. But put that on the YouTube.

Feels like a sequel. That's definitely front of the box quote. On that note, on that note, that wisdom we have to share with the world. Why don't we take a break? And we'll be back with one more thing. You probably already have a favorite animal. Maybe it's a powerful apex predator like the tiger or a cute and cuddly panda. And those are great. But have you considered something a little more unconventional? Could I perhaps interest you in the Greenland shark, which can live for nearly 400 years? Or maybe the jewel wasp who performs brain surgery on cockroaches to control their minds? On Just the Zoo of Us, we review animals by giving them ratings out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics.

Listen with friends and family of all ages to find your new favorite animal with Just the Zoo of Us on Maximumfund.org or wherever you get podcasts. I'm Jordan Cruciola, the host of Feeling Scene, where we talk about the movie characters that make us feel seen. And I'm the show's producer, Marissa. Jordan, you've interviewed so many directors, actors, writers, film critics, and I like to play this little game where I take a sip of coffee. Every time someone says, that's such a great question. That's such a fabulous question. Or they tell you how smart you are. I think that you are rather brilliant.

And of course, the big one is when they cry unexpectedly. Yes, yes. Jordan, I don't want to cry on your podcast. I wasn't expecting to cry. I mean, it makes me kind of want to cry. Feeling seen comes out every Thursday on maximum fun.org. Listen already. What are you waiting for?

Jordan, that's such a great question. And we are back. It is time for one more thing. I'm going to nominate myself to go first because I played a hot new video game that we're going to be talking about a lot more, which is called Final Fantasy 16. So there were previews.

There was a preview event for this game a few weeks ago. I went. I went into New York. and went into their office and played a bunch of the game. They were showing like five hours of this thing, which I think is testament to how confident they are in it. Also testament to how confident they are in it is that they're sending out review codes really early,

which is fantastic. But yeah, I get to play a couple hours. I didn't play through the whole demo. I wasn't going to sit there for five hours, but I played through the first two hours of the game, and I won't get too much into it because we're going to be talking about the final thing pretty soon. But a couple of quick thoughts.

One is that it really does feel like devil might cry, so you guys might enjoy it more than the other final fantasy games we played. Two is that I was a little put off by the frame rate and I switched between like performance mode and graphics mode and graphics mode actually like felt better. Performance mode was like making me dizzy a little bit. This is a preview build, so reserve final judgment for the final thing. But I was a little bit like, oh, this is not great right now. Three, there were a ton of cutscenes. in the first two hours of the game, it was like an hour of cut scenes.

Cool. Okay. And the cutscenes are all very Game of Thrones in both good and bad ways. The bad way is mostly the entire time you're just like, this is Game of Thrones. There's like, people are having sex while having conversations about the film. Well,

there's actually, there's one scene where like a dude picks up a woman and she's like straddling him and it's kind of not in clothes. Sex position. They're in clothes. A little sex position. Yeah, sex position. Yeah.

No, there's this scene, there's this one scene where it's like the regent and the prince are like sitting at a table and all the men are like having body laughing at their own tables and it looks like straight out of like a stark camp like when they're on the move. Like it looks like they literally took that. Was there a stray Starbucks cuff in the shot? There was no, no, not this time. Although that would be, if they'd be funny if they put that in. We're going to do a partnership. No. It's like straight out of Game of Thrones. And I was actually really interested in the story.

I thought it was pretty cool from what I saw so far. There's a way bigger magical element than Game of Thrones in the sense that the story revolves around these big summon monsters, like your summon from your classic Final Fantasy summons, Iffred and Shiva and Phoenix and stuff. Haven't seen Bahama yet, but yeah. And so those are like essentially the world revolves. around those in that like every kingdom or region of the game has one of those that they I guess can use as like their nuclear super weapon and yeah and the first part of the game is there are a bunch of time jumps I think so the first part of the game is your main character

Clive his he's like in his I forget if he's in his teens or in his 20s yeah his name is Clive good old Clive and yeah so I left pretty excited for the real thing but again I'll reserve real judgment until I'm actually playing the final thing, but certainly getting a taste of it, have me stoked. One more really cool thing I just will say real quick is that during cutscenes, you can pause and you can see like kind of glossary entries or encyclopedia entries of each character. So if you get confused about who's who, you just pause and you can kind of select. And it's actually really, really cool.

And I wish like a lot of games did that in case because there are a lot of names to remember and a lot of people to remember. So very helpful. have some TV shows that could do that. That'd be cool. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know how, I think it's Amazon. You can pause it and you see like the names of the cast. And sometimes it ruins scenes. It's like someone is a surprise appearance.

And like, someone's in a mask or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's it's kind of like that. And hopefully it doesn't spoil things. I haven't gotten in depth enough in the story for that to happen. But anyway, I was very impressed by it. Yeah, Final Fantasy 16. We'll talk about it more in the future.

Maddie, what's your role, Marthy? Mine is a movie. It has to be because the only game I'm playing is Tears of the Kingdom. So it has to be a non-game. So we watched a movie for movie night. Dina's and my movie night called Missing. It's on Netflix. It's probably getting pushed on all of you.

I watched it because several of my coworkers at Polygon said it was good. And I didn't know anything else about it. I just knew it was a mystery thriller. That's one of our favorite genres in this household. So I was like, all right, cool. We're going to watch it. And it was fantastic. And if you don't want to know,

anything else about it. You just want to know that because you're like me. You can just skip ahead 15 seconds and get to Kirk's thing. But I'll say a couple more things in case you're not convinced yet. One is, so it stars this teenage girl who has to solve the mystery on her own. She sort of starts out as like a true crime, not a junkie, but like she watches true crime. And that ends up helping her solve the mystery, which is fun. And the teen girl's Storm Reid, she was the star of Wrinkle in Time. And she sort of like a up and coming on. Genue. She's in the last of us.

She was Riley and the last of us. She's Riley and the last of us. She's great. Oh, yeah. She's great. Yeah, she's super good in this movie, too. She's a really fun. Snarky teen who then shit gets real

very quickly because the mystery she has to solve is that her mother and her mother's boyfriend are the ones who go missing as the title claims. And it's pretty intense because she's 18, so theoretically could live on her own, but doesn't yet. And so is in this very scary situation

within the first few minutes of the movie starting and the rest of the movies are solving the mystery. Thing too, that was the most impressive part of the movie is that all of it takes place on a laptop screen, by which I mean. It is all social media and it is all webcam and it is all just delivered to you via webcams and like you'll watch her mouse hovering and you sense her hesitation. Like the mouse is a character in this movie. It is so good.

I kind of loved not knowing that going in, so I'm like a little sad to spoil it because it's like the big hooky thing about this movie that maybe everyone knew. But it was really fun that Dean and I started watching it. We were like, oh, cool, cool. Okay, yeah, it's starting out with like a thing on her laptop, whatever we get it. And then after a few minutes, we were like, is this whole movie going to be on someone's laptop? And then after like 20 minutes, we were like, it's all going to be on her laptop. And it's like, it's on her laptop, her phone and like other characters, laptops and phones, but it's like purely technology. The final scene kind of feels like an advertisement for Apple iPhones, but like it's fine.

I get it. I was willing to go with it. Wasn't there another movie kind of like that? Yeah, I think by the same two director teams. So it's Nicholas Johnson and Will Merrick and the two of them made another movie that I think is called Searching that also takes place entirely on someone's laptop. And then I think Netflix commissioned them to make like a much higher budget version, which is sort of the opposite, where the first movie was like a doubt.

looking for his teen daughter. And this one is like the teen girl is looking for her parent. Got it. And I haven't seen the other movie, although now I'm like kind of interested. But yeah, it's really good. It's called missing.

I recommend it. Cool. Awesome. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is an Apple TV plus show that Emily and I have been watching called Silo that I really like.

That's really cool. I don't think I would have given it a chance if I hadn't seen. I think it was Joshua Rivera's coverage of Polygon, but someone basically saying, This show is going to seem like it's one thing at the beginning, but it's actually much more interesting. I edited this story from Josh. Yeah.

And someone had described it as basically a small town murder mystery, which is what it is. Yep. Though it is a much more high concept show than that, so you would be forgiven for watching it initially and thinking, oh, this is going to be some dystopian. Like big sci-fi epic. Yeah. Kind of sci-fi thing. So this show is based on a series of books. Actually, Emily clocked it immediately seeing the trailer.

She was like, oh, this is wool. And so she had read Wool, which is a short story that I gather kind of encapsulates the events of the very first episode or two episodes and doesn't reveal everything in the short story. But I think there are a series of stories by an author named Hugh Howie. I haven't read them. But the premise is basically there is a silo that is actually quite a bit like a vault in Fallout. It reminds me in a lot of ways of some of those fun stories in various Fallout games where you come upon a vault and there's been stuff happening there for whatever. decades as they've been sort of stuck underground and not willing to go out into the irradiated wasteland. So in this case, there's a silo. It's a big, enclosed underground society with about

10,000 people in it, and the world outside is ruined. We don't really know why, and no one inside knows why either, or really knows what's going on outside. They just know that it's toxic. Like, the air is toxic, the world is poison. You cannot leave the silo. And they've built an entire society, over the course of a long time sort of to survive inside. So the silo is hundreds of, or at least 100 stories deep. It's so deep that it takes, like, days to get from the top to the bottom. So over the course of the show, you really learn all this interesting stuff about how their society is ordered, the different groups, the, like, neighborhoods and areas who are responsible for different things.

There's a kind of a caste system, or at least a class system or the people on top are doing technical stuff and making decisions. and the government is up there, down in the bottom. That's where they're like running the generator to keep everything working, so everyone stays alive. You kind of see the couriers who run up and down, and they're always running up and down the stairs. And it's the spiral staircase that runs down the middle. They don't, and that has become a plot point on an episode that I recently watched. So you start to ask questions like that, and actually, so they begin to be answered in ways that are more interesting than you might think. And it's really well thought out.

So one thing that I do like about the show is there's a lot of logistics. which I always like. There's a lot of just, well, so-and-so is here and so-and-so is there. This information needs to move from here to there. It's really hard to get around. It's all tied in, and it's very thoughtful. It's very well put together. The actual story is the story of kind of what's going on, like what's going on outside. Some of it seems like it's maybe predictable. I don't really know all of the twists and turns, but you start to get a sense early on that things are not what they seem, that people aren't being told everything. There are these kind of warring factions.

Well, the classic, like, subversion would be like, oh, it's actually totally fine outside, and it's all a social experiment or something like that. Yeah, and it's, you know, obviously, like, that's the first thing that you guess. They begin to kind of mess with that prediction. They tease you with stuff. But that's not really what makes the show interesting. It's fun because it's a great mystery. The star is Rebecca Ferguson, who was the one of the leads of the recent Mission Impossible movies. She's kind of the romantic interest for Tom Cruise, which is always kind of a thankless task in a movie because in his movies these days, you have.

have to be like a tough lady who can do really cool stunts and keep up with Tom Cruise and isn't really going to need to be like a, like have sexual chemistry with him or anything because Tom Cruise is kind of a robot in movies and like no one wants to think about that and he's not interested either. So she's kind of this like Terminator awesome chick in those movies and she's amazing. Like she's fun to watch. She's like really good on camera. She does stunts. She's so cool. But you didn't get to see her act or like do much besides being this like hard case chick on a motorcycle. In this, she's kind of similar. She reminds me a little bit of Emily Blunt's character in Live Die Repeat. She has a kind of, that kind of like gaunt, tough, like, I just get shit done

energy. And she plays an engineer down in the very, in the low low, I think, as they call it, who then gets embroiled in this mystery, this sort of like these murders and this twisty tale of what's going on throughout the silo. She's really good. She carries the show. The rest of the cast is great. Rashida Jones is in it. She's really good. Common, isn't it? He's great with his amazing voice.

Tim Robbins is there doing great work. So anyways, it's a cool show. If you start it and you see the opening credits, it sounds like Westworld. The music's kind of boring. The aesthetic, you're kind of like, oh, is this just going to be like some kind of want-to-be, you know, twisty, whatever dystopian bull crap? Stick with it. I haven't finished, so I can't say for sure that, like, everything is great. But we're really into it.

Like, the mystery is really good. It's well put together. It's a fun show. Is the whole season out? Or is it still airing? It's still airing. There are a few episodes left. But yeah, I'm really enjoying it.

And it's on Apple TV Plus, you said? Yes. So it is Silo. It is on Apple TV Plus. And it's a cool show. Check it out. Neat. That reminds me I need to watch the new season of Mythic Quest on Apple TV.

Yeah, I fell off of that. I started. We finished it. But it's fine. Both of your one more things that made me want to go watch them. So good job, guys. Yeah, missing sounds great. I really want to see it. It's really cool. It's cool just as like a film experiment.

Yeah. It's just like, wow. The problem is that everything I watch now, I will be playing Zelda during. But that's fine. All right. And on that note, it is time to say goodbye. We will be back next week as usual. So yeah, I will see you both then. Yeah, see you both next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. 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 to 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. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned.

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