Triple Click - Triple Play: Deathloop

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

It's time for a Triple Play! Jason, Maddy, and Kirk have all played a whole lot of Deathloop, the time-twisting new game from Arkane. They break down what they like and don't like about the game, diving into its unique structure, disappointing ending, and truly delightful little details.One More Thing: Kirk: Hunt a Killer - Death at the Dive BarMaddy: Bullshit Jobs by David GraeberJason: Outer Wilds: Echoes of the EyeLinks:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin 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

Due to the global supply shortage, this episode of Triple Click is running a little late. You can expect it around December. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we are talking about Death Loop, a video game about traveling through a time loop and causing as much depth as possible. Did we like it? I think so. Let's go. I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello.

It's us. And hi. It's us. The three of us. We are back. It is us. It is, what's that line and undertale? You look in the mirror and it's just you.

You look in the Skype call and it's just us. And it's just us. As far as we know, it's just us. You look in your podcast app of choice and it's just us. Speaking of us, did you know that you can support us by becoming a maximum fun member? Triple Click is entirely listener supported. We do not have advertisements. We are able to do the show because of contributions from all of you find.

listeners and you can support us by going to maximum fun.org slash join if you do so. You don't just get that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with supporting your favorite podcast. You also get bonus episodes every single month, including this most recent one, which we ran this week about Half Life 2 plus Half Life 2 episode 1 and Half Life 2 episode 2. And not episode 3 because that doesn't exist. But a pistol 3 and Half Life Alex. a lot of half light stuff. Lots of, lots of good stuff in there. Yeah, that was a really fun, a really fun beans cast that we did. So you can get access to that if you remember and lots of

other cool stuff. So, uh, big thanks to all of you who support the show and to those of you listen to the show without supporting it. That's cool too. Uh, just tell your friends, spread this show far and wide. All right, let's get on with it, shall we? Kirk Maddie, we have all been playing a video game. There's something very exciting. Always exciting about the, uh, the time when a new game comes out and all three of us are playing it at once. It's just a lot of fun. It is. It is. Let's do it, shall we? Today it's time for a triple play. And this week's triple play is Deathloop. Deathloop is developed by Arcane Studios, specifically Arcane Leon in France. It is published by Bethesda, aka Microsoft's Bethesda, which gives it the interesting

distinction of being a PS5 exclusive that is published by Microsoft, which is is a very funny thing because it was the agreement to make it a console exclusive on the PlayStation was set before Microsoft bought Bethesda, which is pretty funny. We are definitely in the kind of weird in-between period of that deal. Though it is also on PC. Yes. It is also on PC. Whatever.

I played on PC. We all played on PC, I think. We all played on PC. Yes. It was out on PlayStation PC. We all got codes for it, by the way. Oh, we did. Or I guess I'm playing it on a press account, but you got it.

Yeah, I'm saying, I mean, I would never, I haven't gotten a code. from Bethesda and ain't here. You know, Bethesda, Bethes is still blacklisted me, even though I went to a Bloomberg. Well, they aren't blacklisting me over at Polygon, so it just depends on where you go. No, no, no, no.

Well, it's a me-specific thing. It's because I did all the stuff that blacklist. You were the specific offender. It's not that they go after every, like, ex-Kataku employee. It's just me specifically. Although they are still blacklisting people who currently work at Katakaku.

This is really off topic. But just in case people were curious about the state of the Bethesda blacklist. It's interesting. It's still going, baby. I do think it doesn't get talked about enough that a major video game publisher has blacklisted a game, one of the biggest gaming websites for years and years. And people just continue to cover them, like, as if things are normal. It's just a very strange, strange thing.

But anyway, that's besides a point. We still, for the, as long as the blacklist has gone. Well, I was going to say, for as long as a blocklist has gone, I have done my best to cover Bethas's games as fairly and as honestly as possible, despite that. which I think is a professional thing to do. And we will do the same right now. Let's talk about Death Loop, a fascinating game. I have many, many opinions on it. I think we'll all go around and give our impressions,

starting with how much you've finished or how much you've played of the game so far. So, Maddie, why don't you go first and give your overall impressions? Sure. So I have completed the game and I also watched stuff on YouTube. I've read a lot of Reddit theories.

I've gone as far into the team. deep end as you can in terms of death loop completion, I think. I haven't gotten every achievement, but you know what I mean. I feel like I know what I'm talking about with the lore of this game. You're a death loop master. You're a death loop board. Maybe too much. Maybe I went too far in. So I enjoyed a whole lot of this video game more than I thought I would because I'm not a stealth person. People remember from the hitman episode that that was a real challenge for me. and this Death Loop is very much a Kirk Hamilton game and not a Maddie game. And there were definitely a lot of moments when I was shooting my way through situations

that I do not think Death Loop necessarily wanted me to shoot my way through, but I just found a way to do it anyway. And you can kind of get away with that for a lot of the game. But then anytime I had to do a stealth mission, I would struggle with that. So I took about 22 hours to beat it. Jason, I believe you said you beat it in 14. So that's sort of the range of what you can do if you're, I assume you played it like stealthy the whole way or did you shoot your way through situations as well.

Yeah, mostly. But I'll talk about my experiences when we get to me. I want to hear your overall thoughts. So I felt like the first few hours were super hard. This is not an uncommon experience with death loop, by the way. It took me a while to get my bearings. You're stuck in a time loop. You're this guy named Colt. Very funny guy talks to himself a lot. Also talks on the phone to this woman, Juliana, who's trying to kill him and preserve the time loop the entire time. their relationship plays out in these funny little phone calls that they have. And as Colt, you, so you're reliving the same day over and over again, groundhog day style, except eventually you figure out ways to preserve some of your guns loop to loop and you also get these like cyborg implants. They're not literally that, but I don't know what else to describe them as, the slabs. Special powers. Special powers. And you can preserve those eventually loop to loop. And as the game goes on, more

things fall into place. You get to know each of the different maps that you explore, like the back of your hand. So at first, you're like, I don't know where the hell I'm going. But then eventually you're like, oh, Upton, I've navigated this place a billion times. I know exactly which dumpsters to hide behind and which guys are going to be where and which lines of dialogue I've heard 600 times. And by that point, you feel like a freaking master. And by the time you get to the end of the game, you are a god and you undergo the perfect time loop. And because the whole point is that you're trying to escape, but escape the time loop. And the only way to do that is to kill the right people. So you break the time loop by going on and killing these visionaries they're called who have

created this thing. And you learn more and more about them as you go. And so the perfect time loop you're talking about is where you can, you figure out how to kill all eight in a single day without the day going back in time and repeating because that's more challenging than, than you would think, since they're all in different locations. And the puzzle box aspect of the game, I found very satisfying. I thought it was super fun to set up the pins and knock them down. I liked all the mechanical aspects of the game. I liked the story at first, but then didn't like the ending.

But we're not going to talk about that on this show. But I will foreshadow my thoughts on that by just saying I was kind of let down by the end. I still mostly like the game. I want to know what Kirk thinks, though. Yeah. It's funny you say that because that's an arcane trend. A lot of people get disappointed with their endings. Prey had one of the worst endings in modern memory.

Kirk, what are your thoughts on DeathLut? I love this game. I mean, it's not probably surprising. Start by how far you are, by the way. I'm going to start by saying that I like the game, and then I'll tell you how far I am. I really like the game. No.

I played like 16 hours of this game. I haven't finished. I'm getting there. I'm really taking my time. Man, I've seen playtimes go up into the 30 hours. Some of my Steam friends, I'm assuming it finished the game at like 34 hours. So you can play this game a lot more than just blasting through the story

because there's a ton of pretty cool optional stuff. And I'm playing with all the waypoint markers turned off. That's the one HUD adjustment that I've made that I think maybe both of you made, or Jason, I know you said you made it as well. I really recommend that for people playing this game. No, I said people should make it because I regret it and not making it, but I'll get to me.

Oh, I see, okay. So, yeah, I turned that off really early. I do that in all of these games, and it makes a huge difference, I think it makes for a very, very different kind of a game, which is much more of a sort of slow-moving detective game that's a lot more confusing and opaque than it would otherwise be. But that's okay.

And I turned on subtitles pretty a little ways in, and that has made the game a lot less opaque because, man, it really feels like getting thrown to the deep end at first in terms of the story. There's a lot of names to keep straight, a lot of just lingo and sort of scientific pseudoscience jargon about this time loop and the way they engineered it and the company that did it and your role in it and everybody else's role in it.

And so it's kind of fun to just feel like, wow, I'm in the middle of this time loop. All this wild stuff is going on. And now I just need to kind of slowly swim toward the surface from these deaths. And so I've enjoyed that experience quite a bit. And I'm just kind of exploring, figuring things out. So I've got a few people kind of dialed a couple of their storylines dialed to where you figure out, okay, well, if I, like, sabotage this guy's experiment, then he won't stay and do science. So he'll go to the party later tonight so I can kill him and the other guy at the same time. And that means I don't have to go to this location or that one. So that's kind of the narrative problem solving you're doing.

In terms of the gameplay, I love the way that this game plays. So I'm playing on PC. And I've played every one of Arcane's games, both Arcane Austin and Arcane Leon. And I think this is a really interesting evolution in the way that they design games. So the big lesson in Death of the Outsider, which is the most recent game from Arcane Leon, it's a sort of expand-alone. It's really just a standalone dishonored game. the big lesson in that game

was that you don't want to tie a morality system to killing people. So in the previous dissonored games, these games were all very similar. This is basically a dishonored game with guns. You get the dishonored abilities, chain guys together, kill one, they all die. You get the blink.

It's like feels and moves the same, same engine, same controls. So it's really a dishonored game. It's just in a different kind of bioshocky, sort of more modern thing, and you have a pistol. And destiny loot. Yeah, it does have a little bit of loot.

That's true. There are some differences, but it really feels like dishonored. And it really feels like Death of the Outsider, which is a fantastic game. And it was so fun playing that game and finally just being like, whatever, I can kill people or not kill people. It's all in just how I want to play. And this game really embraces that too, which is really smart. The thing they've learned and the thing that Death Loop builds into its narrative structure is that it's always more fun, at least for me, to play these games multiple times.

There's so many ways that you can achieve a given goal in a dishonored game, like killing the guy. And there's all these achievements tied to them, and there's multiple. you can do the violent or non-violent path and all this cool stuff. And those games get really rewarding if you play them a bunch to the point where if you watch speed-running videos of dishonored players, they're like unbelievable, you know, like magic ninjas just flying through the world, you know, catching bombs in mid-air and throwing them back at guys and stabbing people. They don't touch the ground.

They kill like 15 dudes in three seconds. And it's because they've played the level a million times and memorized it, where a lot of people, I think, just played through the dishonored story. And then they're like, okay, well, that was cool. I beat it in like 11 hours and that's that, which is a much less rewarding way to play. I think it's so smart that they've built that loop in, which is something that Arcane Austin did in Prey Moon Crash, which is one of my favorite games of that year, whenever that was it came out, which was a kind of rogue light, similar kind of immersive sim with multiple characters where you died and restarted

and kind of played through the levels over and over again and learn them with different abilities, which is something that you do here in DeathLoop. So I think that they're really getting to something cool, and it's been very satisfying to see their kind of design ethos reach a new level. And I think this game is at a new level. It's really, really cool. And I really like playing it. So something else to that point that I think they've really like embraced with this game is that a lot of people, myself included, tend to want to have the perfect stealth run and quick save and quick load over and over again

if they screw up until they do that. And that can be a frustrating way to play. But it can also be like hard to pull yourself out of that once you're you have that mentality of like I cannot make any mistakes got to got a hit f5 got to restart. And so what they did in this game, which is smart, was they took that hitman structure of just having these missions that like well I guess hitman lets you save so that's not a bad comparison. But they took kind of more like a rogue like concept. I mean, pre-moon crash. Moon crash is really relevant thing. But like essentially you cannot save when you're in these loops.

Yeah. There isn't really much too much of a penalty to dying other than like. losing anything you haven't infused. So if you got a cool slab or gun or something, you'll lose it. But otherwise... The humiliation of having Juliana make fun of you. Sure. Julia makes fun. Yes. But the point is that like if you get spotted and like five guys are going after you, you're not incentivized to just kill yourself and reload. You're incentivized to stay alive and to really see it through, which I think is a smart design choice. Which is a really fun way to play dishonored as well. But it took for me, it took me a lot to really force.

myself through that and even still I would save scum. Well, as you alluded to, you feel like you're doing the wrong thing if you kill people in dishonored because your chaos level goes up. But not in Death of the Outsider, which that was how I played Death of the Outsider. Right, right, I'm saying, yes, so the first couple of the two dishonor games, you feel like the game

really does not want you to kill people. In this, you're not penalized at all for killing people. So it's like you're kind of incentivized to just stay alive and gun people down. I almost felt like it was a little too easy as a result of that, but I'll to that in a sec.

So my overall impressions, I finished a game in 14 hours, and you guys will notice that seems like a low number. And Kirk, it's almost like similar to what you just said about going through dishonor and just seeing the story. And that's it because that is very much how I played this game, was I followed the waypoints and just saw through the story. And I kind of, I guess I was under the impression that it would branch out or open up more than it actually did.

But no, if you're following the waypoints and you follow all the visionary leads, which is this menu screen you can see that I'll tell you like okay here is what how you kill each of these people and you track down the best way to do it um if you follow that it'll just lead you through how to do the perfect loop and then take you to the end of the game without you having to think or do anything like to the point this is like the mission stories and hitman are kind of the same way essentially yeah yeah well yeah it's basically that and it'll just like yeah it is like the mission stories in the man it just walks you through every single piece of it and i guess i was expecting it By the end, I was a little let down by the end because I expected it to be more of, I expected there to be more choice and more of, I guess, a simulation, more of an immersive sim in how you actually saw through breaking the perfect loop. But no, it turns out there's only one way to do it. And the game just heavily holds your hand to the point where even when you're doing that last cycle, the game is telling you exactly where to go.

It's like, okay, got to go do this first. Don't forget to do this. And it's like leading you the whole way, which is I highly recommend that if anyone playing this for the first time that they do what Kirk is doing and turn off waypoints. But even then, the game just is so, so handholdy. Like, it's really just leading you by the nose the whole time in a way that I was a little let down by by the end of things. So, yeah, Kirk, I'm curious to hear, you look like you have something to say.

And I'm curious to hear more about your perspective playing it without waypoints. Do you feel like you actually have to use your brain to, like, figure out, okay, if I sabotage Frank's fireworks then he'll be at this point here but I have to do this first and this first or do you feel like the game is still holding your hand even without using waypoints? I think the game is providing

a lot of guidance in terms of the sort of narrative specifics of what I'm doing and there isn't I can tell it's just very clear to me that there isn't any freedom in terms of how to actually execute the loop like when Charlie and Fia are going to be together they're going to be in one place and I have to engineer it so they're in that place

just because there's no room for flexibility because it's so complicated getting however many, is it eight, however many fully targets there are into the same places to make it work in 24 hours, it'd be pretty remarkable if there were flexibility given how complicated sort of full scenario that has to be. But playing the game, I feel a whole lot of freedom just in how it feels to explore and to learn those things that I have to do, even if I understand that the thing I'm going to have to do is going to be pretty prescribed. So, you know, going through the level

and just figuring out how to kill each visionary the first time has been really fun. Like Fia's level, she's hidden in this whole weird art installation, and I was kind of looking at what I needed to find, and it's different pieces of art on the wall, and they each have clues. And I was like, okay, well, this one, oh, I'll write, it's like in the elevator shaft.

So I go to where there's an elevator shaft and looking around and I find it. It's a lot of feelings like that where I'm just reading a clue and then figuring it out, which is a really fun way to go. And there's also optional stuff that I've found. Charlie has made these little games in each level. And there's, there are some where I don't even know.

There's just a lever that I pull. And then I'm like, oh, okay, that set off a timer for this lever. And I have to get to that one. And I'm kind of solving a big room-sized puzzle just to get a cool gun or something, which doesn't really have anything to do with the narrative. Yeah, but the guns are never, the rewards are always extremely disappointing for all that optional content. But the puzzles are really fun.

But the puzzles are really cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay. So, sorry, go ahead. Finish your thought. Oh, just some of those, some of those puzzles remind me of the, kinds of puzzles that are in Desonard. Like Desonard 2 had that huge logic puzzle you had to figure out,

which is this kind of amazing moment in that game. Yeah, that was my favorite part of the game. There's stuff like that at the margins, and I'm not disappointed by the fact that the narrative itself isn't like as flexible as it could be, partly just because I understand the constraints that they were under to even make the whole thing work at all. And it would have been pretty crazy for them to pull off something more flexible. Yeah, and the attention to detail, it's worth noting, is like just

beyond like comprehend like it's comprehension like they have this there's this one section this is a minor spoiler but whatever there's this one section in an updom where there's a guy building a canon and if you go visit him like morning afternoon like evening you will see the gradual progression of this canon and it gets built and there's some fun things that happen and like yeah you can get a cool item if you like figure out the best way to do it but like there are a lot of things like that where like you'll see progression of things and you'll see things change. That's the coolest part of the game to me. So the problem that I had, Kirk,

even, and I think I would have ran into this even if I was playing without waypoints because this was ultimately my biggest problem with the game is that it is just too easy. Once you get a gun, and I got a gun pretty early with suppression on it, like a silencer on it,

you can just use that to just beat the entire game. Between that and then the blink ability, shift it's called in this game, you are just teleporting everywhere, like taking out guys in a second, there's just no challenge. At least there wasn't for me, which is what, again, one of the reasons I beat it all in 14 hours. That final cycle, like there was no tension at all for me whatsoever because I just felt the entire time like I was just blazing through it. And the only bit of tension that the game adds to it is that Juliana will hunt you and Juliana can be played by another player who will ruthlessly

like come in and try to ruin your cycles for you. I had to turn that off though because if you're playing online, you can't pause the game. And not being able to pause the game is not an option in a house with a toddler in it. So I had to turn that off and use AI, Juliana, which is not nearly as much attention because the AI is just kind of stupid. Yeah, she's not as good. Some of those players, though, are really tough. Like, I turned it on by accident for a little while, and I was like, holy crap,

is Juliana just suddenly really good? Like, what is happening? I felt like I was pretty good at this, but she's like hiding. Why is the computer teabagging me? The AI is like so good suddenly. And then like I pause at one point and I was like, oh my God, I'm online. All of those were real people. I'm so embarrassed now.

Like they all just killed me. It was incredible. So yeah, there are definitely people like one of my steam friends, Kirk, since you were mentioning that, like one of them's played for like 60 hours and she's just been Juliana for like half of that. Like she's just getting in there and playing it multiplayer. A whole valid method of play is that people just do that. Well, that's a whole, it's a different game.

essentially. I know. So I know there are a lot of people whose play counts are really high just because they're only playing the Giuliana part of it and just enjoying the abilities and like hunting Colts down in cold blood, which is like a whole other aspect of it that I haven't done at all. But yeah, I would recommend not going online if you want to actually defeat Julianna easily. The problem is if you don't go online, then at least I found the game way too easy. I don't know about you, Mani. I don't know by the end of the things. Well, I thought it was harder than you. But I don't really like stealth games that much. I get kind of bored, honestly. So Kat Bailey from IGN had this tweet where she was talking, she said something like, I never feel more aware of playing a video game than when I'm

playing a stealth game. And I also find that true, although I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing, but you become so hyper aware of like video game animations and like repeating dialogue and like the quirks of the way a character walks and like, oh, they're sort of faced this way, but they can't really see me because it's a video game. And it's so unreal in a way that I don't think it's. is personally very fun. So I just, all of those aspects of stealth, I get bored by and I'm like, I just wanna break this and see what happens

and mess around and have a little more chaotic fun. So I give into that temptation a lot, even when I'm trying to be stealthy for a few minutes, I'm like, well, what happens if I just like kill this one guy in a bombastic way? Or like, what if I just throw a grenade at those three guys? They're right there, I just gotta try it.

And then I do and then everybody's mad at me. I do the same thing and I think that's fun. So I actually don't. play this game as a pure stealth game. Like I have a stealthy load out, and you're right, Jason, the stealth, like a silenced pistol is almost game-breaking. Or it just, it's so, it changes the game

and basically puts you on the fast track toward victory, just because it's so much better than that little nail pistol that you get at first and can kill like I have it, you know, with perks that like kill people from like a mile away with a headshot. And I'm playing with a mouse and keyboard, so it's just click, click, click, and

people die. But I'm playing with a combination. So you can equip two slabs at once, which gives you two special abilities, or at least that's what you can do where I am. Maybe you get the ability to get more later. You do not. Another problem in the game, by the way. Yeah, you only have to have to... You're surprised someone might mod that in. I don't know, though. I think

it's kind of an interesting choice to just have the two. But who isn't going to have shift? That's the thing. It's like shift and then something else. Well, I think it'd be kind of fun though to play with like invisibility and I don't know, the thing that links people together. Like, to try to limit yourself, that could be fun. But I agree. I always have shift. And then I always have havoc. and havoc is an ability that just turns you into the Terminator and makes you really strong.

And there are some great perks for it. Like each time you do damage, it gives you more energy so it lasts longer. And I just have that turned on, which is really my anti-Juliana, you know, a weapon. Like she just shows up and I'm like, all right, shotgun comes out, here goes havoc. And then I just like mower her down. And I am also playing offline because I do like to be able to pause it. And also, I don't know, like actually computer Juliana got me once because I have had to go into the area where you do a, what's like a class pass, which is a thing that you

need to access certain doors. And then it turns off all of your slabs. And Colt, your character has a slab. And that's the thing that gives him three lives. And I kind of forgot. I feel like this happens to everybody. Yeah, everyone's done that at some point. I was like, oh, I just have three lives.

And Juliana came in. And I was like, oh, this will be fine. Maybe she'll kill me. I'll just fight her. And she killed me. And then I just got to came over. Yeah. And you just lose everything.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that happened to me with one of those, like, slab names. nullifier. Oh, yes. The nullification fields. Yeah. Yeah, you got to be careful. So that stuff, I don't know, like I find the game to be a pretty

fun difficulty. I agree that it's not hard. I mean, the AI is pretty dim. Which I don't know whether that's by design or not. It feels pretty ridiculous when you're like, it's very easy to just take people out one at a time. And it I would say that it's a problem only and that it renders like the slab that links

people, which is a really cool ability. Links a bunch of people together. You shoot one and then they all die, which is really, really fun when you pull it off, but it's so easy to just shoot them one after another and they don't notice that it's kind of, I don't have a equipment. It's not just that you can even use it on, uh, on the visionary. He's just kick him out immediately. Like when, obviously Kirk, you know that like at some point you're going to have Charlie

and Fia together. And there's an whole, a whole encounter designed there where like, I won't spoil too much. But essentially like you're meant to, I guess the game wants you to like take out one and then the other one panics and like does some things. And like you're supposed to have this challenging fight against them. But if you use Nexus on both of them, you just snip them down and, like, you don't even have to think about it. But that I love. That's great.

Like, that's the kind of stuff that's cool where you think of something and it works. Yes, 100%. No, it's great. It's kind of an unsolvable problem. Like, how do you balance the difficulty of a game when there's so many possibilities and so many different, like, tools in your tool kit? But I think the issue with this game, I don't know, maybe there are a few issues that are causing the difficulty balance. but one of them is certainly that every single enemy you face is identical. Like they're all,

some of them might have sniper rifles and shotguns, but they all die to a single headshot. And once you have a silencer pistol, like we both said, like it just breaks the game. It's just over. It's just like you can take out anybody. And then that's on top of like from the beginning of the game,

you get this hack a midjig that lets you hack any turret in the game to use it against your enemies. And that just like lets you break anything. There's a lot of just like like super overpowered stuff that you get from the get-go. And Maddie, I'm sorry to make you feel like a bad gamer because you found a, you had a harder time at the beginning. I certainly died plenty of times. Don't get me wrong. Like I got some game over, has lost in progress and stuff like that.

But just overall, I was just disappointed by the fact that it just felt like there was no real tension for me, especially in that final loop. That final loop really soured me on the... I thought the game ruled and I thought it was a brilliant game. And then that final loop really just soured me on the experience in a lot of ways, to Maddie's point earlier. No, I know what you. mean because it is true that up until that point you can play everything however you want to play it. But when you get to the final loop, you're kind of like, well, now that I've bashed my head against the wall in every single one of these missions before, multiple times in some cases, if you're trying

to perfect killing a visionary in order to like get the kill and make sure you did it right, by the time you get to the end, you're like, well, I already know the best possible way to do this. And that is the exact way that the game is telling me to do it. And I know where everyone is. And so I guess I'll just do the thing. And I think it is supposed to make you feel godlike, but in practice it is a little bit of a letdown. And I think it just has, it dovetails with the narrative issue as well, which I won't get into for spoiler reasons,

but it just feels like a AAA game problem where it's the end of the game, so everything has to railroad you to the credits. And so there needs to be a conclusion whether or not it's earned. And it just ended up making me wish that I could just stay in the loop and keep enjoying it, which is also kind of a theme of the game, but maybe not the intention of the ending. It's interesting because it sounds like this is as much, this is weird because I'm like postulating about

why you didn't like an ending that I haven't seen. And I don't want to get spoiled. But I do have a thought that is maybe interesting. And it's that this seems like a narrative issue because Outer Wild, a game that the three of us love that we're going to be talking about a lot more on the show in the future,

does the same thing. When you do the true final loop of Outer Wilde, There's only one thing that you can do. It's a series of events and you have to be actually very, very careful. It's even a little bit frustrating. It's pretty hard to pull off, but you have to like follow this exact thing. But the ending of that game rules because the narrative payoff, which I also won't spoil for anyone else and finish, it's just beautiful and amazing.

So it could just be that it's not so much the fact that it's prescribed just as what actually happens and the ending. So there are three endings. Maddie, I don't know if you knew that or if you only saw it. Oh, I've seen them all. You've seen them all. Okay. Okay, yeah. That's a little like Death of the Outsider, which had multiple endings as well.

Well, there's one that is like clearly meant to be the real ending and it's the most satisfying one. And that's the one I got, actually. That's interesting. I wonder which one you think that's the case for. Well, I don't agree. We'll table this and maybe talk about it on the triple click discord or something. But I will say, just to go back to speaking broadly about the narrative and not about the ending, the narrative isn't really the thing that's grabbing me with this game. I like the incidental writing.

I think that a lot of the journals are really fun. The characters are all these kind of... The text logs, the chat logs are so funny and so worth reading. So all of the visionaries, well, not all of them, but several of them are like horrible, rich people who've just decided they want to live on this island in a time of forever because they deserve that. And Alexis is basically like this sort of Alon Musk type character who like wears a wolf mask. Or Martin Screlly. Martin Screlly. Yeah, or Martin Screlly.

Yeah, he's just abysmal and hilariously written. And like Charlie, the game designer. I mean, what game designer doesn't like putting a fake game designer in a game so that they can make fun of themselves? Like, there's sort of this laser tag level with obviously real death happening in it. And so you can run around and hear Charlie's robot that he's designed, like talking about how great the game is and how Charlie's a mastermind genius. And it's amazing.

One of the best is when Charlie has a thing that's a time challenge. and he's like, sorry, this was a time challenge. I know those are kind of out of fashion right now, but hey, I'm Charlie. I do what I want. Anyway, continue. It's delightful. I really enjoyed the brief moments with all the visionaries.

And I have seen some people complain that the visionaries aren't even deeper characters. And I don't think I agree with that. I feel like they're perfect. I feel like you spend just as much time with each of them as you need to. I didn't need more from any of them. That wasn't my personal disappointment with the ending. I do feel like the visionaries are like really well drawn and super funny and work great as sort of caricature villain types who you're going to have to kill off no matter what. Like that is you need to kind of want to kill them.

Although actually Igor is kind of a tragic one. I mean, I like that all of them are different and you kind of learn about each of them and have different motivations in each case. Some are more assholes than others. Yes, definitely. But that's as it should be as well if you're going to introduce eight characters that the player needs to get to. to know on some level. Right. They can't all be deep.

So with the writing, it's like, I like it on that level. I just think the writers are very clever. Like, this is a very clever script. Just having Wenji, Wenji's a great character, duplicate herself, and her different duplicates are having conversations about the other duplicates. Like, there's just all these ideas of sort of how can we have fun with this premise and with this weird, wacky science island work. Extremely having, yeah, the developers clearly had fun with this.

Yeah. And, of course, with Colton Giuliana, I mean, their dialogue is so funny. We talked about this, some on the villain. episode. I just recently had one where he's, they're kind of taunting each other. They always have their conversations at the start of a new level and they just sort of do a quick back and forth. And he's like, yeah, well, you're, and she just hangs up on him and then he finishes what he was saying. And he's like, man, that's why she thinks I'm not cool. She misses all my best material. Like, he's always trying to prove that he's cool. Anyways, all of that stuff is really fun. In terms of the bigger mysteries and the timey-whimy, you know, sort of wibbley-bibbley of it all.

I'm not that, what is it, wibbly wobbly, timmyness of it all. I'm not that interested in any of that or like the bigger lore stuff or just even the bigger story like who Colt really is. It's just that stuff doesn't, I don't really care. So I guess I'm not really playing it for that. And I feel like that's a good frequency to meet this game on. Well, that's the thing. That's a good kind of microcosm for the entire game, which is that this is a game that excels at the little details. I mean, even just like being able to explore and like find people just like egging other people.

people on to kill themselves because they'll just wake up and because it's a loop or just like like some of the conversations are just incredible and hilarious and like like the party and like all of the the ways that they took I remember um in a screenwriting class once back in college uh there was this whole concept of like you want when you have you have this concept and then you want to just like ring it for everything you possibly can like you take every single possibility and you show it and like something like groundhog say is a perfect example of that you have this time loop concept you show every possibility. And in this, they did the same thing.

They took every possibility you could think of, of, like, living on this pleasure, pleasure palace of an island. They don't eat food. They only eat candy. Yeah, they all eat candy everywhere. It's ridiculous. It's good. That was a good one.

Just like the partying, the hedonism, just everything about it is just so well done. And how they all seem bored and kind of bummed because actually it would suck to live on the sign like that too. Yeah, because actually the hedism is and all that great. It would. Although none of them know how long they've been there. Like only cold. and Juliana are capable of retaining memories.

And even then, it's kind of dubious as to like how and how long that lasts. But all the other characters think it's their first day on the island. And that's like a key part of how they all operate. And I think is Harriet the name of the like cult leader character that you meet? Like you get to hear her cult leader speech a billion times if you're trying to kill her and you're not good at it as I was not good at it. That's a tricky one. That gas. That's a good.

I was always trying to go in the vents like Sammas, and I feel like I was never fast enough. But anyway, it doesn't matter. So she gives this whole speech, and she's like, every other day we're going to have like a hedonistic party time. But today is a chaos day where we kill each other. But of course, every single day is the chaos day where they kill each other. And like, you know that, but all of them don't know that. And they all think, like, oh, well, tomorrow is going to be great.

And you like get to overhear them all talking about how like, oh, tomorrow's going to be really sweet. Like we're just going to vibe. And it's like you're never going to vibe. You're going to feel like shit every single day for the rest of your natural lives. I'm going to know for no idea. I just little touches like that are really fun. And you kind of put it together as you play where you're like, wait a minute. Every day is chaos day.

Fuck. Like that's crazy. That's not guess. So I guess that's the point that I was making is that this and everything about this game kind of works perfectly on this like detail oriented like small microcosmic level. Whereas if you just look at the overarching stuff, some of it doesn't work as well, including the overall loop at the end of things and some of the story stuff and like some of that stuff. But if you're just enjoying this game like on a moment. How does it work? And yeah, don't think about it. Other questions. A lot of metaphysical questions. Some of it is answered through like lore and stuff. But but yeah, I think on a moment to moment level, this game rules. And I really enjoyed playing it. I just, yeah, was left disappointed by some of the bigger overarching stuff. Yeah. Yeah, its ambitions are interesting.

I mean, it really has a lot in common with Bioshock, just the overall vibe, the way that Rapture feels full of splicers, people who are having a big weird party and seem trapped in this one moment in time, the like science gone awry in this isolated location. This really feels like Bioshock in so many ways. Which Bioshock game do you think it's similar to? Well, I just mean like the vibe of the game, I guess. I don't know. Like I'd have to think. I mean, it's a little like Bioshock too, I guess, because of it. in Bioshock 2, and the mechanically...

Well, the aesthetic also is very similar. Yeah, right, but the one thing, and this is actually a thought I had that you just made me think of many when I was playing the game, but just that you would get invaded by a little sister or a big sister in Bioshock 2, which is a very similar thing. It's actually those fights are... Bioshack 2 is an underrated game. It's really fun. And it's similar to when Juliana

invades. It's like a really tough fight that you just have to put up with that happens systematically throughout the game and not in the scripted way. But no, it's just that energy. Like, that that same feeling, but Bioshawk is very concerned with narrative and character and, like, tragedy and these kind of operatic heights

of, you know, this grand ambition thwarted and all of this, like, really dramatic stuff that makes it a very memorable game. This game is, like, way more Saturday morning cartoons. You know, you're just looping around in time. And, like, the cutscenes, those little animated cutscenes, I mean, the whole thing just feels much more bouncy and light, which I don't personally feel,

at least at this moment in time, Is it mark against it at all? Like, Biocshack was cool. And that's why that game lingers. And maybe Death Loop won't linger in 10 years or something. But it's really fun. And it kind of works for the tone that it's going for. Right.

I mean, Death Loop doesn't take itself too seriously. And that's awesome about it, to your point. Yeah. If anything, I wish it took itself even less seriously. Because I feel like it shines a lot when it's funny. And the moments when it tries to say something grand about the nature of human existence or love or whatever are the. moments when I'm like, this is not it, y'all.

Like, you needed to just stick with the goofy stuff and just be a fun video game because that you're very good at. Like, get me back to Alexis telling a weird joke about how his party is going to be so wet and Wenji should definitely go. Like, I, I, that stuff I was totally here for, but. Well, where I think death loop will linger is that the structure of this game is really unlike the structure of anything I've played before. Like, there's no other game that, there are games that do time loops.

They're games that deal with like causal effects of time loops, but there are no games that have you like, like playing them in quite this way or they're segmented in quite this way. And you have to figure out how to move the pieces between each segment in a way that like like outer wilds might be the closest, but it's not quite the same. I mean, I'll say again that anyone who really likes this game should play Pre-Moon Crash because a lot of people didn't play Pray Mooncrash. I believe including my two co-hosts on this show and Pre-Moon Crash is really good and you should play it. That is correct, at least in my case. I play like an hour of it, but yeah. I do like that unlike Outer Wilds, it doesn't, Death Loop doesn't progress in real time, which I would agree with you, Jason,

makes it significantly easier. And I think part of why I thought it was hard at first was that I didn't fully understand how permissive the game actually was. And I was a little afraid of like, oh, what can I do and what can't I do? And is this event just going to be progressing no matter what? And do I need to hurry everywhere I go? And then eventually I was like, oh, no, this won't actually trigger anything until I get to this place or what have you.

I mean, there are some events that unfold no matter what, but not in the linear fashion that they do in Outer Wilds, where it's like every loop is, what is it, 22 minutes, something like that. And it's like, you just have to do things within that time frame. And that's it for you. Whereas Death Loop a day, a morning could last forever if you just keep standing there, which makes no sense. Yeah, well, it's not really a game that concerns itself with like causal effects

the way Outer Wilds or the way Majora's Mask does. It's not a game where you are doing things that then influence the future because everything is resetting so frequently and you're not like until the final loop, none of what you do really matters from morning to afternoon. And you're just not on an actual timer. I mean, it's not concerned with time in the same way as those games. So it's just like a very fundamentally differently designed game. Yeah, it's very much like the sandbox that you're meant to play around with, which is all cool.

Yeah, I just wish that final section had just been executed a little differently. I just wasn't happy with the way that that all unfolded. But other than that, it's a cool game. Yeah. Final thoughts before we take a break. I think we all really like this game. Maddie, it sounds like you're the most down. Well, I'm the most down, but I still recommend it.

I sort of went through a journey in the past 24 hours since I beat it where I didn't like the ending. And then I watched a bunch of the cutscenes again on YouTube and I thought about them. and I was like, I think I see what they were trying to do here, even though it didn't work for me. But I can see some of the ideas and they're cool. I just don't think they worked. But I get it. And I feel like there were enough things about the game that I liked that it's still worth checking out if it sounds fun to you.

Just, you know, go in with the same spirit that you might have had when you watched Looper where, like, you don't really need to have it make that much sense and you're not going to think about it that hard. And just don't worry about it. You know, just have a fun time. and don't do what I did where you play the whole game, thinking about all the questions you have about how the science works, and assuming that you're going to get to read a bunch of documents, explaining all of it, you don't do what I did because it's not going to work out.

Maddie, did you play Prey? No, should I? Okay, yeah. Does it have a horrible ending, though? Isn't that what you said at the beginning of this episode? It does. It's an awesome game, though. Whatever, who cares?

The game is so good. No, I was about to say that. Quick, I was about to say that. A game rules, but, like, the ending is, You just have to pretend the ending doesn't exist or like stop like in the final act. But yes, that game rules and then has just a terrible ending. Just finish it and who cares. It's such a good game.

Even if it has a weird ending. It is a great game. It is a really great game. It's also fine if endings are bad. I can just ignore that after a while. And remember that the bulk of my experience was having fun with it and just be like, oh, well, you know, maybe they'll figure out the tone balance next time. Who knows?

Prey has a lot of the tension that this game lacks. And it just has a lot of, yeah, praise a really good game. Anyway, let's take a break, and then we will be back with one more thing. Hi, I'm Annabel Gurich. And I'm Laura House. And we're the hosts of Tiny Victories. My tiny victory is that I sewed that button back on the day after it broke. We talk about that little thing that you did that's a big deal to you, but nobody else cares.

Did you get that Guggenheim Genius Award? We don't want to hear from you. We want little bitty tiny victories. My tiny victory is a tattoo that I added on to this past weekend. Let's talk about it. My victory is that I'm one-year cancer-free. But my tiny victory is that I took all of the cushions off the couch, pounded them out, put them back, and it looks so great. So if you're like us and you want to celebrate the tiny achievements of ordinary people, listen to Tiny Victories.

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Reading glasses every Thursday on next. And we are back, Kirk, Maddie. One More Thing. Maddie, take us away. Okay. So my One More Thing is a book that I read that is titled Bullshit Jobs and it's by David Graber. And I don't read economic theory very often, but I really loved this. David Graber is a very funny writer. And he wrote a book that is sort of an extension of a piece that he wrote in 2013 that went viral at the time that was called On the Phenomenon of Bulletin. I think I remember this. And it's about, I think he's from the UK, but this ends up being a phenomenon that is international, as he found out in the research for bullshit jobs. Like, I assume it's the United States thing, but it's actually something that happens in every society, seemingly, where there are these sort of middle-class administrative positions where people just don't actually have that much work to do, but they have to pretend as though they're

working for eight hours a day. and a lot of times they'll be blocked from like doing anything fun during the day. Like they can't even look at Twitter or YouTube or whatever. They just have to pretend to work for eight hours. And all they really have to do is send a couple emails. And you think like from the outside that this would be really pleasant and like, oh, you don't have to do anything all day. Isn't that what everybody would want? But it's actually torturous.

And so David Graber interviewed all these people who've had bullshit jobs about like their experiences and why they left. And a lot of them have become like janitors and construction. workers, like the guy at the end of office space. Like, that's like a real thing that people go through where they're like, I need to feel like I'm achieving something in life. I can't just have this job that is completely meaningless. Like, people will go out of their gourd. So if you're a listener and you have a bullshit job or you've ever had one, you should

read this book because it's very cathartic and it's fascinating. And I also just liked it from a political perspective because I just cannot get a read on what this guy's politics are, which I think is really fun. Because, like, he talks a lot about how, like, if you're anti-capitalist, you would assume a bullshit job could never exist. Because capitalism is supposed to eliminate any job that isn't useful and doesn't make money. And that's leftists can't possibly acknowledge that these jobs exist. Whereas, like, communist Russia would implement bullshit jobs simply to keep every single person employed. And so you're like, okay, so I guess this guy's anti-communist.

But then he, like, talks about how libertarians are also wrong about bullshit jobs. And he's like, they assume that only the government has bullshit jobs and that a pure market would never allow. for these jobs to exist. So they don't believe me either. And it just ends up being like really funny. Yeah. Where you're like, okay, like this guy is really challenging everyone's assumptions about how labor works.

And reading it post-pandemic is fascinating. I don't know. I really recommend it. I feel like I'm learning a lot. So it's called bullshit jobs. That sounds good. By David Graemeer. Cool.

Kirk, what have you been up to? What's your one more thing? My one more thing is a game that I played with. I played it before. I recommended this game. It was, on Maddie's recommendation, I bought this. I played this with Emily and a house guest we had over the weekend. It's Hunter Killer, which is the brand of these sort of, I would call it an escape room in a box.

I think that's kind of how it works. And they do subscriptions where there's like five chapters. And then each month, they send you a new chapter, which is a bunch of cool things to solve. This was just a one off that you can just buy. This is Maddie's one more thing a few months ago. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this was on Maddie's one more thing. Yeah, this was on Maddie's recommendation. I decided to get this because her description

made it sound really fun. And it was really fun. So this one was called Death at the Dive Bar. I just bought it online. You can buy it straight from their site. And you can sign up for the bigger ones where you get the subscription or you can buy old ones and they'll still send them to you once a month. This was just, took us a few hours to solve the murder. It's kind of like a guy gets, a guy dies, the owner of a bar dies. And then, you know, his employee thinks there's foul play. And she reaches out to this investigator who you work for, and they send you all her files. So then you just have this, like, mess of Feeleys. You know, if you know from Feeleys from the, like, PC games of the 80s and 90s,

where they'd give you a cloth map or a cool, you know, whatever else, like things that are supposed to belong to the protagonists. They're all anti-piracy wheels and stuff. Well, and then, right, they started using those for anti-piracy, but really just the Feles were always really cool. And there are still game companies that do Feeleys now. This is just all Feles all the way down. So you've got, you know, photos from the crime scene. and printouts of websites and dossiers on all the four suspects that you're trying to narrow it down between and maps and like flyers that were handed out.

And everything is so well done. I was so impressed by just the level of polish and execution of this thing. So each physical object is just really cool and very authentic looking. There's a little matchbook that looks like a real matchbook. The printout, there was a site it's basically next door, but it's called good fences.com, which is so funny. Like there's just a lot of really good writing in the world building where they've imagined these sort of alternate versions of things.

The writing is all really great. It's all very character-based and the handwriting is all different. So it all looks really believable. Interestingly, it was set in the 8-1-2 area code, which is Southern Indiana and that's where I grew up. So the whole thing is set in a made-up town. So the killer was you, and that was a surprise. There's a point at which, and this is, I will not spoil anything other than this one thing

that I do want to mention, there's a phone number written on the matchbook, and it was an 8-1-2 phone number, and the whole time they're talking about Indiana. And then Emily is also from my hometown, so we're both like, holy shit, like this is my area code. Like our home number growing up was an 8-1-2 number, and we were actually supposed to call the number, which we didn't realize until way later. And when you call the number, you get a voice, like a voicemail for the character who like whose number you're calling, like confirming that you figured out who it was. So I was really impressed with this. I thought the writing was so good. There was, I think, one writer on it. And then there was kind of a team of people who made it. But it was just really wonderfully written,

really clever, really fun little mystery. It was easy because it was the easy setting. But I'd love to try a harder one. So we're totally going to do more of these. It was great time. Anyone looking for something to do with like a group of friends? There are settings in these? So they're like handled differently depending on your setting? Yeah, there's like a difficulty for each thing you can get. So ours was marked easy, but I believe they, I don't know how many there are, but definitely they could get a lot harder than the one we did. Oh, so you're saying this specific one was an easy one. Yeah, you can't adjust it. Gotcha. Gotcha. But I really want to do a harder one. And I think it'd

just be fun. Like, man, if you ever go on a vacation with another group of people and you're going to go out and hike during the day and then at night, you do a new chapter in your mystery, I could just see this being such a good time. I really, really endorse it. I thought it was so fun. So that's Hunt a Killer. Thank you, Maddie, for the recommendation. You're welcome. I'm so glad you liked it. That's great. It's really, really, really cool. Cool. So my one more thing is a little game called Outer Wilds. I've been playing the newly released expansion slash DLC for Outer Wilds called Echoes of the Eye. So I'm just going to like go la la la because I don't want to. Kirk, Kirk, earmuffs. So you haven't played it at all yet. Neither have you started it. I don't know what you're

saying. Wow, he's really doing it. He's actually has taken his headphones off. Kirk is going to have to edit this. This part is an unedited part of the show because Jason and I are the only ones here. All right, fine. I'll put them back on. My headphones are back on. I'm not going to spoil anything. I'm not going to spoil anything. I'm just going to say, okay, so echoes of the eye. I haven't finished it all. I played a big chunk of it, a few hours into it, and it rolls.

It's brilliant. It's really good. But there's a but. There's a butt. So, again, I just won't say anything about it other than like it gives you a cool, new space to play in and it's more outer wilds. And to, it's unrelated to the means, or it's kind of like a side thing. So if you know the main story, there's like a big galaxy and so this is just another place. It's a big solar system.

And this is just another place to explore. It's not related to like the main story. So you don't need to worry about that. They say that like having your shipwog filled out with the original game will help you in some way and some non-essential way. So maybe do that. I mean, if you haven't played out a while, you should definitely go play it. But anyway, it's a side. It's a self-contained side thing from what I can tell so far.

the new like location that you explore is just brilliant. It's like so clever and plays around to the game's mechanics, introduces new mechanics. It's just brilliant. It's such a fun time just exploring it. But when you start out this TLC, there's a little blurb that is like some elements of outer wilds may be intense. Like you can turn off, you can lower your frights. You can click this menu option that is like lower frights to make it less intense. You don't want like a super scary experience.

I got to say. Did you lower the frights? The parts that's referring to sucks so much that they made me legit want to stop playing and not play anymore. And this is like, this is like one of my favorite games of all time. And for the DLC to introduce this new mechanic that made me not want to play anymore, it's got to be pretty bad. And yes, it is pretty bad.

Fortunately, it's like pretty late from what I can tell into what you will discover. Like you can discover. a lot before running into it, but it sucks so badly that I just like might not finish the DLC as a result of it. Maddie, to answer your question, I did try that menu option. It did not really help as far as my own enjoyment. And I won't say anymore because I know. Did it do something? Like, do you feel like the menu option like made a change? I don't know. I couldn't. I couldn't really tell. But Outer Wilds is all about exploration and discovery and finding things for yourself. So I don't, I want to be super vague about all this stuff. Well, we're going to talk about this for sure. Like,

once we all played it. We may do a beans cast. Maybe we'll even do a beans cast. Well, if we're all too scared to beat it, that might inhibit our ability to do that. But we shall see. Well, Kirk loves horror stuff. He does.

So maybe he'll stream it and we'll just watch him do that. The combination of like what this mechanic is and everything else in Outer Wilds. Like Outer Wilds is a game about exploring and being curious and like really taking the time to poke around with things and see what happens. And this mechanic discourages that. And it's like the opposite of that. And I hate it. But yeah, okay, that's it.

That's all I'll say. But other than that, it goes with the eye. I mean, I don't want this to be like souring the whole thing because there's so much cool stuff in there. And like, like I said, the main space that you get to explore is just so good. And like so quintessentially outer wilds that I just recommend it. Everyone should play out of wilds regardless. But this stuff is really cool.

And it makes for a good excuse to like revisit like hearing that menu music come up. just like, I was like, oh man, this feels like very comforting hearing that music once again and just like going in and like going around and talking to all the herthians. Very cool stuff. Outer Wild's rules. Echoes of the eye. Mixed feelings about it, but most of it is brilliant.

All right, that is it. For this week's episode, big thanks to everyone who subscribes. Go check out the Beanscast, Half-Life 2. For everybody else, we will see you all next week. See you next week. 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 maximumfun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the showbats. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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