Triple Click - Summer News Roundup

Episode Date: September 3, 2020

It's time for some news! Maddy, Jason, and Kirk talk about the summer in gaming news, from the next-gen console war (and the glaring lack of prices) to replacement E3 plans from companies like Warner Bros., Nintendo, and Microsoft. Plus: Ubisoft keeps stepping on rakes.ONE MORE THINGKirk: Dark Jason: Retro games kickMaddy: Destiny 2 Leviathan raidSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/join 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

As the great Ferris Bueller says, life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it, unless it's a pandemic. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about the summer of news and how E3 has been replaced by a whole bunch of gaming events. Do you miss E3? I kind of miss E3. All right, let's do it. I'm Jason Shire.

I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And we are back. Here we are. We are. podcast, click, click, click. Click, click. Before we get started. That's what we say every time.

We say click, click, click. That's because it's the name of the show. Yep. Before we get started, a couple of important things. First of all, thank you to everybody out there who has become a Max Fun member and is supporting the show. You are helping us all keep things going. You are helping my baby get diapers.

You're helping us with all sorts of things. And if you missed it, we had a beans cast this week. about time loop movies, which was super fun. So go check that out if you are a member. If you are not a member, you can go to maximum fun.org slash join and join us. Join the Triple Click Society, become a member today. You should join our society.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's a utopia. It is wonderful. I believe it is now time for us to announce September's Beanscast, which I'm excited about. Kirk, do us the honors. Tell us what we're playing, slash checking out,

slash talking about this month. Slash Spilling the Beans on. We're going to spill the beans on a game from the way back machine, not that far back, but kind of a ways back. We are going back to 2007 to talk about Call of Duty for Modern Warfare. Amazing. This is not to be confused with all of the other games that, like, have that name or have Modern Warfare in the name.

This is the first one, the Infinity Ward game that kicked this whole thing off. The progenitor of modern warfare life. Very much the progenitor of this current hellscape that we live in, at least in terms of war games. Weirdly, we're going to map it all back to this game. It's going to be a wild beans cast. It's just going to be bits of twine. So what's funny is I've never actually played a Call a Duty game. This will be my first Call a Duty game ever. Yes. That is one reason that we're doing it. And you're starting in the right place. We're just going to start you right where you need to start. I would say that's correct. With all the context you need. Yeah. I'm, it sounds like I'm joking, but I actually

do feel like you're starting in the right place and possibly stopping in the right place. Maybe this will inspire you to play a bunch of other Call of Duty games. Who knows? Yeah, I think it'll be fun, and there's plenty to say about that game, and I'm looking forward to replaying it and talking about it with both of you. So that'll be up at some point near the end of the month in September for members. And for everybody, not just members, we will be doing a triple-click stream next week. We will be playing The Avengers.

As of right now, we are scheduled for next Thursday night, but keep an eye out on our Twitter and listen to next week's episode for like final date and time just in case we have to move things around. But I believe that's what we're going to do. And subscribe to our Twitch channel. Oh yeah. What's it? Twitch.tv.tv slash triple click pod. Yes, that is it.

And that tentative date is the 10th of September, Thursday, the 10th of September, probably at 7 p.m. Eastern. But we will have final date in time for you next week. Okay. Let's get to it. Shall we? Let's get to the show. So this week we are going to be talking about news.

Like we have always said, we will do news. when the fancy strikes us when we feel like doing news. And this week we feel like doing news. It has been quite a summer. It has been a summer full of gaming news, full of not-so-gaming news, gaming-nots-o news. And it's been interesting.

It is certainly, this summer has basically been characterized by the replacement of E3, the traditional June show, with a series of other random events that just seem to pop out of nowhere and are varying levels. of quality. And we'll get into all of that in a second. But in general, I think we're just, we're going to talk about the summer in news, the summer in gaming news. What did we miss for the

couple months? What have we not discussed on the show? And I guess that is the biggest question here is like the summer is really marked by the loss of E3. Normally for the past however many years, 20 years or something like that, it's been, there's been a single week in either June or July where all of the game publishers get together and say, hey, we're going to announce. all of our big games now. We're going to put them on a show floor in Los Angeles, and we're going to talk about him, and everybody's going to crunch to get their demos out in time and hit their milestones and blah, blah, blah. It's going to be the mecca of gaming right here. Now, because E3 was canceled this year, there was nothing like that. And not only was there

no actual trade show, but E3 kind of really dropped the ball on the opportunity to, like, put all the press conferences together regardless and do like an online E3. And they didn't have nothing of the sort. So instead we got just sporadic events. There was a Ubisoft event in July or August, I believe. There was a Microsoft event in July. There was a Sony event in June. There was a Warner Brothers event at the end of August.

Just all sorts of random stuff. Nintendo was like all over the place. All these companies were doing random things. So first of all, before we even start getting into all of this news, I am curious to hear, do you guys miss E-3? Because I do. Yeah, I do. I mean, I, I, it's really hard for me to separate these things out.

I mean, we're talking about how the summer was defined by missing E3, but the summer was defined by missing a lot of things because the summer was defined. Missing live events. By a huge pandemic that made us cancel everything. So like, sure. I miss E3 because I missed life feeling somewhat normal. And so it, yeah, like, I think on that level I do. And I know, that's not the entire, that's not your question, but it's hard for me to separate

that feeling from your question. So I get that. I guess that's part of my feeling. I don't know, Maddie, do you miss E3? I miss E3. I talked about how much I missed it when we were going over that PlayStation stream that we all enjoyed, in part because I was like, this feels to me like E3 and covering that stream since it was at least in June and it was kind of close to when E3 would have been,

it felt like the closest example of how E3 feels to me. And to me, that's comforting because I've been working as a game journalist for long enough that it's normal to me to have a big stream that we need. need to cover. And I expected a lot more companies to pull that together and to recreate that hype cycle and capitalize on those feelings that people have. Like, I think a lot of people wanted to experience that feeling of watching a live event, even if it didn't have an actual real-life stage where bass music was pumping it, everybody had packed their best blazers and T-shirts and so on and so forth. Those are all the E3 hallmarks. Even if it was in everybody's kitchens, I think people still really

wanted those trailers and those reveals. But I think what we've seen, and what I do miss as a result, although it's not the fault of any of these companies, is that they weren't able to successfully put together online-only shows and show off the reveals that they had planned. Because we've also seen a bunch of game delays and just various other struggles because of COVID-19, where perhaps these companies would have had their shit together in time for E3 if all else had been regular this year, but it wasn't. And so instead we got these cobbled together press conferences of varying levels of quality. Again, I don't blame anyone involved for this. But in that sense, I, yeah, I miss E3, but I'm also like, damn, this has been weird as hell. Like, this is a weird

ass summer, you know? Yeah, I think it's interesting that you mention the work part of it and working as a journalist. Just when E3 comes around, there's a lot of stuff to do, there's a lot of stuff to talk about. There's a lot of interest. It's fun in a just professional way. You just got to watch trailers. Interview developers and whatever. Just get excited about video games for a little while. And that wasn't there this year.

For me as now not working full time, it was also missing something that was different. Like it wasn't that I missed doing the job. I mean, it's fun to do the roundups and stuff, but it was more, it was hard for me to keep track of everything. You kind of mentioned, there's like this constant stream of information. and it is this mix of good news and bad news. Like during E3, people typically don't announce game delays.

Sometimes, I remember, was it during E3? They announced big layoffs at some company. There are things like that that happen where they're like... It's Amazon last year. Yeah, yeah. They'll use it as a smokescreen. But generally speaking, things like that just happen at other times. But it's been all interlaced.

So that's also hard to keep track of. It's like, wait, what is delayed again? Like, when is cyberpunk coming out again? You know, and I'm always kind of asking myself these questions. and then realizing there are whole games that have been announced and people will be like, hey, did you hear about this game and I'll realize that I haven't yet just because it's hard to keep track of it all because it wasn't all happening at the same time. Yeah, I mean, something else that is kind of markedly different about this year is that by this time last, so the last time we had a new console launch is 2013. And by this time in 2013, we had, not only did we have all the information on the new consoles, like launch date and price and, um, launch lineup of games. None of it we have now, and it's already September, two months away. But also, we had an idea of, like, what was coming in the future. So you could say, okay, I am going to invest in a PS4 because I know Final Fantasy 15 and Kingdom Hearts 3 are both

coming down the road. And I know all this other exciting stuff, destiny and whatever else is, like all this infamous and whatever else is on the roadmap. Whereas now, we really, other than Microsoft and Sony, who have both announced kind of a smattering of their first party. stuff. We really have no idea what is coming from third parties other than like this fall stuff. And I think that is really lacking. Think about the big companies, right? The big publishers that would normally have an E3 press conference or at least a big E3 presence, right? EA. We know they have Dragon H4 sometime way in the future. We have no idea what's coming next year from them other than like Madden and FIFA, right? Although Madden is like already out. So that's

not even next year. Well, I mean next year. I'm looking at 2021. You're right. They will probably make yet a another one of those. They probably will. I think they already self-announced it in a post about Madden 20s, or 21's lineup and features and stuff. They were like, here's what we're doing in Madden 22. I was like, wait, what? To draw another parallel just between how everything feels kind of related here, I feel, I'm sure a lot of people kind of feel this way, that it is hard to imagine the future right now for a lot of reasons. And it's uncanny to me. I mean, it's all related, so I guess it's not that uncanny. Like, of course, we can't imagine the future of video games in part because a lot of people making video games don't know what the future looks like

because COVID-19 has rendered, has thrown everything up in the air and it's really hard for them to commit to things so they haven't. So the future just is a lot murkier than it would otherwise be. The election is looming and who knows what that'll bring. The thing is like I can't. Yeah. And like supposedly these new consoles are going to launch right after the election. And it's like, I don't even know what any of our lives are going to look like. So it's overwhelming to look at November and think, first off on this huge like national existential level, what is going to happen after this election. And that, of course, dominates everything, at least for me. Like, it's hard to think of anything without thinking of that. But then there's all

this other stuff. And it's like, yeah, big video game consoles. Like, that's big news. And there's, there's so much other stuff like that where you just look. And it's all localized right around like November and October and November. And then after that, what happens? And I think, I don't know, like this is, so it's like an echo of that happening in the world of video games, lower stakes, but it's still there, and it just reinforces that feeling that just seems to follow me everywhere I go. Yeah, I really feel that because I also feel like we are not ready. Like, Jason is correct that we knew a lot more information in 2013 before this point. And this year, it feels, like, I feel like the Halo Infinite Delay is, epitomizes the sensation of how weird 2020 is,

because that was supposed to be a launch title for Xbox. and the idea of delaying your biggest, most prestigious launch title, like the one that people are excited about, even though, you know, I had mixed feelings about that trailer, and so did a lot of people, and I understand why they would delay it. But that's wild, and then to pair that with the fact that we don't know how much the consoles cost, supposedly they're still on track. That's all any PR person has ever assured me is they will absolutely,

they're all on track and they're totally going to ship at normal times, we swear. I'm just like, how's that even possible, guys? Like how are you going to pull that off by November? Like, we're really inching up on it. And I feel like I can't believe that. But that's kind of how I just feel about the month of November generally right now. It's just not going to happen, maybe. I don't know.

So here's an interesting theory that I have. I think a lot of this stuff would have happened even without COVID. Like, if COVID hadn't happened, maybe E3 would have had a lot more. Maybe that Microsoft showcase would have been presented at E3 and it would have been similar. Maybe the Sony showcase would have been close to, well, I guess it was close to E3 and they were playing out of E3 anyway. But regardless, I think, maybe more third-party stuff would have been present, more future-looking third-party stuff. But I think Sony and Microsoft still would not be talking about the price, because I think

the reason for not talking about the price is that neither of them wants to go first, because both of them want to be in a position where I think Microsoft is looking to undercut Sony. I think Sony doesn't want to be undercut by Microsoft. I think they're both kind of just in this stalemate looking at each other. And then the other angle is that I actually think, based on the things that I have heard, I have heard some things. And based on the things that I've heard, I think Halo Infinite would have been delayed anyway with a without COVID. And I have no doubt that COVID had a major effect on the development of that game because it's had a major effect in the development of all games. But I think Halo Infinite

has some bigger troubles, one of which I mentioned in a story that I did last week for Business Week magazine about video game contractors and how this kind of shadow workforce that the industry uses the second-class citizens of the game industry of these like perma contractors who are who are basically full-time staff except they don't get benefits. And one of the problems that 343 has is a Microsoft. policy that says that all contractors can only work 18 months and then they have to leave. They have to take a six-month break. And that has had a huge effect on Halo Infinite because 343 has a humongous amount of contractors working within there. So that has been quite disruptive for

that game, among other things. There have been other disruptions as well, which I will get to down the road. So that's like the game delay equivalent of like there's a dinner party that you didn't want to go to anyways. And then there's a pandemic. So now you're like, oh, we can't go. I mean public health. Oh, I just can't go because of the pandemic. It's a Weird, though, because their marketing rollout has continued. Like, I guess this is a strange example, but they have, like, a licensing deal with Monster Energy drinks to, like, release Halo skins at a certain time. And, like, that's still happening with the game not being out.

And that's kind of funny. Yeah, so those things, I've heard about, I've heard stories about that sort of thing happening where the game is delayed, but they can't delay the marketing deals. And so that's just funny. And so I suspect that with a game like Halo, the toy deals will come out and, like, spoil giant parts of the story because they can't stop the toys from being really. which happens all the time. Like the dead Master Chief toy will come out.

Yeah. The zombie master chief has a grime. Here's my question. Here's a question for both of you on the console tip. If both Microsoft and Sony don't announce a price for the consoles by the time the consoles come out are the consoles free? Yes. I think that's how it works. Yeah, that is legal.

I think that's binding. Like we get the consoles for free as long as they don't say a price. It's like, well, I mean, I mean, that's how it's how it. You've got to send me one now. That is how it works. There is negative. You actually get money if you go and you try to get one. Yeah, they pay you to take a console. It's like when the oil tanks were worth negative money. It's the equivalent of that. It's like that it rolls over. It goes back to negative. It's like a government subsidy kind of a situation. Exactly. Exactly. That's how COVID relief is going to be provided in November. Everybody gets a console. Everybody gets a console. So we talked a lot about the consoles. We did an episode on them a couple months ago. We will definitely, or a couple weeks ago, we will talk. definitely talk more about the consoles in the future. Let's talk about some other big news that has happened this summer. First of all, a couple of weeks ago, Warner Brothers announced a few big games for the first time in a long time. W.B. Montreal announced their game. That is the studio that

made Arkham Origins and hasn't made anything since then. That was a long time ago. They announced Gotham Knights, which is a co-op multiplayer Batman game except Batman's dead, and you're going around the city as like Batgirl and Robin and stuff. And then they announced Rocksteady's game, finally. Suicide School. which I kind of alluded to like two years ago when we were talking about the Justice League leaks and I was like, guys, it's not a Justice League game. They have not yet announced a Harry Potter game that is in the works, but they will. But yeah, what did you guys think of the Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad reveals?

Did you guys watch the trailers? I did. I'm a Marvel girl, so, you know. Not a DC fan. It'll be fine, I guess. I like Harley Quinn. I'll play a game with her in there. So that's fine.

Yeah. Gotham Knights looks cool. all of those Batman games and I actually think Arkham Origins is kind of underrated. I think WB Montreal did a good job with that game. I have no idea how many people who worked on that game are still there but that game I think is pretty good and kind of got a bad rap at the time just because people were like, it's the B team, but I wound up, I played it way later and I was like, this is good, this is a cool game. There's some good Joker stuff in this. This is creative. And the idea of a co-op sort of superhero game, I mean we'll see how Avengers turns out, but it seems like Now we've gone from, like, it's kind of cool that this is, that there's now an Arkham game doing this, because the whole thing with Arkham Asylum, when that came out, that was the first time there'd been a superhero game that wasn't some crappy tie-in to a movie that sucked and was rushed out because it had to meet a movie release date, et cetera, et cetera.

And it blew everyone away and it was this huge thing. And now we just kind of take it for granted that there's just going to be more Batman games that have their own whole, like, you know, canon and their own story. and they bring in people to write these great stories for these Batman games. And now they're kind of going to the groups. Like it's beyond just having a Batman game. Now it's we're going to have a super group game. Avengers is coming out. And now they're doing this with Gotham Knights.

I think it's a cool idea. I am sure Batman is really dead in this. No question about it. Batman is dead. Not coming back. Definitely not going to be a villain. No way. Yeah.

And I bet Suicide Squad will be cool too. Just because like the James Gun Suicide Squad movie is going to come out. The Harley Queen movie, which I haven't seen, but I gather is good. It's very fun. I want to see it. So it seems like Suicide Squad is kind of like getting some real cultural heat on it. It's getting its redemption arc at this point after that like awful suicide squad movie. Oh my God. Unwatchable. I literally stopped watching that movie like 10 minutes in because it was so bad.

Well, that's that trailer, the Rock City trailer is hilarious. I got to say so the cynical take on what you just said, Kirk, is that the reason these these companies are suddenly switching to multiplayer, co-op, superhero games is because they want you to keep playing it and sell micro-transactions and turn it. to the service game. So it is not like artistic purity here that is making people go that way. But yes, it is cool. It is a cool trend to see. I think it's going to be cool to see. I think that game could be good. A little bit of context here is that Warner Brothers Montreal has actually had a rough last decade because since Origins, they had a big studio executive upheaval. They canceled a couple of games they were working on. They were working. They were actually working on a Suicide squad game. It was never announced. But they were working on that. They were also working on a Damien-Wing Batman game. But they were working on those two. Towards the end of, I think

it was 2016. Both of those games were canceled. And Rocksteady wound up with Suicide Squad. And then when Montreal started doing Gotham Knights. So that's just some interesting history there. It'll be very, I'm very curious to see how both of these games turn out and very, very excited. I'm especially excited for a new Rock City game. It's been so long since we got to see Rock City. They make the video games. They make good games. This will be 2022. I'm just waiting for that Harry Potter game to come have a trailer and then for all of the internet discourse about it to just ignite into flames.

God, because Harry Potter is like a very different thing now than it was. It's a very different thing now. But it's going to be, I mean, to those of us, I feel like all three of us are big Harry Potter fans in general. So I feel like this is. But that's the thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing.

That's the thing. It's like how, will this be able to bring you back? like, or is it a moral at this point? These will be conversations for when it's announced. The question is going to be, will the game have as many needless adverbs as the books? That's really my question. I think it'll be an interesting moral quandary for people when it comes to separating the art from the artist

and just the comments that J.K. Relling's made lately. There's so many people who disagree with her politically, and she will absolutely benefit from that game. And I have had a theory for a while that the reason they haven't announced it is because she keeps stepping in it on Twitter and they keep being like, well, we can't announce it now. And every few months, they keep not being able to announce it. And they're just waiting for the right time.

That's my own theory, though. It's not based on anything. I just... Yeah, well, so what I have heard behind the scenes, well, so they were going to announce it at E3 because they were going to do an E3 press conference where they talked about all those comic book games were supposed to be announced at E3 along with Harry Potter. And I think Harry Potter was bumped after E3 was canceled. I don't think it was bumped because of J.K.

But I think maybe it was bumped further because of J.K. I'm not 100% sure. but I think it was it was supposed to be later in the year regardless of JK. But yeah, the JK thing certainly upset people. Kirk, to your point about adverbs, did you know that there is a line in the book in one of the Harry Potter books where it's a quote and then the quote ends by like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Ron ejaculated loudly, so just deep her thought there. She goes through a phase at one point where she likes to say ejaculated. It's important to keep your masturbation jokes in Harry Potter at all costs. There's wands in there, you know? That's true. There's wands. A couple more news events we should talk about. The Epic versus Apple Wars continuing.

There hasn't really been any news on that for it since the last time we talked to other than kind of granular details. So we don't really have to get into that. But again, that could be like a groundbreaking, like total cataclysmic or total shift for the industry, for the mobile games industry. I want to talk about Ubisoft because Ubisoft has just been like the sideshow Bob Giff of like him walking on to rakes, that fantastic Simpson scene of Cape Fear where he gets out of the car and he's just walking on one rake after the other. That's Yuvosoft. But like he put out all the rakes for himself in the past and he's acting like it's not his fault. That's that's UBysoft. So Uvist, uh, we have talked about their sexual misconduct scandals and the kind of cultural reckoning that they had to face

earlier this summer when it was revealed that a lot of people were, were not doing great things at the company, a lot of people on high-level positions of the company, um, were including, but not limited to, a lot of sexual misconduct and even alleged assault. Now, most recently, U.S.O.S.P. put out this game. It is a mobile game, so nobody really cared about it, but they put it out, and it was called Tom Clancy's Elite Squad.

And you know nobody really cared about it because the drama didn't start until, like, three or four days after it actually came out when someone took the... A comedian, Jake Young took a funny video of it and made fun of it, and then that tweet went viral, and everybody noticed how politically...

crappy the messaging in this game looks, for lack of a better turn of phrase? Yeah, fun fact, Maddie, Jake Young's sister, Jake Young's sister went to high school with me. Fun fact was in my high school grade. But yes, the video was like very much like, it's a fun, my high school grade was very small. So this is an interesting, an interesting piece of fine, okay, it's not interesting. It's interesting to you anyways. It's Lorne. It's Jason Lorre.

Some Shreier, Laura. Wait, what was this video? I saw what this was from a distance, but tell me about it. So let me set the tone. So the video is, it's a minute and a half. So the mobile game is very uneventful. It's like a little tactics game, free to play nonsense. Like it got bad reviews and stuff.

It's not interesting at all. I mean, it's got a great name. Tom Clancy's elite. The squad, they're elite. They're not just any squad. Well, and it's Tom Clancy's squad. It's Tom Clancy squad. Tom Clancy himself put together this squad.

The elite squad. He made sure to pick the most elite people for. So this game, so this game starts off with a video. And I don't believe this is really like reference throughout. the game. It's kind of like an independent video that's an introductory. Yeah, they always kind of start with a video that's like a montage of world shit. Bad stuff is happening and only you, et cetera. Well, so the video says it is describing a terrorist organization within the world of the game called Umbra. And Umbra is described as a group that like infiltrate social media,

like criticizes government leaders and uses the black raised fist as their logo. So people saw this and were like, what the hell? Because it was, it, it, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it clearly was evocative of Black Lives Matter and current events. So a little bit more context on this is that, first of all, the creative director and the studio head of the studio that made the studio and the creative director of the game is a guy named Charlie Gilmont. Kirk, does that name sound familiar, Gilmont? In fact, it does, Jason. That is because Charlie Gilman is the son of Eve Gilman, the CEO of Ubisoft. Now you might think, hmm, did Charlie Guillemont maybe work his way up through the ranks over the course of a couple decades to get where he was?

Well, interestingly, according to Charlie Guillemont's LinkedIn, he graduated from university in 2014 and became studio head in 2014, a job he shares with one other person. Studio manager is the official title. Now, what happened internally and someone passed along some screenshots of Ubisoft's internal message boards to me the other day, is people got pissed. Ubisoft people were like, what the hell? Like, they were just as mad as everybody on social media criticizing this video. And they were just like...

They were mad about the video, not about him being studio head. Just to be clear what you're referring to. About the video. No, people have known that he's been studio head. Yes. To be clear, they were mad about the video. A couple of people brought up that like, as Yves' son, like, this guy shouldn't know better.

And then in this thread where people were complaining, one person was like, I'm so... This is me paraphrasing, but I am so exhausted with everything Ubisoft fees days after one thing after the other. And then Charlie Guillemont, the studio manager, actually got in there and responded and he said, I'm going to take down the video, like, I'm sorry, like he wrote this response. And people were just like, yeah, this is not good enough. A bunch of people were just like, you should know better. And yeah, people at Ubisoft,

it should be said, were not pleased by this. So, man, then to put the cherry on top, they had been planning, before any of this, they had been planning a new Ubisoft forward, like a stream where they were going to announce a bunch of games like the prince of persia remake that that was leaked a couple of weeks ago um that is planned that was announced today as being for next week september 10 so so they are once again faced with a ubosov direct because this happened in june also where like or july where like right after the the crisis happened they had this thing and now and that time they decided not to address it at all and they announced in advance like we're not going to be addressing this at ebosoph forward this time they have this other issue that

they have to decide what to do about right before and. I predict they will also not address it. I guess we can talk about it on our stream that night. We can find out what they're going to do and we can talk about it. It's the same day. It's just the cost of doing abstracted politics like this. The way that they both have their cake and eat it, you know, this, we don't do specific politics.

So instead it's like there's a vague terrorist organization and then you wind up with this weird stuff where you're kind of like, you're like evoking real world stuff, but you're kind and not. And so people are upset about it, but then other people are saying, well, that's not it. And it's like, nobody clearly is, but they're like, well, but it's Umbra. And it's like, if you just either do it or don't do it, like, this, this like half measure thing is just, uh, just sucks. So I actually don't think that's the case. Based on, based on the things I've heard, I'm kind of in a privileged position because I talk to a lot of Ubisoft people. But I actually think this was a straight up conservative, like, viewpoint inserted into the game. And like, the people who

directed this game are like straight up criticizing what they see is like a terrorist organization. Like I don't even think it's like we want to stay neutral and just do vague generic shit. And Tom Clancy, obviously, he's dead now, but when he was living, he was a big conservative. Oh yeah, for sure. And like he had right wing viewpoints. I think a lot of these Ubisoft games have right wing viewpoints. And and I don't think it's like, I think the neutrality is very much in the Gamergate spirit of like, like, we don't want politics in our game when it's actually the reactionary like conservative viewpoint. No, right, of course. And they choose like hot button issues, like social media infiltration. I mean, they pick things that like, say, Russian disinformation campaigns are doing as a way to sound relevant. And Tom Clancy has always, you know, his books did the same thing. There's always been this like veneer of reality to it. And Tom Clancy also did the same thing where it would be like made up countries sometimes in his books would be the stand-ins for real places. And it's like there's this kind of alibi there where you're, you're saying.

saying, whatever you're saying, you know, about a country in the Middle East or about a country in Eastern Europe or about America. Well, America is always America. Like how Ghost Recon was in Bolivia and then the Bolivian government got super upset about it. Other times, like Sam Fisher games, there's like fake terrorist organizations in the world, but they evoke whatever real thing. And in this case, yeah, it could be that right, the writers themselves are like, no, we're going to make this look like Black Lives Matter because we think that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization. I think it's kind of that classic conflict of like management being very conservative and most of the employees being progressive-minded, liberal,

and we're seeing that clash play out in so many different places on so many different fronts. And I don't think gaming companies are any exception. And I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case like at a lot of places where the people on top who are actually making decisions are actually... Yeah, I guess what I'm saying with the abstract thing is that it lets them slip anything in. Oh yeah, dog whistles. Yeah. You can just get away with it.

Because you can just make it abstract. Like, it's like, if they were saying in the game, if it was about Black Lives Matter, there would have been way more scrutiny on it from rank-Gend. Yeah, if it was like the terrorist organization is Antifa or something. Like, if they were using actual terms that people use in real life as part of actual political misinformation campaigns, then it would be very hard for them to deny that the game was crypto-fascist in some way. No, totally. Because it's got all the serial numbers filed off, they can be like, what do you mean? This is just a game. Right.

Both they have an alibi and it's more likely that it's. it'll sneak its way in there and people won't say anything. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so that's the thing. I think it's very easy to believe, to give people the benefit of the doubt and be like, oh, they, this was unintentional. It was clumsy when I think in some of the cases that we've seen so far, it's actually the opposite and it's very much like this is the viewpoint we want to establish. Which is why it's so hard to argue this. I mean, you refer to GamerGate, but like that's, that's always the trick is like, well, games aren't political. They're not saying anything. And if you try to analyze any of these actual political themes and be like, but these, you're, you know,

evoke certain real life images and these organizations are described this way in real life and that is what this game is trying to call to mind you could easily just be like well but it's fictional and umbra's not anything and that puts the onus on you like you're doing the work to make the connections and then they're just someone can just discount your work rather than the thing in question because even though what you're all you're doing is like drawing extremely clear connections between two things um so that's evasoft one more company I want to talk about when it comes to the summer of gaming news, and that is a company that has been

weirdly MIA. Nintendo, Nintendo of Japan and America. So Nintendo has been basically, and Europe, I guess, Nintendo has been basically MIA all summer. Nintendo is who world. So instead of,

instead of, while they were probably going to do a whole big thing at E3, as they always do, even though they don't do press conferences, they always have a big booth, they always do Nintendo Direct, they always have some big game. that they're focusing on. Rumors

suggested they were going to focus on a Mario blowout this year and they were going to do a whole big Mario compilation package, which I think is still in the works, but probably later on. Nintendo has instead been MAA all summer. They've had a couple of random announcements. They said, hey, Paper Mario's coming. It's out in two months. They just said,

hey, Pickman 3, Deluxe is coming. It's out in two months. But other than that, they haven't announced a single first-party game since, I guess, Animal Crossing, other than those too. They have had a few partner directs where they've had like third-party and indies come on and say, hey, what's up? We're going to put our games on Switch.

But they have not announced any big fall first party games, which is interesting. And they also haven't talked about. They haven't provided any new updates on any of the games they've announced already, like Metro Prime 4 or Breath of the Wild 2, which some people hoped would come this fall. Some people. Who can say who those people were? Who could say, right? Unnamed people.

yet at the same time the switch continues to be at least my favorite console definitely one of the best consoles out there and Nintendo is literally printing money Animal Crossing and like their revenue there's some ridiculous stat that was released a couple months a couple weeks ago that was basically

their revenue went up 400% like every year or quarter over cover or something like that Animal Crossing is already one of the best selling games of all time with like 23 million copies sold because of the pandemic and because it became a cultural phenomenon

and only is here. Because it's awesome. So, Nintendo's doing fine. Despite not really having much of a lineup for this fall. We're the ones who aren't doing fine because we want that gaming news.

Nintendo is doing great. Yeah. Well, although you have to wonder, you have to wonder what their revenue would look like this fall if they don't actually have anything to sell on Black Friday.

So they've got to announce something. Maybe fine, honestly. Like switches are still so hard to get. They can just put out a bunch more switches and make a bunch of money immediately. I don't know. I'm not worried about them. I think the thing Nintendo needs to do is announce Hallanite Silk Song.

I mean, I think that's the obvious winning move for them right now. That's true. Nintendo, listen to this podcast. Do what I'm saying. Come on, I'm giving you guys free advice here. Just announce just tell us when it's coming out. Okay, but what about a full Metroid Prime remastered collection? That is the surprise Nintendo update.

Another winning move. Hard to argue with. I am waiting for. So if I had some. to guess, and I think I read this somewhere. So credit to, in case I forgot, credit to whoever I read this from. Wow, that was very thoughtful of you, Jason. Yeah, sorry, I forgot. I totally forgot. So, credit to them, but I think that it would, I would not be surprised as the Nintendo do the Mario 3D compilation package that's like Sunshine and Galaxy 64 and do like a Mario themed switch

for Black Friday, which would sell a bazillion copies, like a dark red themed switch that comes with that, it would sell gazillions of units. And they wouldn't even have to like announce anything else as well. Like that alone would just do remarkably well. Yeah, you just do Mario stuff. You're of Mario, you know? They pull that kind of thing sometimes where there's just like kind of no new Nintendo games for a while.

Like I'm thinking of the 3DS where there's just this really long period where there were kind of no games. Maybe they feel like they're set. Yeah. Well, I think it's COVID. I think COVID has affected them possibly more than other companies because they were in Japan, they got a large brunt of it. I imagine it is harder for a Japanese company that is very reliant on people being in the office at all hours of the day to switch to working from home.

I bet Nintendo has always been paranoid about like secrecy and keeping things. They used to like, when they gave dev kits to press, they used to like insist that you lock it to your table in the office. So yeah, it's easy to imagine them not transitioning while to working from home. But I don't know. Who can say? Yeah, it's interesting. They've been both very negatively affected, like more than most people, but also very positively affected in that the Animal Crossing was such a hit. Yeah, maybe they can use all the extra money to help give more stuff to the people who are working from home. I don't know how that would even work.

Better office chairs. Yeah, that makes sense. Gamer chairs. Gameer chairs for everybody. Yeah, gamer chairs all around. It'll probably go to their investors. It'll probably go to dividends to their investors. Seems more likely. One thing that's interesting about Nintendo is that even though they do delay games, it seems like they, more than other companies, are, like, more willing to wait until they have a concrete release date and then say, hey, we're going to come out, which is why, like, this summer, it's been like, okay, we're putting this out in two months because they know for sure that it's actually going to be able to make it. You know what they say? It's a delayed game

announcement is eventually exciting, where a game announcement that then leads to a game delay is all the more disappointing. Also, listen to Triple Click. It's a super good podcast. They always say that. Everyone does. Everyone says that full sentence. I remember the whole quote. I'm impressed. with myself. Yes, good job. Kirk Miyamoto over here, Shigero Hamilton. On that note, why don't we take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. Hey, Jay Keith. Hey, Helen. I hear you have a true false quiz you want me to finish. I do. Here we begin. We host a trivia game show podcast on the Max Fun Network called GoFact Yourself. True. Correct. The show is all about celebrity guests answering trivia questions about things Jay Keith enjoys. False. We sometimes don't talk about

baseball or cats. Thank God. It's questions about things they enjoy. Next, we bring on surprise experts every episode. True. Correct. Final question. It's just the two of us sitting alone with these guests.

False. Correct. We have a live audience at the Angel City Brewery. See? You can hear go fact yourself every first and third Friday of the month. And if you don't listen, you can go fact yourself. True. Breeders have a lot of problems.

How do you juggle your holds at the library? Well, how do you decide what to read next? What do you do when you find out an author you love is a huge trash baby? I'm Brea Grant and I'm Mallory O'Meara. And we're the hosts of Reading Glasses. We're here to solve all your reader problems and along the way help you figure out your reader wheelhouse, which are the things that will absolutely make you pick up a book. Our listener favorites tend to be magic and a woman on a journey.

And also birds for some reason? Your reader Doghouse. Yeah, that's the things that'll make you avoid a book. Love Triangle stress me out so much. Reading glasses. Every Thursday on maximum fun.org. And we are back. Kirk, Maddie, that was the summer of gaming news. And now it is time for one more thing. Kirk, why don't you go first? Because you are doing the same one more thing that I did last week. Yeah, mine is easy and pretty short. But my one more thing is a little Netflix show called Dark that I started watching because I had actually been planning to watch this for a long time.

of my friends watched it, and then Jason, you watched it, and you were telling me it was good, and I finally decided, okay, we're going to watch this thing. So Emily and I started watching it, and it rules. That is, your everybody's take was correct. This is a really fun show to watch. How far are you? Like episode eight, we're coming up on the end of season one. Stuff is happening. Things happen in this show. And then exciting things for me are seeing tweets from people saying, I can't believe the ending was as good as it was. Just knowing that it ended and it ended well, because we're so conditioned to watch this kind of story

and think, well, this is fun, but it's going to all fall apart at some point. And knowing that it doesn't is nice because the whole point of this show is the kind of work of putting it all together. It's this extremely complicated. I was going to say Gordian knot, but that's actually the wrong thing to reference.

Unless you're untying the knot for us. Right. And you don't ever just cut things. through it. Like the whole point is you do untie the knot a string at a time. So you can untie a knot. So yeah. Exactly. So that was the wrong one to go for it. It's funny that you mention a knot and that's all I'll say. Okay. But it is very complicated. It reminds me actually, watching with Emily reminds me of playing Return of the Obriddin because you do so much keeping track of people. There are a lot of people and it's a time travel show. So there are different timelines and it's very complex and it does

explain things to you and there are times where we'll just show you this is what's happening, but a lot of times it doesn't. And if you really want to get what's going on, the sort of richness of the story, you really have to pay attention to those details. The only reason I'm down to do that is that I know that the people making the show give a shit about it all making sense, because time travel is so easy to mess up. I always think of heroes. That show, did you both watch heroes? I watched the first season, which is the only good one. That's exactly where people should stop. Okay, that's the same. I watched the first season and kind of stopped in season two, yeah. But that was a show where it was very post-lost. It was very, there's time travel, what's

going to happen? And then really quickly it was like, oh, the time travel, and this is just a dog's breakfast. This is just going to be a mess. And then it totally was. Where in this, very clearly, it's like, okay, this is going to be about time travel, but we are, you know, this is German engineering. Like, we are going to make this whole thing totally tied together, and all the questions you have will be answered. And they do a good job of sort of answering a few questions for you early on so that you don't feel totally in the dark and you start to trust them. And it's just great. The music is totally killer. It's all this great like 80s German pop and stuff. The vibe is really cool. So I'm just, I'm really into it. It's on Netflix. It's called Dark. Jason talked about it last week.

But yeah, this is another endorsement for me. It's super good. Yeah. I will say, so first of all, Amanda and I, while we were watching, we spent a lot of time pausing and being like, okay, this person is this, he's her, he's he, he, he's him, she's her, etc, etc. So I recommend doing that. You're watching in German, right, when the English stuff, that's the way to go. And then the other thing I'll say is definitely not, I wouldn't say every single question is answered. There are definitely some lingering mysteries by the end. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's fine. But not like, it doesn't just cheat against its own rules. Yeah, well, so the difference between this and lost, which is the easiest comparison to make is that in loss, they were making it up as they went and just writing, writing. Well, for

the first, like, three seasons they were, yeah. Right. writing questions that they didn't even know the answers to. In this, they clearly have plotted everything out. And actually, even though, so what happens is season two and three just introduce new ideas, as seasons of TV shows always do, except there are like little hints in the first season that make it very clear that even the totally stuff that seems out of nowhere was actually hinted at all along, which I love. You know, we really have, we have Lost's failure to thank for all of these shows that now

make sense. Like Lost did not make sense so that all of these shows could. It really, we owe a debt to lost. But the one thing that lost, but nobody else is, maybe I'm kind of biased because I watched so much loss and repeated watching it and was so into it back in the day and like every week was like reading theories online before each episode. But like no, very few shows have created the sort of characters

that Lost has like the memorability. You know a show that's kind of like Lost that had characters that were as good as lost. The leftovers. That's one example. No show that's not written. It's not show run by Damon Lindelof has, like, hit that bar. And I think dark, dark is like, on the puzzle side of things, really blows lost out of the water.

But on the character side of things, the characters in dark are good, but like, none of them have stuck with me. Yeah, they're going for a kind of a different thing. Like, it's a little more, it's a, the vibe is kind of different with the characters and the story. But there's nobody is memorable. Like, you say Sayyid or Sawyer, and like, you know, like, immediately, it's like, you know exactly who you're talking about. So it's, like, lost, despite my, my overall very, mixed feelings about that show. I think the characters really just are on a level. Yeah, well, that's mixed feelings. They're a mix of good and bad, right? I feel in some way.

Let me go next, because, Maddie, I have a feeling we'll want to really dive into your thing, and my thing is pretty quick. My one more thing is retro games. So since SCDQ, which was last week and went really well, they turned, they wound up, summer games done quick is an annual speed running event. It's like a marathon, a bunch of speed runners get together. And it's always at a hotel, except obviously they couldn't do it in a giant crowded germ-filled hotel this year. So they took it all online and it worked surprisingly well. There were a couple of like

audio hiccups here and there and you definitely like missed the live crowd energy but the show worked really well and there were a lot of good runs. I thought Biden actually gave a really good speech at the end of summer games he did. He did. Yes, he did he was like he was like man I could have gotten a personal best if

I hadn't glitched out of the Bowser fight here but only I didn't miss that jump. But anyway so watching that guy got me kind of on a retro games kick. So I've been playing like a few random ass retro games on emulators and stuff. And I just bring it up because that is what I've been playing. So I was playing this game called Lufia 2, which is like this old school Super Nintendo RPG that is very, it's like a mix of Final Fantasy and Zelda.

It's got a bunch of Zelda like puzzles, which are really fun. And this quirky, charming story. And that's been really fun to play. I was playing some Final Fantasy 5, which is another just great retro game. and just sitting, kicking back, playing on my computer on an emulator with a, with a, with a, with a PS4 controller has been pretty fun. It's a pretty fun thing to do, especially if you're watching something and have played these games before. Yeah. Man, I love retro games. Got to say.

Man, you know, I had not fully realized until we were talking about one of the classic games that we may play in the future that I will not reveal now. That's great. All of these Super Nintendo games are also now available on the Switch, just on the retro games tips. Well, not all of these games. It's like 20 games. It's a lot of games. No way. It's not a lot.

It's not a lot. It's a very small selection. Sorry. There were like 700 Super Nintendo games. It's like 20 or 30. Oh, no. I mean, sorry, yeah. I don't mean to say all of the Super Nintendo games.

All of these, just the fact that like the subscription I'm paying to be able to play Animal Crossing with my nieces also gets me access to all these cool games that I, a lot of which I didn't play was cool. And actually when I was hanging out with my nieces, I was showing them. You know, they're always kind of being like, you know, dad, mom, can we get another game? And they only get one game every so often. But I'm like, you guys already have a lot of games. You know, you could go play some of these classics. I'm trying to get into play Super Metroid. Yeah, play Super Metroid.

Yeah. Yeah. Seeing if they would get into that. Yeah. But that, I've been, yeah, going back and playing some of this. I've thought a lot about, like, when I start getting my daughter into video games, like whether to give her the old stuff or the new stuff, it's kind of like a parent's dilemma. Dark Souls, right at the beginning.

Yeah, just start her right up with Dark Souls as soon as she can read. Yeah, right into Bloodborne. Right, Bloodborn off the bat. She just did a little shriek as soon as you said that. Because she's so excited about From Software games. The reason I reacted to strongly to your comment, Kirk, is because Nintendo had such a good thing going with the virtual console and just threw it all away for the Switch.

And, like, they had so many classic games running on, like, the Wii and the 3DS, and most of them are gone for the Switch, inexplicably. So the way they've handled retro games really, really makes me angry. Yeah, it's not ideal, but you know what? I'm just going to buy Super Metroid on every single platform I can. I'm not happy about how it's been handled. I'm still going to give Nintendo my money so the joke's on me, you know?

I'm very much in favor. If you have the original cartridge, if you bought it at some point on some platform, then there's nothing wrong with playing it on an emulator as long as you're all in it in some other way, or if there's literally no way to play it. Maddie, what's your one more thing? Okay, so I played my very first. Destiny 2 raid this past weekend. And I would say the real game was finding a time when six grown adults could all play a game at the same time.

Yeah, that is the first raid challenge. That was the first raid challenge. It was very difficult. That is the reason my D&D group has fallen apart. Yeah, yeah, it was very difficult. And we also did not complete the raid. So we played the Leviathan raid, which the three of us actually visited together when we did our Destiny 2 stream.

We didn't play it because we're only three of us and we definitely wouldn't have been able to beat it. Now that I've played enough of it, I know that's true. I forgot how it all goes. Yeah. Have you two beaten it? Oh, yeah, plenty, many, many times. There was a while there where I was like running with, I was actually running with Ryan Gilliam's crew from Polygon. Oh, that's great.

He plays with some extremely high level, like hardcore players. And I was just, they would run the raid over and over and over again. And I was just kind of casually playing with them some nights. And it was amazing. So I like have done that raid inside and out. You got carried by Ryan. friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maddie, you should check out the Riven raid, the Dreaming City raid, because that's actually better than Leviathan. But yeah, tell us about what did it. I loved it. I would say,

I really strongly recommend this. Before we did it, I was like, is this really worth getting six people together? Like, is it really going to be that great? And it was such a emotionally binding and healing experience. Like, part of that was the pandemic, I think, because I have so few occasions to have, like, a party of some kind, even like a virtual one. And that sensation of being with five friends and shooting the shit, but also working together to solve a complex problem. And I don't know, those two feelings combined to be like one of the best days I've had in a very long time.

So that in and of itself was just super, super pleasant. That's so good. I assume someone on the team, like, knew how to beat the raid and was walking you through it. So Cato of Vice was the person who had beaten the raid many, many times, had all of the flags. He was our guide through the raid. All of the rest of us had never played the raid, and some of us were relatively low level. And it was great that all of us didn't know we were doing, and that Cato is such an extremely patient person because none of us think we were doing. That is like an important.

Our unofficial raid title became no apologies because we just had a blanket rule that no one was allowed to apologize for screwing up at any point, which created this very warm, supportive atmosphere. And I think it really helped. Very good. Because there's, so raids, for people who don't play Destiny 2 and don't know, there's a, there actually is a lot of teamwork and puzzle solving involved. Like, you have to do actions at the same time as multiple other people on your team, be in certain locations at the same time, or be trading off like a rally race or like playing, capture the flag, or games where you really need to coordinate with one another

in order to achieve certain ends in the game. And so Cato would be like commanding out certain direction. that each of us needed to have and we would all be following directions, but also all needing to be very forgiving of one another if we screwed up any one of our pieces that we needed to perform. But each of us screwed up an equal amount of times. And so that was really great. And when we succeeded, it felt amazing. It's such a, it's like a team building exercise. Yeah. It totally is. Yeah. It was incredible. Oh, man. Okay. So Maddie, I think that, okay, if you want some, some, some advice. Like for the next, if you want to do another. raid. I do. Something you could try that will be really intense and I think really fun is going in with a group of people and nobody knows what to do. That would be very different. So what Kirk and I did back in the day, Kirk might disagree. He looks like he's better to disagree. But let me just say. No, no, I just, I think this is really interesting. So Kirk and I, so way back in the night, Destiny 1, Vault of Glass days and like Croix and the Orix one, uh, nights, whatever, Kingsfall.

So what we used to do, we had a group of people and we were all hardcore into Destiny. And, we would do the raids completely blind. So as soon as they came out, we would all find a time to get together, and we would jump on, and we would just stumble our way through the puzzles. Yeah, for hours. And there would be points

where we'd be playing for six, seven, eight hours, and we were like, guys, we got to call it, we got to come back tomorrow and try harder, try again on the next, and like try with the fresh, fresh eyes or whatever. And it was just grueling and exhilarating, and like one of the most satisfying things ever is like to figure out the puzzle as a group of six.

because some of them are so esoteric and obscure to figure out. And, like, you really have to, like, know what the game is expecting you to do. And it was just so satisfying by the end of it. It's something I will never be able to do again now that I have a child and don't have that many hours to spare. But, like, back then, back when we could do it. Well, I don't have a kid. I'm good. I could do it.

Right. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. I think if you go in with a group of, like, your good friends and, like, none of you have done a raid before, you, that specific way before, you will really enjoy it yourselves. Yeah, I think so too. But I don't know, Kirk, do you think that's a good idea? Yeah, I think that it's funny, you say that you'll never do it again

because you have a daughter, but I think that also, it's just because it's harder to do that in the way that we did it back then because the game is different and so many people are different. I think it's just hard. It's hard for me to imagine

having that experience without a lot of stars aligning. Partly, you need to have everyone be on the same level. Like really the same frequency. Like it has to be like, it's very hard, or I've at least found, and it's probably partly that we play with professional games journalists and people who are, or people who take the game very seriously. But it was always really hard to get six people, six entire people, where not one person

in the group was half impatient. Two thirds inpatient, right. They have to be entirely patient people who don't care. Because even one person getting impatient, they'll get on, they'll get on, they get on Reddit or they go somewhere and they're like, I'm just going to look at a guide. And there's this feeling of like, now that the game is just people aggressively go at it and they beat the raid within a few hours. And then everything is mapped out. And there's like a master thread on the subreddit explaining everything. You just, that's just always there where it felt to me at

least when we were first playing the vault of glass, like way back in whatever, 2014. That just kind of wasn't in my head as much. Pioneers. I was just playing and we were just playing together. And it was a thing that I don't think is possible to recapture, I guess. Well, we also had a super chill group back then, I will say. And like, we were all really on the same wave on the phone. And it came to like, okay, we're going to do this blind. Like, no matter what, like, it might be frustrating sometimes.

So, yeah, it's kind of about finding the right group. Yeah, I agree. I just feel like I've really struck gold with this group of people. So I'm just going to play games with them, I guess. You guys should do it. Oh, man, you're in for a treat. So the Dreaming City raid is really good. I don't even remember.

I don't know if I've done all of the newer raids since then. Dreamy City is cool. Leviathan is a little more approach. in some ways. What was your favorite thing? Maddie, what was your favorite part of the raid that you did? I mean, I really loved solving the puzzles, like I said, even though Cato told us the answers, it was still like figuring out how to actually execute them. It felt like a puzzle as well. But there's also navigating the sewers, which I'm sure you guys had to do. And that was just like freaking hilarious. Like there's this moment where we all had to like crouch walk on this one pipe. And like watching the destiny models crouch rock on the pipe was, we were all killing ourselves laughing at that.

the fans, there's the one place where the fans blow you into the wall and kill you if they turn on and you have to run up and hit his switch and turn them off like at the exact time. Yeah, there's fans every, there's fans like all over the Leviathan raid. It's a lot of fans. I think that like the cabal sweat a lot of so they need a lot of ventilation or something. I guess and they need to take a lot of bats. Like there's a lot of baths. A lot of hygiene. Yeah. You can understand. Yeah. I don't know. The look of the Leviathan raid is very cool as well. It's very striking. Very gold. It looks like a Gucci bag. It's. It's, it's. It's, it's a looky bag. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's amazing. I don't know. I just talked about and really enjoyed it. And I didn't think, I didn't think it was going to be worth it, but I can't recommend it enough. And I feel very lucky that I, like, stumbled into a group of people who happened to start playing Destiny 2 at the same time that I am. Yeah, yeah, that's the most important thing. Similar level, similar headspace. I almost feel like I'm bragging because I've achieved the impossible, and I think that this is very rare and strange. So I'm just describing a cool thing I get to do that almost no one else does. So, yay, for me. No, it's awesome.

you're you continually playing and talking about destiny. Oh yeah, it's also part of an elaborate joke that I'm playing on the two of you because we, the three of us, never achieved this when you two were playing Destiny two last year. That's true. That's true. And I've just time delayed it for a really long time again as a joke on you two. So I hope you guys are liking that. Well, when Beyond Like comes out, I'm certainly going to jump back in.

I don't know how long I'll stay, but the three of us will certainly have opportunities to play together. So I'm excited for that. I'm excited for the new stuff. I'm excited for the new classes and stuff. But yeah, Destiny is, it sure is a video game. It sure is. It's fine. It's a perfectly fine game.

Maddie, fun piece of trivia is back in the day in Destiny 1. The raids occupied this different, like, part of the world almost. Like, you would go in, none of the enemies would have experience or drop endgrams or anything. There would be no talking whatsoever from the game, like, not a word of talking at all in the entire raid. It was like, it was like this different, like, phase of reality. It was like you entered a different dimension when you know it's a rate. It was so strange and cool and interesting.

And yeah, when they bring back Fault of Glass, which they're going to do at some point, I think that'll be a treat to jump into again at some point as well. Get a Fate Bringer. You can finally get a Fate Bringer, Jason. Oh, man, yeah, I never did. There was this legendary weapon that everybody had that was awesome called the Fate Bringer, and I, like, happened to never get one, which is so sad. The greatest gaming tragedy.

Super tragic. Okay, cool. Well, that is it for this week's episode. Once again, big thanks to everybody out there. who is supporting the show. Big thanks to everybody who listens to the show, who shares the show with your friends, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Kirk, Maddie, see you guys next week. All right, see you both next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network.

And if you like our show, we hope you'll head over to maximum fun.org slash join and consider becoming a member. Doing so help support us and gets you access to an exclusive triple-click episode each month. Find us online at triple-clickpodcast.com, on Twitter at triple-clickpod, and send email to triple-click at maximum fun.org. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org.

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