Triple Click - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Is Still Magic

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Maddy, Jason, and Kirk whip out their ocarinas for a trip to the past in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the 1998 masterpiece that set a new bar for 3D video games. They talk about how it holds up in 2025, how it set a blueprint for Breath of the Wild, and how Link got adult clothes after seven years in cryostasis.One More Thing:Kirk: Process: A Novel (Matthew Seiji Burns)Maddy: KPop Demon Hunters (2025)Jason: Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)LINKS:Featuring soundtrack excerpts from Ocarina of Time composed by Koji KondoTriple Click’s Link to the Past Episode: https://maximumfun.org/episodes/triple-click/triple-click-classics-zelda-a-link-to-the-past/Kirk’s Strong Songs episodes about The Legend of Zelda: https://strongsongspodcast.com/blogs/episodes/the-music-of-the-legend-of-zeldaAnd a Zelda bonus: https://strongsongspodcast.com/blogs/episodes/s05-bonus-a-little-extra-zeldaAnd Tears of the Kingdom: https://strongsongspodcast.com/blogs/episodes/s05e08-the-music-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdomSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinAll-New Triple Click Merch!! https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Link, hey, listen, Link, hey, listen, hey, listen. There's a new episode of Triple Click. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we are talking about the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, a game about a spider exterminator who just happens to save the world. I'm Jason Trier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hello. Hello. It's a us again. Hello. Did it again. It was us pulling out our adult wallets for another episode of Triple Click. What about you?

You got my Giants wallet right here. Oh, hey, if you out there have a Giants wallet, you should take some rupees out and use them to support our podcast. Throw some gold scultzula tokens, aren't we? We are a listener-supported podcast here at Triple Click. We don't have advertisements. We are able to keep this show going through all of our lovely listeners who make it happen. and you can do that by joining our network. Go to maximum fun.org slash join.

Become a triple-click subscriber, supporter, member. And in addition to making the show possible, you also get bonus episodes every single month, including the full version of Triple Click Live, which we just ran a couple of weeks ago and a massive backrock full of other cool bonus stuff where we talk about games and depth. We talk about movies.

We talk about TV shows. And it's a lot of fun. So become a member today and go to maximum fun.org slash join. All right. We've got much to discuss this week. Maddie, what are we talking about today? We are talking about a game we all played called The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, which we could have just played this anyway,

but we had a very specific reason for playing it, which I will briefly explain. And it is this. Every year we do a series of predictions. each of the three of us predicts something we think will happen in the following year. We do 10 of them actually. And only one of us can win. And this past year it was me. And the terms of that annual bet are that that winner gets to pick a video game that all three of us are going to play on the show and talk about.

And I chose Ocourine of Time because I love this game. And also because I thought we'd all like it. I figured we'd just all have a great time playing this one. And hopefully I'm right about that. have had a wonderful time playing this. This is a third time through playing it for me after playing it on the GameCube when I was pretty young and then playing the 3DS version in 2011 when it came out and then now I am again playing the 3DS version which I do think is quite good. We are only talking about the beginning of the game today. We all played up to the Temple of Time. This is a game

that kind of has two major sections story-wise. You start off as a child, young, little baby link. He's like age nine or ten, and he's running around Hyrule Field with his own little baby animations. And then we played up to this magical time travel, sleeping beauty experience that he undergoes in the Temple of Time where he's asleep for seven years. And then he becomes an adult. And there's a whole other rest of the game after that.

But we're not going to talk about that. Quite yet. We're just talking about Young Link. I've had a really good time playing this, but I want to hear from the two of you first. Kirk, what have you been your experiences playing Ocreen of Time in the past? And what do you think about returning to it now? I have played chunks of this game, and I've never really just sat down and played it all the way through, which is a common experience for me with these older Zelda games because I did not have video game consoles growing up as a kid. but I coveted my friends' consoles, and I especially coveted this game. This was one of the games that I was most envious of as a kid, watching my friends play it on their Nintendo 64. The area in between Kokiri Forest and Hyrule Field,

there's this bridge. It's my favorite area of the game. It's just this bridge with mist everywhere, and those little particles that float through the air in the forest. They're just little light particles. They're not quite fairies, even though there are also fairies. Man, every time I see that bridge, I think of the magical possibility that this game inspired in me as a kid.

I just, there's something about leaving the forest, and you're not quite out yet. You have this bridge that you have to cross, and the bridge is this mystical, mist-covered pathway. I don't know, it's like the path to Avalon or something. It's just magical to me, and it still is playing it all these years later. It really connects with that child, that dreamed of what video games could be.

So I really wished that I could just sit down and get lost in this game as a kid, and I never really was able to. And then played it a few times. I was a little bit older, and I played it on GameCube, I think, because I had a roommate with a GameCube. That was also when I played a big chunk of Wind Waker. Amazing game. Could have easily chosen that one, but not.

Yeah, a great game. And I got up to Adult Link, but I didn't get that far. I know how it ends. because I think I've read critical essays about the ending and about this game's approach to time and music. And then I played through the beginning parts again on 3DS. So the child era, the child chapters that we just played. But I've never really just sat down and played it all the way through like a Zelda game, which I am, of course, doing now.

And, man, it's great. What a great game. I have been loving and I'm very excited to talk about it. Jason, how about you? Yeah, man, what a fascinating game to play in the post Breath of the Wild era of Zelda. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't play this much as a kid because I got a PlayStation instead of an N64 when I was growing up. So I came to it a little bit later.

But I did play hundreds of times or dozens of times at least link to the past and Link's Awakening, which are kind of my templates or my kind of knowing these Zelda games by heart games. And so it's interesting, it's always been interesting playing O'Rean of Time later with that in mind because there's a lot just kind of, of lineage there, especially from Link's Awakening. And it's really interesting to see how many ideas Link's Awakening brought to the table. For example, the worst part of O'Carina of Time is an owl who won't shut up. And that Al originated in Link's Awakening. But also, but a lot of other stuff, Malin and Talon came.

came up through Link's Awakening. That one mini boss in Jabba, Jabu, where it's like running in a circle and you have to hit it in the back. That is a boss inspired by, heavily inspired by a mini boss from Link's Awakening. So there's a lot of stuff like that, which is really interesting because Link's Awakening was kind of like a Game Boy spin-off type thing. But I digress. Anyway, playing Okaryan of the time today is a really cool experience.

It's aged really well in some ways and hasn't aged well. in others. One thing that was driving me crazy was trying to aim the boomerang by not being able to see where it's actually aiming. You just have to aim Link's head in a certain direction. It's sort of right ear. Yeah, his right ear. You have to just line it up just right. Have you been moving the 3DS around and using the motion controls at all? Because I have been doing that and my wife has only occasionally made fun of me for just pointing it at the ceiling while I'm aiming the hook shot at various things. It's, it looks great. I look really cool while I'm playing this game. But in many ways, it has age at all. I mean, the music still holds up. It still looks pretty good for an

N64 game especially. I mean, the 3DS has revised graphics and that's the version I'm playing. So that version especially looks pretty good today. The combat still feels generally good. Z targeting. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but once you get in the rhythm of it with the 3DS controls, I think it feels pretty good still. The dungeons are still a delight. The dialogue is still a delight. There's a lot to love about it even playing it today. But the thing that really struck me was like walking into Hyrule Field and seeing that open world and walking around a little bit and just seeing how empty everything is and comparing that to the modern day Zelda games. Because in 1998, just the idea of being able to explore this massive 3D space and you see Death Mountain in the distance and that's actually

a dungeon you can go visit or that's actually a location you can go visit um it was so revolutionary at the time i say that's not having played it back then but just being aware of it um but then we get to breath of the wild and it's kind of like taking that and and expanding it a hundredfold that it's really interesting to go back and look at that it's kind of it feels very much like a blueprint playing it today which is cool it's a cool experience it's cool to revisit now um but overall i mean i've been having a really good time with it i mean it's a phenomenal video video game both for its time and also to revisit today, I would say. Yeah.

To talk about that scale question a little bit that you mentioned, Jason. I think that this game does a lot of creative work to make itself feel big, to make the scale feel large, even when it's not. One thing that comes to mind is these first person cinematic sequences. The opening of the game from Navi's point of view is one where Navi is flying around the forest, this little village and crashing into things that. There is all this really creative camera work. And then after you finish, Dodongo Cavern, the owl, is helpful for the first time in the whole game.

And pixels link up and carries him back down to the bottom of Death Mountain. And there's this just wonderful sequence where the camera kind of flies into the air and you really, you just get this sense of the sweep and the scope of this vast world. And it's so exciting. And again, it's something as a kid that just really struck me seeing those sequences. I mean, it made me feel like I was in this large world, and I didn't think at all about how empty Hyrule Field was. It's actually very similar to what I mentioned earlier, that interstitial screen, that one bridge in between Cochuri Forest and Hyrol Field. It just, it's one room. It's not very big, but it feels, it makes the world feel bigger because you have to pass through this liminal space, and there are things that happen on the bridge.

you know, it's this gateway between childhood and the world outside. So I think they're very creative about making the world feel bigger than it is. Yeah. And I think no matter what, you're going to hit the day night cycle when you walk across Hyrule Field because it takes you just long enough. So the first time you do that, you're probably going to run into some of the creepy undead beings that walk around in this game. And that's kind of like a preview for the evil that is encroaching upon high. Hyrule. Obviously, it gets way worse than you get that amazing moment in Temple of Time as adult length that we can talk about next time where you walk out and you get to see how different Hyrule is. And that matters because you're going to explore it so much as child link. You're going to

walk over those same pass over and over and you're going to talk to the same NPCs and get to know where every single person lives and is because there's just a lot of, oh, going from place to place. But that sense of timing, the other point in the game, this part of the game that we're talking about that I really like is the moment when Zelda gets captured by Gannendorf and you get stopped by that cutscene outside of Hyrol Castle. Well, she escapes Gannendorf. It's true. She technically does. Well, we don't know what happens to her yet. Well, she's with her bodyguard on the horse and Gannendorf is chasing her.

There's that moment though. And she's got an arm. She's like NFL quarterback. Yeah, she's really got for that. Peyton Manning. Tom Brady over here. Tossing them. But that always happens at night.

It always happens at night. And it's so cool. Like, for me at least, like as I was walking up to the castle to experience that cutscene, it just so happened to already be nighttime. And then you get to start seeing the rain coming down because this is a big dramatic moment. Gannendorf's really scary. So it has to be nighttime when this unfolds. And I can only assume that if it's not nighttime when you walk back to High Real

Castle, it either doesn't happen or they just make sure it's night the next time you see it. It switches. It just switches to it. Yeah, I went into the day and the drawbridge is up no matter what and there's kind of just dark clouds in the sky. So it becomes dark, but it's not night, but it becomes just darkened and dramatic. Yeah. I really like those touches because there are another thing that make the game feel big and almost out of your control where sometimes like the experience itself just zooms out and is like, no, something. going to happen to you and you're going to lose control. That also makes the game feel really cool like a movie. I mean, these are all things that when I was younger, I was extremely impressed by. But even as an adult, I'm like, this is a pretty cool move. Like, it's, it's not as open-worldy as you might think it is at first. If you're, me as a kid, think it gets cool that you could just go anywhere in any order, you kind of can. But as an adult, I'm also still impressed by how open it feels. And

even though Hyrule Field is small, it still feels big in certain ways. Yeah, this is a year, by the way, after, Ocarina Time came about a year after Final Fantasy 7 for context here. And Final Fantasy 7, of course, had these humongous cinematics and just constant movie-like movies inside of your video game. Oh, no, they put some movies inside of our game. So that was a common trend at this point by 1998 by the time, Ocarina. Well, I would say the other piece of historical context,

to keep in mind is that Half-Life came out this year. And while that was on PC, that was the game that I was playing. And that was a very different approach to cinematic storytelling, where you stayed in person and the movie happened around you. Right. It feels a little bit more modern, I guess, now. But it was definitely like a lot of different, very creative people were experimenting with this type of storytelling in video games.

But the big difference between Ocarina and a lot of other console games, especially that played around in cinematics and storytelling. And that front is that Ocarina really feels. felt like you could go anywhere. It felt like it gave you this open world that you could just explore and just wander and do side quests and find fun things to do. Even if you weren't following along with the story, whereas, I don't know, Final Fantasy 7 for comparison is a lot more linear. There is a little bit more. There is an open world, an open world map, but a lot of that is just kind of like you have to just kind of look at metaphorical versions of towns and then go

into them and explore it. It doesn't feel like an open world. It feels like a metaphor. Half-life is a lot more linear, of course. So it's a very different type of kind of cinematic storytelling game because you look at something like Zelda running away, like escaping on her horse, and you realize you could go and chase her and try to find her if you wanted to. You won't, but you could do that, which I think is a cool, a cool just kind of play on that.

It feels very different. When you're seeing these kind of cinematic angles of everything, it's also all areas you can see and explore and jump around. Yeah, it's partly the feeling that the game inspires that we're talking about here. It's a bit of an illusion, some smoke and mirrors to make you think that you could chase after Zelda and see where she went. But it's also the design of the game world. It's remarkably different from something like Half-Life or Final Fantasy 7 or any other games, really. It's this distinct Zelda thing where very little of the game world is wasted, and there are secrets and surprises and hidden challenges hidden all over the place.

something I'm doing differently this time is just really engaging with all the side quests and the hidden challenges, trying to get the heart pieces, trying to find gold skullulas wherever I can. And I mean, there's so much cool stuff in this game. And that stuff really is nonlinear. You can do it in whatever order you want. There are things you can only do as a child, things you can only do as an adult. But once you start really digging around and exploring, you know, getting bugs in a jar and going and finding. areas of soft soil to dump the bugs in, to get the sculptula to come out, to plant the seeds so that when you grow up there's a plant there. There are so many little challenges like this

that are technically optional that I'd never done before, just because I kind of would mainline the story when I played this game. And that's really where the game starts to feel big to me. It starts to feel the more I do it, the more it's this honeycombed, layered, really complex little interlocking world that has so much possibility in it. So I want to talk a little bit about Link to the Past because a lot of Aquarina is built on the structure of Link to the Past. Link to the Pest is the first Zelda game to introduce what became the Zelda formula for about two decades until Breath of the Wild, which is... And a game that we have played and talked about on this show. That's true.

We did. There is an episode about it that you can go listen to if you want to hear more about it. And the way Link to the Past works is you're dropped into this world. You go get a sword and a shield. And then you ultimately have to get these three things, their pendants, and in the, and, you ultimately. link to the past, which get you to the master sword, which unlocks the second part of the game. Instead of changing from a child to adult, you're going from the light world to the dark world. And then instead of switching back and forth between child and adult link, you're switching back and forth between the light world and the dark world.

To solve puzzles, to explore dungeons, to collect new items, et cetera, et cetera. All throughout the game, you're finding tons of side stuff, tons of optional stuff that is oftentimes locked behind some sort of item gate, some sort of rocks that you have to blow up with bombs. or a pole that you have to reach with your hookshot. So very similar structure to length of the past. The biggest difference, of course, is that Aquarina of Time is in 3D, which I think adds, has some pros and cons, at least for me, for my personal taste. I think the pro is that it's beautiful looking and it's cool, and it just feels awesome to be exploring a 3D world.

I think the graphics in Link to the Past have aged much better, because I think in general, 2D sprites look a lot better than kind of polygonal blocking 3D, but that's a personal taste thing. I think the downside, at least for me or the drawback for me, when looking at Ocarina versus Link to the Pass, is that it feels like everything takes a lot longer in the 3D space than it does in Link to the Pass. And Link to the Past, there's no horse because you don't need to get a horse because you can just explore the world really quickly. You move through this two-dimensional space pretty rapidly, and you can even get these Pegasus booths that let you run through them so you can really blaze through from place to place.

And so doing the side stuff in Link to the Pass is a lot easier and a lot smoother. You can do it a lot more quickly. Ocarina, it takes a lot longer. It takes a lot longer to walk through Hyrule Field. Even just getting from like the Lost Forest to Hyrule Castle takes a lot longer than it does to go from a few, a few screens in Link to the Past, which I mean, I think it can have some benefits. It can give you kind of a meditative state. You can really sit there and just kind of soak it in, enjoy it. the death stranding after night.

Yeah, yeah, which, but like for someone like me, if I want to do side quests and stuff, I'm a lot more incentivized to do them in some, in a smaller space that is going to take much less time and feel much less tedious. So when I'm playing Ocarina now, I'm kind of like, I don't really feel compelled to go and do the mask trading quest or like, collect all the sculptures because it feels a lot more tedious to me than it does in length of the past. So if and when I keep playing through Ocarina and play through. the adult section, I'm probably just going to stick to like the main stuff, the main dungeons and whatnot, which I'm having a lot of fun with, just because the backtracking is, is so much more, uh, takes so much longer in the 3D space. Um, but that's that, all that said, one more really

thing that I, one more thing I really noticed about playing this 3D Zelda, um, especially in comparison to the past is that like the innovations that come with it are just so brilliant. This concept of Z targeting. That had never existed as far as I know before Ocarina of time. This that you could lock onto an enemy and then you would, as long as you're holding down that button, you're only attacking that enemy and you could focus on them and your arrows and your slingshot automatically hits them. I mean, it was such a brilliant concept and such a smart way of navigating the 3D space. And then on top of that, like having you automatically jump, if you're like a contact sensitive, like you jump, you try to move past a block or something and

there's another block nearby. You automatically jump it. All that stuff is really smart and just brought so much innovation to the table back in 1998. A lot of stuff that like we take for granted today, especially if you play Mario 64 these days, the camera just hates you the entire time. And playing LinkedIn of the past is such a refreshing change from that because the camera is just so much better. They really, in those two years between Mario 64 and Aquarina, they really figured out how to get a good 3D camera working, which is pretty impressive. Yeah. I mean, I think it's one of the things that playing it in the modern day, obviously, the first hour so that I was playing this, I was like, oh, it'd be really nice if I just had a twin stick camera. Like, I kept putting my thumb

down as though there was a joystick on the 3DS that doesn't exist and being like, oh, it'd be really cool if I could look around. But eventually your brain just gets over it. You get really into the Z targeting and you move on. And also, I agree, you accept how clever it is. And also just by having 3D dungeons, you can do so many different kinds of environmental puzzle design, some of which are very frustrating, and some of which I think are really fun. So I will say I really like Dodongos Cavern, and I also like all the Goron City stuff that leads up to it, in part because it's multiple levels. There's also like a water temple when you're adult length that I think is kind of cool for the same reason that's like a multi-level structure. And that's something that a 3D game can really take advantage

of in the way that a link to the past style dungeon design. It's not to say those dungeons aren't fun, but Ocarina can really show the scale of, oh, this is how big this city is. There's the Goron that's rolling around and you have to figure out how to stop him. But when you first get there, you're like, okay, there's just so much going on. There's all these guys here. I'm overwhelmed and excited by this different culture that I'm experiencing as Link and who are these people.

And then you understand not only how to navigate it, but also how to use bombs in that world and that opens up more areas. I mean, this is like the classic stuff that I enjoy about Metroid games also is like exploring someplace, not really understanding how it works at first, but being excited and overwhelmed by all the different ways that other characters or NPCs are getting around. And then eventually by the end, you're like, oh, I can also get around an intriguing way. But by having it be 3D, you can have all these other things that happen and the scope and scale of it be totally different and more exciting. Or just. annoying if we're talking about Jaboo Jabu's belly, which I will go on record as saying I do not enjoy.

Yeah, it's a little rough. I mean, the fact that it all just looks so gross and like sickly and like samey. Everything I like about Dodongos Cavern is everything I dislike about Jabu Jabu's belly. These two are equally weighted in my mind on a perfect scale. Although the boom ring, getting a boomerang is pretty cool. Oh, yeah. Amazing. And cool boss, cool final boss in that attention. Yeah. Yeah, I was actually going to go all the way back to the great daycu tree as the first dungeon.

Oh, yeah, go for it. I think that there's a kind of very early puzzle in that dungeon that lays out some of what we're talking about. And that's the puzzle where you have to jump from the very top of the tree down into a spider web to break it, which is a logical leaf that you wouldn't necessarily make in 1998. I mean, I don't know since I didn't have to make it. but you know you can burn those spider webs as well using fire there are different ways to get through them and just thinking of it in terms of physics of just well what if i just climbed up to the top and then just jumped off and then hit it hard enough to break the spider web that's not necessarily what you

would think and it's a very 3d game way of thinking and actually remember that in a link between worlds there are at least one or two dungeons that do this same kind of thing where it's a top down game, but you are thinking in terms of the layers of the dungeon where I think it's the ice dungeon maybe where you drop stuff from the top and it goes down to the bottom and you're having to think in three dimensions even though you're looking from the top down.

So they kind of translated this way of thinking back into a 2D game, at least in that game. I don't know link to the past as well if they ever did that. But I just, I think that initial puzzle is a real eureka moment or it's a kind of, it's like one of those big

look, we're doing it in 3D moments that especially if you think about it in context and when this game came out, they were definitely designers at Nintendo thinking, okay, we're going to put this in here now so that we can acclimate people to the idea that you're going to have to start thinking this way. Yeah, LinkedIn has some similar stuff. You would like, a dungeon might be multi-level and you might have to push a block into a pit on one level and then it lands on the next level and then you use it to solve a puzzle by going downstairs and pushing it along the way.

So it was definitely there. The spider web aspect, I mean, that kind of just like sends it up to 11. It's really just kind of exponentially bigger and better and cooler. And that part in particular is awesome because you're kind of like, you have this thought process. If you've never seen it before or played it before, you're looking down and you're like, wait a minute, this is a cliff. Am I supposed to jump here? Or like, am I going to fall? If I fall off, am I going to have to go all the way back up here?

And you look down and you see the spider web and you're like, hmm, wait a minute. I think I put like a heart or a rupee there too, just to kind of tempt you into jumping off the cliff. But you could also think of it as like, oh, I want to get this heart and then quickly move back before I fall off. That's true. But I do feel like the, especially the child sections of the game, I've continued playing the adult section. So I feel like confident making this comparison. These really encourage experimentation in the way that a child would by just being like, let me just see what happens. A lot of the puzzles are kind of oriented around that type of logic.

And there's also a really comprehensive hints system in this game that kind of tapers off in the adult section, but is very present in the child section of the game where if you're stuck, you can just walk up to these Sheka stones and get a very, very specific hint in the form of a quote unquote vision of the future that just shows you doing what the puzzle is. But also, if you just walk around a nearby town, that will often be somebody who's like, well, have you tried this? And it'll just be the character almost breaking the fourth wall and just telling you exactly what to do. So there's kind of the child like, just go ahead and try something and see what happens, aspect of environmental puzzle solving that is very often rewarded. And then also just there are many adults and teens around to help you in the way that it might be if you were a child and you were Link

and you were trying to get through these experiences. And that has always just felt like something about the game that still really holds up and kind of makes it not as necessary to use a guide. I mean, I did use a guide for some parts of this. But I do feel like the game is of a time when that was less easy to do. So it keeps a lot of that just baked in to the experience of like,

well, we don't want you to stop playing. So we want you to continue having fun. Even if you are nine years old like Link is and you, this game is still for you, even if you're that young. We still want you to like it. Yeah, I've liked that element of the game of just trusting it and going and talking to people and assuming that someone will probably tell me where I'm supposed to go. It makes me almost wish there was a way to turn off Navi just because I would really like to play the game.

Yeah, without not. And I actually just don't summon Navi when Navi's like, hey, hey, hey, because, you know. Yeah, I ignore her a lot. Navi will tell you what to do, and I don't really need that. I actually didn't know that you could get the Sheka Stones to just tell you what to do. I've never done that. I had never seen that. So I didn't know that was possible.

They just tell me the time when I hit them. Oh, there's the other kind of Sheka Stone that has like a little door in it that you can crawl through. There's one by your little house that you wake up in in the beginning of the game. And there's another one in the Temple of Time. It's a different kind of Sheka Stone. But yeah. I do remember this. I just haven't found that in this game.

Yeah. Yeah, I like going and just talking to people and then they say, hey, you know, like I heard Saria, went up this way. and then you can go find her. It actually reminds me of Sue Kodin too, of some of the puzzles in that game where you would just go and talk to people. And eventually someone would tell you what you need to know. You just have to kind of pay attention.

And I appreciate that the game does that. Navi, by the way, is way more annoying in the N64 version. You kind of toned her down for the 3DS remake because instead of just being like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, she's just like a little icon on the bottom screen and you press her to some of her. It's very easy to ignore her now.

In the N-S64 version, she's just screaming at you the entire time. I remember it was such a meme. Also, I want to call out the biggest UX fail in video game design history, probably an overstatement, but still, the fact that when the owl finishes his extremely long monologues. And then it says, do you want to hear that again? And the default is yes. Horrible. So upsetting. I remember whenever you watch like a speed run of Ocarina of time, like this is the hardest thing in the game.

It's because you say you're not hit. Yes. because it'll blow like 30 seconds probably off of your speed run time. It's a little ridiculous. And this is something, I think, in kind of critiques that would come later after like the Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword era when a lot of people were critiquing the kind of the structures and the constrainment of Zelda games. One of the big critiques is that it just holds your hand way too much.

And that was very much kind of withdrawal, like taken back, reversed for Brother of Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. But you can see that start to come with Navi because Link to the Past is really not quite as bad. There is, Link to the Past does have a map with like heavy markers of like where all the things that you have to go find are. So it's pretty easy to follow along and like it does give you guidance. But it's not, there isn't someone who's with you the whole time trying to get your attention so they can give you helpful hints and there isn't the owl, that friggin' owl.

Yeah, the owl is somehow weird. to give you unnecessary. I don't know if I could explain why, but it is worse. It's because it's so unnecessary. Like the whole game, you could get just as much out of it without an owl, just giving you long-winded unnecessary exposition because you configure most of that stuff out through context clues.

By the way, I have an important question for you guys. I had never thought about this until this play-through. If Link is frozen, like kind of in a cry- genetic, like, stasis for seven years. Magic sleep. How does he get eurics? Is like, is Sage Raru just like going and piercing his ears while he's like a cryogen? Somebody in the triple Discord shared a comic that somebody had drawn of Raru piercing link's ears. So yes, somebody has thought of this. I thought that was a really funny comic that somebody drew. I don't know who the credit is for the artist, but it's in the Discord right now and it made me really laugh yesterday.

Well, I mean, also, Link grew older and significantly more Chadley, and yet his clothing still fits. So, Rarro must have changed his clothes. So he just pierced his ears while he was. Yeah, he just gave him a full makeover and gave him the same outfit. So Raru is taking clothes off a child who is in deep sleep and putting new clothes on him. Okay, I mean, that's not to talk about this. Waiting every couple years. Did he change Link every time Link grew?

There's a lot of questions about the seven years. What I thought you were going to ask, Jason, and what I think about every time I play this game, is, does Link have a child's mind when he is an adult in this game? Right. Is this a big situation? Yeah. You see Tom Hanks from Big. Well, Link doesn't really have a mind because you're controlling it. You're kind of the mind of Link. Right.

And also, this game, I mean, this is not the only example of a link that is silent, but this link is sort of notably silent to a degree that also inspires a lot of jokes. where I, as the player, always interpret Link as speaking and we just don't know what he's saying. We don't get to hear it. And so as the player, we get to imagine what Link is responding with. But the way that that plays out in dialogue and conversation is that it seems as though he's never speaking. And everyone else talks constantly in this game to him, to each other, et cetera. And the result is really funny because it just seems like Link is just this strong, silent type or like kind of the perfect hymnbo who's just kind of bumbling.

around and other people are like, wow, Link, you're so dreamy. You solved another series of incredible problems. Which is why Link is your mind. The other thing that I noticed on this play through that I was like, what is going on here is after the stealth section of the beginning of the game, that awful stealth section, truly atrocious. I hated it so much. Because it's so stupid. It's like there's no way to really tell, especially that beginning part, unless you know by heart the exact root. There's no, the 3D space is designed in such a way. It's just bad. This was one of the things I looked up a guide for.

I tried to find a map and even that it's really hard to tell. Yeah. The second part, inside the castle, that part isn't as bad as the opening part at the first because that you have no real way of knowing like exactly where the guards can see you. Anyway, after all that stuff, Zelda is like, I think that man in there is bad. And you look through the window and you see Gannendorf. And it's never really explained why Gannendorf is in the castle. Like, what is he doing there? with her father because he's an emissary or something. Okay, so he's just like reping the Garido.

It's funny because I'm playing Tears of the Kingdom right now, and the whole backstory of that is a little bit similar where Ganendorf was an ally. So he was like a prince, you know, or a high prince or something. And then he's coming to the castle under auspices of like diplomacy. But of course, he secretly has a plan to rule the world. So I think I would assume that he was in an audience with the king or something. Got it.

But we never actually meet the king. No. Just scan and draft. And then, yeah, the other, you mentioned this, Mattie earlier, but another thought I had was that after you leave the temple of time, the entire, all of the castle town is just devastated. It's full of zombies. Amazing moment when you come out there and you, like, go up to try to talk to someone

and you realize it's a frigging, like, scary. Well, is it the same as the, it's not one of the ones who pop up in when you're a kid in the overworld. It's like a scarier. I forget which one is the read-ed. I think these are the rededs. Oh, no, it's, you find them as a kid in the graveyard and in a few different places. Right, but they're not the skeletons that pop up from.

No, they're not the stals. No, they're the ones. Yeah, the redos. Those are the truly terrifying ones. Anyway, yeah. They're really scary. You love to try to talk to someone. You realize it's read-ed.

Anyway, so then, but then you get to Kakariko Village and it's totally fine, which is just a fun little quirk that it's like, only Castle Town has been turned into this zombie apocalypse wasteland and other cities are fine. which is just interesting. Although Lonlan Ranch, I do really like the change over there where like before, in the before times with Lonlon Ranch, what's his name, Ingo? The guy who's like Iago or something. If it's Yago, that's a little on the nose.

But he's like kind of this surly like helping hand at the farm and he's constantly complaining about how Malin's dad is terrible at his job talent, I guess is his name. And there's like the perfect environment. storytelling smash cut where you walk up to La Nlaan Ranch and it's like Ingo's Ranch or whatever and you walk in and he's ruling it with an iron fist. I really enjoyed that as an adult. I was like, this is a great juxtaposition of how much can change in seven years because for whatever reason that was the second place I went to you after the castle. So it was all really hitting me. But yeah, Kakariko Village is like kind of fine, especially considering how close by they are.

Right. Very big short distance. bad, but we're sticking it out. The reeds didn't get them. They're chill. They're all good. It's good. I mean, they do have that big gate, and that helps probably. That's enough, apparently. I want to talk about the ocarina. So, obviously, central magical component of this game is just the fact that you have this musical instrument that you carry with you everywhere. And one of my favorite parts of the game is that I slowly learn the songs over the course of it. And they're just,

button presses, but you really feel like you're playing an instrument. It doesn't have very many notes. It's not very hard to learn each of the songs. But they get more complicated as time goes on. And the fact that you learn them and you don't have to keep looking up the sheet music always feels kind of magical to me. It's like I'm along with Link learning the songs. It's just one of my favorite parts of the game. But I don't know if you two like it. It occurs to me that it might be irritating to other people, but I mean, don't get me started. I am willing to get you started, Kirk. I'm ready to do it. I made a whole episode of strong songs about Zelda music and talked a lot about Akrona of time. And yeah, I mean, I love the score to this game in general. I think is just

absolutely wonderful. That high role field music is such a trip. There are so many beautiful themes that are all kind of not what you expect. And yeah, the Akrona as a central game mechanic is one of the coolest things. So what I think is so remarkable and is kind of tied to what you were saying, Maddie, that they have so many different melodies that you're able to keep in your head. And even if you don't remember which note is which, I find myself just using my ear to remember, okay, wait, how do I play, you know, Epona's theme, for example? Oh, right. Okay, well, that's, you know, whatever. I know what the notes are, and so then I sit and figure them out. A big part of that is that there are only four notes available on the ocarina. There's more available.

with the modifier keys, but the game only uses those four notes, plus the D is up the octave. So there's four notes plus an extra octave of the D. And I think that the specific four notes that are available are actually really interesting. Can you guys hear if I play a piano note? So it's a D, an F, an A, a B, and a D. Even if you just play those notes, it's like, that's Zelda. That's Zelda to me. Right.

What you just played is also a chime from Zelda. But you're just playing them all? A lot of the soundtrack is built out of these notes and out of the scale. And it's funny because it's all white keys on the piano. And a lot of the melodies are those white notes, which is just a C major scale. Is it all just in C?

It would be, except it's modal. So this is something that I would explain on strong songs and will not explain here. A mode is just where you take the notes of C major and then you start on D instead. And that's called D Dorian. It's a type of minor. There's a lot of Dorian and Zelda in general.

The song of time is D-Dorian. Or if you play F in the key of C, that's F-Lidion. Sauria's song is Lydian, like, super hard Lidian. It's F-Lidian, so that's like F with a sharp four. And it's just cool that they chose these four notes because it's just kind of neither fish nor foul. It's not a pentatonic scale. Like, it's almost a G-pentatonic scale, but it's not.

It has an F and a B-natural. but has a tritone in it, and in pentatonic scales don't have a tritone, that's kind of their whole thing. So as a result, all of the melodies just have to be a little bit more interesting, a little bit weirder than you would expect, I guess. And then that just makes them so much more interesting. Every single one of them is just a cool little jingle. And of course, you only play the first three or four notes of a piece of music. So then they can, you know, Koji Kondo can write a more elaborate piece of music that comes after you play the first three notes of the Sun song or the first three notes of Zelda's lullaby.

But you say that, but it's worth it's so striking that those first three or four notes are so recognizable and stand out so much that it's just like, oh, yes, of course, this is that. And that helps you remember them. It's extremely strong, like,

motific composition. Each piece has been written that way, and it's very, like, functional writing where whatever piece of music he's writing, it has to give you those first three notes. Zelda's lullaby is a great example. love this. It's wild. Like those three notes, like there's so much more to Zelda's lullaby than just those three notes. And then of course, Zelda's lullaby winds up turning up in every Zelda game. It's

this huge part of Tears of the Kingdom. It plays in all of these beautiful, like, clever ways that reflect what's going on in the story. Like when you find Zelda for the first time, when you find the light dragon, you hear just the first two notes of it. And then it becomes the dragon theme because she, like, can't remember who she is. Like, it is because these pieces of music that we're hearing in this game eventually become just part of the fabric of Zelda over the next 30 years, which is also incredibly cool. It's also reversed for Ballot of the Goddess in Skyward's Sword. Yes.

Yes. Of course, a very famous and an amazing little trick they did in that game. Is this the first game that has Zelda's lullaby in it? I don't think I realized that. I don't think that it is. My memory is that it is in one of the earlier games. I looked this up and talked about it in my Zelda episode. It's in link to the past.

Oh, okay. So it's more just that this is the game that takes a song you know and makes it into a magical totem that unlocks all of these other things in the world. Right, and has you play it over and over. I really think that's such a crucial part of the game is that you're constantly having to remember and play these melodies and they just become ingrained in your mind. And it's, I mean, it's just such a different thing.

And it's just the power of interactivity, like the power of play. It really does feel like you're playing a musical instrument. That side challenge to get the heart piece with the skull kids in the Lost Woods. Did the two of you do that one? I did. You basically have to mirror back to them these songs that they play. And if you keep doing it and you do three of them, then eventually they give you a heart piece. And I did the whole thing.

And they get really long and difficult. But over the course of it, it's all just those same four notes. You're just having to play them in a different order. And so you really like, it really feels like you're like getting better at the instrument and kind of matching them and doing a dueling banjos, you know, dueling Akarina's thing. And it's just a really awesome part of this game. Yeah, music has always been a big part of Zelda, but Aquina at Time is, I believe, the first game in the series where you actually have a musical instrument that you are playing by pressing buttons. Like, you are playing the notes.

Link to the past, you got a flute that could, like, summon a rooster to let you fast travel. Link has always been a musician. Yeah, but this is the first. Or you, the player, are playing stuff as far as I can remember. And that would be carried forward. In Wind Waker, you get your baton and you play songs of that. And then, of course, in Tears of the Kingdom, one of the very funny things in that game is that when he is cooking, he hums all these different melodies from all these different games. Like he'll hon, you know, Zelda's Lullaby.

Song of Storms or, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep, he hums Song of Storms. Yeah, which, by the way, speaking of great pieces of pieces. Oh, my God. When you walk into that windmill and that song plays, that's like pound for pound, possibly my favorite Zelda melody of all time. I think that's such a beautiful piece of amazing. It's pretty great, although I feel like I like Saria's song, but like Darunia loves Saria song, and that is one of the greatest cut scenes in the game.

No one will ever love it as much as he does all out. He loves Saria's song. It's just great. And that is also one of the good examples of just tiny animations showing Link's expression. expressiveness because he like has this moment when he kind of backs up as though he's a little freaked out by how Gerunia is dancing and it's just the funniest thing I've ever seen. You should be this and I hadn't noticed it when I played it. It's hilarious. It's so funny. He's like, okay, dude. It's so good. There's so many moments like that. Yeah. And Kirk, I think you were the one

talking about like Link's expression when he learns a new song on the Akrona and how he looks like his mind is completely blown. He's like, holy shit. It can play a B. It's so adorable. Yeah, I think that this is all worth noting because I was talking about the differences between 2D and 3D before. Yeah. This might be the most profound difference. It's like, suddenly you were seeing people's faces in a way you can never see in a 2D game. You're seeing their animations, their expressions. And that just brought so much character and humanity to a video game that like 2D could never do. So whatever you're you're kind of losing in terms of speed and efficiency and other kind of aspects of 2D, you're gaining so much of it in that stuff.

Like having link back away like that, I mean, you're never going to get that same level of touch in a 2D game. I think also for the time period, this game is remarkably elegant as a 3D game compared to a lot of other 3D games that were coming out at this point in the 90s. There was a lot of really janky, ugly stuff with big huge textures stretched across kind of awful-looking character models, especially the things you see a lot. lot. Like the back of Link's head, the cap that he's wearing, they look really beautiful. The character designs are striking. Nowadays, the faces look kind of silly, a little bit dated. But

the animations, the less is more approach to a lot of the character animation and character design and just world design. It's very elegant and really beautiful at times, even now, which a lot of games from 1998 and from the late 90s in general just are not. Like, they just look like poop. And this game doesn't. I think that that's actually a real mark in it. It's favor and shows how just how artful it was. Yeah, well, it didn't, it deliberately didn't try to make realistic looking people. It tried to make these kind of cartoon-y-looking people and just, like, set this art direction that would carry forth in many Zelda games from here. Not all of them. A lot of them tried new things. But the idea of having Zelda people not look like cartoons, not look like real

people really started in a big way here. And I think is what helps it age really well. Yeah. Although I still think, like to the past, link to the past, looks better to me like playing it today in a lot of ways. Gannon Dorf looks like a big weird triangle. Like his face looks a little like the animations on the horses look pretty. Like they kind of look like little, you know, marionettes like moving around. Like there are definitely things that do look dated that they just couldn't quite get there. But it's enough to make you really care about everybody.

And I mean, obviously I kept on playing and I feel like storywise we also stopped at a bit of a cliffhanger. Like at the end, when Link walks out and he's older and he sees all the zombies everywhere, like, I was like, I got to keep playing. Even though I know what happens. I was just having fun. I was just like, I got to see what Hyrule looks like now. Everything's going to be terrible. Well, we'll just have to keep playing and see what happens next. And where did Zelda go?

Oh, my God. What could she be doing? It seems like she must have escaped that terrifying horseback, right? Who is this mysterious, mysterious? And who's this guy named Sheik? Who is that guy? And why did Jason ask that question after Maddie's question? Yeah, that seemed like totally unrelated, like a complete non-sequitur.

That I don't know who that is. Also, I hope you've never played Smash Brothers before. I know, right? Yeah, so we'll keep playing this game and then we'll revisit it. But for now, let's take a break and come back with one more thing. Jackie Cachian, hi, and welcome to the maximum fun.org podcast, the Jackie and Laurie Show, we talk about stand-up comedy and how much we love it and how much it enrages us. We have a lot of experience and a lot of stories and a lot of time on our hands.

So check us out. It's one hour a week and we drop it every Wednesday on maxima fun.org. Hello, internet. I'm your husband host, Travis McElroy. And I'm your wife host, Teresa McElroy. And this is a promo for Schmaners. It's extraordinary etiquette. For ordinary occasions.

Every week, we're going to tell you about a bit of culture, a bit of of history, how etiquette still applies in the modern day, all that stuff. We also love to do biographies and histories of and, you know, general procedurals, how to do etiquette in today's society. So come check it out every Friday on maximum fun.org or wherever you find your podcasts. Manners Schmanners, get it? And we are back with one more thing. Kirk, why don't you go first?

Sure, I will go first. my one more thing is a book written by a friend of mine, a friend of mine and Jason's, Matthew Sagey Burns, who is probably best known to our listeners as the director and writer of Eliza, the Zach Tronics game. But he works at Zaktronix. Or he might be best known as a guy who guested on split screen one time like several years ago. Yes, he has guessed it. But I would say too. Mostly know him from that. He's guessed it on split screen like five times, not just one time. He is a regular guest. And like I said, a friend. So that is also a disclosure. here that I have biased in favor of this book. I really liked it. And I also like him. So I support

his creative endeavors. But I would say to gamers. He is known as a Zachtronics composer and writer and director of Eliza, which is a phenomenal game that would actually be really interesting to revisit now, a game all about AI and AI therapy that I think was really kind of just ahead of its time. It came out before all of this AI stuff and has a lot to say. Anyhow, this book, wow. This book is a trip. So process is just a fictional story about the world of tech and about an incredibly intense, misanthropic, messed up, dude. I mean, it is a book with a very challenging protagonist.

He's just an awful guy, really, but a fascinating one. And it presents, it views the whole world through his perspective in a way that I think is just fascinating. I really enjoyed this book and just. found it provocative and interesting and challenging and great. I read an E copy of this that Matthew sent a while ago, so I just read it on my Kindle. Though the book has been published in this format with like a ton of art. They hired this whole designer. So there's this really elaborate sort of physical version of it.

You can get, I think, a digital version as well. Or you could just read it on Kindle. I liked it just reading it. But the art is really wild and kind of, I think, underlines the vibe of this book, which is kind of like, I don't even know, really creepy dude worldview kind of a thing. This won't be for everybody. I think that's safe to say. It is a book, like I said, with a very challenging, very creepy, and very messed up protagonist.

That is on purpose. It is, I've talked to Matthew quite a bit about writing it, especially after finishing it. It was really fun to actually finish a book and then just get on the phone with the author and talk about what he was trying to do. And I appreciated that the book wasn't just a comedy about. about tech. It is funny. It's very funny at times, very darkly funny, and it is very critical of the world of tech. It's set in Seattle, and it's this character, his name is Lucas Aderson. The protagonist is just driven to be a tech visionary, but he's just not. He's very socially awkward. He's very self-sabotaging and self-defeating. He wants to be seen as a Steve Jobs, you know,

as a brilliant visionary of tech. But he just isn't. He's a smart guy who's just not really that great at anything. But then he keeps trying, he keeps working, and over the course of the story, he does eventually become a visionary of tech, I suppose. And that's kind of made clear from the beginning. The story is told somewhat non-linearly.

And he, you know, takes his horrible poisoned brain all the way to the top. And in so doing kind of is surrounded by so many different types of guys. so many different types of tech people. He works at so many different companies in so many different formats. It winds up being this really pitiless lens through which to view the entire world of tech and tech workers in somewhere like Seattle over the course of the 2000s. So that's kind of the narrative premise. And yeah, I mean, it is just it is a book with a protagonist who is so awful and yet so unself aware. that as you read it, you begin to understand the ways that he doesn't understand himself.

And I found that to be just a very interesting and compelling way to engage with a character. It's, you know, I compared it to Catcher in the Rye when I was reading it. That's because I'm not like, I haven't read all of the classics, but of the sort of great American novels or whatever that I've read, Holding Caulfield and Catcher in the Rye just seemed like the easiest comparison of another protagonist who is just this misanthropic turd kind of. kind of, but at the same time offers you a really interesting way to view the world. So I've just found this to be a remarkable book.

It wasn't like anything I've read in a really long time. And like I was saying earlier, starting to say earlier, I appreciated that it wasn't just a comedy. Matthew's a very funny writer. He wrote for a long time for Game Developer Magazine. He wrote a column that was always just kind of comedy, like humor column at the end. And it was very observational. It was very true to the, you know, the experience. of working at a game company.

It would be like a company memo regarding the coffee machine. And it would be this kind of thing that really just captured the kind of office space energy, like that kind of comedy or maybe Silicon Valley is a more modern comparison. And he's funny in his own way, but I would compare it to that just in terms of outright humor. I think he could have very easily written a book like that with that same tone. I think that it would be more forgettable and it would be a little bit less bold and a little bit less exciting. We're reading this by the end, I was really excited by it. just the fact that he took this huge swing that he wrote this really odious character

and really spent so much time in that guy's head. I just thought was remarkable. So it's very cool to see a friend take a shot like this, write a story like this. And I really just, I really enjoyed it. I was really glad I read it. So that is Process a novel written by Matthew, Sagey Burns, friend of the show, and his debut novel. So I really recommend people check it out. Cool.

Sounds good. I'll go next. I watched a movie this past weekend that I feel like has taken over a lot of my social media timelines. And I was like, what's the big deal? It's this movie. It's called K-pop Demon Hunters. And it's on Netflix. And it's an animated movie. It's for children. It's very simple. But the notable thing about this movie is that it is about a K-pop group. And the music is very good. And after I finished the movie, I immediately started reading articles about how they wrote the songs for this movie. And it's not just like, oh, one composer or one composing team. They enlisted a lot of people who write pop songs. And there are multiple composers, like over a dozen people writing different, you know, maybe two people wrote one song and two people wrote a different song. And the result actually feels like the landscape of modern pop music, which is really cool, as opposed to feeling like you're watching a movie musical.

And you're like, okay, this is, Alan Mankin's vibe and the songs are really going to sound like that guy's work. Love Alan Mankin. But you get what I'm saying. This movie really feels like it's written by a lot of different people in terms of the music. And that's really exciting and cool. And now I just want to listen to the soundtrack all the time. I would say that is the number one reason to recommend it.

But also it does also have a plot that's endearing. It's about this K-pop group, three young women. They're all also secretly demon hunters, just like the title says. And the demon world intersects with our world in ways that are mysterious and humans don't know about it. It has to be a secret. So they have these secret identities as demon hunters when they're not on stage singing. But then the demons make a demon boy band. And the boy band has all these really amazing songs that human beings are extremely taken with and they're losing their souls because of this.

And so we get to have like, you know, Battle of the bands-esque showdowns between this. demon band whose songs are predictably incredible and catchy and then also our heroines, one of whom a dun-t-da, it turns out she's part demon herself. Anyway, you can imagine where this is all going. It's fine. The plot is really doesn't have a lot going on. The devil went down to Georgia at K-pop edition. Exactly.

And the songs are so fun. And it's been such a hit with people that they're going to like make a TV show or something, which I think is good because not a lot happens in this. movie, but I feel like there's a lot of potential for more to happen. And so I'm like, maybe if they did a TV show that like explained more about the demon world and how it works, that could be really fun. But mostly just as a soundtrack, I strongly recommend this. It's really, really fun to listen to these songs and watch the attendant music video, which is called K-pop Demon Hunters. All right. Jason, it's your turn. What's your one more thing?

I went to the movies to see a Marvel flick, the new, the new MCU piece. called Fantastic Four First Steps. And that is a good movie, a solid movie. Between this and Thunderbolts, I feel like the MCU is at a pretty good year if you don't count Captain America. Which, I mean, I think, I don't think anyone. No one needs to count it. I didn't think one third. I actually forgot it came out until you said that.

So I was going to say. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say, it's not, I think everyone forgot about that movie. Harrison Ford was in it. I guess all the Disney Plus stuff, if you watched it. of those shows, the Daredevil show. No, I'd like to watch it. There's some other new shows.

I haven't watched any of them. There was like, yeah, a couple of those just came and went. Like, there was an Ironheart one that just like really came and went. That's right. Which is supposed to not be good. That did come and go. I don't think anyone, I don't think I saw one person mention that like, even in passing. I saw a friend talking about how it wasn't good.

That's all like up for you or two. Not good. Yeah, not too many of those. I just saw a headline like, the Vision series is finished filming and I was like, what? Great. Come on, man. Anyway, but Fantastic Four. I mean, those characters, everyone knows the Fantastic Four, I think,

because there have been so many, it tends to get it off the ground. There have been so many movies. Yeah, there have been so many of those movies. They're a fun gang. Pedro Pascal is in it. And most importantly, something I found very refreshing about this particular film is that there's no references to anything else. Like, this film is just Fantastic Four.

It's just their story. and set in this... It's like set in a separate world. Separate dimension. At the beginning of the film, it's like Universe, like 818 or whatever it is, which is different than the standard MCU one. Of course, there is a teaser at the end that is like Fantastic for a Real Return and it gives the classic post-credits Marvel teaser for a future thing.

But the movie itself is all standalone. You don't need to have seen any other films in the MCU. You don't need to know anything. It's set a couple years after the Fantastic... Four have already established themselves. So we're not getting an origin story here other than just kind of like a brief montage at the beginning. And so it's able to tell this one standalone story about the Fantastic Four.

And this, what happens is they're known as like the defenders of Earth. And everybody knows who they are. Everybody loves them. Their action figures, yeah, TV shows, etc. And this woman who is clad in silver, the silver surfer, appears on the, the planet and says Galactus is coming to destroy your planet and then she pieces out and the fantastic four have to figure out what to do. And the story is really cool. I think if you just watch the trailers, you don't really know much of the story, which I think is a good thing. It's

really interesting and fun to watch and unfold. It's very serious. It's a lot more serious than other MCU movies. There's still some fun like jokes and gags, but it's a lot less quippy than previous Marvel movies and the casting is really good. Pedro Bascala is amazing, as are all of the rest of the gang, the Fantastic Four. And yeah, it's just a solid movie. It's just a fun action movie to just go to the movies and watch without having to do any homework beforehand. I really enjoyed it.

And I, like, you don't need any comics knowledge because I didn't have any going into this. And yeah, just really enjoyed it. No MCU knowledge required. Just a fun movie, just a fun standalone movie. I don't know. What else can do you? you want from this world? And also, I think the last M-C-U movie until like Avengers or Spider-Man next year,

so last one in a while. But yeah, it's good. I really enjoyed it. They're like starting up the whole Victor von Doom thing. Yeah. With Dooms Day. Robert Henry Jr. returning. And Victor Von Doom, of course, is a fantastic four villains.

So I think the idea is that this is set a, get the first step. Maybe that's worth all the first steps. I guess it's about a baby or something, right? So we know, like, it's been very public that, yes, Robert Downer Jr. is coming back as actor doom and that the next Avengers is called Avengers Doom's Day. And that's like December of 2026. And they said they put out this weird teaser that had a bunch of chairs of like actor names on the back of them. And that included.

And there's like a bunch of X-Men in that movie. And included X-Men. The old X-Men. Yeah. And that included the Fantastic Four on it. And then also all the Thunderbolts and also all the old. characters that were like a it was like 40 names on there so we know that the fantastic four are going to be in avengers doomsday they were in the teaser at the end of thunderbolts as well yes yes they were

mentioned it was their ship like coming at the end of thunderbolts too yeah into the world of earth whatever the current earth none of that matters for this movie which is nice like this movie is a standalone movie it's a fun movie it's fun to watch it's fun to see the fantastic four working together and um taking on galactus and the Silver Surfer. And the performances are really great. The casting is really good. Like that I think is the most impressive part of the movie. It's the fantastic four.

Each of them just is a highlight in their own right. Well, notably, Ivan Mas Bachrack is playing the thing. Yes, he's great. There and from Andor, such a standout small performance in Andor. I love him. He's fantastic. But all of them are. All four of them are really great.

And yeah, just an enjoyable movie. Like, the fact, I mean, the fact that you're bringing up all the doomsday stuff and is all, we'll be important in the future, but does not matter one bit for this movie. Yeah, which is a relief. Yeah, I bring it up in the context of you talking about Avengers and what's coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we'll see what happens next year and how, like, what's going on. I mean, we could do a whole other episode where we talk about the MCU and it's woes and what's been going on there. The fact that we didn't even know that there's this iron art thing or care about that is kind of telling

about the state of the MCU, but between this and Thunderbolts, it feels like they've had just too strong, standalone solid movies that just came out. And as a fan, I appreciate it. So yeah, fantastic forward. Go see it. As we're seeing. Yeah, I've been hearing that overwhelmingly. So I think I might check it out myself. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I like a standalone movie that doesn't require me to know anything about it. Have you seen Thunderbolts yet, Maddie? Thunderbolts is good. I haven't. I'm waiting for it to come out on streaming, which I think it finally is as I'm saying.

It is. Yeah. Thunderbilt is good, but it is very much not a standalone movie. There are so many friggin' tie-ins to everything. That's okay. Unfortunately, for me, I've interacted with almost all the media necessary to understand it. Yeah, you know it. We're all MCU-pilled. So we'll understand it. I watched the Black Widow movie and everything else, all the other characters in there.

I've seen all their movies and shows. I'll be fine. But yeah, Fantastic Four. I love that they made that a standalone movie. That was a great idea. So glad to hear it. And with that, this episode, also standalone. It's over, folks. We're ending it. Ain't no post-credit scene either. We're just wrapping it up here. And with that, well, actually, we've mentioned our link to the past previous episode. We mentioned Matthew Burns previous episode. So I wouldn't say this is a lot of episode. You do need a lot of backstory and I do sometimes put a little stinger at the end of the episode. I guess I don't know what you're going to do. So, you know, I do feel though that if somebody just started here, they would be able to understand our dynamic and what's going on. And I think that's important that we're going to. That

we remain accessible in that way. Really, the MCU stole that from us. Yeah, we really, we really did that first in a lot of ways. I think you'll find that's true if you were to go back and check out all of the previous material that you don't have to. And I'm going to end this bit because it's time. The time has come. We'll see all of you next week. See you next week. Yeah, 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.

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.

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