Triple Click - Skyward Sword And The Activision Blizzard Lawsuit

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason dive into Skyward Sword HD, the new Zelda remake for Nintendo Switch. Does it hold up today? How does it feel after Breath of the Wild? And what's up with those controls? Then they talk about the harrowing Activision Blizzard lawsuit that's shaken up the video game industry over the past week.One More Thing: Kirk: Death’s DoorMaddy: Activision Blizzard discrimination lawsuitJason: The Great Ace AttorneyCorrection: Kirk initially said that Death's Door was on Game Pass, which it regrettably is not. The episode has been edited.Links:Ash Parrish on Skyward Sword motion controls: https://kotaku.com/skyward-sword-hd-might-make-you-actually-like-motion-co-1847306361“Fi’s Theme,” “Crimson Loftwing” and “Ballad of the Goddess” from the Skyward Sword soundtrack, comp. Hajime Wakai, Shiho Fujii, Mahito Yokota, Takeshi HamaBlizzard’s Culture Crisis Runs Deep https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-07-23/activision-blizzard-s-games-culture-crisis-runs-deepJason’s Bloomberg newsletter: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/game-on“Hall of Doors” by David Fenn from Death’s Door: https://davidfennmusic.bandcamp.com/album/deaths-door Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

The Legend of Zelda is a series in which you must save the kingdom of Hyrule, starring as an elf named Zelda. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about the Legend of Zelda, Skyward Sword, HD, a new remake of The We Game from 2011. It's a good one, so let's discuss. I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

And I'm Maddie Myers. And hello. It's us. It's the three of us. Hello, we are back for another episode of Triple Click. And hey, if you like Triple Click, if you said, man, that last week when Triple Click wasn't here, I got really sad. It was just such a bummer. You should know that you can support the show by going to Maximumfund.org slash join and becoming a maximum fun member.

We are entirely listeners supported. So all of the money that funds this show comes from you. All of you find people who are listening. And yeah, we're very grateful. And hey, if you subscribe, you get a monthly bonus episode. including one that will hit this week, or Kirk, when is this next moment? This Monday? I'm not totally sure.

It'll either hit later this week or on Monday. We'll see. Soon in the next few days. Kirk will bing himself in. Kirk will bing in to tell us all when this will. Maybe he will or I'll just keep you all in a state of suspense. Or maybe he won't, yeah. Who knows when it'll be here.

We like to keep things exciting. And it's also about mysteries. It's exciting and mysterious. Yes. Yes, this month's Bean's talk is not about, mysteries. It's about deep questions. I guess the mysteries of our lives. The mysteries of our lives. We will be getting a little in depth and talking about some non-gaming related stuff. It should be fun. It should be a fun conversation. But today we are going to talk about gaming. There's a whole

lot to get to. I know a lot of people are probably waiting to hear us talk about the Activision Blizzard stuff, which we will get to and one more thing. So just calibrating your expectations from the top. But for now, we want to talk about something a little bit later. The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. It is time for a triple play. All three of of us have been playing. Let's start off with some kind of overall impressions, and I want to hear where all of us are at. Kirk, you want to start us off? How far have you gotten with Skyward Sword HD? And where are you at? Oh yeah, before we even start, we all got codes from Nintendo. We should disclose. Kirk, where are you at? I'm like the almost at the end of the second dungeon, like the

second official dungeon, which isn't, I got farther, I think, when I played this game in 2011, when it came out on Wii, and I'm enjoying it. I'm not loving it, like I'm not over the moon about it. It's fine, and it's not just because it's not Breath of the Wild. There's just sort of, there's some things about this game that we can talk about that just sort of don't totally add up into a big, beautiful hole for me at times, but I am enjoying it, and I'm liking that sort of just that Zelda-e feeling of walking around a place and noticing things and then figuring out how all of those things work together.

And my memory of playing this dungeons, at least these first two dungeons from 2011, not super strong. So it's been a journey of rediscovery for me for sure. Maddie, what about you? I'm in the same boat. Yeah. So I played this game in 2011 as well. I have only just beaten the first dungeon, the first boss.

I was going to try to get further. But then for some reason, I had to edit a lot of stories this past week. I can't think why that would have happened. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, so I beat the first boss. But I know I played more of it when it first came out because I have specific memories of certain dungeons I haven't reached yet. But that is combined with my false, apparently false memory of thinking I barely played this game at the time because I remember being so annoyed by the motion controls and not beating it.

But I guess I played more than I thought I did. So that was sort of an interesting thing for me to realize was that I guess I enjoyed it more. than I thought. But yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on the story of this game. There's a lot of talking in this game. I had forgotten how much people talk. And I don't just mean your little buddy, your little robot girl buddy who talks to you constantly. I mean everybody talks to you a lot, a lot, a lot for a Zelda game, especially. But what do you think about it, Jason? Yeah, well, especially after Breath of the Wild, where there's not nearly as much talking. So minimalist, yeah. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts as well.

A couple things. So first of all, I got just to the second region, so in between the two of you, basically. So none of us are super far, but we've all played a chunk of the game. A couple of thoughts. First of all, yes, this game has some interesting issues, especially this non-motion control version, and we will get to the controls in a minute because there's a lot to say about them. It is also a game that's full of fetch quest, which is another thing that I think it's been knocked for. and yes, a game full of dialogue for sure.

The dialogue is better now because you can skip through it. You can skip cutscenes. You can mash the button. There's a lot of quality of life improvements in this version versus the Wii version that I think are very much appreciated. At least I very much appreciated. But my immediate takeaway from playing Skyward's sword was just like how much it feels like a prototype to Breath of the Wild and how much Breath of Wild could not exist

without some of the ideas in this game. For starters, you're like constantly diving off things and using a paraglider, which is, I believe there's a paraglider in Wind Waker, but this is the one that looks like the one in Breath of the Wild. And it's not quite as cool as the Breath of the Wild one because you can only use it going down. And so you can't actually glide. Let's say it's nowhere near as cool as the one in the Red of the Wild. You're not actually gliding in there. Is it a paraglider or is it like a parachute that is only for falling straight down? And that's it's like, but it looks the same as the one you get in Breath of the Wild. But also like,

I don't think, I could be wrong. Maybe there was some level, some sort of stamina and Twilight Princess, but you weren't, like, climbing and jumping and maneuvering until Skyward Sword. Like, Skyward Surter was really the first game that introduced a lot of these mobility mechanics that they took to another level with Breath of the Wild. Like, in this game, you can pretty much climb on anything. You can only just climb for a few seconds before you get tired and fall off. In Breath of the Wild, obviously, you can go and climb on everything you see for as long as you want

until you run out of stamina. But you can see a lot of like the base mechanics for like what would become Breath of the Wild, which I think is really interesting because like this game, as we mentioned a few weeks ago, this game was the game that really made them rethink the Zelda tradition because so many people were like, hey, this game feels a little too formulaic and wrote. One more thing. I said, I believe when we did our, what's the deal with Zelda episode a few weeks ago, I said that the first dungeon in this game gave you the boomerang, which I had forgotten is not the case.

They actually give you this like Beatles. thing that functions like a boomerang, but it's actually this autopilot beetle thing. And it's way worse than a boomerang because it takes forever to use it anywhere. And it's like super clunky and like bangs into things and then like waste your time. Yeah, I'm not good at that thing at all. It's not good. I feel like we, we had a listener who said they really liked the beetle. And I was like, oh, cool, maybe I'll really like the beetle. And then I got it. And I was like, I am not viving with this beetle at all. Because you really got to navigate that guy. around to like get rupees and get certain gems in order to unlock doors and stuff.

You got to get pretty good at using the beetle. And I just felt like it was pure luck every time I managed to do anything with that thing. Yeah, I'm generally a fan of, you know, drones and little mini characters that your character has that you then get control of like in watchdogs or whatever. This is basically watchdogs. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's the same idea, right? You know, a little thing that you can drive around and go into places that you can't normally reach. I like that. that allows for a lot of cool level design. Some of it is just the controls. Like you have to steer it with the left thumb stick,

which just isn't how you usually steer in game. So it's just a funny stick. It's usually I think of it as the camera stick. So am I getting that right? No, it's usually the foot stick. The left thumb stick is usually your feet and not the camera. And so then suddenly you're steering with it. So it feels just a little unnatural like I'm having to sort of reverse my brain.

And that's just the controls in this game in general, even leaving aside the motion control substitution are a little bit weird. And then I find that it works okay the motion control thumbstick swap, but I don't love it. So just to explain to people what they've done, this game, Skyward Sword, its big defining thing was that it used the Wii Motion Plus, which I bought specifically to use with this game when I played. I think I got the gold one with like the little symbol on there. In a package together. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's what I did. So this was like a little dongle that you attached to your Wii moat that then gave it a much stronger, you know, a much more precise mapping to your motion. Supposed. It was more precise, I'd say. And so, you know, they really made that the game's defining gimmicks. So a lot of the game is designed around really specific swords, swipes, enemies block a certain direction. You have to swing left and right. Sometimes you have to like cut at certain angles. There are puzzles built around this thing. And then there are also motion controls in other parts of the game as well. And they've compensated for that because the switch doesn't necessarily have motion control. So if you want to play in handheld, you do it all with the right thumbstick. So you just are moving like a 360-degree range of motion with the thumbstick. It works.

I mean, the game's playable, but it's a little weird. It's playable. I don't mind it exactly, but it also just, I guess, I don't love Zelda combat. There's never really been a Zelda game where I think the combat is awesome and that's why I'm playing the game. So in that respect, it's not a big deal that not love the combat in this one either, but I don't love it. Yeah, yeah.

It's more about the puzzles and exploring and like sometimes the story or at least the dregs of story, the mystery of it all. The music, the vibes. But it's kind of fun about this one. At least when I originally played it, I thought the combat was fun

because it felt like puzzles every time you were fighting a movie and they were like the first boss of the first dungeon, for example. Let's talk about that guy. You have to get his attention in one place and then swing from the other way, which I thought was cool, even though it was annoying me this time.

It's cool in theory. It's the worst. But it is, it's a cool concept. So in theory, this boss, who's like the Joker, basically, like, he's a sexy Joker. And he licks his lips because Link is such a cutie. So anyway, this queer-coded villain, he can predict all of your sword motions. And because it's motion controlled, you're supposed to, in real life, be, like, fainting to the left and then hit him from the right, which I'm sure is way more fun.

with like actually fainting to left or right. But with your controller, you're just like moving. It's worth noting you can use motion controls in this game. We're just all playing in Hamlet mode, I think. I think, Kirk, didn't you try motion controls for a second to see if it was any better? And to shout out Ash Parrish from Kotaku, this was actually her take on the motion controls was, I thought she had the best take, which was that the game is mostly cool with the thumbstick, but then for boss fights and really involved fights, she liked using the motion controls

because it gives you that precision, which does seem like a good way. to go, though I largely just used the thumbsticks. So I beat the boss with a thumbstick. It was kind of a pain, though. Yeah, I think I should have switched to motion controls for this, because fainting left or right or up or down with the thumbstick just feels really dumb and weird. Like I would just, like, move my thumb to the left and, like, wait for him to kind of seem

like he was moving that way. And then I'd, like, quickly go right and do a slash that way. And sometimes the game would register that properly, but then other times it wouldn't. And it was never entirely clear to me what I was doing wrong when it wasn't registering the right motions. Although most of the time, other than that boss fight, I feel like I was getting it right. You know, like I understood what I was doing in terms of the correct motions each time. To drill down a little bit on why I think that boss fight is a little bit frustrating. It's that when you miss, he grabs the tip of your sword and then you lose control.

Like, I think that that's the thing that makes the fight feel bad is that you're just like, oh, damn it. Like you missed and then you just have to kind of rest control away from him. And it just sort of... It's not fun to be punished. Yeah, it feels like it's a bummer. It doesn't feel good. Yeah. I do say, yeah, while I'm playing, I really miss being able to just press a button and swing your sword. Yep.

It just feels like something's missing without that. And yeah, I mean, I think that, like, there was nothing else they could do because the game is so fundamentally built around motion controls that, like, they can not, unless they straight up remade the entire game, they could not do anything else. But the thing that is, like, really crazy about the controls is the camera control. Yeah, yeah. Because there is now a controllable camera in the game, which is great. because Skyward sort needs a control of a camera so you can actually see stuff.

But to use it, if you're playing... Can you ever actually see stuff? If you're playing in Helmeld mode, you have to hold the left bumper and then move the right stick because the right stick is assigned to your sword controls. So you have to hold the left bumper every time you want to look around, which is so annoying and makes it essentially so you can't really use the camera while doing a lot else, like while moving or like really interacting with enemies or anything like that. Or like running around a boss arena.

Yeah. When you use it, you can see everything. Like, it moves around, you move around the camera and you move around Link's head. But it's just that, like, because of the control setup, you can't use it practically. Yeah. It's nice that if you do play with motion controls, you do now have a free camera, which is pretty cool. So that is another argument in the point, you know, in the favor of motion controls. For those of you who are playing on a TV and not playing in a house with a toddler where you really can't play games on TV.

Or, like, have balanced your switch. I was actually on vacation last week, and I played a little bit with my switch to sort of balance. It's on a little table sort of dancing around with the joycon. Oh. Interesting. It works. It's a little bit of a small screen for it. But yeah, that works. And I'm actually using, I got those big monster joycon things that Hori makes with the huge thumbsticks and the big buttons.

I actually got this back for Monster Hunter because it's just a way better controller. And those things have a programmable under button, which I programmed on the left side to match up with the shoulder. And that is pretty cool because you can kind of just press it almost all the time. really easy to press. So it's almost like with that controller, it wasn't as big of a deal for me, but I acknowledge that I was using a controller that most people don't have. Yeah, I found it irritating. Kirk, if we had a dollar every time you said under button, we could turn the entire show. You would have like, I mean, like, $25 maybe. Yeah, but that's not nothing. You get a pizza. That's true. That's true. We run things tight here. There are some other like interesting

control problems. Like, I feel like rolling should be way easier because I think rolling is a major part of the Zelda game. And it's so hard. Like what kind of Zelda game is this for? It's terrible to roll. So you have to press the left stick forward in order to run forward and then press down on it to roll. So you have to really time it right.

And I feel like I've never gotten the hang of it properly where you're like sort of pressing forward and then rolling your literal thumb onto the stick to press it down so that link can roll. And it's the worst. However, counterpoint, it rules to stab with your sword by clicking down on the left stick. Or I guess the right stick, whichever stick it is that you click down. That feels awesome. That was the one choice that I was like, this makes sense.

Clicking this to stab someone, great, good, keep it. Everything else, I don't understand. I don't understand why they did that. Yeah, the shield counter is similarly good. Yeah, the shield is. You have to be careful while you're swinging because if you swing and you accidentally do a spin slash, you'll run out of stamina entirely and you'll just be like running around staggered. if you're like swinging around.

I remember this is a little bit of a problem in the original too, and I was wagling the Wii remote around. It would be like, oh, no, I can't do a spin slash or else run out of stamina. Yeah, yeah. Link can't do all of his best stuff. It's ridiculous. But hey, I want to talk about some good stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to talk about some good stuff because there's a lot of cool stuff in this game. I think the island system is really cool in the sky, even though it can be a little annoying to have to fly around everywhere. Basically, you unlock all these different islands as you play and as you collect like these

these boxes on the ground and you activate them, you unlock treasure chests and stuff like that. I found some cool secrets. Like I went to sleep in Beatles shop. Beetle is the flying shopkeeper that hangs out above sky loft above the main city. And I fell asleep in a shop and like woke up on his island where he lives and like he's suddenly talking in a totally different voice and like there's secrets there. And there's some cool stuff in this game. A lot of side quests. A lot of like, there's a system called gratitude crystals where basically there's a monster living under Skyloft and you have to go collect gratitude crystals for him

in the form of side quests and it gives you stuff as a result of that. A lot of them are fetch quests, some of them are annoying, but some of them are cool. Yeah, I liked just the process of rediscovering the monster under Skyloft the way that someone tells you at a bar that they heard about that they basically tell you what to do

but it's a nice feeling the way these games tend to be designed where you just kind of talk to people, they tell you what to do and you go do it. And it's funny, when we were playing through Link to the past, I wanted to make a lot of progress and I was using more guide-type stuff for that game. And it really is cool to play this game without looking stuff up

because the game just tells you things. And for this show, I think I've been doing more, I mean, especially with Final Fantasy 6, but with other games, just a little more guide reliance in my play. And it was nice for this one to put that down and just trust the game because then it is really concerned. with delighting you with these little secrets. And there's a lot of them.

I mean, I didn't know that about Beatles, about Beatles shop, but even just Beatles shop, the fact that it's floating and you have to kind of figure out how to get him, you'd like ring the bell with your slingshot and then he drops the rope. Or I mean, there's a villager who tells you to do that if you happen to talk to them. So like, I talk to somebody who was like,

oh, hey, here's how you get at that guy's attention. Seems like a real pain in the butt to me. And I was like, it sure does, kid. And then later I got a slingshot. And I was like, aha, that small child told me what I should do with this, which is exactly how a Zelda game should be, honestly. Yeah. Yes. Well, dialogue in Zelda games is always full full of that fun sort of flavor of like, wow, this thing sure is annoying. I hope nobody does this thing. Yeah, but I mean, I kind of like the weird sense of humor

that the game has. I mean, I like that in all the Zelda games. I do think that this game is just a bit overwritten. Like when I say there's too much dialogue, I mean, people will take like five text boxes to say something they could say in one. Like, it needs an editor. Like, the number of times that like Zelda's dad tells you to do the same thing is just absurd. Like I get it. I'm the hero of time, man. Like I don't know how much longer you need to go on. Yeah, you should know that by now.

I know. But I do like the tone of the story, if that makes sense. I like that Zelda sort of has her own thing she's doing, which is very ocarina flavored, which is like the versions of the depictions of Zelda that I can stand or the ones where she's sort of given her own. thing she has to do that is considered just as important as you. You just don't get to see it happen. And she's like going on her own quest and probably solving her own arcane puzzles and pushing blocks around. And it's just not a part of your deal. But you have to solve your own stuff. And it'll all add up into something cool at the end. And that's kind of mysterious and fun.

And it's the part of Zelda that I tend to really enjoy lore wise anyway. Yeah. Maddie, it's also, this is also a prototype to Breath of the Wild in that they looked at Fee and they said, hey, we should make weapons breakable. Really? Is that true or are you? No. That's just a pretty good joke, though. That was solid.

That was a good joke. I like Zelda's character design. I like Fee's musical theme. There's some really nice music in this. I think this game just has a nice sounding soundtrack. There's that orchestra, that great trombone flute duet that's like the love song that plays kind of early. Just love to hear a trombone.

I used to listen to that on loop all the time back when it came out. It's great. It's so nice when the trombone comes in. I don't know who played trombone on it, but I always love to hear solos like that. I even like the writing of the sort of childlike sexual tension between Zelda and Link. Yeah, yeah. I found that really endearing because I feel like these games are really hit or miss with the Zelda and Link romance. Like this is one of the ones that I think is doing a good job, where you do kind of believe that they have feelings for each other, but they're young and awkward and haven't fully.

confessed it yet, but you can feel that tension between them in a way that's really cute, and like, Gruse being annoying about it is fun. I mean, I liked the vibe of all of that stuff. Grus, the teenager from a teen comedy. I know. I know he's gonna, like, turn out to be fine. He's just Biff. He's Biff Tannen, right?

But yeah, he is just Biff. Yeah, I like the love story as well. And that was something that Breath of the Wild kind of notably didn't get right. I thought anyways, was that there was, in the end, this romantic subplot between Link and Zelda and yet it wasn't really ever hinted at in the actual cutscenes and it was just something that didn't feel necessary to me in that game where in this game I ship it like they're really cute they're super cute Zelda made me my little parachute

and she was like so excited to give it to me and it smelled nice Maddie that's right everyone talks about that Kirk on the music did you do you know like the big secret of this the main theme of this game isn't it like an inverted version of something of like the original lockering a theme or something like that? It's an inverted version of never going to give you up by

Rick Ast. That's right. You play it backwards. It's really weird. Remember 2011? Anyway, keep going. I didn't like notice that or anything, but I do remember when someone pointed it out thinking that that was really cool. Imagine if Breath of the World 2's music backwards is never going to give you up. Just a series of weird memes. Yeah, why isn't Nintendo doing that? I don't even know why I said that. It's fine. It's been a long week. Anyway, what else is there to say on this video? Sorry, it's Zelda's Lullaby backwards. That's Sargasor.

Bing! Kirk here and come on, you knew I had to bing my way in here just to kind of demonstrate this because it is very cool. The main theme, the Ballad of the Goddess from Skyward Sword, sounds like this. And if you reverse that and just play those same notes with slightly different rhythms, you get Zelda's Lullaby, the original Zelda's Lullaby. That really is very clever, especially because both melodies really work.

Okay, back to the show. I will say one thing, I want to talk a little, I want to get positive about this game, because I'm actually enjoying playing at this time, and I'm probably going to play through the whole thing over the course of the year, like as I have time. For sure. I really like, especially after Breath of the Wild, which obviously we all think is kind of as a transcendent game, I really enjoyed having traditional dungeons again and even having like linear set pieces again, like getting down to Faren Woods, which is the first level

in the game, and seeing this kind of this big forest that seems vast, but isn't really and you're just kind of going in one path but also you can can kind of branch out a little bit but it's really it's really guiding you the whole way and then it takes you to the temple and the temple's full of puzzles and interesting interesting mechanics and stuff like that I just really enjoyed it and I just always have enjoyed traditional Zelda and it's good to like get back to a traditional Zelda game that I don't really remember having not played it in 10 years and so it's cool it feels it feels delightful and surprising to play through yeah it's a good contrast with breath of the wild I mean, it exists alongside that game in a way that really works.

It's kind of the opposite in, you know, so many ways. The feeling of playing it is anything but the feeling of, you know, I'm on this mountain and I can go anywhere. What do I want to do? It's very much like, well, I know what I need to do next, which can be frustrating. There have been times where I'm using the dousing rod in the second sort of lava area, trying to find, you know, pieces of that key,

where it's just a little like I keep sliding down this stupid hill and having to go back to the bottom and then back around to the top. And I'm like, this is one thing I have to do and there's kind of nothing else for me to do, though that's not actually the case. Like, I'm kind of doing that to myself. I could go back up to the sky if I wanted to take a break and explore around and find side stuff. Yeah, you could explore, do some sides stuff. Yeah, although it's not unlocked all at once, which is kind of the difference between

this and Breath of Law. For sure. And it's sort of minimal compared, I mean, of course it's minimal compared to Breath of Wild because almost any game would be. It's not an open world game. It just has almost the sensation of that, but it's much more linear. I am never the person who will complain that a game is too linear. I often get overwhelmed at Open World Games, and I'm like, I don't know where I'm supposed to go.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I guess I'll just have Link cook some more because I'm freaking out right now, and I don't know what he's supposed to be doing. I'll just make some more mushroom stir fries. I don't know. That looks cute. That animation's great. But anyway, in this game, you always know what you're supposed to do next to a fault, perhaps. Like, you have to do everything in the exact order.

Like, yes, you can fly around and you can find some treasure chest in the sky. but there are only so many and then it's over and you do each dungeon in a certain order as far as I know. I don't think you can mix that up at any point in the game. Like you collect each piece of rock and plug it into the mosaic in a certain order and link finds each door. Like that's that's fine. But it is very much holding your hand in a way that is the total opposite of Breath of the Wild. And is at the time something that people were like, is this what Zelda's going to be like? going to be dragging me from A to B every time? And we didn't know. We didn't know. But that has

its pros. I mean, one of the things that is good about the designers holding your hand the whole time is that it can be much more rewarding as you go. Like the rewards can be much better. For example, as you're doing side quests in Breath of the Wild, I mean, the SideQuests are going to lead to like breakable armor and weapons or like spirit orbs to upgrade your health and like, I mean, not that much cool stuff. There's not that much cool stuff you can get in Breath of the Wild as opposed to a game like this where because of the way it's designed, there's a lot of like wallet upgrades and seed upgrades and harp pieces and all the other traditional Zelda stuff you can get. Plus, you're getting increasingly more powerful as the game goes with new items and dungeon, the stuff you get in dungeons and stuff you get in new bottles and like all this other stuff that you're getting over time, which makes you feel gradually and gradually more powerful and makes you feel like you're unlocking more of the world as you go in a way that Breath of Wild is the opposite. it.

Right. Yeah. I just think that's a cool. Another, it's like a different, I wouldn't say one way is better than the other. One design approaches better than the other, but it's good. It's like got its pros also. Mm-hmm. For sure.

Was this, were people mad about the breakable shields and stuff in this game at the time? I guess they didn't know that breakable weapons going to become the bane of their existence later. They didn't know how bad it was going to get. Yeah. And it's also, it's not that significant because you can get, like, after the first level, you can get a steel shield and you can reinforce. them and it's like it doesn't even it doesn't really become a major thing from what I remember but again this is 10 years ago yeah I don't remember people even talking about it but it was funny that I broke my

shield by accent because I didn't realize the progress bar was there telling me that the shield was going to break I just didn't put that together for whatever reason and then when I went back to the repair shop I was like okay I'll just fix my shield but if you completely break your shield they can't fix it anymore they're like you don't even have a shield it's garbage now you have nothing Well, then you can get, you get a new one at the story. You have to buy a new one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, look, it was terrible.

I'm sorry, Maddie. My condolences. So, Jason, as you were the person that's one among us who has finished the entire game back on the Wii, can I ask you, like, just kind of speaking broadly, I know the story of this game matters and it sort of ties in with Breath of the Wild game. Well, I kind of am just sort of curious if you could describe what that means. Like, how does this relate to what we might get in Breath of the Wild too? Why does this feel relevant now? I don't remember. And I don't want to look it up because they don't want to like spoil it in case I replay.

That's so funny. But I do, the things that I do remember are kind of vague. Like it's, the game is like, this is the first ever Zelda game according to the timeline. That's what I'm wondering about. It sets up the story of the hero of time and generations to come and blah, blah, blah.

Got it. This was like around the time when, when Nintendo was finally embracing the idea of one big Zelda timeline after many years of like fans trying to piece it together themselves. So they were like, okay, this is the first ever Zelda game. Wind Waker also has some really interesting this kind of like ancient history Zelda stuff. That's the one I always think of when I think about the ruins. And yeah, so Skyrood's sort. I mean, there's some really cool stuff later in this game with like ancient civilizations and like beams and like futuristic technology stuff. It's worth, the

It should definitely play more and talk about it some more down the road. It is cool that Fee is like an AI, basically. It's very like Netflix's Shira reboot where the sort of medieval characters are finding like a higher form of technology than they have access to. And like that's what they're using in their medieval world. It reminded me of that in a cool way. I totally forgotten that Fee was like an AI. I just remembered her as a regular fairy, but she's not exactly.

She's technology. So that's kind of neat. It's a cool concept in general that these people live in the sky and don't know that the ground exists. I know. I liked that too. Yeah. I liked that backstory for them. And I'd totally forgotten about the bird fight.

Like it's very like avatar, like James Cameron's avatar. I was thinking of you, Kirk, when I was playing that part. I was like, I bet Kirk likes connecting with this cool bird. I bet he's into this. My life partner, this bird that I'm bonded to forever. Yeah. I mean, that's what happens. Link has a life partner.

is bird. Yeah, and I like how Fee's tone, this very rational, computerized tone that's always judging probabilities of things, just is a nice contrast to the more just typically, you know, kind of fantasy language. Medieval fantasy. Yeah, like the way that everyone else talks. Suddenly you just have this robot coming in, very deadpan. And it does, it works for me, especially because I think they toned down how much Fee interrupts you. So it just is kind of a, like, she still interrupts, but less of a, less of an interrupting character. She's still talking. She's still talking. a lot. Let's be honest. I'm like, oh, my God, just I know what I'm supposed to do. There's a reason Kirk doesn't need to use a guide. It's because the game itself actually tells you every single

thing you need to do. This, I mean, it was the Wii era. You got to remember, like, Nintendo is, their designers are thinking, oh my God, we've sold like 100 million we's, mostly to like really casual people who haven't played a lot of video games, like elder, like old age homes, grandmas and old age homes and stuff, we need a game that's accessible to all of those people. Unfortunately for them, I don't think many of those people actually bought Skyward's sold because it sold like, Skyward Sword, because it sold like three million copies or something like that. But that's what they were going for. Very accessible, very easy, very, well, not very easy, but very easy to know what's going on.

You're never going to get stuck because you can always pull out fee and have her tell you what to do next. All right, why don't we take a break and we will be back with one more thing. yourself for the greatest pro wrestling podcast spectacular known as Tights and Fights. A backdropping audio showcase that helps you understand the world of pro wrestling with a lot of love and no toxic masculinity. Featuring host, Danielle Radford. Time to kick butt and chew gum.

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on maximum fun.org. Butts, butt, butts, butts, butts, butts. Butts, butt's, butt, butt, butt, butt, butt. Buds, butt, butt, butt, butt, butt, and we are back. Kirk, Maddie. Maddie, we're going to start off with you because there's a pretty big topic that we pretty much

have to hit. Take us away. Okay. So I'm going to talk about the discrimination lawsuit that was filed against Activision Blizzard this past week on July 20th is when it was filed actually. And I'll just assume the listener isn't following video game news as closely as we all do. And I'll just, I'll summarize all of it.

So why not? We should give a bit of a warning for people in case? Content warning. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Well, I would definitely give you a content warning if you care to read the full details of the suit, which I did do. But basically, a lot of people, mostly women, have sort of gathered together to file this discrimination lawsuit for sex-based discrimination that they experienced while they were working at Blizzard Entertainment, which is owned by Activision now. And the details of the suit, like, I would say the, the. The allegations range from, I don't want to call any of this minor because it's like, you know, it's terrible to experience these microaggressions even.

I certainly experienced some of them. But the sort of more lesser end of the scale, which is just people sort of making jokes around you, sexist jokes around you, to sort of like the mid range of like men questioning whether women should get promoted openly by saying like, oh, they'll probably get pregnant. and so we aren't going to bother to promote women here or, you know, men making rape jokes on the job or getting drunk and and leering at women on the job. And then I would say like the most extreme thing that I saw in this lawsuit was, I mean, this is just really like sad stuff about suicide. So if people don't want to listen to the rest of this, that's fair. But there's this woman who allegedly, she was allegedly sleeping with her supervisor. and then also on a work trip where I believe she was sharing a hotel with him, killed herself, and also allegedly men at the company were passing around naked photos of her as well.

So, like, again, this is a lawsuit. None of these things have been confirmed. Some of my reporters are looking into a lot of this. I've heard a lot of stuff, and I will not be able to confirm any of it yet, but we're certainly looking into a lot of it. And Jason, I know you are too. I at least personally feel confident that a lot of bad shit happened at this company. And I guess I just wanted to say, like, reading this lawsuit, I mean, sometimes you do things

for work where you're just like, well, I just have to read this really depressing lawsuit. And it just puts you into a funk for, like, days. And that definitely happened to me where I just was reading this. And I was like, wow, I feel very sad not only for these women, but also just for what we can do as reporters. I mean, it's not to say I don't think we can affect change, but it is really overwhelming how bad the industry is sometimes and like how sexist and bigoted it is. I mean, there is this woman described in the report, a black woman who is experiencing like sort of misogynist and racist microaggressions as well. And like that's such a pervasive issue. And it's very overwhelming.

But I am glad that these women are coming forward now. That part of it is really neat. I had always heard but had never been able to fully confirm, like, as a reporter over the years that Blizzard was notoriously sexist. And I'd always hoped that somebody would be able to write something about this. So that part of it is sort of good is just like, oh, finally, this is coming out. But it's also just really, really sad to hear about it. And has me thinking about, like, you know, how long I've been doing this and how different it was when I started writing about games in the 2010s. And, like, some of the stuff in the lawsuit is from 10 years ago, but some of it is like still going on today.

I don't know. So I mean, Jason, I know you've been working on this too. Do you have any sort of thoughts about it? I know you've been reporting a lot and having some sad phone calls. I have so many thoughts. Yeah,

I've been on the phone nonstop with people who worked or work or still work at Blizzard over the past few days. And yeah, I mean, their stories are really hard to hear. And I can't imagine how hard they were to actually go through. it's it's just a lot of the same sort of things just like women just being passed up for promotions and to like like not given the same salary as their male co-workers and that's just like on the

lighter end of the spectrum like the then there's the really dark stuff which is like like like people just getting straight up sexually harassed at work like groped at work and and just like really heinous stuff that is like no company ever should tolerate and it's particularly agreeious at a company like Blizzard because it this is a company that has really like been on the vanguard of a lot of like um ostensible social change like it has been this is a company that is like proudly proclaims every voice matters and is like all about um inclusivity and like diversity and stuff like that on the face of it but clearly that was all kind of a show and there was like this rot at the heart of its culture um and it's also like a company that has been beloved by so many people

for the games that it's made and for the stuff that it's done over the years. And I think that in part is one of the reasons that this has all happened because a lot of people who were like nerdy and geeky became these kind of like rock stars of the video game industry. And that's kind of the fundamental story here, right? Like they became, they believe themselves to be just these immune to all repercussions and they thought they could get away with all of this stuff. Yeah.

And they were. Yeah, it was enabled by this bro culture. And there's a lot to unpack. I'm going to sit on like I'm not going to share a lot of stuff until I've reported it out and actually put it in a story and made sure that it's all confirmed, et cetera, et cetera. But overall, it's just like so sad and devastating to hear about and to try to imagine like how many women have been just chewed up by this company over the years and are still getting chewed up today. So sad. It's really, really sad. Yeah. I was super bummed out by the response also. There have been a lot of responses, like from people who no longer work at Blizzard and ex-warcraft developers and people saying various, you know, personal statements about how they failed people or they were wrong. And then there's the official response from Activision Blizzard, which really just, holy shit. I mean, there was this, that's one line in there about how these are unaccountable bureaucrats coming after us. It just had this very, like, political, like, you know, the kind of thing you would have seen coming out of the White House a couple years ago.

vibe to it that just really made me think like, well, shit. You know, I mean, if like you were saying, Maddie, I covered the video game industry for a long time. And it seemed like there was always this narrative that things were getting better. And I'm sure that they have in some ways, but also, Jesus, you know, this stuff is still coming out. And that's still the response. And it just makes me think, like, what's going to change? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

I mean, there was also this video going around this week of this woman who asked, a question of some World of Warcraft developers at a con in 2010. And a lot of people were like, wow, like, look at this, how she's being belittled by these guys. And they're sort of laughing off her question about like the sexual objectification of women. And wow. And I'm just like, well, first of all, that is what 2010 was like. That was just regular at the time. And like some of that is like times have changed.

And like now you can't get away with laughing off a question like that at a convention anymore. But I feel like instead of that, what times have changed to become is it's now sort of publicly uncool to laugh off sexism. But like these are still predominantly men in power at these institutions. And that hasn't actually changed. And the culture internally hasn't really changed. And like, marginalized people still aren't necessarily succeeding at these companies. It's just that like they know it's not cool to say those things.

Yeah. It's worth noting. I mean, we're going to be talking about this stuff a lot more. I'm sure because there will be more to develop that develops in the weeks to come. But it's worth noting that like, I mean, the company has certainly made some changes. I don't want to say, like there's certainly, some of the anecdotes I've heard are definitely recent. But also a lot of like the old school Blizzard people are gone. And some of those people are gone because of the changes that Activision has been making.

And this kind of like a parallel story to all of the sexist stuff is that Activision has been exerting this corporate influence on Blizzard that I've been talking about for while now, like cutting costs and pushing a lot of people and influencing the games that are made. Obviously, not quite on the same level as like people getting discriminating against and harassed and abused. But that is like why a lot of the old school blizzard people have left, but maybe the silver lining to old school lizard people leaving is that that culture is leaving with them. That said, from the accounts that I've heard, there are definitely still issues there and there's definitely still change that needs to be made. And worst of all, we've seen the Activision

corporate response, which is to pretend that nothing is wrong. Some of the stuff that, some of the statements that have come out are worth looking at, especially going from Fran Townsend, which I think infuriated the entirety of Activision blizzards, a female population. Yeah. Although it is kind of interesting to see other people who work at the company speaking out, like without going through PR and just posting their own Twitter threads being like, I don't agree with the corporate response. And I just want to say, I think this is fucked up. There have been a lot of Twitter threads along those lines, which is something, I guess. But it's such a huge company.

And I mean, Activision is such a huge company that it's hard to really imagine how you would even go about changing it. And I know that's a kind of downer statement, but it just, I don't know. It's hard not to feel that way. Unionization is the answer here. Well, yeah, but unionizing a company that's that big. is very hard. And I just think it's more possible with smaller companies. And so I am hopeful that we'll see stuff like that happening this year. But I don't expect Blizzard to be where it starts or

riot for that matter. I think it's just too thorny at those companies. Could be. But it can also be like that something like this is the catalyst. True. Yeah. Because it's already something that people are coming together over, which means that it's a good opportunity for people to have conversations outside of work slack or whatever they use. And while they're having those conversations, hey, maybe we should be organizing. Yeah, you never know. You never know. So like you, Maddie, I had also been hearing various rumors over the past three years and even first-hand accounts from a couple of people. But I'll on background slash off the record, never enough to like, actually, never, never enough material that I could turn into a story about Blizzard's culture.

And the better approach as a reporter is to tackle systemic issues. And I just, could never get enough. And sometimes it takes an incident like this to make women there, women who either work or work there and a couple of men to feel comfortable enough to speak out because they realize that they're not in it alone. And like oftentimes it can be such a lonely experience like being and this is me not speaking from personal experience, but speaking, but speaking because I've heard this from a lot of people. But it can be so lonely like being the victim of some of this stuff or being a survivor of some of this stuff and just seeing all these other women, having similar experiences can make you feel like, oh, man, yeah,

wow, it's not just me. I can speak out. Yeah, especially since it's such a big company. And in a lot of cases, these are people who were the only woman on their team. So they have no reason to see that it is a systemic issue. They have no way of knowing that. They get pushed out. And then it happens to somebody else who they never meet and they never know.

And like that's part of why stuff like this is so useful is because it's a way for them to meet each other across the years almost and bond. over something. Yep. Also worth noting that something that I heard over the past two years a couple times is that is just the vague like, oh, I can't talk about this because there's litigation going on. So now that it's hit, I think, again, this frees up more people to speak out. So it's all coming to light. It's going to be exposed. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. So as horrible as it is to hear that this was even happening in the first place, nobody can move past it without it being exposed. Yep. Okay. Anyway, video games.

I don't know. Yeah, let's talk about some games. Let's move on to lighter subjects. Kirk, you want to go first? Sure. I'm playing a game that I'm really excited to talk about called Death's Door that I gather is kind of quite the buzzy indie. It is. It is. It's the indie of the moment. It is. It's a really good game. I got it. So our old boss, Stephen Totilla, recommended this to me like a week ago. Then Jason, I saw it in your new Bloomberg newsletter, which I recommend listeners subscribe to. Shout out. You mentioned that as your game, which also great newsletter, man. Maybe we can put a link for that in show notes. People can subscribe.

If you want a little bit more Jason writing each. Yeah, Jason in your inbox every week. Every week, yeah. So Death Store is made by a two-man team. So it has that in common with another indie that some of us love a holonite. It's made by Acid Nerve, which are two guys, Mark Foster and David Fenn, who did everything. David Fenn composed the music to this thing and also like design the game. The music is great.

That was the first thing that really got me is that, you know, every so often you play a game and the music just really has a lot of ideas, a lot of cool, you know, melodic and textural ideas. And it does, the music is really cool. So it's not just music. Everything about this game is great. This is a kind of Zelda style. I was like, oh, shocker, the first thing that got Kirk was the music. The game sucks, but the music is great. Maddie was taking a sip of water, as I said that. I know. It was like, do spit take at that, like a literal one. I've played a lot of indie games that sort of have this sort of vibe. You're playing an animal. It's kind of Zelda inspired.

Like that alone, the packaging isn't always enough, but it's in all those particulars, which are all excellent that make this game so good. And the music is one of them where a lot of times music will be fine in these kinds of games, but this just immediately really did stick out to me. And then I got in my first fight as this bird that I'm playing as, and the fight was really cool, too. Yeah, you're a crow, right? Yeah, so you're playing as a crow grim reaper.

You work for this kind of afterlife bureaucracy, so it's got that kind of bureaucratic vibe. Got a little bit of a studio jibli vibe as well with the art design and the way that some things look. It's got a bit of a hollow night vibe with just the music and some of the tone. It's got a soul's vibe. There's even kind of an onion night-like character in the first area that you get to talk to. And it mixes a lot of these things, but it feels like its own thing in a remarkable way. This is a kind of isometric view, action, puzzle, you know, adventure game, basically. In the kind of Zelda mold, you're playing as this crow going around trying to determine what's going on with this kind of afterlife world.

The world works kind of like Monsters Ink, where there are doorways that get moved and the doorways lead you to a new realm, and then doors can get closed and destroyed and cut off, which then causes sort of these rifts in the afterlife. Very Monstersink-ish. So it's got a lot of these cool ideas going just narratively. And then the game itself is you're exploring these really cool areas. There is notably no mini map or map. Another reason I like the game. You have to learn your way around.

And then you're just getting in fights. And it's pretty tough. But it's not quite hollow night difficult or souls difficult. You don't lose progress when you die. And I just have found the difficulty to be actually really remarkable because it's hard, but it's never too hard. Like it's never punishing I'm doing pretty well. Maybe I've just gotten better at games like this,

but I find it approachable. No, I've heard that from other people that, like, attacks are signposted really well. Yeah. And it's easy to tell what you're supposed to do, which is usually what's difficult about a Dark Souls is having to watch it so many times that you finally recognize an attack pattern.

But does store supposedly, it's just easier to see what you're looking out for. Yeah. And it's a little forgiving, just the invincibility frames and the sort of general flow of combat. It's forgiving. But you can die, and then you can die, and it's like not a huge deal.

You can get back to where you were. You don't have that stress of losing all your progress. And it's cool, man. I mean, the fights are just great. I recently did this thing where, like, it was an avarice fight, which I don't know if that's actually what this is called, but anyone who's played the game will know what this is, and I won't spoil it for those who haven't.

But it was this thing that really knocked me out, a surprising challenge that just dropped right on me, kind of that starts with a big joke. And I was laughing and saying out loud in the room. I was like, hell yes, like this rule is. talking to myself playing the game, which I don't do often, and is really something I only do for games that I'm really feeling. And this game has that. It's got aesthetics for days. I mean, it's just aesthetically wonderful. It's a really, really cool game. So it's called Death Store. It's on PC and Xbox.

And not on Switch, sadly. No, but it's, you know, it is pretty cool on PC and graphically kind of amazing looking at times. You know, the lighting effects in this game are actually really cool. I can't recommend it enough. And I've heard from enough people that I know who have played it all the way through that it's wonderful that I feel pretty confident even though I haven't finished it. And I'm going to finish it. I mean, I'm super into this game. So, Death Store, strong recommendation from me. Cool.

Strong song recommendation. I just want to say that Kirk, when you say that you only talk out loud when you're playing games that you're really into, I do not think that's true. I just about any game. Yes, I talk to myself a lot, but I only like get excited when something is really exciting. Like that actually doesn't happen that much. So the rest of the time you're talking out loud. like in a stoic way.

Or like in an annoyed way. Or I'm just, right, I'm annoyed or I'm just sort of talking to myself. Yes. But when I'm actually just like, this rules over and over again, that is a distinct experience. It's kind of a good way to tell that I'm telling myself

that I'm really having fun playing this. And I'm not just sort of intrigued, but I was really like enjoying myself. Yeah, cool. Okay, I also have a glowing recommendation. I talked about this a few weeks ago, but it's now out. So I have to talk about it again.

The great Ace Attorney Chronicles is finally out finally out in the U.S. that had been out, well, it's a compilation of two games, really. It's a duology. And they'd come out in Japan. And man, after playing through, so I'm, right now I'm about midway through the second game. After playing through these guys, after playing through the first

game, I'm actually pretty glad that we had to wait to get it because in Japan, they released the first game and the second game two years apart. But these two games are like two halves, essentially. Like the first game has so many unresolved plot threads that I would have gone crazy like having to wait two years for the next one. So it's nice that we hear in the West, in English-speaking countries, we get to play them both at once, which is awesome, because they're incredible. I cannot rave enough about these games. Ace Attorney in

general is just a great series. Like if you're into it, you know, you're always going to have a good time with one of these games. But these two have stood out to me in terms of just like the writing quality, the localization quality, the new flourishes they've added. The characters, the music, everything about them is just incredible. Some of the new stuff like this, the Herlock Sholms, aka Sherlock Holmes, the detective in this game is incredible. He's such a good character. And your main character is kind of generic, whatever. But like his assistant, Susado is this badass woman in the vein of Maya Faye from the original Trillard. and yeah, just this amazing cast of characters.

Erlachsholmes has this assistant as well named Iris, who is also just this precocious 10-year-old, amazing badass. She's like the new version of Holmes is like John Watson in the books. And that's his name, right? Watson, Detective Watson, Inspector Watson, Inspector Watson. But yeah, it's great. It's fantastic. We'll talk about this more, I believe next week. the three of us are going to get into a little bit more when we talk about some other visual novels

as well. Yeah, you guys have to play it more. Yeah, I want to play it more. Yeah. I've enjoyed it so far, though, for sure. It's very fun. Ace Attorney is so hilarious. It's definitely a game that I will just laugh at. It has very corny jokes. Just like puns, just really

just 101 level puns that I'll just giggle at. It just gets me to get a headspace. I enjoy them a lot. It's so fun. And speaking of talking to games, actually, during the first deduction sequence in the second chapter when you're going back and forth and like well people will see what it is if they play the game I was like losing my mind the whole time during that sequence okay so those things are all over the game they're amazing it's worth describing a little bit basically herlock sholms a.k. Sherlock Holmes will we'll come onto these crime scenes and like have

these deductions and this character is like ridiculous he's like this brilliant detective but he's also a total goofball and he'll come onto these these scenes these crime scenes and he'll like immediately spot these these wild things and like deduce them but come to the completely wrong conclusions about all of them. And so you as the main character will have to then jump in and correct him. And he'll immediately be like, ah, yes, of course. And like jump in with you. And it's very supportive about it. There's this animation that is like the two of you like dancing around and there's like a spotlight.

Spotlights. Oh man. It feels like you're like in this interactive play. And it's so cool. It's like so well done. I was reading that they did actual mocap for this, which is like, it's, it's like leaps and bounds beyond other Ace Attorney games, which are mostly, it turned, the first three games were two D and then it got into 3D a little bit later on, but like, it's mostly flat screens.

And this is very much playing with like dimensions. And during these scenes, you're like watching people's eye, lines and seeing what they're looking at and stuff like that. And it plays around with camera angles and it's so good. The game is just so well done. And it's all, by the way, I should note, it's all. set 100 years before the main series. So you can just skip ahead to this one.

This is a perfect entry point. If you've never played an Ace Attorney game before, go play this one. We'll talk about it more next week. I'll rave about it more. Hopefully I'll be finished by then, but I'll rave about it more. But yeah, so Great Ace Attorney Chronicles.

It's out this week on all platforms. I'm playing it on Switch. Sure, it's great. Yeah, I would recommend it on Switch since there's a lot of reading involved. And I actually feel like playing it on any other platform would be kind of tough. Yeah, it's nice on Switch.

I would recommend the switch version, personally. Cool. Okay. I think that is it for this week's episode. Kirk, Maddie, I will see you two for the beans talk whenever Kirk decides to run it. It's a mystery. And then again next week. All right. See 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 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. Artists owned. Audience. Audience supported.