Triple Click - Playable Zelda, Metroid Prime 4, And More Big News

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy unwind from this year's not-E3 by getting back into it. They talk about the big Xbox showcase, the big Nintendo showcase, and some of the embargoed games they saw at Summer Games Fest, such as Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Star Wars Outlaws.One More Thing:Kirk: Tactical Breach WizardsMaddy: Valorant (new Xbox port)Jason: The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel (Jenny Nicholson)LINKS:IGN story on development of Perfect Dark: https://www.ign.com/articles/xboxs-perfect-dark-reboot-is-still-years-awayCory Doctorow’s “enshittification” essay: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guysPreorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/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

After a long weekend in L.A., all the big summer game announcements are behind us, and, wait, I'm seeing here, Nintendo just announced a direct. Welcome to Triple Quick, where we bring the summer games to you. It's time for some post-SGF cleanup where we talk about all the games and announcements that we didn't get to at last week's live show, including the fact that Nintendo just announced a Zelda game where you play a Zelda. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shire. Hello. Hello.

Hello. We're back at our house. houses. Separated again. Thank you to everybody who came out for our LA show. It was so much fun seeing people and getting to say hi to everybody afterwards. We were warned beforehand that like L.A. people don't go to shows, but people came to ours. So we were excited about that.

And people came to the hotel afterwards and hung out with us in person, which was great. We have very nice fans, as it turns out. Really good questions at the show. I love our listeners asking really good pithy questions. I just want to shout that out because I feel like that's such a capital G gamer stereotype to have more of a comment than a question or whatever, but not our listeners. Only lowercase G in our community.

We've trained you all well. Yeah, keep it short. Keep it interesting. That's the Jason Trier question promise. So yeah, thanks so much to everybody who came out to the show. And thanks so much to everybody who supports the creation of Triple Click by supporting Maximum Fun, our podcast network. Actually, some lovely Max Fun folks came out to the live show as well, and we got to meet some of them for the first time.

Shout out to all the Max Fun people who are there since they are based in L.A. And yeah, if you want to support Maximum Fun, you should become a member. Sign up at MaximumFund.org slash join. And when you become a member, you can also choose to support Triple Click. And that's the only way we make money on this show. So support our show and get access to bonus episodes. There's a whole bunch of them. And we're going to record a new one pretty soon.

all about psychodicy, the epic length double-fine documentary on YouTube. Maddie has finished it. We've all watched it. We have a lot to say about it. Everyone should very, very good. It'll be an excuse for you to watch it. It'll be a very good excuse for you to watch it. So yeah, maximum fun.org slash join, become a member, support our show.

Thank you so much to everyone who already does so. All right. Jason, what are we talking about today? Today we are talking about summer games fest, sort of. we're talking about the summer in gaming. So on our live show, we talked a little bit about some of the stuff we saw, some of the stuff we played, but as we made very clear, some of the games were under embargo, and also some of the events had not happened yet.

So we recorded our live show before Xbox did their showcase. A Nintendo Direct dropped this week. That was full of cool stuff. And I do appreciate how they were like, you know what? Screw you, Jeff, Keeley, Summer Game Fest. We're going to go a week later just to get away from your weekend, your branding. But they still dropped it on Tuesday morning, so it was just in time for Triple Click to record their episode, which thank you so much Nintendo.

We know you were thinking of us. They're always looking out for us. Yeah, Nintendo's not counter-programming our live event. They're scheduling with us in mind. Of course. So much Nintendo. Exactly. So there's a lot to talk about still from the summer extravaganza.

So let's jump into it. There's a bunch of kind of headlines to get to you. But let's start with the Xbox show because that happened just about, I don't know, 12 hours after we recorded our last episode. So that was Sunday, June 10th. And it was kind of, it was a two-hour showcase that was like a bunch of game reveals and then also a Call of Duty deep dive into Black Op 6. and we all watched it. Some of us were covering it. We were very curious to see what they would have.

There were some new teaser trailers with CG. There were some new looks at games that we already knew were happening. First and foremost, what were your highlights? Kirk, why don't you start? What were your highlights from the Xbox Showcase? There were a few. I thought that Perfect Dark looked really, really good. It had the look of one of those demos where the finish game isn't probably going to look like that.

Not a little. That looked like the fakeest shit. But it looked good. There was that animation where at one point Joanna Dark kicks a guy and hooks her leg around his head and knocks him to the ground. This is in first person perspective. And then goes into bullet time and shoots two guys and then turns to the guy who she's got her leg around and like shoots him. And I was like, there is no way.

I mean, maybe. I will look forward to that being in the game if you can actually do that move. It was very cool. Yeah, there's like full granular shooter acrobatics that Joanna can do moment. moment. You get to select which acrobatics you want to do per moment. There were some pretty, some pretty impressive first person animations that, man, if the game has a third of that, though, it'll be really cool. I just thought that that demo looked fantastic. An interesting development story on that game, I gather. Am I correct here that Crystal Dynamics has kind of

swooped in and taken that game over and are now making it? Yeah. Which is fine because even watching it, it felt kind of like their Tomb Raider games, same kind of mix of stealth and platforming and action, just from a first person perspective with more of a kind of espionage, you know, lilt to it. And I just thought it looked cool. I think that, you know, we played through Perfect Dark just recently, thanks to Maddie. And that was a very eliminating experience, even though the game wasn't that much fun,

because I think we all kind of came away from it thinking, oh, so Perfect Dark doesn't have a very strong identity, actually. It's kind of just this little shell of a game. So there was a lot for them to build on. And I thought that that demo looked like a game that I would love to play. I mean, that was exactly my kind of game. So I thought it looked cool. I thought it was fun that the trailer had some perfect dark lore in it.

Like, that was how I figured out it was perfect dark, because they kind of, they did the tricky thing where they didn't tell you what the game was going to be. And then they were referring to Carrington. And I was like, oh, I know. We just all played Perfect Dark recently. We know Carrington is a character in there. We're going to be in Joanna Dark's world. I'm sure you see.

They've been recognized that all. Yes, Carrington. My favorite character. One of us remembers the lore of Perfect Dark well enough to recognize proper names. Remind me, Maddie. Is Carrington the talking briefcase, like, eyes that float around? Yeah, Carrington Industries. Do I need to link you guys to the fan wiki?

It's not important. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. It's fine. It doesn't matter. The point is I recognized it. I got the feeling watching that trailer. So there's been some stories.

I think there was a big IGN story about the development struggles that this game has gone through. I get the feeling that one of the reasons that's gone through development struggles is because the original is such a nothing burger. It's like, I'll never forget, as we talked about when we did our episode about that game,

the section where she's like, all right, I got to sneak through here, can't get noticed, and then immediately all you can is to shoot up a bunch of guards. And like, I think when you have a game, when you have just a kind of a weird concept like that, it's like, is this going to be a shooter? Is this going to be a parkour

game? Is this going to be a stealth game? Is this going to be all the above? What is this actually going to look like? And it's, I imagine, it's very hard to actually find a direction that works. But yeah, I mean, that game didn't even have a release year. So don't expect it for quite a long time, which is a running theme with Microsoft. Microsoft tends to have these really cool showcases full of awesome trailers and games that look really good, like Perfect Dark and Fable and State of Decay 3, which were all shown in like 2020. So it's, it's true. just a theme that these games just are shown over and over again forever. So there were a few other games at the Xbox or during the Xbox stream that I thought were

pretty cool that I just want to shout out. I thought that game mixtape looked pretty neat. It was a kind of what remains of Edith Finch style game where you're moving through all these dramatically different types of gameplay as these young characters have memories of their times together with, of course, a killer soundtrack with like Devo and Joy Division. And that just looked pretty neat. There's a game called Adam Fall. Do the two of you remember Adam Fall? No. Remind me what happens in the trailer.

That was the one that was a kind of a British like fallout meet stalker like kind of retro futurist thing set in the English countryside where there's robots and it's a kind of survival game. It looked really neat. I went back and watched the trailer for it again. I had kind of forgotten it since watching the stream, but that one looked really

pretty dope. Yeah, I was interested in expedition 33, which was kind of the flashy looking turn-based role-playing game. I mean, you always get me a turn-based role-playing game. That was interesting looking. So that's made

by Sandfall Interactive. That's a French developer and something we talked a little bit about at the live show was a recurring theme here is that there are these European developers and in particular French developers. I feel like a lot of really cool games are coming out of France now. I think on this team

there is some ex-Ubysoft people, which kind of makes sense. People who started a new studio. This studio is, I think they say they opened in 2020, if my memory serves from looking them up earlier this morning. And this is, I think, their first game. So they're making this really high budget looking, beautiful looking thing that is a turn-based action game that's kind of based on, you know, like a French architecture and the whole Bel-epa-pac thing. I thought that game looked awesome, even though the full name Claire Obscure Expedition 33 is not as good. Also, the villain. in that game is named the painteress, and she is this painting deity-like lady who paints the

numbers of people who die. Like, the lore of it sounds cool, even just from the trailer. So I definitely have my eye on that game. It sounds awesome. It's a cool concept, yeah. Also, some other things that I found really interesting about, I think it could be cool. That's the new game from Obsidian, their new RPG. Yeah, I was a little unimpressed by that.

I'm a little worried about that game. And maybe, I don't know, we'll see. and Indiana Jones, I think, is going to be awesome. Yeah. I'm very hyped for that game. Yeah. I like that the trailer had some jokes in it. Like, Indiana Jones should be a little funny, you know?

I liked that. Yeah, it's always, it's always funny. I think that the Indiana Jones face is a little weird, like the Harrison Ford thing. But you don't see it that much. It's the first person game, so it doesn't really matter that. Well, but the demo was like all cutscenes, so you saw his face a lot. True. I feel like Troy Baker's Harrison Ford impersonation is really good, though.

I actually think he's doing a great job. at that. You would almost never know it's Troy. Yeah, the voice is better than the face. Machine games, of course, makers of Wolfenstein, pretty good. That'll be a fun game. They make fun games. And yeah, and I'm looking forward to like lots of cool puzzles and other Indiana Jones type things. And then other people, I mean, these games are not for me, but other people I know were hyped about a new Doom and a New Gears of War. That Doom trailer was sick. I really want to play that too. Yeah, that's what's good. He has a shield that's a chainsaw.

It looked awesome. It's like we're going to get medieval, literally and figuratively, slang term-wise, and also going back to medieval times. It's going to be sick as hell. And like, Gears Award trailer, pretty surprising to me, honestly. We talked a bit about this ahead of the live show that we did in our predictions episode, where I was like, oh, yeah, I really liked Gears 5. Maybe they're going to do a Gears 6.

The coalition is not doing a Gears 5. or six, apparently they're just going to do a Gears of War prequel game with young Marcus and young Dom, which feels very much like a, okay, how back to basics can we possibly go? Like, up to and including the Gary Jules Mad World cover in the trailer of like, remember when you liked Gears of War I, we're going to give you that feeling again with Gears of War I, which, okay, fine. I feel like every game studio is constantly pitching. We got to go back to the basics.

I know. Gotta go back to how you felt 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and just evoked that exact same feeling again. Well, all these are like reboots like God of War. We're just calling it God of War this time. Every single game studio is always like we're going back to the basics, back to what you used to like. Well, and with a series like Gears of War, that totally makes sense because Gears of War has sprawled in so many different directions. And by the time Gears 5 came out, you're like,

driving vehicles around a semi-open world. Yeah, I mean, it has become a really, it can mean a lot of different things to play Gears of War. And I totally get wanting to go back to the original, because the core of Gears of War, it is just these two dudes who rock. Two dudes being BFFs and some bugs are popping out of the ground. And we've got to find them. And I'll admit, I don't even care about Gears of War lore, really. I've lost track of the story. But seeing Dom again and having him, you know, catch Marcus. I was like, all right. Yeah, I was pretty good. I'll probably play this. To me, I was like, yeah, I like those guys.

Do you guys think the next Halo is going to be back to basics? We're just calling a Halo. Yeah, probably. He's baby master chief. He's young. He's vulnerable. He doesn't know who he is. I guess that doesn't really work for Master Chief because he was like in a tube during that time or whatever.

Yeah, sure. Halo back to the tube. Must be the Halo. How about Halo, Lieutenant Chief before he was a master? He was just Lieutenant Chief. He's just corporal chief. Okay, and that's Xbox. Phil Spencer did not mention all of the studio closures and layoffs and other disastrous decisions that have happened on his watch or really like talk about the future of Xbox.

Although he did do kind of, he did do one interview afterwards with Ryan McCaffrey from IGN. and he kind of did me a couple on the layoffs. He didn't really explain much, but it was just like, yeah, I run a business. This sucks. We had to lay people off and shut down some studios. Also, one other thing that's notable here is that Doom was announced for PlayStation shortly after the announcement on the Xbox Showcase stream. Other games were not, other like first party games were not announced for PlayStation yet,

but might come in the future. And it still seems just I've gotten the sense that they are still not sure what this strategy is going to look like and what they're going to do with all these. Like which games are going to come to PlayStation on day one, which are going to come to PlayStation later, which will come to PlayStation at all. It's all just kind of a confused mess in terms of their strategy because they just don't know what they're doing yet. Yeah, that's pretty weird. Yeah, that's all I have to say about that. It's weird. We're in a post-consul Wars environment.

environment now. Everything can be everywhere. Or at least entering that. Which is nice. But then we had the other major event. We'll kind of, we'll skip past Ubisoft because there wasn't really anything noteworthy there other than some games that we got to see, which we'll talk about a little bit later. And we'll jump ahead to the Nintendo Direct, which is, this is the one company that is still releasing exclusive games. PlayStation and Xbox have both started releasing on other platforms, especially PC, but Nintendo is still sticking to its guns doing the whole Switch thing.

And so people came into this Nintendo Direct, I think having low expectations. We know that the Switch 2 is expected March 2025 or so, spring 2025, let's call it. So this would be the kind of the finale, the final year of the Switch 1. People thought like maybe it's going to be

a bunch of remakes and stuff. But no, they announced a new Zelda game, where you play a Zelda. They announced a new Mario and Luigi game. they shut off Metroid Prime 4. Yeah, NPD. You're just running down the most exciting things that have ever happened, just right around.

Just for me, they announced an Ace Attorney compilation of the Ace Attorney Investigations, spinoff games, including one, Ace Attorney Investigations 2, that never actually was released in English until now. So that was pretty sweet. I've heard that game is awesome, so cannot wait for those. I mean, that single-handedly, like, 1E3 is just having an Ace Attorney game.

But, yeah, what did you guys make? the Nintendo Direct. I just think it's really funny that you put A's Attorney 4th as your personal one more thing lineup of how you, Jason, perceived the Nintendo Direct. Like, that's your order of importance. I, for me, at least, I mean, yeah, it's cool. But playable is all done a video game. I was shocked by this. This had been rumored for a while, the specific game that they announced, which is sort of done in the visual style of the Link's Awakening remake that we talked about on the show back when it came out. This is rumored. I didn't know. This is rumored. It was rumored. And the reason I know it was rumored just because Polygon's own Mike McWhorter kept telling me for the past several

weeks that he's been seeing pretty credible rumors about it. And I was, and he was like, I'm going to write, I'm going to pre-write this, Maddie. I'm going to pre-write this story. I was like, Mike, they're never going to announce a playable Zelda game. You're crazy. He was right, folks. And we hit that story right away because Mike was out here. What are his sources? I don't know. I couldn't tell you, but somehow he knew. Just to be clear, this was stuff he was hearing. And stuff he was hearing. And stuff that was on the internet. There were rumors out there. I don't know. I don't know. I was blown away by it. I couldn't believe this game was even shown at all. This was a story that was really huge for Polygon readers and huge for everyone in the world, I think. I mean, we were all freaking out in Polygon's internal slack about playable Zelda. I can't believe this is happening, truly. Yeah, not just playable Zelda, but in a game that is coming out very soon and looks very fun. Yeah. I think the game looks great. Let's describe the mechanic to people who didn't watch the direct.

So the game is called Echoes of Wisdom. Good name, I guess. It has a kind of a diorama-ish look. Looks a little bit like some of the recent top-down or isometric Zelda games. And yeah, in this one, Link barely manages to rescue Zelda from wherever she is being held before being sucked into another dimension. And then Zelda breaks out on her own and is like, oh, crap, I guess it's up to me. And she has this wand that lets her duplicate items in the world and then put

them in other places. So they show you kind of taking a table and you zap the table with the wand and then you have this whole menu you can cycle through. What do you want to make with the wand? You want to make a table? Okay. So then you make a table right in front of you. And then you can make another table and it goes on top of that table and you can sort of build a ladder to get up somewhere. This is a little bit like Tears of the Kingdom. Like or, well, yeah, Tears of the Kingdom in particular where you're kind of building crazy bridges to get over things and coming up with your own clever solutions. And then each thing that you suck into the wand, has its own unique mechanics attached to it.

So it has this emergent, really clever style of gameplay that seems in line with more recent Zelda games and looks super fun. I mean, it's very cool that you can play as Zelda. That alone is a really big thing to endorse this game. But I thought the gameplay of it looked very different and very, very cool. Yeah.

It definitely looks unique. Yeah, there were some scenes of her kind of swallowing monsters and then summoning them as well. Yeah. She could do a rock and then throw a rock. she could do like one of those kind of blade enemies and then jump on top of it and use it to spin around. Yeah, it did look pretty awesome. It's so funny that they're just like, oh, here's a Zelda game and it's coming out in three months. Yeah. And such a kind, another contrast

from the Xbox showcase where it's like, here are these games that maybe you'll get to play in four or five years. And Nintendo's just like, don't we're just dropping. We're just quietly working on this. So the aesthetic of this is actually taken from the link to the the past remake. That's been the kind of, that's the kind of diorama style clay-ish Zelda look that they're going with for these 2D games. I guess they're not really 2D, but 2D in the sense that they play like 2D Zelda's as opposed to 3D Zelda's. But yeah, that one is a unique mechanic. It makes me wonder, I, one of the things that I've always loved about 2D Zelda's is dungeons with unique items and puzzles that can be, that have bespoke solutions.

and interesting mechanics as a result of those items. And this wand mechanic and the ultra hand, pseudo-ultra hand that we're playing around with here, seems like it'll be used, that you can use it in a way to solve puzzles in a thousand different, with a thousand different potential solutions, depending on what objects you've picked up and zapped into your wand. I wouldn't jump to that conclusion just yet, at least just personally. I think they can make the puzzles very particular if they want to. Sure, they can, but that's what they said in the trailer,

is that like no player will have the same experience because you can solve a these different puzzles in different ways. It'll be a mix of both. I think I'm very curious to see how that plays out because it could. You could kind of lose something if you find out that the solution to everything, the easiest way to beat everything is just to like conjure a bunch of beds and stack them on top of each other and bypass everything. Kind of like in Tears of the Kingdom, how you can just build bridges using woodland lines.

The Kingdom was still one of the best games that would play. Building long bridges ruled. Yes, I was getting at that. It works, but it's like it's a very different feeling than the 2D Zelda games that were used to playing. So just curious to see what it's like in action. Yeah, Mario and Luigi was also a highlight for me. The game is called Mario and Luigi Brothership. It has this really interesting, sol-shaded aesthetic.

And it's the first new game in that series in a really long time. We've seen a couple of new paper Mario games, a couple of remakes of Super Mario. RPG and then Paper Mario a thousand-year tour. But this is the first specifically Mario and Luigi game since I believe the 3DS, since Mario Luigi's Dream Team, I believe on 3DS, which was something like 2015. The company behind these games, Alpha Dream, actually shut down. So that was kind of an independent Japanese studio that worked with Nintendo a lot on games. They shut down in 2019.

So I'm curious as to who's making this one if it's internally developed at Nintendo or what. But I am very curious to play that game. It looked pretty cool. Yeah, it did look fun. I loved Dream Team and we'll play it. You know, it also looked cool. This was not a Nintendo or a Switch exclusive. Is Mio Memories in Orbit?

Yeah. That's coming to other platforms, too. That's going on Steam. It's like this beautiful looking, I would guess, a Metroidvania 2D platforming game, or I'm not guessing actually, it describes itself as a Metroidvania on its Steam page. But that's going to be on all platforms,

but I thought the trailer looked gorgeous. Oh, yeah. And the gameplay looked cool as shit. It was a lot of kind of warping, jumping, actually similar to some of what we've seen in Silk Song gameplay, where there's a lot of kind of jumping onto a plane, like to be sort of co-planer with a point across the map and then hitting a button that warps you across that point and shoots you through it, which is a really exciting kind of platforming since it allows for both player control and level design to play a role. And just the gameplay looked sick and the art looked beautiful.

And I was basically like, yeah, I would have played that game, probably on Steam Deck and Not on Switch, but still I'm going to play it. Quick correction, it was actually Martin Luigi Paper Jam. That was the most recent one. Yeah, I was going to say, Dream Team was the most recent one I played, but I knew there was one since then. Also a bunch of JRP's new Dragon Quest, which I played. I played Dragon Quest 3 HD in L.A. That was one of the Embargered Things.

It's a Dragon Quest game for sure. It's a turn-based RPG, Invisible Random Encounters, and so on and so forth. And then, of course, Metroid Prime 4. Maddie, what did you think of that look? at the fourth venture bar. I thought it looked pretty good. It wasn't that long of a trailer, and I have been worried about this game for a while,

so I was a little relieved to see it at all, even if it wasn't that long of a trailer, and it was like, showed a little bit of gameplay, a little bit of cutscene. But yeah, I really just want to play it. We've heard a lot about this game having to reboot, having kind of a troubled development timeline,

so I am just personally still a little worried about the game, but I can't, I'm not saying that based on this trailer at all. the trailer looked fine. I just am like, I would like to play this game and see what they actually ended up deciding to do. I thought it had a cool title, though, Metroid Prime 4 Beyond. Fun?

Beyond. Metroid Prime 4 Beyond Two Souls. Yep. That's right. Yeah, I think it's hard to imagine, of any company, it's hard to imagine Nintendo being like, all right, we just got to get this out the door whether or not it's good. It's hard to imagine them releasing a bad iteration of Metroid Prime. Also, I think notable that they're saying it's coming out next year.

would be eight years after the announcement in 2017. So despite the reboot that happened a few years ago, I mean, it's had time in the oven. Also, most likely going to be one of those kind of cross-platform releases for both Switch and the successor, given that we know the successor, is coming out next year. That's why I don't really think. It just said 2025 and didn't have a date was because I was like, it's probably going to launch with the Switch 2. And that's why it doesn't have a date.

Yeah, that would make sense. sense. And I think it's something a lot of people predicted and saw coming. And yeah, it's, it's really hard to imagine. Like, I don't really think there's a reason to be pessimistic about this one. It's hard to imagine Nintendo releasing a bad Metroid, like, prime game, especially if it becomes, like, the launch title. I know. That puts a lot of pressure on it. So it really needs to be good in that case. I thought it looked great. I think visually it looked a lot like the remake that recently came out just in terms of the look of that game. And I think that remake looks amazing. And it sounded great. They got the music just right. That final shot of the trailer where they showed the

2025 release date, it cut to a kind of world map view. And man, it was like the choral synth sound from the original Metroid Prime came it. I mean, the music was telling a story all its own. And I thought that was a cool little nod. And then it was another way they were saying, don't worry, like this is going to be like Metroid Prime. It's going to be good if you like matured crime. Yeah, the other game I want to flag real quick before we move on is Fantasian. So Fantasion, you guys remember, I talked about this as my remember thing a few years ago, and this is a game from Mist Walker and Hero Nob Sakaguchi, who is the creator of Final Fantasy.

He left Square in 2004, and 20 years later, he is coming back to team up with Square again to publish this game and, like, free it from the iOS prison, because it was an Apple arcade exclusive and it was only playable on iOS devices, which kind of sucked because a game like that, you don't want to play in your phone, a meaty, rich, like, JRP. Kind of sucks to play in your phone for a number of reasons. First and foremost being that, like, I remember vividly, I stopped playing because whenever I switched to a new app on my phone, like, if I got a text message and wanted to switch to that, and then came back to the game, it has, like, started, it had to start from the beginning.

Like, it wouldn't save the progress and suspend it. So that was just, like, excruciating to play. play through. Yeah, so I'm really excited to give it to like start from the beginning and like play through the whole thing on a real platform, on a real gaming platform. And I imagine it'll be a popular, like I imagine this will get a lot of attention because it's a new term-based air purgee from the creator of Final Fantasy. And just kind of a cool story that it's like, apparently I'm trying to find out I'm talking to Skoria and seeing if they'll let me talk to him to get the full story of how this all came together. But it seems based on his Twitter feed that he was like a big fan of Final Fantasy 14 and became friends that. with Naoki Ashida, the director of Final Fantasy 14, the MMO. And from that, they wound up collaborating on this thing. So that I think is a cool story. And will be a fun game for me to force you two to play. Sounds cool.

Moving on, a couple more things. So we saw and played some games that we weren't able to talk about last time while we were in Los Angeles that I think we should hit now, shall we? So let's talk about Star Wars Outlaws. That was one of the Ubasop games that I alluded to earlier. Maddie, you and I both got a fair amount of hands-on time with this game, about an hour's worth of demo time. It was three different demos, each showing off like a different portion of the game.

Maddie, what did you think of it? I thought it was pretty fun. I enjoyed it. I would have loved to have heard more dialogue because what I did hear, I thought was funnier and snappier than what we saw in the trailers. And I remember thinking with the trailers like, oh, these characters aren't really grabbing me and I really need story from a big open world Star Wars game. I need something to keep me interested in this if it's like a rag tag ensemble cast.

But I liked what I heard. I like the mysterious robot guy. I think his name is ND5. I thought he was a fun character that they introduced in the part that we got to play. He was cool. And I like that the other characters in your little squad make fun of you, your main character, K, a lot, because she seems really arrogant in the way that like a Han Solo type would be. So I appreciated that dynamic. And just kind of all around, I thought the gameplay was pretty fun. It reminded me of the Jedi, a survivor, kind of a gameplay, even though it's a Ubisoft game. It's not the same people making it.

But it definitely felt like they played those games, the Jedi games, and we're like, okay, yeah, like these are some things that can work. And even if we have a character that doesn't have force powers, this aesthetic and this feeling of like environmental puzzle solving, like, feels pretty fun in a Star Wars environment. If you're like running around a big abandoned place with a bunch of metal working and like elevators that are broken and you've got to repair them, you know, all that kind of Star Wars stuff. So I thought it was fun.

I had a good time. Yeah. To me it felt like uncharted almost kind of by the book uncharted. Everything from the third person shooting and cover to the climbing and you can, you can see the yellow bars that you're going to climb. Yes. Yes. When you're on the end of one, when you're on the one.

end of one. She kind of like does the gesture, a signal that you can jump over to the next one. And I think there were multiple times when she, K-Vest, the main character, she jumped on a platform and then it fell and she slid, true uncharted fashion. Of course, yeah. I left that demo and the guy who was overseeing and asked me what I thought. And I was like, well, that sure was a video game. And I think he interpreted that as like a dig on it. But I just meant that like, yeah, that was a video game. Like, I'll play it. it was fun. It was enjoyable. It was a very AAA the experience. I imagine that this game will like live or die based on how good its story is and if its story is

really good, then it'll be awesome. But it's not going to do anything that we haven't seen a million times before. There's tie fighting or space, dog fighting against tie fighters. There's a speed bike that you drive around. There's side quests you find in the towns.

There's shooting and jumping. there's a little critter pet thing that you have, little alien that you have that you can send to distract guards or like to hijack terminals and stuff and do environmental damage or make things explode. In fact, it got to the point there was one demo. One of the three demos was set in a ruin and I was playing through it and I was like,

hmm, this is all climbing and traversal and platforming. I haven't fought a single enemy. I bet as soon as I get to this room where I find the computer and steal the thing I'm after that the enemies will poke out and they'll ambush me and then I'll have to sneak around the room and take him out. And yeah, that is exactly what happened. So it's basically like literally, you've played this before the video game. But I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing.

Like I'll happily jump into that. It comes out August 30th, pretty soon. And I think I'll enjoy it. Me too. Maddie, you also got to see Assassin's Creed shadows. I mean, we all did. because the part that they showed the press ended up being aired for literally everyone in the Ubisoft live stream. Yeah, that's true, but it was a little different for us because the way they showed it to us was like the same mission three different times.

One with Yasuke who plays with like a brawling mechanic just runs through and fights everybody. One with Nayo who sneaks around and does Shinobi stuff. And then a third with Nio except fighting instead of sneaking around and doing Shinobi stuff. Yeah, I mean, it certainly looks like an Assassin's Creed game to me. Kirk, did you see it or have you not watched that trailer yet? No, I haven't watched it yet. Okay. Maddie, what did you make of it? I thought it looked cool.

I mean, I think most of my coworkers were like, yeah, it's fine. It looks like Assassin's Creed. But I'm actually still pretty excited for this game. So it was enough for me to be like, yeah, I'm excited for this. I want to play as a cool ninja lady. I want to sneak around and stab people with my little life. I mean, it's not that different from Star Wars Outlaws, right? It's a game that looks fun.

and we know what it is, but that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean I don't want to play it. Yeah, if you want this, you'll probably like it. I was a little sad they didn't let us play it. Like going into SGF, I kind of thought they were going to let us play Assassin's Creed, and it's coming out pretty soon. But watching it was fine. I hope it's fun when we get to actually play it. But unlike Star Wars, we did not get to play it.

That is true. Yeah, that was too bad. But yeah, so that comes out in November. Should be fun. Should be very Assassin's Creed. It's funny. I was talking to someone at Ubisoft, and they told, me that Shadows, Assassin's Creed Shadows, is very traditional Assassin's Creed and will probably

be pretty good, but very traditional. And then Assassin's Creed, Hex, which is the next one that they've teased, that is going to be pretty unique. That is going to have a lot more kind of wild ideas. And that game, of course, is directed by Clint Hawking, who did Watchdogs Legion and long before that, Far Cry 2. So he is known for experimental game. play weird ideas. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So that'll be interesting. That'll be cool. I like both halves of that. I like them being like, here's one for the people that just want to sneak around and stab somebody with their little wrist knife. And here's one for people who are like, what if Assassin's Creed was totally different? I actually think that's a pretty good tactic for them. Exactly. And it's funny.

I hear you, Maddie, I'm sneaking around and running stab people. That's exactly the sense I got from the demo to the point where I was sitting next to Ben Hanson from Minmax. And as we left the feeder, I was like, why would anyone play as Yasake when they could be. sneaking around. And he was like, I have the exact opposite reaction. He was like, why would anyone play his Nio when they could run around and just run into people? And so I'm glad that Ubisoft has given that play style option to everybody. Another thing that we saw that Maddie and I saw and Kirk was too cool for was Dragon Age, the Veil Guard, which we did not get to play, but we did get to see a demonstration of which, again, most of that was posted on the internet,

although there was kind of an ending, an ending story twist thing that we did not, that I don't think has been made public. No. It was not shown online anywhere, so we won't spoil that or anything. So yeah, Maddie, what did you think of that demo of Dragon Age? I, again, I thought it looked pretty fun, but I will say I agreed with the people who saw the animation style and were like, oh, it's so much more cartoony. That took some getting used to.

I had the benefit that other people didn't have after watching the trailer. The first time I watched the trailer, I immediately got to sit there and watch an entire hour of gameplay performed for me by BioWor Staffer. And that meant that I kind of like forgot what the trailer looked like. And then I also just kind of got used to how different the art style looks. But it is really different. Like it is more cartoony. It's really stylized.

The characters' faces don't look as kind of photo real. It's not to say I need every game to be photo real, but I am kind of used to drag it. age trying to be on some level and it was interesting to me that they just chose to go in a totally different direction art style wise. So that was weird. But yeah, overall, I thought this looked fun. The first hour of the game is pretty combat heavy, but I don't think that's a bad thing. There were still some cool narrative choices along the way and I thought the combat looked pretty fun even though personally that's not really what I play Dragon Age for. I play to make friends with my virtual companions and, you know, set them up on dates with each other and see what happens to

them all and who dies and who lives and so on. But the combat did look fun. It looked cool to me. What did you think? Yeah, it's hard to get a gauge on the combat without actually getting your hands in the controller because it's hard to feel kind of how responsive everything is, how it really feels to use each ability without getting your hands on the sick. So that was a little disappointing. I don't know. I didn't really know what to make of it. I was a little bit. disappointed to see it go, I don't know, full Final Fantasy 16 on us or full mass effect on us even. You can't control the other companions. You're a party of three now instead of four. There's a lot of big changes that this game is bringing to the table. The dialogue tree seems more like Dragon Age 2 or like

kind of simplified than, I don't know, the old school style. And it's so, man, I mean, these guys are very unlucky releasing this just a year after Baldur's Gate 3, which changed so much. much of like what we expect from these big meaty computer RPGs and I think that might work against it. I don't know. I'm reserving judgment until I actually play it and I'm very much looking forward to sitting down and spending several dozen hours diving into Tevinter and getting getting to know Solis again and all those other dudes. But yeah, it's it's I don't know. I didn't, I certainly didn't leave the demo feeling like, oh man, I'm so hype for this game. but I also didn't leave it thinking, oh, this is going to suck either.

And I really wanted it to be a win because if it's not a win, who knows what will happen to buy a wear. I know. I know. And I think they know that, like, at least in my session, they kept telling me over and over that the story and the narrative were really important to them and that they knew people wanted that. And they just kept emphasizing that over and over.

And I was like, okay, so you get that this is where people are coming from and that people played anthem and it didn't really have what they wanted and what they're looking for here is like the romance, the intrigue, the drama, characters fighting with each other and bickering and having chemistry or not. And they were really trying to tell me that's what the game has. But it's also tough with like a first hour of the game. That's all we saw. That's mostly combat heavy because you're starting right in the thick of this dramatic action, which I think is a good way to start a video game for the record. But it also means that it's hard for us to tell like what is the actual story of the game going to be? Are we going to be forming

relationships with these characters over many hours and liking them? Or are we going to feel like they fall flat in some way? It's impossible to know at this day. Yeah. And after playing Baldur's Gate 3, not to harp on this too much, but like you can play so much of that game without getting into a fight, just kind of tactically stinking around and passing persuasion checks and jumping through windows and misty stepping and all that good stuff. And to suddenly see this just be non-stop like fighting purple monsters, it felt like a little bit of a little bit of walk back in terms of what I want from an RPG. But again, I don't know. I don't want to be too harsh on just the first hour of the game. Yeah. I watched the gameplay demo and it looked fine as like

an action RPG. It looked fun enough. But I do think that's something that Dragon Age has going for it that sets it apart from Baldur's Gate is the world building, the lore, the story. I went back and reread this explainer that I wrote for Dragon Age Inquisition about the lore that explained all the different factions and Orlai and the DeVinter Imperium and Farrellden and how all of these different political organizations are pushing against one another and the history of Thadis and all of this. And it's all really cool. It is actually really interesting. There are these built-in conflicts between each group within every country and within even subgroups within countries, you know, social groups and religious organizations. And they've really put a lot of thought into this,

people who originally wrote Dragon Age David Gator and his writing team. And that's a great foundation for a story. And I will say that the story stuff that I saw in that intro seemed really true to that. I mean, they were still tying it back to the events of Inquisition in a very clear way. Solis is there. You know, Verick is there. They're talking about things that have happened. And I think we're going to see all those characters. You know, Cassandra is the new divine or whatever, like all these characters who went through major changes in Inquisition. There's no reason for them not to be back in this game. And the more I thought about it,

the more I realized that that's going to be this game's greatest strength. And they'd have to really work to screw it up. Like what Dragon Age 2 did, for example, where they just went to Kirkwall and like none of it really mattered. Like you just didn't see anything from anywhere else because you were in this one town.

I have a feeling they know better than to do that. Like they learned their lesson. And that's what Inquisition was. And even though I know a lot of the writers are gone who worked on those early games, I don't know. I'd be pretty surprised if they got that wrong. So actually just,

It wasn't just the demo, but it was like returning to Dragon Age and thinking about what makes Dragon Age special made me more optimistic about this game than I had been. I totally get that. I mean, even just hearing the voice actors, again, really brought me back emotionally to that place of being like, oh, yeah, I really like a lot of these characters. And I, like, care about what is going to happen. And, like, I want Verra to confront Solis and, like, have it out with him. Like, that's exciting to me.

And, like, I think for people who care about that, even if they are completely different writers, it's very clear that it's written by people who played those games and are invested in those stories and are going to try to come up with something to happen next. That's interesting. I hope. Yeah, I mean,

let's not act like everybody from Bayrewer is gone. To be clear, the lead writer of the game, I believe is Patrick Weeks, who has been writing for Dragon Age for a long time. The creative director, I believe is John Epler, who is the Cinematics Director and also worked heavily on the narrative for Inquisition

and other games. So it's not like all the old school, by where people are totally gone. Just a lot of the people whose names we've seen have lives. Another reason for optimism. Yep. Yeah, lots of reasons for optimism.

Okay, real quick, before we go, any other games that you guys saw or played that you didn't get to talk about in the live show that are worth bringing up? I'll just say real quick again, I played Dragon Quest 3 HD, and it looks pretty, and it's very old school, and you guys are both going to hate it

because it's got so many invisible random encounters. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I obviously didn't sign up that demo. No, yeah, I didn't go and look at that one. I did see a couple other things. I saw a Dune Awakening hands-off demo. I thought that game looked pretty cool. I only got to see it for like 30 minutes and I didn't get to play it, but it has a lot of like crafting elements that I thought were fun and you can like decide you want to join the Harkonans and like craft all of their crazy tech. And that was a lot of what they showed me that I thought looked really neat. And I played a little bit

of Path of Exile 2. Never played Path of Exile 1, but I thought Path of Exile. Exile 2 was pretty cool. And I was like, oh, this is like very different. It's like Diablo, but with a Dodge Roll. I don't know if you two have ever checked out Path of Exile at all, but it's way harder and like more Souls likey because it incorporates a dodge roll and like a lot of precision combat mechanics. So I had a really good time playing that and started thinking maybe I would become a path of exile two person when that comes out. And yeah, those were like the two main other things that I saw and played that I've still been thinking about since the show and being like, oh, those are actually pretty cool. Excited for those. Awesome. My only one other game is Metal Gear Delta

Snake Eater. Oh yeah. I find myself pretty excited for. So whenever that does come out, I will be playing. Yes, we did not see a demo of that to be clear. That was just a game that you were excited about. Just that we saw a little bit more gameplay of it and was reminded that it is happening. It exists. I am excited about it. One last one I will drop at you guys before we take a break is Monster Hunter Wilds, which I saw a behind closed doors demo of that was super cool. Lots of just endemic systemic gameplay. You were, there was just this 15 minute ride where you're just chasing this one big monster around and he goes through all sorts of shenanigans. At one point, it winds up fighting another monster for a while. You wind up like dragging it into

or kind of baiting it into a thorn pit. You wind up bringing it into a lightning storm and it gets struck by lightning a few times. Can it get like swarmed by smaller monsters now like a bunch of Little Monsters, which is a new mechanic. There's a lot of really interesting stuff that I still, I have not really been able to get into Monster Hunter, but this demo did look pretty cool. I hope this is the game that I get the two of you into Monster Hunter because it'd be very fun to talk about it on the show. It would be fine.

But you do have to kind of do the buy-in. You have to get really into it. You have to get into it to really get what makes it so good. But it is very, those games are amazing. Awesome. All right. Let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. Hello, Sleepy Heads.

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No, definitely not. It's really bad. I would say out of 10, maybe like a 4 out of 10? It's just really boring. Yeah, zero. Subscribe to Jordan Jesse Go, a comedy show for grownups. And we are back. Kirk Maddie, it is time for one more thing.

Addie, start us off. Sure. So I played a little bit of Valerant because it is on consoles now in beta. And Polygon got some beta keys for this. So some of us have been trying it out. I played Valorant on PC when it first launched. This is like the Riot Games Twitch shooter where characters have abilities, which makes it sound a little bit like it's an Overwatch style.

But it's really a lot more like a counter strike in the sense that the abilities matter to gameplay. but also every character is like Twitch shooter style. Like you need to switch to your knife so that you can run as fast as possible. There's like points on the map where you set up the bomb and you have to either defend the point or diffuse the bomb, et cetera, et cetera. If you played Counterstrike, you know what I'm talking about.

And I used to play Counterstrike when I was a teenager and I'm not capable of maintaining the Twitch shooter capabilities that I once had. So when I played Valerrish on PC, I was like, this is fun, but I think I'm good on this. And now many years later, it's out on the Xbox. And this power is really interesting because they've had to try to make a Twitch shooter that's like really tactical and competitive, possible on a controller. And they've done something pretty cool that I'm sure other games have done,

but I just haven't personally experienced it, where they have an effect where when you press down the left trigger to aim, it automatically slows down your reticle. And you can adjust how fast your aiming reticle moves the rest of the time in the game, game so you can line up headshots just normally without pressing down the left trigger, but you can also have this additional slower speed that you can adjust. And it's called focus mode in the game. And it's really good. It's really, it feels great. It just the way that the, the, the change in speed is telegraphed for you just feels really good. All of it works really well.

And almost makes me feel like I could be good at Valerent, but I think I'm good. But yeah, I, I, I enjoyed playing it, and I thought it was impressive what they were trying to do with a game that is pretty difficult to make into a console port and to try to make fun for people who are playing with joysticks instead of a mouse and keyboard. Does it also have aim assist, or is that the main way that they give you benefit? Not that I saw in the controls. If that's there, I didn't find it. But, yeah, no, they want it to be hard. Like, that is really how they market the game, is that it's like, it's a difficult tactical shooter. And you need to be anything.

The Xbox port is you are playing only with other Xbox players. There's not crossplay with PC. There's not crossplay with PC. There might be crossplay with PlayStation, though, because it's also on the PS5 right now. And you're using a controller. The question would be if you're playing with people with a mouse and keyboard. So they could have some sort of... Go ahead.

I do know that people are using mouse and keyboard on console, and it's causing huge problems, and people are mad at anyone who is trying to do that as customarily happens. Anytime somebody plugs a mouse and keyboard into a console and forces it to work in a game, I've seen some headlines about that. So I don't think they're intending to do any console crossplay with PC because it feels so different. It is because of just the nature of a Twitch shooter. Like it is just slower with a controller. And it's not really fair if you're using a mouse instead.

So I don't think they're planning to do crossplay. Gotcha. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a demo that I played as part of Steam Next Fest for a game that I was aware of, had not played and I'm extremely excited about called Tactical Breach Wizards. So Steam Next Fest to, I'm sure most of our listeners who already know, but maybe some who don't, is a really cool thing that Steam, I don't know how long they've been doing this, but they're doing it right now where every game that signs up for Steam Next Fest is coming out fairly soon and has a demo.

And on your Steam page, like in your Steam app on your PC, you can just go to Next Fest, just scroll through. And if you see a game that looks cool, you just hit download demo. and it doesn't even take you to a new window, it just starts downloading the demo. So I just went through and downloaded a ton of demos. I actually have a lot that I haven't played. There are so many different games.

I mean, there's a million cool-looking, mostly indie games coming out. And Tactical Breach Wizards was a game I was aware of because I'm a big fan of its creator, Tom Francis. So Tom is a former game journalist who I think a lot of, I think the two of you probably know him, or at least know of him.

He made the game Gunpoint, which was a huge hit. He was working at PC Gamer, I think, at the time, and then also working on Gunpoint. And then he released Gunpoint, and it wound up being this smash hit and let him move into game development full time. Since then he made a game called Heat Signature that I actually missed. I should go back and play it, but I just didn't play it. And now comes Tactical Breach Wizards. This game is awesome. The demo is so good.

I just recommend everybody download it and play it. It is a, well, I mean, it's a tactical game, a kind of turn-based, a game where you're breaching rooms and then having to clear them effectively. But what makes it so great is the writing in the story, which is very similar to Gunpoint. Gunpoint was the same kind of idea. Tom's a very funny writer, and he's really good at writing quips and very deadpan humor. So the way this game actually plays out, you are a tactical breach wizard. So you're like a wizard.

You have a machine gun, but it's actually kind of ends in a staff. So you look like you're kidded out in tactical military gear, but you have a wizard hat on. but the guy also has one of those cool tactical earpieces like underneath his wizard hat. So he looks like one of those gruff special forces operators except he's also a wizard. And it's a really funny mix of those two aesthetics that is funny consistently, like for every bit of it that I played.

And so you'll stack up at the door, you and your partner, and you're faces to one another on the opposite sides of the door and you're getting ready to breach because you are tactical breach wizards. So the whole game is about the moment. before the breach where you make some quips to one another. Didn't think we'd be here today. Well, actually, I did.

And you can always choose your responses very similar to gunpoint. And the responses are all very funny. And I don't know how much they affect the narrative, but it like makes for really good banter. So a lot of the game is banter. You spend a long period of time just making jokes at one another in front of the door. Then you breached the door. And then you go in and it's kind of a puzzle. Like you have to figure out how do I get over here?

should I take cover? Is this guy going to get a turn? And you have the ability to sort of look into the future and make your decisions based on what might happen. Kind of like into the breach? Yeah, a little similar, yeah. And to a lot of these kind of tactical games where you can see one turn ahead

and then rewind time and try it again. Here the character is the wizard's ability is that he can see into the future. Cool. But yeah, it's like you kind of, if you look into the future and nothing bad happens, then you just actually, you just played out the turn. It's basically just a rewind mechanic

But it's really, really well-designed It's very smart. Tom makes these very tight Very well-designed games But it's also just hilarious You're constantly knocking wizards out of windows He's very big on knocking people out of windows Which Gunpoint also was And it's just a wonderful game

Like the world building The constant sort of low-key humor of it At least it really really worked for me So I recommend people check out the demo Which is free. You can just go check it out And then the actual game is coming out in August and I'm definitely going to play it, and we'll talk about it on the show more when it's out.

But yeah, Tactical Breach Wizards. That's exciting. That's pretty soon. All right. Why One More Thing is a YouTube video called The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel by Jenny Nicholson. Do you watch this whole thing? I watched this whole fucking thing. That's why it's my one more thing because I watched the whole thing.

It's very rare for me to watch a four-hour YouTube video, but I was listening to, I was listening to, I was listening to, our friends of the Hard Fork podcast and Casey Newton over there was like, I watched this entire thing. It was gripping. I'd seen people mentioning it, but I was like, I don't really care about the Star Wars Hotel, so I'm not going to watch this. But then I start watching it. And Jenny Nicholson, who spends most of the time just talking to a camera while wearing funny hats, is very charismatic and edits this video in such a way that makes you want to keep watching it all.

It's really something. It's ostensibly. review of the kind of ill-fated Star Wars Hotel that shut down last year that was like this cost people thousands of dollars and you could larp as if you were on a

galactic space, whatever cruiser. The entire time and there were actors who would interact with you and there was a story that you would follow and she gets into all of the things that went awry and the reasons it sucked so much for her a lot of it was bad luck.

Like she happened to get seated during one evening that was supposed to be dinner theater, like dinner in a show where someone is singing, she happened to be seated in the one seat that was behind a pole so she couldn't see it the entire time. And also her app wasn't working, and she had a lot of misfortune on her trip. But it's really about something bigger. It's really about companies that are cutting costs and just looking for any opportunity to get as much money from you as possible without lowering the profit margins, just really just delivering as little value as they can. And in that, it's an interesting kind of look at capitalism as a whole,

and I just found it really fascinating and captivating to watch. It also is kind of a relic of this space cruiser experience that nobody will ever go on again because it's shut down. So it's interesting from that standpoint, too, to be like, look at this kind of moment in time where this thing existed, and what it was like for people. And yeah, it's really fascinating. She spends the whole video.

She filmed a lot while she was there, which I imagine also kind of was detrimental to experience if she was filming the whole time instead of doing. But still, it's really interesting. She breaks it down. She goes into all the prices. She goes into all the different aspects of the cruise experience from the apps to the scenery, to the characters,

to the meals, to, the theme park section where again it was in an act of misfortune it was pouring while she was like in this one era this one section of her schedule which is supposed to be like the going to the theme park and experiencing thing is there part of it and yeah it's just really really worth worth watching if you can can watch it you can very easily watch it like a few minutes at a time while doing other stuff just keeping it on in the background while you're cooking dinner or playing a video game or something because yeah it's very entertaining and uh The takeaway is that, yeah, Disney did a bad.

Yeah, I really like this. I watched the whole thing as well. I'd say to the bad luck thing that her argument that if you're paying $3,000 a person, it should not be possible for you to have a bad experience due to bad luck. I think that holds water. I don't think there should be a table that has a pillar in between it and the view of the main stage. I think that's valid. No, I think that's true.

Although the aspect of it that is a little more questionable as I was talking to someone after watching it, I was talking to someone who actually went on this thing and had a good time with it. And this person was telling me that they had also had like an error with their app the way that Jenny Nicholson describes. And they just went to the front desk. And the front desk was like, okay, we'll fix it. Yeah, she mentioned that. But like, there's no way to know to do that. And you have to kind of break your immersion too. No, no, no, no. This person was saying they tell you at the beginning that if you have an issue, you should go to the front desk. This person I talked to. Maybe they started doing that later. Because she mentions that in the video.

But the other thought I had, well, two other thoughts that I had related to this video on sort of other topics. One is that I think the video is a pretty good outing of all the influencers that sold this thing. That's the other aspect of it. I think it's, I think she's very effective at that without even naming names or going after people individually. Just that she didn't say that she was a YouTuber with a really big following. She just kind of went and brought her camera and then had a pretty bad experience. And I think it becomes clear when you go and watch clips from some of the videos that she shows where people are like really misrepresenting what it was or people didn't even go to the whole three-day event.

I think she really captures the feeling of exhaustion you get at a super booked, you know, two-night, one full-day trip, especially when you spent that much money and you feel all this pressure to get to like squeeze the marrow out of every bone to get the most out of it because you're paying so much money and how that's a lot of money for most people too. So I thought that was really effective. And the last thing is, I kind of came away feeling like it was an example of the inshittification of Disney Live resorts. Have we talked about inshittification on this show? Have we gotten in there? Yeah, well, that's what I was talking about earlier, the cutting costs, the profit margin. I mean, it's just inshittification of everything in the chase for greater profit margins above all else.

So that's true. And I think that's like a broad definition of inshittification. I'm referring to that Corey Doctor of essay about inshittification as this kind of specific process. And something that she gets at here is that some of the things that you're seeing at the Star Wars Hotel are things that would maybe previously have been included at Galaxy's Edge at the amusement park, but have been kind of pulled out so that only the people who are paying the premium of going to the hotel can see them. And that's the feeling, I think, that people are getting more and more at Disney, is that they're kind of degrading the experience

for the lowest paying user so that they can get ever more money out of people. And it's not just that they're like getting cheaper, it's that they're making the experience worse so you have to pay more so that then you can skip the lines and then you can have the cool live show at the restaurant or whatever else. And that I think really comes across in this video, that this is something Disney is doing across the board and is a really big problem, especially for people who really like Disney because they feel so taking care of her, they've always felt like, you know, Disney's going to give you good experience no matter what. Yeah, she mentions at the very beginning of the video, Spirit Airlines, which is the concept of spirit is that the base flight is very cheap,

but then they nickel and dime you on everything else. And it feels like Disney, among other companies, has gotten to this place where, like, the base price isn't cheap, but then they still nickel and dime you on everything else. And it's kind of, we've become the frogs getting slowly boiled in water with all of this stuff, the different little things, suddenly becoming fees, suddenly getting fees attached, like everything from, I don't know, having more leg,

room on airplanes to like Wi-Fi in certain places and yeah it's just everything is just kind of like sit at the better table or you know have the slightly more exciting experience at the Disney Hotel like that that is very similar yeah yeah it's a great video I co-sign

people should watch it it's awesome it's really interesting and again she is extremely captivating and she's very good at painting this picture and talking she's funny I've watched some of her other videos she's a good she's really good a very good YouTuber And also the entire time, she's got like all these plushies in her background. And she's clearly like this humongous theme park nerd talking about all of her theme park experiences.

It's very funny. All right. On that note, it is time to say goodbye. We will see everybody next week where we'll be talking about Eldon Ring. Yay. Very exciting. All right. See both of you then.

Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network,

and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at Maximumfund.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun

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