Triple Click - Triple Play: Alan Wake 2

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

Jason, Maddy, and Kirk pull out their flashlights and go spelunking in the Dark Place for this week's episode, all about the wonderful new game Alan Wake 2. They talk about the increasingly fascinating Remedyverse, the game's Resident Evil inspirations, and try to figure out if Mr. Door was supposed to be played by Lance Reddick. One More Thing:Kirk: Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix)Maddy: Quiz Lady (2023)Jason: MCU (Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, Gavin Edwards)LINKS:Variety on the turmoil at Marvel Studios: https://variety.com/2023/film/features/marvel-jonathan-majors-problem-the-marvels-reshoots-kang-1235774940/Polygon feature on Blue Eye Samurai director Jane Wu: https://www.polygon.com/23945186/blue-eye-samurai-action-jane-wu-animationSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy 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

Welcome back to The Dark Place, where you must listen to Podcast to Escape. Welcome back to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about Alan Wake 2, a new video game from the Finnish developers at Remedy Entertainment, who have really created something special. Let's talk about it. I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

Hello. Hello. It's us. friends once again, welcome back to the show. From the darkness of winter, we come. From the dark place of winter, we come. It is the dark place of winter. It's, it's, the, the days are getting shorter, which means there are fewer hours in which I can play Alan Wake 2. Huge issue for me. So I don't like playing it at night. As soon as it gets dark, it's too scary for you. I keep noticing that the podcasts that I make start becoming real and a kind of twisted, nightmarish way. And I don't know what

I think video games might turn out to be real. Interesting. So you're saying, it's kind of scary to think about that, isn't it? You're going to bring, Kirk is going to bring me and Maddie to life. Wow, that'll be scary. That would be really weird.

Oh, man. Maybe I am just a character that one of the two of you created. How can we know? And hey, if people out there want to bring us to life and make sure they stay alive, they should become a member of the Maximum Fun Network, which is a network that hosts this all podcast of ours. So, hey, go to Maximumfund.org.

join and become a member. Help support us. Help us make the show possible because we don't have ads. We don't sell ads against anything. So we rely on a beautiful subscription slash memberships from our beautiful, beautiful listenership. So subscribe, become a member. And not only do you support us, you also get a monthly bonus episode, including the one we just recorded and ran last week, which is called V-Hunt for Best October. And a whole back-backback, Lots more in there and then lots more to come, including some really good ones in November and December. We're going to talk about some games that I think people are eagerly awaiting us to talk about in-depth. Yes, for sure.

On beans casts where we really just go into the meaty core of a video game and get spoilers and all. Getting out our steak knives and slicing open the meat and getting to the core. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, sign up. It's maximum fun.org slash join. And you too can join today.

Kirk, what are we talking about this week? We are talking about yet another video game. I don't know if the two of you noticed this. A lot of video games out this year. It's a real problem. It's a real problem. Pretty good year for video games.

Played a game again. We did it again. So here we are again to talk about a new game, exciting game, or at least a game that I'm very excited about, called Alan Wake 2. I've written a little. preamble to explain what it is and to put us in the mood.

I can't wait for you to explain what it is. It's going to be so easy. I'm really curious as to what you could possibly say. Go ahead. It's not a lake, it's an ocean. 13 years after Alan Wake shared that cryptic yet somehow revelatory statement, the writer has returned in Alan Wake 2, created by Finnish Game Studio Remedy Entertainment

under the guiding hand of creative director Sam Lake, Alan Wake 2 snatches up the baton from the 2010 original, as well as its increasingly experimental, downloadable expansions, and its 2012 spin-off, Alan Wake's American Nightmare. It also establishes itself firmly in the world of Remedies' 2019 action game control, building out a connected remedyverse of characters, institutions, and paranormal phenomena. In Alan Wake 2, players returned once more to the town of Bright Falls, Washington, assuming control of the titular author, who when we last saw him had become trapped in a supernatural nether zone known as the Dark Place, slave to a malevolent force, the dark presence, which siphons artists' creative energy and is steadily twisting pages from his new novel into reality.

Players also take control of a new character FBI agent Saga Anderson, who has come to Bright Falls to investigate a series of menaceous. mysterious murders and finds herself inexorably drawn into Allen's story. The game is thus a dual protagonist, third-person survival horror deal, very much in the mold of Resident Evil, with players jumping between saga's investigation in seemingly idyllic Bright Falls, and Allen's desperate attempts to escape the dark place, which manifests as a cursed nightmarish vision of New York City.

Like Remedy's previous games, it mixes tense exploration and chaotic combat with live-action interludes, original rock music, and extended unapologetic fourth wall breaks to create a storytelling stew that is often bizarre and never boring. We've all played the game on PC with codes provided by Remedy PR. I have finished it.

It took me a little over 20 hours. I gather the two of you haven't. But let's start with the two of you since you're earlier on and just for the sake of spoilers we're not going to be getting into some of the stuff that I've seen because I don't want to spoil either

if you want it. So how much of both of you played and what do you think of the game? Let's start with Maddie since I think you've played a little more than Jason. So why don't you go first? Yeah, I'm further in. By the way, I actually am playing it on PS5.

Runs just great. Oh, okay. But not PC for what it's worth. Oh, okay. Love those sweet, sweet haptic triggers. Just makes it a little bit more terrifying, folks. Yeah, I've been playing on PC with the dual sense. And it's an incredible dual sense implementation.

The raindrops on the controller. Anyways, very good on PC with dual sense too. So go ahead. Well, we'll probably talk in a bit about all the different ways that Alan Wake 2 is scary, which is to say every single podcast. possible way that a game can do horror. Alan Week 2 does do horror, except for maybe gore. There's only a little bit of gore in the game so far. So I'm many hours in. I get lost pretty easily in games, so I'm probably not actually as far into the story as one might guess

based on how many hours I've played. But I believe I'm at chapter four of Allen's story and chapter three of sagas. I've been pretty consistently switching back and forth between them now that I've hit the part of the game after chapter one for each of them, I believe, is around when they let you switch any time. I know you don't have to do that. I have co-workers who played all of Alan and then circled back to do all of Saga. I'm trying not to do that and actually switch back and forth as I go. Game scary. That's that's what I made takeaway. And also my other takeaway is that I kind of wish I had played Alan Wake One and the control DLC and all the additional remedy verse pieces because this game makes it very attractive to get involved in its lore

in ways that sometimes other games that we play and other media that we interact with don't make it fun. Like I guess sort of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the obvious go-to here where maybe we're a little tired of it and we don't like having to keep up with all of it anymore. This is like the opposite where I'm like, oh, I haven't kept up with all things. Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yeah, it's like, it's like that, but it also kind of reminds me of like the first season of lost. Like, there's a very like early 2000s or like just the brink of 2010's feeling to this game in that it feels like the four puzzle boxes were played out.

You know what I mean? Like discovering things in this game feels very satisfying and exciting, even though I'm also of a mind that maybe it's not all going to fit together or it doesn't make any freaking sense. I think that's a really important observation, though, because I also find myself very drawn into the broader remedy verse of it all. And this was true with control as well. There aren't a lot of answers. There aren't a lot of firm answers. I will say by the end of Allen Wake 2, there are some things that become less ambiguous, but there's so much mystery. It's so lynchian.

It's so influenced by Twin Peaks where the asking of the questions is part of the fun. And I think that loss comparison is a really good one. That's a different kind of lore than the MCU, which increasingly feels. feels like homework because it's so straightforward in a lot of ways. Like it really is just a bunch of characters with really plain spoken stories and you kind of know what they're doing. And then you just need to know what everyone's doing in order for the next conflict to make sense.

In this case, it's more like, it's much more abstract. So actually, I do find it more enticing as well. I find myself with friends just going down weird rabbit holes trying to figure out who Thomas Ane is or whatever about this game. I googled Thomas Ane earlier today. A very mysterious guy. So yeah, I think there's a lot to that and agree that the broader remedy verse is very enticing to me because it's so mysterious and kind of there aren't that many answers.

Jason, what do you think of the game and how much of it have you played? Yeah, I think there's something ironic, probably some irony in the fact that I am about to spend three weeks in a writing hole trying to finish my book for a deadline and will therefore not be able to play anymore, Alan Wake. too as much as I would like to. It's for the best, maybe. It could be fairly stressful, especially later in this game. Some of those scenes of him trapped in that room, writing and spiraling over and

writing. Yeah, I don't know. This game really makes writing a book seem like the worst possible thing you could do ever. Well, using a typewriter seems pretty miserable to me. But on a typewriter, you can't be distracted by the internet, so that's helpful. Yeah, I'm not very far. I actually just got up to, I haven't played it in a week because I haven't played it in a week because I was in Anaheim for BlissConn over the last week.

That's right. But last Tuesday or Monday or whatever before I left, the last thing I played was actually in Allen's first chapter, where you first start seeing all the live action stuff and craziness. I think I just met Adi, the janitor from control. Yes. Hung out with him for a bit, which is very delightful. Love him.

Love Ati, definitely. So I'm not very far, so I'm not going to be able to, point out and get all the references and stuff that you guys you both know at this point. But I've really enjoyed what I played so far other than that first boss. It was a real pain in the ass. The first couple of times I tried to beat him. What's his name? Nightingale. And yeah, I really enjoyed it. I mean, it looks really great. It looks gorgeous.

It's really cool. I think Saga is a really interesting protagonist. She's got kind of a cool perspective as a mom and as this FBI agent who's coming in and trying to figure out what's what, although I was a little bit kind of like disconcerted by the fact that it seems like this normal world, but then she's just kind of like rolling with the punches as, no, she's just like rolling with the punches as one spiritual, mysterious things happens another, which is very bizarre. Yeah. And she herself seems to be very familiar with the supernatural world in that it doesn't take long at all before you're like, wait, does Saga have some sort of preternatural detecting ability where like

she can sort of talk to suspects or or people involved in the mystery and then infer things about them that seem impossible to infer? So it was pretty, pretty early on into the game before I started being like, is Saga, which of some kind and what's really going on here? Definitely the name. Definitely the name Saga conjures which, which is. Yeah, she's cool. And I just have really enjoying it in general, wishing I had more time to play it, especially when I find things like these nursery rhyme puzzles that I really want to dive into and take hours just like staring at and riddling away at, which I will not be able to do for at least another month or two. So I'm going to put a pin in this game and we'll hopefully, hopefully people will still be talking about it when I do get a chance to play more. I definitely will be and I'll be excited to talk to you about it. Yeah, so like I said, I finished it.

I absolutely love this game. This is one of the coolest video games I played in a really long time. I think it's just incredible. My God, I can't believe it exists. This is one of those games like, I know like some people actually feel about death stranding, a game that I've come to really appreciate. But that's the last time I played a game that felt quite so unapologetically strange and original. and I'm just so impressed by Sam Lake and so very happy that he managed to find someone else to foot the bill for such a grand expression of his and his studio's creative vision.

I think this game is just absolutely awesome. I have a lot to say about it. I guess I'll explain, though, a few more things about how it works, since we're talking about saga and her ability to maybe possibly psychically tell what people are thinking. And one important thing about this game that I think people should know going in is that it is a very narrative-focused game. It is more narrative-focused, certainly than control, which was very much an action kind of Metroidvania style, third-person action game, lots of explosive, big fights, supernatural powers, flying around tons of enemies. Gaining ability after ability, superpowers. And narratively very cool, but the narrative is in equal proportion to the comments. bad in the game. This game, I would say, is more like 70-30, maybe 75-25 narrative to gameplay. There's a lot

of exploration. It's very much a survival horror game, so even much more so than Alan Wake or anything that remedy has ever made. It's a lot of intense fights against two or three enemies that are very hard to kill. It's probably hardest at the very beginning. I agree Jason, that opening boss, Nightingale, who fun fact is voiced by Doug Cockle, who played Gerald of Rivia in the That's funny. Wow. That's very funny. Found that out in the credits.

I thought that was kind of cool. A tough early fight. And it kind of, I found, I got into a group with it pretty early. But the gameplay is, there's not that much combat. It's a lot of walking around and looking at stuff. And then it's a lot of spending time assembling the story on a cork board. Because a really cool idea that this game really commits to is that both characters, Alan and Saga, have an internal space.

In Allen's case, he's in the dark. place, which is kind of a dream world anyways. So he's trapped in this writer's room. It's the attic of a building where his typewriter is and he has a wall where he's drawing all of his narrative ideas and it's kind of his like writer's wall. So that's kind of a supernatural thing anyways. With saga, it's a little more unusual because like you said, Jason, it's a little weird at first where she's really rolling with it as very strange things are happening. And it's pretty disconcerting because she's just like, okay, yeah, that guy came out of the lake. He seems to have some kind of magical dark shroud around him. I don't know. Anyways.

He's attacking me even though the heart is removed from his chest. He killed like three police officers in front of me. Yeah. He came back to life in the morgue. I think the wildest part of that moment that you just described is that the police officers come downstairs to multiple bodies and they aren't faced by it. A very jarring moment that I remember when I was playing as well. It's so strange. Well, and as you play the game more, it becomes, it's not like there's like an explicit explanation for that, but there is a total.

tonal one where the whole game is on that kind of bent twin peaks wavelength where it's just like weird things happen. Plus, in fairness, Bright Falls is like the most haunted place in the world and horrible things have been happening there forever. Super strange. Right. It would also not be that surprising for the police officers there to be like, oh yeah, some more of our cops got killed by some weird monster in the basement. Yeah, they're like stepping over a dead body while also telling you that magic isn't real like at the same time. And you're like, well, how did this person die that you just stepped over if not by the zombie running out of the room? But I don't know.

I guess maybe magic is there isn't real, depending on who you ask in Bright Falls. But yeah, go back to describing the mind place. I interrupted you. Oh, no, that's fine. It's very twin peaksy where in Twin Peaks, it's that same thing where there's almost a supernatural element at play in some of the deductions that are going on. That was his name the FBI agent is deducing with saga. that winds up being a major part of her character. And if you'll recall, even going into this game,

I mean, Saga is a figure from Norse mythology. This is a world, a universe in which Tor and Odin are the band leaders of a band called the Old Gods of Asgard, who played a song that was in control, who played songs that were in Allen Wake, one, who not a huge surprise to hear turn up in this game as well. So it's like there's also this sort of Norse mythological vibe tying in with this.

A fun thing about Bright Falls in general is that it feels kind of like a town in Finland or something. Yeah, this is a very Finnish game. Standardadian for some reason. Because, of course, Remedy is a Finnish studio. So, yeah, the Mind Palace, her Mind Place. I know, I keep wanting to call it a Mine Palace too, but it's not. I think she calls it her Mind Place.

It's like, yes. I think she describes it as being based on the Mind Palace approach. So she's even kind of referencing the sort of Sherlock Holmesian thing. She has this room. It's this very, very cozy room. in which you can really get a good look at her sweater, which I would have to say is like the third lead of this game is Saga Anderson's sweater.

What a sweater. You wouldn't say her ponytail? Her ponytail is incredible. Ponytail is pretty great too. Yeah. They used all of those lighting and ray tracing and whatever path tracing to make some amazing looking clothing and hairstyles.

So she's in this very cozy kind of cabin where you can walk around and it's like your manuscript pages are over here and then there's your big crime wall. And it's really cool and like really involved. I was so surprised by how involved it is the game really takes you through it at first, where you're kind of, you know, you have a photo, okay, there was a murder, you look at the murder, and then she lays out kind of automatically when you put the murder photo up,

she lays out some note cards that'll say motive of murder, you know, weapon with a question mark, and then you have some polarids in your hand that you then have to kind of place in the right places. And as you do so, they very pleasingly get stuck up onto the board and a little red string connects things. things. And I think it's a really smart approach for a game like this because the more you play, the more of those you're filling out. There are a series of cases. And so all the way through collectibles, you know, you're collecting these lunchboxes. Each lunchbox gets its own little entry, but then also whole things like, you know, whole storylines, what's going on with Alan Wake or what's going on with the cult of the tree, this cult that's apparently killing people. And as

you go, you can watch Saga kind of reason through what's happening. And it keeps the player in the loop, Like it is really helpful for keeping you grounded in what's going on in the story, since it's this labyrinthine narrative full of contradictions and mysterious dream logic. So having this board that just lays it all out as best as she can figure is very, very helpful, I think. I never got bored of doing that. I was thinking about how in previous games, whenever a game tries to make their menu something clever where you walk around or something like that, it's always a pain. And this, it works.

And I think one of the reasons it works is to back up for a second, the three of us have talked a little bit and thought a little bit about how this console generation has not felt next gen in that the graphics haven't made huge leaps from what we can tell. Everything kind of feels like the PS4 era in a lot of ways in part because there's a lot of cross-gen stuff, but for a lot of reasons. This game, to me, feels really next gen, not just because it looks really cool, but also because being able to zip back and forth in no loading times, that's what to me feels like is like one of these big next-gen. innovations. You're on a solid state drive now, so you're going to, you don't have to worry about like all this stuff loaning in every single time you go to this mine place, Amazon Palace, mine place and back to the real world. And I think that's pretty cool. It allows for some innovations like the one we're just seeing where essentially your menu is in this little explorable place, but it doesn't feel annoying. Yeah, it feels great. And I think also,

we've talked before about solving a mystery in a game and how hard it can be for a game to you that Sherlock Holmes fantasy of feeling like you're figuring it out at the same time as the protagonist. Like usually you'll be ahead of them and then you'll be annoyed that they're placing the clues in some arcane way and that you have to jump through those hoops or the opposite happens where the character's figuring it out and you're like, wait, what? Okay, I guess the game's just telling me that's the murderer. Fine. It's really hard to split that difference. And this game is more doing the latter, I would say, than the former. Saga's smarter than I am for sure. but I think that works because the game is not about putting me in control.

And I'm not just saying that because it's the name of a remedy game. Like the game is really interested in making me feel powerless and alienated a lot of the time. And even when Saga feels like she knows what to do, I, the player, am like the friend in the backseat who's like, everything's so crazy, Saga. Like, I'm glad you're feeling good about this. But like, this Woods is freaking me out, man. Like she's cool as a cucumber, but... And when it's dark out, you go to sleep in the back,

you close the shades and you're like, yeah, I can't handle this. I can't handle this. I can't. You drive a while. Don't... Yeah, I'm falling asleep in the back of the car while I let Saga drive. I am much closer to Alan, who's constantly panicking in his version of the world. That's closer to me.

Yeah. But you know what I mean? Like when you're playing a horror game, it has to sort of design around the idea of giving you that power fantasy versus is not. And I think this game is really good at making you the player feel scared even while also presenting Saga as this incredible detective who is cool as a cucumber. Yeah, they have a lot of fun with that over the course of the story too. As Saga becomes increasingly enmeshed in the story, she becomes more and more loss and actually more frightened because the way that this dark

presence manifests is by sucking everyone in and making them all a part of this draft that Alan is trying to finish. And I won't get into the specifics, but this was true in the first game, but we only saw it really from Alan's perspective. And having a new character in the second game, especially with some of the stuff that was set up in the control DLC, where Alan is trying to find a hero for his story so that he can maybe change the way the story is flowing, so that he can escape the influence of the dark presence, which manifested in whatever as like scratch and there's all these different

characters in the various DLCs, he's trying to get out. And so that kind of pulls all these people in. Saga's partner, anyone playing this game who's played remedy games, will notice immediately, basically is Max Payne. Even though that also means that Saga's partner is Sam Lake, the director of the game, and the head of remedy. Because Sam Lake lent his face to be Max Payne and Alex Casey is the character's name. Oh, my God. I can't even, I've started on the wrong foot. I know.

I'm like, maybe you should go back and explain that again. Let me rewind. So Saga shows up with a partner. Her partner is a guy named Alex Casey. Alex Casey is played physically by Sam Lake, the director of Remedy. He is voiced by, what's his name, James McCaffrey, I think is his name. That's right. And who is the voice of Max Payne from the original games and also the voice of director

Trench from control. So he's like a voice that is always turning up. So basically he's like this hodgepatch of other. remedy characters who's appeared suddenly in this world. But also in the world of Ellen Wake, Alan Wake is a novelist who writes crime fiction about a detective named Alex Casey. And this Alex Casey is talking about, he's always talking at the beginning about how he's like, yep, I'm named the same as the guy from the Allen Wake books.

It's a thing. Everyone always asks me about it. So from the very start, you're like, okay, what? Like immediately. You're like, wait, what? And also it's Sam Lake. So if you're a game journalist, you know his face. anyway, so you're immediately like, well, Sam Lake's in this video game. That's really weird.

And this game looks so good that it's very clearly Sam Lake. Like when you see him, it's not, there's no confusion there. Like you can just see him and be like, that's that guy. I mean, we haven't really talked about the live action aspects of the game yet and like the guy who plays Alan Wake. But I think part of why those sections work at all is because the game looks so realistic and also because the live action segments are lit in such a way as to look somewhat uncanny so that

they can sort of blend between one another without you feeling well I don't want to say without you feeling as disturbed the opposite to maximize the disturbance of switching between live action segments of this game and also seeing very photorealistic actors portraying parts as models as 3D models I just

I don't know that the whole game makes you feel like you have no idea what is real. That's the whole purpose of it, though, is to then include the literal director of the game as a character in the game. It's freaking weird, man. I don't know. It gets weird, and you can tell

that Sam Lake is having so much fun. I mean, there are so many sequences, especially in the dream world, which, yeah, let's talk a little more about that, about the dark place where Alan is living, where it just seems like this is Sam Lake's dream. I mean, this guy is clearly such a, like, media obsessive. He actually shares that in common with him,

video Kojima, I think. It's a certain type. I was about to bring up Kojima. Like if you're going to put yourself in a game, I'm surprised Kojima hasn't put himself in a game as a main character yet. Maybe he'll play this and then he'll be inspired. It's funny because Kojima is in cyberpunk. When I was replaying cyberpunk, you find him in this

bar and he's talking about video games or something. I wonder what he thinks of this. He must have talked about it because he must see a kindred spirit in Sam Lake. There's this certain type of video game otore that is the like media obsessive, like really into movies really into certain styles of other media and likes to bring that into the world of

video games as opposed to someone like, I don't know, Jonathan Blow or someone who's just like really into like game design and like just wants to come up with new game design ideas. Lucas Pope. Yeah, there you go. Lucas Pope is a good example. So this definitely feels like that first type because there's so much cinema in this game. A lot of the best parts of the game are like incredible things that you're watching. And then also, I'll mention it here.

There's so much amazing music in this game. That was true of control. That was true of the first Alan Wake. There's a band, Poets of the Fall, a Finnish rock band, who have provided the music of the old gods of Asgard, who have appeared in all of these games. They were the ones who played the Ash Trey May's song from Control. Still, for me, one of the greatest music video game moments of all time. And, like, they do some incredible stuff in this game as well. They even have a callback.

There's the song from the first Alan Wake, the late. of the light. I think it's called The Poet and the Mews is the actual name of the song. I'm just going to play a little bit of it right now. It's such a good song. It returns at a moment in Alainway 2 and just reminded me of the needle drop in the first game. That's that band. I just, I feel like having a band like that on call to write epic like Prague, like Prague rock Zeppliny sounding songs for you is such a trump card for this studio. Like every game studio should form a relationship with a cool rock band. I agree.

But I'll also say. Yeah, we should have one for triple click. Absolutely. But I feel like part of why this doesn't scan as like self-congratulatory or annoying or self-aggrandizing or something is because I often get the sense that Sam Lake is making fun of himself. Like, yes, he's sort of playing the role of this Alex Casey. character, but that's not really the main character. Like, he isn't saga. He isn't Alan Wake.

He's kind of this other being who's sort of on the periphery of the story at all times. And I kind of, I mean, I don't know this. I've not asked him, but I get the sense in his portrayal of Alex Casey that he's kind of making fun of the idea of him being in the game and like the idea of kind of fame in that way. Like a lot of the story, Alan's story is about. his discomfort with that level of fame that he achieved. He's sort of the Stephen King-esque super famous writer within the world of the game. Or a Dean Coons. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Or like a John Grisham or something because he's more of like an airport novelist. And he's very uncomfortable with that. And I just feel like this game isn't like somehow because of that tone throughout of self-effacingness, it doesn't come across as annoying to have like songs that are written specific. four-year game. Like, I feel like that's something that Kajima games sometimes struggle with is that sometimes I'm like, yeah, movies are cool, but like, is this cool also? Or is this just sort of us talking about how cool movies are? Like, I feel like there's a version of this game that's, like, an imitation of Twin Peaks that's the worst thing ever. Do you get what I'm saying? But instead,

this actually feels like it's in conversation with Twin Peaks and building on some of those themes and actually has something more to say, as opposed to just being like Twin Peaks. What a cool. TV show. Remember that? Yeah. I totally agree. There's a sort of a light touch and a bit of goofiness to those scenes, especially the ones with Sam Lake. It helps that Sam Lake, I think, is a genuinely compelling on-screen presence. Like, he's not bad. He's like an interesting-looking guy who knows how to act and carry himself on screen. And as a result, it's fun to watch him do things. Because when you're playing as Alan in the dark place, there are these frequent vignettes that are these live-action sequences. is it starts with another character that we haven't actually talked about, Mr. Dorr, who's the host of a talk show, is played by David Harewood. Yeah.

My sense or my gut is that this was originally supposed to be Lance Reddick because Lance Reddick was in Quantum Break, and Lance Reddick is referenced in the credits. They sort of, you know, pay tribute to him in the credits. I love David Harewood in this role, by the way, but I can picture a very different version done by Lance Reddick as well. the character reminded me of this character from Lost that Lance Reddick played called Matthew Avedon. Yeah, you're right. And Mr. Doer is like very uncannily similar to him. And so, yes,

Kirk, I'm like, in fact, I should, I bet I could, let me text someone right now and see if I can get an answer to that question. Although it's a little late. If you can get the answer by this. Let me see. All right, we'll see if you get a response. Bing. Future Jason here, pulling a Kirk to explain that after I sent this message, it was too. late in Finland to get a response, but the next morning I did get a response, and this is from my person who would certainly know. The answer is yes, Lance Reddick was meant to play Mr. Dorr until his unfortunate passing. All right, back to the show. So to stay on that, though, yeah, there are, there are some loose ties to quantum break, even though Remedy doesn't have the rights to quantum

break. So it's more like their actors from that game will appear and stuff. And they, you You get the sense that they would love to connect all of their games. And I could see them casting Lance Reddick as a sort of similar character to the character that he played in Quantum Break and having him play that role. Though David Harewood, who is the actor who plays Mr. Ador, is fantastic. It's really an incredible performance and a very mysterious one. So you'll cut to these scenes of Alan being interviewed by this guy. And they're totally like making fun of the kinds of promotional interviews that authors give in a really funny way where Alan is. is in a dream.

It's even the way that they present these sequences to go way back to something you said, Jason, about the next genie-ness of this, the technology, I think, makes it possible for them to do a lot of this sort of overlaying or, like, you'll be exploring an area as saga and you'll see a flash of somewhere that Alan is. And you don't even know if that's what you're seeing. It's not even always clear to me now that I've finished the game. Yeah. Like you'll see like a train tunnel and then way later you're in a train tunnel as.

As Alan in the dark place. I do actually recommend I liked playing back and forth. I did kind of chapter to chapter or like kind of clear stopping point back and forth between the two because they do overlap at various points in really cool ways. And I think the technology makes that possible. And then because Alan's in like a place that just totally follows dream logic, I mean, there are these loops he'll get stuck in where he's walking down a staircase and opens a door and then he's back at the top of the staircase and has to go down again.

Like it's really rebuilding the levels as he moves through them. and then sometimes you'll just come to a TV screen, and on the TV screen is Live Action Allen, and you hold down the button, and then it cuts to that live action Alan who looks over his shoulder, and then suddenly there he is on a screen, and you're in live action,

and he's talking to Mr. Doer, and then something very strange happens in their conversation, and then next thing you know, you're controlling Alan, and he's standing in the empty television studio. They're able to do stuff like that so constantly, and then, I mean, that's child's play compared to the stuff they pull off,

even kind of early on in the story, Like some of the stuff they're doing is so freaking cool with like live action projections around you while you're moving through the game world. People like in the sky like these actors looking down on you. I mean like presentationally and aesthetically, it's just so visionary. It feels like this visionary work of entertainment. Even leaving aside all the narrative stuff, all the gameplay stuff, just the way that it looks and the experience of moving through it is really remarkable. Just to get back to something you said in that little diatribe Kirk about. about Alan waking up in the studio,

that is one of my favorite horror elements that they keep returning to is sort of the actor's nightmare element. Like in the first interview that Alan has, he's like, I haven't even written a book. Like I don't know what your age is doing me about. They're like, good joke, Alan. Ha ha ha.

Yeah, and like Mr. Dorr is like, well, of course you have and he like takes it out and it's right there. And like that is, I mean, it's certainly a dream I've had because I did theater as a kid. And even as an adult, I have the classic like, oh, I'm late to class dream, but I also have the actor's nightmare dream. We're like, oh, it's a show, but I don't, I don't know, remember any of the songs

or I don't know any of my lines. And oh, my God, I'm being pushed out on stage. Like, it's terrifying. And this game really takes theatrical elements of design and puts them into a video game in a really seamless way and also makes them horrific and stressful. And I think that that is a form that I haven't really seen a horror game do, that I find very effective because it's like, oh my God, what is happening? Absolutely. This game borrows a lot from theater and from like art installations in ways

that are so, so cool that just continue as it goes along. So, okay, so real quick, I just want to talk about the gameplay because that's a lot of I've been doing, at least in the first saga chapter. As you guys know, I'm not super far, but it seems very Resident Evil. I haven't played the first Allen week, so I don't know if that's similar, but comparing it to control. like you said before, Kirk, very different types of games. But control feels a little bit more like a kind of, I don't know,

classic video game structure. You get more powerful. Eventually you're just blasting through things and it's just a blast to fly around and use telekinesis and all sorts of cool tricks. This feels a little bit more like resources are limited, scavenge for what you can, move a lot, look for the light, the same sort of classic Resident Evil gameplay style we've been seeing for a little while now. First of all, was the first game like that?

Second of all, do you guys think they just took Resident Evil and we're like, yep, that's what you're in here. Even the inventory is like straight out of Resident Evil. Yeah. To answer the second part first, yes, I think they've been explicit about the Resident Evil influence. To the first part, this is much more survival horror than the first game was and much more explicitly Resident Evil influence. Like the two protagonists is part of it. But the way you move, the way that enemies move, the feel of a fight is just a lot fewer enemies. They're harder to kill. And you have to manage your resources much more carefully.

I found, like, I eventually hoarded enough stuff that I always kind of felt prepared. Once I had two or three weapons, because you empty a gun and then you need to keep shooting. So it's like, all right, shotgun's empty, got to move to the crossbow. Okay, crossbow is empty. Got to move to my handgun. And then you're like, I'm getting out of bullets. I need to flare. Like, you need an oh, shit gun that you can just pull out and, you know, if you're really

getting swarmed. But, yeah, I'd say it's very Resident Evil influence. I wouldn't say it's not as strong on the combat as control, a game that I think is really, really fun as Max Payne series that I think is really fun. First Ellen Wake, I kind of remember feeling pretty boring. So I think I would find it, I'd say I find it more interesting than the first Allen Wake, but it's not quite as good, just as a pure combat game as Resident Evil 4. There are some things about it that I find annoying. There are just times in combat where like whatever you want to call it, the balance is a little bit off, the push and pull doesn't quite feel right.

There's one thing that drives me nuts is you have to use your flashlight to burn the shadow off of guys before you can damage them. Or you do a lot more damage if you do that. They're a big glowing red weak spot. Right, and you get a glowing weak spot. And something that really frustrates me is you replace your batteries once your flashlight runs out of batteries, but sometimes that'll happen right after you've used your last segment of your battery bar to burn someone's shield off and they're vulnerable right after that happens. But instead of being able to just pull out, you're gun and shoot them while they're vulnerable,

like while they're staggered, you'll pause and like your character will put batteries back in their flashlight and it drives me nuts. I think it's such a bad feeling. It's like a weird video game rule that you should never interrupt the like flow of inputs that way just because they happen to use the last segment of a battery. in your flashlight. But generally, I think the combat's pretty good. I find it pretty fun. Yeah. I think it's fine. It doesn't feel as good as Resident Evil to me, or at least the latter-day Resident Evil is that it's mimicking, but I don't think it's intended to. I feel like it's

much closer to a super stressful walking simulator in terms of what they're trying to evoke. Like a lot of times you can just avoid enemies entirely. If you're Allen, at least, you can kind of predict like, okay, there's a lot of shadows there. I can dodge around a lot of them and just get through it and then get whatever I need to and keep going. There are some situations where you can't do that, but I don't know. I do that more often than not. Such as the first boss fight, which, again, that's a boss fight. So let's talk about that a little about the differences in gameplay between Saga and Allen and also about the scary factor because Maddie you mentioned that. And I do want to come back to it because this is actually a pretty scary game and people should

Very scary. There is a pretty significant difference between the saga segments and the Allen segments. It's almost like the saga segments play like Alan Wake 1, and the Alan Wake segments play like the Alan Wake DLC. Is kind of how I would compare it to anybody who's played those two games or how to explain it. But Saga is really like exploring a town. There are a lot of collectibles she can get. I'll say actually I think the collectibles are pretty great. There are these cult stashes.

Each one has a puzzle. I find them very fun. By and large, I think they're fun to try to solve. Each one is unique. One was just a math problem. It was like there is 200 wheels in a factory. Bikes have two wheels. Cars have four wheels.

It's just an algebra problem. It was just a problem. And I just sat there. I was like, you have to figure this out. So they had fun with those. But it's a lot of that. That's awesome. I want to play a game that's just going around and doing math problems.

It's kind of what the game is. Yeah, I want that. It's a new form of horror that can't like it's discovered. Someone should do like an SAT prep that's like a game, like an Alan Wake style game where you go around and explore a town and you have to solve puzzles that are just like SATs questions. Yeah, why isn't that a game? It sounds amazing. That seems like it would prepare a lot of students. Yeah, it would be great. An engaging way to prepare students for college. So a saga, it feels very much like Alan Wake one, like a pretty traditional survival horror.

Alan's segments are very different. They are more like a walking simulator like you said, Maddie, because there are fewer are types of enemies and the way that it works is, I think, ingenious. It's something I've never really encountered. Silent Hill has played with this, but you're in this nightmare New York City. You're walking around and there are just shadows everywhere. There's like shadow figures.

For starters, they're just very disconcerting because they say, Wake, Ali Wake. And it's never like, the sound design to shadow, I mean, every technical aspect of this game is incredible. The sound is really remarkable. The music will start playing this like keening tone.

And you just hear them all saying, like, I drowned, I drowned. Yeah. And you're like, wah, like, and they're constantly, like, you'll come around the corner and it's like, wake. And you're just like, stop it. Like, I'm always talking to them. Like, stop saying my name for you. Most of those shadows are not dangerous. You can just sort of point your flashlight at them.

Yeah, not unless you bump into them actively or shine the flashlight at them. Sometimes they'll react badly. Sometimes you can kind of just walk through them. But then sometimes they become corporeal and they attack you. And you never really feel. safe. And I think it's a really smart design because you're mostly just moving around and you're trying to get to the next place and whatever, go answer the phone, go get to the hotel, whatever, like do something. But they're just in between you and there. You never really know what you're

going to run into. And the game has a few little cues that it tells you the music when it starts getting scary. Okay, you're going to have to fight. But you never really know what you're going to have to fight. And it really puts you on edge. It creates a very tense experience. I find that to be, it's not that scary, but it's very tense. There were definitely points where I was just like, like kind of laughing and talking to the game being like, stop it, stop it, leave me alone. The saga sections can actually be scary in a different way

because there are these jump scares in this game. Yep. Where out of nowhere, a spirit, like a figure, will flash onto the screen with a really intense audio cue. Usually at a moment when you're already kind of tense, like you're opening a door, you're crossing a threshold. And there are some later in the game at a point that I think neither of you have reached yet that are so scary that I was like having full like my nervous system ejected from my body.

Like when the first one hit me, there's one that anyone who's played the game knows and the two of you will know when you reach it. Not to psych you out. It's very fun because they're kind of they're not actually like, there's nothing you have to do when they happen. They just come out of nowhere and they make you jump. They're like anybody who grew up with the internet, it's like that kind of clashing. classic internet jump scare where like somebody sends you like a website and it's like a maze. And they're like, just defeat this maze in one minute. And then within maybe 15 seconds, like a scary face pops up and it's like, blah.

With a screen. And like distorts the audio. What a great throwback. That's the kind of jump scares this game has. That is a great call though. That's exactly what it's like. Getting nostalgic thinking about this. It's such a different kind of fear.

You're so focused on the maze or whatever you're doing. You're like, okay. Okay. I got to do this. And then. And then. It's. Which is just what this game does.

And it's kind of wild that I don't think I've really seen this in a game before. I'm sure it's happened. But usually jump scares and games are like dead space. You know, there's a necromorph behind you. Oh, God. And then you're in this stressful panic situation where you have to deal with the necromorph. This game, it really is where you're like trying to solve a puzzle. It lulls you into a little bit of like, okay, we got to get into this door.

And then this thing jumps out at you. And it just gives you this jolt of adrenaline. And then you're just in front of a door. Like there's nothing happening. I feel like the Arkham games did that with like Joker scares or scarecrow. Scarecrow stuff. I feel like I've seen them. They did.

They kind of messed with you. And those games used dream logic, I think, in creative ways. The level of, I guess there are a couple, you're right. Now I'm thinking back to the Arkham games where they did a jump scare and it was equally effective. I guess the man bat thing that I was talking about just a couple episodes ago is one. But I'm thinking, yeah, I'm thinking of like a Joker specific moment when like suddenly Joker is in your face. Yeah. He actually does the man bat scare in a little.

Arkham night. He does the exact same thing, like, where he's like waiting. You, like, grapple up to a building and he's like, boo. And you're like, fuck you do. So good. So similar feeling where I felt I was always laughing, but there were times where I was just like, oh my God, like, I have to get through this segment. It's this one chapter of Saka's story where they just keep doing this scary face that really scared me. And so I will say, genuinely a scary game. Scarier than Resident Evil to me. It doesn't have the thing that Resident Evil does that I find most stressful, which is you're being hunted by a like procedural sort of AI, unkillable thing that's just going to turn up and chase you that doesn't really happen in this game. It's more atmosphere and then, you know, boss fights

and monsters coming out at you and occasionally jump scares. But I did find it to be like genuinely disconcerting the audiovisual vibe of it when you're in a really scary basement that's kind of flooded and there's, you know, it really does start to feel scary. So it's not for the feign of heart. Though if you are up for that kind of thing, it's a great horror game. It's one of the best horror games I've ever played, are one of my favorites. I think the jump scares are probably my least favorite part of the entire game. I don't like them, and I wish I could turn them off. Pretty much every other aspect of the game's horror I can deal with and respect what it's trying to do. And that's enough that I'm going to complete the game because I really like what it's doing.

And I like all the other horror elements that are there. Like one of my favorite parts is really early, Jason, so you've probably already seen it. It's a conversation that Saga has with the waitress in the diner where they sort of disagree about the nature of reality. And that part really freaked me out and that's not a jump scare at all. I just was like, this is like a broad daylight conversation where I was like, I don't know what's going on. Like, what is real in this world? And I like that type of horror a lot. lot in this game does that a lot. I talked about Jordan Peel's us last week and I'm really glad I

just watched it because this is also a game about kind of the idea of a doppelganger who's doing things that other people are blaming you for. And that's like a sort of methodology of horror that I think resonates with any person like the idea of people being angry with you for something you either don't know about or can't remember doing. That conversation reminded me of Shutter Island. that conversation was later. Yes. Yeah. And also Silent Hill, too, which is sort of like a classic kind of outside reality, learning who the character is as you are playing as them throughout an entire story. And that's like a form of horror that I really enjoy is like, oh, this character that I'm playing

as has a secret. I don't even understand until I've completed their story. And it is maybe even a horrifying secret. I love all of that. And I think even if you're, like me and you really hate jump scares, all those other aspects of horror are so strong in this game that I still really recommend it. Like, I recommend kind of musseling through what I consider like the cheaper, like 1999 Mays website level of horror that makes the game not sound very fun, but like the rest of it is so well done and well told that I really enjoy it and recommend it a lot. I agree. Yeah, having played the whole thing, Saga is a great character and I'm really looking forward to, you know, seeing where her story is.

goes next and to the DLC for this game, which I think will be sort of similar to the first game and we'll explore some new, interesting areas. And of course, then Control 2. I mean, we have this whole world now of mystery and mayhem that can just continue to be elaborated upon. So very exciting stuff. A really, really cool game that, yeah, just to say one more time, I absolutely loved. So that's Alan Wake, too. Let's take a break. And then we'll be back for one more thing. What is up, people of the world? Do you have an argument that you keep having with your friends and you just can't seem to settle it.

And you're sitting there arguing about whether it's Star Trek or Star Wars, or you can't decide what is the best nut or can't agree on what is the best cheese. Stop doing that. Listen to We Got This with Mark and Howl, only on Max Fun. Your topics ask and answered objectively, definitively, for all time. So don't worry, everybody. We got this. We got this. Hey, Sydney, you're a physician and the co-host of Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine, right? That's true, Justin.

Is it true that our medical history podcast is just as good as a visit to your primary care physician? No, Justin, that is absolutely not true. However, our podcast is funny and interesting and a great way to learn about the medical misdeeds of the past as well as some current, not-so-legate health care fads. So you're saying that by listening to our podcast, people will feel better. Sure. And isn't that the same reason that you go to the doctor? Well, you could say that.

And our podcast is free. Yes, it is free. You heard it here first, folks. Sawbones, Meril Turr of Misguide the Medicine right here on Maximum Fun, just as good as going to the doctor. No, no, no, still not just as good as going to the doctor, but pretty good. It's up there. And we are back for one more thing. Maddie, you go first.

What's your one more thing? It's a movie again, folks, but I just keep watching really, really good movies. So this is a totally different kind of movie that we watched this week. It's called Quiz Lady. It's a brand new movie. This movie had me laughing pretty much the entire time. And I feel like it's been way too long since I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt and I felt like I was going to cry.

And I just, I kept turning to Dina and being like, this is a really good movie. So I think everyone should watch this movie. It stars Aquafina and Sandra O, both of whom are playing against Type in that Sandra O is playing the wacky manic pixie. like older sister who's never had a job in her entire life, like extremely stressful to be around is like quote unquote manifesting her ideal life. But it's Sandra O. So she's Sandra O's age. And you're like, aren't you way too old to be talking about manifesting something? And then Aquafina is this like phenom who's been watching Jeopardy for her entire life. It's a fake version of

Jeopardy called like What the Quiz or something. And she is like idetic memory, like incredible. but also kind of agoraphobic and like really anal retentive, the only person in her like impoverished family who's managed to hold down a job and like support her failing parents and failing older sister. And she just kind of like lives with her dog and has no life. And so Sandra O's character kind of barges into Aquafina's life

and through a bizarre series of circumstances, their mother's gambling addiction basically, the dog gets kidnapped and they have to get a lot money really, really fast. And of course, the only way to do that is to get the shy, anal retentive Aquafina to go on this fake Jeopardy show. And it is so funny. Like, I just, I don't know what, I've never seen Sandra O play a character like this before. And I'm so impressed with her timing and her, like, her outfits in this movie are insane. I don't know. I love her anyway. But I really, really recommend this movie. Also, this is going to make it sound

like the movie is stupid, but Will Ferrell basically plays Alex Trebek in this movie. And I know he's done that before on S&L multiple times. Right. And like as a joke, like normally Will Ferrell plays Alex Trebek and it's like a joke. Like they make him say things Alex Trebek would never say. No, no, no. In the SNL, he plays a straight one. Well, I guess I should say Sean Connery makes Alex Trebeck. Yeah, exactly. Alex DeBek into saying things Alex Trebek would never say. But in this version, like, there's no sort of Sean Connery-esque character who's like sort of making fun of the Alex Trebek that Will Ferrell plays, like, it's very pure instead, and he just plays it straight without that ever being interrupted, if that makes sense. Like, I feel like I almost never get

to see Will Ferrell do this, like, play, like, a very pure role where you just enjoy his presence, and it's understated. And I really liked it. Like, I liked that he got to just play Alex Trebek, because, you know, it's not around anymore. So he plays that character. Yeah, that feels like a good homage. That's like a fitting. It is a really, good homage and it's pure the entire time and you just leave it and you're like, Jeopardy was a good show. What happened to it? It's too bad. It never aired again. Nobody hosts it now and they're never going to air it again. But yeah, so it's called Quiz Lady and it's kind of a tribute to Jeopardy as a concept and it's really, really good. It's on Hulu and I recommend it.

Nice. Have you seen that movie Stranger Than Fiction that Will Ferrell is? Yes. That is a good movie. He's pretty good in that. That's a nice performance. I like it when, when Will Ferrell plays plays just a sweet guy. Just a guy. It's nice. Just a guy. It doesn't always have to be elf, you know? You can just be a guy.

Jason, what's your one more thing? Yeah, man, I haven't thought of that movie in years. I remember seeing that in theaters. My more more thing is a book about movies. It's a book called MCU. And it's by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzalez, and Gavin Edwards. I've never heard of a book with three authors.

But this is probably the first book I've seen with three authors, other than like some textbook or something. But most people probably know Joanna Robinson because she's part of the ringer and she does like a bunch of comics podcasting and stuff like that. Did a Game of Thrones podcast back in the day that I used to listen to. She's great on. And so this book, MCU, is kind of the attempt to do a deep dive

into the entirety of the MCU starting with how it was formed and how it started happening and how kind of starts actually with the earlier movies of Marvel. So really just kind of some background on that and then gets into how Kevin Feigy wound up building this empire. And the book has a lot of good access. They have interviews with Feige, among other people. And it's really well reported and well researched and really interesting. And I really enjoyed reading it.

It kind of tapers off towards the end when you can tell that like some of the stuff is a little too recent to really get the inside info on. Just reporting, reflecting life, right? The MCU kind of tapered off. Well, that's what I was going to get into. So actually, there's a lot of, like, reporting on why that happened. And I think a lot of people know the answer, which is that Bob Iger leaves Disney and Bob Chepec steps in and the pandemic happens. And Disney is, like, Greenlight 1,400 Disney Plus shows.

And Kevin Feige gets super distracted because Kevin Feige, as it turns out, was really, like, more than just a producer of every movie. He was, like, a shadow director on every single film. they did. And he would like be reviewing edits and doing cuts and like reviewing the story and all this stuff like that. So um, him just being super distracted or not distracted, really just overwhelmed with all the content that the MCU was putting out over the last couple of years just led to bad things. And so the movie does kind of, or the book does kind of explain why things went down the way it did. And so it's really interesting. And there's a lot of just kind of like dishy juice.

If you want that Hollywood gossip, this is a perfect book for you. And it's also just a really interesting business book. It kind of tells the story. There's a villain in the story of this guy named Ike Pearl Mudder, who is an infamous Marvel. Yeah, well, I mean, the book is about real life, so that makes sense. No, it's not. It's about Marvel comic superheroes. Right, that's true.

It's all about this floor and Spider-Man team of an exclusive interview with Hull. To take on Ike Pearl Mooter. And yeah, a lot of interesting stuff. There's also kind of like if you're wondering, hey, whatever happened to Edward Norton, why wasn't he in the MC moving forward? This book tells the story of that. This book has just a lot of, there isn't like a ton. I found that there wasn't a ton that was like totally new, but I just found it really

compelling and a really good read. Nonetheless, it was just really well reported, well written, well structured. I just really enjoyed it. Skimmed over a little bit. They went into a little too much granular detail about like VFX and stuff. But otherwise, yeah, just really enjoyed it. It's a good book. Again, MCU is the name of the book.

I think it was the New York Times best sellers. So pretty successful. And yeah, I wish those authors the best of luck because good stuff. Nice. I'll check it out. I gather Edward Norton is a really chill, easy guy to work with. Exactly. That's why they were like, you know, you're too.

That's why you're too easy to work with it. You know, one recurring theme, actually, is that like people get so sick of the demands. and how intense everything is. Like John Favreau, after two movies, he was like, nope, can't do this again. I'm out too stressful. Or like, Josh Whedon is portrayed in some interesting ways in this book. And not good ways, I mean.

But like, he's like, nope, can't do this anymore and so on and so on. James Gunn eventually tells us story of what happened there. Again, a lot of this stuff has been public, but it's actually, I find it very helpful to, even if I know stuff already, just seeing it all in one story is actually And in order. So, right, that's the same I mean, like one chronological story. It's still really compelling, even if you know a lot of the details already,

just to see the story laid out the way it is in this book. So I found it really interesting. Cool. Yeah, I'll have to read it. I read that recent variety piece that we can maybe link in show notes. That was just a, that was almost like an epilogue to this, even though it was a different author. So Joanna Robinson, who co-wrote MCU is quoted in that variety piece.

And so, yeah, it does feel like it kind of like, it was fun to read that as I was reading this book, yeah. Yeah, for anyone who's curious, kind of why is Marvel not good anymore? That article has a lot of answers. Yeah, that might literally be the title. It's something like that, yeah. Why Marvel not good?

Why not good anymore? Yeah, that's a word of reading. That article, by the way, had a bombshell, which is that apparently they're considering doing a reunion of the original adventures in a movie, which is ridiculous. Pretty desperate. Yeah, I hope that doesn't happen. But sheesh.

Well, I'll go last since I'm the only one left. My one more thing is a Netflix show that I watched in like two days with Emily. Totally out of nowhere, out of the blue, you could say. And absolutely loved a show called Blue Eye Samurai. That is a new Netflix anime that totally rips. If you're into samurai shit and action stories and love that kind of dueling, sword swinging, blood spraying, revenge tale. Holy crap. You will like this show.

It totally rules. This is, so like I said, this is an animated show, an extremely adult animated show. The most flopping penises I have ever seen in an animated show by far. In addition to being very violent and just generally very adult in not just in the violence and the sex and everything, but just in its themes and its characters. Can you just clarify when you talk about swords swinging? Oh boy. I'm talking about katana swords and also penises. being referred to as swords.

Gotcha. Because quite a lot of sex in this show. So this show is created by Michael Green and Amber Noizumi, who are a husband-wife team. Michael Green wrote Logan and Blade Runner 2049, two great movies. So good writer.

And Amber Noizumi has given some cool interviews about sort of the genesis of the idea for this show, which is the tale of a woman of mixed-race heritage with a white father and a Japanese mother in Ado, Japan, which was a time period, at least in the show and I think in reality, when white people

were totally kept out of Japan. And if you had, for example, it's she does as Mizu, the main character has blue eyes, that was seen as this horrible deformity, and you were seen as subhuman. So she is a woman pretending to be a man who also is hiding her eyes. She wears these cool, like, sunglasses under her, you know, big straw hat. And she looks cool as shit. The art and character design, and this is so sick. So this is kind of based on Amber Noizumi's thoughts on her own child and on like mixed race heritage and what that means.

And on like the sort of Western influence in Japan, which is a big theme of the story. So that's kind of the setting. It's a tale of this samurai Mizu who is like typical in one of these stories. This not the very silent, stoic, absolutely unstoppable warrior who's on a quest for revenge and comes across a variety of people. It starts that way. It follows some familiar beats, and then pretty quickly, it really started surprising me. It's edgier. It's more realistic, I suppose, in how it depicts the way things play out in a pretty hard-boiled way a lot of the time, but in a way that I just found surprising and constantly engaging. It just is a really good story. I read Petrona's review at Polygon, and she just talked about how it made her remember how much she likes a really well-told story. And I think that's really right on.

I just loved watching it because the story rules. And also, the action in this show is out of control. The last time I've seen a show like this was probably Arcane, which had a similar feeling where the episodes are 48 minutes long. They clearly spent a lot of money and time developing them. And it just feels more special than your average animated show. This show is very much a showcase for Jane Wu, who directed a lot of the action scenes.

there's actually another really cool feature about her on Polygon that we can link in show notes. She's a storyboard artist who's done storyboards for the action sequences for a ton of Marvel movies actually for all of this really big budget stuff. She's like the go-to lady for doing fight scenes in pre-vis because a lot of that is kind of animated anyways. She's a martial artist and like knows her stuff. She knows how to fight. She knows how to move.

She understands like Hong Kong cinema and like a lot of those camera techniques that were developed in East Asia. So she, like, brings a lot of that to this show. But this show is clearly, like, her unleashed. Like, Jane Wu, she directed a couple episodes. She did a lot of the fight scenes. And I think they had their whole, like, approach to the fight scenes was that it has to look like it's being shot with a camera.

So it's animated. They're using a kind of mix of computer animation and hand-drawn stuff. But when you're watching these fight scenes, it is, like, the most exciting, like, bone-crunching, incredible stuff. Like, it feels like you're watching this just, like, totally. killer samurai flick. And like, I mean, I can't say enough good about it. And then they all take their dicks out.

Well, and then sometimes, yeah, a guy runs through the scene with his dick flopping around. And that definitely happens a lot of times. But really, I mean, it's just, it's a great, great show. It has a killer cast. Mizu is played by Maya Erskine, actually, from Penn 15. Wow. Who is like totally locked in and just nails it. It also features George Takeh is really good in it.

Masai Oka from Hero plays the kind of sidekick. he's really good. Brenda Song is in it. Randall Park. Kenneth Branagh plays like the villain. It's like a killer voice cast. Honestly, like this show is really something special. We watched the entire thing in like two days. I loved it to death and just think it rules and can't wait for season two. So that is my glowing recommendation for Blue Eye Samurai, which is on Netflix and whips ass.

How many episodes is it? It is eight episodes. They are about an hour long. So it's, you know, pretty significant experience, but I kind of liked that about it. I felt like I wanted more at the end. Cool. Always a good sign. Wow, it sounds awesome.

It rules. I really, really liked it. So yeah, that's our episode, everybody. Just a bunch of good stuff this week. That's all we talk about now. Yeah, I am off to deal with the dark presence in my mind. Yeah, good luck. You must write to escape.

Yeah, I know, right? This is Jason's going to finish his book and be like, it's not an ocean. It's just the lake, actually. It turns out it's just the lake. It's fine. Trier. Is that helping, Jason? I hear those listeners.

Well, what I do is I go to Starbucks and I sit and work for a while and I plug in headphones and then I record myself whispering Shrier and then listen to that. That's how I write. Horrible. Very conducive. Totally normal. So the person I texted about Lance Redick is probably asleep, so I do not respond. If I get an answer, I will have Kirk Bing it in in the show.

Great. So that means people already heard it actually. So maybe they are weird the thing. Yeah, this is some time travel action. We cannot know. It's Schrodinger's Bing in this moment. We have no idea. We have no idea. But people listen to this will know. That's a weird. They do know. It's a weird concept. It's a real paradox. Much like Mr. Doer, they'll be aware of an episode that we have yet to complete. It's true. Exactly. Oh, man. We better sign off for our brains.

Yes, yes. My mind is starting to melt. I will see the two of you next week. See you guys next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about

on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at Tripleclickpod. 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. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.