Triple Click - The Many Kinds Of Boss Fights

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

What's your favorite video game boss fight? Kirk, Maddy, and Jason break down all the options with a brand new taxonomy of bosses, from The Preview to The Gimmick to The Final Exam. They talk about some of the most memorable boss fights in gaming history, like Metal Gear Solid 3's The End and Metroid's Ridley, then dissect what makes each one unique.One More Thing: Kirk: Elden Ring’s StoryMaddy: The AfterpartyJason: Triangle StrategyLinks:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/BOSS TYPESThe Preview - An early fight against a boss you won’t fight again until later. Variation: The Hunter Preview, see belowThe Roadblock - A difficulty spike boss that stops many people from playing the game entirely.Variation: The Skill-Check, a boss that’s hard on purpose to make sure you’re leveled up enough, aka Margit, Hornet. Variation II: The Sidestreet Roadblock, where it’s the hardest boss in the game but it’s optionalThe Gimmick - A boss fight that’s actually just a puzzle. You can possibly beat them straight-up, but there’s some trick that makes things easier. The Setpiece - A fight that’s really more of a long interactive cutscene with occasional combat Variation: The Giant - A Setpiece boss who is way bigger than you to the point that you can’t engage them with ordinary gameplay - you have to either focus on their feet or do platforming to get to their headThe Hunter - A boss fight where you have to hide from the boss, i.e. a stealth boss fight. Variation: The Hunter Preview - An unkillable version of the boss hunts you, but ultimately you wind up fighting itThe Final Exam - A boss that requires you to combine every skill/item/ability/party member you have to that point to beat them Variation: The Teambuilding Exercise - a Final Exam boss that cannot be beaten by a single person, aka an MMO raid boss Variation II: The Duel - No weapons, no abilities, just fists (Liquid vs Snake in MGS4 - the opposite of the Final Exam)The Pair - Oh no there are two bosses! Variation: The Mob - there are lots of enemies - common to From games, e.g. Renalla phase one or those old dudes in DS3, Watcher Knights in Hollow KnightThe Spitting Image - Surprise, the boss is you! (The mirror self in Control, the Mimic Tear, Shadow Link, Dark Samus)The Unfriendly Friend - The (often final) boss turns out to be someone you’ve been talking with. The Saga - A boss fight with multiple phases that keeps going and going. First you fight Sephiroth, then Safer Sephiroth, then… 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

If you find yourself struggling against the toughest, nastiest boss you've ever faced, you know what you need to do? Join a union. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we are talking about bosses and video games from the gimmicks to the set pieces to the final exams. We've come up with a whole bunch of categories for video game bosses. Let's get to it. I'm Jason Dreyer. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hey. Here we are. It's us again. Here we are. It's us again. I came back from San Francisco with a nasty cold, but unfortunately, I've tested negative for COVID twice.

Just a cold. So it's just a cold. Yeah. It still happens. Isn't that weird? It's not weird? Yeah. I actually, I think I might, I suspect I might have gotten it from my toddler before I even left for GDC.

Because it didn't really hit until after I got back. But my toddler had the sniffles as I was leaving. So just had a feeling. But anyway, we were back. I'm back in New York. GDC is over. We're all here, virtually not giving each other colds and sickness. And there's lots to discuss. If you would like to support a show and help us out in case we do catch colds or COVID or whatever else we might catch, you can become a member, a maximum fund member and support the fine network that our show is based on. We are entirely listener supported. We do not have ads, paid sponsors, anything like that. Just go to maximum fund.org slash join and become a member today. And if you do, you will get a bonus episode from us every single month. And we got some good ones.

We have a whole big archive full of them. We just did Beanscast, which is our bonus spoiler episode on the movie Die Hard, which was a lot of fun. Yeah, it's great video game starring John McLean. It's a cool cop. Great Metroidvania. It is a Metroidvania. Next month, I think it's safe to say we will be doing an episode on Horizon Forbidden West. It's true.

Yeah. So many beans in that game. You've got to be real careful not to drop any of those. It's a very bean-filling. A lot of beans in there. A couple more things up top before we get into the episode. One is that last week I mentioned a game about like unwilding the environment, like decolonizing the environment. Yeah, yeah.

And a bunch of people have pointed out that that game is called Terra Nill. So go check that out. T-E-R-R-A-N-I-L. Nice. Because I had said I forgot. the name of the episode. Another thing is in two weeks, we will be celebrating our 100th episode. We made it guys.

100. Wow. It's a big number. It is. Also our two-year anniversary. Yeah, roughly the same time. Which makes sense because we take two vacation weeks a year and so 52 weeks. So it makes sense.

Fair efficiency. It really works out. Two years, 100 episodes, we're killing it. So to celebrate, here's what we're going to be doing. We are going to be doing. We are going to be streaming the recording of our 100th episode live on Twitch on Tuesday, April 12th at 6 p.m. Eastern. Triple click pod is our Twitch handle, I believe. We'll put it up on Twitter or remind people.

We'll include all the details in the show notes. So yeah, check that out. You can watch us do our live episode. We'll have a few more details next week. And then one more thing before I throw it to Kirk to start the show is that for those of you who are curious and please. playing along with the video game Sweet Coden 2, which we are all playing as part of our bett deal for this year. We will be doing part two of that series on May 26th. So plenty of time, two months from now, May 26th. And we'll be playing up to the point where I don't want to

spoil it, but basically the Luca part. And you'll know it when you see it. The Luke of Light part. And you'll know it when you get that. I'm excited just basically. on that alone. Yeah, you'll know. I hope I get to play as Luca for the entire next two-thirds of the game. And then I just kill everyone I've recruited. I hope you guys, yeah, I hope you guys dig this next part of the game more than you dug the first part.

But we shall see. I bet I will. We shall see. It's been interesting. I've seen some mixed reactions in the Discord for sure. People are playing it for the first time. Some people are like, oh my God, this is a masterpiece. Some people are like, oh, my God, this is so infuriating.

It's been fun to read for sure. Yeah. And now, without further distraction, Kirk, what are we talking about today? Talking about boss fights. One of the best things about running our own company is that we're our own bosses. We never have to have boss fights anymore. That's true. That's not true if you play video games.

In video games, you're pretty often going up against some kind of boss. And we thought this might be a fun topic just to talk about, because it's such a pervasive part of video game design. For whatever reason, I think we'll get into maybe why. that even is. And also, of course, all three of us have been playing a lot of Eldon Ring lately, and that is a game punctuated by many, many, many, many boss fights. So we've all had bosses on the minds. I think it's because most game developers just have hellish work conditions, and they're like, man, I really want to kill my boss. And they just put it in the games.

That's how it started, and it's just carried on ever since then. So, you know, this is a pretty loose topic, but before we get started, I did come up with a few types of bosses with with help from my two co-hosts. A few different types, since I think anyone who's played a lot of video games knows there are various categories of a boss. You start fighting a boss and you start thinking, oh, this is this type of boss or that type of boss.

You figure out what kind of boss it is, gives you kind of a context for what you're doing. So here are the boss types, and we're going to just talk about these as we go. So first off, we have the preview. This is an early fight against a boss that you won't fight again until later. When people think about boss fights,

I think a lot of times they actually think about this type of boss fight because it's the boss fight that isn't actually a boss fight if that makes sense. The tease, the tease that you're probably going to die to. I feel like that's definitely a heavy characteristic of this, is that they're going to kill you. Yeah, that's sort of a version. Sometimes you're designed to die to it. I mean, of course, the example that you have here is there's a big spider

at the very beginning of Eldon Ring, but my go-to example is Ridley and Super Metroid, which is yet another fight that you're designed not to be able to win. But also, he can't beat you. either. It's like entirely scripted on both sides and just a setup so that you can meet him later on. And that just seems like a story classic in a lot of video games. All the from games do this. I have an intro boss that kills you. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, the from from thing is a little bit different from the JRP thing where in a from game,

I've learned to expect that. And actually starting Eldon Ring on New Game Plus, I didn't realize that the opening area of Eldon Ring is that same area that you warp to later using the magic key. Yeah, it's that like freestanding sort of... Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there are all the messages on the ground that say like avenged or like revenge or whatever because you get to finally kill the spider who gets you at the beginning. Yes, so I totally didn't get that the first time, just went over my head. And this time I was playing it and then I looked out at the view when you first come out

at the very beginning of the game and you're looking out on Stormvale Castle. And I was like, oh, I know where I am. I'm here. And oh, of course. Because I kind of just was like, oh, it's another one of these guys. guys and I killed them when I came back. NBD to this spider. Who cares?

Right. And then I went up to that building and I was like, oh, there's no boss here. There's kind of nothing here. I was sort of expecting there to be a fight because I didn't realize that it was the building that you started and the little chamber that you started at the beginning. So that's kind of one thing. But I actually don't like the JRP must lose boss fight. I think Lavas is this way in Chrono Trigger. That's the one I always think of, like the first time that you fight Lavas, you're supposed

to lose. because especially in JRPGs I always wind up throwing a lot of resources at them or like using a lot of healing items and then I realized partway into the fight that I'm supposed to lose and then that also causes a trust issue for me later where there are times where I'm like

oh so this is really hard I'm supposed to lose and I'm not actually like I'm supposed to be trying and then I die and like get a game over and I'm like oh what's hell I thought this was a must lose I always appreciate it when they make it clear that you're supposed to lose by making you do zero damage to the enemy then you're like okay Yes, that's true. That's a good workaround because when there's any ambiguity, I'm not sure really how to tell what they're trying to tell me.

Yes, so many JRPs do this. It's like a trope of the genre because the idea is that, oh, this character is too powerful for you now, but one day you'll be able to get strong enough to take him down and that's your hero's journey. Or in every Metroid game, some variation on it happens solely because Sammas is actually too powerful at the beginning of the game and she needs to go back down to level one. so the way they get around that is by having something defeat her utterly and just knock all of her powers scattered to the four wins. And it's the same deal. It's just as frustrating to be knocked down a peg in that way. But since it's scripted, I mean, I agree. It feels bad. It definitely feels bad if you're spending a lot of time in your head thinking, wow, this is so stressful.

This game's so hard right out of the gate. And then you're like, oh, never mind. No, it's not. It was tricking me. This was a joke. I don't like that. Yeah, I mean, it's a different experience in something like God of War II is another famous example, where you have all your shit at the beginning and then Zeus strikes you down and you lose all your stuff and have to get it all back.

That's like, that can be kind of frustrating, but that's, I'm okay with it. They call it an abilities, T-E-A-S-E, abilities. They tease you with all those abilities you're going to get later on. I don't know who came up with that one, but it's a term I've heard before. You know, Final Fantasy 7, does this count as a preview when you fight alongside Sephiroth? in that kind of early game flashback and you see how super powerful he is and you kind of know he's going to be a boss

but you're not actually fighting against him? I don't think that counts, but I do think the deeply homo erotic scene in Final Fantasy 7 remake where you run into Sephroth in the alley and you definitely can't beat him surely counts because he's truly just messing with you in that scene and it is kind of a fight but it's mostly just cloud having a panic attack.

That one feels much more like the preview. The preview of the guy. who you're going to meet later on. All right, so that's the preview. The next one is the roadblock, and this is a difficulty spike boss, like a notorious boss that sort of blocks a lot of players

from continuing. Some that I listed here, examples that come to mine are the Blood Starved Beast in Bloodbourne is a very famous example of this. I think that stopped a lot of people. And I think that Crayed was kind of this way for some people in Metroid dread as well.

I've seen a lot of people say that as well, which is sad because Metroid Dread is great. But also, Margut is, I know you have this under a variation, but I'm sure there are people who stop playing Eldon Ring at Margaret as well, just not understanding. So here's the thing. Okay, so there's a variation of this, and that's the skill check. And I think this is like a fine distinction between a roadblock and a skill check.

Because the idea of a skill check boss is a boss that's like a test to make sure that you have the equipment that you need, the abilities that you need to sort of make it through the next area. And I think that Margaret doesn't count as a roadblock because it's not just like a difficulty spike. He's there specifically, you know, with a purpose. And his purpose is, you can't come into this castle yet. Go do something else.

And you have to kind of understand that from the game because then you can just go and explore all of Limgrave and, like, level up a ton. And, like, you have to come back and get really powerful. And then you're kind of ready to go into the castle and, like, get into the meat of the next part of the game. So it feels intentional in a way that I would say from the same developers at from the Bloodstarved Beast,

does not. I think in Bloodborn, that's just like a hard fight. That's for anyone who doesn't play Bloodborn. You're kind of doing okay. You're getting your head around it. You've beaten a few bosses. You kind of make your way down to this creepy cathedral down in, I guess it's an old Yarnum, is that right? And you go into this cathedral and there's this creature there. And then next thing you know, you're in this enclosed space fighting this boss that's like a really fast-moving werewell-style beasts that also like sprays poison everywhere. And you have no way of dealing with poison except for these consumable items that are in limited supply.

And the whole fight is like way, way harder than anything you've done before. And I think that was just kind of a roadblock for a lot of people that didn't necessarily feel intentional. It just was like a lot of people were like, okay, this game isn't for me. Mm-hmm. Well, it's interesting, though, because I feel like Cray is actually secretly a skill check boss, though, because a lot of other bosses after him, are not harder, at least by my personal estimation.

I know we got to get into, this is where we get into tricky territory where we talk about what is and isn't difficult for each of us. Sure. But each of the other bosses are going to ask you to use the same skills that you use to defeat Cray, which is to say, dodging a lot, going ball mode a lot. Well, you actually can't get ball mode yet for CRED. You use that for other bosses.

Forget that. Using your missiles a lot and like, you know, beating whatever a boss shoots at you and then that refills your health and your missiles and learning like, oh, I get more missiles by shooting at these other smaller enemies. And as long as I dodge everything, I can actually either keep all my health intact by dodging or I can just keep shooting at these littler guys to get more health and missiles. And like, those are important skills that you have to learn. And also the fact that Crate has multiple phases prepares you emotionally for the fact that almost every major boss in Metroid Dread is also going to be multiple phases and they're

each going to have their own patterns that you have to learn each time. So I do say to people when they're like, okay, like I'm stuck on Craid. Like should I just stop here? I was like, maybe because there's going to be other bosses who are very similar to that guy, not literally similar, but emotionally similar. So like if this frustrates you now and you don't want to memorize some attack patterns, you're not going to have a good time by the time you get to Ravenbeek you're not going to have a good time with that guy you know it's true it's a fine

it's a really fine distinction like just because I don't know like most roadblock bosses are kind of a skill check as well I mean the Bloodsarf Beast you can make an argument for that as well being like well you're going to have to beat a lot of things like this yeah so I guess the question is if you're talking about a skill check or like a numbers check

because like there are bosses so here's a good example in destiny and Destiny 2, there are raid bosses who literally cannot be beaten unless you can do enough DPS, enough damage per second within a certain limited amount of time. So it's like no matter how good your skill is, if you don't have the gear, if you're not outputting enough damage, you're not going to beat him, as opposed to something where it was like, okay, like if you have the right skills, if you can do this and with enough teamwork, enough coordination, you can beat this boss. and I guess that would be more of like

well maybe not a crate maybe that's more of a market is maybe more market is more about like you have to be this level if you're really going to beat him or you have to be very patient there are people who beat Margaret with purely skilled but that's unusual yeah there's no such thing as really a numbers check in

the from games because skill can always trump everything but like I think that's more of like the difference between the check boss as opposed to the robot. I think that makes sense, yeah. And then I don't actually like the numbers check. Like it's always frustrated me in Destiny Raids when you're doing everything right

and you've got all your skills down and you just like can't do the damage you need to do because then you just feel like you're hitting your head against something that's numerically impossible where I really like how Frum Games make it. So if you're good enough, I mean, like I would never be able to beat Market at level zero with a club in no armor.

I just can't. But it is cool that I know that that's possible, I suppose. So the other sub-variation here is the side street roadblock, which is where the hardest bosses in a game are also optional. So you can go hit your head against just the toughest boss in the whole game, and you may even feel some obligation to do so, but they're not necessary for finishing the story or getting to the end

or seeing what happens to all the characters. There are some good ones of those in Final Fantasy games. Oh, yeah. That's true. That's a good, the weapons in FF7. Emeraldon, Ruby Weapon, and Osma, and FF9, and a lot of other classics. Yeah, the Valkyries in God of War 2018 are this way.

That final Valkyrie boss is mental difficult, but also like totally optional. I mean, those are so clearly delineated as optional. And I still felt like I had to do them. Like I kind of beat my head against that boss. Like even though I knew it was optional, I was like, well, technically this whole video game is optional. I could just go off the talk.

Wow, that's deep, man. But you know what I mean? I still kind of felt obliged to do it. Wow. Do you beat every boss in Elton Ring as well or no? I did, I think, yeah. Wow. I think I beat every boss.

Okay. There's probably some like whole hidden world that I don't know about. You know what I mean? Yeah, I feel like tomorrow someone will be like, I discovered it a whole new world. And we're like, oh, I guess there's seven more bosses in Eldon Ring. Okay. Interesting. I beat every major boss, but not every just like random catacomb and stuff.

That's true. There are probably some catacombs I missed. And most of the, there were a couple of catacombs bosses I skipped where they were straight up just bosses I'd already fought somewhere else. Well, sometimes it'll just be two versions. A lot of times. Oh, man, there was a moment in Eldraming. So you guys know that kind of creepy cat boss at the beginning,

the sword and the fire tale. Anyway, there's a moment I get to a catacomb and Kalid, and it's like that cat boss and then a second one. And I'm just like, no fucking way. And I just yope down there. Yeah, what if there were two cats? Yeah, there are a few variations of that fight. I like that guy.

When he stands up really tall and looms. Yeah. That was a fun design. I like how weird his face was. He looks like the bunny and Donnie Darko. He's a weird-looking cat. I'm kind of a maybe this, I'm sure I'm wrong about this, but it was not a from-boss design that I'd really seen before. A big weird statue automaton. Most of the enemies in the Leldon Ring are pretty familiar, but that one feels kind of different. All right. So moving along, we've got the gimmick. This is another fun one. So this is a boss fight that's actually just a puzzle. And you can maybe possibly be. them in the straight up like normal combat gameplay way, but there's some trick that makes things easier. And I listed a bunch of examples here, Psycho Mantis.

It's a bunch in From games, Rite card, Rinala's first phase. There's always one of these where you get some unique weapon that does like lightning damage and has no stat requirements to use it because you just use it to fight this one boss. Yeah, that demon souls like big Manta eagle thing. Yeah, there's a giant in Dark Souls 3. They always have that. So there's, you know, there's always just some sort of a trick. I also think maybe

does do fallout bosses count like from the original fallout where you can fight them but you can also talk your way past them if your stats are higher enough? Is that really a gimmick? That's maybe kind of a different thing. I don't know.

How do we factor in undertale to that? I feel like just opening up the idea of bosses where you could also not fight them introduces a whole other layer to this conversation. That's true. That's true. In Plainscape Torment, you can also talk to final loss into just ending its own life

into just disappearing from the mortal plane. One of the great, I would say ultimately disappointments of Mass Effect is that no matter what you have to fight the final boss in some form, because you can talk him into like killing himself, right? If you're enough of, I think if you go all the way in on Renegade or Paragon, which is its own questionable decision. But he still doesn't die. You're talking about Sarin?

You're talking about the first time? But these are always fun. The puzzle aspects of it are, well, I shouldn't say always fun. They're sometimes fun depending on. and how well they're put together. There are some gimmicks. I don't know if you guys enjoyed this. When we were playing Final Fantasy 6,

do you remember that one boss where they're constantly changing their elemental weaknesses? Oh, yeah. I didn't think that was fun. No, personally. Not fun. Because I fought it for a very long time and felt insane.

And then eventually Googled it and was like, oh, it's because an absurd thing is happening that I don't understand, which is that it's possessing my friends. And I don't, like, get that that's what the animations here are reflecting. No, no, no, no, no, I was talking about. No, no, I was talking about something different. I was talking about the one that changes elemental weaknesses.

No, you're talking about something else. Right. There is that boss that, um, like... The one that possesses your friends is a totally different thing. No, I'm talking about the one... But that's also a puzzle. Yes, that's also a gimmick, yes. So you have to kill your own party members to...

Uh-huh. There's so many gimmicky bosses in Final Fantasy 6. How could I even remember them? I will say, though, in Final Fantasy's defense, I did think it was cool. that with undead creatures you can just heal them to kill them, quote unquote.

I like that as a concept. I think it's fun when you can use a healing spell to kill a zombie because it's funny to me. So that gimmick I'm okay with for whatever reason. I think it's cool. There is an enemy in Eldon Ring called the Revenant and I will describe this enemy to you

and you will both know who it is. It's the teleporting guy with a million arms who just appears next to you and then instantly kills you because there's nothing you can do to stop him from punching you. And as it turns out, the Revenant is vulnerable to healing spells. So if you heal, if you do any kind of healing incantation while it's coming toward you,

it'll like do half its health and stagger it as well and you can finish it off. And it's not a boss, but it's harder than most of the bosses in that game. And it is kind of the same idea. And it's a gimmick. I think it's fair to say that's a gimmick. Yes. I was very happy when I found that out. Because honestly, like they're really, I'm sure you can beat them with skill,

but they're so hard. They're so hard to beat. And I've seen some people who don't love like the Rikard fight, which is where you get this crazy weapon that lets you just, you know, it's basically you have to use it to win the fight. I love that fight just because it's so ridiculous looking. It's just like one of the most outsized, outlandish boss fights I've ever seen. And I think it kind of is able to do that because everyone's going to fight it the same way.

You stand there with this thing and you're just like blast it over and over again. I like it too. I like it if a game forces you to use. used one specific technique to kill something. Like I, what is it called in the Gears of War games when you have the like thing that shoots a laser beam out of the sky? The hammer of dawn. And there are some bosses where it's like, oh, I just accidentally tripped over this

specific gun on the ground. I guess I'm going to have to use it later. And it does feel very silly. But it's also fun as hell and it looks really cool. I think it's, I think it's actually kind of fun and cool when a game has a really big splashy boss fight. And it's like, also you have to use the specific. weapon to beat it because we just wanted everyone to have the same badass experience with

this guy and that's fine with me. Although it can be disappointing if you're like you play through this whole game and you get to the final boss and the final boss requires you to just drop everything you knew and like do something totally different. That can be frustrating. For the final boss it doesn't feel fair but for just like one boss among many it's like this one's a gimmick I'm cool with that. That's fine. Yeah that kind of I'm moving these around because that's a good transition to another one of these but just the set piece and is kind of similar. It's a fight that's like a big, long sequence of things. It's almost like a big, long, interactive cutscene that sometimes has combat,

but isn't just like a one-on-one fight. God of War does this constantly. The opening of God of War III is a great example of this, where you're on the back of a titan climbing Mount Olympus, and you, like, fight Poseidon. And the whole thing is so, so big. I mean, Kratos is this speck, you know, compared to the enemies that he's fighting. and to his ally.

And it's just, it's not a boss fight, really. Like, it's, it's almost a tutorial for the game. And then Dead Space has this as well. There are these sequences where you're being chased by something, and it keeps turning up, and soon you're, like, kind of going through these, these almost, you know, like QTE sequences followed by chase sequences, followed by platforming, you know.

And it's kind of a similar thing where, if it's the culminating showdown against a boss you've been looking forward to fighting, it can actually be kind of deflating, even though it's cool looking. when you're done, I sometimes feel like, well, okay, well, I guess I killed that thing. Like I was- Well, you just followed, yeah, you just followed the instructions. It was like building a Lego or something. I personally didn't really kill that guy.

The video game played me a video of somebody else doing it, and that's not the same. Like, if you wanted to do it. And sometimes it can also just be really corny. You wrote the Worm in Gears of War II here. I had completely forgotten about the worm. That's like an entire level where there's worm jokes, the whole. time and you're inside a worm and it's I I don't know if I love or hate the worm level and gears of war to you I guess I love it because I'm sure remembering it now and it's something

I guess if it's an entire level then it's it's different because it's like the whole thing revolves around the idea of fighting this worm and you're looking at it from all these different angles including inside of it and then you fight it at the end kind of you guys are going to enjoy is Luke of light. That starts off. Okay. Take your word for it. I think set piece boss fights do allow for really memorable things because

they allow a sense of scale that's not possible usually in the game. Like the variation I have here is just the giant because a lot of times just the boss fight you're fighting. It's just such a big enemy that you can't actually fight it one-on-one. And even sometimes you then grow big so you can finally fight it one-on-one and be the same size.

But that, I mean, like the Gears of War, it's like debatably a boss fight. In this game, for anyone who doesn't play Gears of War II, there's this sequence where you're swallowed, your whole squad is swallowed by this worm that's the size of like a skyscraper. Yeah, it's like a dune sandworm basically is kind of what they're borrowing from in terms of the size. And so then you're running around inside of its digestive system and then you're like blowing up its many hearts and eventually you're like sawing it open. It's like an episode of the magic school bus, but very gory. And you're just taking a tour of its innards and blowing up different parts of it. It's great.

that is not possible unless you do a set piece like this. You can't have a like, you can't design around that sort of thing. Though there is, I guess the one exception of this is Shadow of the Colossus, where that game demonstrated that each boss is really a big set piece and it's really kind of a platforming level combined with a puzzle. It's kind of a lot of these things at once. And that's actually really effective. Like that makes each of those bosses super memorable because it's this whole thing that you play through to get to the very sad ending. Yeah, that's your reward at the end. Your reward is that you feel worse about your stress for a while.

Yeah. So the next one is the hunter. This is, okay, this is kind of a divisive one. The hunter is basically a stealth boss fight. A boss that is, you have to hide from the boss, and the boss is hunting you, and then maybe you have to hide for a certain amount of time before they become vulnerable, or maybe you can only approach them from a certain place, or they only have some weakness, but you can't just fight them straight up.

And some examples of this are the end and quiet in Metal Gear, obviously these sniper fights where you have to approach a sniper. David and The Last of Us, a very memorable and terrifying fight, I think, where Ellie is up against this guy who wants to, you know, kill her and is hunting her through this diner, I guess, and you have to avoid the glass. I really have strong memories of that fight. And then in The Last of Us 2, there are some bosses like that. Yeah, so stealth boss fights. Not a fan. But I'm not surprised that you are, Kirk. I'm just assuming you are.

Well, I'm not. No, no, no. Oh, interesting. Even the fan of stealth has his limits. It's true. I really like stealth games, but I, stealth boss fights don't have most of the things that I like about stealth games. Stealth games are fun because of the, like, manipulation of the systems

and the feeling of, like, omnipotence and tinkering around and playing with the AI. Stealth boss fights, that's usually off the table. You have to just stay out of sight. scene. Usually something terrifying happens. You get killed. And then there's like the same cut scene again usually where you're like, great, I died. Just take me back to the beginning. Fine. And you're just waiting. Yeah, it's the worst. It feels bad. I enjoyed the end. That's what I was going to ask. Jason. I know you like the end as a boss fight. Yeah. I think that's the, well, it's like, I mean, that was the first time I'd ever done anything

like that. So that's part of it. I don't think there's ever been like until Metal Gear Solid 3, which was where that game is. I don't think there had ever been any. sort of like sniper crazy boss fight like that. And also Metal Gear got to talk about a game with insane, ridiculous boss fights. But yeah, I don't know. Something about it, I barely remember it, but I remember the tension of just like having to watch for movement and like catch this camouflage, old ass hunter who's in a wheelchair and just try to figure out where he is.

I just remember really enjoying the tension of it all. That's true. And I'm thinking about, you know, I played more recently Metal Gear 5 where you fight quiet and it's sort of a similar fight where it's this big open expanse and she's set up on this mountain and you have to get to her and she'll just wreck you if you get out of cover. And I do, I did like that encounter, not for stealth game reasons, but just because, like you said, the tension, the feeling of like, oh my God, I'm going to try to get to this rock. Like, I'm just going to go and hope she doesn't see me. And that is actually kind of fun. It's a little different because you're not being like stalked by someone who's like pushing you out of cover.

You can take your time. Maybe that's the difference is that you can take your time. Yeah. And also it sounds a little bit more like it taps into the horror game side of you, Kirk, which I can see why you might like that aspect of it. Or instead of it being a stealth game, it's more of like an adrenaline rush game where you're sneaking around. Like you're sneaking from the alien and alien isolation or whatever, but it's quiet trying to kill you. So that's, and that's a variation of the hunter, which is the hunter preview, which is very common in horror games. So we mentioned the preview bosses where you see the boss for a long time or you see them up front, but you don't fight them for a long time. and in a ton of horror games, I think Resident Evil was the first to do this.

I never say anything was the first to do something. Well, you're right. I have no idea. But famously, in early Resident Evil games, you couldn't do much of anything. You couldn't just headshot every single zombie. Like a lot of times you wouldn't even have anything on you that you could kill a zombie with at first. And so you were really underpowered. And that's part of why they were so scary.

And then they kind of up the stakes by introducing people like Nemesis and Mr. X, which is just like a super big, unkillable zombie by your regular weapons who's going to stalk you terrifyingly throughout a level. And then eventually you can beat those guys too because you're, I don't know, Chris Redfield's the coolest guy in the universe. And eventually he becomes so wide shoulder

that he can kill anything. He sets his mind to. Well, and that, like that, the fight against Mr. X in the Resident Evil II remake where he is like an emergent or, you know, procedural AI. Right. that doesn't follow a script and just turns up.

And so then it becomes this terrifying presence throughout the game that chases you and is very stressful. And then at the end, you do finally get a fight in. And it's a hell of a fight. And it is very satisfying. I mean, it is, like, gory. And you just, like, finally, like, kill this fucking guy who's, like, been hunting you the whole time. And I think that's just become its own whole trope in horror games. I mean, actually, I don't know.

I never finished the game Outlast, but there's this big chunker dude who follows you around an Outlast. who's super terrifying, same kind of idea. I'm assuming at some point in the game, you finally get to kill him. There's one of those in Dead Space, too. There's this huge, scary thing that chases you one of those, a Xenomorce, or they're not called that, but whatever they're called in that. Legally distinct xenomorph, yeah. When in Dead Space, the whole thing is chop off their limbs, right?

It's like you're supposed to be cutting off their limbs. Yes, no headshots. Don't even think about it. You got to chop off those limbs. So there's this one guy where when you chop off his limbs, they grow back, and you just can't kill him. and then eventually you get to. And so you just see that happen and you lose your mind.

You're like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't know what to do. It's interesting. It's kind of because it's a preview. It's a type of preview. That's why the hunter preview is like a hybrid. Because it is like you see his leg grow back and you think, oh, okay, I'm not going to be able to kill this guy.

So instead I'm clearly supposed to run away. And then you run and then eventually, you know, you wind up in a scenario where you're able to kill him. So those are stressful, but I like them. I think it varies. It's sort of contextual because I don't love it in every boss fight. I can find it stressful. and not fun, but then I don't mind running away from Mr. X or whatever.

Yeah, I think it's interesting that they made it procedurally generated in the remake. I do think it fundamentally changes it. I don't know if it was specifically influenced by alien isolation, but it feels similar. It feels like just the idea of a procedural generated boss that follows you just became in vogue for a period of time. And I think it's really freaking scary. It's definitely way scarier than knowing. where Mr. X is going to show up already and just already being mentally prepared for that. It's way scarier if you never have any idea where he's going to be. It's the worst. So yeah, I guess

it works. But I don't know if I like it. Am I saying I like it? I don't know. I don't know if I do. All right. The next one is the final exam. This is a very Nintendo thing. This is when the boss specifically requires you to use skills or items or abilities that you've gotten right before it. Can't believe you didn't put Metroid in this list. It's so messed up. I tried to add Metroid to every single item of this list. Well, when I wrote, this is a very Nintendo thing. That's kind of what I meant.

But yes. Mario, Zelda, and Metroid all do this. They teach you something and then you immediately have to use it. And it really does feel like, I mean, the same way that a lesson plan is structured with the final test. Like, it's the exact same thing that Nintendo is doing. Yeah. Yeah, you got to use the hook shot and also the sword and also the shield, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But, I mean, come on.

Metroid's the best example of this ever. These are kind of like the most classic, the classic boss is the final exam, right? That's kind of the archetype of the boss where you spend the entire game or you spend a dungeon learning on to use something and then your skills are put to the test at the end of it. Yeah, I think that a link between worlds was the Zelda game that sort of changed this in an interesting way that then I don't really think worked that well. The fact that you could get the items in any order and then just go to the designated dungeon. and do them. And then you would fight, you know, that dungeon boss was always, always required you to use whatever item the dungeon was themed around.

But because you weren't getting the items in a specific order, they couldn't assume that you had other ones. So it felt more like discrete lesson plans and not like a, you know, culmination until the final boss suddenly like that final dungeon required you to use everything. Which, yeah, like it's, I think it's more fun when things sort of build on themselves. And you have a feeling of like a growing toolkit that's being tested. more and more and more and more. One boss that I put down for this is the arch demon

in Dragon Age origins. Did both of you do that fight at the end of that game? It was so long ago. But yes. I don't remember anything for that game. So it's a giant dragon that you have to fight in this town and it's a kind of a twist where this happens in other RPGs too. This actually happened in what, in FF6, right? I think this happened several times where you have to make

several parties where the whole game you've been playing with a party of, I I think, four people in that game. And then for this final boss, you need one party to defend the town and another party to go attack the dragon. And people can permanently die because it's the end of a biower game. So suddenly it's like, oh, if you didn't level up some of your characters, like they might just get killed and then you'll get a worse ending.

And it's kind of not a final exam. It's not like you're learning. You know, it's not you're not being tested on things that you've learned or abilities you've gotten. It's just like you're being tested on your party. And if you've built them up enough. Yeah. did you do a good job equally leveling your characters, Final Fantasy 6 style? That's terrifying.

I don't remember that. I probably let everybody die. I don't know. Yeah, I think I found it very stressful. I think I remember going back and then trying to do some leveling before it, just like being like, oh, wait a minute. I didn't realize I was going to like, I have to have this guy and this person I barely even know, like lead a squad. So the Sweet Conan series sometimes will force you to use party members that you haven't used before that, like, we're hiding in your castle for hours and hours. and they'll be super underlevel and you'll be like fuck what am I going to do and then you take them into a battle and they gain like 20 levels yeah try so it's really a nice thing about that game that actually has some good good quality of life stuff in that sense yeah that I will agree with another type of final exam is the team building final exam and this is like raid bosses where has I've never had a feeling like I'm going through a team building exercise I've never had the feeling of going through a team building exercise as strongly as when doing a destiny boss where every single element that's been introduced. in the rate. I mean, the Atheon fight at the end of the vault of glass. It's like, you did some time travel, you fought some oracles. You learned the oracle sounds, you know, you

learned how this thing works and that, how to trigger that kind of portal. Here's one new element. Now you've got to put it all together and like figure out how this final test works. And Kirk the whole time will be like, guys don't die. Try not to die. Try not to die. You need one person to tell you not to die. That's a very important part of this thing. Somebody has

to say it. Otherwise people will die. I would say you were the bard, the bard of the group. of this. Right. There's a new song I wrote. It's called Don't Die. Cool. Yeah.

But yeah, this is also, I mean, there are cool aspects of this in single-player games, too. Cool. Like, I mean, the archiemen is sort of like that, but I've also played JRP. Yeah, it was a team-building exercise. It's true. I've also played like JRPGs where, like, a boss cannot be beaten by a single person or party. You need to, like, gather all your troops. And there could be some, some games do some pretty cool stuff with that.

So the other variation of the final exam is the duel, which is, this was a Jason Schreier's suggestion and is a good one. It's kind of the opposite of the final exam because it's where the final boss, usually the final boss, has nothing from the game that you've played so far. I can't believe you didn't put the Lasmos Part 2 on this as your example. The Last of Us Part 2 and Liquid versus Snake in MGS4. They're basically the same thing where it's like, okay, now we're just going to punch it out. like no more forget your cool upgrades, forgets your special abilities. Isn't there a Death Stranding fight? I never played long enough to get to it, but maybe you did, Kurt.

I've seen people post it, which is how I know about it, where there's the two guys punching each other one, which is, of course, Sam Porter Bridges. I won't reveal the other one, but I've seen people share it. And so I think it happens at least once in that game. I don't think it's the final, final boss. It didn't happen for me, and I got pretty far, but, I mean, that game is super long and I didn't finish it. I got to a point with Death Stranding where I just started.

watching people's clips and just enjoying the heck out of them because I was like, now it just feels as though anything could be in that game. Maybe what I just described is a clip someone made as a joke and it's never in the video game. But like people got to the point where they were just posting everything from that game and every time I watched something, I was like, this could be a joke or it could be in dust stranding. There's simply no way to know. And I like it that way. Maybe I'll never beat it. I might though. I don't know. Yeah, maybe one day. It is kind of a flummoxing thing. I mean, I guess it's fine. I think that both of the fights we mentioned,

The Last of Us 2 and Metal Gear 4, are both kind of head scratchers. Yeah, they are also head scratchers, yeah. It's kind of a bold choice, I suppose. All right, well, let's get through the last few here before we run out of time. First of all, we have the pair that is, oh, no, there are two bosses.

It is a boss type. It's like where you're fighting one boss and then a second boss rolls in, classic from game, Ornstein and Smog. Every time you see a gargoyle in a from game. Anytime you see a gargoyle, there's going to get into half health, and then suddenly a second health bar is going to appear at the bottom of the screen, and you're going to have to rethink things.

You know, that's a pain in the ass. I feel like duo bosses are always held up as some of the hardest bosses. I think Ornstein and Smog is generally, usually held up as one of the best boss fights of all time, just because there's two dudes. They're very different, and you have to fight them in some order. And when you beat one, the other one gets harder to kill. What's the name of those two Hades guys as well?

Like the two guys that seem like they're dating, the bull guy and the Hottie? Yeah, Theseus and the Minutarch. Those guys, that one, I remember giving me some trouble the first few times I hit it. As is Hades is watch. That is actually a real roadblock. Yeah, because I kept being like, I don't know which of these guys to defeat first. And they keep getting on my nerves. And every time I'm hitting one of them, the other one gets on my ass.

What am I supposed to do? Eventually I was just strong enough that it didn't matter anymore. That was how I got through that roadblock. You know, that's a great, man. And that's a great, that's a good example of a check, of a sort of skill check slash roadblock boss too. That's a great fight. And they're hilarious too.

They got a lot of great dialogue. That helps, I think. There's not funny dialogue of from soft bosses making fun of you, which is probably for the best, but it really fits in Hades, I would say. That's true. Sometimes there is. Every time you die to Margaret, he's like put those foolish ambitions. to rest. That is true.

Margaret is kind of a dick about it. You know, I fought Margaret on New Game Plus and just absolutely owned his ass in like two seconds because I'm still pretty high level for New Game Plus. It was very satisfying. I was like, I wonder how this is going to go. Then I hit him and his health bar went down like 15%. I was like, oh, this is going to go fine. Nice.

Okay, a couple more. The spitting image. Surprise. The boss is you. This happens quite a bit in control. You go to a mirror world and fight yourself. There's, of course, the mimic tier. in Eldon Ring who starts as a boss that you fight

and then becomes your very best friend if you're me anyways and you don't care about making the game too easy for yourself and then of course there's Dark Sammas there's Shadow Link. Anytime you have to fight someone who is a copy of your character and has your same abilities. Samas has to do it all the time. You know it's funny? There's Dark Samis, there's Shadow Link

and then there's Wario. There's Wario. What's your point? What are you getting at? Wario's the coolest of those three. It's too bad Dark Samis doesn't have have like a little more toad. It would be funny if those three hung out. Like, what would they get up to? I guess Dark Samus and Shadowlink would be pretty quiet.

Right. And Mario would be really dominating in conversation most of the time. I'm surprised. That's never happened that the three of them have. Have they never really gotten together? Why would they ever get together? Because they're all like that they're the... Totally different games.

I guess in Super Smash Brothers, they can get together. Right. Maybe in Smash they could. That is a good point. Yeah, they can and they have. They can and they have. All right. A couple more.

I think this is a type of boss fight worth mention. is the unfriendly friend. This is a person who is an NPC or someone that you talk to throughout the game, who then becomes the final fight. So obviously, Hades and Hades is a great example of this. You know he's going to be the final fight, the whole game. But then he is, of course. Caraman, is that how you pronounce his name in Bloodborn? It's another example of this. This happens a lot in Frome games, since usually in Frum games. You basically just wind up killing everybody that you've ever talked to by the end of the game. There's plenty more of these, lots of JRPGs, Frank Fontaine and Biocococ. counts, I would say, the voice over the radio who then turns out to be someone. Yeah, I would say so. I assume for this you're not counting betrayals, or maybe you are. I don't think it has to be a twist. Because like, Hades and Hades is, you know it's going to be the guy at the end. That's not even a spoiler because the game starts with you being like, I'd like to kill my father,

please. Right. Like, that is the entire video game. And you've talked to him repeatedly about that fact. About how you're intending on killing him. Yes. Uh, but some of these, like, are a little bit more twist. where it's like, oh, what's, I expect this person to be my friend and then turns out you got to fight him later.

But, hey, I guess it still counts. Whenever I'm playing a JRP, I pretty much assume that, like, whoever the quest giver is or the surprising person who turns up is that I'm going to have to fight them. I actually assumed in persona five, what's the cat's name that I was going to have, that the cat was going to turn out? Morgana, yeah. Morgana does turn out to have some twists and turns to their character. Like, I was like, oh, this is totally going to be the final boss. And then that wasn't the case. Though, of course, there are other twists in that game as well.

Because he seems shady, and he's got, like, hidden secrets. He is shady. Let's be honest. He is pretty shady. I'm going to replay Persema 5 sometime. All right, the last one is going to be familiar to any JRP fans or anyone who's played from games or really most of video games. That's the saga. That's a boss fight, usually a final boss fight that has a million phases that just keeps

going and going and going. And the thing that is most remarkable about these kinds of fights to me is that you get so good at the first phases because they get harder as they go. And so eventually it just really feels stressful because you're like, man, I spent so much time getting through the first three phases of this fight. And now I'm going to die in the final impossible phase. And then I'm going to have to do all those phases again. I suppose this is why boss fight checkpoints are a thing, even though there's... Sometimes, but sometimes they're not. And sometimes that's okay. Like, I don't know. Maybe that stress in some ways makes the boss fight more satisfying when you beat it. I'm not sure

if I think that's true. I'm just throwing that up there. I feel like it does, at least for some games. Like, in Metroid Dread, I often would feel like the first phase and then eventually the second phase was so easy by the time I got to the third one because by then I had done it so many times that I was like, ah, easy peasy. I know exactly when every single shot is going to fire.

And by the time I beat the boss, I'm like at full health the whole time, dodging like a pro. But of course, the first few times you're like, this is impossible. But then it feels awesome when you beat it. That's the ideal boss phase scenario, I would say. True. And to your point, Kirk, I think the tension of knowing that you could lose all that progress makes it all the more relieving when you actually win.

It's like when you're gambling and you're like, you know, if I lose all this money, then I can't go home tonight. So it makes it all the more satisfying. Yeah, there is that kind of sunk cost, like fear of loss thing. Yeah, like it depends. I suppose. Hollow night is, I don't mind the fight against the Holo Night. and then to get to the radiance part of the fight

and the radiance is where it really gets hard. And I just got so good at beating the hollow night that I could do it with my eyes closed. It's like practice. It's like warming up and like rallying in tennis before you start playing. Fighting Redan, which I know Jason, you fought Redan pre-Nurf. I know they nerfed him in Eldon Ring.

But that fight is so chaotic and ridiculous that actually it's a little frustrating that you have to go through all the setup of the first phase to get to the second phase, which is where it really gets hard. Before they nerfed it. I could see why they tweaked it, even though I sort of appreciated the challenge

and liked beating him. And now you can brag that you beat him the first time around. Right. Which is important. I always have that feather in my cap. Radon on his tiny horse. All right. Well, that's a lot of different types of bosses

that we've talked about. I'm sure we missed a few. I'm sure people will be talking about this, the triple click discord. But yeah, this is fun. I'm going to go fight some more bosses in Eldon Ring, New Game Plus. Yeah, I feel like you forgot

the boss who rides your ass because you came in 10 minutes late. the boss who uh... Passive aggressive boss Yeah the passive aggressive boss That's a separate list For a different podcast The boss who's always

subtly union busting The boss who keeps making comments About your t-shirts at work The boss is so many bosses that we've yet to get to help The bus who won't let you work from home Because he wants to see what you're doing all day Jason do we need to intervene?

Like is everything your thing? I hope none of these are your boss. Right, right. Jason's boss is currently listening to this like, oh shit. What the heck? These are all based on stories that I've heard. Great. All right.

Let's take a break, and we'll be back with one more thing. Hi, I'm Biz, host of One Bad Mother. Whether you're a parent or just no kids exist in the world, join us each week as we honestly share what it's like to be a parent. I signed my stepson up for a camp that is actually in another state. I feel really stupid, and I don't think we're going to get the money back. And then he found out that the car manual is a book. about cars, so now he's reading

our car manual. We are excited. So join us each week as we judge less and have more and remind you that you are doing a great job. Download one bad mother on maximum fun.org and yes, there will be swears.

Hey there, beautiful people. I'm Trevelle Anderson. And I'm Jared Hill. We are the hosts of Fantai, the show where we have complex and complicated conversations about the gray areas in our lives. to things that we really, really love sometimes, but also have some problematic feelings about.

Yes, we get into it all. You want to know our thoughts about Nicki Minaj and all her foolishness? We got you. You want to know our thoughts about gentrification, perhaps some positive, question mark? Uh-oh. Aspects of gentrification,

we get into that too. Every single Thursday, you can check us out at maximum fun.org. Listen, you know you want it, honey, so come on and get it. Period. All right, and we're back for one more thing. Maddie, why don't you go first?

Because I also watched your One More Thing. Sure. So my One More Thing is a TV show. It's called The After Party. And it's on Apple TV Plus and it's eight episodes. So, Dina and I watched this because it was a comedy murder mystery. And we had just completed watching an extremely dark murder mystery on Netflix, which I guess I'll say, I think it's called Pieces of Her. We really liked it, but it was just really intense.

And we were like, we love murder mystery. but we just can't watch another horrifying one. So before booting up severance, we were like, how about this? How about this other lighthearted show, the after party? And we watched it very quickly because it goes down so easy. Yes. And I love that, okay, so each of the eight episodes takes place

from the perspective of a different character, and it's a closed room murder mystery. And you can actually solve it, although good freaking luck, because there's so many moving parts in this mystery that are revealed over time, that I had no, like I didn't even guess, I didn't guess a lot of the twists. And that was part of what made it very, very fun.

Can I say that Emily nailed it? Like, we nailed it, like two episodes in. Not from clues, but just from, like, context. Just from vibes? Yeah. I had a few moments where I was like, interesting, but I was very much taken in by a lot of the twists as well. Sure. It's a good mystery. No, it's a good mystery. It's a legit good mystery. Tiffany Haddish stars as the detective.

She's so good. hilarious and incredible. There's a whole episode that's about her. And I saw some reviewers saying they didn't like the episode about the detective because it has nothing to do with the mystery. It's just her backstory. But it was one of my favorite episodes actually because her rival at work is the guy who played Dan on Veep.

And I know we all watched Veep. And he's so good at playing a scumbag. Like, he's incredible at it. And like his acting as her rival was just incredible. And it really humanizes her. And like you get why she wants to crack this case. record time and you can't help but roof for us. So yeah, it's incredible. It's called the after party. Really funny murder mystery and a lot of great performances. Sam Richardson stars. He's hilarious

and everything he's in. I love that guy. Also in Veep. I like him as a lead. He's, yeah, Richard Splett from Veep, but he's great as a lead and not, he's not as much of a, like, ridiculous character as he is on Veep. And he's really good. He's got a lot of range. I just really enjoyed him. He has a lot of range. We watched Promising Young Woman the other night. He's like a bad guy in that? And we were like, we are watching so much Sam Richardson and seeing how much he can do.

He plays like a fedora wearing douchebag in promising young women. Anyway, who cares? I'm not recommending any of that other stuff. I'm recommending the after party. That is a good TV show. Jason, what's your one more thing? I'll go quick because mine is the same as it was last week,

which is a game called Triangle Strategy. I mean, mine is the same too, so it's fine. What could it be? this game and then somehow found myself playing through the entire thing again. That's how much I like this game. So yeah, the way it works is I described it the other day, but it's basically half strategy RPG and half visual novel. Right. And it branches. And the way that it works is it branches, the story branches and it can lead you down three different endings. And then in addition of those three endings that are basically like all bad choices. So you get to near, you get close

to the end and you have to make one of three different choices. And they're all kind of bad choices. It kind of sounds like Elton Ring. It's really interesting. It's like they're each going to, like, they're each making a compromise in some sort that will not make you happy by the end. I mean, you'll be like, God damn, like, why things have to end up this way? And like some of them are like critiques of capitalism. There's some really interesting stuff in there.

And then it turns out there's like a golden path. There's a true ending that you can get. So I decided to play it all on New Game Plus, which just lets you carry over your levels and characters and stuff and play harder versions of every battle. And you can skip most of the cutscenes. You can see through choices that you didn't make before. Or you can follow the choices that lead you to the true ending, which is what I'm doing. And so I'm about to get to that and looking forward to seeing it.

And then you can also recruit a bunch of new characters in your second try. And it'll like the game systems that had previously been opaque will now be opened up to you. But anyway, it's a really good game. I'm really, really digging it. I have to play it. I think you both might enjoy it. I don't know. It depends how much tolerance you'll have.

for like this kind of heavy-handed political fantasy story with like a goody two-shoes main character and some kind of dry dialogue but if you can look past that and like once you get into it i think you would both really enjoy it because the combat is is is tactics ogre which is like 3d fire emblem and um it's really good just great strategic combat and uh i really enjoyed the story you're like making the choices um so you can't actually i explained this last time but just to reiterate you can't actually make the choice yourself. You have to convince your party to make a choice for you. And so that involves going around and like having actually talk through all these different choices and be like, look, see it my way.

And you have to like pay attention to how your character, each of your characters is reacting and what their personalities are in order to get them to see things your way. And it's all just really well done. But yeah, I'm about to get to the end of my second playthrough and looking forward to seeing the true ending. Very rare for me to like play a game and then immediately play through. the little thing. Yeah. That's high grace. It's a good one. Nice. Well, speaking of

really liking a game, finishing it, and then starting New Game Plus, I'm doing the same thing with Eldon Ring, and that's my one more thing. I couldn't bring myself to do that because it gets rid of all your States of Grace, and then you can't just teleport anywhere you want anywhere. So here's what I did. So for New Game Plus, in this game, you finish the story, and you don't

have to go immediately to New Game Plus. You're given this choice, so you can kind of keep messing around in the open world. You can finish up most of the stuff. Which is what I'm doing. And I did that for a little while. But then I basically just backed up that save as the pre-new-game plus save and then just started a new game plus to see what it was like. And it's been really cool. So I switched my build type to, like I was playing a sort of strength with a big shield and faith, you know, incantations and a big sword.

Now I am playing with no shield at all and like total dexterity with katanas that do a ton of bleed damage. And it's really fun. I'm using the Bloodhounds Step, I believe it's called, weapon art, which is a sort of quick dodge. And I'm basically playing it like Bloodborn. I have these talismans that give me health back on kills and on damage. So it really feels like I'm just this damage-dealing character. I'm still really overpowered. Like I mentioned, I beat Margut in like two seconds.

I don't think this will be that hard. But the reason for making this one more thing is actually that I'm getting into the story. And there's this feeling that you have. It's a very specific feeling, I think, for From games in particular. And I really had it here. And that's, you finish the whole game. You beat all these bosses. You're kind of paying attention to what they're talking about and the backstory, but not

really. By the end, you're just like, okay, I don't know. Here's another huge god-being dragon thing that I'm fighting. Unless you have a journal and then you can figure out the whole story. If you really pay attention, you can. I'm just kidding. I had no idea what's going on. Exactly.

I don't think, I'm guessing that, I mean, no one knows what's going on because a lot of this is a mystery still. But like... Well, Vati Vidya will know and he'll do it to our video and then we'll I'll be educated. So here's the thing. So here's my thing. Okay, so here's my thing.

There's a whole feeling that you get when you finish the game, the way I was just talking about, and then you start a new game plus and it shows you the opening cutscene, which shows a ton of characters and actually a lot of story information. The first time you watch that, it's like, okay, here's some guys. Let's talk about some guys. That's basically it. And then you're like, all right, whatever, I don't know. The second time you watch that video, especially if you don't watch it until finishing.

And one of them is called the loathsome dung eater. Dung eater. Yeah. Love that guy. But it's so cool. Cool because I totally know who that guy is. I know who all these people are and like why it's listening to them. And oh, so these people are all tarnished.

Oh, and if that guy's a tarnished, right, because he was the first tarnished. And he started to like figure out who is who. Turns out the dung eater does a lot worse than he's tongue. Well, that's true. So anyways, it's a cool feeling when you realize like, oh, what that means. And then as I've been playing New Game Plus, like you talk to Kenneth Hate and he talks about Godric. And he's like, Godric, God, that guy is like, I can't even believe he's part of the golden lineage. Like, he's the same blood as Godfrey.

And I'm like, I know who those guys are. And then I've started doing my own kind of just on Reddit. There's a lot of people trying to figure out the story. There are these cool family trees that, like, explain the different gods that are connected to the different characters. They're like this sort of duo single person who's the parent of all of these different demigods, but then different groups of them based on their names, you know, beginning with different letters.

That's why the names are all the same. The more I started to learn it, the where I'm like, this is cool stuff. It's like this weird puzzle that everyone's trying to figure out. which is just like what happened in this world, who are all these characters? And the wildest thing is that Melina, who is your maiden, basically, who turns up, she's like major character in the game. Not to be confused with Malini, yeah. Correct, not to be, but there's, here's the thing about her. No one knows who she is.

She's like the one character that's just shrouded in mystery. And she does have a name that's similar to Mikala and Melania. And there's this question of like, well, she may be related to them. And it's so wild to me that no one knows yet. She also looks a lot like Ronnie, by the way. It's true. She does. And people have noticed that. And there's a whole theory that she's connected to Ronnie.

So it's been really fun that there's all this. The mysteries of this game go into the story as well. And as much as like someone like Vati video or whoever will make a video that will lay as much of it out as they can, it's actually been really cool to try to piece it together myself and to just, you know, kind of casually just go through this stuff and start to learn it. because it's actually really cool and interesting. Once you can get your head around the names, because the names are like maybe the hardest thing in the game. One of the mods on the Discord was like,

real question, was it harder for you to learn the fighting in this game or to get all the names straight? And I was like, real answer, it was harder to get the names straight. Like, that happened later in the game for me. Yeah, I still feel like I can't keep them all straight. Oh, yeah.

I'm not surprised. Yeah, I'm with you, Kirk. I think at some point I'm going to replay the whole game from probably not too good, New Game Plus, probably just a brand new character. So I'm not super overpowered. And I'm going to read carefully like every item discussion and be like trying to piece it together. Maybe when the DLC comes out, I'll do that.

Yeah. The one thing I'll share that was one of the favorite things that I discovered somewhere, maybe Twitter, whatever it was, is that someone discovered that all of the divine towers in the game are kind of like surrounding this one area, this clouded area in the middle of the map that is like ambiguously clouded and no one can figure out how to get to and nobody knows what's in there. And there's a theory that there's going to be some sort of DLC in there, which would be amazing. And oh, man, what a game. What an accomplishment.

What a try. Yeah, the lore and theory stuff. And then, yeah, the questions that remain to be answered in DLC is very fun. But anyways, I'm sure we'll talk more about that. Soon, we'll be talking about Elton Ring for a while. Yeah. And again, I mean, it just speaks to the power of this game that, like, this story. story that is barely in it is still so intriguing.

And that's just how Frum does things. And somehow they've created these stories that are evocative and fascinating, even though they're barely explained and totally incomprehensible. Yeah, it's incredible narrative design, as much as it is minimalist. It's like really well done. It's something that becomes clear the second time through. All right, anyways, that's enough, enough extra Eldon Ring for now. We did it.

We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We beat the final boss. podcast recording. We did. We took all of our skills.

Congratulations. But we made it. Time for a new game plus next week. The final, the final type of boss is the listeners, because our listeners are our bosses. We don't have any ads. We would never beat them.

No. We would simply talk to them. It would be a conversational boss fight. All right. I'll have another conversational boss fight with the two of you next week. See, bye. Conversational boss fight.

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 maximumfun.org. slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple click pods, send email the triple click at maximum

fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned, audience supported.