Triple Click - The RPGs of 2025 (with Cameron Kunzelman)

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason bring on special guest Cameron Kunzelman to talk about this year's suite of roleplaying games, from Avowed to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to The Outer Worlds 2. They also talk about Assassin's Creed's pivot to RPGs, what an RPG even is, and much more. Plus: Steam Machines!One More Thing:Kirk: Do The Right Thing (1989)Maddy: AnniversariesJason: King Sorrow (Joe Hill)LINKS:Cameron’s new Assassin’s Creed book: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517914943/everything-is-permitted/The Ranged Touch network, with a bunch of his podcasts: https://rangedtouch.comSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Some 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

A role playing game is only a role playing game if at some point, preferably early on, you get to decide if someone lives or dies. That's just how it is. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the role playing games to you. This week, we're joined by special guest Cameron Cunzelman to talk about the RPGs of 2025 and what we can learn from the many choices that they offered us. Let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Dreyer.

Hello. Hello. Hello. It's so nice to see you both. Great to see you guys. It snowed today in New York for the first time this season. Pretty wild. How much snow?

Just a tiny bit of flurring. But still, it was like, when I say tiny bit, I mean, it didn't stick, but enough to, like, fill the air with snowflakes. I mean, for early November, I feel like that's pretty early for you to get snow. Definitely. It's supposedly coming here, too, but I don't know if it's here yet. Jason and I are close enough proximity that sometimes the weather report actually. contains both of us. And that's why it's so important that we go over what the weather is. Exactly. So you know whether to put on a jacket.

Right, right. Jason can tell me ahead of time before the winds push the storm over. And when I'm going to take the trash out later tonight, do I need to put on a more significant coat or not? If you like this scintillating weather content and you want even more of it, and you could support our show by becoming a member of Maximum Fun at maximum fun.org slash join. That's where you sign up to become a member. And that's how you support triple click. That's the only way that we make money on this show. And we really appreciate everyone that is a member. So maximum fund.org slash join, become a member, get access to bonus episodes. There's all kinds of bonus episodes. We recently recorded a very interesting one about indie game, the movie.

And we have a very exciting one coming up for November that I'm not actually going to I'm just going to tease that it's something that we've been talking about doing for a long time and is actually going to happen in November. So it's very exciting. We'll probably announce it next week. I'm going to go full sick off. It's going to be pretty good. One more way that you can support us also is to buy merch. We have got a bunch of new merch this year in the Triple Click Store on the maximum fun.

It's really on the maximum fun store, the Triple Click section. There's a link for that in the show notes as well. Get some merch. Get a, get a mug or a shirt. It's going to snow. You need a hoodie now. Get a set of pins for the lowercase G gamer in your life. There's some really cool designs in there.

So before we get started, there is some news we're going to talk about that Jason, I think, you had been briefed on before it was announced today. So, yeah, what is that news? Valve is announcing a new Steam controller with track pads and haptics and magnetic thumbsticks. And Valve is announcing a new Steam VR headset that runs Steam OS and a Snapdragon processor. And Valve is announcing a new Steam machine that is a new Steam machine that is a. console that plays PC games on SteamOS and is this little this adorable little box that sits into your, under your TV and you plug it in or your monitor and you use one of those fancy new Steam controllers to play PC games on it.

Oh man. Get a whole lot of new Valve hardware. It's funny because I've been, the YouTube algorithm has been feeding me videos about this for the last week and a half because there have been some... Like rumors? I guess leaks, but like there's an icon that sort of showed the controller. So then of course it would show me some hour and a half long podcast where three guys are just talking about the icon. Great.

Yeah. To me, the most exciting thing is this steam machine because like I remember, man, I don't know if you guys remember this. In 2012, but Kirk and I were. And I was at the Spike Game Awards at the time. And I interviewed Gabe Newell on the red carpet. And he told me for like one of the first times they'd ever said that they were working on a living room console. And I broke that news on Kataku. And that turned into the steam machines, which were these ill-fated devices that had valves branding, but were made by third-party companies.

If I can tell a story, I went to Las Vegas during CES for an afternoon. I believe this is one of the only times I did this at Kotaku. I flew in in the morning, went to a hotel room above a casino, and watched the steam machines presentation, and then had some very unsatisfying interviews with various valve engineers just about, like, what is this? because it was just a bunch of PCs and then flew home and filed a story about it. Well, because it wasn't made by them. That was the important part. It was like third parties and had Valve's branding.

It was very expensive, very confusing, and sold terribly. By 2018, it was all discontinued. But it led them to say, hey, we want to make hardware still, but we're going to take it in-house. And that led to the Steam Deck, which we all love, the portable gaming PC, which has done really well for them. They won't say how much it sold, but they told me multiple millions. And that's the success of the Steam Deck and its popularity led them to, to then make this investment and be like, hey, we're going to do a proper steam machine.

We're making it. It's got like, it's very specific, got these predetermined specs. One big caveat here. All three of these devices are going to launch in early 2026 and they do not have prices yet. So this could go all sorts of awry if the prices are revealed to be really terribly overpriced because of tariffs or whatever other reasons. But the steam machine is really cool. It comes in two models, 512 gigabytes and 2 terabytes.

You can buy it in a bundle with the Cserville. seam controller or you can just buy it on its own if you want to plug in your own Xbox controller or whatever. And it has this AMD Zen 4 with six cores is a CPU. And the GPU is this AMD RDNA3 with 28 compute units, which is basically the equivalent of like an AMD 7,000 GPU, which I believe is like a mid-tier gaming PC level. So if they can sell this thing at like console prices, is 500 bucks, 400, 600, 600 bucks, that could be really appealing for a lot of people to be able to play your Steam games, run pretty well on a TV, on this machine. So I'm pretty excited about this. I think it's pretty cool. Yeah, it really takes me back. Yeah, that's cool. I'm 2012.

I'm more excited, probably about the controller just because I will use that. And that was actually something that they also unveiled at that CES was the first Steam controller, which I know has a lot of really diehard fans. With the weird, like touchpats. Yeah, there were two. Two touch pads and one thumbstick, which I'm guessing, Jason, I haven't seen a picture, but there are probably two thumbsticks on this new one, and I'm assuming it's sort of, it works like a steam deck. Yeah, two thumbsticks. It looks, yes.

I remember playing it not for Kotaku, just at a Pax East. I just played it like a regular person. And it was real weird. Weird control. It looks like you take a steam deck and you get rid of the screen in the middle and you just smash the two sides together. That's what this looks like. So, yeah. Since I started playing on the steam deck, I basically wanted this, this, this whole time.

And Valve has added a really nice layer to Steam where you can customize your controls, which is really nice. It's actually, it works with my dual sense edge, the sort of advanced Sony controller, and lets me even program the under buttons of that controller as a kind of extra layer.

It doesn't always play nice with games. Like it'll read as an Xbox controller. There are some things about it that aren't perfect, but it's the same as on Steam Deck, how you can just pop into that layer and just customize the shit out of the controls. And man, And having done that a lot on Steam Deck, especially with PC games where you can set a radial to one of those track pads to be like a bunch of key, like key commands.

For example, the M key to get to your map or whatever, the JK to get to your journal. Like when I'm playing cyberpunk and I can just do that, or even F5 for quicksave. Just having a radial for like seven or eight key commands is so nice. And the idea of having that as just a controller when I play games on PC, like I will absolutely buy one of those things. hopefully they're not super expensive, but I'm at least really excited about that. So, yeah, I mean, one of the things that I think is really appealing about the steam machine, and the reason I'm excited for that above all else is that it runs Steam OS, which for people who haven't used it on the Steam deck is incredible. It's very snappy.

It works really well. It's so compatible with your Steam games, but it's also compatible with other stuff if you want to run emulators on it. You can get that working in the same interface. And the idea of that going to a PC, like a living room PC that just plays in your TV. is really cool. You can do that with your deck too, but like this will be much more powerful, much more suited for living room gaming or bedroom gaming or whatever. And we're about to enter a world where Xbox, the next Xbox is going to be a living room PC as well. But as we've seen with the Rog Ally Xbox, which is their own version of this handheld PC thing, running games on

Windows is much more of a pain and has all sorts of problems. I've been texting with people who just talk about how like getting a basic game just running is just like a pain in the ass for them, let alone getting games through Steam. That is such a chore that having Steam OS on this thing and then also them beating Xbox to market, it's going to be really interesting to see. The Steam deck has my number one most used game console has been since it came out for three years now. So I'm a big fan of what Valve has been doing with it. Steam obviously has the biggest library of games anywhere and the most variety of games anywhere. And yeah, I think this is pretty cool. And hopefully it's not $1,000 because that would kill it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, we'll see. I'm looking forward to reading about the announcement. Yeah, we'll talk about this more down the road, I'm sure. Yeah, it'll be fun. And we'll probably check all of that stuff out. All right, so let's get into the topic for this week.

This week we're going to talk about role-playing games and the role-playing games of the year. And to do so, we thought it might be fun to have on a guest. Cameron Kundleman makes some of my favorite podcasts, including just King things about the works of Stephen King and also Mages and Murder Dads, which is, I think, ostensibly about the Baldur's Gate series, but it's about a lot of different RPGs too. He's a part of the Range Touch Network. They make a whole bunch of different shows

that I'm sure a lot of our listeners know, and if you don't know, they're worth checking out. And he has a new book out about Assassin's Creed, which is why he reached out and said, hey, maybe, you know, you want to have me on your show to talk about Assassin's Creed and adjacent things. So we invited him on the show,

and, yeah, we're going to sit down with Cameron and talk about the role-playing games of 2025. So let's get into that. All right, Cameron Cunzelman, welcome to Triple Click. Wow. I'm here. You're here. It's so exciting. Yay. It's Cameron. I almost want to just totally sidetrack you and just start talking to you about Bob Dylan because I just put out an episode of Strong Songs about Bob Dylan. I just want to kind of troll you. And that's a rivalry. Famous rivalry. Yeah. How did you manage to cover one of the worst musicians to ever live? It seems like, I think now that you've gotten that hot takeout,

there. We could almost just move on and we can get listeners feel just kind of tantalized by the mystery of Cameron's incendiary takes about Bob Dylan. But no, we are here to talk about role-playing games. We are here to talk about video games and we're here to talk about 2025 in RPGs. So a couple of years ago, we recorded an episode called What Even Is an RPG Anyways? I think that was the name of the episode. I'm not sure we answered the question, a little bit of a Godwin's law situation there where like, I guess then the answer would be no. So it was, wasn't a Godwin's law situation. I don't know. What is an RPG? No. I mean, that was the closest, that's maybe closer to an answer than anything we came up with. But we talked a lot about, you know,

RPGs at the time. It's a very funny conversation, partly because Baldersgate 3 had not come out yet. And of course, I have listened to you and Danny on Mages and Murder Dads play all the way through Baldur's Gate 3, a really great series that I learned a lot about that game, even though I had played it. So you seem like a very good person to ask this question to Cameron, what even is an RPG anyway? Well, you know, one of the easy answers is no, which I've heard is apparently a valid one. I just to give you an easy out there. Yeah, right? Simply no.

You know, I don't know. Sometimes you've got to put your genre analysis hat on. I wrote a book on science fiction a few years ago called The World is Born from Zero. People can check that out. $21 in paperback. wherever books are sold. Always be selling. That's right. You get it.

You know the deal. It's true. But what's interesting about that, you know, is somewhere in that book I had to say, what is a science fiction game? And I very neatly, you know, maneuvered my way around that because there's kind of two different ways of thinking about genres, period. And that means genres of games, which are often about the actions you take in those games, or genres of different media modes,

is often about aesthetics, right? So, like, science fiction's got lasers and spaceships, fantasy's got swords and magic or whatever. And the decision you have to make is, like, do you want it to be descriptive of qualities and content? And so basically it's just a big bucket that you put things that are like one another in? Or you do want it to be prescriptive, which is to say that science fiction or an RPG or whatever has a very limited set of possibilities that we have determined what they are before. And so, I don't know, like a role-playing game seems to be a game where you take on some sort of role and then embody it with choices that you make through a character. You know, is that sufficient or useful? No.

That's pretty good. Yeah, I think the choices are an important part of it. Yeah. And, yeah, I really do like that distinction between game aesthetics and other media because a first-person shooter is a genre that could only exist in games, right? and it tells you what the game is in a way that, I don't know, the word jazz does not really actually tell you that much about what kind of music you're going to be listening to. It could be so many different instruments and so many different styles and sounds, right? Even though that's technically a genre. First-person shooter, you kind of know what you're getting.

So that is an important distinction for listeners to think about. But yeah, I think that's more or less what we came up with, right? It was something about choice, something about inhabiting a role, whether it's a character that you've made yourself. or someone who has been sort of imposed upon you. Maddie and Jason, am I forgetting anything? Yeah, I mean, when people talk about RPG elements, oh, this game is RPG elements. We're adding RPG elements to a game.

Oftentimes they're talking about things like levels and quests and other various specific criteria. So I think the genre has been kind of codified as this collection of separate features, and it doesn't have to have all of them, but if it has a few of them, then it qualifies as an RPG. You know, I remember people would talk about, talk about modern warfare in 2007 as having RPG elements in the multiplayer just because there

were bars that she would fill. Like that alone was sort of understood to be an RPG aspect, which I'm not sure. Well, also you got to carry around RPGs and shoot them at people. That's what it was. It's true. It's an RPG. Maybe you misunderstood, Kirk. You thought maybe this was like, you know, slightly. No, I remember that really clearly between Modern Warfare 1 and Modern Warfare 2 when those came out because of the perks and the way that you had character builds. And I remember there being that kind of weird. The RPGs are coming from my World War II shooter kind of internet forum conversation. So yeah, that was definitely in the mix back then. Yeah. And I think that now, at least when we talk about role-playing games, we're definitely talking

more about narrative than about those kinds of systems just because, you know, that was modern warfare in 2007. The great innovation of that game went on to infect every multiplayer game ever. And now most games have a bunch of bars that you have to fill and you're constantly making progress. None of those, I don't think, would be called a role-playing game really meaningfully today. But then all the games that we're going to talk about on this episode do feel more like, you know, narrative role-playing games. You're in some way inhabiting a character and making choices. Yeah, something that Outer Worlds 2 really had me thinking about was the idea of coming into a game and having to invent a character and then having the option. to be allowed to invent a character.

We can debate as to whether it's effective at that or not, and I don't think that has to be true of every RPG. We've got a lot from this year and from history where you are invited to step into a pre-existing character who has a designed personality, and you maybe make a few dialogue choices here and there, but you're along for the ride on this other person's personality, and either you like it or you don't.

But in Outer Worlds, too, I felt like I actually could design a personality for my character for better or worse and continue to role play it. Whoa. Throughout the game. And I don't know if that's good or bad, but it was definitely something that I was extremely aware of while playing. And in my mind, that is like the dial on RPG is turned up more when I'm doing that,

when I have more control over how much personality I get to have. Yeah. I'm curious, Cameron, if you've played much Outer Worlds 2. I know you did a whole series at Too Much Future about Fallout New Vegas, which those games are very kind of in conversation with one another. And I'm curious if you played that game and what you thought of it. Yeah. You know, I played maybe the first five hours or so of Outer Worlds 2.

And I ended up feeling kind of the same way that I felt about Outer Worlds 1, which is, this is a great schematic for getting me to engage with a world that is wrapped up in a lot of things I don't particularly care for. I think there's something about the science fiction tone that is in those games that really pulled me out of the stuff that you're talking about, Maddie, right? The ability to imagine myself as a character in that world, which is, you know, the inverse of that, which a game that made me feel like where the aesthetics were really aligned with me was Starfield, but I just didn't enjoy playing that game very much, right? You know, it had kind of the opposite, it, but I felt more like I was involved in the actual conflicts of the world of Starfield

than I was, the outer worlds, too, which felt like a series of predefined politics that I could ping off of with a little guy that I made, as opposed to like a little guy that I made, it can run around in the world and kind of do whatever he wanted. And so I do think that, at least in some of these RPGs, there is at least the illusion of freedom that matters a lot, you know, this self-expression, this ability to engage in it. And this goes all the way back to the beginning of role-playing games. You know, you can read John Peterson's work, who's written a lot about the early days of G&D and the early days of role-playing, and you can see these exact questions showing up at the very dawn of role-playing games in the 70s, yeah. I wonder about

the kind of the difference there that you're identifying, looking at New Vegas compared to outer worlds to being that in a game like New Vegas and maybe a more, quote-unquote, open RPG, you have to actively discover the factions and learn about them. And you can go the entire game without stumbling upon one or two of them. You'll probably run into at least one of them. But you could go the whole game ostensibly without running into Caesar's Legion and just kind of play through all the way to New Vegas and finish the game there. Whereas in Outer Worlds, too, it's kind of, it's shoving a lot of that stuff in your face from the get-go.

So you have less of an opportunity to, you have less agency in picking what you want to learn about and learning about it in an active way. And so maybe it feels a little bit more prescribed than a game that just throws you into the desert and lets you find things yourself. That's an interesting idea that the role playing in these games is partly the wandering around and discovering things, that that is actually part of the experience. You know, it's not just are you making choices at any given moment. but also are you finding the game rather than having the game come to you? Because that is a really significant difference between a game like New Vegas, where you feel like, oh, I heard about these guys, and then I discovered them, you know, five hours later,

and now I'm learning even more about them and I'm in their camp, you know, talking about Caesar's Legion, where, yeah, that is definitely an issue with outer worlds in general or with, it was kind of an issue with avowed to, like the feeling that it's all laid out for you at the very beginning, and now you are just going to sort of make a series of choices through this defined framework. Well, just to be clear, at least for me, it's not that one way is an issue or one way is better than the other. I actually found the outer worlds to an avowed way to have its own kind of advantages

as a player. I don't think there's anything wrong with seeing the lower up front Star Wars style or it's throwing a bunch of text at you, throwing a bunch of data at you. I don't think there's anything wrong with that necessarily. You feel like you have less agency when you're being given things and told things as opposed to actively finding them yourself. It's just a very different style of game. And I mean, also, it wouldn't really work for a game like this as opposed to a game like New Vegas

where you're on a giant open world map and you can walk in any direction and you're not really limited. Outer worlds and avowed are much more constrained. You have smaller, smaller kind of zones or smaller open worlds. And so you do have to know a little bit more. It is a little bit harder to kind of breadcrumb you

and get you discovering a bunch of different things on your own. Yeah, that makes sense. And it's sort of, I mean, yeah, right, it's just more or less agency. And it's easy to say, oh, more agency should be better because I don't know video games or something. But you're right that it all depends on the goals of the game. Cameron, did you play much avowed? I think I made it about the same amount of time. I mean, there is something, I think Jason's really kind of hit the nail on the head because I do think there's an onboarding method or a philosophy of onboarding.

that maybe is existing within these recent obsidian games that I'm really empathetic to, which is to say that they make complicated and interesting games, but I think the realm of dropping someone into a random world and asking them to just figure it out, I think that's hard to do these days if you're making games for a really wide demographic. There are lots of games that do that that are very successful and really good. Caves of Cud, one of the best games made of all time. The most hostile thing you could ever pick up. I mean, not literally, but it's pretty close.

And so for both of those games, I really felt like having the full stakes of all world, I don't know, engagement being presented to me like over and over and over again, it seems like for the first few hours of those games, you're constantly being given context and stakes. And I think that probably is really efficient for getting people interested in an RPG from zero. But I'm already on board. You know, like I'm already on board to play an RPG. So I'm looking a little bit more for novelty or interest or whatever. And this is something that goes all the way back through Pillars of Eternty, too. Those games, I have similar friction with them because they do a really similar move. So this is in the studio DNA in some ways, I think.

You know, to circle back to something you were saying, Maddie, earlier, that one of the big things about Outer Worlds, too, is that the character creation, the mechanics for it, like the way that they've set up the character creation is so cool. This is something we just talked about. it's yeah it's really well done the flaws the perks the way that you kind of gradually realize oh i'm playing like a really lunk-headed lucky you know person who with bad knees you know and the game kind of gives you these opportunities to start role-playing that's something that that game does that almost none of the other RPGs of the year really do in the same way and it's also something that's different from avowed because in a vowed one of the notable things about that game is that you know you can't choose your background, for example. You have to be this, like, you know, race of fungus people because that ties in

with the narrative. And then as a result, they're able to... God likes people who are ordained. Thank you. How could we forget? Not quite fungus people. Thank you, God likes. I was trying to remember the name on the fly and it was eluding me. Yeah. So, and as a result, then they can, like, tie you into the narrative in this certain way and, you know, and then make the story make sense in a way that it just wouldn't if you were playing a human or whatever. And so it works, but it's just a really different approach to character creation. I'm wondering what you think of that, maybe Maddie,

since you were talking about it earlier, just thinking about Avowed versus Outer Worlds 2 since we've played both this year. Yeah, I remember being really struck by the almost chosen one narrative of Avowed, and I mean, we haven't gotten into Chosen One's stories yet, but they're such a staple,

not just in video games, but I think of RPGs. And part of that is because I think that if you spend a lot of time designing your character, as you will be doing over the course of the entire game, not just at the beginning, you feel special. And so having the game tell you that, I tend to chafe at that, actually. And so I think that's part of why I was endeared to Outer Worlds, too, even though I agree with Cameron that some of the storytelling was just laid on really thick at the beginning in terms

of just characters, like almost walking up to you to tell you the plot of the game, that I could take or leave, but the fact that I could affect my character so much just really strongly appealed to me. And in a vowed, I didn't super feel that way. I kind of felt like I was just, the dialogue choices didn't feel notably different to me. And because there wasn't some additional system, like the flaws system in Outer Worlds, too, that I find really charming. I just kind of felt like I was there. And like the other characters in Avowed, were people. And like I was a video game protagonist. Jason, you're a lover of Avoud.

How do you think of the two games in terms of how they handle the player character, like in how you felt as your character moving through that world? Yeah, I mean, I don't have a problem with the game telling me, like when you play Mass Effect, you're Commander Shepard, no matter how you choose to play her. When you play Baldur's Gate 3, you're always a guy or girl with a tadpole stuck in your head, and the plot goes around that. I mean, similarly, a vow just handles the godlike setup in that way.

And part of the game's core mystery is to figure out who the deity is, the deedy is that is kind of in your head and giving you instructions and blessings and whatnot. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that part of it. Avout is one of my favorite games of the year for other reasons, mostly because of the exploration, because it's one of those games that just is so good at teasing you into climbing up things and parkcoring around things. finding all sorts of fun little treasures in nicks and crannies or little story moments in little pieces of the game, which also can be an interesting and special part of RPGs is that exploration element that I think video games are better at doing than any really the only art form that can do that, that can give you a play space to explore. And I guess it's not just RPGs that

have that kind of level of exploration, but they're easier to pull off in RPGs. Yeah, and that's true. You know, speaking of having a set character, so another game that came out this year that has RPG elements, and then I think, I don't know, fits into this conversation. Interestingly, interestingly, is Assassin's Creed Shadows. This is not something that I was expecting in this game, that you would actually be making narrative, like branching narrative choices. The first one comes kind of early on. I think we talked about this way back when that game came out, but you're choosing whether to kill a guy or let a guy live, and you're inhabiting Nowe in that moment. And, and And it's really, you know, really far in the direction of, okay, I'm just playing as this girl.

And she is making a decision right now. And I found it to be interesting because it's not like my character where I've decided who this character is. They're evil, you know, they're good. They like this person. They don't like this person. I've spent however many hours just watching an actor emote and play this character. And then suddenly the game is just asking me, okay, so now do you think that she would spare in the sky or would she kill him? And my Noway killed him, I believe that maybe all of us did in that moment in that first big choice.

And that sort of leads you to unlock one character and maybe not unlock another one. It's this kind of odd direction that that series has gone. So Cameron, you've written a book about Assassin's Creed. And toward the end of the book, you get into this latest transformation that that series has undergone. Because they've been making these games forever. But this most recent trilogy finally started introducing quote unquote RPG elements. are really like the Witcher 3 style dialogue choices and some branches in the narrative. This is with Odyssey.

And I'm interested, I don't know, because you just talk a little bit about that and how that fits in with like the, you know, history is your playground thing that Assassin's Creed is going for. Yeah, you know, something is really interesting about Assassin's Creed is that kind of more than, hmm, more than any, yeah, sure, more than any other franchise. Beast of Perlative, it's fine. Yeah, more than any other franchise. I don't know if this is a perlative or not. It is willing to be a weather vein for whatever the heck is going on in the world. Right? So, like, whichever way the wind is blowing is where Assassin's Creed is going.

And so that meant, you know, multiplayer modes when multiplayer modes in a random AAA game were important. That meant, you know, engaging in tower defense. If people remember playing, what's the revelations that has tower defense in it. Yeah. There's lots of different, you know, you play across the franchise and you play attentively. Ubisoft have always been pretty tactical with saying, what's up right now in the game's world? How can we have Assassin's Creed interact with that? And so something that's really interesting to me about the dialogue choices that were added with Odyssey,

which is accelerating into the stuff in shadows that you're talking about, is that I read all of that very cynically or experience that very cynically. To write this book, everything is permitted. I did a lot of digging around in Ubisoft and reading a lot of investor reports and looking at investor calls and checking out the way that they talk about themselves, all these different things. Ubisoft and many other companies right now are very invested in how much time you spend working on that thing as much as what the quality of that time spent is. You know, these games have moved into login bonuses and things like that, all that kind of stuff of how often you're engaging with it. So in Odyssey, which is a game that really ballooned after the origins before that, origins you can complete. If you just want to play the mainline story, in about 30 hours, you can really power through it if you want to.

Odyssey is not that case. I tried to do it as quickly as possible, and I think it took me 65 hours. Yeah, it took me like 80 hours or something. That game, and I played the whole thing because I really liked it, but damn, it went on a very long time. That was 2018. That was the peak of service games, and they described Odyssey as a service game, which is one of the reasons. To your point, to your point about the daily bonuses, they wanted it to very deliberate. And so I think that's a part of it.

I think these RPG mechanics, the acceleration of just going from dialogue, which is, could you engage with this more often or more frequently or in different ways in order to get a slightly different story, which is kind of the whole deal, multiple main characters who interact with the world similarly, but not identically. And then they can choose to interact in different scenarios, right? So to make people fight with them or not fight with them, whatever, in the dialogue choices. I think that is just as much of a games as a service thought on the part of Ubisoft in the sense that it means that you are coming back to the same product, you're engaging with that product over and over again. And that accelerated into Valhalla and then that accelerated into shadows with obviously Mirage kind of being the little side story along the way that doesn't really follow that. Although in terms of unlocks in that game or whatever, it looks a whole lot like an RPG.

I don't know if y'all played that. No, I never did. it seemed a little like a side story the way you describe it. But no, I didn't make time for it, even though I heard some good things and some kind of mixed things about it. You should check it out, I think. I think if you like Assassin's Creed and you want to play like a solid 18-hour game that feels a lot like an RPG, it is like right in the sweet spot. And it's the last one that I played before the book came out, so I didn't have an option to play Shadows. And I haven't yet.

I spent about 2,500 hours, give or take playing Assassin's Creed for the book. And so I literally got to the point of buying shadows. And I'm hovering over, you know, clicking the button. I just couldn't physically bring myself to do it. I can't sign up for more of this. So I'm waiting. I'm hoping that the burnout goes away. But I do think that thinking about these RPG mechanics,

I think it is worth in the macro scale, thinking about how are they aligned with other things that game companies are tracking and they're invested in in terms of bringing players into the fold and keeping them there. You know, what you were talking about earlier with bars going up and experience being accrued in Call of Duty. There's a reason those RPG mechanics are in. And it's rewarding, you know, in a very kind of skinnerboxian way. It's rewarding to get that small trickle of you did a good job. And I do think that narrative, if we think about it robustly, I think narrative in games can function the same way.

It's about novelty. It's about engagement. It's about feeling fulfilled. You know, Matt, you were talking about kind of chosen one narratives before. That's all part of the same, I think, cosmology of ways of getting people invested in a product. And so macro level, I think all this is part of the same system. Can I push back against that a little bit? Yeah, please.

Because I remember when Odyssey came out. I remember talking to people who worked on it. And I heard a couple of things that I thought were it was really interesting. One was that this Odyssey came out in 2018. The Witcher 3 came out in 2015. Witcher 3 came out when Odyssey was essentially kicking off development. and everybody played it and fell in love with it and was like, we would to make a game like this.

And I think that was a big inspiration for a lot of what came in Odyssey, including the dialogue trees. I also think, I might be misremembering this, but from when I remember, there was conversation about how, like, hey, we're making a game in ancient Greece. Plato and Socrates, their, like entire treatises, their work was told through dialogue exchanges. And so we should have some interesting kind of dialogue exchanges

and play around with dialogue. And that was a thing in Odyssey, right, where you talk to Socrates and you have those. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, well, I think you're spot on about things like the daily bonuses being part of that cynical kind of grab that player engagement and grab it by the horns or even the amount of content in the game

to the point where there were different teams and different Ubisoft studios, each working on different continents. And like, it's a big, massive beast of a game. Odyssey is also my favorite Assassin's Creed. So I have a softball. for it for a lot of reasons. But I think a lot of the stuff that sometimes we as players think as cynical is really

just developers just thinking it's cool. Yeah, I mean, I would never say that the fingerprint of the artist is not on the thing. And I think this is where you and I diverge a lot of the time, right, in terms of our way of thinking about games. But I think this can be easily a question of both and rather than either or, right?

In order to make a game within a framework of something like Ubisoft's massive company and with Assassin's Creed as a franchise, you have to stuff that's legible within the framework there that is presumably a thing that someone wants to work on, but that can also be completely aligned with larger economic values or larger systemic values that produce a thing that we can maybe be cynical about, right, or that maybe we can question. So I take your point. I bet that people, and I feel very confident that people played

games that they wanted to emulate, I think we should also take seriously that there are game mechanics and there are modes of designs that are affirming to the people making them and that are affirming to us who play them that also can feed into other systems that we might more on surface be cynical or questioning or negative about. Sure. And part of that conversation is always, well, The Witcher 3 sold a bazillion copies. So that's why we can just about doing this. Yeah, and like Baldur's Gate three sold a bazillion copies. And like we can, I think, I think it would be fair to say that all of us like it in a pretty unsiniscence.

way and that we can see the artistry of it. But it also is one of those games where you see its success. And I get nervous. And I'm like, what cynical conclusions? I mean, we've talked about that on this podcast before, too. Wasn't that a listener question? Yeah, a listener, I think, wrote in and was like, what would be the most cynical conclusions that somebody could draw from

Baldur's Gate 3? And I feel like you're actually answering it, Cameron, unwittingly here, because the cynical answer is, well, okay, maybe narrative choices are what gets a player to log in, over and over again. And yeah, that's true in a vacuum, but also what makes those negative choices feel like they do matter

as opposed to just being there for the sake of being there. And to tie it back to shadows, I've really been thinking ever since you said this, Kirk, you characterized it as what decision would Noway make and you feeling like you needed

to make a choice on behalf of Noway there, which is interesting to me because I usually think of it as, well, what would I do? And then I feel like I'm refracted into the character. And I think that the fact that Shadows has this quote unquote canon mode where the game tells you the correct choices, like it takes away some of the choices from you that would otherwise be there. And it allows you to see what is supposed to happen, quote unquote. And like that is a key piece of the Assassin's Creed lore that

also Cameron, I'm really curious for your thoughts on how that's changed. over time as somebody who just played them all. But that, I think, is a really fun tension with Assassin's Creed, where introducing RPG elements to it is fascinating, because this is also a game about genetic predestiny and things that already happened in the past. Like, Socrates lived and died. We all know what happened. Like, it's very funny for that game to have choice be what it's hinging on.

Yeah, I have a sort of transitional thought on that, actually. this is something that I think is very distinct about Assassin's Creed. Last week we were actually talking about the seance of Blake Manor. And I mentioned how I love that that game is set during a specific point in history. And how playing Kingdom Come Deliverance too has been this kind of eye-opening experience for me because it's set so specifically at this point in history. And it is not like fantastical. It's like they're real people.

You're just at a real point in time in history. And how that felt really cool. I was editing the episode, and I thought, why didn't I mention Assassin's Creed when I said that? Like, there's this long-running, very popular series where the whole idea is that it's set during historical periods. Then actually something in your book, Cameron, clarified that for me, which is that Assassin's Creed is not actually about history exactly. Like, it's not a historical game. And this is something that the creators of the game, I think, have even said. Well, no, it's a sci-fi game.

It just is set in history. And then that's, you know, reflected in the whole narrative premise of Assassin's Creed, which is that in the the game, you're in like the future and you're getting into some crazy VR machine and then going back into the past. And then they've used that as a way to, you know, write up all these different things that you can do in the past, including now dialogue choices and branching narratives and, you know, getting, like, changing their own lore to make more and more things possible. And it's, it really helped me realize, like, oh, so maybe Assassin's Creed isn't really historical role playing in the same way that something like Kingdom Come Deliverances or even something like Blake

manner is where it's just telling you a story that took place in history and making you a historical character. Yeah, you know, I, that's something, I'm glad that that came through in the book, because some of this really, I guess I approached the Assassin's Creed games being like, their historical fiction, you know, and historical fiction has some parameters on it, but overall, their historical fiction. And then I read a million interviews with all of it, going all the way back to the first game and even preview material from the first game, where they are constantly banging the drama about it being a science fiction game and that that for them was you know kind of a lever or a wedge to be able to say listen it's taking place in history dear gamers but that doesn't

mean we have to be responsible to everything you know something they say repeatedly many people have I guess most recently uh Maxime Durand um Durand not sure how you say it but is the 15 second rule everything in Assassin's Creed stands up for 15 seconds you know in terms of its historical content. After that, you're on your own. And, but so, you know, that's what's really interesting is there's always this escape valve for it. And I think what's interesting about the addition of dialogue choices, the addition of all these other mechanics that we've been talking about, these RPG elements, whatever. All of them have been born out of a science fictional narrative maneuver, which is to say, well, we just made a better version of the animus. And so we were able to look at the genetic data for this given moment.

And inside of that given moment, here are the alternate possibilities. And they've expanded that, you know, since, really since origins of what that might look like and how it shakes out. And they've moved really far away from the mechanics and ideas around synchronization and have moved into this. And what's really great to me about that is that it's leaning into the science fiction premise that's going on with the Assassin's Creed to say, what does that open for us? What does that give us the ability to play with? And they've done it in other genres, too. You know, they've made the 2D games. They made the mobile games.

They made the Facebook game that was just, you know, dealing with Templar. Wikipedia, you know, they've done lots of different interventions, I guess, into different ways of doing Assassin's Creed stuff. But, you know, I really like the idea of leaning into the tools they've already given themselves in order to add more ways of interacting with the thing. Do you think that if they made Assassin's Creed now that they would still do the whole animus thing? Is that an artifact of its time? Or is that something that you think just is essential to the series,

that they would still think, oh, that's a cool way to do a historical story? You know, hard for me to say. I mean, I talked to lots of people for the book, some people on the record, some people off the record. I think that there are real tensions around the animus, obviously, still in that company. You know, the stuff about Black Flag remake supposedly and not having the animus supposedly involved.

And, you know, out of the last 10 games, that maybe half of them have not really featured the animus, maybe three or four of them. But no, I think they would want to run from it as much as humanly possible. It is way too complicated. Many people still don't like it. I wrote about that extensively in the book about just the conversations that have happened around the animus. I think that that stuff is the most important and interesting just thing going on in the game. I find it really compelling.

It does not seem like the player base necessarily enjoys it. And obviously the critical base is really hotly split on it. So, you know, maybe in the year of 2025, if you're being, we're talking about cynicism earlier, maybe you do say in order to be as controversial as possible within a very apolitical framework, maybe we put in something like this in order to make people argue and yell about it. You know, one could say that. I don't think they're that cynical. I think, yeah, if they did a redo, they just get to be historical fiction games. and you don't need the additional device. Reading about the development of that,

and I cover some of the stuff in the book, if people are interested, it's really fascinating to learn about those conversations and why they happened and how they happened on the back of the Prince of Persia game that initially was supposed to be, the first Assassin's Creed. And the way they tell their own story

in the Assassin's Creed 15th anniversary, weird hagiography volume, people might be interested in that as well. It's worth noting, of course, that the original creators of Assassin's Creed Patrice Desolitz and Corey May and Jade Raymond are all gone from Eubesoff long gone from Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of people who came up with this idea of the animus and kind of saw that as the framework

in which Assassin's Creed was built around are just no longer part of the franchise. So the franchise has just become kind of its own. It's kind of like, what's a good example of this? I don't know, the Twilight Zone or like some other like Doctor Who or some sort of like running series where like whoever comes into it and takes over puts their own space. on whatever it is and it's just not even really a franchise anymore. It's just kind of like a series of like games that are loosely connected with some like basic, like very, very skinny lore.

Yeah, the flip side of that too, though, being that Darby McDevitt, who is, if there's anyone on the earth, man, who is more into the animus and all the weird stuff in Assassin's Creed than I am, it's, it's, it's Darby McDevitt. Darby is great. He's a great guy. I really like Derby. He's got a lot going on. And clearly, you know, every time if you look at the projects that he's been the most intensely attached to, those are all the places where you're diving the deepest on it.

So it is really interesting. Jason, I think that's a really good point that all the people that made up these initial kind of goalposts or parameters, they're all gone. But there is this kind of next generation and now a third generation that have come in who are seemingly way bigger freaks about it than anyone else ever has been for. And I really like that. That's like really affirming to me. Yeah. I've kind of grown on me for what it's worth. Yeah, Darby notably not was not on Shadows, but is working on the next one,

Project Hex. So we'll see what that looks like. And worked on Valhalla, right. He was, I think, the narrative lead on that. Which Valhalla, of course, had that big twist at the end involving the animus. So that's like, which has not been addressed again, which is hilarious. I started out as a person who was very anti-animous. And I feel like either because of the games forcing it on me or reading people like you,

Cameron. I've grown to love it. And I think that isn't an uncommon modality of interacting with these games to just be like, I don't really get why this is here. Can't this just be a game where I'm in Italy and I'm killing guys? And you can tell which one is the first one that I played. And then over time, I think it was probably around origins, which is famously my favorite one, where I started to kind of grow attached to the modern character who's in that game as well. And then I grew to really like the meta layer of it that, again, often isn't in any other RPG at all, and certainly not any

others that we've talked about today, where it's like you're playing a game as someone who's playing a game. And so you're going to really think about the fact that you're playing a game the entire time. And you're never not doing that when you're playing a game anyway. So we're just going to make it so freaking literal that you can't not think about it and then have you question that. And that is actually a very fun mindset. to be in as a critic and a player. And so it's come to, it's, it's come to be something I enjoy now. You, you Cameron, among the other animus diehards, have converted me.

Yeah, it's true. For me, I think it was Stephen Totillo who has always loved the animus stuff and is, of course, a total Assassin's Creed sicko. And he just, you know, he, like, I think Rogue is his favorite game. You talk about Rogue in the book, Cameron, which is definitely the deepest in the Kenway lore. and it's this whole, it's like an Avengers end game of this whole middle, kind of unloved middle series of Assassin's Creed of the Assassin's Creed 3 timeline.

So anyways, he got me into the animus. And then over time, I appreciate it for what it is, even as, especially lately, you know, Kingdom Come Deliverance to is one game, but another is actually Indiana Jones from last year, playing that game, playing that game and being in these historical places, you know, going into the Sistine Chapel, like exploring Rome or wherever. you know, in that game, I was just a guy in history. In Kingdom Come, I'm just a guy in history. It's fine.

There doesn't need to be this whole extra layer to explain how I happen to be there doing things. It's just kind of cool to feel like my character is actually there. And in that role-playing aspect of the game, I do appreciate that. The feeling of actually being there, this sounds kind of stupid. Because obviously, Indiana Jones was not really there, you know, Henry from Kingdom Kong. Yes, he was. What are you talking about? was not actually there.

Sorry, I forgot Neimanichens is a real guy. But, you know, like, it does feel slightly different. Just the narrative context affects me slightly differently when I feel as though my character is in a world in which he exists, rather than my character in the game being, you know, one further step removed from me, which has always been a weird thing about the animus and Assassin's Creed. But then again, that feeling refreshed playing those two games I just mentioned,

that only is true because, I've spent so many years playing Assassin's Creed, and really for a long time, that was the primary mode through which I experienced history in video games was the animus, because Assassin's Creed was doing something that nobody else was doing outside of like the historical Call of Duty games or whatever, but those are pretty different. So one other thing that happened in 2025, in terms of 2025 and RPGs, is Claire Obscure Expedition 33. And I have to mention this game only because it seems to be a frontrunner for a game of the year. It's going to win so many awards. And between that game and the Final Fantasy Tactics, Ivelace Chronicles,

there are these two poles of JRP design. Jason, I want to throw to you on this, because I'm curious if you have some thoughts on it. But so many people have held up Claire Obscure as this revolution, this revolutionary idea of kind of like Western aesthetics, JRP, turn-based combat. How do you even think of that game as a role-playing game at this point? I feel like you just like are giving me bait telling me that that game is a revolution. I mean, you cross, like, Paper Mario with Final Fantasy 10.

You don't take it however you want. And you get clear. Just answer the question. Yeah, I mean, it's a polished, well-made game that's, like, designed to appeal to people. It's very pretty. It's very well-written and well-acted. It has fantastic music. It's a very lovely game, very melancholy game.

It, like, isn't afraid to kill a character or two. And it takes a lot of ideas from games that worked really well in the past and iterates on them in some cool ways. I bounced off of it for various reasons that we talked about a few months ago when it came out. But yeah, I mean, it's, I would definitely call it more of an iteration than an innovation. That's for sure. As far as its position in the grand RPG canon, I don't think it will be remembered as some game that just like brought all these ideas to the table. I think it will be remembered as a game that executed really well and was beloved because of that. There's also the whole meta-narrative surrounding it where everybody is like feels like they're,

they're rooting for the ex-subisoft, like, indie team to beat all the odds when they, when they support this game and give it all this acclaim and love and stuff. They feel like they're, they're rewarding true gamers instead of the corpos, which I think plays a large role in the, kind of the overall reactions that we've seen to it. But that's a whole other bag of can of worms and, like, you threw this at the very end of this conversation. Well, I have a thought on it, too, for what it's worth as the person who did complete clear obscure and is almost done with Final Fantasy Tactics. I was playing it right before we got on this call. Oh wow. You're almost done. We'll see. I'll see if I'll talk about it next week. Maybe I'll be done by then. But I think something interesting

about it in the context of this conversation we've just had is that those are both games where you are so along for the ride that the story is happening without you. Like you are not you're not having Ramza make decisions or having Gustav make decisions in that way. You're watching a cutscene play out and then you're playing a tactical battle. And that's part of why in my mind I tend to call that a quote unquote story game. That's not an official genre term. It's simply how I choose to describe this type of game, which is also a genre I really enjoy. But I don't know that I often feel like I'm playing a role, as it were, if I'm playing a Claire Obscure or an FFT. I mean, I'm certainly interacting with the characters and playing as them whenever that

battle music kicks in. But that's pretty much it, right? I mean, the rest of the time, we're watching what happens to them. And we don't get to have a say, if there's a character death, for example, in those games that isn't part of one of those battle music moments where I'm specifically moving my guys around. And that is like another entire subsection of RPGs that is just actually super different because you kind of don't have a choice about what happens to the characters there. And whether you have a Phoenix Down or not is not going to matter if it's a cutscene famously.

Cameron, did you play episode or Expedition 33? Do you have any thoughts on that game? Yeah, yeah. And even played it for longer than I played many of the other games we've talked about. I mean, I finished it. And I got to the end and I thought, yeah. Kirk, did you finish it? No, not yet.

It's just us. I'm going back to it and I want to finish it before the end of the year. You'll be all right. You'll be fine. I mean, one of the things really notable about that game is that I, yeah, 10 years ago, there would be a huge amount of discourse about the last, I don't know, 10 minutes or so of that game. And in the world we live in now, just seemingly no one cares to talk about that very much, which is interesting.

I mean, the stuff that you're talking about Maddie and Jason that you were alluded to, earlier is a lot of what you're identifying there is the very I don't know traditional differentiator between the WRP and the JRP you know that you're identifying some long running strife in between those two different strains of of RPG design I guess the thing that about clear obscure that was really notable and it sounds like Jason this was a big thing for you as well is that it feels I don't even know if I would use the word iterative it feels very profoundly derivative. You know, I've seen

every plot beat in that game more than once, and most of them in Final Fantasy 10, just by itself. Good game. Yeah, no complaints, you know, really enjoy that. But I think what's notable to me is that Claire Obscure's position right now, you know,

I think part of the stuff, Jason that you're alluding to in terms of what, it's fulfilling a kind of function. One of those is discursive about, you know, the Scrappy Gamer Upstarts who get to do this kind of stuff and against the corpos, as you said. I think the other one is that we do have a in games culture, this has been talked about repeatedly. We have a really short memory. There are objects that are really important to games culture.

I would not say that there is a deep memory of the specificity of things. So I had a conversation, for example, with someone, a friend of mine who really enjoyed Claire Obscure. And we were talking about it. And I said, listen, you know, I've seen a lot of this before. And I just started laying out the plot beats that are in that game that are shared with other games. And look, this is common in all media. This is not unique to clear obscure. But literally, this person I was talking to had said, oh, you know what?

I'm familiar with Final Fantasy 10. I just didn't know all that stuff was in there. You know, I know the icon of these games. And so there's something going on, I think, that we'll see going forward a lot. I think this is going to be more present than not in the next several years of this. of very specific tactical retreads of things that feel very familiar, but in objects that for our generation of player feel very held onto or dear, but might just exist as YouTube videos for people who are younger than us,

which is not saying that their mode of access is wrong or anything like that, but I do think that there's an accessibility thing going on with Claire Obscure of I can play it right now on whatever thing I want to do, and I might not be familiar with that game from literally 20 years ago. And why would you be? So I have some empathy for that position. But yeah, I think that derivativeness,

that feeling of that iterative cycle, I think we're going to feel this going forward a lot more of really reusing some of the ideas of the big hits of yesteryear. Yeah, I mean, what you're describing is also the end result of video games that like Assassin's Creed Odyssey are so bloated that they're impossible for most people to finish.

I imagine that one of the reasons we haven't seen a ton of discord around the ending of Clare Obscure is because how many people actually finish that game. To your point about Final Fantasy 10, how many people know that Tidis has a laughing scene, but I've never actually played that game to completion. I mean, gaming culture or discourse online or whatever you want to call it is often driven by people who have not finished the games in question, which I think is a large part of the phenomenon you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I got to finish it. I want to finish it before the end of the year, only because I have seen enough people say, well, the ending of that game is pretty wild. And I just want to know what they're talking about because I'm not spoiled on it.

Anyways, this has been a very fun conversation. We're going to wrap it up. Cameron, before we go, why don't you tell listeners really quick one more time about your book just in case they want to check it out? Yeah, it's called Everything is Permitted. It is on every storefront you could attempt to find it on. It's, I think, $26. Those are the most important parts. No.

That's the, you know, the back of the book stuff. Assassin's Creed is a franchise. It's a book that came out from an academic press, but if you're familiar with the things I've written or the podcasts I've done, it's, I think, pretty conversational. I think it's pretty readable. It is an attempt to understand what the heck is going on with a 15-plus year-running franchise, and how does it manage itself aesthetically, conceptually, science-fictionally, all these different pieces. How does it feel like it's all of a piece with one another and how does it present different parts of it to players in order to interact with them. I think it's a pretty leisurely walk through what's up with these? Why are they culturally

important? How do they work with people? How do they get you to engage with them and their ideas? And what maybe will they give you to take with you further on in your life? So big cultural kind of history work. I think people will like it. Generally positive reviews all around. That's the pitch. Nice. Well, hopefully some listeners will check it out and we'll put some links to some of your other podcasts and other work down on the show notes as well. Cameron Konsselman, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. All right, let's take a break, and we will be back for one more thing.

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And we're back for one more thing. Maddie, how about you go first? What's your one more thing? Okay. So I realized something today. It just so happens that today, the day that we're recording this, bear with me here. It is the anniversary of Dina's and my first date, November 11th, 1111, really easy to remember. Which was seven years ago. And you two might not remember that something else also happened seven years ago, which is why these two things are kind of linked in my mind. And so I looked at these days. And so I looked at these days. today. So the very first time that I was announced as a host on, it was split screen back then was also seven years ago and it was very close in time. So that was actually December 13, 2018, that I was first, first became part of the trifecta. It was official. Maddie Myers was joining the cast of Pataki Split Screen. It's kind of tough to say like when our anniversary is because I guessed it on split screen. couple times ahead of time. And I was like, what would we say is our anniversary of the three of us

podcasting every single week together? I think it would be hard to know. But December 13th is maybe a good day. I'm not saying you guys get me anything, but like it's coming up. It's been seven years. And also it's like weird that those two events are linked. So that's just pure coincidence. Can I make a counterpoint here, Maddie? I feel like typically anniversaries are not the first date, but like the wedding, right? Right. Right. Right. Okay. I see. I would say that our equivalent of our wedding is when we launched triple click. I would agree.

I would really like all committed to each other permanently. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Because we all quit, Kotaku, and we were like, let's get into business later. Yeah, exactly. Let's sign a piece of paper. We got a wedding style. Yeah.

So I would say it's kind of like how Dean and I have our date anniversary, which we celebrate in a more low-key way than our wedding. So like our triple-click date aversary, when we went on our first date, perhaps. was back in the split screen days. Anyway, I just thought that was kind of fun, but we've been doing this for seven years together, almost. And a lot has happened in that time. So, yeah, I was really thinking about that today,

the past seven years of my life. And, yeah. So do you give us credit for, like, keeping your relationship healthy for these last- It's all this. It's actually all just this podcast. Nice. I don't really share that much information about myself all this show

at some of the games I play, but like if somebody wanted to kind of track the few times I mentioned Dina early on, like as I recall, I was like, oh, this girl I'm seeing like very, very early in the show, you could do that, I suppose. But what's more important is these two things coincidentally happened seven years ago. And I just think that's cool. So happy almost anniversary of you two, day diversary. Yeah, happy almost anniversary to you too.

And yeah, maybe all of our listeners out there can think about what interesting and lovely anniversaries are happening for them as well. It's good to think about anniversaries. Jason, what is your one more thing? I have been champing at the bit to talk about this one. You sure it's not chomping? Champing, chomping, chomping? There's no way to know.

I've been chumping at the bit. Who knows? One of those unknowable questions. I want to talk about nepotism. Nepotism is a really interesting thing, right? Nepotism is a funny thing. It gets a bad rap, right? We think of nepotism as like, oh my God, your boss is like,

like nephew is coming in and on the fast-track to success. They're the CEO suddenly. Yeah. Or, I mean, Ubisoft's Ives Guillemann, the CEO of Ubisoft, his son is suddenly the CEO of the new Ubisoft company that they started. Perfect. Perfect. Right.

That's the thing of, a nepotism has. But nepotism, I also think, can have, like, can be advantageous even to the outside, people outside of that nepotism world. Because if you are the child of someone who is really, really good at something, then you can learn from them every single day. You can train with them. You are essentially getting, you are becoming an apprentice from the time you are born

to this like master at a craft, which is why I think nepotism in the creative world is a little bit different than nepotism in the business world where there's a little bit less of the craft part of things. I bring all this up because I recently read the book King Sorrow by Joe Hill. And Joe Hill is the son of the author Stephen, King. Also, the author Tabitha King, who I believe is a force in her own right, but I'm not as familiar

with her work as Stevens, of course, as most people are. King Sorrow is the best book I've read this year. It is tremendous. It is a tour de force. It is this like 900-page doorstop of a book that tells the story of this group of friends, this group of six friends who in the 80s summon a dragon to help take care of a problem for them. And that dragon, it turns out, in addition to taking care of that problem, also demands a sacrifice every single year. So every single year, they have to get together and decide, this is the person or people. We are going to have King Sorrow, the dragon, kill. And the book follows three or four decades of their lives and rotates between the different characters and tells different vignettes in their lives as they deal

with this dragon and the forces that they have unleashed into the world by summoning it. And it feels like a Stephen King book in so many ways. And it feels like a book that was written by someone who just learned from Stephen King and had Stephen King read early drafts and had Stephen King teach him for years and years and years. Now, Joe Hill, I should be clear, he is an established writer already. He wrote a comic book series called Lock and Key that turned into a pretty big show. He wrote a bunch of other books. The Fireman, I believe, is one of his books. Heart-shaped box, I think is another one of his books. And he famously helped King rework the ending to 1122-63, right? That's one of the Joe Hill fun facts that I'm aware of. That the ending, apparently,

the ending, apparently, it's an unusually strong ending. I at least like the ending to that book. And yeah, apparently Joe Hill kind of gave him some notes on it and they reworked it together. I like that. Family business. That's the phrase we're looking for here. It's part of the family business. Yeah. Well, it's so interesting because I think that like it's worth noting that Joe Hill probably would not be where he is right now. He probably open. The door was left wide open for him because of who his parents were. That is undoubtable. And he acknowledges that. But he also goes by a different name in part because he wants to be like his own identity. And I think the fact that he was able to learn from Stephen King is like irrefutable and has made him into this masterful writer and storyteller and reading this book. I mean, finishing this book, I was like, I to read this again. This is so good. This is like such a, such a ride, such a trip. As good as anything Stephen King has done, like as good as anything, like the best book I read this year, I think. And so, uh, I guess, I guess maybe people are a little bit too hard on nepotism. Sometimes nepotism can create more writers like Stephen King, which is something that we want in

the world. So maybe nepotism, maybe when we talk about nepo babies, maybe we should give some credit to those who like use their nepotism as an opportunity to get so good at the their craft and really like find their own incredible creative path in the world as opposed to the ones who are like, oh, well, I got this internship at the job and you can't say anything bad to me because my, my dad's the boss. That kind of an apple baby, maybe we don't need to give credit to. But man, Stephen King's kids and if he's like Stephen King has had this, now has this lineage, his other son, of course, is a famous writer too, Owen King. And I think that's pretty cool. So yeah, Here's to Nepotica.

Do you think that this book will do well because it has the word king in the title? It's so funny. And it has a whole bunch of references to Stephen King stuff. It's like broken up into different books and each one is a title that's like a reference to some sort of like literature from the King family. There's like there's one incredible gunsling a reference that I won't spoil, but it's pretty fun. I think there was a reference to Cujo in there. I mean, it's like in Stephen King fashion. It feels like he has all these kind of like mannerisms that Stephen King has in his writing

where like he'll be like, that was the last time this person did this ever again. And like he'll do the foreshadowing thing. Like it's very clearly written by the son of Stephen King. But he also has his own ideas and his own flourishes and his own writing style that I really appreciated reading this book. So yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty cool. It's almost, it's like a you're playing one of those games that's like a rogue like where like the child inherits some of the traits of the.

father and then you take over the child's life or something. Yeah. I was thinking like zombie you or something like that. Maybe that's not quite the quite the right one. Role legacy, yeah. But yeah, anyway, pretty fantastic. That's funny. I mean, I'm wondering if literally there's like a Pavlovian thing. People see the word king in big text on a cover of a book. I saw this at the bookstore the other day. Actually, right before you told me you were reading it and send a picture to my friend just sort of laughing. Yeah. Because it's like Joe Hill, king. And that's what you see from. first and it grabbed my eye immediately and then you told me you were reading it. I think I have this on hold at Libby and waving on it. So looking forward to reading it. That is funny. I think it's,

I think it's doing well because it's an astoundingly good book. You guys would both love it. Cannot recommend it enough. King Sorrow, Joe Hill. Everyone should go read it. You'll probably hear me talk about it again during our bonus episode where we talk about our favorite things of the year because yeah, blew me away. My favorite book of the year by far. Cool. Nice. Yeah, I will definitely read it. And yeah, kind of appropriate to talk about that on an episode where we just had Cameron. I know. I think they've talked about one of Tabith's books on Just King Things. I wonder if they'll ever talk about it, Joe Hill.

Yeah, I'm curious about that. He comes up a lot on the show, but it'd be cool for them to cover this book just because it'd be fun to listen to Michael and Cameron talk about it. All right, well, I will go last. My one more thing is a 1989 film that should have won best picture and didn't called Do the Right Thing, which I watched for the first time last week. The first time. Wow. I had never seen it. this is a massive blind spot in my in my film filmography my film history and and I wanted to see it forever and then as I've mentioned on the show before my friend Sam and I have a regular hang where we roll a dice and whatever year a hundred-sided diet and whatever year we roll we then go through the Academy Awards from that year and we pick one of the best picture nominees we rolled 1989 and as a result it was just an easy pick we both were like neither of us had seen do the right thing both of us really wanted to do

see it. So we just sat down and we watched that movie. Holy shit, that is an amazing movie. I was totally unprepared for how amazing it is. I knew it was good. I've even heard, like, Wesley Morris talk about it multiple times. I think it's one of his favorite movies. He's always talking about it on various podcasts. And I knew what it was about. I knew that it was just kind of the story of, you know, this one kind of block in bedstay, that it's one day. It's sort of a day from start to finish, like the hottest day of the year as racial tensions kind of simmer and then erupt. And it's also the story of a neighborhood. And I haven't mentioned, but this is, this movie is written and directed by Spike Lee.

And this is why they're seen as one of Spike Lee's most important films. And yes, also starring Spike Lee as Mukie. And then starring a whole raft of other actors, many of whom you would recognize Frankie Feizan's in it. Giancarlo Esposito, a very young Giancarlo Esposito is in it as bugging out. Unrecognizable, I would say, if you've only seen him in like breaking my at or something. Especially because he's all, you know, he's like very ornamented. He has his hair is a certain way and he's got glasses and he has all this just stuff, all these sort of accessories. And he's a very, you know, I mean, kind of everyone in this movie is just yelling at one another

the entire time. It's like a very yelled movie. Anyhow, John Torturo is in it. He's Pino. Who else? Oh, Rosie Perez is in a kind of small but crucial role. She's really great. And then so many other actors. I mean, just watching, you'll recognize half the people in it. And I just, man, I mean, I've seen some Spikely movies, not every Spikely movie. This one is just amazing. I really think anyone out there listening to this, if you haven't seen do the right thing, you should. I think it should be required viewing in like history or American history or civics class or something, just to kind of see this artistic interpretation of America and of race relations in New York and in America.

And then also to understand it in the context of the 1989 Academy Awards, because famously, driving Miss Daisy was up against it for Best Picture, and Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture. Very Green Book winning situation. Yes, and yeah, I think that was referenced quite a bit when Green Book won Best Picture, because it's a similar kind of story. It's a story of racial reconciliation

where the black character and the white character come to understand one another, and it's this very optimistic view of race in America. The fact that Driving Miss Daisy won and that do the right thing was snubbed and did not win can almost be read in some way, like the judges were saying, we want to believe this version of race relations in America, when, if you watch Do the Right Thing Now, especially the culminating event of that film,

which is horrifying in which I was not actually prepared for or aware of, we live in that America. Like, it is unquestionable. We do not live in the Driving Miss Daisy America. We live in the Do the Right Thing, America. That movie had so much more to say. And I just, like, I was totally blown away by it. Also, stylistically, it is no shot in that movie. movie isn't interesting. It's like beautiful looking at all times. It's so creative. It feels like

it was shot on a sound stage, even though I know it wasn't, but there's a sort of a Broadway, like a stage-like quality to a lot of the performances. And half the time, you almost expect to the characters to kind of come out onto a stage. Like you expect to see an audience with them. Mother's sister and the mayor, there, two scenes, these two elderly characters who were talking to one another. She really doesn't like him. He's kind of trying to charm her. He's kind of the, like, local alcoholic, you know, he's kind of just around, a really great character played by Asi Davis. There are scenes, the music just feels like it would be a Broadway production. There's this like string orchestra, you know, playing under them.

Don't stare at me. The evil eye doesn't work on me. Mother, sister, you've been talking about me for 18 years. What I ever done to you? You are drunk food. Besides that, the mayor don't bother nobody. And nobody no bother the man. But you. The mayor just tend to his own business. I love everybody. I even love you. Hold your tongue.

You don't have that much love. One day, you're going to be nice to me. We may both be dead and buried, but you're going to be nice. At least civil. A lot of the time, Brandfer Marcellus is in there playing saxophone. But this, I don't know, it feels like a stage production. And then having seen in the Heights, Lynn Manuel Miranda's kind of first big musical I was looking around for this to see if there's more critical discussion of these two things

because they are so similar. I mean, there's like a Paraguas seller in Do the Right Thing that turns up. And then the Paraguay guy in The Heights is like this recurring character in that musical. I have to think that Lynn and everyone else who wrote in the Heights were like very influenced by Do the Right Thing. It's like also the hottest day of the year. It's a neighborhood. It just happens to be Washington Heights instead of Brooklyn. And like it just has so many little echoes.

and I found that really interesting as well. So it was like an essential piece of the American canon that I hadn't seen. I'm so glad I saw it. It's like a work of genius. I really just can't recommend it enough. I want to watch it again immediately. So this is my big recommendation. Anyone out there, if you've thought about seeing Do the Right Thing and you've never watched it,

just watch it. Sit down with some friends. Put the movie on. You'll be very glad you did. It is a masterpiece, an amazing movie. It's great. I'm glad you finally watched it. Yeah, me too.

Man, what a movie. All right, and that's another episode of Triple Click. Hey, did it again. We did a podcast. Happy, happy day anniversary. Like we've been doing it for seven years. I guess for five years. You're right, it does kind of confuse things.

Happy part of us. Forget what I said. It's fine. It's whatever day it is. Who cares? It's whatever day. We've been doing it for years. We've been doing it for years.

And we'll do it for many more years to come. All right. I will see the two of you next week. See you next week. Bye. triple click is produced by jason schreyer mattie 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 maximum fun dot org slash join email us at triple click at maximum fun.org and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.